Castanza

oof....

Son of a bitch...

I agree Trump 2.0 is a different guy and the checks and balances have been under threat since Clinton. Presidential powers have been growing rapidly and executive orders and politicization of the judiciary are threats to the checks and balances. Bruce Ackerman touched in this topic in 2010 in his book “The Decline and Fall of The American Republic” “The system is also promoting different personality types to the White House. Nominees of major parties are no longer absolutely required to convince a broad range of senior politicians of their fitness for the job. While establishment support is generally an asset, the winning candidate may owe his presidency more to the media consultants and movement activists who've sustained his momentum throughout his lengthy presidential campaign. Charisma, counts more. Season judgment counts less. A career of political achievement is always nice, but a successful career in the movies or television may be even better.” Predictions: “I predict that one, the evolving system of presidential nominations will lead to the election of an increasing number of charismatic outsider types who gain office by mobilizing activist support for extremist programs of the left or the right. Two, all presidents, whether extremists or mainstream, will rely on media consultants to design streams of sound bites aimed at narrowly segmented micro-publics, generating a politics of unreason that will often dominate public debate. Three, they will increasingly govern through their White House staff of super loyalists, issuing executive orders that their staffers will impose on the federal bureaucracy even when they conflict with congressional mandates. Four, they will engage with an increasingly politicized military in ways that may greatly expand their effective power to put their executive orders into force throughout the nation. Five, they will legitimate their unilateral actions through an expansive use of emergency powers. Six, and assert mandates from the people, in quotes, to evade or ignore congressional statutes when public opinion polls support decisive action. And seven, they will rely on elite lawyers in the executive branch to write up learned opinions that vindicate the constitutionality of their most blatant power grabs. These opinions will publicly rubber-stamp presidential actions months or years before the Supreme Court gets into the act, and they will generate heated debate amongst the broader legal community. With the profession divided, and the president's media machine generating a groundswell of support for his power grab, the Supreme Court may find it prudent to stage a strategic retreat, allowing the president to displace Congress and use his bureaucracy and military authority to establish a new regime of law and order.” I’d say he’s getting pretty close with those estimates. And if it’s not Trump, the trajectory is the same. No system is perfect and there are always cracks. I think a lot of people have gotten killed into the “American will always be too dog” mindset. Maybe for a long time that will be true…..but history isn’t kind to those opinions.

Can we just put a “$” in front of all new/existing threads?

Not my cup of tea

Why do new young value investors gravitate towards the most macro, complex, unpredictable, geopolitical investment class? I’ll never understand this. There is definitely some romance here…. much easier hurdles out there

Yeah the tariffs may be a terrible idea for 99% of the things and countries. But this situation is solvable with the stroke of a pen and some good gestures by the next president (if it goes 4 years). People comparing this to the pandemic need to take a step back. That was a once in a lifetime event….this is tariffs…trade agreements….the world is not ending and people are not dying (yet). As I said, quit bitching and start buying….come up with a capital allocation plan, get organized and start looking for sales. I guess do both of you want, but bitching clouds judgement imo.

META, GOOGL, NVO, FRFHF, BX, NTDOY

lol I hear you, but cost basis is your friend. Have a capital allocation plan to average in and stick with it.

Do you get upset when the big pack of toilet paper at Costco goes on sale? The earlier and the cheaper you can accumulate assets the better. “The stock market is the only market where things go on sale and all the customers run out of the store.” Cullen Roche

Less bitching more buying...this volatility is a gift to anyone under 50...And we've now had two of these "events" in 5 years...

A good observation

~4%with a good amount of deployable cash, no debt, and 3 years of living expenses in cash (This is the type of stuff that makes me glad I paid off my house early) Birkenstock season is right around the corner....Gonna get me a case of Red Stripe, a pair of shade and ride this shit out while tending the garden/mowing the lawn and chasing my son around the yard. Simple life

Good to be a FFH holder right now

How did they describe "moderated" because in my experience it's very heavily moderated by the users that create the subreddits. They may have been talking at a company level. There isn't anyone I know both left and right that does not describe Reddit as a very left leaning echo chamber as a general rule. Depending what subs you follow it's definitely useful. I use it a lot for general feedback or questions.

This tool can lead to the use of another. Emergency Powers….Presidential power has been growing since Clinton. Executive Orders have grown (Clinton, Bush2, Obama, Trump, Biden and now Trump). Congressional effectiveness has gone down the drain. The Judiciary has been increasingly politicized and packing is seen as an expectation of executive powers. Congress has provided Zero fix for Emergency Powers and made it worse in the 80’s. The problem with Trump is he is a narcissist that has ZERO character or empathy. A big reason I did not vote for him in the last two elections. “Insurrection Clause” is all he needs. So he’s a melting ice cube until he’s not….Is Trump that guy? Not sure, but he’s the most likely candidate we’ve seen. America needs to move away from the appeal to Caesar path asap. Both parties are to blame here. edit: Obviously worst case scenario. But long-term....the US is stacking it's deck to make this move much more likely. I'm not willing to sound the fire alarms yet on that side of the coin... Current policy and tariffs make little sense to anyone....at least we can all mostly be bi-partisan on that.

New Dan Carlin just dropped https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/common-sense-with-dan-carlin/id155974141?i=1000700526085 Time to take a step back on American Politics folks….the pendulum nightmare we are locked in ain’t working https://pod.wave.co/podcast/common-sense-with-dan-carlin/show-324-whats-good-for-the-goose-ea24d501 Some solid notes on the podcast. Best part is about Bruce Ackermans book and subsequent predictions from 2010.

BX, GOOGL, NVO

Idea of who? People haven’t trusted American institutions for decades here in the US. The news is full of conspiracy theories. Our media is constantly pumping out new films (Civil War, White House Down, Red Dawn, etc etc) for decades. Same for the music industry. Bad for society imo. Americans more than anywhere else are “brainwashed” to be skeptical of every institution. Perhaps it’s gone too far? @Spekulatius could absolutely be right in the jobs comment.

I still laugh about this. Previous admin took “being allowed to go back to work” and spun it as “jobs we created.” Probably one of the best PR spins of all time for a President who’s primary focus was his fathers driving ability, ice cream, and photo ops with children.

Very respectable, you definitely have one of the most unique approaches on this board. I pretty much view BRK as quasi SPY substitute for non 401k accounts. Not a massive position for me, but I sleep better holding it vs holding SPY (currently)

Have you outperformed BRK.b over your investment career?

Okay those are two of the worst offenders. You can argue about valuation of Nvidia, but who can replace them near term? Tesla certainly has issues with Chinese auto manufacturers so I agree there. But when you get to GOOGL, MSFT, META, AMZN who replaces them? Are European nations going to cozy up with China? Is ASML going to cut the US off and flip to being a supplier of China? Will TSMC back out of building new chip plants in the US and instead align with EU or China? That would seem pretty hypocritical to align with China when you're lambasting the US for "Aligning with Russia" (which is highly debatable). DeepSeek is an interesting development, but in AI a rising tide lifts all boats. Remember AI has it's roots with American companies. Europe could absolutely inflict some damage on American Tech giants if it wants, but there is no reason to believe (yet) that there is a long term threat to them. I think emotions are running high and this is a very dynamic situation. To replace the datacenter infrastructure alone take a TON of capital and TIME. Trump is absolutely mucking stuff up, but when his time is up 4 years I think relations will be repaired. If I was handed a punchcard for investing I'm not sure I would be punching anything the next few years.

Which ones do you think are expensive and why? I mean 18x for (GOOGL) and 23x for (META) does not scream expensive to me.

BX