changegonnacome

@Vish_ram I think that's right - the US indices have become so service and software heavy (capital light writ large) that the old models are going say its expensive no matter where we are in the cycle versus the past....the average SPY company is now simply a better business than the average SPY company from 20,40, 60yrs ago.....margins, ROIC, global TAM's feeding into global growth avenues all requiring little incremental capital to do so etc. You can and should pay up more for this versus the past.........within limits of course.....so a model rooted in the capital heavy past would of course flash red as Hussman's has forever basically.

Centene investor day has now gone virtual....previously it was to be held in person at NYSE on Dec 12th..... https://investors.centene.com/2024-12-05-CENTENE-CORPORATION-TO-HOST-VIRTUAL-INVESTOR-DAY-ON-DECEMBER-12,-2024 Very sad state of affairs that this is where we are now.

Hate to break it to folks.....but the premise of Breaking Bad no longer really stacks up..........Walter White at the next ACA open enrollment period could have signed up for a top tier coverage plan.....with no pre-existing condition exclusions and no waiting period for coverage to start!

This does not exist anymore - the individual mandate at a Federal level is gone....only California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia retained their own state level mandate.

Southpark is on point as always! No healthcare system is perfect........but what I've seen hybrid private-public healthcare systems I've encountered globally are probably the best........a single payer system with blanket universal access......creating a base layer of care and cutting off the tails of medical bankruptcy.........but where private hospitals & private insurers......compete for incremental healthcare spend because they are providing incremental outcomes, speedier turnarounds, better service over the basic public option. Not perfect - but as @Castanza has pointed out - too many talented people are shackled in the US by the employer health insurance chain.........it has undoubtedly suppressed entrepreneurship over the last couple of decades.

Totally agree - disconnecting the patient from the price of service via the HMO cut-out then abstracting the cost of the overall insurance even further by embedding it as a group benefit paid for by your employer (but then ultimately paid by everyone that purchases goods or services from that employer)....is one of the many ways that the US healthcare 'vampire squid' financial shakedown has increasingly got out of control.......its a kind of zombie bloated bureaucracy where no individual provider or worker in it could ever be accused of the shakedown.... but rather the shakedown is the labyrinth system itself for which there are thousands of little innocent cogs that dont need to be there..... The American healthcare system represents a kafkaesque nightmare......as most know on this forum being involved in the finance world....when you encounter something that is needlessly complex......well......where there's mystery, there's margin'......

You know your in trouble when Jeremy Siegel is calling for S&P in 2025 to return 0 to 10% If Tom Lee or Dan Ives....comes out and says anything less than 20% return for SPY in 2025.....I'm selling everything

I hope they do. The economy really needs to be brought to its knees there to create the right conditions for some sort of settlement next year.........cause every report I'm reading right now from the front lines is bleak....... showing a Red Army on the march and clearly in the ascendency....by contrast Ukrainian reports are of relentless shortages of artillery, men and moral........some 50 ATCAMS, for all the talk, are not changing the overall trajectory of what is fundamentally a ground war.....there is very little military incentive right now for Russia to come to the negotiating table on January 20th....increasing economic pain on Russia is now the most viable pathway through which the West can help Ukraine (& itself) save face with a deal that may be defensible relative to all the hot air spewed in 2022.

Not sure you picked up my sarcasm….or the post above it that pre-dated Trump doing exactly what I said he would (telling the public something is fixed when nothing in a practical & quantifiable way has changed at all )….but it goes to prove my point…truth social or X posts are the new governing…the tribalism inherent in the country (on both sides) means simply telling your ‘team’ that you’ve fixed something…results in them swallowing it …..forget the post-truth era….we are living in the political vibes era….your party/president is in power and everything is automatically great again (data be damned)….your party/president isn’t in power and the place has gone to hell in a hand basket again (no matter what the data says)…democrat and republican diehards are as guilty of this as each other..it’s quite the trick they’ve pulled the boys and girls in D.C.….turning each parties supporters against each other like rabid dogs….is a genius move for politicians that now run on clicks and vibes…versus actually doing stuff.

Voila......and just like that.........the Southern Border has been 'fixed', the migrant crisis ended....all in a phone call with the President of Mexico......and effective immediately! Wonderful to hear it. https://nypost.com/2024/11/27/us-news/trump-says-mexicos-president-has-agreed-to-stop-migrants-from-crossing-the-us-border-illegally/ “Mexico will stop people from going to our Southern Border, effective immediately,” the 45th president said. “She has agreed to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border,” he added.

Yep been watching that..... I think everything in the US/EU's power now should be done now to kind of dial up the pain on the Russian side......not sure what sanctions are left or whether the existing ones enforcement can be dialled up....but they should be.....there's a window, perhaps only a few months when Trump gets into office where the whole situation is really Biden's folly still......before too long though the stink starts to get on Trump's suit & its his ego/machismo begins to get wrapped up in the situation.......there's on off-ramp coming up for the two superpowers......I think they'll take it....at the expense of Ukraine.

Yep mutually hurting stalemates and the concept of 'ripeness' for negotiated settlements has always been a pretty descent framework for how a lot of seemingly intractable conflicts get resolved......ripeness almost being a perfect substitute for the word exhausted! https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/9897/chapter/7 The wrinkle to this..........would indeed be a Ukrainian collapse whereby Russia started making sustained and speedy territorial gains due to the Ukrainian front line collapsing......nothing mutually hurting about making advanced gains in a short space of time....before you head to the negotiating table.

