Is Europe becoming uninvestable?

[Spekulatius]

Europe may not be investable, but at least it can automate ports without politics interfering:

 http://www.hafen-hamburg.de/de/presse/news/neue-containerbruecken-fuer-den-container-terminal-burchardkai/

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.ft.com/content/f0b621a1-54f2-49fc-acc1-a660e9131740

 

Quote

A lack of wind in Germany and the North Sea will push electricity prices in southern Norway to NKr13.16 ($1.18) per kilowatt hour on Thursday afternoon, their highest level since 2009 and almost 20 times their level just last week. “It’s an absolutely shit situation,” said Norway’s energy minister Terje Aasland.

 

If only if environmentalist lobby that has taken control of Germany could have foreseen the obvious consequences of eliminating base-load nuclear power. Now Europe will have to learn the hard way.

 

Quote

The ruling centre-left Labour party now says it wants to campaign in next year’s parliamentary election, set for September, to turn off electricity interconnectors to Denmark when they come up for renewal in 2026. Its junior coalition partner, the Centre party, has long demanded an end to the Danish connection and also wants to renegotiate existing interconnectors with the UK and Germany.

 

Unlike the EU, Norway has been very smart in its development of energy sources...

 

Quote

The issue is also causing deep alarm among EU countries keen to use Norway’s abundant hydroelectric power to help balance energy prices on the continent.

 

Quote

Norway is also western Europe’s largest petroleum producer and has replaced Russia for many EU countries as their biggest supplier of gas.

 

Edited December 14 by Dalal.Holdings

[Spekulatius]

$JOST a stock I like from uninvestible Europe. They are the #1 for 5th wheels. (A real thing)  and other truck accessories .

$JOST. Roughly €6 in earnings (a bit less this year) and a goal to have €10 Euro in earnings for 2030. ~20% ROE due to asset light business model.  Sounds pretty cheap to me for €43 Euro stock.

 

https://www.jost-world.com/fileadmin/documents/pdfs/investor-relations/IR-presentations/2024/20241119_JOST_Werke_Investors_presentation_2024_-_November_2024_update_final.pdf

[Tenerife]

9 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

$JOST a stock I like from uninvestible Europe. They are the #1 for 5th wheels. (A real thing)  and other truck accessories .

$JOST. Roughly €6 in earnings (a bit less this year) and a goal to have €10 Euro in earnings for 2030. ~20% ROE due to asset light business model.  Sounds pretty cheap to me for €43 Euro stock.

 

https://www.jost-world.com/fileadmin/documents/pdfs/investor-relations/IR-presentations/2024/20241119_JOST_Werke_Investors_presentation_2024_-_November_2024_update_final.pdf

Their Hyva acquisition should give a nice fillip and can reach the €10 Euro in earnings in couple of years. Also their Asia margin (local production with cheap labour/material) is double that of rest of the world , should grow nicely with Hyva.

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.ft.com/content/39d8e496-ddd2-486d-9306-da699687ee9a

 

Quote

“You’re leaving the country in one of its biggest economic crises in postwar history,” said Friedrich Merz, the CDU party chief leading in the polls, in comments targeting Scholz ahead of Monday’s vote. “And you’re standing here and saying . . . let’s increase debt at the expense of the younger generation.”

 

Merz sounds like a fiscal hawk pro-austerity guy (not Keynesian). The German constitution also limits annual structural deficits to 0.35%. Not reassuring for Deutschland.

 

Why is Germany so stingy with fiscal spending?

[Dalal.Holdings]

 

Who wants to take bets on whether this will ever come close to being a viable alternative to Starlink vs just a waste of $11B?

 

Europe is focused on the wrong priorities

[economonoc]

6 hours ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

Merz sounds like a fiscal hawk pro-austerity guy (not Keynesian). The German constitution also limits annual structural deficits to 0.35%. Not reassuring for Deutschland.

 

Why is Germany so stingy with fiscal spending?

I would guess because devastating hyperinflation in Germany led to the rise of Hitler.

Edited Tuesday at 07:22 AM by economonoc

[Milu]

6 hours ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

 

Who wants to take bets on whether this will ever come close to being a viable alternative to Starlink vs just a waste of $11B?

