Xerxes

Saw an interview with a rattled and nervous Mike Novogratz (spell). I like him. Sticking his neck out and staying the course. at the end of the day, the mega-bulls kept selling this as inflation hedge, but that statement had a disclaimer written with font 3 in the foot print : if QE-forever persists. I still think it is all about the “rate” of inflation and not level of inflation in of itself.

Cevian i disagree. I think given how illiquid & complex it is, it tend to be less correlated to indices. And it’s day to day movement are largely irrelevant. quarterly updates and the state of the insurance market are the real driver behind the stock and it happens in step change. And not the indices. when I see FFH I see a stock that hasn’t lost 40-70% of its value. This what we should look at. It is good to have as a diversifier of opinion (i.e. a capital allocator at the helm that sticks to a certain framework (something works and sometimes it doesn’t).

If she says otherwise others will complain why are the even looking at the stock market, that is not their job

For the life of me I don’t understand why Prem is not short the market. It seems so easy to do. when rates goes up, that is when the shorts go on. not when rates go down

At some point there ought to be a thread for BOTTOM IS COMING starting the 28 page discussion semi-perma-bear Jeremi Grantham always complained that the 2001-2003 bear market didn’t take the S&P500 below is a certain trend line that it should have. So it wasn’t a perfect correction. That was 20 years ago …. And rising Who cares ? Don’t get carried away by being a perfect bear. Each time it will be different and you ought to deploy if risk reward of individual name gets tilted in your favour. at the moment there is broad psychological good feeling safety of being a loud bear. It is like the analyst that keep raising price targets in a bull market.

Sometimes it is fashionable to be a bull, sometimes it is fashionable to be bear and point all the historical anecdotes of bear markets. I don’t know more than the next person but if inflation has peaked, you will only see it six months from now when you look back and say ahhh that was the peak ! Reverse wealth effect (stocks going down) + higher interest rate + higher cost for goods/services + higher fuel prices are all having a damping effect on “demand” and that will work itself through the system … lower economic demand means relatively lower inflation. I think our focus should be on the “rate of change” in inflation and not the “absolute level of inflation”.

At least, it will no longer be illegal to say war … though you would still be arrested I reckon. unrelated just saw this. There are a lot of coverage about Russia running out of tanks etc. Our NATO inventories are 1/3 empty since the war started.

CNN reporting what it looks like a formal declaration of war by Kremlin (against Ukraine) on May Day is coming. ————- unrelated, here is an interesting anecdote for those interested. While most folks are aware of Dec 7 pearl harbour attack, and the subsequent declaration of war by FDR, that declaration of war was against Japan ONLY and not the Axis powers. FDR was itching to fight the Nazi, but still couldn’t do it yet. Hitler however got sooo excited by the Japanese attack that he gave a hand to FDR by declaring war against the U.S. in Reichstag on Dec 11. And that is how the formal war started between the Reich and the US: by an overexcited Hitler, who wanted to egg the Japanese to enter the war against the Soviet Union. however, Japan never entered the war against the Soviet Union, until the latter did weeks before the atomic destruction of Hiroshima by invading Manchuria. Most folks looking back have a hard time understanding the nuances. But formal declaration matter. It was very difficult at the time for FDR to commit to Europe after the Japanese “sneak” attack. And had Hitler been less excited a different outcome would have came even with the Americans eventually entering the war on the side of allies.

it is a very grey zone between offense and defense. A lot of countries conduct proxy military operations/wars outside their border so that they do not have to do in their own borders. I can think of Iran, Isreal, UAE, U.S., Russia etc. of doing that for years and decades. The problem is most normal folk live in illusionary world, where they think, it is OK for one side to do it but it is not ok for the other side to do it. I would add that while people complain about war profiteering, I for one believe we need a strong military industrial complex. Not to the point of shaping international politics to capture market share and profit, but just to have that industral base. (think Japan), It can go nuclear if it is choose to.

