nsx5200

Looking at all those religions, I'm wondering if there's a correlation between compassion and organizational longevity. Even a weak correlation would provide an long-term 'competitive advantage' that should compound over a long time. If so, that should be one of characteristics that we should be looking for in assessing organizations. The ones I'm thinking of are Google's "don't be evil", Apple's policy of no porn in its app store and Costco's no markup above 15%. IMHO, they adds a halo effect that translates into real competitive advantage. This is especially true in Apple's emotional branding. I guess things gets more interesting when judging different governments from this view point, and would be more appropriately discussed in the Politics thread.

I find this article to be illuminating to the underlying operating principals of Trump and the current administration: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/05/steve-witkoff-putin-russia-ukraine-diplomat/682805/ or https://archive.ph/lwBL5 NotebookLM's summary: "This Atlantic article focuses on Steve Witkoff, a real estate billionaire and friend of President Trump, who has taken on a significant and unconventional diplomatic role. Despite having no formal diplomatic background, Witkoff is involved in complex international negotiations, including those concerning Israel and Hamas, Russia and Ukraine, and Iran. His approach is characterized by a transactional perspective and leveraging his personal relationship with the president, which has reportedly superseded the traditional duties of the Secretary of State and drawn both praise for his unconventional successes and skepticism from foreign policy veterans." The bolded items are also qualities that Witkoff shares with Trump, IMHO, and explains why many of the signature actions doesn't seem fully vetted, even though they have good intentions behind them. It's a bit unfortunate that the current administration doesn't take the time to better vet their actions, and requires a bit of iterations back and forth to reach a more reasonable 'solution'. Disclaimer: The Atlantic leans heavily to the left, but this particular article, IMHO, is less opinionated and focus more on the interview and facts. Caveat emptor, and calibrate accordingly.

The grand trend is that globalization in trade and automation have caused the well paying skillset to change. There is a huge population that got left behind from these larger trends. If you think about it, this was what happened in the middle east in the past. They used to be the bleeding edge in terms of inventing the best math system (decimal), most food production, etc... They've been left behind in terms of industrial revolution, green revolution (many of it due to its localized climate change), technology/computer revolution and it seems like they're going to miss the upcoming AI revolution as well. The whole rise of the Taliban, ISIS, whatever, are just futile attempts to make the middle east great again. Their strategy is to take the middle east back to pre-modern era, the historical golden age of the middle east. This same strategy is used by the current administration, and marketed to the population that got left-behind. Similar attitude and trends are showing up in the United States in the form of xenophobia, anti-technology(especially big), anti-trade, anti-progressive. Realistically, ignoring and even fighting these grand trends(via these crude tariffs) is unlikely to work, and IMHO, neither party is offering any real solution to solving it. If there are proposals to actually solve them, there is no real political will to implement them as they require long-term investment in education, public infrastructure, research, etc. Stuff that takes years to see results from. The boomers, which holds pretty much the political power in the US, are too old to really care about investing in the future generations, and they care much more about preserving their wealth to give up cuts in Medicare/Medicaid, social security, and to paying more taxes to pay for future investments. The young generation, unfortunately, don't have enough money and fingers into the political system to really fight for their long-term success. The rise of the Facebooks, the Tiktoks also promote even shorter-term behavior over long-term behaviors, to the detriment of the younger generation. Even the stock market, with its focus on short-term profits have eroded many long-term crucial capabilities such as manufacturing, ship-building, etc. I expect to see companies that continue to focus on learning and long-term investment over short-term gains to do well, and I hope other sees maintaining institutions that have those qualities as worthy of keeping around (ex. Harvard, NIH, etc).

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-05-13/were-17-members-of-el-chapo-guzmans-family-escorted-into-usa-from-mexico https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sinaloa-cartel-leader-family-enters-us-deal-trump-administration-mexico/ "He [Guzmán López, one of the family member] plans to change his not guilty plea to guilty, according to court papers, but the terms of his potential plea deal remain publicly unknown." Didn't do too deep of a dive, but it seems like these are just deals to turn them into witnesses. A bit of sensational and mis-leading tweet, IMHO.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge on this topic.

