Sweet

I think there will be a large effort to pivot away from that choke point by major producers in the area.

Love ya cubs, but I agree with change

Possibly, but do you even have to go in? Half a million troops at the Iraq border, demanding the uranium or else, I expect that helps resolve the situation one way or another. I’m certainly not cheering but from Iran’s perspective what’s the incentive now to negotiate? The regime itself has survived probably the worst, and they can wait longer than Trump can - especially if he loses the midterms. The Iranians smell a bit of a bluff.

Probably. From Iran’s perspective, the Rubicon has been crossed. They are directly striking Israel and Middle East countries, and the worst they are getting in return are air strikes which they can eat all day long. Trump clearly wants a deal and doesn’t seem to want troops involved - but maybe his hand is forced. In any case, hard to see how negotiations go anywhere here when it looks like Iran can just tolerate the bombs.

Iran war is a mess, despite any claims to the contrary, because Trump / Bibi aren’t willing to go in. Iran can get bombed for years and it won’t make a jot of difference. Major fumble.

I do think the shine has come of Musk turd a bit, but FOMO is strong, so I’m 50/50 on direction. It’s just a hard avoid for me. ———— Being contrarian is hard and over rated. I only go long, so I’d say long complex software where the data and relationships are the moat rather than the software itself. I still like Harley Davidson as a mean reversion play to 40 - 50s (2x) - though I don’t currently own it. The universe is signalling to me though, I keep seeing Harley’s on the road and I rarely saw them previously.

Quite something to say the largest bubble you have seen. I think a lot of the tech stuff is a bit dodgy. I don’t think the AI build out is a mistake but it’s darn expensive and it’s bidding up prices in ‘compute’. The level of capex is not sustainable. Something is going to break, I hope it doesn’t bring down the whole market with it.

The price action it the chip makers like Intel, AMD, Micron is very sketchy. Regularly getting huge intraday swings of 5-10%. Some of those stocks are up 5x in a year. Total mania.

That there is something about America, in terms of its innovation, culture, regulations… whatever… that makes it just that bit better than everyone else when it comes to economics and tech.

Agree. If you know my post history ITT, which you probably don’t, I know Europe has loads of problems. Over taxed, over regulated, declining culture, declining demographics. I just don’t think it’s as bad as that tweet you posted makes out. I don’t see any chance in the near term either. Plus I do think American exceptionalism is real.

Sure, in the same way the Opium Wars and Taiping Rebellion prevented China from developing - checks notes - until the 1960s and 1970s.

Blake should just actually do that, hedge himself. Do 50% stocks, and keep the 50% cash for the crash he believes is coming. If he is wrong he might still be making money, if he is right he has 50% to invest at bargain prices. Decent compromise.

Europe had two world wars bro, fought predominantly on their soil, and a Cold War that split the continent in half. Major facepalm. In any case I’m not arguing that there hasn’t been a relative decline of Europe, or America to a lesser degree. For Europe, it was about 25% of the global population 100 years ago and now it’s about 8%. That’s a major factor. It was industrialised long before the rest of the world, who are now catching up. America’s percent of globally population has been relatively stable surprisingly, but there really is such a thing as American exceptionalism. No other country is like it. Europe could try being a bit more like America.

Does the measurement period have to start at 2008? Europe and America was like 75% of global GDP at one point.

But it has, just not as much as Europe. We are talking about relative decline in Europe, living standards are still improving. Plus, America is a different beast. It dynamic, innovative and entrepreneurial while Europe is just… ‘fine’.

I mean it’s not really a decline in the way the Chinese was. They simply got so far ahead and the rest are finally catching up. Loving standards are fine, they are good companies. Everything is actually OK… but that’s sort of the problem too. When everything is fine they just keep muddling on. Much of this isn’t even economics. There is a decline in culture and people. Birth rates are terrible, demographics are aging and declining. They need to fix that first.

I think it’s going to be both good and bad for SaaS, I think it will depend on the product and the adaptability of the company itself.

I think these two environments are different. We are building out infrastructure for AI, and much of the revenue for semis and Mag7s are ultimately dependent on large investment from AI companies. If the hype of AI is not realised I can see domino effect, where AI companies aren’t spending as much, hyper scalers aren’t building out cloud, and demand for semis drops. Huge amounts of Google and Microsoft’s predicted cloud revenue is from AI companies like OpenAI or Anthropic and if they cut back it would blow a large hole in their forward guidance. In 2000 it seems like the reverse, price was getting way ahead of investment and revenue but that revenue did come. Whereas here the risk is that things just flatten out and revenue withers.

if nothing happens the Iran uranium not sure what the point was. If it was to just destroy Irans navy - job done I suppose. Still seems like they messed up. Rubio really is excellent. America is lucky to have him. I hope one day he is president. There isn’t anybody on either side of the aisle I rate as highly.

Ty both

Didn’t know this was an option for us retail. Any outfits that you would recommend?

I don’t have to explain anything though, and I don’t understand why I should be appalled at this, but just shrug at the other political and legal hounding of Trump. You shrug I shrug.

Claiming it is a dictatorship and there are no guard rails is exaggerating.

Exaggerate much?

I know it’s going to be difficult for some to understand, but when the structures of government are turned into a political weapon against Trump and his friends, you kind of just shrug at ‘no more audit’ stuff. Improper use of government begets improper use of government. It’s like the universe balancing itself out. Democrats can only really call this out when they stop doing it themselves.