Saluki

Sold the small position I had in SFL (17 % gain), and added mostly to NTDOY and a little JOE and BTI.

This is a biopharma company, so it's in my "too hard" pile without even looking, but I noticed that they had a lot of insider buying this quarter from a 10% owner fund and one of their directors: http://openinsider.com/CGON

Small adds to JOE and NTDOY. I was tempted to sell something for more to deploy but I'd like to imagine that one day ( a very, very, very long time from now) that my descendants are going through my brokerage account after I pass and they find the stock equivalent of an episode of Hoarders. Except that instead of old magazines, it's full of hundred baggers .

Some small purchases of NTDOY , ENPH and FRPH.

BTI dipped below $30 again today. At that price it's yielding a 9.8% dividend.

When I used to listen to their conference calls, I was impressed with their Kaizen continuous improvement philosophy. It reminded me of the Danaher guys. It rang a bell when I read the Isaacson book on Musk over the weekend because with cars, or spaceships, or tunnel machines, the design is something that a lot of people can do, but building "the machine that makes the machines" is a complicated process and a rare skill. I noticed a similar skill when I was connected the dots in my investment in Smith and Wesson. It's surprisingly hard to make a gun because of tight tolerances and manufacturing processes. I noticed that although some companies have been around for a long time (Beretta started in the 1500s), there are a lot of crappy new entrants, and a few surprisingly good ones. What the good ones have in common, is that they were in some other manufacturing business first. Benelli, the high end shotgun company made racing motorcycles, and Diamondback made speed boats etc. There's a reason that they sell most of the snow plows in the US. They have a really great process for efficiency and improvement. Several years of warm winters have taken their toll on PLOW. It WAS a slow and steady compounder with no debt and a decent, boring dividend. I check in on it once in a while, but it seems that the most important thing in moving the needle (a cold winter with lots of snow) is something that they can't control. I hope you are right about it.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/panama-canal-drought-could-threaten-202842044.html It seems that containerships, which are probably overbuilt already, are going to pay higher rates to use the Panama canal because their cargo is more valuable and they can eat the cost. I've always hated bulk carriers, but there are a lot more of them carrying low value cargo that doesn't warrant paying for passage through Panama. I wonder if it's worth it to start looking at some of these companies again.

Sold a few shares of SFL. I wanted to wait a year so I don't have to pay short term capital gains, but I wanted to add to NTDOY on the dip today.

Well, according to Elon and family, he was physically and psychologically abusive. He tried to falsely take credit for a lot of Elon's accomplishments by claiming to have sent him to America and being an investor in Paypal. As a child, when Elon was beaten unconscious and hospitalized, his dad blamed Elon for provoking the kid. He used to send Elon and his brother to some summer program that was more Lord of the Flies, than a camping experience. According to news reports he killed 3 home invaders in South Africa. In the book, it mentioned when he visited the US he was acting very possessive of his 15 year old stepdaughter. She joined the family at 5 and Elon and his siblings considered her a sister. Elon was creeped out and tried to get them to stay and send his dad away to head off whatever weirdness was happening. If you google his dad, you will see that he had 2 kids with his step daughter. Etc etc.

There's a video on CNBC now of Einhorn pitching his stock Solvay at the Sohn Conference. When I checked the prices, the shares in Brussels are up 4% and the OTC US shares are up 12%. And markets are efficient?

Listened to the audiobook over the weekend. It's really well done and with inside access. I wouldn't want to compete with Elon, he's a madman, but it's clear that from being around him a lot, Isaacson sort of takes Musk's side on things, even when he's clearly in the wrong. Part of that is probably because if you are spending a good chunk of your life writing about something, you will have a soft spot for it. When people write about the Comanche, they revere their prowess with a horse and bravery in battle. They don't start writing about them and then say "I've changed my mind, they were actually genocidal sociopaths who tortured people for fun, raped and murdered settlers and other Indian tribes, kidnapped children, and never developed an advanced culture like the Aztecs." Isaacson never calls out the mental acrobatics that Elon does to justify doing what is in Elon's best interest. He bans the guy who tracks his plane from Twitter (because safety!) and then bans the reporters who write about it for the same reason. But he leaks the name of the guy who was in charge of content moderation, who later got death threats at home and had to sell his house and move. Elon's got private security, but banning the plane guy was a legitimate safety move, but picking on this guy was okay? And the weird prickly behavior, like arguing with Twitter users, or rage posting and sharing fake news articles like Trump is disturbing. He's genuinely a bad person. His dad is a monster, but that doesn't excuse his behavior. Trying to pretend that he isn't insensitive to trans people when he makes jokes at their expense by stating that his kid is trans, is weak. His kid won't talk to him and changed his last name to his mom's because he can't stand Elon. Spending hours a day playing video games, but not reading his wife's novels, shows that it's all about him. The weird dick-measuring rivalry with Bezos over spaceships is funny, but despising Bill Gates because he shorted Tesla is just thin skinned nonsense. This is a fascinating book about a rich, brilliant, and despicable human being.

