lnofeisone

bought some ELAN, MIC, and JBGS

The cost declines are real and it's great to see. Two things to keep in mind when it comes to these curves: 1) ITC - this one is easy. NREL shows a good chart showing the impact of ITC. 2) For homeowners, PV is a phenomenal proposition as they are getting tax-free energy and tax-free SREC sales. I live in DC where local utility net-meters (i.e., they charge me $0.12 for fuel + delivery for electricity and they must pay me the same when I pump into the grid) so I get substantial boost from tax savings. Similarly, because of the DC-specific market, the SRECs I generate go for $400/MW so I get that tax-free too. Without the ITC and tax subsidies my PV calculations are nowhere near what NREL or any other curves.

ESG investors really catalyzed the impact of O&G debt binge, which was not sustainable, especially in light of SA/Russia oil fight. That's all it took for O&G to find new financial discipline (all but ET). I had some VGELX but sold it and rotated into few specific names as soon as they announced that they will be buying utilities. It was poor timing for them too as they were selling off beaten down energy names to buy less beaten down utilities. Forward to today, VGELX is more of a utility fund (45% utilities now) with O&G kicker (25% oil majors and 15% E&P) that missed a monster rally in O&G.

I used EverNote and played a bit with Obsidian. It really depends on the use case you are going with. EN is robust, been around for a while, and is built for 80% of the needs you'll have, especially what you described. It's very use friendly and web clipper is probably one of my favorite features. At minimum, your workflow will feel easier and it will be simpler to search through documents. I also like the API and sync functions (which I think Obsidian now has too). Obsidian has a bit of learning curve, especially if you aren't coming from the coding world (i.e., if the .md in obsidian.md means nothing to you, you'll probably have some learning to do). They store files as markdowns so there are some advantages (e.g., you can link really easily and see spectacular connectivity of your data). After few months of dabbling with Obsidian, I resumed doing almost everything in Evernote.

Or there is a huge Federal incentive. The sustained marketing campaign blitz against O&G has been phenomenal. I think that created opportunities for oil and gas but in the intermediate to longer term (5-10 years) gas will outperform. No secret, energy is a large part of my portfolio (even more so if you consider solar panels as part of my energy portfolio). I have few regular names (KMI, ET, WMB, MPLX) and few sleepers. I think one sleeper that has slowly been fixing itself up over the last few years is TGP - nat gas shipper. It is boring (no more IDRs), projected to increase dividend, and it's a shipper.

trying to get a starter position in ZIP

Bought back ETH and ABNB starter positions.

I like this approach. When everyone is looking for gold, make shovels. I think this is the approach Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have taken with their platforms (AWS/GCP/Azure). I think going with this trio will likely give you fine results to capitalize on the AI revolution, even if you miss a few smaller companies that will be 100-baggers.

I think CRAI is riding the wave of COVID work and bump in all the work that came with it. There is a very healthy backlog of work as municipalities, states, countries are looking for specialized support. CRAI doesn't really compete with TYL or BAH and they have specialization moat that the likes of PWC, EY, and Deloitte are unable to overcome mostly because Audit/Tax can't talk to consulting and all consultants are basically kids out of college that know how to do Excel/PowerPoint but no other real skill.

I've been tracking TYL for a while looking to buy but shy to pull the trigger at these valuations. Few comments: I like software that they have in place. That will provide a stable revenue/profit base for years. However, I think their margins will start compressing and there will be opportunities to buy it cheaper. Maybe 50% cheaper than it is today. TYL bought Socrata in 2018 and the platform is clunky and somewhat outdated by 2021 standards. Underinvestment in R&D clearly shows. Partnering with AWS is nice but really is not distinguishing. AWS will partner with anyone as their margins are close to 90% and they sell AWS and don't have to worry about the low margins on services. In many cases AWS will partner with several vendors bidding on the same contract and just go with the winner. ACN, BAH, Deloitte et. al have been making massive inroads into state and local. State and local in the US is not a sophisticated buyer at all (as compared to the Federal gov't) and high margins are very common. This naturally attracts competition. ACN has been extremely aggressive at developing and partnering to develop pseudo-products for digitization (and digitalization), modernization, etc. Deloitte has been somewhat aggressive buying innoWake few years back. The buying cycle is about 1-3 years for state and local so I think 2021-2022 we will start seeing results of other consulting firms entering the market. If I remember correctly, ACN partners with TYL but that's an interesting relationship. Some of the other partners are low quality staff augmentation shops that only exist because of all the small business requirements. At some point, low staff quality shows.

Bought some BABA, PCYO, CIBR, and a tiny bit of AYX.

sold LMND puts and all ETH.

