Saluki

sold some January puts on Venture Global at $10 and bought some calls at $12.50.

I have a midsize position and sold the shares in my retirement account. The taxable shares are a tougher decision because some of them will hit the 1 year mark (and lower capital gains) in a couple of months.

I have a small starter position in this. Bought a little early but I almost never bottom tick anything. If there is anyone who isn't going to vibe code software, it's underpaid municipal employees in cities that you never heard of.

Taylor Devices is coming down again. It's in the $50s from a recent high in the $90s based on multiple compression. They make landing gear for Reaper and Predator drones. No debt and a lot of cash. I think the concern is the future of warfare. Swarms of cheap, crappy drones seem to do an okay job at assymetrical warfare. Is it worth paying 50-100x more for a drone with a much bigger payload if you are targeting soldiers and tanks, and not battleships?

I get Valueline free through my library. If you like the binders, go ahead and subscribe. I'm getting lazier now, but I used to have a redweld and manilla folders when researching a stock and as part of that process I would print out a Valueline page for the stock and write my notes on the back for the thesis (to prevent thesis drift). Since you only have one sheet of paper, it makes you synthesize your thoughts clearly and briefly. (So for Crox it would've been a few bullet points (much higher margin than competitors, brand recognition, 5-6x FCF, buying back shares, growing overseas, and temporarily trading down because of horrible bolt-on acquisition). I used to pay for SeekingAlpha but cancelled it. I liked that they had articles (even if a few years old) on some oddball stocks that it was hard to find info on, like Taylor Devices. At the $99 intro price it was worth it, but I didn't think it was worth $250 to renew. In economics i would be known as an inframarginal consumer. COBF is more useful, IMHO, because people aren't commenting on 5 year old articles of small stocks on Seeking Alpha, but I can post about it here and get crowdsourced intel that isn't stale.

A month ago I sold $10k of CPNG for the tax loss harvesting. I bought about $15k back today. I may buy some options too since the decision on the penalty for the data breach is coming soon. I'll probably sell another 10-20k after 30 days to tax loss harvest some more and rinse/repeat until the end of the year. Buying a few shares a day of some small new positions that I am studying. I'll sell them all if I change my mind, but at least have some shares so that I don't miss it if it runs up parabolically. OTCM, TME, BMI and UBER if anyone is interested.

Anecdotally, I worked with a guy who, about 20 years ago, was the chief economist at one of the largest oil companies. He said that their internal think tank would run scenarios that way more complicated and implausible than Rand or the Pentagon would do, because they wanted to be prepared for anything. When I asked for an example, he said they tried to figure out what would happen (in terms of their business operations) if a war broke out between the US and Canada over water rights involving the great lakes and the border shifted With Trump threatening to annex Greenland and Canada and the aquifer in the middle of US getting more depleted every year it doesn't seem so far fetched anymore.

Picked up a few shares of UBER while I keep studying it. May just nibble a little a day unless I find something I don't like. So far nothing bad. It's not too cheap now, but I think the operating leverage kicks in and it will do really well. Seems like it would be hard to disrupt them at this point in food delivery or driving. If Lyft is a distant second, what would it take for a third one to get any traction? The only legit contender (in Europe) is Bolt. And they don't seem to want to come to the US and Lyft doesn't want to go to Europe, so they are both fighting for share against UBER, which is now dominant and not running the business at a loss to get to scale anymore. They sowed, and now it's time to reap.

Added a couple of shares of Fairfax. Some NTDOY in my retirement account. Small adds to a few new positions that I am slowly building. OTCM, ASHXF, BMI, TME.

I have resting bids on a very small cap illiquid company, Progressive Planet at different prices. It's going down so I got a few shares filled yesterday. It's annoying because I can't buy it with Robinhood (where margin is lowest) or my Merrill Account (where they don't charge fees), because they don't list it. Schwab does but charges $6.95 a trade on them. So if I can, I'd rather buy Nintendo, Kraken or Fairfax on Merrill with no fees. But Schwab carries Progressive Planet and the other two don't. Normally it's not an issue, but on some very small stuff, like TBTC, sometimes I'll get a partial fill and still get charged the $6.95. If I get a fill for a few thousand dollars fine, but on the illiquid stuff if I get partial fill for $100 and get hit with the commission, it's infuriating. I got a fill of POWWP on Merrill once of ONE share . Luckily Merrill doesn't charge fees.

Sold some 2028 puts at $15 and 2027. Yesterday also tried to buy a few Nov $15 calls and sell $19 calls. I put in a few orders at different prices for that but only got one fill. Might try again today.

small adds daily to my "software is not dead bucket" : TYLER, ADBE, CSU, Lumine, Topicus, VRRM, NTDOY, ZETA. Sold some puts on CPNG.

Thanks for all the great advice. I will definitely use it. Yesterday our son turned 7 weeks and we hit a milestone, he smiled! Before it was just random facial expressions and yelling between naps and feeding. But my better half figured out that tickling both cheeks at the same time gets him to laugh/smile repeatedly. It's definitely something that was appreciated

FFH and a little more NTDOY.

There's been an interesting trend in private equity being involved in sales a company to it's employess, via the Employee Stock Ownership Plan in the US or Employee Ownership Trusts in Canada. It lets the seller/founder delay or avoid paying huge taxes too. The US law isn't going anywhere, but the Canadian law expires in 2026 unless it's renewed. The US one allows you to defer taxes, but the Canadian setup allows you to avoid paying taxes altogether. Here's couple of articles on it that came out this week (where I'm quoted). https://ionanalytics.com/insights/mergermarket/private-equity-finds-stability-in-employee-owned-firms/ https://ionanalytics.com/insights/mergermarket/selling-to-workers-gains-traction-among-private-equity/ I've been trying to get quoted more in press to help with "answer engine optimization". While MergerMarket doesn't have the readership of CNN, I'm pretty impressed that I got in there. It's a niche publication, but according to Google, the subscriptions can run USD$15-20k per year. So as value investors, I hope you all enjoy these two freebies