 

Europe is focused on the wrong priorities

Northvolt round 2

[Dalal.Holdings]

 

Bahahahahaha…

 

God help Europe if this is how its leaders think…

 

[dwy000]

The timeline is cherry picked but I wouldn't have guessed this to be the case

https://x.com/Hedgeye/status/1868070212190216492

Edited Tuesday at 10:34 PM by dwy000

[TwoCitiesCapital]

37 minutes ago, dwy000 said:

The timeline is cherry picked but I wouldn't have guessed this to be the case

https://x.com/Hedgeye/status/1868070212190216492

 

I've seen similar metrics - but was like 1-2 years ago and didn't exclude NVDA but rather than Mag-7 (or was it FAANGM at the time?). 

 

Basically, similar to those handful of stocks driving the entire index while the equal weight index has been shit - it's a relatively similar story compared to int'l stocks. 

 

Doesn't mean much IMO. If you missed the mag-7, you missed the returns. It really doesn't matter what you bought instead - categorically everything else has been mediocre-ish - especially post-2021. I still like int'l because it's hated, it's cheap, and the currency may eventually be a tailwind. But it hasn't been working for years - but not because intl was bad. Because they weren't the nag-7 just like the rest of S&P 500 wasn't. 

 

Edited Tuesday at 11:12 PM by TwoCitiesCapital

[Spekulatius]

2 hours ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

I've seen similar metrics - but was like 1-2 years ago and didn't exclude NVDA but rather than Mag-7 (or was it FAANGM at the time?). 

 

Basically, similar to those handful of stocks driving the entire index while the equal weight index has been shit - it's a relatively similar story compared to int'l stocks. 

 

Doesn't mean much IMO. If you missed the mag-7, you missed the returns. It really doesn't matter what you bought instead - categorically everything else has been mediocre-ish - especially post-2021. I still like int'l because it's hated, it's cheap, and the currency may eventually be a tailwind. But it hasn't been working for years - but not because intl was bad. Because they weren't the nag-7 just like the rest of S&P 500 wasn't. 

 

Yep, and these rocks are a highly correlated  with a lot of interdependency (AI trade etc), When you buy SPY you don’t really buy a highly  diversified index , you really make a tech trades that is based on just a few themes. The same was true in 2000.

[John Hjorth]

8 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

Yep, and these rocks are a highly correlated  with a lot of interdependency (AI trade etc), When you buy SPY you don’t really buy a highly  diversified index , you really make a tech trades that is based on just a few themes. The same was true in 2000.

 

Certainly food for thoughts, - nowadays.

 

Please, take care.

[Spooky]

Interesting article by Martin Wolf in the FT about Europe: https://on.ft.com/4gDLw3D

 

Shows that the expansion of the EU to poorer countries has lead to increasing GDP per capita in those countries. Contrasts it with Mexico and Nafta where GDP per capita has gone backwards despite the opportunities supposedly afforded by its free trade agreements.

[Dalal.Holdings]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/opinion/germany-scholz-government-election.html
 

 

[Spekulatius]

Trading with Putin and getting back the cheap NG gas. That’s basically what the AFD is asking for. What’s could go wrong? 

 

You would think that the Ossies had enough when they were occupied for 45 years by the Sowjets (and were none too happy when visited the DDR in the 80’s) , but I guess not. 

Edited Wednesday at 06:02 PM by Spekulatius

[cubsfan]

2 hours ago, Spooky said:

Interesting article by Martin Wolf in the FT about Europe: https://on.ft.com/4gDLw3D

 

Shows that the expansion of the EU to poorer countries has lead to increasing GDP per capita in those countries. Contrasts it with Mexico and Nafta where GDP per capita has gone backwards despite the opportunities supposedly afforded by its free trade agreements.

 

The real problem in Mexico is that it is a failed state run by narco-cartels. Without the USA to send hard currency back to Mexico the government would likely fall.

[Dalal.Holdings]

The very smart people over at the EU thought they needed a viable alternative to GPS system, so they built $10B Galileo system which took over 20 years…

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/world/europe/galileo-outage.html

 

After all the spending and time/resources spent on this project, does anyone use it instead of GPS?

