ValueArb

I thought I was struggling to build a position because I didn't want to pay more than $3.70, but actually reached a 13% position yesterday so this was nice news. Looking at their balance sheet I'm fairly confident they'll be able to pay out the additional 15 cents for $4.05 at closing. No idea on value of CVR.

Came across this company when it's offer to exchange new preferred shares valued at 25 cents for common trading at 9 cents popped up. Looks like it's lost over a half billion in the last four years or so. How the heck does it keep raising more money?

Steve was also against big screen phones, he didn't want any screen that your thumb couldn't tap every bit of it while holding it one handed. Apple definitely lost something when he died, his personal measures of product value and quality may have held up the Apple Watch another year before its release, and he may never have released the HomePod. But Apple also gained the flexibility to better address customer needs like bigger phones.

Everyone thought zero day options were a great thing when the market was on a hot streak, but one bad day and now they are the problem? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-21/fingers-point-at-vilified-zero-day-options-to-explain-stock-drop

Today I bought a 2020 Audi Q5 "45 TFSI Quattro Titanium" whatever that is. At 190,000 miles my Cayenne basically has become a mechanics dream, a permanent annuity for their kids college fund. The Audi is certified in perfect condition, still has a year left on its warranty and cost barely half its sticker price from three years ago. Electronics are a bit dated, but I care a lot more about the price than I do wireless CarPlay. And I financed it 100%, even better than a margin loan;)

Still no upvote feature.

I was just being a sarcastic skeptical a-hole like I am about every new wall street claim. But in my defense I did read this in the Reuters article. So some of it could get dumped into the market, or triple that amount could get pulled out of the market, depending upon whether people get really greedy or extremely frightened.

THRX dumped off again late in session, picked up shares as low as $3.67.

People are going to dump all their emergency funds into the market because no one fears volatility any more. Need to buy a house, a car, pay your rent? Just sell some shares.

Buffett owns 915M shares of Apple. At 10% of the average trading volume it will take him nearly 8 months to unload all of those shares, and even at that pace it's likely to slowly push down the stock price. He's stuck and has no place to go. And at $40 basis per share he'd owe roughly $33 per share in taxes at current prices. So while he might think Apple's current 32 PE is a bit spendy, he might also be fine owning AAPL at the net cash PE of 27 instead of cashing out only to hold that cash for a long while until he can find something better.

Update to you and anyone else who might be playing the DCBO tender offer, if you have not tendered yet you can sell your shares right now for a little over $51.50. I actually got out at $51.29, figure its worthwhile to avoid the hassle of tendering and the minor risk they pull the odd lot provision or that I get stuck paying withholding taxes even though shares were all from IRAs. Thanks to Interactive Brokers for not getting their corporate transaction forms ready yet so I could still sell my shares. My guess is that because so many shares are locked up in the tender that there is a lack of sellers, so I might be premature in getting out. I'm putting on some popcorn and watching to see if it busts over $55 this week, which would be both hilarious and painful to anyone locked into the tender.

Sold my DCBO odd lots from mine/client accounts. Bought at $45 thinking I could tender them at $55 and get 100% accepted since each of us only owned 99 shares. These were all IRAs so theoretically there is no tax on the canadian distribution which would have been $7/share in a taxable account. But for some reason it's been moving up the last week and I considered selling at $48 to avoid the hassle and risk that I'd still get stuck paying tax withholding due to broker/company misunderstanding of law, and also the risk that so many odd-lotters will lead DCBO to remove the odd lot provision. Luckily I waited and sold at $51.29 (!?) today. No idea whats going on, and looks like I sold too early, $51.68 and still climbing.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-19/demise-of-small-caps-haunts-wall-street-in-the-age-of-big-tech?srnd=markets-vp

Yesterday was a great day for THRX, was able to pick up shares for only $3.70 and shares traded as low as $3.68. Unfortunately bouncing back up today. Everytime I open my account screen in interactive brokers and it's down near two month lows I get depressed, then snap out of it and realize it's opportunity I'm smelling (er I mean "money" Mr Vannett) and find something like THRX inexplicably in the dumper. Now when my account is up near two week highs its starting to depress me.

If you want a list of all the reasons inflation might not be dead and rates might not go down, the always interesting Porter Collins and Vinnie Daniels visit Value After Hours to kvetch about their fears.

I don't know why you guys are so mean to Jim Cramer, he's getting better. After all, he's almost made it a whole year without recommending a company that immediately went bankrupt.