Here's the link to the actual order: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/lowering-drug-prices-by-once-again-putting-americans-first/ Some initial digestion by news sources of that order: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/12/trump-drug-pricing-order-most-favored-nation.html Allsides' coverage of the same news by left, right and center: https://www.allsides.com/story/healthcare-trump-announces-executive-order-cut-prescription-drug-prices-30-80 I'm not an expert in the medical payment flow, but it seems like the order calls for using the Federal Government programs (Medicare, Medicaid and associated programs like 340B Prescription) as levers to lower drug pricing for at least those programs. @dwy000, what do you see as the major impediment to the EO? Some items in the EO seems like wishes such as "These actions included encouraging the development of generic and biosimilar alternatives to higher cost brand name prescription drugs and biologics to harness competitive forces and increase access to affordable medicines." A lot of the EO calls for further analysis/recommendations from the delegated agencies/secretaries, so no real concrete actions until we see the actual recommendations. It does seem like the recent sudden pharma stock drop is not *yet* warranted, as you've stated, but I suspect for certain high-profile drugs like insulin, those manufactures will eventually get impacted (IMHO, rightfully so as the price differential between the US and the rest of the world is too much).

Almost everybody's got some devil in the closet. Even MLK had issues that was glossed over. Nobody's perfect, and we can only hope the goods that we do outweighs any bad that we do. I try to leave the judging to a higher power, although there are a few past figure's grave that I wouldn't mind taking a dump on. Their anti-contribution to their contribution ratio is just too high.

Apr 27, 2025 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/sex-workers-already-predicted-theres-a-recession-coming-heres-how-they-know-goog_l_680a6887e4b0b1be33560f56 "The past has shown that nontraditional measures like brothels, beer and lipstick can tell us a lot about the economy’s health." The many nontraditional index listed in the article points to a incoming recession.

CCP/Xi by announcing that there is no talk is public shaming Trump/US administration by announcing that there is currently no off-ramp. I don't see an easy way out for Trump to save face. It would be quite a hit to Trump/US administration's reputation if Trump kowtowed by walking back big chunk of the tariffs now. The only thing I can think of now for Trump to do is to create a even bigger 'scandal' for the media to report on, a typical MO for Trump. I think even he admitted to such tactic in the first presidency, but I can't locate that clip/article. Before the tariff the announcement, the Hegseth security not-leak was all over the news/media until the tariff announcement. That went totally silent after the tariff announcement. Unfortunately, Hegseth didn't seem to learn that lesson, and now that news is making a second come-back. We/media seems to have a short-memory on how the first presidency operated with continued waves of scandals (real or fake, depending on the media biasing). We will most likely have more opportunities in the market to catch great companies at fair prices with this administration.

That was the old Republican party. Would the old Republican party advocate for crypto, or even side with Russia? The new Republican party is RINO.

classic optimal game theory strategy. tit for tat, with sporadic room for forgiveness to give the system a chance to move to a better state.

It's been a long time since I looked at Visa. Held it since the Paypal fear a long time ago. Both payment systems enjoy wide moats. Network effect, toll booth, incentive vs cash, speed of payment, cut down on cash fraud, etc. Lots of potential competitors to watch out for, including Apple, but none of them seem very serious yet. Some good case studies for what it would take to displace/replace Visa/Mastercard/Amex are the payment systems in China. Visa is big in the US, and Mastercard is big outside of the US. Mastercard had a slightly higher growth rate because of that in the past. Wouldn't mind adding/starting on either one at the right price. It might be getting there. Just need to wait for hints of recession to show up in the news from the effects of the fed layoffs in addition to the current tariff stuff, IMHO. Please report back on the Visa thread if you find anything fun. TIA

Some SVXY. Theres probably a better cheaper way to bet on VIX, but I'm too stupid to figure it out. If anybody have a better idea, please share. TIA.

