tnathan

Do you mind sharing some of what is in the ideal portfolio?

Bought some more today. 6.5x NTM Sales for a company growing sales at 15%+ w/ operating leverage opps and strong moat.

Hmm interesting I actually didn't know this. Thanks for sharing!

Like I agree with you. But you can hold two truths in your head at the same time ... (1) The dems (and frankly repubs for decades too) haven't done enough to cut / hold back government spending over the past decades and we need to do something about this (2) There are more effective ways of doing this than taking an axe to things that might actually be helpful and seriously jeopardizing alliances that took 100 years to build

I agree but people under rate how important the “getting rolled out” is. Sometimes the execution is more important than the idea and while dems are being tribal republicans are being equally tribal by not questioning the execution which could bring the real demise

I prefer the companies which have more of a focus on aggregates which is VMC / MLM. The others are potentially good businesses too but there's more pricing power in aggregates even in down markets (pricing was being raised through the financial crisis even as volumes plummeted). In my mind both VMC + MLM great companies but I prefer VMC because it is more singularly focused on aggregates and I think is well-run based on some prior work I did at a consulting firm (not for them).

Sold my OTIS shares and moving into better r/r opps. Its stable but fully valued

Started new position in VMC - been waiting to do this for forever

+1 Agree ... still think Amazon is probably the most attractive as the moat hasn't been touched and people somehow have missed that retail is now operating at 8% margins...

After some research I ended up buying a 2% position in Moog

Does anyone have a sense for which smaller U.S. suppliers are very entrenched with the European Defense primes? There have to be some U.S. stocks that are selling off here but could actually be beneficiaries as Europe increases spend...

I'm with Malm on this ... Trusting / siding with Putin is like if 2 kids are on the playground, 1 being much bigger than the other and the bigger 1 is bullying the small 1 to give him his lunch money and the teacher says to the small kid -- "just give him the money so you'll stop fighting" lmao. Don't you see how dumb / cruel that is?

+1 exactly. Which is why the republicans are morons

If Europe seriously thinks that Putin has no further expansionist urges, then settle the war. But it's hard not to believe that if he is allowed to take large portions of Ukraine that he will simply stop here. I don't know the answer (and you don't either) -- I'm sure the intelligence communities have a good sense. If they think there's a bigger long term threat and the precedent being set in Ukraine creates a scenario where expansionist leaders feel they have a right to expand, you have to fight the war aggressively. It's a really weird (almost pro German WWII) argument to automatically say the world should settle and let Russia have what they want. Very shortsighted.

+ 1 -- we can hold two truths in our head at once. Europe messed up by being so behind on military readiness, but Putin is bad news and the fact that Trump has allied himself with Russia is legitimately one of the dumbest things I've ever seen. Long term loser is the United States. If you look at most of the early Trump policies its getting a very short term victory at risk of long term ruin. It's the mark of am 80 IQ guy who thinks he's a 150 IQ guy.

Also very interested in perspectives here ... I know some have a negative view of the company but it seems cheap even considering some bad news (and the backlog is huge)

Just do the math...you can get to a trillion if you cut the very large line items, which are military, healthcare, social security / unemployment. You're not getting there by cutting small parts of everything else. When they start trying to cut social security let's see what happens

I think what a lot of the arguments miss is that the only way to make a real dent in the budget is some combination of cuts to (1) Defense (2) Social Security and (3) Healthcare. So Elon can claim to be making great progress, but nothing he cuts outside of these areas actually matters. Good luck to him cutting #2 and #3 above -- these are a lot more complex than simply saying "we are getting rid of DEI programs". If he does start to cut #2 and #3 people are going to have serious problems with him.

I am going to make Skechers a core 5% position over the next few weeks / months

dipped toes into SPSC. I think the runway is decently long and it's not too expensive for what its growing at

Bought SKX … weakness in China taking stock lower. I love the story though over next 5-10 years. And it’s trading cheaply for the growth. They have surprising strength in India…

Bought some more NU - this is a special company

Thank you!

Wanted to follow up here -- does anyone have any opinions on any of the teams at Artisan Partners (Milwaukee based) and the work they do / reputation? I'm not intentionally going down this path, but this opp kind of landed in my lap so might as well see it through.

Thinking about selling HIFS tomorrow -- not sure why that would be up so much but ill take it