maplevalue
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Posts posted by maplevalue
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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
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Trump win -> uncertainty over US monetary policy. His previous nominee Shelton was supportive of gold standard.
QuoteFeb 2 2024 - Trump says he would replace ‘political’ Jay Powell as Fed chair
Donald Trump said he wanted to replace Jay Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve, accusing him of being “political” and predicting that he would cut interest rates to “help the Democrats” this year. Trump was fiercely critical of Powell while he was president from 2017 to 2021, and his latest comments point to serious friction between the Fed and the White House that could erupt next year if he defeats Joe Biden in November.https://www.ft.com/content/ca3808a6-ab2d-4586-ad31-9107700f90cd
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2 hours ago, Gmthebeau said:
SMT.L paring some tech exposure. still have more
Don't sell too much as the hopeful breakout past 800 will be epic
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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.
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More Scottish Mortgage Trust
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18 hours ago, Sweet said:
Someone pointed out one time that the rules of the SP-500 meant that it acted like a giant trading algorithm that cuts losers and allows winners to run. I thought that was very perceptive and accurate and it helps explain its success.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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
QuoteThat leaves our winner, Greece. Ten years ago it was crippled by a debt crisis and ridiculed on Wall Street. Incomes had plunged, the social contract was fraying and extremist parties of the left and right were rampant. The government grew so desperate that it cuddled up to China and later sold its main port, Piraeus, to a Chinese firm. Today Greece is far from perfect. A rail crash in February exposed corruption and shoddy infrastructure; a wire-tapping scandal and the mistreatment of migrants suggested civil liberties can be improved.
But after years of painful restructuring, Greece topped our annual ranking of rich-world economies in 2023. Its centre-right government was re-elected in June. Its foreign policy is pro-America, pro-eu and wary of Russia. Greece shows that from the verge of collapse it is possible to enact tough, sensible economic reforms, rebuild the social contract, exhibit restrained patriotism—and still win elections. With half the world due to vote in 2024, democrats everywhere should pay heed.
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On 12/22/2023 at 12:09 PM, Jaygo said:
I'm looking at some beaten down real estate Artis REIT and Morguard north American real estate trust in particular. These babies are left for dead so do as the vulture does.
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
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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.
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Good discussion in context of the bond moves we are seeing.
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Quote
“When we look to the future of immigration levels planning, we want to maintain ambition and immigration, but we want to better align our immigration policies with the absorptive capacity of communities that includes housing, that includes health care, that includes infrastructure," Sean Fraser said in an interview on CTV’s Question Period with Vassy Kapelos on Sunday.
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“If we were going to shift the way that we operate, to set a target or to align the numbers with the housing capacity, it's a monumental change in the way that Canada does immigration,” Fraser said.
“That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. But it does mean if we're seeking to make a permanent change to the way that Canada's immigration laws operate, we have to do it right.”
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4 hours ago, gokou3 said:
Interesting idea. In the past, share prices of rate-reset prefs tend to correlate with general interest rates. The consensus seems to be that the current rate cycle is closer to the top than the bottom. Are you concerned about an rate decrease in the next year or so?
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. -
34 minutes ago, lessthaniv said:
Not sure I'm understanding the math on your comment? Can you elaborate on your calculation?
The following is from the Aug 2nd, 2023 newswire but the 5yr hasn't moved materially.
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.
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1 hour ago, Parsad said:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-consumer-prices-swing-decline-014520524.html
https://www.barrons.com/articles/china-deflation-beijing-private-sector-ba37b49b?siteid=yhoof2
We're starting to see what was supposed to happen years ago. Governments can't manipulate fiscal/monetary policy limitlessly and debt accumulation will have some consequence. And not just for China! Cheers!
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.
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5 hours ago, Spekulatius said:
The conspiracy crowd seems to think that the onus is on science and now the government to debunk this stuff. That not how science works, you can’t really disprove something (in most cases)l the burden of proof is on those who make a claim.
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!).
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3 hours ago, Parsad said:
But if you keep claiming smoke, I need to at least see the tiniest of sparks! Cheers!
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).
10 hours ago, ValueArb said:Science relies on preponderance of evidence to start believing a hypothesis could be true, and for extraordinary claims we require extraordinary evidence.
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.
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15 hours ago, Parsad said:
But that's kind of the problem...classified or not, the public does not have the documents or evidence. I can tell you I saw a ghost, and there might be hundreds of documented proof of ghosts, but until it all comes out...we stay in the same spot we've always been...no evidence, no facts, can't accept it as truth. Cheers!
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!
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13 hours ago, scorpioncapital said:
is anyone worried about a nuclear war, followed by deflation, a rush to certain continents vs others, panic, and some companies doing well that sell radiation monitors, or even Amazon delivering essential goods via robots?
Nuclear war is inflationary. Governments will hit the print button immediately, making COVID handouts look small in comparison.
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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.
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Bridgewater warns US inflation fight is far from over:
https://www.ft.com/content/3489c43d-83ff-413b-9477-dd6c042211f2
QuoteThe investment chief at one of the world’s top hedge funds has warned the US battle with inflation is far from over, and bets on a rapid series of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve next year are premature. The comments from Bob Prince, co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, pour cold water on this week’s global rally in stocks and bonds, which was sparked by relief at data showing annual US inflation had fallen to a more than two-year low of 3 per cent in June.
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“Inflation has come down but it is still too high, and it is probably going to level out where it is — we’re likely to be stuck around this level of inflation,” Prince said. “The big risk right now is that you get a bounce in energy prices when wages are still strong”, which could drive a rebound in inflation, he added.I enjoy listening to Bridgewater's macro takes as they seem to take a much bigger picture view as opposed to the sell side economists which seem largely concerned with what the next CPI/employment print is going to be. Will be particularly interesting if late 2023/2024 is finally the year of the 'China reopening' and global economy hot because of it
Elliot Bucket
in General Discussion
Posted
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.