Dinar
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Posts posted by Dinar
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@John Hjorth, John, I would not be so pessimistic. While the situation in Ukraine is awful, and unclear when it will end and how, I would be shocked if there is any long term impact on the Baltics, let alone Denmark/Sweden/Finland, besides possibly higher energy prices as these countries diversify from Russia.
I cannot imagine after the bloody nose that Russia has received in Ukraine, that it would attack any of those countries. In addition, given that all of them are either Nato members or about to become Nato members I would not be worried.
I hope that you had a merry Christmas, and I wish you and your family, a healthy, happy, prosperous and peaceful 2023!
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2 hours ago, LC said:
Good way of looking at it. Do you know if brokers are compensated as a % of the overall policy or is it fixed? I.e. are brokers benefitting from hard market pricing (and also hurt as price softens)?
Usually yes, brokers get a % rather than a fixed commission.
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@Spekulatius, forget Tucker. The more important issue is that the support for Ukraine will drastically erode over time as the cost born by the West keeps growing over time while the people get worse off.
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4 hours ago, UK said:
John, nice to know you! No problem, I am from Vilnius, Lithuania. It is some 180 km from Minsk, Belarus and only some 40 km from their new nuclear power plant in Astravets. My mother tongue is Lithuanian, but I also understand and speak Russian well, since my generation was probably one of the last, which still had Russian language on the full schedule at school (and on tv). Actually I love Russian classic literature etc. In my previous job, some 10+ years ago, I also worked on a project in Ukraine (in a town somewhere near Odessa), and my former employer was working on some other projects in a country, including in Mariupol, right until this February. Btw this summer we were visiting Billund, not that far from a place you live, very nice place for a fans of Lego:)
I was in Vilnius and Kaunas 35 years ago, what an amazing place, and a culture shock for a someone coming from the Soviet Union. It was more European than Soviet.
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I was in Alsace and Freiburg in fall of 2014, I wish I knew...
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17 hours ago, maxthetrade said:
Well, I need a break from the relatives
Had some excellent vintage Champagne:
and some over 40 years old Tawny Port, my favorite Port of all time:
A perfect match with a cheese plate from Maitre affineur Antony and some selfmade Baguettes:
The cheese is in a class of its own, if you ever get a chance to taste his cheese do it, you won't regret!
Where can you buy this champagne in North America? You are in Alsace? I looked up the cheese monger, he is in Alsace, no?
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1 hour ago, formthirteen said:
Thanks. I needed some good news.
But, as an investor in PM and MO I was unhappy to read this, LOL:
The World Tobacco Atlas revealed that for the first time the proportion of smokers in the world has fallen. That's a hugely consequential shift that will save millions of lives. Out near the front of the pack? The United States, where cigarette smoking is down sharply, and New Zealand, the first country to implement an annually rising smoking age, ensuring tobacco cannot be sold to anyone born after 1 January 2009.
I miss SWMA already, LOL.
PM is actually having volume growth as smokers are switching to IQOS. Yes, I agree re SWMA (PM bought it from me), but PM owns it now.
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Western European and somewhat US incompetence is stunning
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30 minutes ago, ValueArb said:
One day the American empire will fall because no one comes to our aid, and we’ll say “we don’t deserve this! I just built a new house!”
Yeah, and if we just give Ukraine a trillion dollars, then the Germans who can't be bothered to live up to NATO commitments for the past thirty years and Ukrainian government that steals everything will send troops without weapons and ammunitions to help the US.
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18 minutes ago, ValueArb said:
nobody owes Ukraine anything.nobody owes Finland anything
nobody owes Sweden anything
nobody owes Poland anything
nobody owes the next domino anything
Finland fought the USSR to a draw, while Ukraine with 10x the population would have already collapsed without Western aid. Go cheer for Ukrainian corruption.
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6 hours ago, ValueArb said:
if Putin wins in Ukraine, he becomes an existential threat to Europe. He’s been moving one country at a time for a long while.and the performance of the Russian military has been far better than their performance in 1941, and they ended up winning that war. Russia is enormous and deep with resources. They can easily replace their losses ten times over. Europe is massively wealthy, can easily afford higher energy prices AND to aid Ukraine. Especially when France and Germany have barely contributed so far.
USSR lost at least 20M people in World War II, and USSR was much bigger with more resources than Russia. No way can Russia afford this kind of a victory.
USSR was several times bigger than Germany, and Germany was fighting US & UK as well.
Western Europe has 3-4x more population than Russia today. Oh, and Putin is not Hitler.
As for what Europeans can or cannot afford, go to a German or UK pub and tell people that each one should suffer $5K in more expenses per annum via higher fuel & food costs as well as higher taxes to support Ukraine and see whether you can come out of there alive.
