President-Elect Trump trades

[John Hjorth]

50 minutes ago, Dinar said:

Chubb lost its shirt in 2022 betting on fixed income, I think 30% of book value was vaporized!  Did not stop Buffett though, but who is he compared to the great Blake Hampton?

 

The last now almost 5 years have been quite violent and brutal with regard to developments in markets, interest rates, inflation and a lot of other stuff, if one did bet on anything particulary [, based on what?], and perhaps ended up being wrong about it, to me must just be about the worst job one can imagine serving clients with capital committed entangled in expectations to you.

 

Jeffrey Gundlach, Doubleline, [partly owned by Oaktree, and thereby also by Brookfield] [Gundlach in earlier years referred to and quoted by Lars [ @Viking ] here on CofB&F several [, if not many] times, seems to possess such talents, and appear wired by birth to do such thing for a living.

 

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It appears the guys at Fairfax managing the Fairfax bond portfolio also has got things right in that particular period.

 

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It's certainly not for fainthearted.

 

Here is a photo of Jeffrey Gundlach from the Doubleline website :

 

 

I still have earlier photos of him in my visual memory. What has happened to his appearance is to me, personally, not only the toll of time.

 

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Buffetts constantly rolling of short term US T-Bills into new short term US T-bills has absolutely nothing to do with this. He is waiting for LARGE and fat pitch, that he is well aware of, that he may perhaps never experience, otherwise the 'successor' will just take over control of the cash position, better going out with a bang track record than a bummer in the end.

 

Anyone here on CofB&F ever asked yourself the question : 'How good has Buffett been at paying up for potential growth prospects and quality?' You bet, he has asked himself that particular question, and also delivered the truthful and honest reply to himself, internally.

[John Hjorth]

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[John Hjorth]

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[Spooky]

Playing in the bond market is a tough game, it is the smart money and markets are extremely efficient. Better for us to hunt for the most inefficiently priced assets. Easier to make higher returns if you are good.

[John Hjorth]

I'm sorry for the triple posting above. Server flux or something. I can't fix it myself by deleting, so reported it to Sanjeev [ @Parsad ], to get it fixed. When fixed, this post will disappear, too.

 

Thank you, and I'm sorry for your inconvenience.

[Parsad]

1 hour ago, John Hjorth said:

I'm sorry for the triple posting above. Server flux or something. I can't fix it myself by deleting, so reported it to Sanjeev [ @Parsad ], to get it fixed. When fixed, this post will disappear, too.

 

Thank you, and I'm sorry for your inconvenience.

 

Weird!  For some reason it won't let me delete the two extra posts...as if they don't exist.  Something weird with the server probably...thus why it posted three times.  All I could do was delete the info.  Cheers!

[Spekulatius]

Isn’t tobacco a Trump trade? Beyond the more obvious things like lower tax rate benefit we have currently a situation, where there are hundreds of illicit vaper devices and what not available everywhere while at the same time the process to approve legit devices or products is totally broken.

 

If this is cleaned up, it would be a big benefit to those they play by the rules and that’s big tobacco.

[John Hjorth]

6 hours ago, whatstheofficerproblem said:

Shut up John, you have a long time ahead of you. We're all in this shitty world together, we aren't letting you leave before us, let's suffer together.

 

@whatstheofficerproblem,

 

Thank you for being my friend, dragging me up here!

 

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To say the  truth about what happened yesterday for me personally, making me cranky and frustrated, was that I was about to buy some further, extra outdoor security cameras, to include in and to expand our home security system already in place here in and outside our home.

 

Dutch firm. Works great, untill it doesn't. After struggling with the order on the company website for hours yesterday, the site does not function correctly with regard to the payment. ... So, really, no order placed!

 

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Then, today, in the morning, I digitally got this letter from our 'daily day' bank, that my primary MasterCard is now blocked for use, because of what happened yesterday, with a lot of instructions about what to do.

 

Then I called the bank, the person mentioned 'below' in the  letter, to ask for an explanation and elaboration. Answer : 'The site you were ordering on, likely got hacked, with alll consequenses , related to that for you".

[John Hjorth]

1 hour ago, Parsad said:

Weird!  For some reason it won't let me delete the two extra posts...as if they don't exist.  Something weird with the server probably...thus why it posted three times.  All I could do was delete the info.  Cheers!

 

Sanjeev [ @Parsad ],

 

Thank you for looking into it.  Let's let it go, and move on! - It does not really matter to anything of importance!

[villainx]

3 hours ago, Spooky said:

Playing in the bond market is a tough game, it is the smart money and markets are extremely efficient. Better for us to hunt for the most inefficiently priced assets. Easier to make higher returns if you are good.

