What are you buying today?

[LC]

19 hours ago, dwy000 said:

Thats actually a great idea. Might look at January tho to put it into next tax year. 

 

19 hours ago, Junior R said:

sold naked put on UNH $310 expiring Dec 19 2025 for $40

 

Talk about the worst idea. 24 hrs later - hope you guys didn't get blown out too hard.

[texual]

I won't be buying UNH until there's some clarity.

[Marco Van Basten]

UNH call spread: june 2027 long 200 short 320, paid $50 points with the stock at $259

[dwy000]

3 hours ago, LC said:

 

 

Talk about the worst idea. 24 hrs later - hope you guys didn't get blown out too hard.

Luckily (pure luck), I looked into it after the market had closed so dodged a bullet. One day later and it would have been a different story.  Whew.

[lnofeisone]

I sold UNH puts. Some ITM, some OTM. 

[ValueNation]

Have been adding to MRNA and BNTX

[Spekulatius]

On 4/11/2025 at 7:23 AM, Spekulatius said:

I continue  mostly to add to existing positions (GOOGL, PAX, CX, REGN, ADM, NVO, ARE, 4368.T ,etc) on large down days. A new one I bought a couple of days is a new IPO in Australia - CCL (Cuscal). It does payment processing in Australia and has a high market share there. Their first report looked pretty good, imo. It’s sort of a busted IPO and looks pretty cheap on many metrics. I don’t know much about it, but the cheapness and the low Australian dollar make it an attractive bet.

Re Cuscal - is anyone invested in this? I bought some of this busted IPO around tariff day and the stock has done well. Unique Australian payment infrastructure and fintech play. I am getting some Visa / Mastercard vibes post IPO. Wish I had bought more.

 

.https://ir.miraqle.com/DownloadFile.axd?file=/Report/ComNews/20250326/02928953.pdf

[Marco Van Basten]

4 hours ago, Spekulatius said:

Re Cuscal - is anyone invested in this? I bought some of this busted IPO around tariff day and the stock has done well. Unique Australian payment infrastructure and fintech play. I am getting some Visa / Mastercard vibes post IPO. Wish I had bought more.

 

.https://ir.miraqle.com/DownloadFile.axd?file=/Report/ComNews/20250326/02928953.pdf

Who are the competitors?  Why did they go public?  Who owned this pre-IPO?  What will they use the proceeds for?  Thank you.

[lnofeisone]

On 5/15/2025 at 2:37 PM, lnofeisone said:

I sold UNH puts. Some ITM, some OTM. 

Bought back ITM puts here. Can't argue with 50% gain. Will sit on OTM as I don't mind being assigned at 230. 

[dipod]

Shorted OTM puts on NVO again today. 

[Spekulatius]

9 hours ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Who are the competitors?  Why did they go public?  Who owned this pre-IPO?  What will they use the proceeds for?  Thank you.

I think the history and what they do is not a mystery when you just go to the Wikipedia site. Cuscal is a payment service business that was mostly owned by banks and credit unions. Those tend to be not profit optimized and good setups for IPO’s - see Mastercard and Visa when they IPO’d. Thats basically why I bought some shares even though I am hardly an expert on the business.

Edited May 17, 2025 by Spekulatius

[Luke]

I added to Warrior Met Coal and Valaris

[Saluki]

Small nibbles to JOE and VG. 

[Castanza]

On 5/16/2025 at 11:40 AM, Marco Van Basten said:

Who are the competitors?  Why did they go public?  Who owned this pre-IPO?  What will they use the proceeds for?  Thank you.

All we have to go on is analyst projections…which look to net out to ~13-15%. 2025 bad yeah (outlier)…..can you demonstrate what has fundamentally changed with the business? Because so far it just seems like a barrage of headlines with 1 bad Q and a criminal investigation which doesn’t give any insights as to who what or when happened and what the potential consequences are. They won the last trial so would a company double down on fraud? Idk, but what I do know is the market tends to overreact in the short term. So far the “issues” (going on limited info) don’t seem systemic to the business. The punishment of the share prices seems to outweigh any fine or ruling they could see near term. 
 

To me it’s worth an option play as you don’t get massive sell offs in big names like this all too often. 
 

btw I’m up 20% on calls as it stands now. Plenty of room to make money there. Size accordingly

[Marco Van Basten]

3 hours ago, Castanza said:

All we have to go on is analyst projections…which look to net out to ~13-15%. 2025 bad yeah (outlier)…..can you demonstrate what has fundamentally changed with the business? Because so far it just seems like a barrage of headlines with 1 bad Q and a criminal investigation which doesn’t give any insights as to who what or when happened and what the potential consequences are. They won the last trial so would a company double down on fraud? Idk, but what I do know is the market tends to overreact in the short term. So far the “issues” (going on limited info) don’t seem systemic to the business. The punishment of the share prices seems to outweigh any fine or ruling they could see near term. 
 

