Spekulatius

Realwear gear strikes me as relatively crude as it is not seamless - it has its own miniscreen and is connected to a helmet. I am certain similar setups have been around for military for a while. I can see it being useful for difficult working environments and I guess that’s why some companies are buying this. My bigger concern from an investment perspective is what are going to be the margins on stuff like this? They are pot. similar to consumer electronics or is there any high margin software attached to it? I am pretty sure AR/VR has a future but it has to be bright in a way that doesn’t look intrusive. Not many people wil use an VR Headset that looks like a fish tank strapped on you head, not even for gaming. The 3d TV‘s failed because you had to use bulky classes for example amongst other things. FWIW, Zoominfo revenue data aren’t very reliable but I guess it is better than nothing.

At some point it is inevitable that China‘s Yuan becomes a reserve currency. The Chinese don’t want this yet and that’s why they essentially have pegged their currency to the USD. about think about this, if the their Economy become larger and larger and exceeds the US economy, it really can’t be avoided due to sheer amount of economic activity in Yuan and trade. The reason the Chinese government doesn’t want it is yet is that it will cause dislocations in their economy and probably a higher exchange rate and loss of control. As far as inflation is concerned it seems that the price action in gold indicates that it is going to be short lived. Gold is weak on days when interest rates go up for example. There is no speculative run towards gold as this money goes into crypto etc it seems. As far as QE and reserves are concerned, I don’t think any of this matters really. What matters however is spending and that spending is going up financed by federal deficits. At some point we will see the limits of what can be done without penalties, but it does not seem we are there yet. As for now, you got to dance as long as the music is playing.

^KJP, yes I put in the wrong link - here is the correct one: https://www.barrons.com/articles/how-boeings-problems-play-out-and-five-stocks-for-an-aerospace-recovery-51615589491

Pretty good article in Barron’s about aerospace and defense: https://www.barrons.com/articles/these-8-value-stocks-will-benefit-from-an-economic-recovery-51614337206 Touches upon BA, LMT, NOC, RTX

Agreed. However, there are some years when Fairfax will grow BV by 15%. There are 2 key drivers to Fairfax being able to hit 15%: 1.) insurance underwriting 2.) investment results - especially equities Given the hard market in insurance and how they are positioned today with their equity holdings i think they can hit BV growth of 15% in 2021 :-) I'll add a third key 3.) They will not blow a billion on some risky venture That is the main key for me. They showed us that they are able to do this. Sanjeev answer vigorously to my post but he says the same thing than me. I bought at 465 in january and waited the annual report to decide if it was a short term investment or for the longterm. Reading the report where everything positive where explain in great detail but the negative was hard to come by convince me to be a short term holder for this time just like Sanjeev position. By the way I have a very long story with Fairfax. It is probably responsible for half of my net worth. First buy in 1993 and sold at 3x BV for a ten bagger. I was one of the first to discuss about FFH with Sanjeev on MSN. Was lucky enough to buy back in 2003 in the exact day of the bottom at 70 and sold at about 8x that price. I run a concentrate portfolio of 8 to 10 stocks. I had a couple of in and out since that for a wash. Now i'm in for the ride back to BV. Awesome! That's the way to do it. #SellattheRightTime beats #neversell at least in this case.

Unfortunately, reducing the float does not necessarily help reducing the discount, as shares get even more illiquid. Having few outside shareholders also increases the chance or a takeunder at an opportune time for the controlling shareholder. I actually think that cash distributions would be a way better for minority shareholders in cases like this. Speaking from sad experience. Can you share your experiences? I’m curious if they are a fair comparison to ELF. I don’t think a take under is possible as the NAV is so easily determined, too many minority investors would exercise their dissent rights. Also, with a share buyback in place, that’s $850k in liquidity a day. I’m constantly surprised by how much liquidity investors need for all of their positions every day. A big advantage for retail is that most of us don’t have the liquidity restraints of pooled capital. It’s a definitive edge for the most part especially since the GFC. BRK.A has less than 700k shares outstanding and the ELF float is about 763k. The former seemed to work out ok so far. I also want to share this essay from Howard Marks on liquidity. It changed my thinking dramatically. It probably doesn’t, however, fit most investor personalities or investing styles. https://www.oaktreecapital.com/docs/default-source/memos/2015-03-25-liquidity.pdf Yes, my most recent cases: FOPE SPA - IPO‘d a couple years back and the owner sold out at 9 Euro, which is most likely followed by an buyout. This seems to cap the shareprice HDG.AS (Hunter Douglas) - trades at low volumes forever. Owner family took advantage of the COVID-19 dump and presented a takeout offer for ~ 10x earnings when it was clear that the housing went gangbusters. I made money in both cases, but it could have been more if it hadn’t been controlled by a single shareholder to begin with. The way I see it, the controlling shareholder have a never expiring call option on buying the remaining shares and they will exercise it when it is extremely favorable to them.

