lnofeisone
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Posts posted by lnofeisone
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12 hours ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:
https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/17/24133700/google-fires-28-employees-protest-israel-cloud-contract
Why did Google fire them, it shouldn't have. In fact, the employees must have willfully resigned as a sign of protest.
Sincerely,
All undergrad & grad students.
There is more to this story than being published.
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On 4/18/2024 at 5:46 PM, Libs said:
I don't see a quote for the 138's , just 135's ($2.00) and 140's ($3.15). So that one (140/135) costs $1.15, and at $135 you make $5 or 4.7:1. Do I have that right?
What about the 150/145. Cost $2.25. Stock only has to drop to 145 and you make over 2:1. Not bad. You might be on to something. Thanks.
what broker do you use? I have ToS and have put in $1 increments in the 108-150 range.
the trade you are proposing is you are risking $1.15 to make $3.85 ($5-$1.15) but you got the idea generally right.
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If this is your hypothesis, I'd go with a vertical bear spread. 140/138, with an expiration of next week, is trading at 0.50. So, if you are right, you get a 4:1 payout, and TSLA only needs to go down to $138. If you bought the 157 ATM Put @8, TSLA would need to go down to 125 to have a similar payout.
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On 4/13/2024 at 4:57 PM, ourkid8 said:
Israel attacked a sovereign country's embassy which is an act of war, can you at least admit that much? Second, if you need to even ask what genocide/theft Israel has commited, I have nothing more to say as this is blind ignorance. Iran has not officially released any statement as such besides organizations that may or may not be affiliated with the government. Let's do a simple exercise, please perform back of the envelope math on what the population would be if Israel did not commit genocide since 1948. let's look at how many lives were lost. Its shocking when you do this exercise.
This is factually incorrect.
1) Israel didn't attack a sovereign country's embassy. They attacked an annex. Notice how everyone killed was IRGC and the ambassador and embassy staff were safe. A lot of news sources got this wrong, and this has become one of those nuances that got lost for those who aren't reading and tracking this carefully.
2) Let us not forget that Iran set this precedent long ago with this - https://www.reuters.com/world/argentina-court-blames-iran-deadly-1994-bombing-jewish-center-2024-04-12/
Can we agree on this much?
3) Your take on Gaza is also weird and incongruent. Let's do a simple exercise. You claim Israel is an occupier. As an occupier, Israel is obligated to provide food, water, and shelter to the occupied territories, which it did before Hamas and MANY Gazan civilians went on their adventure into israel.
However, as an occupier, Israel has some flexibilities, which include setting up checkpoints, restricting population movement, and really anything for the purpose of security. Palestinians have shown time and time again that they are a true security threat. So if Israel is really an occupier, their behavior in Gaza and WB is really justified. Think another way. If there was a terror group that actively lobbed missiles from Puerto Rico and Guam into the continental US, you can bet your portfolio US would not hesitate to deal harshly and there are many existing laws that could be applied to punish those responsible. This is why I think the talking point of "Israel is an occupier" is a really bad one so whoever is giving you your talking points, should take that into account.
4) You want to see real Genocide? Look at how Hamas went into Kibutzes and systemically targetted and killed every family they could find. That's what genocide looks like. If Israel had no ability to stop Hamas, they would go as far as they could. That's Genocide. What Israel is doing is combat. Terrible collateral damage (still well below many comparable urban warfare situations) but it's legal combat. I'll concede that not everything Israel is doing is perfect and by the book but it's much closer to what International laws were designed for.
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7 hours ago, blakehampton said:
Just out of curiosity, is there a way to bet on oil volatility?
If you think Vol is underpriced here, you can buy straddles. You can adjust your strategy to backspreads if you have a directional bias.
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16 hours ago, Ross812 said:
Even with some acquisition expenses, tough YoY workers comp. increases, and a temporary staffing market down 9% YoY, HQI is doing well which speaks to the quality of the business. The case is pretty straight forward in my mind - hit less than 50% SG&A on franchise revenue of $36M and a 17% tax rate and you are looking at $15M in earnings on 13.8M shares outstanding - and this is earnings power in an off-cycle year! You're paying 10x EBIT and 12x earnings right now for a company growing at 27%.
I get the argument growth is coming from acquisition and that is worth a lesser multiple, but acquisitions are immediately accretive to the bottom line. Look at MRI Network (which is under earning right now), acquired 4Q22 for $13.3M and added $7.8M in revenue in the last year; they paid <2x franchise revenue.
