lnofeisone

The US also struggled against militia in Iraq. Doesn't make US any less powerful. It's hard fighting militia as a conventional force. See Lebanese civil war with all its massacres if you want to understand how to combat militia effectively (on the battlefield).

WaPo and a lot of MSM ate up stories from Hamas. Most never bothered to read the entire story and reacted to picture. WaPo got their click from you. How new are you to this conflict? Euro-med monitor? LOL. The organization that failed to condemn Oct 7th attack that included burning, mutilating, and raping of Israeli citizens but somehow found the courage and words to criticize Israeli response? Be serious. 50k dead in Gaza. Say 20k of them are Hamas. 30k civilians make up ~2% of the population. That's not an annihilation. I separate the average Palestinian from Hamas. Though I saw a lot of ordinary Palestinians celebrating deaths of the Israeli civilians on Oct 7th. I agree with @cubsfan, Palestinians voted for Hamas (however long ago), and they get the leaders they voted for. I also think Palestinians, like the germans and the japanese in ww2, need total loss where there is no question that they lost. Not hudna. Total surrender. Only then can they start reforming.

You are welcome to look these up. They are propaganda to the max. Civilians ocassionaly drive into WB. The border is a lot more porous than you think. https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-lightly-hurt-as-car-is-stoned-driving-into-west-bank-refugee-camp/ Here is the incident I was referencing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Ramallah_lynching. At your own risk, you can search for actual images beyond the idiot standing at the window with his hands bloody (VERY NSFW and GORE - but here is a link) . These are "Palestinian civilians" holding organs - hearts, intestines, etc., that they ripped out and strung up. I have an old computer I have in storage and have a video of it too if you care to go down that lane.

These are real bad faith arguments here @Blugolds. The 2nd and 3rd pictures show kids who have diseases - one has cystic fibrosis and the second one has lipodystrophy. They require special diets and can't consume food that is readily available. Pro-palestinian propaganda always does this. Are you hoping that most of the readers won't look it up or are you hoping that we don't know? The roles are reversed @Blugolds. How many jews live in Gaza? How many live and own property in Jordan? Egypt? Lebanon? Should I show you pictures of what Palestinians do to soldiers who accidentally drive into the West Bank and get detained in jail? You really want to see a picture of some animal behavior where a soldier's heart was ripped out of his chest? Gazans were not starved before Oct 7th or after. Hell, one of the fastest growing industries in Gaza before the war was - drumroll - weight loss clinics. Does that sound like starvation? Look at the student who went on a hunger strike for 9 days, and she fainted and had to be transported to the hospital. Do Gazans look like they are fainting? They are absolutely suffering because they are in a warzone, but to say they are starving is VERY far from the truth.

Thanks @Spekulatius. BAH is taking a beating in their Civilian and Health work. Their DOD work is holding up well and slowly growing. This is the same reason why the likes of CACI rebounded (though I think CACI will have different problems in 6-12 months). Depending on where the current administration decides to settle on things, BAH might be a good pick-up come mid-term elections.

I like your perspective. The idea of Yahoo-like acquisitions crossed my mind. This is one of the main reasons why I have been slowly and steadily building up my Google position. For Google to gain the advantage, here is a simple software push.

How do yo figure it's the top? OpenAI spends 13B in cloud compute for inferencing (not training and R&D) because everything gets routed back to its cloud. Shifting AI to local devices is a logical next step and if they are successful will reduce their 13B inference cost.

I suspect their margins will be a bit higher than those of traditional large defense contractors but there is more risk. In short, large contractors often have a fair amount of time and materials contracts where the margin is predetermined and tends to be lower because the customer assumes the execution risk. These contractors sprinkle in some firm fixed price contracts, which are higher margin but shift execution risk to the contractor. Anduril is primarily involved in firm fixed-price contracts (which they paint as products).

I got some shares in Anduril. Wish I put more in.

Bought back ITM puts here. Can't argue with 50% gain. Will sit on OTM as I don't mind being assigned at 230.

I sold UNH puts. Some ITM, some OTM.

I find that family numbers generally don't pencil out (we are 2 adults + 2 children, generally healthy but kids have A LOT of visits). At best, we would break even so having HDHP + HSA is just extra overhead. My strategy on HSA was max it out when I was 20-40. I also saved enough receipts just in case I need to tap into HSA.

