Dinar

Why do you think that the new government will end the war? It seems to me, that there is a broad consensus in Israel that Hamas and Hezbollah must be destroyed. I agree 100% with your point on rolling the dice.

@UK, thank you very much. Yes, coming with three kids, tied to the school schedule, oldest will be 9 and youngest almost 4. I would like to show my wife (born in Kiev) and my three kids (born in the US), the Baltics, so I would definitely go to Tartu, Talinn, Riga, Kaunas, Vilnius. None of us have been to Krakow, and I have never been to Scandinavia. For the kids' first European trip, I was debating between beach and culture (Prague, Paris.) I was thinking of Spain (Barcelona, Valencia) since it is easy to combine beach and culture, but yes, I have heard of the recent heat waves over the last couple of years.

Why do you think so? Let's say tomorrow Bibi and his crew lose the election, good riddance! What will change? In my opinion, nothing. Hamas is dedicated to wiping Israel off the map, so is Hezbollah. Say tomorrow Israel withdraws from Judea and Samaria and gives east Jerusalem to Palestinian Authority. Within 5 years, Hamas will run West Bank, and at some point, Hezbollah & Hamas will attack from three sides.

Yes, and money, but with the right woman, it is so worth it! People like you - wealthy, well rounded and educated should have kids, rather than people who don't care about their offspring. Perhaps you are depriving the world of the new Avicenna.

If you had a choice between spending the summer in Yurmala, German Baltic coast or Italy/Spain/Greece, which would you choose? If you would not choose Yurmala, why not? Thank you.

Why wouldn't you own Safran or GE? Better businesses and better growth prospects.

Dude, the Baltics were part of the Russian empire from 1740s (called Kurland) until 1917. Then USSR 1939-1941, Germany (1941-1944), and then USSR again 1944-1990. Lithuania did NOT expel Russian troops, there was the Soviet Army, and Lithuania did not have the ability to do it. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia left voluntary. Lithuania never had the means to expel anyone. Might as well say that Austria expelled the Soviet troops in 1955....

What is your thesis on Rentokil? Do you think that they can turn around the Terminix business? It seems that their organic revenue growth has been below inflation for at least five if not ten years.

Park Ohio (PKOH) - insider bought $1mm worth of stock. Weyerhauser (WY) - insider bought $1mm worth of stock. Does anyone have any view on any of these?

I don't care for Bibi. Actually, what you call a cockmammie theory was the original plan by the British - modern Jordan, called Transjordan to become an Arab state, and everything west of the Jordan river to become a Jewish state. There is no Palestinian people. There are Arab people, who have lived for at least two thousand years in modern Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Not sure, but I do not think that they lived in Egypt or Lebanon before the Muslim conquest. Similarly, Syrians, at least 2000 ago were distinct from the Arabs, and Romans distinguished between Syrians and Arabs. I hate to remind you, but the place west of the Jordan River was called Israel, Judea and Samaria until the Romans renamed it Palestina after one of the Judean revolts - either 133 AD or 72 AD. The people who lived their were Jews and Samaritans. Arabs did not live there. Gaza was called Gaza for ages, and while Jews have lived there for millenia, I don't know who else lived there besides the Jews, although clearly non-Jews have lived in Gaza as well for thousands of years. There was another Semitic people - the Nabateans, who built Petra, they may have been wiped out in the Arab conquest. I am not well versed in Nabatean history.

Gibbons was a good book. I really like books by Simon Sebag Montifiore (court of the Red Czar) and Fernaund Braudel

Well, they are both Semites. Who knows. According to the Islamic tradition, Arabs are children of Abraham by Hagar, if I am not mistaken, and Jews are his children by Sarah (I think.) I only read the old Testament and the New Testament (some three dozen years ago), flipped through the Koran and never read the Jewish holy books (Tanah, Talmud, the Prophets, etc...)

80% of Jordan's population are descendants of Arabs from West Bank, which by the way came from Arabia and Jordan. If Jordan is not a Palestinian state in all but name, then what is it?

Of course you can! Germans are not asking for Sudenland - a place where they had lived for 500+ years. Greeks are not asking for return of their historical lands in Turkey, neither are Armenians! They both had lived in Anatolia for more than 2000 years.

Houthis are not the problem, Iran is, or more precisely the current government of Iran. They are pulling strings behind the curtain.

Egypt never had a stake in the fight, and got paid handsomely with Sinai and US military aid. So why do they care? They don't have a stake. They refused to take Gaza back. Jordan is glad to wash its hands of the Palestinians. Or have you forgotten who killed the current king's grandfather and the attempted uprising in Jordan by Palestinians in 1970 - Black September? If you offered Judea and Samaria or West Bank with Jerusalem to Jordan, do you really think they will take it?

Seriously? What is the probability that Hamas is reborn in Gaza in a few years and attacks again? The only way that Hamas is defeated in Gaza permanently is as follows: Gaza is in ruins, and all Palestinians have left Gaza. Then it will be clear that Hamas has lost. Similarly, Hezbollah will not be defeated until Shiites are expelled from Lebanon and Lebanon becomes Christian and Sunni Muslim. Then, it will be clear to everyone that Hezbollah has been defeated and unable to reconstitute itself. This is what happened to Germany after WWII. Otherwise, Hezbollah will keep reconstituting itself like a Greek hydra - you chop a head and three grow. You are welcome to disagree, but then how do you prevent a new organization rising like a phoenix from the ashes? This is how the world has worked for millenia, what makes you think things are different this time?

100,000 Israelis cannot return to the north of Israel. It is already a war zone. Hezbollah chooses when to escalate and Israel is just a Pavlov's dog. Israeli leadership has shown itself to be incompetent on October 7th and it still has not been able to defeat Hamas - a job that could have taken less than a month (Mongols would have done it within a month).

Once you factor in state and local income tax and inflation, it will be closer to 90%

Actually it does not. Hezbollah still decides when and how to escalate. Israel's policy of containment is a strategic failure. Israel is winning tactically and losing strategically. In the next war, US may not back Israel, Israel must wipe out Hezbollah if it is to restore deterrence and have a modicum of peace. What to do about Iran's nuclear ambitions is another life or death question.

In case it matters to you, IRS does not consider Hong Kong and Singapore dividends qualified dividends.

I agree with you, however if you look at Kamala Harris' platform, she calls for billions of tax increases on oil and gas firms on top of regular corporate tax increases.

There is an offset to this. R&D spending should not be written off since it is more like cap ex, yet it is. As S&P becomes more and more R&D intensive, and as R&D grows sharply over time, earnings from this standpoint are understated.

Thank you for the compliment. I would suggest that you take a look at Arcosa, I think that it is still cheap, albeit with lower quality assets than CRH or MLM/VMC. Management is better than at MLM/VMC. What is the rationale for CWK? Thank you.

Thank you. Basically the company had a sharp increase in profitability over the last several years, and I and probably others were not sure whether the profits would stay at this high level. The company was hinting in the 10Ks and 10Qs that the profits improvement was sustainable however. Then, in its Q1 2024 press release, the company announced that it was going to do a tender offer at $925 for 30% of its s/o, while the CEO who owned 10% would NOT tender. This was a signal to me, and perhaps others, that not only profits were sustainable, but would grow. So I immediately bought shares. Then in the Q2 results, the company not only did well, but in the 10Q the company further raised estimates of future profitability. It also promised to return capital to shareholders. This week, it raised dividend from $0.50 per share per quarter $2.50, and announced a $1bn share repurchase (enough to buy back more than 10% of s/o).