Northbound (higher quality executive staffing) was purchase for $11.4M and generated $1.1M in 10 months ($1.3M proforma); 8.75x franchise revenue
Dubin - 10 months $.11M ($132k proforma) on a $2.5M outlay. 19x franchise revenue
TEC - looks to be $1.1M on a $7.8M. 7x franchise revenue
Temp Alternatives- $523k (though not all converted to franchises yet) off $7M. 14x franchise revenue
Together its $10.7M (proforma) in franchise earnings acquired for $42M. Assume 50% SG&A and slap a low 10x EBIT multiplier and you are adding $53.5M to the market-cap (27% growth). Looks like a sustainable roll-up to me.
Organic growth should follow growth in temporary staffing. Check this by looking at HQI ex-franchise revenue from FY23 acquisitions ($9.6M) which is $26.2M vs $28.9M (FY22) down 9.3% which is in line with temporary staffing down ~9%. The good new is temporary staffing follows GDP over the long term so the business should grow organically by 2-3%. I don't know what kind of EBIT HQI should trade at, but its not 10x and when you start playing with the EBIT multiple the spring keeps tightening.
Thanks for this. I think they are reasonably good with the roll ups and you are right. The spring keeps tightening. Just needs some patience.
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9 minutes ago, Ross812 said:
Just right sizing. It was over a 7% position this morning after earnings and I'm more comfortable in the 4 to 5% range. I'm down to a 6%ish position. I've been buying for the last couple weeks in the 12.1X's and was selling this morning in the 12.80+ range. It's tough getting in and out of when in only trades 15k shares a day and and individual can be a significant portion of that.
Got it. Thanks. I'm looking to double this one to roughly 5% range. I think the challenges will work themselves out and we'll be heading back to the 20+ range.
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50 minutes ago, Ross812 said:
Buying some DFIN and HSY from proceeds of an irresponsibly large HQI position.
are you bailing on HQI or rightsizing?
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New settlement hot of the press. Sellers no longer have to pay the buyer's agent fee. I know most here would agree that transaction costs in RE are due for a change but I'm thinking through the winners (FSBO, Redfin? for sure) and the losers (Compass) and neutral (Zillow?).
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17 hours ago, ValueArb said:
No surprise but ESG outperformance studies were flawed and confused causality.
No surprise indeed. Lots of capital got burned up because of these studies. It what makes the market.
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14 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
The climate related investment I like the best is HVAC. Many tailwinds here with respect to regulation (requires more environmentally refrigerants, better efficient, switch to heat pumps) as well as the increasing temperature
s especially in heat island cities requiring more HVAC use. It’s a story that seems to have legs for decades to come. That said, most stocks are not cheap, but I did buy some JCI recently at a decent valuation and look at others as well.
I like JCI and I've held for AOS (full position) and LII (starter position). AOS can get volatile but the business is steady.
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10 hours ago, mattee2264 said:
Isn't it a little worrying for Mag7 investors that a start-up founded only a few years ago can release LLMs that compare favourably to the ones put out by OpenAI/Microsoft and Google? Reinforces the point that in AI no one really has a moat at this point. Mag7's ability to stockpile chips gives them an edge and they can outspend everyone on R&D. But in the internet age it was Google who ended up with the dominant search engine not AOL/Netscape/Microsoft.
Any company with a good idea/product will have little problem attracting funding and users aren't locked in to a specific LLM at this point so will switch if something better comes along.
And so far it is LLMs that are generating all the buzz and drawing in all the users and seeming to have the most practical use as a lot of people are using LLMs to write emails, assignments, research papers, marketing copy etc.
From what I see, there is now a trend to tap into AWS/GCP to accelerate the journey to LLM and other analytics. Lots of orgs have proprietary data but have no clue how to get it to LLM.
As far as the moat for Google/Msft/Aws, I'd argue the moat now got bigger. There are only few start ups that are really thriving here. Anthropic is one. Perplexity is another. Many fold shop before they get to market. The cost to train these models is north of $1M per run. There are a lot of great ideas but few companies with funding to try them so AWS/GCP/Azure have plenty to pick from and fund if they so desire.
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I remember when the original Shogun (1980s make?) made its way to Uzbekistan in mid-90s. All of my friends and I were glued to the TV for every episode. It will be the same way for this series as well. The production quality here is very high. I didn't realize it was based on a novel so will get it on Kindle.
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1) Go to Wendy's and order 100 of these sandwiches, driving up futures
2) Trigger the algorithm
3) Start selling to people behind you in line for less than the current spot price
4) Orders will be delivered by Wendy's
Someone with extra $1k and a sense of humor should totally do this.
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I'm also a fan of perlexity. Tried few things that are "hard" and got very impressive answers that saved at least 2-3 weeks of work.
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17 minutes ago, fareastwarriors said:
some power generators should be all over this.
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28 minutes ago, Luca said:
Interesting, my worry with intel is that they won't be competitive enough in the foundry business cost wise and experience wise, have lagged in CPU/GPU performance and lost data center revenue etc...what do you see here?
