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.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/canadian-government-won-t-rule-out-changing-immigration-targets-to-address-housing-challenges-fraser-says-1.6555446

Obviously they do better if rates are high (attractive as not many assets have this characteristic). If we go back to ZIRP they may struggle.

coupon based on $25 par value but shares trading around 17

1. ZPR - ETF of CAD rate reset prefs. One of the few assets out there that should do well in a higher rates for longer scenario. Over time the coupon on these should reset higher and the higher current yield will make it more attractive to retail. 2. New Nintendo Switch joy cons. Cost $100, but felt great buying them because the Switch is so great.

I think the more recent lesson is that deflation is a very solvable problem (see what the experience of the US was printing money and giving it directly to people). China knows the playbook of deflation gets entrenched. I think it’s reasonable to expect they do helicopter money soon.

The interesting thing in situations like this is who this burden should fall on. You have these credible witnesses report on seeing UAPs (plus some videos) plus indicating there is a secret crash retrieval program. If we say the burden rests on the individuals claiming they are extraterrestrial, it is a pretty high bar to prove they were in fact extraterrestrial (here I suppose one needs an alien body or an extremely high resolution picture/video). But if we say the burden rests on those claiming they are not extraterrestrial, it still is a very high bar to prove what the heck these things are. Sure there are theories (country that has advanced tech that has been kept secret, some sort of optical trick, etc) but have yet to see anyone offer solid concrete evidence beyond just conjecture/speculation of what the tic tac is. The saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is just that, a saying. The scientific method is based on reproducibility, but there are many things that are not reproducible (e.g. we can't just travel back in time and observe the tic tac). In cases where the evidence is incomplete and limited, I think it is incorrect to just assume there is no truth to be found in it. In the UAP case, sure we don't have anything yet that offers concrete proof the US government has extraterrestrial craft, but based on everything we have seen, I have a hard time not putting a non-zero probability (5%? 20%?) on us learning this is true. This is why I am following this so closely, because even if it is a low probability, the implications are so incredibly massive to humanity (and of course investing!).

I suppose this is where we might differ. Sworn testimony by David Fravor retired US Navy Commander, who witnessed the tic-tac, doesn't seem crazy, plus the declassified video of it to me suggests either some country around the world has access to secret technology leaps and bounds ahead of what we currently have, or it's extraterrestrial. Both are pretty extraordinary things to consider, but one of which has at least a nonzero probability of being true given the evidence that currently exists (and we are likely to see more evidence as more gets declassified). Another way of looking at science is people come up with theories as to how the world works, and then as more and more evidence is gathered they are increasingly accepted as true by the scientific community. Long before we could fly to space and actually observe the sphericity of the earth ("extraordinary evidence the earth was round") people over time came to accept the earth was in fact round. In the UFO case, sure we don't have a dead alien body in front of us, but the hearings I believe raise the probability we see something non-human in origin in our lifetimes, even if its not a high percentage, but it definitely just went up.

I think a great parallel is with the UFO story and the COVID lab leak theory. Origin of COVID a very complex topic where there is active debate within the scientific community. We do not have hard evidence that it leaked from a lab (and likely even if it did would never hear about it since certain governments/individuals would do everything in their power to make sure this did not get out), therefore many people absolutely refuse to believe it did and brand those that do as conspiracy theorists. However, there are very compelling arguments as to why it might of (some argue about the biology of the virus, others about sicknesses within the WIV in 2019). If you demand hard evidence of a lab leak, you don't have it now, but is it really wise to view the lab leak as a 0% event? Same thing with UFOs, if you absolutely must have a dead alien body in front of you to believe that aliens might exist then there is no way you will believe in them now. However, if one is willing to be flexible and consider that congress holding hearings into UFOs with several credible witnesses is possibly a precursor to harder evidence coming forward, then you cannot dismiss aliens as a 0% event, and likely need to raise your own view on the probability aliens exist after watching the hearing. A final thought, one of the things I have realized in my career (currently doing a STEM PhD) is how limited our understanding is of the world around us. Be careful putting too high of a burden on accepting something as true, as it stands we can say very little about very few things with much certainty!

Nuclear war is inflationary. Governments will hit the print button immediately, making COVID handouts look small in comparison.

Absolutely wild the type of stuff being claimed by these 3 seemingly credible individuals. The relatively tepid coverage of this by the news media is a good reminder that their filter for what is important news is not a great one.