 

Even the Soviets were able to cut through their bureaucracy and achieve great things in space. The EU though?

 

EU gonna EU

 

Edited Thursday at 12:59 PM by Dalal.Holdings

[Spekulatius]

3 hours ago, Dalal.Holdings said:

The very smart people over at the EU thought they needed a viable alternative to GPS system, so they built $10B Galileo system which took over 20 years…

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/16/world/europe/galileo-outage.html

 

After all the spending and time/resources spent on this project, does anyone use it instead of GPS?

 

Even the Soviets were able to cut through their bureaucracy and achieve great things in space. The EU though?

 

EU gonna EU

 

Your phone probably uses it. Higher precision than GPS.

[Dalal.Holdings]

7 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Your phone probably uses it. Higher precision than GPS.

 

Well I'll be damed it does

 

I still think taking on Starlink with 290 satellites is a total waste

[TB]

 

 

 

[John Hjorth]

On 12/14/2024 at 6:55 PM, Spekulatius said:

Europe may not be investable, but at least it can automate ports without politics interfering:

 http://www.hafen-hamburg.de/de/presse/news/neue-containerbruecken-fuer-den-container-terminal-burchardkai/

 

I hope you here were alluding and referring to Mr. Trumps post on Truth Social recently after his meeting with the longshore mens association about automation etc., @Spekulatius .

Edited yesterday at 08:46 PM by John Hjorth

[John Hjorth]

On 12/14/2024 at 7:13 PM, Dalal.Holdings said:

https://www.ft.com/content/f0b621a1-54f2-49fc-acc1-a660e9131740

 

If only if environmentalist lobby that has taken control of Germany could have foreseen the obvious consequences of eliminating base-load nuclear power. Now Europe will have to learn the hard way.

 

Unlike the EU, Norway has been very smart in its development of energy sources...

 

@Dalal.Holdings,

 

For what ever reason I'm not able to quote the above post of yours, so it's also containing your quotes from the Financial Times article. So if our fellow board members want, really want, to understand what your post is about in detail, they will have to revisit it to read your actual quotes. For the  convenience of others, here is a screen shot of your full post :

 

 

I take issue with your line of posting here, actually, because you quote socalled sources [to me personally, more or less consciously, or perhaps unconsciously, so to various degrees, depending on the specific content of your actual posts by and from you].

 

Where is your skeptisism and critical attitude towards your sources when posting in this topic? You obviously do not possess sufficient knowledge about the energy systems in the Nordics, how they operate, and how they interact and cooperate. Otherwise you woulden't have posted as you did above.

 

To me, the fact here is that somebody at Financial Times with absolutely no basic knowledge and understanding of the Nordic energy system grabbed a political headline in Norway from some Norwegian News Media, and 'brewed' a piece, a 'story' on it at Financial Times. And then you brought it in to CofB&F, at par, as if if it was a true and fair view of the situation.

 

I'm pretty sure this [the above] approach is not your modus operandi for information gathering while managing OPM.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Have you ever heard of Nord Pool ?

 

 

We actually have an energy exchange among us Nordic countries. 'Exchange' here not meant as 'in 'exchange money for a good, or physical, tangible item', but 'exchange' as in 'stock exchange', a place where buyers and sellers, producers of energy can meet to trade and agree on prices in an open and to all market participants, visible and transperant, way.

 

What do you think would happen [here, to Norway, in that respect], to this exchange, if Norway cut the line to Denmark?

 

Are you a proponent of protectionism? Or of trade and cooperation? How does this Norwegian political stuff and nonsence from a leftist make you think that Norwegian energy policy is smart?

 

Norway is by now known as 'Tesla-land'. The country and its citizens are incredible rich, and the country has the highest EV penetration of all countries. Every newborn is popped as a tripple millionaire in NOK by birth, reducing future tax burden, because of that.

 

They [Equinor] drill like hell in the Norwegian part of the continental shelf to get it look like a Swiss chease [for the purpose to sell oil and gas, and to tax Equinor separately, and extra]], and then they are 'green', driving Teslas, and throwing out all other oil majors and all kinds of other stuff from the Government Pension Fund Global [ www.nbim.no ] and everything is obviously fine, or is it really?

