JRM

And who says politics and investing don't mix? Energy and metals have been one of the best setups going into 2022 because of half-baked policies, ESG virtue signaling, and general ignorance by the "smart money". What's going on in Russia just pulled things forward a bit. It was an inevitability. I often question whether or not I have any business investing my own money, then I read some of the takes on twitter by the "smart money" and think, holy s&*t, these guys have no idea. And no, I don't hate the environment. Banning plastic straws and driving $100k golf carts isn't going to save us.

Why?

I thought I created a topic for this one, but I guess not. I bought last quarter at $52. I don't have much to add to the shipping container discussion, but it's cheap as hell and the bet is that rates don't normalize as quickly as analysts are thinking. Lots of cash and printing money at these rates. Not a huge position for me.

I trimmed some WMB at $28, but its still yielding over 5% at $30. Isn't there still a chance pensions funds figure out how dividend investing works?

There are some conspiracy theories that Nazi's had controlling stakes in Germany's industrial power houses like Siemens, Mercedes, etc. and the ownership was allowed to stay intact after WWII. Something about escaping to South Amernca, and Nazi families still in control of the companies today.

Was the US investor only made whole because we won the war and destroyed most of industrial Europe? We may not win next time.

agreed

Where I live a nurse is required to travel at least 90 miles to be considered a travel nurse. Maybe buy a rental 90 miles away?

I talked to a traveling nurse about this over new year's. There are local hospitals short staffed and hiring traveling nurses to fill in. She could easily get a job at any of them...or she can commute the minimum required 90 miles and be a traveling nurse and make twice as much. So it sounds like a lot of nurses are just commuting unnecessarily to make a lot more money.

Now you're starting to speak my language! So the two pieces to the value of the bitcoin network (as a transfer mechanism) and the token itself. I would think the network piece would be valued close to the cost of completing the transfer. The second piece of value for the token itself is what traditional asset can bitcoin displace. This is where I have a harder time convincing myself Bitcoin is going to replace anything like USD, treasuries, etc. (even layer 2 protocols). It may replace some failed currency, but a major currency?

How much value do you assign to a payment rail?

This is a funny thread:

The largest energy store in the United States isn't oil, coal, or natural gas still in the ground. It's actually spent fuel sitting in spent fuel pools decaying away for the next 200 years (required to be cooled and covered for the entire time). Again, the fear has kept spent fuel reprocessing from becoming established in the U.S. Nuclear power is the clear answer, but too many hurdles exist currently.

What nuclear plants are in the pipeline for Europe and the US? China is building a lot, but it takes a LONG time to bring a new nuclear plant online. It also takes longer than most people realize to bring a shuttered plant back online. Most of the uranium\nuclear bulls are operating on the wrong time frame in the US and Europe. China is another story. Don't get me started on SMRs.

People in energy insecure location are hoarding firewood for the winter. Even better than coal!

Probably shouldn't listen to anything I say since I fell way short of the triple digit returns I'm seeing all over the place. However, I'm positioning myself for 2022 in oil\natural gas and gold\silver in various ways. Gold and silver still feels like a forgotten asset class left behind\obsoleted by Bitcoin. It seems like a lot of people are left wondering why gold isn't "working". Parts of these positions worked in 2021, but not the home run.

2021: 16% 2013-2021: 23% per annum Doesn't feel great when the S&P is up so much and I see many people posting monster returns this year. Oh well. Didn't trade many core positions last year, so we'll see if they work this year.

Even better is the cartels grow here! Like what is happening in northern California.

Might as well just fly it in from South America!

I keep thinking Buffet is going to sell some AAPL and buy back BRK shares. I'm not sure why he's letting the position get so large.

I came across a funny tweet today, but can't find the source: "Imagine you take a dump and every toilet in the world has to flush. That's blockchain."

I assumed this was just an MLP thing. I checked with WMB and KMI and they both appear to qualify. On Kinder Morgan's website they say this: "A corporation’s quarterly distribution of cash is characterized as a taxable dividend (qualified dividend) to the extent it comes out of the corporation’s earnings and profits (“E&P”). Any part of the distribution that exceeds E&P is treated as a non-taxable return of capital (non-dividend distribution) which reduces the shareholder’s basis in the stock. If the return of capital exceeds the stock basis, the excess is treated as a capital gain."

trick question. they're both equally worthless...j/k