Castanza

Wrong thread?

Last week added to: ATCO, PCYO, RTX, BAC, WFC, INTC, and started new 3% position AAPL This morning started positions in ESRT, PGRE, VNO. Still cheap with the vaccine news.

Anyone have the cajones to lever up at this point?

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no? So what? First of all it's not true that nobody has any savings. There are tons of savings. It's the poor people that have no savings. And yes there's a lot of them. Second, you are aware that consumption=production right. Lowering GDP hasn't been very good for prosperity or stimulating economic activity... historically speaking. Third, you want to incentivize poor people to increase their savings by hiking their tax bill? This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. I'm not saying tax the poor more and I'm not saying lower GDP. But you seem to be coming from the angel that GDP is all that matters. I think there is more to it than that. I don't believe higher taxes on the rich solve issues long term. It's a temporary stimulus in an of itself. I think deregulation, shrinking of govt and govt spending and allowing individuals to keep more of what they earn in general is the best way forward. Sorry but that's exactly when you're saying when you're talking about regressive taxes to encourage saving among the poor. You pretending it's not so doesn't change it. The whole shrink the government so that people can keep more is also pretty much bullshit. Most of the government spending is on healthcare, education and military. Those aren't discretionary items. People will have to consume those. In order for the people to keep more of what they earn the private sector will have to provide those goods cheaper. Out of those 3 (2 really) which one does the private sector offer at a lower price? Arguably both healthcare, education Consumption tax is regressive if you view it plainly as you do. There are many ways to structure a consumption tax that even has attributes of a progressive tax while still allowing this to be mostly volunteer. Canada has done quite a few studies on this in the mid 2000's and the results were positive. There is more than one way to skin a cat. The straight up progressive tax bracket has been anything but perfect here in the US. https://ideas.repec.org/p/sek/iacpro/5808138.html I also prefer a Negative Income Tax structure as well. Yeah. That's bullshit on the education and healthcare. The paper that you've posted here is. Not really a paper or a study. It pretends to be a paper but it's really more like a deck for a conference. It was written by some political prof at Mount Royal junior high and it's clear that he doesn't know what a regressive tax is. It employs a series of other fallacies as well to try to make its "thesis". At this point it's pretty clear that you're not dealing in facts here. This from someone who didn't want to make it political. Hey you guys heard it here first. The World Tax Czar rb scoffs at individuals like Friedman, Hayek, Sowell and their puny intellect. Stop recording tax history because the only way forward is a progressive tax! Not only that but he has also found a foundational truth that the private market cannot provide cheaper healthcare and education than the government! JFC, lets make this guy the supreme leader now and call it a day. Enjoy your weekend rb exiting stage left.

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no? So what? First of all it's not true that nobody has any savings. There are tons of savings. It's the poor people that have no savings. And yes there's a lot of them. Second, you are aware that consumption=production right. Lowering GDP hasn't been very good for prosperity or stimulating economic activity... historically speaking. Third, you want to incentivize poor people to increase their savings by hiking their tax bill? This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. I'm not saying tax the poor more and I'm not saying lower GDP. But you seem to be coming from the angel that GDP is all that matters. I think there is more to it than that. I don't believe higher taxes on the rich solve issues long term. It's a temporary stimulus in an of itself. I think deregulation, shrinking of govt and govt spending and allowing individuals to keep more of what they earn in general is the best way forward. Sorry but that's exactly when you're saying when you're talking about regressive taxes to encourage saving among the poor. You pretending it's not so doesn't change it. The whole shrink the government so that people can keep more is also pretty much bullshit. Most of the government spending is on healthcare, education and military. Those aren't discretionary items. People will have to consume those. In order for the people to keep more of what they earn the private sector will have to provide those goods cheaper. Out of those 3 (2 really) which one does the private sector offer at a lower price? Arguably both healthcare, education Consumption tax is regressive if you view it plainly as you do. There are many ways to structure a consumption tax that even has attributes of a progressive tax while still allowing this to be mostly volunteer. Canada has done quite a few studies on this in the mid 2000's and the results were positive. There is more than one way to skin a cat. The straight up progressive tax bracket has been anything but perfect here in the US. https://ideas.repec.org/p/sek/iacpro/5808138.html I also prefer a Negative Income Tax structure as well.

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no? So what? First of all it's not true that nobody has any savings. There are tons of savings. It's the poor people that have no savings. And yes there's a lot of them. Second, you are aware that consumption=production right. Lowering GDP hasn't been very good for prosperity or stimulating economic activity... historically speaking. Third, you want to incentivize poor people to increase their savings by hiking their tax bill? This has got to be one of the worst arguments I've ever heard. I'm not saying tax the poor more and I'm not saying lower GDP. But you seem to be coming from the angel that GDP is all that matters. I think there is more to it than that. I don't believe higher taxes on the rich solve issues long term. It's a temporary stimulus in an of itself. I think deregulation, shrinking of govt and govt spending and allowing individuals to keep more of what they earn in general is the best way forward.

They discourage consumption. So what? Here we are in an environment where nobody has any savings and we have to pump trillions of dollars in stimulus money into the economy to keep everything moving forward. Maybe it's simplistic, but allowing people to save more and spend as they see fit is not in and of itself a bad thing no?

