Xerxes

just raising cash or fundamental with the company ? LMT at this point is an income play until the top line moves and defense cycle are less sync with the economy. So better no ?

Gregmal, The fear is that Fed cannot raise rate too much every time the economy is coming out of a downturn, before that rate increase engineers the next recession (leaving yet less ammunition to fight the next downturn). There clearly is a trend. The Bitcoin and the Katie Wood crowd are not having a great day these days, but they believe this (above) (and so do I to a certain extent). Who knows how much of todays inflation is monetary related and how much is supply chain. If there are over 100 ships at the Port of Los Angeles jammed waiting to be unloaded, that is not going to get solved by Fed raising rate, but rather will need time. Once that unravels itself slowly, what is left is monetary inflation. And the view is that technology-driven deflationary forces in the medium/long term will overwhelm the inflationary forces, as they did in the 2010s. Case in point, late 2018 and the pivot that Fed did on Christmas Eve (or around there) with markets were buckling up. Yet there is another macro point of view (that is counter to what i said above) that I find interesting as to why the long term interest rate will permanently live on a higher plateau for many decades: - The duplication of supply chain, un-doing of Just in Time, building up buffer inventories, will all take time & capital. This is happening at a global scale. - Electrification and the green tidal wave will take time and capital that was not there 20 years ago. - Contrast these two points with how little capital/Capex technology companies needed in the past 20 years, which contributed to the glut of capital and low interest rate. - A steady supply of capital has been the baby boomers that have had their peak salary in the past decades, that will continue to wane, as they become a taker of capital rather than a source of capital.

I see air coming out of the market kind of helping Fed in taking liquidity out and a net positive thing. Would one prefer a market foreplay where it irrationally melts-up in the face of tightening cycle? overall i agree that after 40 years of bull market in bonds, the "breaking point" has always moved lower in time. What is weird is the CAD;USD FX rate. Typically when it hits the fan, US dollar shoots up to 1.35 and as high as 1.4. Today it is sitting at 1.25, might be the petro-dollar aspect of Canadian dollar giving it strength. dont know One thing for sure for the indices to move, Apple needs to be toppled way down from its $3 trillion crown.

Would you recommend that book ? Looks a bit pricy. I like the topic, but not if it is a re-hash of Buffett buying American Express or Coke etc.

Here is Iger full interview with CNBC. It is says "PRO" but the full version is out there.

AGT Food CEO signals openness to returning to capital markets - BNN Bloomberg

Finished this one as well. Great book and really appreciated the behind the scenes of the four major deals that created Walt Disney 3.0. You got to respect Iger and his character. Only the very best of them, is able to manage & navigate a cast of characters, ranging from George Lucas, to Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch, the Marvel owner (forget name) etc, and buy out their companies. Relationships matters. If Bob Iger was the Steve Jobs of Walt Disney, let's hope calculator-wielding Bob Chapek would be its Tim Cook.

Finished this book. Fast read and great work by the author. Happy to learn that the author has joined the TIP podcast as a co-host. I also learned about Nick Sleep and his record, which now has me directed to his letters.

Something interesting i observed while watching Shetland. I am used to watch North American police shows etc. so it was kind of odd to watch a police show where the policewomen/men were chasing bad guys without side arms or entering in a house (without guns) where you know there is a bad guy. The audience almost feels naked in those scenes with the cops having nothing to protect themselves. Another observation is that in Shetland, it seems to be ok, apparently to walk into people's house, without them opening the door for you. Don't try that in NorthAmerica or elsewhere.

the first few season of Shetland is there, as i just finished watching them, before going to Britbox (through Prime) for the rest

Thanks. I think some of these European shows are best reached through Amazon Prime's pipeline by getting a 30-day free. For Shetland, i watched the first few seaons on Netflix, but the last two seasons were not on Netflix yet but got it through Prime's distribution.

My simplistic view is that you need to own your own real estate. The equity that you built in it is your "central bank reserve". The price will always look expensive, it certainly did to me when I bought my first in 2011. If Toronto or Vancouver look inflated, then you have Montreal, that will always trade at a discount because of the perception that Quebec is about to separate. Now once the first property is bought, anything additional as investment in real estate can be contrasted with other alternative (stocks etc.) and arrayed against the cost of capital. But you need to get that first real-estate as residence, not only for the passive equity that you built but also the steep learning curve that it will make you go through. How could one seriously consider in building real estate as investment, if one never "went through it" with one' own personal experience. This matter because unlike stocks that you can "average in" over many years thereby taking advantage of different prices, real estate's purchase price is a snapshot that once signed, is seared and set in stone forever. Your own lever after that is your mortgage rate.

