Sweet

I’m European (British) and feel strongly that we should help Ukraine. I’m very grateful for the US and all the help they provide to Europe - in return they very often get looked down on by snooty Europeans. I don’t agree that the US has given too much and should stop giving money, I think it’s more correct to say we Europeans have given too little. With respect to money I think Trump is right, the Europeans need to do more, however at the CNN town hall he refused to say he supported Ukraine and wanted them to win - a strange omission.

Think you should ask that of yourself. You are being rude.

Germany was not even an original signatory of NATO. The three pillars of NATO was France, USA and the UK. That’s not to undermine the others, it’s just that those were the main powers at the time. A precursor to NATO was France and the UK signing a mutual defence Treaty from that spawned NATO in some respects.

I don’t see much dislocation that’s obvious, maybe drowned out by other macro concerns. I remember the first time this happened it was reflected in stock prices across the SP-500, this has happened a couple of times now, maybe the market no longer believes it’s of much importance.

Hope this doesn’t come across as a rude question, but what are your holdings, specifically those companies you don’t want to ever sell?

Yep, makes sense.

Don’t you own Amazon?

Some very suspect price action in some regionals - particularly PACW and WAL. The after hours drop in both PACW and WAL after Powell was speaking made no sense, the rate hike was telegraphed. Looked like a coordinated attack in low liquidity post-market. And today both have a strong rebound on no news, only for us to find out later there was talk of a short selling ban.

Too slow to tighten, too slow to stop. There is no point raising rates now if it means cutting in a few months. Why not pause.

Don’t understand another rate rise at this moment. Seems like self harm.

1.1% is still growth, and even with the average error, still growth. Far better than what many have been predicting.

When is this imminent recession going to happen?

Stan has been making recession and stock implosion calls for years…. wrongly. Go look. He makes his money in-spite of his shit macro calls not because of them.

^ They’re done it seems.

Have read a good few free substacks / seeking alpha. Macro commentary IMO is pointless, nearly always bearish, and nearly always wrong. Some good analysis on specific stocks, but never bought a stock after reading any substack etc. To have the conviction to own and hold a company, I need to build my own view about the company.

If the growth stops with Amazon investors will want the profits. It could be an R&D forever type of company, but I’d doubt it.

Nuts on both sides of this for sure.

You are not required to tell anyone they aren’t the gender they claim if you don’t want. However you are overlooking, and haven’t acknowledged, that many within the trans movements want to force us to affirm that a trans-person’s gender is what they claim. You also don’t have to care either but there are reasons to care mentioned above. This includes hormone blockers for nine year olds, hormones and surgery for teens, being taught to children in schools behind parents backs, people losing their job for not getting with gender theory - there are other reasons too: - Fallon Fox was a male who transitioned to a woman and entered woman’s MMA beating the shit out of them. - Isla Bryson was a male who raped two women and was convicted. He became trans, claimed he was a female, and was sent to a female prison (yes really). Great that you don’t care about these issues, but why are you frustrated that many of us do care? The issues are real even if you prefer to not care about them. It’s not really a Conservative vs Liberal issue here in the UK. It’s one of the rare issues with much common cause.

There are a range of reasons to care. Being able to speak the truth is reason enough. Some people have lost their jobs for not believing what you believe - that gender and sex are not fluid. In the UK Maya Forstater was discriminated against and lost her job because she was gender-critical. She took a case against her employer and won. That is important, we are talking about serious discrimination here. It's far beyond some fella dressing up as a girl in drag. I don't mean this disrespectfully, but you haven't been paying attention, probably because you don't care.

Assuming you’ve not made an error by agreeing Parsad that gender and sex are not fluid, you have outed yourself as being opposed to much of the transgender movements beliefs - because they in fact do believe it is fluid. To claim they are mentally ill is frowned upon too. The medical definition of ‘gender identity disorder’ was changed so it was less stigmatising and the result is the transgender movement don’t want it considered an illness at all. When you say they are ‘not just mentally ill’ you're offending much of the trans movement because they don't believe it's an illness at all. From this belief that it is perfectly normal that you can be born in the wrong body, that your brain can be a different gender, follows that it is perfectly normal to ‘change’ your sex through hormones and surgery. And if you change you sex it can be insisted that male-female trans are really women, that must use the female bathrooms and facilities, that must compete against women in sports and other sex based competitions, and to say otherwise is discrimination. If you don’t want to date, fuck and pair up with a trans-woman it’s discrimination because she is a real woman: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42652947.amp In the UK there is a push for gender self ID, which means that if a male says they are a female, the law would mean that for the purposes of passports, driving licenses etc they are the sex and gender of their choosing. With that they inherit female rights or men rights. You might ask ‘so what’ - to which I’d ask ‘doesn’t truth matter anymore’? Doesn’t the impact on the majority of women matter? It’s really not about treating people well, it’s way beyond that. The movement has transitioned (to borrow the phrase) from wanting broader acceptance of transgender people to demanding that society and everyone else accept they are the sex and gender they say they are. That a transwoman IS a woman and if you disagree you are transphobic - meaning that according to many transgender advocates you rkbabang are a transphobe (I'm not joking). If you don’t know all of this you haven’t been paying attention. Its not just Conservatives pushing back against this, it’s many many Liberal too, like Joe Rogan, Bill Maher, and JK Rowling... heck even many gay people.

Trouble is though dwy is that in the UK at least, treatment at the Tavistock gender clinic was very often affirming and uncritical. I'll not rehash the story, but you can read about it here: ‘A contentious place’: the inside story of Tavistock’s NHS gender identity clinic | Transgender | The Guardian At root of the trans issue is that its not scientifically accurate to say you can be born in the wrong body, or you can change your sex. This matters, for example, medical care is tailor around biological sex. I want it kept away from my own children.

dwy, I cannot speak to everyone, but I think you are far off the mark if you think it is not liking gay people. A growing number of homosexual have issues with the transgender movement. They argue that the transgender movement pushes people to question if they are actually gay but instead born in the wrong body. They consider it damaging to their rights as homosexuals and medically damaging for many young homosexuals. For example: LGB Alliance (@AllianceLGB) / Twitter In the UK the Tavistock gender clinic was investigated and ordered to close down by the Government. Puberty blockers were given to children from aged 9 years old, and the treatment given to them was ruled to have failed to consider alternative issues, such as a high correlation with autism: NHS to close Tavistock child gender identity clinic - BBC News I'm sure part of the rise of trans people is social acceptance, but there is no way the meteoric rise in the number identifying as trans is down just to social acceptance. It's now trendy and a way to get attention - even some trans people think this. Bill Maher recently did a skit on the transgender movement and questioned some of the trends and interventions: New Rule: Along for the Pride | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) - YouTube

In the past ten or so years we have started teaching about trans in schools, sought to get gender recognition laws passed to allow anyone to ‘change their sex’ if they wanted, want men competing in woman’s sport, give puberty blockers to children under the age of 10 (UK), surgery and cross hormones for teens, passed laws that compels speech pronoun use, and other laws which means parents must affirm their child’s gender. @Parsad @dwy000 do you consider pushing back against that as targeting a particular group?

I think Europeans are probably ok on natty gas front. They are going into another winter with very high storage, so probably OK until next year. By then they may have additional storage built, LNG terminals etc.

@KPO I don’t see the discount on the CF that I would have hoped for - just a cursory glance at price. Fertiliser companies probably benefit from low prices I would think. @blakehampton Chesapeake energy was a badly run company that only recently came out of bankruptcy. Looking at price again, I’m not sure that the really low prices are reflected in the share price. It might simply be that nobody believes these low gas prices is likely to last, therefore no compelling opportunity.