Talk is cheap, telling other people that they should sacrifice their prosperity for the sake of foreigners is easy when you do not have to do it. Go and sell all of your possessions, turn off heat in your home and give all the money to Ukrainians before telling the people in Europe to sacrifice anything.
Nobody owes Ukraine anything.
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1 hour ago, ValueArb said:
if higher energy prices ends European support for Ukraine, we should just negotiate Europes complete surrender to Putin now. Can you imagine Churchill telling Parliament, “We shall fight them on the beaches, unless gas prices exceed 25 cents per gallon as I have an election to win!”You are being melodramatic. Hitler was an existential threat to Europe, Putin is not. Putin has shown that Russian army is incapable of winning a war, it is not Wehrmacht and Shoigu is no Rommel/Erich Von Manstein.
You are also conveniently forgetting the tens of billions of dollars that Ukraine has received and continues to ask for. When your people are freezing, they may not understand giving tens of billions to Ukrainians. The moment Western money ends, the war is over.
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3 minutes ago, SharperDingaan said:
Most would expect volatility, but any numbers are little better than 3-month guesses.
As/when the US starts filling the SPR, the NA floor for heavy sour crude is supposedly USD 70-75 landed, and sourced primarily from Mexico, VZ, and Canada. If US/UK LNG exports are to double over winter, the SPR will also be filling with associated light crude from mostly southern US fields. Ukraine severely damages a Russian oil/gas facility in a reprisal raid, and o/g prices materially spike upwards overnight.
SD
Yes, but won't materially higher oil prices kill Europe's economy and hence end support for Ukraine? Similarly in the US it would be hard to send $30-50bn a year when people are struggling to afford gas and food?
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34 minutes ago, Viking said:
The key to pricing for any commodity will be demand and supply. Looking out 12-24 months i am quite optimistic oil prices will be higher and probably much higher. Over the next year, absent a severe global recession, i expect oil to do ok ($75) to very good (+$100). So lots of volatility just like 2022.Demand:
- China ending zero covid should add +1 million barrels per day, but likely with a delay into Q2
- slowing global economies is a big unknown. Hard landing is only scenario where global demand actually goes down and i don’t think that is in the cards.
- US. will need to re-filling SPR at some point.
Supply
- capex across the globe remains muted so supply will increase but modestly.
- US will be ending releases of SPR at some point in 2023 = reduction of 800,000 to 1 million barrels per day.
- Russia: given sanctions and much lower capex spend (lower in 2023 than during covid in 2020) i would expect supply from Russia to decline over time. No idea of cadence (how much how fast).
- OPEC: appears to want oil in $80-90 range. Given how tight oil market currently is OPEC might get their wish.
Ukraine war is a wild card. Weather in Europe is a wild card.
Yes, but what about Venezuela? Can its production recover? Could it go back from 400K barrels a day to 2MM?
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It is not in the management's interest to do a tender offer or to give people an option to redeem via ETF.
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1 hour ago, Spekulatius said:
The LNG terminal in Wilhelmshafen received its first load. This terminal can import 5% of the German There is a other one going operational soon and a couple more after this later.
The NG shortage is not over yet but I think the worst case scenario is pretty much off the table unless the winter continues to be very gold (as it happens to be right now).
Incredible how fast this was built
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2 hours ago, SharperDingaan said:
The reality is that retail is pretty clueless, and always has been. Back in the day, HF's used to be very smart ... but now? - not much better than retail. Margining and packaging dogshit to retail in shiny wrappers, claiming they are fully hedged, and blowing up as/when the market moves against 25%+. Mostly smart enough to not be holding the bag when it blows up; but hey bud, WTF happened to those hedges !!
Buying/selling multiple names in any quarter isn't investing, it's addiction. And addiction is a great business! as every reasonably competent legal drug pusher can attest to. There are very few genuinely very good investors, they are almost all contrarian, and for the most part they are all private.
Inflation thing. Prices do not go down simply because inflation goes down; lower inflation does not reduce the number of people having to use foodbanks. And inflation driven wage increases, REDUCE the number of people forced to use those foodbanks. The only whining is pensioners whose pension isn't inflation adjusted, and businesses exploiting low cost wages; folks who knew they were taking risks, and believed everyone else should pay for it! ..... welcome to moral hazard.
SD
SD, with all due respect, inflation is another tax on savers/investors/home owners, so it confiscates the wealth of people. I have nothing against business paying good or above market wages, but I remember how in college economics professors praised inflation since wages are sticky on the downside and inflation allows for wage cuts without actually cutting wages.
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Bought CNQ & GHC
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2 minutes ago, formthirteen said:
History is complex and everyone is ”conveniently" ignoring historical memes.
