SharperDingaan

Quite agree, the whole purpose of setting the table is to rig the game in your favor. So when you increasingly can't get the simple task right .. it speaks volumes to the fragility of your 'infrastructure'. Opportunity SD

No particular preference. NTR, GSP, WRX, KRN All on the TSX, all mining potash in Saskatchewan, all politically 'safe'. Each a boat on the expected rising tide, offering different takes. However, NTR also has an options market. Obviously, do your own DD. Within Canada, you might also want to include CP and CN. Simply because what Ukraine doesn't produce, the rest of the world will need to make up for. More grain volume than usual moving from silos/storage to ports, and it is already getting hard to find available rail transport (tankers/box cars etc.) for Fall. Good luck, SD

You might also want to keep in mind the type of oil ... There is a material US deficit in sour crude that is being met out of SPR releases, and on some occasions the entire SPR release is sour crude. The remaining SPR sour crude inventory is estimated to be < 240,000 (very low), net of minimum balances to maintain the structural integrity of the salt caverns themselves. Lot of folks starting to look for available Q4 railcars, sending WCS south and returning north with dilbit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbit SD

Ultimately, it is a game of trying to predict a bottom - with a bad set of tools. In almost all cases the tool assumes that the future will resemble the past, so when this this clearly isn't so ..... the tools fail. It is not the tool mechanics breaking down, it is the data that they are using. We have had continuous extraordinary CB involvement since the GR in 2007 - the last 15 years of the time series. So if this is a material portion of your historic recency weighted historic time series .... you are assuming similar extraordinary CB intervention going forward. You are ALSO assuming that the impact of changing technology is minimal. Hard to defend. So ..... now we have to do investment the 'old-fashioned' way, or how things were done before the 'quants' arrived. Sniff tests, focus on business fundamentals vs market, and not just on market comps and multiples, etc. Less 'formula', and more true 'value add'. Obviously, there is opportunity here. Sniff test. How is it that the analytical community STILL doesn't 'get' the changes going on in o/g, vehicle manufacturing (ICE to EV), food production (fertilizer), real estate, etc.? How is that retail increasingly seems to be getting this better than the analytical community? We know that Ukraine isn't producing surplus food anymore, that famines are inevitable, yet the analytical community is NOT talking up the fertilizer stocks? POT, etc. Obviously, something is very wrong ..... Opportunity !!! SD

Always the heretic we would put a few things to you .... While WEB lives, a lot of things that should be happening, aren't. WEB dies, following a suitable period of mourning - BRK goes through a modernization. Not much different to the British Royalty .... do you really think that the British Royalty is going to look anything like it currently does - after the queen is dead? Riches to rags in 3 generations. This first turnover is from a god to a mere mortal, historically they do not work out so well. Most would expect fund managers to initially sell into the 'legacy' euphoria in recognition of that, hence 20%+ downside. Then quietly buy back as 12-18 months later, mourning is over, the cash pile gets 'distributed', BRK gets broken up into multiple entities each trading at much more affordable share prices, and everyone raving as the sum of parts is now worth > than the whole. Its also known as asset stripping. Nothing wrong in that, but if you think that post WEB, BRK simply remains as it is - the odds are very likely against you. SD

Rents are dirt cheap, and the annual rent raise is capped in most places. As most include property tax, mortgage, and condo fees; inflation cost > rent raise is eaten by the landlord. A non issue a long as the landlord has turnover, if not - the landlord needs to sell. Rates of your floating rate mortgage rise > 150bp over 3-6 months, and you're f*****. However, rents are rising rapidly. If the place you live in is sold, your rental deal is off if the buyer is a family that actually wants to live in the place. Not unusual for the displaced to find that the rent on their new place is 2-3x higher than it was on the old. Sticker shock, mostly because the old rent was artificially low. SD

