Red Lion

This morning yes, but this afternoon no. 10 year yield still up 15 basis points on the day and S&P500 is up 8.5%. I bet trump is trading weekly options.

Interesting to see the monster rally in the stock markets, but the 10 year yield is still up another 15 basis point.

And if so would the insider trading be somehow protected by executive privilege under the Trump v. United States Supreme Court decision? It certainly seems plausible, particularly if Trump was trading on this in his individual capacity.

Maybe the recency bias with Biden and trump has distorted my view of things. I think he’s a good public speaker (not that it matters in the world of soundbites) and a smart individual willing to take whatever shot he can at accumulating power.

I feel like margins and large amount of invested capital make this a really hard calculation. Commodities hedging doesn't help handicap these investments. I'd love to get in on some good royalty plays, but it feels like I missed the boat on TPL, and for some reason I've had bad success with small cap royalty companies (although not oil specifically).

I suspect that some might argue they would come off the sidelines once medicaid funding gets axed for non-disabled working age people. I doubt this makes a drop in the bucket with the immigration situation, but it would at least be some offset. Another possibility would be automation/AI/robotics, although the timeline seems to be aggressive if that's going to make a difference over the next couple of years.

Are you investing more into small cap type names or majors? I have lost money so many times on oil producers that I've given up trying at this point. I've done a bit better with midstream investments, but even then they've been underwhelming and some significant losses in the mix as well. I'm probably just bad at analyzing these situations.

Vance is anything but stupid, but he’s very avaricious and wants power for himself. He’s playing chess not checkers, with the goal to become president or at least get silly rich. Listen to him speak, and you’ll realize he’s more eloquent than Obama. Personally I’m quite curious to see how he pivots from trump when the time comes.

Not me I was buying garbage value stocks at ridiculous multiples. Still made good returns but not nearly as much as I would have with some higher quality names.

If China is the main issue here, it would have been much easier to get Europe/Canada/SE Asia on board to match our tariffs rather than going to war with the whole world.

I was putting all my bills on credit cards so I could buy as many stocks as possible at that time. That’s why I see young people talking about losing 20% on a 100k setting them back and I fundamentally see these times as a great opportunity if you either have a bunch of cash on the sidelines or earnings/savings potential.

There was still an impossible decision in this most recent election where the alternative espoused policy detrimental to the USA’s future. If you’re a progressive then voting for Kamala was easy. If you think the progressive movement is the greatest threat to the future of America, you hold your nose, vote orange, and hope to god the mainstream media didn’t get it right for once and that 2024 was the last election we’d ever have. Or vote third party to prove a point? It’s too bad that there wasn’t a moderate pro business democrat to vote for.

One wonders if trumps next treasury pick, especially a full maga loyalist, would get confirmed so easily, seems like several senators are turning already on the tariff issue.

Maybe if eliminating the charitable interest deduction doesn’t work we should start enforcing the accumulated earnings tax along with penalties and interest for large corporations. I just don’t like this idea because I think it would be terrible for the stock market in general and in specific for some of our most dynamic businesses like Berkshire Hathaway, apple, google, etc.

It seems like free trade and social safety net programs have been a great way for billionaires to extract money from the middle class. Please note, I’m not saying we should have protectionist policies and no safety net, but the status quo has been pretty remarkable for billionaires. Tax the upper middle/upper middle class to death. Keep the masses happy with bread and circuses (cheap shit, Medicaid, food stamps, housing assistance) all while making the lion’s share of profits from all the wealth redistribution at every step of the way. Just retain control positions in public stocks until death, and then give it all to a foundation which will employ your descendants for generations while maintaining their standard of living. I’m all for self made billionaires, and I think a wealth tax is unworkable. But a lot of problems could be eliminated by capping the charitable deduction limit to the same as the estate tax. Edit: Also just throwing out there that as an owner of a closely held c corp the government forces you to pay dividends with the accumulated earnings bullshit, but mega caps can do this forever apparently with no repercussions. The double standards are irritating as hell.

Thank you. That makes sense.

That’s kind of why I was thinking duration on tips could make sense. And maybe I don’t understand because I’m definitely NOT a bond expert or even close. But let’s say we have 5% cumulative extra inflation due to a one time tariff increase (that hopefully gets rolled back in a few years) and also have 10 year yields drop to 3%. If that happened over a year you would get a high teens return on a 10 year TIP right?

I was thinking this is sort of the opposite of 2022. We have a tariff shock that seems likely to cause significant short term inflation while long term yields are dropping along with a steep sell off in equities. It seems like the market is worried about a recession / stagflation situation with compressed longer term yields. I’m not predicting this, but it seems like that would be an optimal position for long term tips no?

Yeah and maybe enough disagreement in the razor thin house to actually not pass a tax bill if we're talking worst case scenario. Certainly seems like a huge risk to take.

I've got a terrible track record with oil investments, but when it went negative I got my wife to load up on the majors and it turned out to be a very profitable investment. Doubt I ever see that again, but if so I'm backing up the truck.

Best of luck to you, and I suspect you do really well on this over a few years timeframe.

Sold BTI to raise cash for a big add to OWL. Probably too soon.

Big add to OWL as well.

Long duration TIPS certainly seem to have some hedging potential if the current market fear materializes (higher inflation and slower growth or recession). Wouldn’t this be a double tailwind for long duration TIPS if we have some short term inflation and lower long term bond yields at the same time?

You bring up an interesting point. With the recent Supreme Court ruling, it makes you wonder if insider trading on short dated puts for example would be covered by executive privilege/separation of powers. I mean just because you’ve got $200 million in puts expiring next week can’t get in the way of exercising your executive authority (which congress abdicated) to impose 1930s level tariffs