A more significant point is being overlooked here. Perhaps it's just me missing something in my civics classes, but I didn't realize the president's job description includes day trading. How about focusing on effective governance, cost control, and the advancement of US interests, and (secondarily but tied to the former) global interests? Setting up an idiotic tariff policy that caused markets to rightfully tank, to walk it back, is not a win.

It's a conversation starter. In the same way Deloitte does Tech Trends and PWC does M&A reports. The goal is to get in and get conversation #1. After that it becomes about personalities and relationships and only after that does it become nerd alert and detail-oriented number crunching.

Got to play the market you have and not the market you want. For example, some healthcare stocks will take a beating today. Might be worth looking into those that get punished more than they should.

It's grift from the former and the latter. It is that simple. The latter is in the office, so naturally more light will be directed that way.

My favorite part is where the plane will be transferred to the Trump Library Foundation after he steps down. In other words, he will be the sole decider of who gets to use the plane.

I shorted GOOGL puts.

If you keep score on mental gymnastics, at least stretch, and start measuring performance with January 20th as day 1.

It doesn't have to be one of the go tos. There is plenty of other ventures like trump shuttle, trump university, trump vodka, trump mortgage, gotrump.com (that's a oldie and goodie), trump steaks. Those are the failures, but he also has some great investments like 40 Wall Street, Trump Place, and of course The Apprentice. Normally, I would say "this dude is enterprising as hell" but in his case, his failed investments always uncover some element of fraud or very questionable behavior. And you are right, he is as ruthless as BN or APO are but that's where the similarity ends. BN or APO, while ruthless and probably pushing the law to the greatest extent possible, maintains a pristine image. Trump's CFO pleaded guilty to 15 felony charges related to a tax-fraud scheme. Trump's accountants left him as a client and said their audit isn't something to be relied on. You think Trump didn't know what was happening? And here is my issue with Trump. It is hard to tell what decisions and investments he makes are rational and which are fraudulent. This is what is getting carried over into the WH, except now he is the law enforcer, and he gets to abuse the executive order privilege. He is surrounded by idiots (e.g., Musk, Navarro, RFK...the list is long) with some wild ideas they are implementing. I'm sure Trump only cares as much as these ideas appease his base, but that's about it. The problem is that these ideas are becoming implemented as policies, and they impact the whole country. I said that Trump's "lean" gov't will cost more than our previous government. It's already showing up in the numbers. Trump's government worker layoff is having some serious ripple effects. This will start showing up around August/September. Tariffs? Huge joke. Our alliances? Huge joke. Retaining top scientific talent in the US? Huge joke. Anyway, I'm trading what the market gives me but this administration is a total dumpster fire and will set us back probably 20 years back economically, 20-50 years back on the scientific front, and maybe 5 years back on social issues.

A plan would have measurable goals, strategies, an approach to execution, and risk mitigation. What we are experiencing is more like a spray-and-pray. I am very skeptical that there are measurable goals, tailored strategies, and any risk mitigation. The situation with China is an obvious demonstration of that. It's very clear to me that Trump has no plan, and the little he does only hurts the country (like liberating 20,000 UPS workers from their jobs - https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-tariffs-liberate-20000-ups-workers-from-their-jobs/). I'm trading accordingly.

Bankrupting casinos is a hella win...against long odds.

This is the correct take. OID is at issue. Buying on the secondary market is called a market discount. You can get a weird situation where a bond has both OID and market discount. The most significant difference for taxes is how you choose to accrete. With OID, you can only accrete annually. With market discount, you can choose to accrete annually or the entire discount as income at disposition/maturity.

These are big headlines numbers but they are meaningless. They are cutting the ceiling space on contracts. Meaning, the Gov't can spend up to $X dollars. Most contracts rarely hit the $X that's contracted out. Even with all these top numbers, they are cutting $5B out of $1T. That's not even 1% and it's not even actual spending. Regarding buying directly from providers like AWS, etc., ACN and others put a tiny markup (~3%) on procurements. So if the contract is $100M, roughly $97M of it would go to AWS. So that cost isn't going away. Just gets redirected. This mark

If this turns out to be true, this is absolutely insane. And if this is their MO in every agency, it's beyond absurd. I know a lot of them will get pardoned at the Federal level, but I can't wait for some justice at the state level.