Sweet

Germany shouldn’t pick up the tab alone, Europe should, together if it is important to them - and I think it is. Europe has sent a lot of money already, more total than America when all added together. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/ This narrative that Europe hasn’t helped is just wrong. The question is it enough.

I don’t think there is any point jumping into this ahead of any confirmed release. I traded in and out of FNMA for years, sometimes for gain and sometimes for a loss, and although I was slightly up overall it wasn’t worth the headache or the opportunity cost. You can’t trust Trump, the courts, the head of FHFA, none of them. If the GSEs get released I’ll almost certainly buy with the intention of holding them a very long time. But I’m done with betting on hopium that never came true. Worse, any release could be very unfavourable to all holders of common and preferred - you could lose money maybe even all of it. So why bother? My strategy is to wait for release and try and get it at a reasonable price.

And as much as I hate to admit it, this rings true. Some countries in Europe have done their bit. But the biggest countries like the UK (where I am from), Germany, France, Italy, Spain…. come on. We still aren’t meeting our 2% defence spending when the wolf is at the door. We’ve got complacent, what’s it going to take to wake up.

Not the take I was expecting:

Trimmed shitty bank

Caved and took a position in Google. Been looking at it for months. Wish I found religion last year but whatever. Still have my doubts about it of course.

Does anyone have a view on some of these sport betting companies such as draftkings or flutter entertainment? I think Draftkings looks interesting if they can keep their revenue growing for several more years. I don’t know much about the products, never used them. Basically a bet on increasing degeneracy, not sure how I feel about that as an investment strategy.

This is sick, telling people what size their living space should be. I loathe these people.

The governments don’t seem to understand that the migration is at least partly responsible for the demography issues. Low skill labour undercuts wages of citizens, immigration that results in state dependency is less government support for citizens, this lack of resources means the populace can’t afford to have as many kids. It’s a cycle.

This is a major problem for the West.

Many politicians genuinely don’t understand why America has done so well. I saw someone on Twitter from the UK arguing that a person making the equivalent of $87k a year, which is $64k after tax, was ‘rich’ and they shouldn’t complain about tax rises. Rachel Reeves, our new chancellor in the UK, announced today on Twitter that she chooses investment in the UK over decline…. Paradoxically it’s almost certain that her budget will raise tax on investors. The immigration non-policy in Europe is not helping because in many cases it’s just large scale state dependents. Some European country, the Danes I think, published their data on the contribution of migrants to their economy by ethnicity. Many migrants, particularly from Africa and the Middle East where a large net drain to the economy over their lives. So yeh, I’m fairly pessimistic about Europe. We desperately need a return to common sense and what worked before.

CNN NYT too, think they broke it first of the major outlets.

Checking trending. Multitude of sources. Sorry, I don’t really know who is reputable otherwise I’d link. Lot of reports though giving some substance to it.

Users on Twitter are reporting air strikes on Iran - reports were up 20 mins ago. No major news out letting reporting it yet.

Japan rewrote the script on debt and inflation so I’m not sure the link holds. I’m still of the view that the post covid inflation was largely as result of supply chains and not a monetary phenomenon. Although the stimulus checks didn’t help either.

Why do all these guys believe inflation is going to come ripping back? I don’t get it. Is it because they learned their craft during the 80s when we had the double spike in inflation and they expect the same? Where is the evidence of ‘all roads lead to inflation’ because I don’t see it.

Under the Tories we had tax increases and the highest tax burden since the Second World War. You seem to be of the view that the Tories need to stay where they are to get back in. Whereas I think they need to move right. It’s debatable as to whether we actually have a conservative party in the UK anymore. The Tories are certainly not culturally conservative, in the past they could claim to be fiscally conservative but no longer either. So what exactly are they? Tories or Labour I think taxes are likely to stay near historic highs.

Thowed, I mean this with respect, but can we please stop pretending that political positions that were mainstream 25 years ago are now considered ‘extreme’. The only thing extreme is how irritating and tedious this has all become. For example, take the old Democrat position on immigration, these words are considered ‘extreme’ by some these days: Nancy: https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4713577/user-clip-2008-nancy-pelosi-secure-border

The SP-500 is up 20+% this year and the forward PE multiple is lower than this time last year. Just pointing out that stocks can go up and multiples can come down.

Don’t know if true, but this is funny:

The SP-500 fwd PE is 22, it was like 50 during the dot.com bubble. I’m fine with saying valuations are more expensive than historically but those charts are misleading. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen these comparisons made over the past 15 years, and if you just index into the SP-500 everytime you’ve seen these charts posted you’d have 3-5x your money.

I actually don’t mind paying extra tax, but I think it should be on income. All of the money used in my investments were savings from income. Taxed at source, companies I own pay tax, dividends taxed and then capital gains taxed. A 40 - 45% capital gains tax is what I would likely pay depending on the year and how I disposed of assets. That’s just too much, might as well buy an index and never try to outperform by picking individual stocks because the government will take nearly half anyway. Compared to others on this board I’m not hugely wealth and on the younger side trying to grow my base - so these taxes matter a lot. In the UK too, as some who knows and works with government regularly, the waste is enormous. Even under the Tories taxes went up, there doesn’t seem to be any desire to cut spending and there is plenty to cut. I do agree about military spending, in Europe it needs to go up to 3-4% imo.

Why those countries? I don’t speak the language in Italy, and besides I count myself as British, I have an attachment to the country and want it to do well. Although I have family in the US too, and likewise I have a strong attachment to the USA also.