Saluki

... Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by Monday, according to the memo, which is dated Tuesday and includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern U.S. border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones and other munitions. ... Well, my small positions in Taylor Devices and Kraken Robotics should do okay under this scenario, and there are a bunch more in the drone post I did. I have a few shares of MIND (ship radar) I bought to remind me to study it, but the 10K was only 40 something pages and I can't find info on it, so don't want to take a big position. There is a company in Australia that does drone jamming, but it was pricey the last time I looked and I assume that with countermeasures their tech will have to keep adapting and someone else could do the same thing too since the countermeasures will change and give new entrants an in. With regard to munitions, OLIN might benefit.

Yes, it was a typo. New ticker for Nextera energy partners. It dropped so much after the dividend was cut to zero that it looked good again. Probably take a year or two to see some price improvement but I can nibble along the way.

Can you explain what you mean capacity swap losses? I worked on capacity swaps when I was a young lawyer but those were Telecom swaps (indefeasible rights of use) where one guy with fiber in one part of the country gives some to another entity in another part of the country so they both have fiber everywhere instead of both of them overbuilding everywhere.

I'm doing research on renewable energy to try to transition into that space since leaving my prior job (derivatives lawyer). I found these two primers written by a law firm (as part of their marketing to position themselves as experts in this space). One is 150pp and the other is 180pp. Good references for anyone interested. https://www.growsolar.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/lawofsolarenergy.pdf https://files.stoel.com/files/SR/Stoel Rives - The Law of Wind.pdf

Yesterday I trimmed a few shares of CPNG and NTDOY. I was burned when I didn't trim my largest position, GOOG, and it dropped hard after the DOJ thing, but I added more and it worked out. I trimmed GOOG as it went past my pre-determined weight for it and then when it dropped again it wasn't so bad. I sold a few shares of META as it crossed the weight I felt comfortable with too. I decided CPNG and NTDOY are positions that I can sleep soundly with 5% positions.

Small nibbles to VG, XIPR and TalkMD.

I picked up a few shares of ISSC and hope to add a little each day as I keep selling off some other stuff. I got lucky a couple of days ago and picked up a few shares of POWW cumulative preferred when it dropped 10% for no reason (sloppy seller? fat finger?). I had other limit orders in for it at different prices, but none got filled Adding a tiny bit of VG each day. I'm glad I didn't go big all at once, but sometimes the opportunity passes quickly like Fairfax after the short report.

I think smaller companies still trade at decent valuations if you look around, but they are suppliers of parts to larger contractors. Taylor Devices makes the landing gear for predator and reaper drones and Optex makes optical devices for Bradley vehicles and howitzers. One is 12x trailing earnings and the other is 10x. Virtra had a small part of a defense contract issued to MSFT, but I don't know if that has been cancelled.

I'll be heading up to NYC for a few days starting tomorrow and will have my days free while my better half is at a work conference. If anyone is around and wants to meet up for coffee during the day, let me know.

I'm reducing risk so I've been selling off things to reduce my margin and my new purchases have been much smaller new positions that I'm studying instead of adding to larger existing positions. As a whole, they probably make up a mid size position, but most are very small while I study them and decide to fish or cut bait. Small placeholders in VG, TALK, VTSI and LFMD, while I study them, and very small adds to NEP, INSW and TAYD.

Well, are the people who are now advocating a sovereign wealth fund from the same party that was railing against getting equity in the banks that we bailed out during the great financial crisis? I thought we were supposed to just give them the money and expect nothing in return? Why is this not socialism now if the government is getting stakes in private businesses like the CCP? Do you remember how AWS sued because a government cloud contact was given to MSFT, and they claimed that it was because Trump hated Bezos. If you buy TESLA and not NIO for the fund, do you think that will lead to litigation? What about the bonds of a troubled bank? Are we going to give them money at par like Treasury to shore up their balance sheet, or drive a hard bargain to get the best return? Do you remember the Solar Company that went bankrupt? Would the fund invest in stuff like that? If a foreingn employer like Fiat and a domestic one like GM were both in trouble, would the fund invest in the one with the best return for the taxpayer, or would there be no politics involved? Who is going to manage this fund? Blackrock? Goldman? What about the fees? set by Congress or the lowest bidder, like Pentagon billing. Those Pentagon contracts aren't padded with hidden fees, right?

Bought a small amount of JOE, POWWP, and DEA.

I wonder if you can consider adding something to the list of cannibals if they have a big authorization but haven't bought back a lot of stock yet. Both Olin and Anterix have buybacks authorized for half of their market cap, but you need money to carry that out.

Small starter positions in NEP. The bid ask ratio is no longer heavilly skewed towards sellers dumping. Bid10.37 x 1100 Ask10.40 x 900 I think now that all people who invested for the fat dividend have sold when the dividend was cut to zero, it looks like a less risky play getting all these assets at a discount, and some nice FCF after they deal with the 2 CEPFs that are coming due by hoarding cash or selling rather than diluting to pay it off with shares. .

A few shares of DEA and POWWP in my Roth IRA for my fixed income basket.