Keystone (Canada-US pipeline) is stranded largely because a re-approval would require massive damages payouts, which is not politically practical. The best alternative is a 'national interest' re-approval and completion of the pipeline on the government dime, and a sale/leaseback of the government interest to industry. Still very difficult. The pipeline carries very high political risk, that risk will continue well after it is completed, and there is very real possibility that it will economically strand before it reaches end of life. Can't make the business case, and existing write-downs cannot be reversed until Keystone is actually completed and product has begun flowing (years away). The more practical alternative is a build out of west-north-east gas pipelines that are entirely in Canada. Product/transportation/related employment a better fit for the times, globally strategic, more politically viable, and delivery from sea to sea to sea. US pipelines connecting to the trunk, where it makes sense. The Canadian energy future is bright for decades to come, but it gets there by stepping back from reliance on the US. The US has a great many disruptive issues to resolve (failed Jan 06 Coup d'état, Roe vs Wade reversal, etc.), that will take years to work through. In the meantime it is just pragmatic to avoid getting stepped on, by giving the elephant some distance. SD

Depends on your time horizon, and your directional degree of certainty; Speculation (1 day-2 quarters) vs investment (1-6 years); the longer the hold, the greater the certainty. The short-term community is just trading headlines, and today the news feed is negative. Speculative manic depression at work. Energy is not manufacturing, and vendors are not price makers; applying a multiple to historic earnings just doesn't work. Multiples are used, but it is on a FFO, FCF, etc - a forecast 12 months out. and NOT eps. Price moves up/down, primarily because future cashflow is expected to be higher/lower; the FFO/FCS multiples themselves move much more slowly. Investment speculation at work. Know your swim lane, then stay in it. SD

Look at Baba, before and after the Beijing Olympics. Baba used to have the material majority of the Chinese payment market, and earned a small piece on every transaction - Baba now has a much lower % of the payment market, and a lot less revenue as a result. Worse still - if Baba was part of an optimized (Black Litterman) portfolio, all the historic co-variances are wrong, as the world has suddenly and materially changed; the portfolio is not optimizing. CBDC disruption. Change Baba to Wells Fargo. If migrants can send money home via a CBDC for free - what do they need a Wells Fargo for? If they don't have to cash cheques at a Walmart? Most would expect that a good chunk of the Wells Fargo remittance earnings goes up in smoke. As with Baba losing market share to a CBDC, and the portfolio issues - so it goes with Wells Fargo as well. CBDC disruption. There is still a need for banks, but they get paid for access to the CBDC infrastructure, and value-add. How many people do they still collectively employ? A mystery SD

The Eurozone is the next jump, and the CBDC will be the digital Euro - supported by multiple CBs settling wholesale via their DSIB's and GSIB's. Lots of economic and political implications to that, particularly to southern and eastern Europe, hence the delays - the limitation is not the technology. Demonstrate the precedent in the Eurozone, and you have the template for something similar in SA, East Asia, Caribbean etc. Technology acceleration. Not spoken to in the Riksbank paper is the impact on state corruption, the biggest obstacle to development in most parts of the world. Do everything via CBDC, and materially more money in the hose gets to the end user, simply because holes are being plugged up - less aid money is required to deliver the same result. Estimates in some quarters, place the cumulative dollar value at around the size of the globes annual 'peace' dividend. Inferred but not spoken to, is what the corrupt do when CBDC is in widespread use - as corruption doesn't go away. The obvious alternatives are greater use of physical cash and BTC. Given that cash is issued by CBs, change the cumulative physical cash in circulation, and you change the demand on the fixed 21M token supply of BTC. CBs get control over the price of BTC, in much the same way that monetary policy works over control in setting interest rate. Against all this is VISA MC in its current form? and we want a multiple of todays earnings to own it? Nothing wrong with paying a multiple, but with this much headwind - it's not going to be very much. SD

If you don't wish to look at China's experience, look at Sweden's https://www.itu.int/hub/2022/01/e-krona-sweden-riksbank-central-bank-digital-currency-cbdc/ https://www.riksbank.se/globalassets/media/rapporter/pov/engelska/2020/economic-review-2-2020.pdf The reality is that if Riksbank, and the Peoples Bank of China (PBOC), did not think that it was a better all round package than the current system, they would not be developing it. The fact that these entities actually issue the currency, and are/have developing/developed a CBDC, strongly indicates that it IS a better all round package. SD