To me it’s worth an option play as you don’t get massive sell offs in big names like this all too often. 
 

btw I’m up 20% on calls as it stands now. Plenty of room to make money there. Size accordingly

Are you referring to UNH?   I am glad that you are up on your calls.   I would be playing it via option spreads since 50% implied vol is tough to overcome.    Look, 2017 EBIT was $17bn, 2024 was $34bn, what caused this growth?  Why is $34bn a sustainable level?  In the long run, healthcare cannot continue to grow as a % of GDP.   Look, I don't know this name well, but I would be surprised if $34bn is a level from which the company will grow.  I think upcoding is a real problem, and I think MLRs will go higher than 85% that they had before.  Why are their margins so much higher than the rest of the field?  You are right that large cap names don't get beat up this much often, but here, in my opinion, the profitability/business model is in question.  Also, given the risks, if its growth = inflation, it should probably be a 13-14 p/e, and not 16, as it is riskier than the typical stock market name in my opinion.   I will again admit that I know very little about the situation, and I wish you luck.  

[Castanza]

18 hours ago, Marco Van Basten said:

Are you referring to UNH?   I am glad that you are up on your calls.   I would be playing it via option spreads since 50% implied vol is tough to overcome.    Look, 2017 EBIT was $17bn, 2024 was $34bn, what caused this growth?  Why is $34bn a sustainable level?  In the long run, healthcare cannot continue to grow as a % of GDP.   Look, I don't know this name well, but I would be surprised if $34bn is a level from which the company will grow.  I think upcoding is a real problem, and I think MLRs will go higher than 85% that they had before.  Why are their margins so much higher than the rest of the field?  You are right that large cap names don't get beat up this much often, but here, in my opinion, the profitability/business model is in question.  Also, given the risks, if its growth = inflation, it should probably be a 13-14 p/e, and not 16, as it is riskier than the typical stock market name in my opinion.   I will again admit that I know very little about the situation, and I wish you luck.  

 

Again the market is proving in less than 1% FCF growth at these prices. 2024 dip was mostly due to the hack.

 

Analysts EPS growth estimate through 2029 is ~15%

 

We don’t know 2025 EPS projections so let’s use 2023 numbers of 24. 
 

Average PE was ~22 the last decade which seems high. 

Napkin math…

Even if you use 2023 EPS numbers ~24 with say ~8% EPS growth at 17x PE you’re looking at like ~9-10% CAGR share price through 2029. 

 

Could all that change with some big fraud case or change to the business fundamentally? Yeah I guess…but you state longterm healthcare industry outlook is bleak and % of GDP is unsustainable. Not sure that matters over the next 2-5 years. I doubt much changes just my two cents. 

 

Massive established company with high rates of insider buying, a first time miss like this and a decade+ of solid growth in revenue and FCF per share. A fraud case with no evidence (yet) and examples of past cases won.  All for 50% off. 

 

does it need to be more complicated than that? 

[Marco Van Basten]

@Castanza, you are probably right.  I made a mistake.  Good luck on the position.  

[Junior R]

1 minute ago, Marco Van Basten said:

@Castanza, you are probably right.  I made a mistake.  Good luck on the position.  

No Mistake there will always be an opportunity in some stock the question is which 

[Castanza]

5 hours ago, Junior R said:

No Mistake there will always be an opportunity in some stock the question is which 

 

Definitely not enough info out there to take a big position on this imo. New guidance and more clarity from the CEO would be welcome. Optically it's cheap, but I couldn't tell you anything about the business or the future of the business. I just find it hard to believe that a company operating pretty well for a decade all of a sudden has a severe systemic issue....

 

edit: I think something has to change at the political level long term for this business model to be material impacted. But what are the chances there? Healthcare lobbying is still extremely high (300M)....and you recently had Bill 35-48 completely die even with support from both sides!

 

Increased claims are still likely due to covid suppression to a degree. Could be some risk with up-coding for sure but how big and what's the fine if there is? 

 

Edit2: Took profit on Calls (30%) rolled it into shares and hedged with puts....lets see what happens

Edited May 19, 2025 by Castanza

[This2ShallPass]

Added more to the Pabrai Wagons fund. My plan has been to allocate small amounts to other managers, with a simple rule: if they outperform me in any given year, I'll add more, but if they underperform my portfolio for 3 consecutive years, I'll cut bait. I started with Pabrai in Jan'24 and added Ackman this year. So far, both have underperformed:)—Pabrai by quite a bit. But I decided to ignore my rule and add anyway, mostly because of the reasons below.

 

I liked his recent update—he trimmed exposure to coal and car dealerships, and bought VAL, NE, and TDW. I had already started building positions in these three earlier this year, so I was familiar with them. Edelweiss also looks interesting. They're currently valued around $1B, and they'll be spinning off 4 units, each potentially valued around $1B according to Pabrai. The first IPO/spinoff is coming soon, expected valuation around $900M–$1.6B, so we'll soon find out if his thesis holds up. Also, TAV Airports had 95M passengers last year and expects to hit 110M this year. Edelweiss and TAV together are about 35% of his portfolio.

[dipod]

Shorted some OTM LLY puts.

[Malmqky]

Nibbling on JOE, first time adding since 2023

[Gregmal]

More Vitrolife 

[sleepydragon]

Sold puts of MRNA

[tnathan]

2 hours ago, Gregmal said:

More Vitrolife 

Funny - I just started a position in Cooper today