 

I was listening to one of the podcast with Josh Brown who had a fixed income/bonds guy on as a guest.  They were saying that the bond index was sort of made to be beaten, too many variables and inefficiencies.  I know it's unrelated, but just made me think of it.

 

 

[Spooky]

13 hours ago, villainx said:

 

I was listening to one of the podcast with Josh Brown who had a fixed income/bonds guy on as a guest.  They were saying that the bond index was sort of made to be beaten, too many variables and inefficiencies.  I know it's unrelated, but just made me think of it.

 

 

 

Yea but who cares about beating a bond index.

[Gregmal]

2 hours ago, Spooky said:

 

Yea but who cares about beating a bond index.

lol I thought the same thing. Outside of pension managers and people who leach off a pool of money they rip off who actually gives a shit about a bond index?

[dwy000]

32 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

lol I thought the same thing. Outside of pension managers and people who leach off a pool of money they rip off who actually gives a shit about a bond 

35 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

lol I thought the same thing. Outside of pension managers and people who leach off a pool of money they rip off who actually gives a shit about a bond index?

 

Given the bond market dwarfs the equity market, on a $ basis there's a lot more money worrying about beating the bond index than the stock market.  

[Spooky]

37 minutes ago, dwy000 said:

Given the bond market dwarfs the equity market, on a $ basis there's a lot more money worrying about beating the bond index than the stock market.  

 

Then they are focused on the wrong thing.

[Gregmal]

Bond buyers are basically just a circle jerking group of leaches that manage pensions, insurance portfolios, endowments, etc. They want nothing to do with real alpha, they just don’t want to print a negative number so in exchange they seek assurance of their own prosperity by seeking out safe mid single digit guarantees. Retail investors are basically just a blip on the radar and consist of senior citizens and folks who want to be in the stock market but are scared.

Edited Wednesday at 07:34 PM by Gregmal

[dealraker]

We all know that as much as T intimidates the world that Mr. Market too is trembling down to his knees - all to give T a better S & P starting point on Jan 20th!

Edited Wednesday at 09:07 PM by dealraker

[Gregmal]

34 minutes ago, dealraker said:

We all know that as much as T intimidates the world that Mr. Market too is trembling down to his knees - all to give T a better S & P starting point on Jan 20th!

One thing I do genuinely find annoying is that after every election theres this huge rush to "price things in", exacerbated almost entirely by the ideas everyone has, displayed in threads like this...when the truth is, its almost NEVER actually priced in to any sort of reasonable degree. In other words, the market rushes to wrongly price in things that arent as important as they think. 

 

End of the day I tend to think robust trends continue regardless, and shitty businesses will continue to be shitty businesses. In light of the talks with Blake the other day, I will say, highlighted in everything, maybe not apparent to everyone, but I found it funny...Blake stated a few times "what he expects the market to do under Trump"...and being around here long enough, I noticed it was pretty much EXACTLY what he felt about the market, under Biden. In other words, Blake and I obviously have different approaches and outlooks, but can probably agree...shit really shouldn't change all that much just cuz some new talking head strolls into town with something to say. 

[dealraker]

5 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

One thing I do genuinely find annoying is that after every election theres this huge rush to "price things in", exacerbated almost entirely by the ideas everyone has, displayed in threads like this...when the truth is, its almost NEVER actually priced in to any sort of reasonable degree. In other words, the market rushes to wrongly price in things that arent as important as they think. 

 

End of the day I tend to think robust trends continue regardless, and shitty businesses will continue to be shitty businesses. In light of the talks with Blake the other day, I will say, highlighted in everything, maybe not apparent to everyone, but I found it funny...Blake stated a few times "what he expects the market to do under Trump"...and being around here long enough, I noticed it was pretty much EXACTLY what he felt about the market, under Biden. In other words, Blake and I obviously have different approaches and outlooks, but can probably agree...shit really shouldn't change all that much just cuz some new talking head strolls into town with something to say. 

Of course I was being nothing but silly.  I had planned to begin buying a few stocks today in my retirement account again but I got busy networking all my new prescriptions with my doctors and also working through the lengths and auto-refill complexities with people at Walgreens.  My latest is that my blood pressure on most recent dose size was 95 over 65 and I literally couldn't stand up - just a few days after going to the ER feeling like superman with a reading of 217 over 105 on the old prescription size!   

 

Plan to include JOE and MSGE in by buys.  By the way I'd bought more (I've owned it for years) GOOG when you bought (just under $100) a bit over a year ago or so.  I would not have done that short of your post.