Well the whole rationale for having lower rates for capital is to stimulate economic activity. That means new real means of production. So from that perspective dry cleaning would qualify and clipping divvies would not. As for inheritance taxation I would say that duties that amount to seizure are not the way to go. But I also don't think anyone is talking about that. I do think that income shouldn't be sheltered forever and has to be taxed at some point. Personally I like Canada's system where there is no estate tax but you have a deemed disposition on death. But even that system could use some improvement especially when it comes to IRAs. Income is taxed when you earn it.... Well you're gonna have to earn your capital gains at some point. Why not tax income less and establish a flat tax on consumption? The issue with income tax is it's difficult to balance incentives to earn more. I think inflation is also more detrimental with high income tax because you can't exactly scale back how much you're paying. But if tax were primarily consumption based well you can scale back. I just think this idea of creating a class warfare on the rich is misguided and ignorant of history. This hasn't ever worked long term and basically destroys incentives long term all for some short term relief?

Well the whole rationale for having lower rates for capital is to stimulate economic activity. That means new real means of production. So from that perspective dry cleaning would qualify and clipping divvies would not. As for inheritance taxation I would say that duties that amount to seizure are not the way to go. But I also don't think anyone is talking about that. I do think that income shouldn't be sheltered forever and has to be taxed at some point. Personally I like Canada's system where there is no estate tax but you have a deemed disposition on death. But even that system could use some improvement especially when it comes to IRAs. Income is taxed when you earn it....

If wealth is concentrated in a few at the top. Is your country really prosperous? Is it not prosperous? Poverty is relative no? edit: Anyways I don't want to stray into politics on general thread, so I'll end with that.

You can't tax your way into prosperity. "When Congress votes for all sorts of benefits, without voting for enough taxes to pay for them, they get the support of those who have been promised the benefits, without getting grief from the taxpayers. It's strictly win-win as far as the welfare-state politicians are concerned. But it is strictly lose-lose, big-time, for the country, as deficits skyrocket." Thomas Sowell

rb summed up the Intel situation without actually talking about Intel. Somewhere in the Apple thread he said something along these lines. "It's a massive company, with generally solid products and a sticky business that is trading below 10x FCF. So I backed up the truck." Sure, situation isn't apples to apples, and I don't want to speak for rb. But Intel is a massive company that produces competitive products and has solid entrenchment in multiple markets. As Spek said, the latest earnings report was actually pretty good. People love doom and gloom stories. Especially in the tech space. Apple wasn't going out of business and I highly doubt Intel will be out of business anytime soon.

Same

If you have to go with public school, just make sure your kids are in the AP classes. At least where I am from this served as a make shift private school as those kids are generally isolated from peers in many ways. But my HS class size was close to 1k kids as the multiple upstream elementary and middle schools fed into the downstream single high school. I saw a lot of peers from MS dwindle academically as they got lumped into the mixed bag of classmates in non-AP courses. This doesn't solve your original qualm with the public school though.

AG small position Silver to gold ratio is currently 77:1. Historically it trades closer to 50:1. Current global consumption is 1b oz annually and production is 800m oz. Silver use in the auto sector from 2002-2020 has grown from 2m oz to over 40m oz. This is mostly outside of EV production which would increase demand even more. Solar panel production has seen similar demand increases 2m oz - 85m oz over the same time period. This is trending down from 100m in 2017 due to increased efficiency in solar panel technology. I think the electric vehicle boom is starting to kick off. Add in solar panels and the demand for silver is going to grow from an industrial perspective over the next decade. I'm not a gold/silver bug by any means, but the current situation seems interesting enough to take a small position.

RTX at open

Van Trapp from VT if you can get it. Sierra Nevada also has an Octoberfest that’s pretty good. I do drink the Sam Adams Octoberfest which is easy to get where I live. From the German Oktoberfest beers, I prefer the Hacker-Pschorr and the Löwenbräu, but they are much harder to get. The Wegmans near my house has a pretty good German selection; I'll have to keep an eye out for it. Definitely agree on the Sam Adams. I would have to recommend Breckenridge Oktoberfest.

Some interesting talks coming up regarding Central Bank Digital Currencies https://meetings.imf.org/en/2020/Annual/Schedule/2020/10/19/imf-cross-border-payments-a-vision-for-the-future Interesting read by Mark Carney https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/-/media/boe/files/speech/2019/the-growing-challenges-for-monetary-policy-speech-by-mark-carney.pdf

Any must try Oktoberfest brew recommendations?

PM, ATCO, small basket of ET, KMI, WMB, ENB

WFC - started a position again....just hard to not have a position at these prices....

BAC Started in CINR....has anyone done work on this? There was a decent write up on VIC. Looks interesting at these prices as long as they stay liquid (which they seem to be doing). Soda Ash consumption seems to be increasing globally. A few catalysts would be EVs and increased Solar panels. CINR seems to be positioned very well long term. If I had to guess the and some other subsidies will all be brought under the umbrella of We Soda (which has discussed IPO). CINR has no baggage like GEL which is also tied to O&G. Divy also seems like it will come back at some point. Unfortunately there is a K-1. Sorry a bit of a ramble.

PLTR

Closed DKNG put position. 26% gain

So when a pension fund or insurance company has a 5 or 10 year US government bond mature their proceeds are going to end up on the Fed’s balance sheet? My comment was aimed at private organization who currently own US government bonds. As these bonds mature and these organization re-deploy where will it go? Demand will increase for some asset classes. I saw some Ohio pension funds allocating north of 5% to gold. I think historically these positions are 2% on average. Not necessarily meaningful I guess