rogermunibond

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/10/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-click-cancel-rule-making-it-easier-consumers-end-recurring Golf clap. Finally a ruling from Lina Khan that I can get behind. I wonder if subscription companies of all sorts are going to start going down.

@Dinar i was just looking at CP. CNI, and UNP Did you choose CP for the Mexico play?

Hurricane Ian - $65B in insured losses according to this SwissRe article https://www.swissre.com/risk-knowledge/mitigating-climate-risk/hurricane-ian-revisited.html

It’s all in the link @Thrifty3000 posted above. I think the author means smaller local home insurers. PGR among national insurers has most exposure.

Multiple home insurer failures- calls out PGR with high Tampa exposure - possible failure for Citizens and FHCF

Has anyone looked at Chris Hohn's latest add of FER (Ferrovial)? Pricing power on major toll road projects thesis?

Agreed most of these measures are directed at banking, property market and stock market. Maybe makes Chinese consumers a bit more happy to spend via the wealth effect channel. Shoring up the capital adequacy of banks helps. But who's taking out loans? I don't expect much though.

That FT article is pretty inaccurate.

Subprime auto delinquencies going up. $ALLY had a bad call. Bringing down KMX, CACC, CVNA, and even the dealership groups - AN, LAD, etc. First inning for auto loan write offs. However, mortgage delinquencies not affected. It's a bifurcated economy.

GAB-PK or any of the Gabelli Equity Trust preferreds Looking at COF-Pj too

https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2024/0702 A lot has been made from the CBO's estimate of 2023 net immigration of 3.3 million. Sharing a good explainer on the various estimates and overall effect on gdp.

Good thread @Libs

Waymo is definitely the leader from the US perspective but there are lots of others making progress in the space, but less known to US investors. Wayve is a Autonomous startup in the UK that Uber signeed a partnership deal with. Also, Uber is buying 100K BYD vehicles to be leased to global Uber drivers. BYD has an Autonomy partnership with Huawei. I think there are probably other Chinese Autonomy plays too like Baidu.

How many hours of autonomous driving does MBLY have? I think part of Waymo’s advantage is their lead in AV data over Cruise, Uber, even Tesla.

There's quite a lot of scuttlebut on the reddit r\geico board specifically around the IT turnaround at Geico. Seems like the new CIO is going in a different direction from SNOW.

Critics like Michael Pollan have condemned the agro-industrial-food complex but I think the impetus for the US govt's involvement back in the 1920-30 period was to prevent the creep of socialism and civil unrest. This was extended even further in the 70s under Nixon. The goal was to make certain cash crop production stable and increasing to keep a lid on food cost inflation. The policy probably performed too well.

@Spekulatius @Saluki what do you make of Corvex taking a big stake in VSTS? Are they able to stem the loss of accounts to Cintas? Interesting that VSTS appointed a new Sales VP who comes from Cintas.

https://www.reuters.com/science/seismic-data-indicates-huge-underground-reservoir-liquid-water-mars-2024-08-12/ Would be amazing if this finding is confirmed, brings to mind the Kim Stanley Robinson Mars trilogy. Terraforming Mars anyone?

Vuori is backed by Softbank, believe it or not. They're probably looking to IPO soon.

@73 Reds practically speaking that's Fannie and Freddie pref holders

This Bloomberg piece from Monday does a decent job of explaining some of the VIX related selling on Friday and Monday. Seems like more a market event than a recession call, though maybe partially fueled by the employment #s and yen carry trade stuff. https://archive.ph/Ks2Rw

https://www.ft.com/content/a2ee3452-ed34-45a1-8515-a88841c9ed31 Muslim countries seeing boycotts of western brand consumer goods and restaurants. A lot of companies are unwilling to call attention to it. During second-quarter earnings updates, many multinationals were hesitant to address the issue head on, referring vaguely to geopolitical tensions, while a few attempted to directly quantify the impact. Luca Zaramella, chief financial officer of snack maker Mondelez, said the boycotts “remained a headwind”, weighing down Middle East sales growth by 2 per cent in the second quarter. Beauty group L’Oréal equally said the boycotts had a 2 percentage point drag on growth in the first half of the year.

LULU, NKE, EL, DEO, BFB seems like many high multiple consumer discretionary superstars are getting dinged as the global consumer is tired out or has alternatives. Any others to watch?