ValueArb

Thanks! And just in case anyone reading that thinks that I'm depressed or anything, I'm not. I feel better about myself now than I have in years, the shoulder pain is just a bump on the road for me. I am very sad about my dog, but optimistic about both getting healthier and maintaining my fitness for as long as I have left. Two years ago I was depressed to the point that I wondered if I would see 60 or if I even cared to, and I'm very glad to have shaken that awful mindset.

When I was 57 I had surgery to compensate for a torn tendon in my right ankle and caused it to deteriorate over 30 years, giving me plantar fasciitis and pronating enough to make it impossible to run any more. When I was 58 I had my left hip replaced, probably because it wore heavily due to the asymmetry caused by that missing tendon. When I was 59 I was 40 lbs over weight because of a decade of poor diet, combined with increasing sedentary lifestyle from work, divorce, and that bad ankle. I sometimes found myself wheezing when I walked, which was incredibly scary during COVID, and unfathomable to me given I was a college athlete (practice dummy) on a national championship wrestling team, rode as much as a hundred miles a day in the off season, and after college ran 40 miles a month, half marathons, etc until my late 40s. Today I'm 60 and have to take THC edibles to sleep through the night because of the pain of a (presumably) torn rotator cuff in my shoulder. But I've lost 33 lbs doing hot yoga almost every day for the last 15 months, along with some improvements to my diet. And I got on a weight lifting program this year (along with TRT) which has increased my muscle mass noticeably, even though every morning I wake up with an aching shoulder, and I have to skip some exercises (haven't bench pressed in months) because of the pain. I have an MRI next week, hoping there is an easy arthroscopic fix because shoulder replacement is way harder and rehab takes far longer than hip replacement. The lesson I wished I had learned before this is that I can't get back all those days I woke up healthy and skipped my run or workout, and ate whatever I wanted. Instead I was forced to put myself through incredibly hard workouts and food choices for over a year just to get back close (but not there) to where my health should have been naturally. Maintenance is so much easier than undoing a decade of bad choices. So my advice to others is, don't take health for granted. Every day I'm grateful that I'm still healthy enough and the pain is not so great that I can still push through it enough to slowly improve my fitness, even if its nowhere near as easy or fast as it was when I was younger. One of my yoga buddies and me talked about the need to stay ahead of the curve, and how Charlie Munger proactively moved to walkers/wheelchairs to avoid the falls that commonly rapidly accelerate our declines in our last years of life. I am witnessing what can happen in stark terms today. Our best dog ever who would turn 12 this summer and was so active and energetic that people thought she was half her age. Three weeks ago she yelped from pain jumping out of the car and it started a downward spiral to where now her back legs are so weak she needs my help to stand, and all she can do is rest all day. I'm in $2,500 into tests and x-rays without a clear diagnoses or treatment plan for recovery, and on the cusp of the decision whether to put her down or not today. So my advice to everyone is, stay active even if you don't feel like it. Find something you like, or can tolerate, enough to do regularly. If you can't/won't run, then swim or bike or go to fitness classes, or take up weight lifting. Or just go for long walks or take up hiking. Podcasts can make long workouts more tolerable, but they are also useful times to meditate on your day and your life and think more deeply and clearly. Find and create your own healthy habits that can last you a lifetime so when the inevitable setbacks occur, your body is stronger and more ready to help you recover from them. Because it's the setback we can't recover from that is often the cause of our end.

On the surface arresting Timur Ivanov seems like a very direct move against Shoigu. That said I don't we disagree by that much. I will just point out that the Tsar has been incredibly reluctant to move Shoigu out, despite his many failures. So maybe a better explanation is that Putin Soprano is very tight with his capitans because they stole Russia together. Shoigu is either his Silvio or Bobby Baccalieri, either competently doing his bidding behind the scenes or incompetent but unassailably loyal. Sometimes I imagine Putin in a rage over the failures in Ukraine that were directly linked to graft and corruption (like failing truck tires) and then Shoigu reminds Putin that he got the bosses share of the money they stole from the truck maintenance budget.

I think Israel should immediately halt all military activities in Gaza, and conduct an orderly withdrawal, just as soon as all the hostages are released and Hamas leaders in custody.

Patron Silver.

Looks like Shoigu is going to get arrested next. Putin is probably shoring up support beforehand to avoid Shoigu taking him out in a coup. https://www.politico.eu/article/bribery-case-puts-russian-defense-minister-sergei-shoigu-in-the-crosshairs/

There is a hypothesis that liquidity needs determines short term price action. When more people need cash than they need more savings, general market prices will decline as sellers outnumber the buyers. When the inverse is true it will rise. And there is a corollary that when liquidity is high money first flows to the most speculative investments because their values are less knowable, at the same time investors are flush and more willing to gamble. For example most won't overpay for GM because its long record gives good reason to believe it will trade in a relatively tight earnings multiple range. But those people may happily overpay for Tesla because its much shorter track record demonstrates that it can trade at almost any multiple. So crypto is like the ultimate expression of that theory, without any binding valuation metrics to hold it down and a history replete with massive bull runs, its catnip for investors flush with cash looking for outsize returns. If these hypothesis are true, they also work in reverse. When liquidity tightens, people sell the most speculative positions first, so crypto and tech stocks would trail the market. Not sure how well the data actually matches these hypothesis, the real world is complex and messy with millions of independent agents making independent decisions and being driven by other factors besides a simplistic liquidity == gamble-gamble mental model. So it would be surprising if the effect was so strong to be irrefutable, but anecdotally there is plenty of evidence that can be cherry picked post hoc to support it FWIW.

This guy will be a hero in New York, until the first time he tries to raise rents.

In BlackRock we trust.

The very idea that any reasonable peace plan was possible is de facto absurd. It would involve Putin giving security guarantees to Ukraine that it could never trust.