This. + 1) KNOP will do a secondary and I expect it to drop to 18 or below. I've been a KNOP nibbler sub 18, and KNOP buyer sub 14. 2) KNOP seems to always get beat up with oil even if they aren't exactly correlated with oil 3) I've been very overweight in energy. Wasn't great for me for most of 2020. 2021 is a different year. I still have few energy names (TGP, WMB, KMI, ET) that probably have more room to run than KNOP (maybe not ET. Spek was right 2+ years ago ) so I can still participate in the energy rally but in a more responsible way.

Selling MPC, CEQP, SWN, and some WFC. Getting close to unloading KNOP.

This (as C+PV(Strike Price) = P + Spot Price. In either case, put/call parity is a theoretical exercise that is mostly applicable to European style options and wouldn't readily apply to Tesla. The exception being that you would hold options to expiration and in that case you have to navigate points 2 and 3 that Richard outlined.

Sold Creswood preferred and rotated into CEQP (albeit a bit late) @26.40. Bought some DISCK@34. Thanks Wabuffo.

CLMT (this one really came back to life and is higher than pre-COVID with likely more room), MPC, SWN. Cutting my energy holdings by 30% or so.

I clocked in around 11% for the year and I'm up that much in the first 10 days. Got really pounded by my energy concentration and WFC (which made a strong late comeback and is up remarkably in January). Got bailed out by AVLR, ZM, TSLA, and ETH.

Sold DNNGY and went for ARKK march puts.

I realize not the point of the thread but Predict it has been out of control lately. There is free $ to be had. For example, "Which party will win presidential election" was settled a few days ago and the last trading price was $0.94 (the payout is $1). Even 2 weeks after the election this market was trading in the $0.85 range. There are few other markets that are trading at unreasonable prices, given that we already know what the outcome will be. I suppose the gamblers/the believers are those who are taking the opposite side of these bets and they really just need to be right once to recoup their losses. *The catch with predictit is that withdrawal cost is 5% (4% is you use cash back card) and they take 10% of your winnings.

+1 Ride or die. I just sold my starter ABNB. 30% in a week is just money growing on trees but it's so uncomfortable. Bought some AIV, ATCO, and bought back my 25% in KNOP.

25% of my KNOP. Will look to buy it back. As pointed out by Wabuffo in KNOP thread, some turbulence ahead as Cushing is rebalancing and KNOP is out.

I've come to this conclusion too (and don't think SCOTUS will resolve all issues) . I've traded in and out and holding what is essentially free shares but not holding my breath for anything spectacular either.

Starter ABNB

Congrats on your accomplishments! Between the two of us, we have a math degree, 3 computer science degrees, 1 electrical engineering degree, and a physics degree. I teach AI/ML at a university (historically, non-online 8)) and worked for an insurance company. So now that we pointlessly settled that (and really credentialed our mutual "technobabble") do we really need to go through the false equivalence that is the next 3 lines you wrote? On a more cordial note, I found this particularly hilarious "Hey, a human and a lump of coal floating in a bucket of water are made of roughly the same stuff, so to anyone but a purist, they're the same." Got to give some love to kinetics and thermodynamics. Call me in 100 years. Pretty sure we will all be lumps of coal floating in a bucket. Though maybe if I turn myself into a diamond, I'll sit there on a shelf for a bit longer or sink to the bottom of the said bucket ;D. For my curiosity, forget prop algorithm(s) that Lemonade has, what AI/ML technique in your mind is not rooted in statistics? In fact, let's say for a second that Lemonade (like Capital One in the past) found a way to stratify the broad population into smaller segments. And now they have to make inferences. So, back to statistics. More importantly, and probably more pertinent to this forum: 1) Today, Lemonade ratios are declining but are still above the industry average (59.6% for 219, 61.6% for 2018 - I'll agree upfront that these numbers aren't totally accurate as Lemonade doesn't cover everything P&Cs do). So, for now, they are converging to average. 2) Let's peel off some of that sweet, sweet, AI/ML magic. Lemonade's largest markets are CA, TX, NY (around 70%). All 3 of those markets clock in net loss ratios that are typically below the industry average with premiums above the industry average. As a fun fact, in California, they have a pretty high justified complaint ratio. Imagine what it takes to get a millennial to complain and take it to the state. By the way, few companies just above and below Lemonade have 2 star ratings and some very scratching remarks, as per Gooogle. 3) They are currently ceding 75% of their policies. Curious how their reinsurance fees will hold up as more data comes in. 4) Aside from my belief that they are simply converging on the weighted average of the rations of the markets they operate in, I'm genuinely curious what general set of AI/ML algorithms differentiates Lemonade from Progressives of the world? What makes you believe that the latter can't figure these algos out? The latter are sitting on plenty of data, can afford to acquire new datasets, and hire an army of data scientists to get through the data. Cloud is not really a differentiator anymore. I agree, Lemonade is willing to try things that others haven't (e.g., behavior analytics) at the production level but at its core, it's still a test-and-learn shop. I don't have a high conviction in the timing of this short (hence such a small short). I do think it's a nice platform that beautifully obfuscates a traditional insurance company. Probably should take this to the Lemonade thread...