Dinar
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Posts posted by Dinar
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18 minutes ago, no_free_lunch said:
It's not so black and white. There are options for escalation between current support and some type of direct NATO-RU conflict. That is what we are witnessing in fact. Increased supply and more sophisticated weapons can be delivered to Ukraine. Some type of private military, a parallel to Wagner could be employed, it already is to a very limited extent by virtue of volunteers. Drones play a significant role and can be upscaled by western donors.
Who is going to pay for all of this? Ukraine needs $50bn per year to fight and probably a trillion for reconstruction. There is not a chance in hell the US will come up with $25bn per year for the next five years.
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3 hours ago, cubsfan said:
Tough one, but important question.I’d say beyond significant material support- should Russia prevail. No, but the west would need to figure out a permanent penalty to make it very painful.
Europeans entitled to a different viewpoint, since this never should have happened and threatens them the most. I certainly wouldn’t feel good living in Poland or the Baltic States.
Why? Baltics are part of Nato and so is Poland, that's a big difference!
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Added to Transdigm (TDG) and Philip Morris International (PM)
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3 hours ago, mcliu said:
This is probably not an option, but what happens if Ukraine starts losing the war? Should NATO intervene? Would people in the West support a direct war against Russia?
Hell no!
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1 hour ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:
I agree with you, but with nuance.
If you ask someone about inflation, often they'll point to the cost at the pump.
But average price for fuel in the summer of 2008 was $4.11/gallon. Today it's ~$4/gallon. So I ask, what inflation? It's been 15 years!
Same things can be said for food. Some things are more expensive currently - some things are cheaper. I'm regularly seeing beef/chicken at my grocer stickered for 30-50% to get it sold before the sell-by date.
So yes, prices are more expensive - but if you wait a day or two it's 50% off? What inflation?
CPI is a better way to view average prices overtime than someone's opinion on inflation. But for short-term movements in prices, I agree with you that all that matters are consumers' attitudes and their views on what is likely to happen next with rising prices.
You are cherrypicking, and also saying things that are not true. For instance, in 2004, gas was $1.25 in NJ per gallon and today is it $4 per gallon. In terms of food, in 1990, the grocery bill for my family of 3 was $350 per month in NYC and we ate very well. Today, it is closer to $2000 for a family of 5. I challenge you to spend the same amount of money on food that you did in 2008. Yogurt that I buy has doubled in price in the last 5 years, tomatoes and chicken as well, fish more than doubled, and the list goes on and on.
What food products are cheaper today than they were in 2008?
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16 minutes ago, sleepydragon said:
watching on YouTube the CNBC interviews with the CEOs with these defense companies -- all old white men..
Your point being? Microsoft, Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Berkshire, and the list goes on were all created by white men.
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@Spekulatius, yes, you are absolutely right.
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@RichardGibbons, I grew up in the Soviet Union, you do NOT want to live in a place where everyone is equal. The US does have serious problems and this is how I would begin to address them:
a) Stop immigration. Immigration expands labor supply and depresses wages, particularly for unskilled and the poor. Raises cost of housing, again impacting the poor and middle class the most.
b) Fix public school system (just don't spend more money - NYC spends USD 40K per kid, and outcomes are awful, Newark tripled its spending per pupil, nothing improved.) and give vouchers for private schools to kids. Break the monopoly of public schools. Mandate personal finance classes in every grade starting with 5th in every school, and teach personal responsibility. Classes how to choose a spouse, a job.
c) End federal guarantee of student loans which just serve to enrich colleges. Use the money to reduce budget deficit.
d) End personal income tax on the first USD 50K of income of you are single, $100K if you are married, and say $100K if you are single + kids, $200K if you are married with kids. End all personal deductions, including for charity and mortgage interest.
e) Fix healthcare system which is dysfunctional and a cancer on the US. Three quick solutions: 1) Every hospital/medical practice should have publicly listed price list and law of one price - you have to charge everyone, ensured and uninsured same price, no $50K bill but $10K if you have insurance (80% discount negotiated by your insurance company) and $50K if you pay cash. 2) Mandate that for every medicine in the US, pharmaceutical companies cannot charge more than say 30% more than the same medicine costs in Canada. 3) Ban rebates and other abusive practice in the pharmaceutical industry in the US.
f) Reform welfare and other social programs. It should not be that in the US, a single mother with 2 kids gets so much generous support that she needs to earn $150K per annum in NYC before she is better off working than sitting on the dole.
g) Stop the whole switch to solar and wind which is very expensive, particularly for the poor, and build nuclear power plants - cheap, environmentally friendly electricity.
I am sure that there are a number of things that should be done that I have missed.
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1 hour ago, tede02 said:
I bought TIPS for the first time this week with real yields over 2% (chart is slightly out dated). When you think about earning a 2% real yield on cash, that is pretty damn good historically.
aven't been in this range much historically.
TIPS are NOT cash. They are bonds, albeit inflation indexed ones.