I've traded in and out of Douglas a few times. There wasn't a lot of snow last year, and we're heading into spring/summer. Is there a reason that you think it will turn around soon?

A little FRPH today. I had some resting bids for shares at just under 60, 59, 58, 57 and someone hit the bid on the higher one today.

Does the exchange clear trades themselves or do they have a clearing house? Generally the largest members are clearing members and they have to make up a shortfall if a member goes bankrupt. So it's the members interest to only let financially sound entities be clearing members and have a lot of capital as a cushion. But most of the exchanges that I'm aware of have their trades executed on the exchange and settled/cleared through a separate cleaning house.

That's surprising. The stuff that they use for ships, bunker fuel, is literally the crud that is right above the asphalt in a cracker when they break petroleum into other stuff. It's literally a solid at room temperature, so it's hard to think that it could be even lower quality than that.

Sold the small position I had in NEP for about a 20% profit since the end of last year. The dividend is yielding 12% and if interest rates go down it could do really well. But if they don't, the new solar projects will be more costly and they will have to finance them at a higher interest rate, so I took the quick win and added to my other positions.

I've heard the author say that you should look for the next outsiders from the people who worked there with the current outsiders. Bruce Flatt at Brookfield came up under the Brascan guys, for instance. In that vein, I was very impressed with David Sokol's turnaround of Atlas. One of Buffets three Ts (Ted, Todd and Tracy) started a VC firm, but haven't heard from her since. Did Singleton have any underlings?

It's great to have all the side events in one place so you can plan your trip well. I enjoyed going the previous two years but I don't know if I can make it this year. The money for the Dilly Bars sold downstairs are going to charity so if I'm not there please eat two or three on my behalf. Take one for the team!

That's fair. Shipping is a terrible business and as SFL is probably the leper with the most fingers. Very long streak of paying steady or increasing dividends and long term contracts are a good buffer from the wild swings up and down of many shipping companies that are exposed to spot rates and use the volatility to make money off the "tourist" investors. I don't plan to hold forever but as the new ships get delivered and more earnings come in it should be fine. Dividend is good but, if I had to pick a reason to Avoid it besides it being a shipping company it would be the price. Even with a growing dividend I always feel like a sucker if I pay more than book value for anything that floats or writes insurance policies. I like to refer to shipping companies as "floaters" to remind myself that they are turds

I wonder if this will be a winner take all (or most) like other tech. MSFT is the winner take most in the business software (word, outlook, excel) and AMZN is the winner take most in online sales and cloud, NVDIA is the winner take most in AI chips, and GOOG and META are the winner take most in advertising. GOOG and MSFT seem to be the frontrunners in AI and Apple trying to license the tech rather than build their own seems to be acknowledgement of the idea that it's better to license the best one than to make a pretty good one. If that's the state it is now, and AI works best with more users, more data, and more iterations, then maybe the lead will grow bigger over time and the lead will eventually be like what Alphabet has with Google. Someone can spend $100bln on Bing for a single digit market share. https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-says-it-spent-100-billion-on-bing-and-is-stopping-google-from-having-a-monopoly/#:~:text=In the hearing%2C Nadella mentioned,in terms of market share. If that's not proof of an incredible moat, then what is? And a search engine is a lot easier to make than AI. Search engines have been around since the internet has been around. Maybe if more people start using GOOG's AI than MSFT's or vice versa, then the learning and constant reiterations will make it so that you can't catch up. I.e. if you kept using the crappier AI it would get better, but you won't because it's like BING. So the better one just keeps getting better.

Small adds to CPNG, NTDOY and ATEX with some dividends that came in.

I have a small position in SFL, a shipping company founded by the guy who started Frontline. I'm up about 20% on it this year, but the dividend is still almost 8%. It's safer but with less upside than most shipping companies. They operate like Aercap (or ATCO before they went private) in that they don't do spot contracts, they buy ships when they have a customer who commits to a long-term contract. There isn't a post on COBF about them, and when I start a post on something it tanks, so I won't start one. But they own a little of everything (containers, drybulk, VLCCs and product tankers). I think the earnings and dividends will continue to grow because they are about to take delivery of a few more Ro-Ro ships and two product tankers under long term contracts. They are dependent on debt so if rates stay high it may stunt growth in the future, but for the next couple of years it should grow when the new ships start earning. Product tankers are getting great rates now because of the low order book and the shipping nonsense in the red sea. And Ro-Ros are an oligopoly business, and whenever I've looked at the pure play Ro-Ro companies they are pricey, so this gets you some exposure to that which is specialized and not prone to new entrants like dry bulk.