Jesus - rough stuff reading........It really wouldn't surprise me if Ukraine's front line collapses in the coming weeks....it must be incredibly difficult for Ukraine's military leadership to maintain discipline and commitment now in the lower ranks.....I feel for the Ukrainian fighters out there in Eastern Ukraine.....the David vs. Goliath ending is assuredly over now....and so it must be near impossible to summon up the 'why' required to press forward and put your life on the line.

Yep - The correct negotiating tactic for a country coming under tariff wars with the Trump administration.......is to realize that Mr.Trump is the most PR president that has ever held office (i mean they all are)......actually moving the ball down the field in a real sense rarely comes into it........what matters is the headline, the photo, the soundbite and the perception of promises made, promises kept.........give him a public 'win' that can go on the front page of the WSJ, NYT or trend on X for his supporters to cooo over.........like say Justin Trudeau publicly grovelling at the WH at a press conference beside Trump promising that Canada will stop taking advantage of the USA henceforth re: immigrants passing through its borders and drugs and immediately set up a taskforce with the sole focus of fixing transit immigration and transiting drugs to the USA......whatever happens after that PR 'win' barely matters for Trump IMO......it's showbiz......baby

Guess one might classify the current Trump BTC rally as one of these moments!?!

Yeah these are increasingly outlandish with ever higher hurdles IMO....but totally understand.......BTC keeps confounding expectations.......like a growth stock with higher and higher multiples....what begins to be required for it move higher over time are increasingly ever more implausible scenarios.......but the holders think past is prologue cause a bunch of implausible things have ALREADY happened.

Not really I'm with @Gregmal - things are 'worth' what people will pay for them (obviously).....whether its BTC, gold or a baseball card.......certain items without underlying cash flows......are pure games in predicting future mass psychology/interst which drives future supply/demand which drives price.......will an artist's reputation grow in time driving future demand such that their art will appreciate in value or not etc. Indeed even things with cash flows.....need to be assessed for future demand...which is a function of mass psychological attidudes.....i.e. is this a product or service that will be prized as highly or not in the future. A corset manufacturer in the 1800's had intrinsic value based on its cash flows.......but that intrinsic value was predicated on corsets remaining an item of fashion value in the minds of society....it turned, over time, that value went to almost zero. BTC is like this.......its a game in predicting future mass psychological attitudes towards it....the story and its ability to resonate is the value if you we're trying to pinpoint it............ its why finding out Satoshi was a 15yr old obese dork kid is not entertained by the believers......as it diminishes the story...........BTC'ers say we're early....7% of the US population have been interested enough in the 'story' to participate by purchasing BTC in some form or another.....you need only a view on whether the adoption rate will increase or decrease over time to have a view on the future price path......for what its worth.......BTC looks like a story where all the big catalysts have already played out.....but I've never been good at guessing future mass psychology re: assets with zero discernible cash flows today......not a game I'm good at so I dont play.....but it doesn't invalid it as means by which to speculate.

Everything old is new again! Looks like we might need to relearn an important lesson from a hundred years ago about what happens when you allow your economy to become a casino. Folks would do well to read about blue sky securities of the 1920's............which was the last time we allowed thousands of 'coins' then called shares to come to market with a story attached from snake oil promoters to be sold to the gullible public with near no controls, no registrations and disclosures while providing 100 to 1 leverage to the end purchaser. Out of it of course we got the Great Depression........and then the 1933 act which put controls around the selling of investment contracts to the public and then the 1934 act which created the exchanges, broker-dealers & clearing house infrastructure that created the most robust capital markets in the world.

CNC

CNC

Watching this too.......keeps dropping....getting to £67 now......minus 34% year to date......great company, lousy price the last couple of years.....

I think this is a fair assessment - monkeys inside the machine do unpredictable things.......what I would say in Mearsheimar's defense and in the defense of realist theory broadly in international security studies......is that it (realism) has the highest base rate of any of the competing theories in attempting to predict the future of state level conflicts.......that's not to say it is highly predictive but rather to say that amongst all the frameworks one could use to approach this dastardly problem of prediction it is the best.

Some debate obviously on the causes or reasons for the initial 2022 invasion.....I've got my theories (NATO/US 'puppetism'), others have theirs (the Catherine the Great theory)....but the competing theories can't be more different in a way.......an imperialist & a national security NATO 'red line-ist' are two very different beasts to deal with in a 'peace' negotiation. An imperialist who encountered way more resistance than they ever expected so was under prepared to achieve their military aims.....takes a win with a small 'w' (Donbas/Crimea), concedes on NATO, takes some marginal incremental territory and goes home to rebuild their military forces to try again later.....a (temporary) peace deal should be 'easy' to do with an imperialist .......a country/leader driven by genuine existential national security concerns rooted in NATO/US encroachment....will not fold on a red line issues like NATO membership. As we enter the end game here - we are going to get our answer......the 'tell' so to speak, IMO, has already come from Zelensky right at the beginning of this conflict in March 2022 in his most early kite flying for a negotiated settlement (see below BBC link)....we in the West might be confused about Putin's invasion motivations given our information is filtered through our own version of (un)controlled private media (that nevertheless manufacturers consent to borrow a Chomskyism). Zelensky has a clearer eyed view than anyone on the causes and the solutions to Ukraine's woes....and HIS solution to this war, offering permanent Ukrainian neutrality, speaks more clearly to the origins of this situation than a million WH briefings, NY Times and CNN pieces. 28 March 2022 - "Zelensky says Ukraine prepared to discuss neutrality in peace talks" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60901024

Its a deal! And totally hear you on the stamp duty......the UK and Ireland are literally punching themselves in the face from a capital markets point of view attaching stamp duty to share purchases