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@RichardGibbons, what do you think the implications of a 99% inheritance tax will be? I will bet that you will
a) see tax collection decline
b) people move out of the country (like Eduardo Saverin did)
c) massive misallocation of resources and economic destruction. (If I had a net worth of $200MM and could only leave $30MM to my kids, I would move out of the US. If I was prevented from doing so, I would then buy $170MM worth of apartment buildings or a really scarce commodity and burn them down. Most of the kids I know from high school would do same thing by the way.)
By the way, I came to the US as a penniless immigrant, and 70% of the kids in my high school were penniless immigrants. We all became doctors, lawyers, programmers, etc.... I have yet to meet someone in the US (excluding people who are very ill) who worked hard, saved and did not do well.
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1 hour ago, no_free_lunch said:
The real cheat code would be to ignore Ukraine and focus on problems at home. Build up the economy, education systems, reduce corruption, so much more. With its energy and other resources they could be very wealthy.
For the moment I thought that you were talking about US. You are absolutely right of course, that's what Russia should have done. It needs Lee Quan Yew and so do we.
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1 hour ago, no_free_lunch said:
This is good. It provides additional leverage for negotiations.
Reading the coverage, I feel that when Russia gets attacked it's always spun as though they have been cheated. "The UK is supplying weapons..." Yes, they are. All predictable responses for attacking a country with which defense alliances exist. Russia can stop this immediately by simply removing themselves from Ukrainian territory. I have no sympathy for their position.
Would you mind providing proof for your assertion that there is a defense alliance between UK and Ukraine? I was not aware that one existed.
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29 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:
What makes you think the CEO (Hayes) is incompetent? UTX did quite well when he was CEO from 2014-2020. I would even state that the merger with Raytheon was a good capital allocation move, as was the spinoff of Carrier and RESI.
Really? Why do you think that UTX did quite well from 2014-2020? I do not recall the company posting good operating performance. Sure it was good that Carrier & Otis were spun off, but Otis organic revenue growth has been below peers for years.
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43 minutes ago, sleepydragon said:
Bought KVUE
Why? This is a no growth business, right? 16-17x p/e on 2024 is not expensive, but what's the upside? 20x?
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RTX, in my opinion, has an insanely incompetent CEO and CFO (who was an IR guy before becoming CFO.) I wonder how good the next layer of management is as well? This is NOT a business that a moron can run!
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3 minutes ago, RedLion said:
I wrote a bunch of puts on this name around this price around this time last year. I really like the assets here, and think it’s attractive around $120.I looked into doing same right now, but there is no vol in the options.
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SUI - Sun Communities at $121.33
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@Xerxes, I agree 100% with you regarding the risk at Safran (which I own.) That's why Safran is a 5% position and not a 10% position. The way I deal with it also is that in my back of the envelope DCF, I assume Safran's unlevered cost of capital = inflation + 6%. I have always been worried about this given troubles at Rolls Royce.
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31 minutes ago, Xerxes said:
full disclosurei add this morning at $73 or so and increase my ownership by 35%. Probably dead money for a few years but I need to do a portion of my RRSP for the year.
portfolio allocation is still around ~3% or so
i considered this as critical infrastructure asset. The narrative upended by GTF (and for good reason) but there is more to it than that. The company will have a chance to show in late 2024, that I can generate cash in Collins and Raytheon and hopefully put in place an accelerated share repurchase once they got a good handle on the current concern issue.
Isn't the earnings quality lousy? A bunch of operating income comes from pensions, no? Also, given the engine issues, should we not increase discount rate since the business is riskier than perhaps we thought in the past?
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25 minutes ago, dipod said:
No lol. Wish my account were that size. But a decent amount. Premiums were too good to ignore. And it's a stock I want to buy.
Oh, I agree, I sold a few today as well it was either 50 or 70 implied vol, I forget what it was, but it seemed way too high.
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1 hour ago, dipod said:
Shorted some KVUE 1 week $21 puts. Decent premiums, discount to current price if assigned.
So you are the one who sold 5K contracts, eh?
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20 minutes ago, mcliu said:
I think best value but also maybe value trap in banking and energy.
There is an article in the WSJ that you may find interesting re banks. https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/commercial-real-estate-regional-banks-9f8f591d
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One of my biggest investing mistakes was selling my position in ASR in 2007. One thing to remember about ASR is that it is very vulnerable to hurricanes.
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Maui matters because if the local population and politicians that behaved irresponsibly (including not bothering to get insurance in many cases, and not deal with fire hazards the local government was warned about for years) is bailed out, then there is no incentive for anyone in the US to get any catastrophe insurance.
Russia-Ukrainian War
in General Discussion
Posted
@UK, @no_free_lunch, there has not been a poll done in at least a year of US citizens asking whether or not they would be willing to pay $100 per person per year to support the war in Ukraine. You may think $25bn per annum is a small price to pay, but US citizens think otherwise. Also, nobody is talking about handing the region over to Russia. However, it is NOT the job of US taxpayers to support Ukraine. It is the job of Ukrainians.
Yes, we are obligated to defend Poland and the Baltics due to treaty obligations.
Meanwhile, let's not forget, Ukraine has never existed as a country. Western Ukraine was part of Austro-Hungarian empire for centuries, and eastern Ukraine was called Little Russia for centuries, and part of Russian empire, and was Russian speaking. Hell, Kiev was called the mother of Russian cities.