"War is a racket" book was actually on my to read list since 2010. Sadly, I have not read it yet. War Is A Racket: Original Edition : Butler, Smedley D: Books - Amazon

I own RTX, and hope to continue to own for many decades. But it was always based on it being system-agonostic supplier of picks and shovels in aerospace & buildings (prior to Otis and Carrier spin-off). Defense portion is just icing on the cake. Not comlexity in my opinion. It was just interesting to note, how fast NATO inventories are being drawn down.

that is where crypto comes in ... lol

indeed, but the "missile" part really came in after 2020 (with Raytheon corp purchase). I thought that was an eye opener statement from Q1 call. "Greg Hayes -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Yes. Let me start with that. As far as looking at the sales forecast for RMD, that does actually not contemplate any upside that we see from replenishment of stocks. And again, we're working through all that, trying to understand the timing. Clearly, we won't see any of that benefit this year. But as we think about the next couple of years, as we see the budgets continue to increase and we see the replenishment orders come in, we would expect we will see a benefit to the RMD top line, which will take that number up somewhat. Again, we're not quite ready to give you a new number, but I would just tell you, it's going to be higher than what we've got there. As far as the Stingers, we should keep in mind, we have -- we are currently producing Stingers for an international customer, but we have a very limited stock of material for Stinger production. We've been working with the DoD for the last couple of weeks. We're actively trying to resource some of the material. But unfortunately, DoD hasn't bought a Stinger in about 18 years. And some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we're going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile, of the seeker head. That's going to take us a little bit of time. So again, we'll ramp up production, what we can this year, but I would expect, again, this is going to be a '23, '24 where we actually see orders come in for the larger replenishments, both on Stinger as well as on Javelin, which has also been very successful in theater." "

Knowing what we know about the giant Activision position, it is worth re-watching that segment of the Charlie Rose interview, when he asks Buffett about his two BIG invstments (Oxy and Activision), of course not realizing that there was actually a big position in activision which was not disclosed yet. Buffett had a split-second pause before he responded and went on and on about the media mis-reporting.

Obi-Wan : I felt a great disturbance in the Force, with FFH falling 7%, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced

I started watching the new Matrix. I don’t understand anything. That said the scenes where they are having espressos and lattes are cool.

I had trouble finding it on YouTube in the morning. I think it was meant to be a exclusive on CNBC.com. Not even on the CNBC feed of YouTube. for those looking for a replay, they did say it would be included in the CNBC Buffett archive. I don’t think there is a firewall there.

Buffett was hilarious today. Good laughs. Funny, how he described how Oxy and Alleghany came about. Investment by coincidences and chance. So his mental bandwidth and attention is really the deciding factor between cash pile going down or not.

The noises around Moldova I think are just Moscow way to distract some Ukrainian resources away from Donbas. If Russian army’ battalion tactical groups were healthy, they would want as much Ukrainian forces in its jaws as it closes. I guess that is not the case with the Russian BTGs being mauled, depleted and re-grouped. Unrelated, May Day would be interesting.

Gregmal’ best friend has spoken

Historically in Canada it has been real estate, Big Banks and the oil & gas sector. that incremental dollar saved need to be soaked up somewhere.

“first tweet” NFT reaching its 52-week low. Who is holding the bag ? A Persian. Damn ! https://www.bbc.com/news/business-61102759

I have been watching MoonKnight (and all Marvel shows). But specifically MoonKnight is not doing it for me. Downhill after the first two episodes. HBO: ”We own this City” brought to you by the producers of the Wire. And also in Baltimore and with a lot of actors from the Wire. With quality dope coming out of the HBO pipeline no wonder Netflix is losing subs. episode 1 available

I am talking about the second gulf war. Not the first. Iraq was the aggressor in the first. Not the second. I am talking about a U.S. military based in an Indian Ocean (actually British) not the almighty Israel. ISIS came after the post-2006 insurgency totally irrelevant to 2003 at the time (it was more like a post-script to that sorry idiotic adventure) and definitely irrelevant to the first 1991 gulf war, which you took us. bottom line: we as human beings will rally behind whatever cause we want to support and built narrative around it, ignore whatever we want to ignore and call it fair.

I have three tranches on my house. tranches 1 and 2 were locked in at about 1.7% for 5 year in the depth of the Covid. Late 2020 and early 2021. tranche 3 was coming due in a few months. I got nailed with the fix rates, as oil prices spiked in March. Finally opted to lock in only for 2 years for 3.1% up from 2.68% which was at its end. the 5 year fixed was too crazy for my taste