If Bill Miller had his personal wealth split between Bitcoin and Amazon, check out this guy, who has his wealth solely in Zara's Indintex and his real estate portfolio, and he is over 70 as well. The article is from 2014. He was on the news this morning, as he bought RBC Plaza for a cool $900 million. How Zara's founder Amancio Ortega has quietly built a US$10-billion 'all cash' real estate empire | Financial Post

it hard to take Saylor seriously when he is wearing a suit and tie I've never seen anything as compelling and unstoppable as bitcoin, says MicroStrategy's Saylor (cnbc.com)

^^ The more it goes down, it only means that if you buy ARK you are getting a higher and higher than 45% compounded growth rate in their 5 year plan. Based on their intrinsic value. It is RRSP season, for 2022, and i need to chose in the next few months between adding to FFH, adding to GOOG, adding to RTX .... and starting a new position in Lockheed Martin. Or a combination of these four.

That was my point, the steam will come off between those data points (ex-dividend and Q4 results), because Q4 will be accretive to BV. There are a lot of folks that are just playing the Christmas jumbo dividend round trip. (i.e. not taking risk to wait to see Q4 results)

between the x-dividend date late next week and the Q4 results in mid-Feb, some steam should come off, as flippers move on greener pastures

Thanks for your thoughts, certainly GE Aviation has been an incredible company with the reach and the moat they have had. Great company, means great people. My comment was mostly about the corporate level of GE. The Alstom deal was almost comical. Reading this book, it make me really appreciates what we have with Berkshire Hathaway. I have every trust in Greg Abdel, but I hope Buffett's shadow won't imped him like Welch's shadow impeded Immelt. I would be a buyer of GE Aviation stock once it spins of Healthcare and Power (*cough* Alstom *cough*).

There might be a bias thing, where folks do not want to think in terms of a possible scenario (however improbable) where everything they built over the years goes out and the only thing remaining would be Bitcoin. The question is: is Miller's outsized position a reflection of his belief that there would be an economic catastrophe, where all he needs is Bitcoin and Amazon Prime deliveries, or just that there is more upside at least in the short term b/c he sees no correlation with the interest rate cycle, which would be putting pressure on other risk-on assets in 2022-23.

Very well said TwoCC on what we should ask ourselves. For clarity i dont think he is 50% on BTC directly, i think he has a lot of ecosystem-like plays (MSTR or miners) involving BTC as well as the actual coin as per his comment in this interview. There is another interview he did with author William Green that folks might find it interesting. It is on his website. On interest rate, i see BTC different today than 2017. Today's it is being marketed as institutional-grade "digital gold" as "inflation hedge" on the back of Covid-induced easy money. 5 years ago it was a "payment alternative", and prior to that it was a "be free from Government" product and i imagine the narrative will switch to something else in 2025. Like someone said, it is solution looking for a problem, and slowly but surely reaching escape velociy. That said, in the short term, I feel that between something like Ether and Bitcoin, the one that has a "inflation hedge" narrative will have more headwinds because its raison d'etre was to be the "sound money" while the Fed was on the rage on the printing press, which no longer will be the case in 2022-23.

If Bitcoin can survive the higher interest rate and a period of quantitative tightening, than it is made.

I didn't know his legacy that well. may he rests in peace

Was not sure where to put this interview. Something we hear often, how after every downturn, when the Fed raise rate the economy buckles at lower and lower rate. (ala Q4 2018, when the whole thing started to warp). Making the case that in 2022-23, Fed can only raise rate perhaps 4x 0.25, before the market start to cough. Not that it is Fed's job to keep the stock market afloat, but just using the stock market as a proxy of the overall sentiment. And i think this has been the core belief of the Bitcoin community that notwithstanding 2022-23 where the rate will increase, the Fed would have no choice to circle back. (ala Japan) ... unless if there is a powerful independent Fed that could engineer a recession and let the market fall where it may.

Lights Out: Pride, Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric: Gryta, Thomas, Mann, Ted: 9780358250418: Books - Amazon.ca I work for one of General Electric' competitor, and I was always fascinated how no matter what GE did (good or ill), they always make it to the front page, and that was not the case for its competitors. It was all about the lingering Welch' mystique. I really enjoyed reading this book. Was familiar with the story but it was a pleasant read and connecting all the dots. Reading this book, you really grasp how an institution can bury itself under massive layers of fat, unable to move and dislodge itself, while everyone just squeeze as much milk as they can from it, while they can. Contrast that with Berkshire with the CEO owning +20% of the stock and 99% of his own wealth. I will be also reading the one Jeff himself wrote. Very soon.

Speaking of crime series, one of the best one i have seen is "Shetland" set in Scotland, UK On Netflix