Privacy has a scale, extreme through to zero - give some of it up and you get benefits. Whether that be use of a Facebook/We Chat/Visa-MC collecting data for resale/AI use, or a CB offering guaranteed zero cost payment and liquidity via a CBDC. If you want extreme privacy either use cash, or BTC. There is a reason why most Benjamin's carry traces of cocaine. If I just want to pay for coffee/lunch, there's nothing wrong with cash Thing is ... if I walk into a car dealership, or a brokerage, and try to use a suitcase of cash to buy something - it has entirely different meaning. Cash is great, but it has limitations - as any black market vendor will tell you. So it comes down to transaction cost vs privacy cost - for making everyday transactions (privacy not an issue), VISA MC just isn't competitive against CBDC. VISA MC is really a predatory credit delivery system at 21% interest, for those who couldn't get credit cheaper elsewhere - which is sadly, a very large number of people. However, once you have the CBDC payment rail, it is very simple to add credit/points to it, and offer a much more cost effective solution than VISA MC. Blockchain technology just removes intermediation, and offers the identical product via different and much more cost effective plumbing - exactly what we see here. And this IS blockchain - it's just being done on a private ledger (CB), with a privately agreed upon consensus algorithm debiting account X and crediting account Y. Identical to the process that allows high volume fully auditable securities trade, confirmation, and settlement in < 2.5 seconds vs 3 days.. We live in 2022, not 2002, and over the last 20 years - technological ability has radically changed. A moat only holds up when the underlying technology is NOT changing. SD

The hate on CBDC has nothing to do with its merits - it is because of fear of the digital yuan. If e-CNY didn't work, and very well, there wouldn't be this fear. https://cointelegraph.com/news/draft-bill-to-ban-china-s-digital-yuan-from-us-app-stores CBDC is just another payment method - the same as crypto is. Like it or not, CBDC is a direct competitor, and just does payments better in almost all aspects. The cost is the loss of privacy, and reliance upon the CB. The antidote is zero-trust BTC - which of course has zero value, and we all hate! The place for this discussion is the crypto thread. SD

For the doubters ... the BIS link is the underling technical report, the Globe and Mail link is a more digestable summary https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/us-business/article-crypto-fears-now-materialising-central-bank-body-bis-says/ Roughly 90% of monetary authorities are now exploring CBDCs as they are known. Many hope it will equip them for the online world and fend off cryptocurrencies. But the BIS wants to co-ordinate key issues such as making sure they work across borders. https://www.bis.org/publ/arpdf/ar2022e3.htm Retail CBDCs and fast payment systems ..... Nobody wants a FANG with any kind of significant market share in cross border payment systems. Before Apple there was Facebook Libra; rapidly shut down for very good reason. Where FANGS have been used, it has been primarily to develop/implement domestic payment systems (China, Russia, Nigeria, Caribbean) - that are subsequently 'partnered' with the state. Those payment systems are CBDC's and they make the ancient technology that credit/debit cards run on - instantly obsolete. Of course, you can still get around using horse and buggy - but the motor car is just multiple times more effective, efficient, practical, etc. However ... if we can't see a mainstream CBDC in the US or Europe, it doesn't exist ! The EU, the US, and Canada are amongst that 90% of monetary authorities. The big issues are privacy and integration with CB protection of DSIBs and GSIBs in wholesale CBDC; technical mechanics to making a payment were resolved long ago. They will be in service well within the next 15 years, and when they arrive - most would expect a lot less transactional activity on the VISA MC rails. Hence ... projecting 15 years of current inflation adjusted earnings to arrive at a valuation, makes very little sense. Nobody wants to hear obsolescence, hence the reaction. We get it. We just prefer to drive - by looking through the front-window, and not the rear one! SD

The central bank guarantees is a lot better than the VISA MC guarantee, doesn't cost anything, and includes fraud guarantee. Credit can be obtained for a lot cheaper from a secured Line of Credit, and it is very simple to pay daily interest on the credit balance in your digital wallet. Payment via the CBDC digital wallet centralizes financing services automatically - if you don't have the credit, you have a linked line of credit with available capacity. Excess cash auto-swept into a linked MM Fund account overnight, No capacity, no payment, no fraud. VISA MC was a great innovation in the 1950s. but it's had a 70 year run over multiple product extensions, and is really at the end of its product life cycle. We just cannot imagine an alternative to what we have all grown up with, and refuse to see that the world has changed. That VISA MC has to be torn from my cold dead hands !! SD

