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

I don't know how to check each individual company for this, but it seems to me that whether a company will be hurt or help by AI might depend on how the services are priced to the customer. If it's something like Microsoft Office where they charge you a certain amount for each license, than if you have a third less employees, you would have less money. Westlaw charged by the minute when I was working at a law firm. So people using AI features on it more would mean higher bills. What about something like Bloomberg terminals. If they charge for each terminal, not each employee, then it would depend. If they got rid of 30% of the workforce but the people use the terminals twice as much, they would need more terminals. If usage stayed the same because they are using alternate AIS instead of Bloomberg's terminals, then a 30% cut in workers would be 30% fewer terminals. It's hard to know how that would play out. I think for some kinds of software if the model after would be damaged by AI eventually they would change the pricing structure and things would even out as the contracts were renewed. Then again, I am pretty confident in my positions in things like Nintendo, meta, Google, Tyler( municipal contracts that can last decades ), vrrm( red light cameras and places like New York where it is a multi-year rfp process), or TBTC which requires approval from gaming regulators to be able to sell to casinos, which would create a multi-year hurdle for new entrants. VRRM is kind of interesting because it relies on software but it also needs hardware, speed cameras, so you can't disrupt it with some lines of code. Code. I think along those lines utility meters like tantalus or badger meters also present an opportunity because of IOT which might be helped by AI.

Bought a big slug of NTDOY. Sold a few short dated VG $10 puts and used it to buy a long dated VG call. I'll try again if Mr Market decides to drop it another 8% in a day.

All the software stuff was down this morning after ServiceNow announced earnings, so I nibbled on the software basket for a few shares in each (Tyler, Constellation, Topicus, Lumine, DOCS, VRRM, ZETA, NTDOY). Added a few shares to Pulsar Helium (which still looks pricey, but has pretty much gone up in a straight line for the past year except for right after I decided to buy )

Thanks for the advice. I do have fond memories of camping with my Dad. I remember once while camping he wanted to listen to a soccer match and took out his Grundig short wave, looked at the specs in the manual and figured out that he needed a 20 foot antennae to get the game. He attached wire to the antennae and attached it to a couple of trees that my brother and I climbed up to get it high enough.

As some of you who know me personally know, I became a first time dad last month. Fifty Five (double nickels) is a tough time to be doing all-nighters. I hear new dads in their 20s and 30s complain about it, but I could drink all night in my 30s and go to work the next day. I'm committed to winning the "World's Greatest Dad" championship. I don't know if it's like Boxing where there are lots of governing bodies (I see a lot of past champs with T-shirts), but I am committed to unifying the titles. So in that spirit, what is some piece of advice, or practice from your childhood upbringing that you remember about your dad and planned on using it yourself when you raised your children?

That's a great question. It's very common for someone like Lou Simpson (Buffet's GEICO manager) to go from a fund to a SFO when they want to wind down, but there are reasons to do it earlier. If he's doing a lot of "wealth preservation" vs aggressively growing the pie, then it's a different type of investing. Buying safer stuff might lower the fund returns, so why not do it in a separate vehicle. He could also be getting into stuff like private real estate deals and buying art (lot's of rich guys fancy themselves collectors), and if you are using hedge fund staff to subsidize your side businesses, help you with your philanthropy or political aspirations, then it's a bad look at best and violates fiduciary duties at worst.

I had a small-med starter position in IBKR that I sold today for about 20% gain. I didn't want to wait the full year for lower capital gain treatment because the market is getting frothy so I'd like to sell out of my lower confidence ideas and free up some cash for dry powder while keeping my core positions intact.

For those who say Bill Ackman can work miracles on HHH, does the way he handled his family office give you a data point to add to your Bayesian analysis? https://moneywise.com/news/news/bill-ackman-severance-dispute-employee-billionaires While he was busy with politics, Harvard, and other things besides investing, it seems he really took his eye off the ball. On a related note, if anyone here is a COO or CFO for a family office, please message me. A reporter wants to talk to me about this, and wants to also speak to someone with those titles (anonymously if you want) about how family offices should handle this type of thing.

Trimmed some Crox in my retirement account.

I've been nibbling a little a few shares a day on my basket of bombed out software companies that I believe are being unfairly tainted with the AI Apocalypse brush. CSU, Topicus, Lumine, Tyler, Adobe, DOCS, ZETA, VRRM, NTDOY. I haven't added to TBTC (full position 1% already, which is what I'm okay with in a nanocap), SPGI , FICO or MSCI which I think are fine but not as much of a bargain yet and may go down further.