Xerxes

Does his name rhymes with made-off

I almost submitted my resignation to myself for messing out the % return. it was 1.5% or so off. lol

I don’t usually share interim report, as it is usually noise. but this quarter is an exception Total TFSA/RRSP/LIRA return for YTD 2024. Not including crypto. 2024 Q1/Q2/Q3 => 25.6% 2023 => 24.81% 2022 => -11.48% 2021 => 20.09% 2020 => 11.36% Pre-2020 => data tracked differently so not comparable S&P500 YTD Q1/Q2/Q3 return: ~20% When the markets are going well I usually track it +/- 1-2 % and when the bear comes in (2022), I usually do better thanks to the strong tilt toward BRK and FFH. That is the source of long term outperformance I think. Q3 this year however was juicy enough to push my return way above S&P500 YTD in an upmarket. I think that would be the first time. I say Q3, because I know I closely tracked S&P500 in Q1 and Q2 of this year. S&P500 Q3 return: 5.5% No clue what is my Q3 specific return as I just check YTD always. I did a quick check, here are some Q3 alpha culprit w/ the above 20% returns: - Stelco 84% - Mercado Libre 28% - Starbucks 28% - RTX 23% - BN 24% - BIP 21% - Barrick 20%

hi John I have to re-post. it was about my YTD return, but then realized that the return was off 1-2%, b/c I forgot to remove a cash in injection in January. so I have to rerun the numbers and re-post. Wanted to make sure the return is correct. Won’t make a big difference on my initial post, but wanted it to be correct.

the “sovereign” point of view ?

I think what promoted the author to write the article was “accumulated deficit” that had to be backfilled before more $ goes to treasury …. So a pittance of remittance for time being … think that is the “news” part. So the story was structured around that. the mechanics of it is interesting though even if is missing cohesiveness, I.e rates were higher recently not lower, etc

An obscure but interesting topic, yet one thing is unclear. it defines profitability as creating new money to buy investments, which exceeds banks operating cost. operating cost to me is the cost of running operation. It makes no mention of the yield it has to pay to commercial banks. in the same article close to the end, it explains its lack of profitability in recent years being due to having lower interest return on its portfolio and thus a low spread against how much it is paying out to commercial banks (5%)

good ending for end of Q3.

Anyone knows if FFH has ever closed above $1700 ? I know it went above it as shown in the 52-week high but not closed. Correct ? except maybe today. If it holds up.

Sugar on AppleTV was great detective police show until it became Xfiles around episode 6

Obama was nominally correct and his math checks out. But is GDP everything. There is the size of the country. Location and its vast resources as well. What if you could transfer the entire Kremlin to Madrid. And give them 30,000 nukes. Would Putin wield the same power in that scenario ? According to Obama, yes. What was the GDP of china when Nixon was kicking the tires. I don’t know what it was but it was irrelevant. What matters was its geopolitical clout and size. And let me tell you that Nixon was not a buy-and-hold investor that was looking to HODL it for 50 years to get the back-end Hockey stick effect. Only thing that matters was the Soviet Union. PS: For clarity, we did the right thing to help Ukraine from the get go. Just to understand that this didn’t come out of blue. We enabled it and we all played a role in this tragedy /… but we cannot use it as a black hole to sink as much as h/w we like for the hell of it.

if the samething is said “twice” it must be correct.

thanks for the link. i will read it.

I would want to live in a democracy. But that is me. If I don’t live in one, than I ought to move where there is one. And not to incite violence, mayhem and civil war, if the country of origin is not ready. Western attention span is measured in “minutes”. They all have the good intentions, to save cats and ducks, provided nothing else exciting comes along. If I was from the Baltic state, as you are, I want to be tight with the West. And I mean tight. Tight as a tiger. I fully understand your view and I would have the same view in your shoes. On democracy and its spread to other countries. Each country, culture and nation has a history shaped by the passage of time. It takes time. If I were to take the English people from 500 years ago and moved in the middle of Ukraine, they would not have become people of any significance to history over the next 500 years compare to their situation in the current history. They became what they became precisely of their situation and where they were located. More so they would have stayed as absolute monarchy and have a Tsar as an overlord and not a constitutional monarchy. Russia’ autocratic past is shaped by its Mongol past. it needs to work through that. I said it before in this thread. South Korea and Taiwan are democracies because they went through decades of dictatorship post WW2. Everyone forget that upfront investment that created the necessary condition for democracy to flourish at a later date. I actually believe that it is possible that Ukraine will go through similar dictatorship before it becomes a democracy, because of the traumatic experience it had as nascent independent country post 1991. Specifically to this thread, there is more at stake than saving cats and ducks so that we can have instant gratification in the West. You don’t want to forever lose Russia to China and reverse everything that Kissinger had done in the 1970s. Don’t humiliate your adversaries. George Bush Senior and Ronald Regan understood that. They didn’t “dance on the Berlin Wall” as the Soviet Union rolled over. The result was that you had a Russian government that wanted to work with the West. And not an angry and humiliated government. As we had after 1920s in Berlin. Edit: when was the last time Biden and Putin had a direct conversation. Biden is no Bush Senior