I'm halfway through this very interesting book that has nothing and everything to do with investing, in the same way that "Fearless Golf" does. He grew up with a mom who was a Jehova's Witness and a Dad who was a police officer. After relentless bullying in school he realized that his church teachings of non-violence weren't doing him any favors (even the principal told him that he needed to fight back) he stopped turning the other cheek. Thorton opened one of the first MMA gyms in the US and trained with the first person who brought Brazilian Jiu Jitsu to the US, Fabio Santos. When Fabio left for California to help the Gracies try to get UFC 1 off the ground, he trained under Rickson Gracie (the Muhammad Ali of jiu jitsu). He has gyms all over the world and many successful MMA fighters, including Conor McGregor. There are lots of endnotes and the assertions he makes are based on data, not philosophy, which I appreciate as a numbers guy. I appreciate the reality based approach to risk and probability instead of the usual snake oil salesmen peddling fear. My dry cleaner is a retired policeman and after car jackings and murders more than doubled last year he told me numerous times that I should get a gun if I am going to be walking my dog at night. So I looked at the data, and decided that what I needed right away was...more fire extinguishers. Your lifetime odds of being in a house fire are 1:10. So I decided to start there. He takes a similar approach and criticizes the "grossly out-of-shape paranoids" who go to self defense seminars (some are hand-to-hand but many are involving guns and unrealistic situations like clearing rooms in a house like John Wick) to train for the improbable without focusing on the obvious. If your concern is personal safety, you are attempting to survive so that you can live longer. If longevity is the goal, then you don't need another gun or a few Krav Maga lessons. You are better off being in shape, eating healthy, wearing a seatbelt when driving, and quitting smoking and excessive drinking or drugs. There's an old joke that was going around when River Phoenix died and it fits here. He was a strict vegan but when he died the autopsy found massive amounts of several drugs in his system. The joke was that found everything but red meat in his system. What difference does being a vegan make if you do other things that are much worse than eating red meat? A lot of the other points are obvious but usually overlooked or not talked about at all. You won't learn to fight in one four hour seminar on a Saturday. That will take years. What you can do is learn to focus on situation awareness and to make conscious decisions to reduce the odds of something bad happening. A former co-worker of mine was killed in a car-jacking recently in broad daylight in the part of town where all the office buildings are. He was waiting to pick up his wife from her office and the car-jacker opened the passenger door, and got in and shot him. If he had been waiting with the door locked, or noticed that someone stepped off the sidewalk and was heading to his car, that might have bought him enough time to drive off. The title of the book is terrible. My better half said it sounds like the memoir of a serial killer. But it's an interesting book and the discussion reminds me of when I hear Sam Harris talking about jiu jitsu.

Thanks @gfp, this was an interesting read. I remember looking at Chicago Bridge and Iron, another EPC company a few years ago and I was not comfortable with the fact that deciding whether a project is 30% or 40% done involves a lot of subjective decisions and thus they can decide how much to report and it would be too easy to manipulate earnings. The float like aspects of the upfront payments and what you get to do with the money didn't even occur to me. Sometimes looking at things a different way will give you a better appreciation for the value of something. When Amazon bought Whole Foods, some people wondered why they bought a struggling high end retailer. I remember Prof G (Scott Galloway), who predicted it, saying that it one move Amazon bought refrigerated distribution centers in every major US city. @ValueArb I have Jason's book sitting on my boookshelf and I haven't cracked it open, but I will.

This was exactly the issue in the Blue Chip Stamps litigation involving Berkshire many years ago. The issue was favoring one group of shareholders vs another and long term greedy vs short term greedy. I'm no expert on Canadian corporate law and how it differs from Delaware corporate law, but there is some value in not having sharp elbows when it comes to dealing with people. Every big bank or insurance firm does a lot of trades on exchanges and bilaterally with other big players. There are people in every firm that deal with "out trades". You call for a bid on a forex transaction, for instance, and unlike most trades (dollar/euro, dollar/yen, dollar/ swiss franc, dollar/kroner ), you want to trade the British Pound, but you forget that it is always quoted the other way GBP/Dollar and you give the wrong price. You verbally confirm the trade and realize that you quoted the price wrong. Or some trainee makes a fat finger trade for 1000 lots of something instead of a 100. If the other guy holds your feet to the fire and says "a deal's a deal", then you win that round and did good for your clients. But there aren't many huge firms, and they keep trading amongst each other like a weekly poker game, so after a few rounds of that behavior you may find that people won't trade with you any more. Knowing what you know about how people behave, would you sell your office building on handshake deal to Sam Zell or Trump? Would you rather sell your family business to Berkshire or to Bain Capital? Looking at it the other way, if Prem is making decisions for FF India and he takes the better deals for FFH and dilutes them at the bottom, then he'll never be able to offer another separate publicly traded vehicle like this. If he ensures it does well and the shareholders make money, then he can launch more of these. Maybe put the Kennedy Wilson and other real estate, like the Toys R Us assets, into a separate JV that is publicly traded and focused on Real estate. Maybe the Shipping stuff can be spun out with other logistics or infrastructure assets? Who knows.