matthew2129

Idk what the amateur central bankers are saying, but JP and the Fed have been clear in their releases and press conferences that they view the neutral rate to currently be around 2.4-2.5%....

Would have liked to see them nibble on long term bonds and extend the duration of the portfolio during the q2 spike in rates, but oh well, guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks

Yet what you describe is the exact opposite of a wage-price spiral: Which one is it? Everyone loves to cite the risk of a "wage-price spiral" b/c they heard it happened in the 70s and ignore the fact that the majority of sudden and steep rises in inflation over the last hundred years were followed by equally sudden disinflation (and sometimes even outright deflation).

I wouldn't be at all surprised to see YoY inflation drop below 2% by May 2023

NVR with a nice earnings beat today and hefty 20% rise (on dollar basis) in their backlog: https://nvri.gcs-web.com/news-releases/news-release-details/nvr-inc-announces-first-quarter-results-14

NVR and LOW....housing market pullback be damned, I'm here for the buybacks

A growing number of in-person and online shops are starting to accept USDC. It's really a no-brainer from the merchant perspective; it's certainly better than accepting credit. Once USDC is ubiquitous, fiat off-ramps won't be necessary. Don't think we're far away (couple years, not decades)

Started positions in DIS and CPRT

Started a position in NFLX and closed out some ATCO covered calls. What a gift days like today are

All of today's chains that use PoS and burn transaction fees are already backed by cash flow. There's zero difference between burning tokens and buying back shares. These chains should be viewed as tech equities

How long does it take for $ to hit folks accounts after the FIH tender?

Agree. What's the point of locking in gains on say ~5% of the AAPL holdings if it causes the remaining 95% to drop 5%+ in market value?

Helpful background, thanks. Will definitely have to take a closer look at this one

Big fan of NVR. Does DFH have any affiliation or stated goal of imitating NVR? Or are you just drawing the comparison b/c of the asset-light business model utilizing options?

More ATCO plus a pinch of SVXY at the close to keep things spicy

BTC reaching its 21M cap isn't going to help the headwind, the same flows will still be required to maintain the network, they will just migrate to transaction fees instead of mining rewards (either that or the network will become unsecure). Whether its Sol, or ETH achieving scalability through StarkNet or some other combo of scaling solutions, or some new blockchain that doesn't yet exist, idk. But im skeptical PoW will be around in any meaningful way 50 years from now

Two big differences that I think make the 70s an unhelpful comparison are: 1. Corporate profit margins are at an all-time high today. It's very rare, if not completely unprecedented, to have sustained inflation when you don't have increasing input costs threatening to take marginal costs towards or above marginal revenues. And despite increases in wages per employee, aggregate wages have never been lower as a % of revenues. Corporations have never been further from the "viscous circle" of an increase in input costs forcing an increase in prices. 2. You can't buy a 30 yr treasury yielding 15%, and I don't think rates will necessarily rip anytime soon. US treasuries may have had deeply negative real interest rates this year when you denominate in USD, but denominated in yen or Euro, US treasuries had highly positive real returns this year (thanks to the strength in the USD) We also don't have the demographics we did in the 70s for sustained CPI inflation. The money has to go somewhere, but my bet is on continued financial asset inflation.

Regardless of whether miners sell anything they mine, there's still a huge headwind compared to PoS, since miners get the new issuances instead of the token holders. PoS allows the token holders to keep the tokens for themselves. It's hard to compete with a business model that eliminates 99.9% of the expense of securing the network In PoW the aggregate market cap needs to increase by at least the amount of the mining rewards just for your investment to stay flat. In PoS, the market price of the tokens can decrease by the amount of your staking rewards and you'd still be flat.

Good quote -“The desire to be consistent with oneself is the source of poor decision-making. The winners of the Big Short came to define themselves as bears and proceeded to underperform everyone for 13 years. There’s never a need to define yourself. The market does not care who you are.”

Good summary. Personally, I'm amazed the discount to BV isn't even greater here given the discounts at FFH and Fairfax India, and this illiquid junk isn't even marginable in margin account since its a micro cap

At current prices, BTC requires over $400M of inflows per WEEK(!) just for the price o fBTC to remain flat. Even if you DGAF about the environmental impact of PoW, PoW blockchains are a melting icecube that will become an increasingly smaller and smaller size of total crypto market cap going forward

Most of these stocks individually are fine, maybe even above average, but a portfolio composed almost exclusively of cyclical, small cap, foreign, illiquid stocks is pretty shitty portfolio construction for regulated insurance entity that needs to worry about its mark-to-market shareholder capital. I don't think FFH could even exit a single one of these positions without tanking the stock. Would it be so much to have just one liquid large cap US-based company in your top holdings?

Companies that consistently plow a significant portion of their free cash flow to buyback stock instead of issue dividends tend to trade at a premium to their peers b/c having a whale consistently sitting at the bid de-risks the investment and creates a huge tailwind for the price. Do that quarter after quarter, year after year, and the premium becomes permanent. And I'm not talking about the dorks with calculators who only buyback their stock when it's trading at a discount to intrinsic value, I'm talking about the Alpha Chads like AAPL, AZO, NVR ect. who smash the ask and eat themselves every quarter

I suppose the structure could vary, but i think typically the opening reference price and ongoing margin is offered by the bank upfront, and its up to the bank's trading desk to determine the appropriate price based on the size of the TRS and the liquidity of the underlying stock

If you look back at the trading/volume data from the same time that FFH put on the TRS you will see a huge spike in volume and stock price