What does that mean?

Weird how a decade of FSB bribery, corruption and undermining can affect a local economy. Of course you aren’t hearing from the Vatniks on the front line. Just those lucky enough to avoid conscription. . weird how the eastern regions weren’t a problem until little green men crossed the border en mass. I guess you think the maiden uprising throwing out Putins hand picked President was the problem? Tell it to Wagner Group. Well positioned with blocking battalions to force mountains of under trained vatniks with 50 year old weapons into the meat grinder.

I used to believe they sandbag delivery estimates so Russia can't fully prepare for them before they arrive. But last week rumors were being printed about Ukraine getting ATACMS with unitary warheads before any have been seen in use, so I'm probably wrong about that.

These are very good points. Buffett sees exactly what they do and by all his public statements he's been very pleased with their contributions for a long time.

I wasn't referring to Buffett, I was referring to what happens after he's gone. Clearly it's unlikely he'll ever issue any dividends because it's antithetical to his life long goal of making his "painting" as large as possible. He didn't even start buybacks until his 6th decade as CEO, but at least in that case it directly increases per share value.

That just makes it worse, no? It would mean Combs and Weschler are going to be stuck managing such an enormous portfolio that it's going to be very difficult to beat the market over time.

https://www.ft.com/berkshire According to the FT analysis the last decade hasn't been kind to Warren's public company investments (trailing the S&P 500), but both Ted and Todd have done much worse. Their methodology is pretty ad hoc, so can't attest to the reasonableness of their conclusions. They make one good point about Berkshire's "permanent capital" giving them an edge that few managers have. But I think overall running a $350B actively managed portfolio is probably the most challenging situation an investment manager ever had. So it's not surprising that even Buffett is trailing the S&P for long periods now. I'm not sure what the solution can be after Buffett, I doubt the shareholder base has the stomach for an enormous one time dividend or whether it would be enough to lighten those chains to return the portfolio to consistent market beating returns. Even a $250B distribution would leave them with over $100B to allocate, and even if they produce stellar returns that's from barely 10% of Berkshire assets so how much could it move the needle?

A net-net trading at a big discount with questionable management and shareholders. https://nvariant.substack.com/p/big-new-deal-announced-by-akili-akli

Buy your own submarine, grow a beard, get adopted by an Indian Raja, and sail the world venting against Imperialists, Captain Nemo style.

Maybe its because I charged them fees based on $75?

It doesn’t matter. If you think a business growing earnings 15% a year is worth a 25 PE on trailing earnings, then it’s worth a 22 PE on forward PE. Gregmal has it right. Look at next 3-5 years of earnings to make your valuation. I would just counsel to make your own estimates and not rely on analysts. The only reason forward PE was created was as a Wall Street sales tool. They know clients might view an over 20 PE as “expensive”, so be using forward earnings they can turn that trailing 20 to 30 PE into a sub 20 forward PE and claim it’s “cheap”, while ignoring the risk that those earnings won’t actually happen.

There is no such thing as economic war, thats conflating two vastly different things. Its not war when another country works hard to provide your country with cheaper goods.

Not true. People aren't going to starve themselves to make a buck, in fact the problem in society is that people don't save enough. Inflation was and is always a monetary phenomena. There was no major war in the 1970s, not for the US. Vietnam spending was over by 1975, and during the 1970s US military spending as a percentage of GDP was substantially lower than it was in the 1960s and had been declining since 1953. https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/defense_spending_history This is a straw man, no one claimed "NO oNe WiLL EvER INveST IN ThE US aGAiN!". The Marshall Plan constituted about 5% of US GDP in 1949. Germany has been the recipient of over a trillion dollars in assistance from the US in present day dollars, not just from the Marshal Plan, but also from US defense forces staffed in Germany to protect it from the USSR. We still spend tens of billions a year on forces in Germany to protect them allowing them to reduce military spending below 2% since the fall of the USSR, an enormous peace dividend they've received. So they've been sailing with a large wind at their back since 1950. Again, if you had actually read what I wrote, inflation raises real capital gain tax rates which reduces capital investment here and pushes investors overseas. Another straw man. No one claimed deflation is preferable to inflation.

The real irony is that Trump was just as terrible at fiscal leadership as Biden. When Republicans controlled both houses while he was president, the spending spigots were wide open. The only difference was that spending was directed to a different set of friendly political supporters. Neither president has done anything to make the Feds job easier, they've both made it extremely difficult.

Inflating away debt might be the more likely solution, but its not any better than defaulting on it. It will drive borrowing costs through the roof for everyone, and make it far harder to borrow in the future even if inflation declines as inflationary expectations will remain high for generations (fool me once, etc). It will bleed many people who don't have inflation indexed businesses. Any business that requires forward contracts will take massive losses and have a difficult time using them in the future. Any workers that don't have rapid inflation adjustments will end up with lower standards of living. Most specifically, investors will see their real capital gains tax rates sky-rocket as their reported gains will be far higher than their inflation adjusted gains. For example, assume inflation is 14% annualized for 5 years, halving buying power. Lets say you bought $100k in stocks at the start of that period, and sold them at end of it for $300k, which appears to be a 25% annualized return. But you owe 25% in federal capital gains plus state income taxes, or $50k, leaving you with $250k. But the buying power of $250k is now only $125k, so your real after tax economic profits is $25k, or less than 5% annualized. So will you be anxious to invest in stocks again? Maybe, you might not have a choice as what will offer a better return? Or maybe you'll invest overseas in a country with low inflation. Certainly foreign investors are going to think twice about investing in the US, so over time inflation will bleed us of capital which drives productivity gains. Go back and read up about the 1970s and how awful investing and the economy was when we dealt with high rates of inflation.