Libya was not our problem nor our business, unless there was major humanitarian reasons. I understand as Westerners we have fantasies, about watching video clips of cats and ducks being rescued and feel good about it. That is why Mark Z. created Facebook so that we can watch and have our fantasies w/o causing civil wars that may cost 100,000 of human lives, not to mention countless cats. There are no shortage of jackasses in this world, some democratically elected while some who took power. Yes Qaddafi one. So? Who are we to decide for others. Dick Cheney is and was a jackass. Did US impose a no-fly zone on itself ? Half of the problems we have is because we want go around world, and just f&&k things up and rescue cats and ducks. And then make Hollywood movies about it “our rescue missions”. I would be careful with Iranians though. They curse the mullah, hate them and spit at them. But, they are extremely nationalist people. The moment the sovereignty is violated by foreigners and/or perceived to be violated, they would flip out of blue to the absolute delight of the mullah. This may have a different ending than typical Western fantasy let’s-make-world-better-place happy ending movie. And in any case, who the hell knows who are the real powerbrokers in Tehran anyways. Ps: we are in the wrong thread and officially busted. Have great weekend.

Yes they did well from what I can gather, which was 5 min clip on SkyNews. but it seems to me that over long enough timeframe the parasite will rebuild. The CAGR won’t budge. To remove the parasite you need to remove the condition for it to exist. Why does it need to be there ? Patraoeus (butchering his name) understood that when he was fighting the Sunni insurgency in the Anbar. He helped the locals, gained their trust, and undermined the insurgent even as he was fighting them militarily. And it worked. Israeli don’t get any of that stuff. And who knows where Greater Israel really ends. anyways as I said before to Castanza. There are so many subtleties that we don’t know from either side. So I shouldn’t comment. A real shitshow that is what it is.

unrelated this this thread. Robert Lacey two books on House of Saud are phenomenal. I have been critical of Saudis, you know that whole Persian vs Arab thing. But after reading those two books, I came to respect the Saudis. Let’s just say that I got educated. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t criticize their foreign policy when it needs be. Coincidentally Robert Lacey is also a consultant/consaisseur on House of Windsor.

I really think folks ought to read history books. The 1,000 page type books.

I don’t expect West to do anything for Sudan. I wouldn’t want Canada to be involved in a civil war. But we as citizens ought not to be ignorant about it. And what our allies are up to. And not to be brainwashed on what mainstream media tells us who are our “bad guys” for this year. World is a bit more complicated than just “these are you bad guys for 2024” Ps: I still cannot believe that we got 10 year civil war in Libya, just because Hilary Clinton wanted to have a line on her CV : - Warlord 20xx-yy

unfortunately a parasite entity like Nasarllah’ shop doesn’t get “trimmed” and just go away just like that. It will outlive its leader, compound its anger. “Trimming” doesn’t do anything.

You have rightly tabulated a list of the bad actors. Right out of the media. But what about Western bad actors and Western sponsored bad actors ? How do you dissuaded and set the floor for the idiots and dummies in Washington and London etc. Saudi Arabia launched a war against Yemen in 2015, not too dissimilar all than the circumstances of Russia’ war in Ukraine. The Arabian peninsula is considered its backyard. House of Saud sets the discount rate in the Arabian peninsula. Not Qatar, Yemen, Oman and/or UAE. And it didn’t like a “loose” Qatar and Yemen. It couldn’t bomb Qatar, given the “hedge” that Doha built with Turkey and U.S. but no such luck with Yemen. They got sent to oblivion. The U.S. Government seemed to be ok with it in 2015. Supported it, helped Saudi planes refuels to bomb school, weddings, the occasional Houthi etc. and whatever else House of Saud felt like doing. If bombing a school is an act of terrorism, what that makes the Western government supporting it ? No need to guess => it is called state sponsoring terrorism. What is Yemen today: a broken state with vultures taking a piece of it. And a reliable low-cost proxy (acquired at no cost) for Iranian malign influence. What about the American Caesar wannabe: Warlord Hilary Clinton. She said: “we came, we saw, we conquered … “. talking about Libya. 10 years later after the War Lord Clinton plagiarized Julius Caesar, everyone forget they left a mess and a civil war in Libya. Oh well. At least she got to act like Caesar. Today, even as we are discussing this, there is a civil war in Sudan. With UAE largely behind it. And of course who are main Western state backing UAE. https://youtu.be/mlz3-OzcExI?feature=shared In summary, if a psychopath gets elected to office and/is part of liberal democracy, their foreign adventures seem like all forgotten. Is anybody counting the cost of Libya in the past 10 years ? How about Sudan ———////———- General comment: I really think Western commentators in the two geopolitical threads should really get off their high horses. Stick to the economics, politics and cost-benefit analysis. Leave the good guy bad guy stuff for Bill Ackman to talk to on Twitter.

Looming Tower is pretty dated. it was an ok show. That was my recollection.

i keep it at 1 marathon every two - three years

Only few hours away from Fort William (a city) is an actual for worth seeing :“eilean donan castle”. Enjoy yr trip.

Rebel Ridge wasn’t my recommendation …. For me, anything from Netflix (except for Crown) , and other shows that is really not theirs, goes straight to garbage