I think what you are buying today is an average-priced enterprise with 3 embedded potential catalysts: 1) IFS, 2) Mobile Eye, and 3) Network and Edge group.
Getting one of these right will be transformational. Throw in Gov't loan/grant/support and I think the odds are heavily tilted in INTC's favor.
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3 hours ago, cash_incinerator said:
I have a few oz investments, I never understood how a publicly traded one could really work, and I'd steer clear. And oz program just causes a deferral of a capital gain until tax year 2026, not a deduction thats good forever. So yes you could buy oz with say a dollar in capital gains and defer that dollar of cap gains tax until 2026, saving you 20 cents this year. But if you ever sold oz before 2026, that entire transaction should be reversed, and since you are the seller, i think the irs would take a dim view and might impose penalties and interest. Not sure on that last piece but I'd be careful.
This is what I was curious about too. OZ hinges around investment and holding for deferral purposes. So how would that work if one buys OZ and then sells OZ. Is that the same as selling holdings in OZ triggering tax events? What if OZ itself sells something, does that mean a tax event triggered?
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Starters in INTC and COF.
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On 2/16/2024 at 2:45 PM, aws said:
OZ. I need to do some more work on it to see if there is any fundamental reason for the selloff this year but I wanted to pickup some. It's an Opportunity Zone fund and has been beaten down to less than half NAV. I suspect it could just be capitulation in a thinly traded stock. It looks like they had to take out a high interest mezzanine loan this month on their new retail/luxury apartment building they are supposed to finish this year. Possibly they expected to be able to issue more stock at NAV as they had an outstanding offer for $1 billion at $100/sh, but only sold a little over $300 million worth. Either they are crimped on cash and running into issues on their development, or there is fear they are and they will need to dilute at even lower prices.
It's been a favorite trading vehicle of mine in the past because it is has the unique trait of being the only publicly traded stock in the market that allows you to take a dollar for dollar tax deduction when you buy it. And the deduction is retroactive to last year so long as you have a gain in the past 6 months to offset.
Can you share more please, especially around the tax structure (I always love clunky tax structures)?
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5 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
Some of their fabs run ~1um feature size process. Bleeding edge is 3nm or 0.003um feature size. 1 um is basically “steampunk” tech for semiconductors. It does mean it can’t be a good business, but I found it remarkable.
There is some fun history here - and this is my electrical engineer side.
X Fab looks to produce analog devices. Those generally tend to run larger than digital chips. The sizing they give you corresponds to the actual sizing. 3nm stuff is marketing fluff, and those chips are much bigger than 3nm. So it's not apples to apples, but yes, the analog world is much larger.
In the analog world, 1um is not terribly far behind "cutting edge." Take a look at at ADI's roadmap and zoom in on the sizing.
The bit on history: When semiconductors were first produced the sizing was describing the size of the transistor gate length. Over time because of the chip architecture innovation, "nm" took on a marketing tilt. The 3nm doesn't mean a 3nm transistor gate length. All it means is that 3nm process makes smaller stuff than a 7nm process of the same company. The latter point is important because it means that 7nm process of one company can be bigger or smaller than 7nm process of another company.
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I think there is a lot of truth to what Einhorn is saying and we see it play out with multiple favorites on this board - JOE, BTI, FRPH, CPNG. One of my holdings - VET. Small companies where value is "easier" to recognize are appreciating just fine without shareholder yield. Companies where things are complex really do need that extra push. The value is not dead, it just requires a little bit more thinking, recognition, and patience.
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3 hours ago, sholland said:
IMO the difficulty in forecasting natural gas prices is the reason that this is known as a widow maker trade. Natural gas is a pure commodity sensitive to warm winters and lacks a cartel like OPEC to limit overproduction.
This. Demand for NatGas is notoriously hard to model. It's subject to weather and, for the longest time, it was centered around local markets. This is why LNG imports were hyper-profitable. Now that LNG transportation infra is becoming more robust, prices across the world will harmonize better, i.e., there won't be a $20 difference between NA and Asian NatGas but there will still be a difference to account for shipping cost/time. Supply is a bit easier to model as you can assume companies will pump out as long as their profit is above or at $0.
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Depends on the industry you are in. I've supported model development for several CFO shops. We usually had ranges, and then scenarios planned, i.e., if this happens (e.g., your workforce quits or demands higher pay), then the range gets adjusted like so and so. The complexity of models goes up with more business lines, geographic diversity, etc. At some point, models become more directional or you have a forest of sub-models that average out to be generally correct. Really hard to model discontinuities like rapid interest rate hikes, COVID, Ukraine/Russia war, etc.
What are you buying today?
in General Discussion
Posted
I did the same but with verticals.