It's a bit sad to me that the tribal aspect discussions have gotten in the way of actual discussion. In the scale of Paul Graham's hierarchy of disagreements, those would be lower three tiers. IMHO those low-level type of discussions adds a significant amount of noise to the little value it would add(the value of essentially polling of opinions). This is especially true when the same low-value arguments are injected as rapid response in spam-like fashion. I've never really understood why people would be so emotional about rooting for their favorite teams, but I can see that same dynamic when it comes to their favorite political party, favorite religion, and sometimes even their favorite investment assets. It really goes downward fast when disparaging comments are made, and natural human reciprocity kicks in. I understand the instant gratification of making those disparaging comments to arguments made on the other side, as I have dished them out myself in the days of BBS. But have since learned that listening to different opinions actually speed up the learning process, as hard as that may be. Being respectful will, most of the time, yield the same reciprocity, at least in terms of tone and in appearance. That leads to less emotion/anger involved, and invite for more valuable logical counter-arguments in the future. So when given the choice of making a quick disparaging comment vs taking a longer time to actual think about the validity of the other side's position, hopefully I choose the latter. With that, I have found many of @Dinar's arguments to be on-point and worthy of consideration even though we may be, at the end, standing on different sides of the aisle on many issues. I hope Dinar continues to participate in this forum, as that expands the potential valid view points. For others that don't make similar cuts, there's always the "ignore" button available to me. I invite others to hit that "ignore" button on me if they feel like my post's signal-to-noise ratio is too low as well. "When three people walk together, one of them must be my teacher" - Confucius

As much as Trump wants Greenland, I don't believe he will get it, and he won't(I hope) start a war to acquire it. At least there should still be enough checks and balances in the U.S. government to prevent it, as well as the lack of political will to do it. This is especially true within Trump's base that probably can't even locate Greenland on a map, never mind understanding the logic in acquiring Greenland. I certainly don't, when existing framework like NATO covers any 'security concerns' for acquiring Greenland. IMHO, acquiring Greenland is simple case of vanity, just like acquisition of Ukraine by Russia is, IMHO, a simple case of vanity. The lost of interest in Ukraine by the administration, IMHO, a pivot away from Europe/Russia to China. Trump/Project 2025 is correct in that in order really take on China in the future, Europe will need to be able to defend itself against Russian aggression with less help from the U.S. It's was poorly communicated to the European allies, but it did get them going. It's unfortunate that more cooperation to coordinate the build-up of arms amongst the US and its allies wasn't done, but it is what it is. If somebody can make a valid case for U.S. to acquire Greenland, I'd like to hear it. TIA

It is true in many parts of the country where many are indeed left-behind from globalization/mechanization/obsolescence/whatever. I remember driving to the area where the Zippo factory is located via local roads, and drove past many towns where you can see hallmarks of industries that was once thriving, but is now in ruins. I suspect this happened over and over again all over U.S., and the towns that relies on the growth of such past industries have essentially declined. The United States is very a big place. One trip to the Grand Canyon or Alaska will give you that sense of awe in the vastness of that space. It's easy to think the world from the perspective of a more modern environment like New York City, or a typical Simpson-style suburb, but there are still still tons of rural areas where the media ignore, so it's essentially forgotten until the politicians need their vote. I can definitely see how those places can be attracted to a candidate that promise to rip the existing system down, and get back to those "days of glory". Peter Santenello has a bunch of videos where he interviews people in these forgotten places, and just walk around. It's worthwhile to check out a few videos, as it provides a different view into America that is typically not covered by MSM, left or right.

So it seems like holding bitcoin safely doesn't seem like it's 'free' or cost less. You're paying for it either through some service/device that needs to be maintained, and/or incur some risks(cost). If the private key can be captured with digital camera/phone/hack, then stealing an account/address can now be invisible, and possibly not known until long after the fact. So it's even harder to claim that a given Bitcoin address is safe and not stolen yet. IMHO, the advantages of Bitcoin/cryptocurrency vs gold substitute one set of problems with another, with more unknowns for crypto that have not yet passed the test of time. I'll let you guys work out the deeper implications for a shrinking pool(reduced supply) that is suppose to be used as a vessel for storage of value in the exchange of goods. I will also stop poking the bear (or is it bull?). Thank you, @TwoCitiesCapital & @rkbabang for your answers as they resolved my questions as to whether certain problems have been solved yet.