Any way to get a physical copy for my kids?

I really thought he was going to beat Canelo, but he had three shots at it and couldn't get it done.

Russia doesn't have the ability to mount an effective counter-offensive or it would have been them on the offensive this summer. There is no Russian bear, it's a cub with a small third world economy with population large enough to feed a ton of raw recruits into the grinder. They simply can't afford to replace most of their lost material that was built during the Soviet era when they had eastern Europe and all of the republics still enslaved. My guess is another rebellion in the ranks occurs before Russia can mount any kind of effective offensive, and this time the rebels aren't going to stand down early.

I doubt this narrative has much to do with reality. Zelenskyy has been firm that he doesn't want a repeat of the Minsk accords, meaning that he knows Putin can never be trusted. Russia is just trying to save face here by calling Ukraine a puppet, they tried to bully their way to an agreement and failed. There can never be peace in the Ukraine until Russia withdraws. Any agreement short of that is just a temporary cease fire while Russia rebuilds for the next invasion. The idea that Biden is preventing this is silly.

So much for holding our European allies to the 2% commitment.

Its like they built their list by throwing darts at the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

Its interesting, I'm not going to value a CVR very highly so I'd like to pick it up cheaper but there is a good potential that Orbimed/Foresite pay more than Tang. So far I've held off hoping it will get cheaper.

They also need SEAD to take out Russian SAMs or giving them better planes still forces them to fly out of SAM range where its tough to hit targets from. I've often wondered why we don't give them the F-117, its a 40 year old first gen stealth technology that was designed to hit SAM sites and we have a bunch in storage unused. As far as other planes in storage, we could give them many almost for free, just refurbishment costs. Note that I'm no military expert so most of these suggestions are probably absurd, but just going to show how huge our inventory of obsolete airplanes is and many are far superior to what Ukraine is flying. This should be nothing different than what we did for China before WW2 with the Flying Tigers, giving them reasonably modern fighters and volunteer pilots. But the reason the Biden administration won't crack open the storage is they don't want to see a F-16 dropping bombs on a Russian city. http://www.amarcexperience.com/ui/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=205&Itemid=274 68 Fairchild Republic A-10C Thunderbolt - Not a huge fan because the gun is too inaccurate for close air support, but basically a great bomb truck and the C version has the latest/best targeting systems. 55 General Atomics MQ-1B Predator - Not sure how survivable it is in contested space but seems like they could use it over the black sea, for recon, and even suicide strikes on Russian SAM sites and other high value targets. 126 General Dynamics F-16C Falcon - There are 208 A/B/Ds there too. Better than Ukrainian MIGs in many ways but most specifically it can carry and target all the NATO ordnance while Ukraine has had to jerry rig their MIGs to carry. 36 Grumman EA-6B Prowler - Not sure if its out of date but we only stopped using it 14 years ago for electronic warfare to support ground strikes. 5 Grumman OV-1D Mohawk - You want to kill drones? This is designed for observation and light ground attack. But it has a 4 hour endurance so it can orbit for hours waiting for a drone to be detected, fly 300 MPH to get to target quickly and can then slow to under 100 MPH giving it plenty of gun time each pass. 103 Lockheed C-130E Hercules - There are 312 total Hercules versions in storage. Give them some for a fast cargo moving force for flying equipment cross border, delivering close to front, dropping troops behind the lines, etc. 140 Lockheed P-3C Orion - Submarine tracking. 102 McDonnell Douglas F/A-18C Hornet - There are 163 of all types in storage, and while I don't know much about it has to be better than the F-16 because it's two numbers higher? More seriously, pretty sure it can carry all the latest NATO weapons. 10 Boeing E-3G Sentry - AWACs to detect low flying intruders. That's igoring all the other cool planes, like the massive number of F-14s, F-15s, harriers, B-52s and B1 bombers and the hundreds of attack helicopters.

Sure, the M1A1 still superior to anything the Russians have, especially in crew protection. We do spend money updating them before sending them to Ukraine so they have good armor and electronics (but not the latest armor and electronics). The Javelins we sent them are the first version and obviously very effective, just not as good as the current versions we use. The early version ATACMs are still devastating, but we gave them the cluster munition versions that we aren't allowed to use any more, but not the big warhead versions they'll need for the Russian navy, bridges, etc. Finally, the Bradley knocked out more Russian tanks in Iraq than the Abrams did, and I think the M2A2 ODS we give Ukraine isn't much behind the latest M2A3 in features.