ValueArb

When looking at the following, what comes to mind? -People are stupid? -We should be scared? Maybe part of the above answers are right but i would submit that people somehow are trying to get through this, sometimes through trial and error and sometimes the result is not elegant. A nice thing about such a place is that people can share independent thoughts (sometimes with deep convictions). It doesn't mean though that someone who thinks differently is an enemy. ----- Have you seen the latest results for the influenza season (in the US as an example of a global phenomenon)? The point of this is not that we have learnt how to deal effectively with the flu but that there may something to learn if 'we' communicate and collaborate more effectively and in a more constructive way. Congrats, you discovered all influenza deaths are counted as "Corona" deaths. Most heart attacks are even counted as Corono deaths. How else could they inflate the numbers to such a ridiculous degree with a common cold infection? How do people get influenza if working in the house all day and rarely venture out without a mask? If someone who is very ill with COVID has a heart-attack and dies, how would you determine cause? Are you saying the heart-attack was inevitable and would have happened on same day and been fatal without the person being ill? If a 95 year old gets sick with COVID and dies, should we tell their kids and grandkids we don't count the COVID because their remaining life expectancy was so short?

I agree that Growth and Value investing are different things, but disagree with that distinction. Instead, I'd define Growth focused investing as those oblivious to an investments intrinsic value, and relying on its high rate of growth to bail you out. Where-as Value investing applies margin of safety to all investments that have a reasonably estimate-able intrinsic value, including growth companies, and uses that discipline to out-perform.

Not sure I understand. If you want to do cash flow analysis, why not do it yourself and why rely on analysts? I say this because cash flow projections are, just projections, and subject to an immense amount of bias that sell side analysts live with daily. Do your own projections, with a focus on making them Goldilocks, not too high and not too low. And do it the way WEB does it, don't look at the stock price before you make your estimates to avoid subconsciously biasing them.

https://nvariant.substack.com/p/my-vc-convinced-me-to-short-spacs "My VC convinced me to short SPACs"

I think the odds of crypto beating stocks over the next 5-10 years are close to nil. But of course I expect a 80%+ pullback in crypto when stimulus gamble-gamble money is gone.

I'm not a Bitcoin believer at these prices, so I'd have to structure my tax fraud some other way;) More seriously most of my money is in an IRA, so not too worried about investment taxes, though a couple double ups and I will!

Thanks for the clarification. Good to know I won't be moving the market once I decide to start my inflation hedge;)

Sorry, I forgot the link. https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-happened-to-stocks-during-the-german-hyperinflation-2011-11 Thanks for the book recommendation, I’m sure that it has more detail than the report. I’ll add it to the pile of things I’m working to read. And my point about Bitcoin was partly tongue in cheek, but also a little serious. I’m wondering if the inflows that would have driven gold to the moon have been (temporarily?) diverted to Cryptocurrencies in their current bubble. There is a lot of similarities, both have no fixed value. Gold is valuable for jewelry and electronics, but that utility doesn’t constrain it from being $100 an ounce or $4,000 ounce. Bitcoin has utility if you can’t trust your government (Venezuela), or won’t trust your government (criminals, tax cheats) or are just getting divorced. But again that utility doesn’t constraint it to any range narrower that a few thousand dollars to $58,000 apparently.

I'm going to take the counter position here on your hyperinflation indicators. This research paper claims https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-happened-to-stocks-during-the-german-hyperinflation-2011-11in the Weimar Republic Hyperinflation started with a huge runup in stocks and increase in speculation: And Gold itself is on an amazing tear this year, it's called BTC now.

Munger today on SPACs: "The investment banking profession will sell shit as long as shit can be sold."

https://thebearcave.substack.com/p/special-edition-will-ark-invest-blow Interesting argument that ARK is poised for a collapse. If it did, it would bring a swath of my short positions down with it. Not sure the math works, but it looked like it was happening this morning fir the first couple hours of trading.

