Spekulatius

Since BTC is now legal tender supposedly in El Salvador, anybody has to accept it. it will be interesting to see how street vendors in El Salvador and the many small business deal with BTC payments and the volatility. I suspect there are going to be a lot of exceptions - otherwise I think we will see a lot of chaos and bankruptcies occurring from folks that find themselves on the wrong side of the volatility or that possibly get scammed.

BTC at $29.7K this AM. Looks like the line has been breached. This could be fun. Never a dull moment in crypto land.

In terms of quality of execution, I think Fidelity is on par or better than IBKR (based on the price improvements I am getting).

Tarex has been a terrible performer. 2* rated on Morningstar. I always liked their commentary but they really went into some areas that had strong headwinds (Japan, Hongkong).

Interesting chart regarding valuations and equity multiples:

A 50% decline in stocks is not a low probability event. It is more like a once in a decade event. We have sen those in 2002 and in 2008 and I think we will see one this decade too, but one can’t know for sure. High inflation typically hope so when their is political upheaval in combination with some economic stress factor (both are typically related to each other). I think a value like 10% is possible if the political stability of the US takes a severe hit and the financial markets lose confidence. It is a low probability scenario, but it is not impossible Imo. FWIW, the best inflation hedge is a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. To hedge yourself, you would want to have as much fixed rate 30 year mortgage debt as possible on your property. It also comes with a free call option to refinance (without penalty if you are in the US) if you are wrong.

I would be careful with NNN leases or NNN Reits. Most of these leases have annual escalators that are capped at some not so high value. If inflation really would go to even 5%, this would probably exceed the cap and then you own basically a long duration bond with an coupon below inflation, and some risk.

I agree. You are also paying through the nose for a business with an obsolence risk. What is the FCF yield - maybe 5%?

@wabuffo succinctly explained the case for gold, imo. Miners could be better, but traditionally, mining stocks / even gold mining stocks) also get whacked badly in a Stock market downturn, so as a hedging instrument, they may not work well at all. Holding cash in the 70‘s was not so bad, because savings accounts and short term bonds/ treasuries were actually yielding something. You still lost purchasing power as the yields didn’t keep up with rising inflation, but it wasn’t a catastrophic loss, I think

Reits are very sensitive to credit market conditions. That means that once there is some sort of a hiccup in the financial system, Reits are going south in a hurry. Crude is not a good inflation hedge because it’s is highly sensitive to marginal demand/ supply imbalances. The changes in crude prices in the past decade had very little to do with inflation.

Since the assets that constitute the Book value also generate the FCF, adding the Book value to the NOV of the FCF is double counting.

Nobody knows nothing, least do those working in the industry. Must be frustrating to compete against a fellow like Gary who rips up the playbook and plays his own tune and it works. Not that I have seen this coming.

It seems to me that there is a surge in orders for ships. I have no idea if they have long term contracts, but doubt that all of them do. https://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/container-ships-drive-119-jump-in-total-new-orders-in-first-five-months-of-2021/ It takes probably a year from order placement to actually get them to operate.

I kind of like the yellow metal here and bought more today. I regard it as a better alternative to cash basically. Sure, it could go down, but there is also a chance that if inflation kicks in with negative interest rates, that it goes up a lot. Gold has been a store of value for more than 5000 years and I think it will be for a while in the future as well. my vehicle of choice is IAU since it had lower fees than GLD. I wasn’t aware of GLDM so maybe that’s a better alternative. Gold miners are tricky and it isn’t clear that it works well in and inflationary environment. When buying a miner, you are basically making a bet that the mining costs go up less than the price of Gold, which isn’t necessarily a given. In the depression in the 30’s gold miners did well, because the price of gold was fixed and their input costs (labor, materials ) were falling significant, so their margin improved. That’s unlikely to repeat itself however.

If it can't be meme-fied, is it even worth investing? I goddamn missed the $PLTR despite having a good handle on the pro's and cons. Doing better with this one. Then there is $CNNE. It is trading below NAV with a pretty decent track record, but who cares? Cannae Holding sounds good and they have an war elephant on their website. Who doesn't like elephants? This is why we fight!