 

k

 

 

[Gregmal]

1 minute ago, dealraker said:

Of course I was being nothing but silly.  I had planned to begin buying a few stocks today in my retirement account again but I got busy networking all my new prescriptions with my doctors and also working through the lengths and auto-refill complexities with people at Walgreens.  My latest is that my blood pressure on most recent dose size was 95 over 65 and I literally couldn't stand up - just a few days after going to the ER feeling like superman with a reading of 217 over 105 on the old prescription size!   

 

Plan to include JOE and MSGE in by buys.  By the way I'd bought more (I've owned it for years) GOOG when you bought (just under $100) a bit over a year ago or so.  I would not have done that short of your post.

 

k

 

 

Get well for the holidays. Then all of 2025. Expecting to see you and Angela at the AGM next year!

[Blake Hampton]

19 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

One thing I do genuinely find annoying is that after every election theres this huge rush to "price things in", exacerbated almost entirely by the ideas everyone has, displayed in threads like this...when the truth is, its almost NEVER actually priced in to any sort of reasonable degree. In other words, the market rushes to wrongly price in things that arent as important as they think. 

 

End of the day I tend to think robust trends continue regardless, and shitty businesses will continue to be shitty businesses. In light of the talks with Blake the other day, I will say, highlighted in everything, maybe not apparent to everyone, but I found it funny...Blake stated a few times "what he expects the market to do under Trump"...and being around here long enough, I noticed it was pretty much EXACTLY what he felt about the market, under Biden. In other words, Blake and I obviously have different approaches and outlooks, but can probably agree...shit really shouldn't change all that much just cuz some new talking head strolls into town with something to say. 

I agree but I also think Trump has a very different agenda than Harris would've. That said, there's a lot of things currently happening which Trump is not responsible for. Problem is, is that when shit hits the fan, people have the tendency to blame everything on the current man in charge, and I honestly think it's one the dumbest aspects of politics.

[Blake Hampton]

These presidents hold real power, but maybe not as much as people make it out to be.

[Spooky]

41 minutes ago, Gregmal said:

One thing I do genuinely find annoying is that after every election theres this huge rush to "price things in", exacerbated almost entirely by the ideas everyone has, displayed in threads like this...when the truth is, its almost NEVER actually priced in to any sort of reasonable degree. In other words, the market rushes to wrongly price in things that arent as important as they think. 

 

Agree with this. No one knows what will actually happen. Better to focus on the micro and individual companies and ignore the politics / noise. 

[TwoCitiesCapital]

6 hours ago, Gregmal said:

Bond buyers are basically just a circle jerking group of leaches that manage pensions, insurance portfolios, endowments, etc. They want nothing to do with real alpha, they just don’t want to print a negative number so in exchange they seek assurance of their own prosperity by seeking out safe mid single digit guarantees. Retail investors are basically just a blip on the radar and consist of senior citizens and folks who want to be in the stock market but are scared.

 

Isn't it weird that those bond guys at PIMCO actually built one of the best returning stock funds of all time?

 

Even after underperforming by 10+% annualized each year for the last 3-years during the duration bear market, the PIMCO StocksPlus Long Duration fund is still beating the S&P 500 by over 0.30%/yr, after fees, on the 10-year figure numbers and has done ~13.5% per annum after fees since its inception in 2007.

 

And my guess is that the majority of the bond bear market is over, so we're probably judging them at the trough in relative performance

Edited Thursday at 01:56 AM by TwoCitiesCapital

[Gregmal]

1 hour ago, TwoCitiesCapital said:

 

Isn't it weird that those bond guys at PIMCO actually built one of the best returning stock funds of all time?

 

Even after underperforming by 10+% annualized each year for the last 3-years during the duration bear market, the PIMCO StocksPlus Long Duration fund is still beating the S&P 500 by over 0.30%/yr, after fees, on the 10-year figure numbers and has done ~13.5% per annum after fees since its inception in 2007.

 

And my guess is that the majority of the bond bear market is over, so we're probably judging them at the trough in relative performance

People always talk like stocks where the product of a 40 year decline in rates, but I mean was there anything easier than buying bonds with constant inflows of capital into US markets and a similarly constant put option of refinancing? 
 

I agree worst is behind on bonds right now. They’re interesting for sure especially with dropping Fed funds rate which is where margin rates tie in. Soon if not already you can buy some stuff for free and probably scrape out a net positive carry along with some free optionality on a recession induced decline.

[Spekulatius]

Isn’t tobacco a Trump trade? Beyond the more obvious things like lower tax rate benefit we have currently a situation, where there are hundreds of illicit vaper devices and what not available everywhere while at the same time the process to approve legit devices or products is totally broken.

 

If this is cleaned up, it would be a big benefit to those that play by the rules and that’s big tobacco.

Edited Thursday at 03:19 AM by Spekulatius