Actually, I think you can say he is, at this point. Maybe an unconventional path to get there, but as lead rocket designer for SpaceX, and based on any reports I could see from people around him, he can hold his own with rocket engineers no problem. Nobody knows everything, but to pretend he doesn't know what he's doing and isn't a real rocket guy just because he didn't have some piece of paper or some job with some title at Boeing before this seems missing the forest for the trees to me. Self-education is still education, and doing is better proof of competence than diplomas. Yea, if he said something stupid about satellites it's most likely because he was simplifying for an audience. When the Falcon 1 reached Space it put Elon in an extremely elite group of people who'd created a privately funded orbital launch system, right now its Rocket Lab Electron, Northrop Minotaur, then you have a couple of tiny air launched vehicles form Virgin Orbit and Northrop Pegasus. Bezos has spent many billions and hasn't come close to orbit, barely reaching 1/10th the necessary velocity with a sub-orbital toy. Since then he's helped lead the design choices that created 1) The worlds leading launch system Falcon 9 that dramatically cut the cost of space access by ... choosing to use ten engines per launch. Yes, Falcon 9 was far cheaper than the competition before reusability because of the decision to design with a liquid fuel engine sized for mass manufacture. It's also cheaper because he didn't make the costly mistake so many others did (Arianespace, SLS, ULA) in adding solid boosters, or using a poor fuel as hydrogen as the first stage propellant. 2) Only then did his team master hypersonic retropropulsion to enable first stage re-use and recovery, using both RTLS and recovery ships. It's the first time cost effective re-use has ever been done for space launch. 3) Then he built the worlds biggest active rocket, the Falcon Heavy. 4) And now they are building the world first fully re-usable launch system, Starship. If you compare the design decisions between the Space Shuttle and Starship, you'd have to conclude Elon is a genius just from those. a) Using identical engines for both stages means they can be efficiently mass manufactured. The Shuttle SRBs were $70M each, and it's Hydrogen engines were $75M each (double that now for SLS), Raptors will cost less than $1M each. b) No expensive solid rocket boosters b) No heavy hydrogen tanks and engines, instead burning dense methane that fits in smaller, lighter tanks and doesn't evaporate over time like hydrogen does. c) No expensive fragile materials like the Shuttle heat tiles and it's aluminum frame, just super cheap stainless steel with much higher heat resistance with carefully located heat shield material on hot spots that can be easily replaced. d) No massive single stage stack to reach the Moon or Mars, instead cheap refueling in low orbit significantly increases velocity (shortening interplanetary trips) and allows for delivering much larger ($100 ton+) payloads. e) The robust heat resistance allows for aerobraking into Mars, saving huge amounts of fuel and again substantially increasing tonnage of payload landed. f) Methane can be made anywhere in the solar system, especially on Mars. This saves another massive amount of launch fuel and increases payloads yet again. 5) Oh, and there is Starlink. There were discussions of satellite constellations before but Musk is actually making this happen. Test results have been fantastic, as has launch cadence. Elon has literally put more satellites into space than anyone on this planet at this point, so I'm going to guess he knows a bit about how they work even if his real focus is launch systems and manned exploration of Mars. Musk may say idiotic things on a regular basis, but as a rocket designer he's neck and neck with Von Braun as the greatest in world history. The world is full of rocket engineers who've made grand plans and done nothing, and lots of them work at Boeing turning government dollars into nothing but pork.

If Mr. Market is unstable, what is Dr. Market given their easy access to mass amounts of prescription drugs?

So soon? I can't sell, I bought my $200/$400 Puts around $825, and am barely showing a profit.

well said ! If only we could buy far out of the money calls and puts on Chamath, we'd be rich in ten years!

He's a billionaire, clearly. “Most of my coins” Implying at least three. If so congrats rk Yes more than three, but much less than a billion dollars worth. I was buying at $200-$500 and not buying more than I did is by far the biggest mistake of my life. At least you did buy some. I saw it when it was around $10 but didn’t buy any because new kid, death in the family etc. It was a crazy time. I almost bought $5k worth at that time but didn’t. I probably wouldn’t have held to $50k per Bitcoin anyways. Thats why you shouldn't sweat missed trades like this. I kick myself for not buying at $250, but I'm almost certain I would have sold at $1,000. So I missed a nice trade, not a life changing money (as if money can ever change life).

So your average holding period is about 18 months? Is that right? So i guess your holding period seems 'forever' as it is more than double the average period now for the average crowd. i've started doing 'this' about 20 years ago and one of the most striking features has been the unrelentling rise in competition. Some days i wish i'd have started in 1957 or something but then again, now is probably one of the greatest times to be alive. I need someone to tell me what my top 1% of my ideas are, because I have no clue myself. The present is almost always the best time to be alive. Exceptions were probably the 14 century (epidemics) in Europe ir if you were born in Germany before 1618 or 1914 (very ugly wars). My post was partly tongue in cheek, but if you are reviewing more than 50 investment ideas per month, I think it builds the muscle that helps determine which is best. It reduces the impulse to buy the latest hit idea and raises your bar for purchases. Maybe not to the level that can discern best 1%, but surely best 10%.

Musk says BTC price seems high, less than two weeks after buying $1.5B worth? https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/20/elon-musk-says-bitcoin-seems-high-after-surpassing-1-trillion-market-cap.html

Interesting post on ArsTechnica BTC hits $1T story comments. “Satoshi Nakamoto” Has 1M Bitcoin .

He's a billionaire, clearly. “Most of my coins” Implying at least three. If so congrats rk Yes more than three, but much less than a billion dollars worth. I was buying at $200-$500 and not buying more than I did is by far the biggest mistake of my life. LOL I sold at $250 while simultaneously telling my friend that BTC had an innate value as a medium of exchange, especially in places like Venezuela, but as a value investor I couldn't calculate it so I wouldn't hold it. If I had only followed through building that mental model it would have been clear that world-wide the need for cryptocurrency in a $100T+ economy was a lot more than $500M. I mean even today I think that $1T isn't absurd, if it was $100B I'd probably get right back in. Which I could have not that many months ago.

At $53, isn't the BTC market cap around $700B as I seem to remember that accounting for lost and unmined total count was closer to 14M? Or is that way off?

https://247wallst.com/autos/2021/02/19/tesla-gets-hit-with-horrible-dependability-rating-in-new-study/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FRyNm+%2824%2F7+Wall+St.%29 Tesla: Hey at least we ain't Alfa Romero, or Landrover, or Jaguar, they really stink!

I thought you might like that one ;) I forgot who recommended it, was it you? If so thanks for the suggestion, I really liked this one.

So the report is saying that Burry and the other longs had diamond hands that they were able to dump on to Redditors at insane prices? Frankly I'm amazing that Senvest and Burry were able to hold out until the multiple hundreds. I probably would have sold at $20, but I guess thats what makes Michael Burry a G.O.A.T. and me, me.

YOLOTCF - You only laugh once but cry forever.