Saluki

I told my better half that it would be $3-4 million. At $3 million it's just enough that I would quit my job if I hated my boss. At $4mm, it would be hard to justify going into the office unless I really enjoyed it, so I would quit even if it was just okay. And at $5-6 million, I think it would be hard to justify going in because even without working I can probably compound that to $20mm or more before I die, so why keep going to the office? So that I can leave $25 or $30 million when I die instead of $20mm? I won't be spending the extra money anyway, so why keep coming in?

I don't want to start a separate post for MIND because it's such a small company and I don't want to pump it and sell out or anything. But is anyone familiar with these guys? I bought a few shares so that I would see it when I log in and not forget to look for information, but it's gone on a tear in the past week or so since earnings. Almost a double, but I don't own enough shares to do anything with the profits besides have a nice dinner. Their 10K is only 32 pages, so it's basically a pamphlet and not helpful at all. I did find some stuff on their Klein sonar thing, and seems to have a good reputation, but it's already been sold to someone else. Their sonar stuff has obvious applications in the defense industry (and offshore oil and gas), but how does it stack up against their competitors? I can see the advantage of good imaging tech that is in a sub looking at the seafloor for someone like Kraken, but the side scan radar stuff (radar on a boat scanning to the left and right of a vessel) doesn't seem that complicated. Lots of fishing vessels have it, so what makes MIND's stuff better? Or is it? Seems like much of the price action is just the fact that by converting the dividend paying preferred shares to common shares, it's moved from one of the thousands of "cool tech but no profit" small companies to one that actually can report a positive number at the end of the quarter. Anyone have thoughts on them?

I picked up a few more 2027 $10 LEAPs. The previous ones were $12.90 breakeven these are $12.50 breakeven. They are making money and doing buybacks, the capex for the HQ is over, so it seems like a decent bet.

Bought a little EPD and CPNG.

My basket of shipping is in the toilet. More people pumping crude hurts oil prices but should be good for VLCCs and product tankers, yet rates suck now. STNG, TEN, FRO, DHT INSW all down big in just a few months.

You know what, I would also guess POWW should get sold soon. The management is terrible and they have an incredibly profitable online business paired up with a money losing ammunition business. Vista Outdoor sold their ammo brands off, and if someone like that buyer could stop the ammo business from losing money, they could use the online business to sell all their ammo brands, and have intel on how much of their competitor's ammo is selling and at what prices. It's about half what it was a year ago and even with the board members suing each other, their auditor saying that you can't rely on their past numbers, and the very questionable related party transactions, it's still a good business if you just get rid of management and replace them with your own people.

Great work @spartansaver In addition to the one's I mentioned above I would guess there's one that I posted about in the Investing forum that is probably for sale soon: PETS. It's a $100mm company competing against companies that are worth single digit billions, so they can't get the same volume discounts and are subscale, but have recognizable brands (1 800 Petmeds). It seems they recognize they are cheap and an attractive target with no debt so they issued a poison pill recently to prevent hostile takeovers. The new CEO cut costs and returned the company to profitability so it's no longer a melting ice cube, just a profitable subscale operator trading at an attractive price.

Statue of Liberty is definitely worth the trip. It's a half day though, with getting there and back. If you want to see a Broadway play, but not any particular one, you can go to one of the TKTS locations and get some for shows that extra tickets, sometimes half off, for the same day. I think the hop-on hop-off tourbus is overpriced, but the route will take you to all the major spots in Manhattan and the tour guides are pretty knowledgeable about the history. Your wife probably isn't interested in the financial district, so I wouldn't make a trip just for that, but if you go to the World Trade Center, it's close by and you can see the Bull statue and rub the horns (or balls) for good luck. And the bar where George Washington had his farewell dinner with his troops is still there and nearby also if I recall.

I don't think this is the same Seaspan that eventually became Atlas and was bought by Fairfax. There was another Seaspan that was private and owned by the Washington family, which also owned a lot of the publicly traded Seaspan/Atco. I think this is the private Seaspan that is owned and controlled by the Washington family.