Those adoption statistics. Do they account for lost key/wallet, or essentially inactive key/wallet? Also, what's the historical & expected lost rate? If a long-inactive wallet suddenly comes alive, how does that change the price in terms of supply/demand, if that's even possible to figure out? How should a logical bitcoin holder/investor account for such events?

That's how it is... big experiments in 4 year chunks. With the mid-terms, sometimes shorter in 2 year chunks. It's a try-fast-fail-fast and see what sticks model. Any "long-term" strategies are embodied by the two political parties.

Secret Pentagon memo on China, homeland has Heritage fingerprints - The Washington Post "An internal guidance memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth focuses on deterring China’s seizure of Taiwan and shoring up homeland defense. In some instances, the document is nearly a word-for-word facsimile of a report from the conservative think tank behind Project 2025[Heritage Foundation]." Along the same lines: US reorients its army, China and Taiwan become main priority | RBC-Ukraine It seems to indicate that the administration is pivoting from Europe/Ukraine/Russia to China/Taiwan/Indo-Pacific. China, meanwhile, is trying to shore up its internal economy. They know that a crappy economy tend to lead people to overthrow the government, and somewhat well-fed people tend not to overthrow their government (see Egypt and their bread subsidy). From what I can tell, the Chinese people are starting to grow a bit restless, and a bit more bold in their internal social medias while conforming to the standards of their censorship.

Along the lines of car repair. Used car dealerships: https://www.tipranks.com/news/cvna-kmx-azo-stocks-of-used-car-dealers-and-repair-shops-surge-on-news-of-trump-auto-tariffs "CVNA, KMX, AZO: Stocks of Used Car Dealers and Repair Shops Surge on News of Trump Auto Tariffs" If the tariff look like they will be around for a while, then it would reduce demand from the higher prices. This would lead to consumer behavior change to look for alternatives like more Uber, Lyft, Zipcar(?), public transportation, or even more escooter/ebikes rental? Other cascading effects may be that delivery services (Doordash, Amazon, UPS, Fedex) will have increased demand with less cars around to use. IMHO, these might be extrapolating too much though to be actionable unless somebody comes up with more insight. Anyone? Anyone?

Feels like I'm day-trading. The limits tripped for NVO, and picked that up as well. NVO trading not that much above t-bills in terms of P/E. It is sick. Note: CLIP (short-term t-bill ETF) actually moved downward for the day, outside of the dividend distribution day. This is so abnormal.

The way it's trending, I'd be happy if the government can continue to provide trustworthy economic data. On the flip side, we seem to be getting more insight into really accurate non-classified battle plans that we didn't get with the previous administrations. Trade-offs.

It looks like my limit triggered for GOOGL, so now I have more.

There have already been some experiments in UBI: https://www.npr.org/2024/01/10/1197956397/give-directly-universal-basic-income-poverty-kenya https://www.research.ox.ac.uk/article/2020-05-12-the-evidence-behind-putting-money-directly-in-the-pockets-of-the-poor I have not done a deep dive on this, but from what I've read, giving directly to the most poor typically does not result in misspending like many on the right fear, but the recipient actually better themselves with it in a fairly optimal way. The only way to achieve this is to redistribute it from the haves to the have-nots from a broad perspective. Whether AI would be the catalyst that pushes the politics in this direction or not is questionable, but in the current political climate, it seems like it's a no-go seeing that people bicker about something as basic as universal healthcare (right to get practical care to live, essentially) in the U.S., never mind giving money away. Other 'socialist' countries that have better safety-net programs may already have many elements of a UBI... If a country like Denmark can provide the below to prisoners, I can only imagine the kind of safety nets they would provide to law abiding citizens. So given all that, experimenting at smallish scale is very different from scaling it up to an entire country. Many implementations do go awry when scaled, along with the increased inefficiencies... As a natural experiment, the COVID impact payments is probably as close to what it would look like. It would be interesting to dig around to see the studies on those impact outside the ones that we already know about, the trick-up effect, the inflation, etc... There are probably a lot of MMT nuances that I missed/glossed over, so feel to jump in, or provide links to more relevant discussion/forums that might discuss these in detail. Yeah, this is a pretty big topic that might not be relevant to a stock forum, at least in the near-medium term.