You all really need to take a powder .... If I pay 15x earnings, what I am REALLY doing? I am saying current earnings, growing at the inflation rate or better for 15 YEARS, discounted at todays market rate of interest. Yet I know that both blockchain and CBDC are severely disrupting payment rails, and that historic inflation has been a lot higher than the 2-3% CBs are targeting? Most would suggest that future earnings will be a lot less than forecast as activity is lost to competing solutions, and discounted at too low a rate. The multiple is too high. The moat is the payment rails ! it can't be replicated !! Yada, yada .... Back in the day the moat was horse and buggy infrastructure across the land ! yet the motor car utterly replaced it in how long a period? That vaunted 'rails value' is little more than a melting ice cube, melting faster the closer it gets to expiry day. CBDC instantly displaces rails. There is no charge to transact, no fees to pay (or be paid) by anyone, payments are in live-time and guaranteed by the CB, and there is no need for a Visa/Debit card period If you really want points, just buy them at their cash cost. Sure, but it'll never happen !. Yada, yada. Until very recently, Ali Pay and We Chat Pay, held a combined 94% of the payment market in China.- two private companies in a communist country with a near monopoly control over ability to make payment. China took steps, and hard launched the Digital Yuan with the Beijing Olympics ... today that 94% is a lot lower, and continuing to fall quarter over quarter. So much for it'll never happen !! So ,, if you're a VISA/MC investor, and weren't aware of this .... you need to ask yourself why? Leave the cool aide behind. SD

USD 20,000 is roughly the 2017 peak. A price decline convincingly below this, that stays there for a while, shakes out all the gains of the last 4+ years. New financing rounds close off, industry job losses accelerate .... and should a black swan show up, the next layers of technical support are very much lower. If I'm holding BTC puts or short BTC futures, I have strong incentive to break the pegs. Many of the pegs have already broken at much higher prices, and have had to be supported since. That support gets progressively more brittle as prices continue to decline. Hedge settlements go to the banker, and the allowable margin % goes down as the magnitude of the unrealized MTM hedge gain goes up. At an unrealized MTM hedge gain of 50M, maybe the allowable loan is 50% (25M) - but at 100M it gets cut back to 40% (40M) as it has become too risky. The MTM doubled, but it now supports 10M less debt (40-2*25), so boys ... put up additional capital - or watch the pile fail. Brittle. Putting lipstick on the pig, doesn't change the reality .... https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/international-business/us-business/article-crypto-industry-fears-contagion-as-bitcoin-slips-under-20000/ SD

BTC has fallen through the USD 20,000 'barrier' and fell to USD 18,097 06/19 at 5:41 AM. What do you think happens on Monday when the media starts reporting it? and on Tuesday when the US comes back from holiday And should some pegs break again ...... SD

People just don't get that fields have been permanently put into blow-down. Net depletion drawing down longer term o/g supply at about the same rate (or faster) than overall demand. Ongoing industry maintenance capex being stripped and applied to buybacks and dividends for at least the next few YEARS. Global production not being maintained, will keep O/G prices elevated for a very long time, and allow the price to be used to establish EV (energy source, capital stock manufacturing, etc.). Exxon 'rebranding' from an O/G company into an 'energy' company, providing primarily electricity. Powered from gas turbines, wind, wave, and geothermal. Investors have a hate, 'cause energy is just 'too difficult' - can't just trade a 'story line' anymore. Analysts/governments have a hate, 'cause the industry is winding down - and the 'old metrics' just no longer hold anymore. Spin doctors have a hate, 'cause record quarterly cashflows keep getting jammed in their face - forcing them to talk about it. And as indexes continue to fall ... o/g weightings only look better and better. Nothing like the smell of napalm in the morning. Just enjoy the feast. SD

Come on folks ,,, 2 weeks to go through June 30, average Q2 energy prices have been stela, and come early august, the entire industry will report earnings off the charts. What do you think happens when companies start announcing special dividends and buybacks in a big way? SD

