thowed

Amazing! Don't want to be a misery-guts, but am tempted by some Jan 2026 Index Puts for next year. Feels like a lot of optimism about Trump is baked in, & silly Memecoin stuff going on. It's been a good run since Oct 22. Will hold on to what I've got which seems reasonable e.g. FFH, TVK, CSU - thinking of that old line about how great companies with great operators can take advantage of a downturn. Community Banks - some of which seem cheap still and growing. And a few other small things, like Laurent Perrier (family-controlled illiquid value) and FPT (outstanding tech company in Vietnam - I think one of the highest quality cos in SE Asia).

Happy Thanksgiving And I give thanks to everyone here whom I have learnt so much from.

Swiss ETFs are kind of crazy, as Nestle, Roche & Novartis are nearly 40% of it. On other hand, since two of them are at multi-year lows, and while boring, fairly blue-chip, it might not be an awful time to buy. CHF currency is pretty solid too.

I thought Swissquote was pretty decent? But IB generally best.

Just wondering if anyone here is on BlueSky? Seems to be gaining traction as an alternative to Twitter, which a) is full of idiots, b) is hard to search for company tickers, as they've all been hijacked by Altcoins and c) has Bill Ackman trying to impress Musk by making teenage boy jokes (he actually made a 69 gag - unbelievably cringe...). I found a couple of friendly faces, but would be great to know if any more. Cheers.

BTW - everything (well, most of it) about this thread feels like the sort of sh1tposting nonsense I'd expect now that Trump's back. JFC. (I'm not a Democrat, before anyone starts, just anti-idiot).

Erm, isn't the whole point of that, that you don't have to put up any 'collateral' for it, so it doesn't matter if you're wrong?

Because BTC is experiencing high speculation?! I think it boils to simply that Bitcoin is THE Brand in Crypto - a lot of people buying in now may have barely heard of ETH. It still seems bizarre to me that the big brand is one where a) the creator is unknown (can you imagine the red flag in any other industry?!?) and b) based on older, slower technology than the competition (though precedent in VHS/Betamax etc.).

I think there's some cross purposes here. I don't think @dealraker is arguing for keeping the borders open to Illegal immigrants. Neither am I. I think for all of us here, if you want to be an investor, believing in the rule of law goes hand in hand with that. I think he's saying that the inconvenient reality is that SOME illegal immigrants are working hard doing jobs (& not committing crimes) that some locals don't want to do any more because they've got comfortable and lazy. You see it all over the developed world. If you get rid of the hard-working illegals (along with the bad guys), and generally show a view of hostility to prospective legal immigrants, then there's going to be inflation, because to get people to do the crap jobs that only immigrants tend to do, the wages are going to have to go up a lot. So I don't think Charlie is on about the morality here (correct me if I'm wrong) - we all agree we want to get rid of the bad guys - but just the need to see that there are trade-offs here. This is all a bit off-topic anyway.

@dealraker Thanks for the reality check. In the UK, Brexit is an example - it has been a nightmare finding decent tradespeople for building etc. though arguably this is not because there's been much success in getting rid of immigrants, and possibly more that skilled immigrants find it less attractive being in a country where the economy is stuck e.g. the Poles have been going home where business seems better (also, ironically given 2011, the Greek economy is also pumping!). People don't like immigrants, until they've gone, and people realise what they were doing.

Bill @wabuffo did something similar recently & referenced brklyn, but I can't remember where - Twitter? Don't know if that prompted this?!

Black-swan opportunities. Asymmetric super-nova. There are a whole load of great indie band names in that post.

Certainly feels like this at the moment.

Look, a headline about seals being kidnapped and having headphones put on them is stuff straight from a comedy skit! All I meant by 'political' is that people are taking this cartoon stuff seriously! It's just some Twitter clickbait. Anyway, nothing else to add.

Can we leave out the Extreme Political stuff please - which at this point is most things Musk says - such a shame. Thanks. It's just too polarising and doesn't really add anything.