 

Where is Norway getting its energy from, when those water reservoires needs to be filled, or when there is drought in Norway?

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

So what you here actually have dragged in here at CofB&F, is really Norwegian, leftist and political spin and yelling on a given energy price situation, that happens from time to time, from a Norwegian leftist dumb head, who is politically elected, but have no clue of the matter at hand.

 

- - - o 0 o - - -

 

Here is a website, that for you may perhaps be useful for an interactive overview of the Nordic energy system :

 

EnergiNet : The energy system right now

 

 

It's pretty cool, right?

Edited 22 hours ago by John Hjorth

[Dalal.Holdings]

@John Hjorth the news item I am discussing is quite simple. German energy fragility has resulted in a big price spike in energy prices for people in southern regions of nordic countries. In this case, due to a lack of wind.

 

So, German energy fragility (lack of consistent base load power which previously came from nuclear) means energy fragility for other countries too. Here is another source:

https://www.dw.com/en/combating-high-energy-prices-in-the-eu-though-more-coordination/a-71094111

 

I quoted the current Norway energy minister—is that someone who is not a reliable source? My understanding of Norway is that they have lots of hydropower up north and is a major producer and exporter of oil and gas—western Europe’s largest producer. Please feel free to correct me where I’m wrong.

 

This is consistent with a theme in Europe I’ve been repeatedly pointing out: the people in the driver’s seat in the EU and Germany in particular have been extremely shortsighted with just about all of their policy choices. It seems like the German/EU people themselves endorsed these policies, personified by people like Angela Merkel, Lagarde, Ursula, Thierry, etc.

 

Whether shutting down nuclear, being dependent on Russian gas, overregulation (esp in tech), uncontrolled immigration etc. It was all just short sightedness without any consideration of potential first, second, and third order effects of these decisions which are now being borne across the continent.

 

Edited 8 hours ago by Dalal.Holdings

[John Hjorth]

@Dalal.Holdings,

 

Thank you for the elaboration. I likely misread the priority and weigthing of the content of your post, and gave the comments from Norwegian Energy Minister too much focus in my own post.

 

You are right about the components and basic structure of the Norwegian energy system.

 

https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/kraftproduksjon/ :

 

 

Sub specification and split of thermal power :

 

https://www.nve.no/energi/energisystem/termisk-energi/termisk-kraft/

 

Please note natural gas is only 259, and oil lumped together with other sources of capacity is only at 12 in the whole picture of things of 40,077. As far as I know Norway only has three power plants of size than run on either oil or gas, of which one is mothballed.

 

The Norwegian Energy minister wasen't even talking Norways own book here, ref. the above, because when there is a combination no wind and low water levels in their reservoirs at the hydro power plants [by drought], Norway is in need the connections to other countries in the connnected energy system. So pPure spin, based on situational populism.

 

So it is actually also a bit mind provoking to think about that Norway by its own choices and decisions hasen't covered it's own butt by what it itself  is actually swimming in to such degree that they are exporting loads of it.

 

And then holding their nose with regard to investing in O&G companies in their 'tiny' common and shared piggybank and generally mostly self driving Teslas by now, if they one, they just buy the damn thing, because they are well-of! 

 

https://www.nbim.no/

 

 

 - - - o 0 o - - -

 

I agree with you, that the German energy policy and  German energy system is more or less broken, because was has been decided about nuclear power and what has happened to import of of Russian gas.

 

As a note, when we here in Denmark are swimming in renewable energy from wind, Germany is cutting the cord / shutting the connection to Denmark! What is it? Are there some place a complete idiot in a decision maker position, who doesen't understand his job? - No, the southbound German grid to industrial Germany isen't calibrated / built out to carry this load of transport, so to shut the connection is needed to avoid a collapse of the whole system, the collapse causing outages. Then the price go negative on power [naturally only the price on raw power, not the total price of power] here in Denmark, and I guess Norway isen't complaining then either! -And it's happening regularly, but not often.

Edited 5 hours ago by John Hjorth