I just looked at the 10K for a $50mm company the the audit fees were almost $500k, so out of their $4mm projected profit, it is a big % and that's only part of their fixed their costs, like legal and HR etc. Management is essential in companies like this. Check out SOWG and you will see that the company has $6mm shares outstanding and management awarded themselves options that will entitle them to another $3mm of shares, and there are related party transactions that I'm not comfortable with. It's hard to make money like that. By contrast, Taylor Devices was less than $100mm when I started looking at them and they don't issue crazy compensation to insiders. And I agree, a lot of these companies will stay cheap forever unless you can identify something, besides price, that will make things better. PETS cut costs and returned to profitability after years of losses. Taylor's aerospace business increased after people started shooting down predator and reaper drones, and they needed to replace them. Another company I'm looking at converted all their preferred shares to common, which eliminated the cash drain that was soaking up all their profits.

I trimmed a little GOOG to keep it at the weighting I am comfortable with and sprinkled the proceeds to a few positions that aren't dirt cheap, but could be a little bigger in my portfolio (AOS, CROX, CPNG and ATEX). The first three I've discussed on here before, and earlier I sold half my position in ATEX for a loss to offset some gains, but I noticed a couple of insider purchases on Forms 4. I figured I would buy back some shares before the next quarter with the new CEO and see if they were sandbagging the prior Q to make him look better when he takes over. The options are illiquid and only go out six months, so common shares or nothing.

https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2024/12/andurils-dive-xl-setting-new-standards-for-maritime-autonomy/ This Anduril ship uses batteries from Kraken, one of my small holdings, which hit a 52 week high today. Anduril, which isn't publicly traded unfortunately, also announced a new partnership with Palantir to use their AI for Anduril's sea and air drones, Possible applications for deployment on the Mexico boarder. Palantir is already a $100 Billion dollar company though, so I don't know if this will move the needle for them.

This case is disturbing, but not for the usual reasons people cite. There were 386 murders in NYC last year. If you believe that we are all equal under the law and in the eyes of our elected officials, then why in those other murders didn't they also show a photo of the ID to every member of the NYPD, and also have 100 police officers retrace every suspect's footsteps to look for clues, and even enlisted the scuba divers if necessary. I'm sure the family of a bodega worker killed in an armed robbery would be grateful if they received the same importance as the CEO of a large corporation. In 1989 a friend of mine was executed on a busy street just like Brian Thompson. They didn't catch the guy until 2006. There was a detective assigned to his case, but this wasn't his only murder and he didn't have 100 people to look for clues. https://nypost.com/2006/03/30/mole-probe-solves-senseless-89-murder-bklyn-teens-kin-its-justice-at-last/ If you're wondering what he did to get killed by the mafia, he didn't do anything except look a lot like one of the people they were actually after. If Luigi had killed someone in the same manner, but it was another middle aged chubby white guy walking in Manhattan who just happened to look like the CEO, then he'd still be out there. Christopher Hitchens said his parents hated the fact the UK had a ruling class, but they sent him to the best schools they could afford because although they hated that the UK had a ruling class, they wanted their son to be part of it rather than on the outside looking in. When gang members beat up uniformed police officers in times square, they were all released without bail. When gang members attacked the ex-governor and his son, the bail was set at $25,000 cash. Do better New York.

The Canadian exchanges have some lighter regulation for the new small caps, but they tend to be very speculative businesses, so buyer beware. I think Toronto and Vancouver have venture exchange listings. In the US, it's not a great regulatory structure for small companies. For accounting and legal fees it will be several hundred thousand a year, realistically. I remember a while back some horrible woman at the SEC spearheaded an experiment they called the aircraft carrier where you could use a special category and raise less money and allegedly have fewer regulatory requirements. I thought it was a terrible idea because the requirements will still pretty burdensome and it capped the amount of money you could raise. And if you wanted to be a real public company where you could raise a lot more, you would have to start all over and couldn't just use your existing aircraft carrier registration. I never worked with this woman, but I did have to deal with her in my professional capacity across the table for about 6 months and I thought she was an idiot. She brought up the aircraft carrier to us several times even though it had nothing to do with why were talking to her and lamented that she worked so hard on it and nobody was using it. The last time someone mentioned her was to tell me that she left the SEC and wrote a children's book. I bet it sucks

Even without the DNA on the water bottle and the cell phone I think they will find the shooter pretty quickly. I've seen that he's 6'2, which is less than 4% of the population. United Healthcare apparently has 30% of the market share for insureds. And they are reviled for denying a third of claims. So .4 x .33 x .33 and you already have less than half of 1% of the population. If this image is accurate, I would say he's in the top 5% of income too. And he's probably former military since he cleared the weapon so quickly. He probably made the suppressor himself (3d printer?) since it jammed. So maybe he's a tech guy?