ValueArb

If it wasn't bad enough that SU-34s and A-50s are falling out of the sky on a daily basis, now 20% of Russia's steel production was disrupted by drones.

Specifically his historical justifications for Ukraine being a part of Russia.

No, because they created and sold a fraudulent product on their platform, they are guilty of fraud. So you are asking me to spoon feed you all the legal claims and evidence that has been provided against Gemini? It doesn't seem you really care that much if you aren't reading it on your own. Paying interest on loaned assets makes Earn tick a few more boxes on the SEC definition of a security than a generic crypto coin. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-7

Why have a conversation if you don't read anything I wrote?

Enron? GE?

Ray apparently left Bridgwater in a dog eat dog competition for the final end boss.

Maybe it’s their BTC stake that has you so wound up here, but Gemini committed fraud, WeWork didn’t. Avoiding bankruptcy over money you frauded from customers isn’t a badge of honor.

Lets not make false equivalencies, its a poor analysis tool. Adam Neuman got paid off because Softbank and other investors wanted to continue the business without him, as far as I know non alleged any fraud on his part, being a bad CEO and spending like a drunken sailor aren't crimes. Trump has been convicted of fraud, but not in combination with the bankruptcies of his subsidaries. He's mainly rich because of his inheritance. Bank CEOs always are well paid, and should be given their stewardship of billions in shareholder investments and client funds. In 2008 the administration should have clawed back more compensation in exchange for bailouts, but didn't. That's on the administration. Gemini promoted a financially unsound Earn program (and illegal according to the SEC) to clients, promising imaginary returns that weren't supported by the collateral. Their own internal documents showed they knew this, and that they kept promoting it even when they knew Genesis was at risk of failure. The issue isn't that their main investment filed bankruptcy, its that they lied to clients about the safety of their investments, including using misleading language to lead clients to believe their deposits were FDIC insured. All of these allegations, if proven, are fraud.

The Winklevoss twins are still filthy rich apparently, giving $4.9M to a superpac. I was worried they'd gone broke because of Gemini Earn but apparently only their investors and clients did. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-21/crypto-super-pac-fairshake-gets-4-9-million-from-winklevoss-twins?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTcwODUyODIyNCwiZXhwIjoxNzA5MTMzMDI0LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTOTZJRUlEV1JHRzAwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIzQTU2QUZFQkIwMjU0OUUxQkVBRkRENDc0RkI4MTc2OCJ9.VJTupMr74GMH_kv2BP3Lg69ymQhpKCu6P21xA6WuSz8

What subsidies are you referring to, did you mean agricultural subsidies?

HEADLINE: SHOCKING NEWS! BUFFETT SELLS APPLE! READ ALL ABOUT IT! IN A STUNNING TURNAROUND THE WIZENED WIZARD OF INVESTING HAS TURNED ON TIM APPLE AND DECLARED HIS COMPANY MUSHY, BRUISED AND NO LONGER EDIBLE ! Body: Berkshire sells 10M out of 900M AAPL shares it owns or barely 1%.

Historically he's been extremely catalyst driven. During his salad days of crushing the market for half a decade before the Big Short, he'd identify some deep value position that was going to get uprated, or added to an index, fix a bleeding subsidiary, or pay out a large special dividend, etc, buy it and then flip it within 6 months or a year. But I don't know what the catalysts can be for positions like BABA, other than its cheap. Burry did come out of currency trading where it was all technical analysis into deep value investing and never entirely shed the idea he could predict some types of price action. So it might be something like he's seeing something that he believes indicates that the outflows from BABA are ending and expects it to get added back to some large fund portfolios.

I believe Burry bought BABA as well in his latest 13F.

I think you are both right. For sure they will use emergency rooms, and likely send their kids to public schools. But @changegonnacome is also right that a large number just work and pay for most everything else themselves. This was a long time ago, but I remember when we used to have "migrant" workers. I picked strawberries with them and was always amazed at how freakin fast they could fill their flats. They were almost always no nonsense, no chit chat, just racing down the rows cause we got paid per flat. I was just trying to earn spending money as a 13 year old, and frequently got distracted BSing with my buddies, and probably picked at 1/4 their rate. Historically the migrants would work their butts off for half the year and then spend rest of the year back home in their Mexican villages. This was how they could earn enough to lift their families out of poverty and live well in Mexico. Academics called it "circular migration" as they never wanted to move here But over the last 50 years as a never-ending series of border crackdowns made it harder and harder to cross they started bringing their families and staying, worried they wouldn't be able to make it across again.

One place I'd quibble is LTCG and dividend rates should be same as earned income as fairness dictates everyone should pay the same rates. To put corporate earnings and capital gains on a level playing field with earned income we'd also have to index capital gains for inflation so only real gains are taxed and allow C Corps to pay dividends pre-tax to eliminate its double taxation. The second quibble is HB-1 charges. You'd be sending a lot of talented people to foreign competitors. In the early 90s I paid over $20,000 in one time legal fees to get a work visa for a foreign software engineer, and his work ended up creating about 40 jobs at our company and made us millions in value at the companies eventual sale. At the time had I had been forced to pay even $20K annually in fees to keep him I doubt I could have gotten authorization from my CEO/CFO, and the super valuable graphics software he wrote for us would have been written for a competitor in Asia. Second example, who would have paid $50k/year to get Elon Musk a visa when he was a Stanford drop out? I can see maybe $10K a year to separate out the low value hires, or a 10% tax on wages so it scales up but even then I think it's a negative incentive. Better to just freely give out work visas to those who pass a reasonable background check. Anyone who is willing to pack up and leave all their friends and family behind to go try to better themselves in the U.S. is already scoring high on ability and willingness to work hard. Let them keep the visa as long as they keep a job and don't require support, its far better they can work and live in the open and help clear out all the crime associated with our current black market system of not letting anyone but illegals in.

So few actual products and customers, but sure lets throw trillions at building more AI chips ahead of demand. https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/sam-altmans-vision-to-remake-the-chip-industry-needs-more-than-money-1dc0678a?mod=hp_lead_pos3

Another Russian landing ship has been promoted to submarine, the 24th in Russia's Black Sea fleet to receive the honor since the war started (not counting a submarine rotisseried in dry dock). How many decades will it take Russia's flagging economy to replace them? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-02-14/ukraine-says-it-destroys-russian-warship-in-black-sea-attack?srnd=premium

And let me also thank you for sharing this podcast. Sorry for not saying so immediately, you are as awesome as Chuck Akre for introducing me to Chuck Akre.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/early-adopters-of-microsofts-ai-bot-wonder-if-its-worth-the-money-2e74e3a2?mod=hp_lead_pos5

I often thought the lesson of GE was the better a company was at making its public forecasts the more likely it was they were manipulating their earnings if not committing outright fraud.

Let me add that everything you wrote is true, it was great podcast and Chuck (whom I never heard of before) was awesome.

Tucker just let him spew his fabrications and historical lies without any pushback, like any good journalist would do;)

He's beaten the market by 100% over the last three years (and beaten market significantly over funds history) so I think he's figured it out. In the interview he's mainly talking about a 5 year stretch in mid to late 2010s where he did poorly every year, that's when he struggled to understand how things had changed. If you previously averaged over 20% returns for your entire career, it's a lot harder to realize you need to change your investing approach than if your career was more marginal before. I really liked the interview and found it inspiring. It's not great for decent value managers who had to leave the industry, but the more money in passive vehicles like index funds and ETFs, the more opportunities for remaining active managers. Makes me want to read even more 10Ks.

China has solved the homeless crisis and all the west can do is criticize, SMH!