BTC as a payment method is just widely misunderstood ...... At the primary level you are paying for ability to make an anonymous payment - high security, high value, infrequent transactions, for less than the cost of money laundering. For these purposes a 50K transaction fee on a 10M payment is squat. At the secondary (Lighting) level, the fee is divided by the size of the batch, and there is incentive to update just once/day. If all you are going to do is pay for coffee/pizza, you don't need this level of security, and could make the payment alternatively at a lot lower transaction cost - zero if using cash. Sure you could use BTC to pay this way, but this is obviously not the target market, as there is minimal utility. Zero value to BTC! However, if you live in a nation with CBDC, this is one of the very few scalable ways by which you CAN pay for black market transactions when the CB is reducing cash in circulation in favor of CBDC. The real target market, and to whom this ability is worth a great deal. Transaction demand is steadily increasing, and CBs around the world continue to work very hard to make it so! It just isn't the demand you thought it was ... SD

You might find the below a very useful DD exercise Google the halving rate of BTC. Record the miner reward and date 50(inception), 25 (2012), 12.5 (2016), 6.25 (2020), 3.125 (2024). Google the price of BTC June 30, 2012, 2016, 2020, and TODAY. Multiple the mining reward at each halving by the BTC price mid-way (June 30) through that year, divide by 100M to get the mining reward per Satoshi. Multiply by 5,000 to get a transactional cost (ie: 5,000 Satoshi for USD 2.50). Multiple by 100M to get to the mining value of 1 BTC. This is essentially a rough production BE estimate, 'cause were it to cost the miner more than this - he/she would stop mining to avoid incurring a loss. Interesting numbers keep showing up, as well as some implications around continuation of the halving process. That 12-14x that rkbabang refers to, could even be conservative! SD

Agreed. Whether the entry point is 8,000 or 14,000 is just a number. The key point is a entry price lower than it is today, and an exit price a lot higher. Our 50K number assumes a mining cost of 5,000 Satoshi for USD 2.50 - or USD 0.0005/Satoshi x 100M = USD 50K/BTC. Theoretically, the more mainstream BTC becomes the greater the transactional demand for Satoshi, the higher the price, and the higher the end value of a BTC. The actual value N years in the future? .... anyone's guess. SD

Just to throw some numbers out .... BTC-USD peak was about USD 61,308. If 6-10% of 'peak' is the eventual expectation .., BTC-USD is 3.700-6,200. If BTC-USD falls to 16% of 'peak' (average guestimate is 50% too aggressive), BTC-USD falls to roughly USD 9,800. Obviously, to get from USD 22,000 to USD 9,800 - a black swan or two need to show up. Spectacular stable coin failure. Occasionally even a CB doesn't have the reserves to maintain a currency peg (Bank of England/Soros). Stable coin organizations are only as good as the quantity and quality of the collateral ,,,,,, ETF/Whale failure. Underlying a great many crypto ETFs is a derivative transferring beneficial ownership of the whale holding to the ETF. Somebody, somewhere, has a margin call large enough that a whale has to sell part of their holding ..., loss of confidence, along with a deluge of supply all hitting the market at once ..... BTC futures/options . The pricing mechanism between spot and future is well known, and works both ways. The option market is institutional, came into being after the famed USD 20,089 peak, and is (as a new market) abnormally lucrative ..... directionally push the futures price, to push the spot price? and widen your put gains? Lot of other, more subtle possibilities as well, but the point should be clear. With so many ways to die, and all of them swarming the industry, it is inevitable that some of them are going to hit. As as the hits mount... the decline accelerates. Creative destruction. Most would argue that a buy at 10,000, in anticipation of a sale at 50,000 in a few years, is not a big risk. ETH requires a gas fee to use it, BTC will increasingly require buyer/seller to split the mining fee - and pay in Satoshi. BTC trades at a much more stable 100M x the price of a Satoshi. Not a bad thing. SD

We don't often agree with Mr. Wonderful, but on crypto he is quite right .... “A much bigger player will need to collapse completely, so that it can lead to more volatility for crypto. This is a space that has never seen that kind of volatility yet, which means it’s also never seen maturation yet either.” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-kevin-oleary-sees-more-pain-ahead-for-the-crypto-industry-as-investors/ Think o/g companies. .... So utterly despised that not that long ago they often routinely traded at 6-10% of their peak valuation. Still despised today .... but now, they trade for a lot more than they used to We may dispute the merits of BTC, but same as the clap ... it is not going to go away. If you need an antidote to the zero privacy of CBDC there are few better functional alternatives. Hard to see how a patient, but enterprising lad,, doesn't make at least 3-5x on BTC over the next few years. SD