maplevalue

Reminds me of part of the reason Philip Morris performed so well (best performing stock 1926-2021) was federal + state lawsuits -> stock to be depressed for a decade despite it still "churn[ed] out cash and pa[id] dividends". Meant the returns from reinvesting the dividends became very large. Stocks for the Long Run 6th Edition (pg 163)

Elliot establishes a 5% position in Scottish Mortgage Trust. This article suggests that SMT's latest announcement to authorize buybacks may have been intended to get ahead of a potential activist https://www.proactiveinvestors.co.uk/companies/news/1043788/scottish-mortgage-buybacks-quizzed-as-activist-investor-builds-stake-1043788.html.

India’s Feet of Clay: How Modi’s Supremacy Will Hinder His Country’s Rise https://www.foreignaffairs.com/india/indias-feet-clay-modi A balanced article; thought there were quite a few similarities to Xi

Trump win -> uncertainty over US monetary policy. His previous nominee Shelton was supportive of gold standard.

Don't sell too much as the hopeful breakout past 800 will be epic

Has MW confirmed anywhere they will participate in the conference call? My sense is they will not and we will never hear anything substantive again from them on FFH.

More Scottish Mortgage Trust

This is one of the key reasons I have warmed to the idea of indexing. In my trading career, or experience picking individual stocks, I found the most success in having a few big winners, while keeping the losses on the non-winners manageable. With indexing a stock can quadruple and the index still holds the same position, versus an actively managed fund which would be likely to sell part of a position to not become too concentrated.

Curious if anyone has recommendations for any papers/articles/etc. about why index investing works (beyond something like the Little Book of Common Sense Investing). I feel like as time passes I am more and more amazed at how well indexing does, while at the same time cognizant that there is more money tied up in index linked products today than at any point in history, and perhaps past performance does not equal future results.

Yearly IRR's (calculated via Quicken) in CAD 2020 12.5% 2021 12.9% 2022 -12.6% 2023 20.9% Fairfax big winner this year. Large EM allocation ~25%, and limited exposure to MAG7 has dragged me down since 2021.

Greece named The Economist's country of the year: https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/12/20/the-economists-country-of-the-year-for-2023

Continuing blowout CAD population growth numbers further support the case for MRG. It’s a nice name where you get paid a nice dividend while you hope for the valuation to normalize.

Added to Scottish Mortgage Trust

Great discussion. One thing I would say about Dalio is he tends to take a bit of a longer term view and highlights macro risks that are lower probability events. Hot war with China, some sort of political breakdown in the US, possible massive money printing in the next US recession. How many sell-side banks' research departments talk about these topics? These are things that are hard to forecast exactly, but worth having an understanding of when building a diversified portfolio. I think his track record speaks for itself as to him being someone at least considering listening to.

Good discussion in context of the bond moves we are seeing.