Everyone hopefully agrees that it was unnecessary to humiliate Germany after WW1. Russia was humiliated in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed, but most of it was because of their own stupidity. This time it seems they are humiliating themselves again.
But maybe you're right, we could bow down to Russia and let ”Putin” take
SudetenlandCrimea. Wait, don't forget to give him Eastern Ukraine, and what should we do about Southern Ukraine? Okay, let's give him Abkhazia and Transnistria too.It seems Russia's meme writers (Pushkin, Putin, etc) are more powerful than international law.
Ok, when you compare Putin to Hitler, I know that further discussion is not productive. Sandro from Chegem (Fazil Iskander) would laugh at you and your assertions regarding Abkhazia and Transnistria.
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@dealraker, Charlie, thank you for the post. Would you be able to share what you think are good business to own? (forget about current valuations, as you know they fluctuate) I am just trying to add to my database of businesses to follow and buy if the occasion presents itself. Thank you.
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4 hours ago, formthirteen said:
I understand your viewpoint, but the easiest off-ramp is Russia leaving Ukraine and Crimea. Russia's propaganda machine is able to spin that as a victory to the people of Russia, for example, ”We were right, NATO attacked us but we are still here”.
Also, Russia does not respect any contracts or treaties, only power and force.
Putin is Russia. Invading and destabilizing neighbors is Russia's culture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia). Removing Putin will not change that culture.
Basically, it's a war of memes and cultures:
A war of Borscht (see video):
No opinion on the war, other than ”it is what it is”.
Actually, no. Neither Putin nor any other Russian leader will be able to sell leaving Crimea. You are conveniently ignoring history. Crimea was part of Russia for two centuries before it was transferred to Ukraine in 1954 by Khruschev (Ukrainian) to celebrate 300 year anniversary of Russia - Ukraine unification. Also, eastern Ukraine and Western Ukraine are very different. Eastern Ukraine is very much like Russia while Western Ukraine, a huge chunk of which like Lviv (Lemberg) was Austrian until 1917, is more nationalistic and closer to Poland and Austria. Even in Soviet times, everyone spoke Ukrainian and did not want to speak Russian in Western Ukraine (Lviv, et all) while speaking Russian and not Ukrainian in the eastern part.
The key to ending the war (assuming Putin is rational and just miscalculated) is to find a way for him to save face, so he can declare victory and leave Ukraine.
As for Russia not respecting treaties and only respecting power and force, yes you are right. Sadly, however this is not limited to Russia. Germany, US, China, Japan and the list goes on.
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1 hour ago, changegonnacome said:
Haven't had time to dig around in these latest reads properly......but dont need to on one point.......those that exclude Food and Energy have no idea about real life..........and that F&E makes up about 70-80% wallet share of those less well off than they are....housing the rest.....and that is not a small amount of people out of the total population.......inflation pressure is the difference between running out of money on the 27th of month and running out of money on the 20th of the month.
Only a tenured professor at an Ivy league business school would say something so dumb with a straight face as in -
price inflation data excluding food to stay alive and energy to stay warm/cool
apart from that for everything else is awesome.
Quick read so far - as predicted the trip from 9% down to 5% is kind of a mathematical certainty......this journey 9 to 5 is indeed the COVID inflation/supply chain/Ukraine stuff going away..........its the trip from 5% to 2% that will be the bitch.....that 3% is god damn monetary inflation.......and its pain in the A to get rid off.
I am sorry, but food + energy = 70-80% of spending? I am sorry that does not sound credible. How do you arrive at those figures?
Assuming a family of four and $1000 a month grocery bill (I know plenty of people who spend that much on groceries for a family of four), that is $12K per annum. Even if you drive 80 miles per day 20 days per month, that's using 30 miles per gallon, that's 54 gallons or another $150 per month at Costco. So, their budget is $1150 / 0.7 = $1643 per month or $20K per annum.
What income do these people have? Assuming 40 hours per week at $20 per hour, that $40K per year income assuming one person working and essentially zero taxes (only Social Security + Medicare) already gives you a $36K per year budget before government transfers, if any. Assuming 2 people work, which is normal by the way the budget would be closer to $60K per year.
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His mother by the way seems certified batshit crazy leftist with zero common sense. If I am not mistaken, she claimed that people have no free will, and concepts of personal responsibility in crime and finance should not exist. There goes civilization...
A real pity, since SBF is clearly a brilliant guy who was raised by brilliant parents with probably zero common sense. What a waste of intellect!
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Russia-Ukrainian War
in General Discussion
Posted
@ValueArb,
a) Russia is NOT USSR, it has a fraction of military might population
b) It is not up to Biden, Congress has to go along.
c) Western Europe is NOT US
d) Russia is not a treat to the US, China is