FAAMG is >20% of the S&P 500. By being underweight FAAMG, I've been unintentionally betting AGAINST these great businesses. Not a smart bet. So I'm comfortable having up to 20% in these (or similar businesses). Within FAAMG, the relative valuations have shifted dramatically. Facebook used to sell at a premium because it had the best combination of growth, profitability, and ROIC. It is now the cheapest by a wide margin. Because... yuck. -- Has anyone gotten past the ick factor? I'd gladly put 10% into any of the other FAAMGs at cheaper prices. But Facebook is just too gross. -- To sum: - Great business - Cheap price - Super icky That's three buy signals, creating an intense urge to make it a full position. And vomit. What is so icky about FB? I own several defense stocks, Bayer, MO and booze stocks and don’t feel bad about any of those.

hyper elitist education for the win. Palm Beach Day just ain't gonna cut it. Dalton or Bust!* https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-10/wall-street-a-listers-fled-to-florida-many-are-eyeing-a-return *for the record, pupil went to a poseur south florida prep school, not in NYC/Northeast Arn't public schools in Florida total crap? That's what my wife heard from folks that moved there from Long Island. LI school were excellent when we lived there.

how you buying Shinoken ? This is not listed in US Through Interactive Brokers with trading permission for Japan. I've heard it's also available through Fidelity as ADR but have not confirmed. I am on H1B work visa. I am eligible do open account with IBKR to buy other countries stock ? , it was asking lot many questions was confused what to fill. I opened brokerage accounts when I was on H1B, no problem. I can’t speak for IB specifically, but why should it make any difference?

Unfortunately, reducing the float does not necessarily help reducing the discount, as shares get even more illiquid. Having few outside shareholders also increases the chance or a takeunder at an opportune time for the controlling shareholder. I actually think that cash distributions would be a way better for minority shareholders in cases like this. Speaking from sad experience.

I believe the average pop from the reference price for a direct listing is ~30%. So I call a $60 open. I have concerns about the normalized growth rates going forward, but the general feel of this seems to be overwhelmingly positive. So I think the stock will do well, at least short term.

I have the same thoughts. They have reduced their backlog in the SNCL segment from 2.84B to 2.175B and took 0.41B hit doing so. With that much backlog left, it is quite possible that further hits are outstanding. These business are problematic to wind down. Apparently they can‘t sell it and everyone who works there knows the end is coming and probably doesn’t give a damn.

Well without cash flow, they can’t really do share buybacks. The Engineering/ construction companies usually have issue with extremely lumpy cash flow, which makes it hard to manage the balance sheet. I haven’t really looked at Lavalin‘s balance sheet at all, but based on what you describe, it comes at absolutely no surprise that they don’t do share buybacks.

The delivery advantage due to density would be one competitive advantage I would be concerned about, because the delivery players like UeberEats etc are not going away, Those guys play the scaling game too and when you look at Uebers presentation, it‘s all about route density. So in that way, the Domino‘s delivery advantage is going to diminish. Pickup is interesting and I think here they could have an edge, as they do a superb job with their app to make this easy and transparent for the customer. I had Domino‘s pizza only once and that was during the pandemic when I picked on up on my way home from work and the ordering process was very well done (contactless pickup). The pizza itself is nothing to rave about, but it’s not cardboard either.

Looks like they waited a bit too long to IPO, ARR looks like they flatline in 2021: It will be interesting how this performs out of the direct listing gate. keep in mind, that they tend have 5% dilution annually in shares from SBC.

LOL: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/05/detroit-mayor-rejects-initial-jj-vaccine-shipment-saying-pfizer-and-moderna-are-the-best.html

Yeah, better do your homework on this one, this is a very promotional tweet ands a pretty complex situation. There are various VIC writeups (one recent one regarding the bonds) and it has been touted as a value investment quite a few times over the years. No position for me (too hard pile).

Can someone explain how Chamath getting rich with SPAC vehicles has anything to do with climate change? I don’t even see a remote connection between the two issues.

^ Yes, I think This makes sense. We had excess death last year which lowered the life expectancy but only last year, going forward this should revert to its LT trend. I do agree that on the long run, the drug related death are more important. In 2019 we had about 70k and about half of those were from opioids. Those 70k are mostly younger folks, so the impact is much larger than the COVID-19 death hitting mostly older folks. Anyways, the epidemic will turn into an endemic by early summer in the US, so we are almost done here. On the drug abuse issue, I wondering legalization of marijuana might have a positive impact on mortality. My thinking is that people will use one drugs or another and marijuana is less likely lethal than opioids and alcohol, so crowding out these drugs with a healthier one could have a positive impact on mortality. I recall seeing stats that the introduction of marijuana in a state has reduced alcohol consumption for example (I forgot about the source). There is now a natural experiment going on with some states in the US legalizing marijuana and others not yet. Do it should be possible to get some interesting data from consumption trends of various drugs upon introduction marijuana. Longer term, I think alcoholic beverages may suffer from increased competition.

Well, I was a kid in the 70‘s, but I sometimes think the 70‘s now get a worse reputation than they deserve. I grew up in Germany where the inflation was significant, but not as bad as in the US, so that may be a factor. Yes, there were oil price shocks, but those lasted maybe 12 month. In this decade we have an epidemic, which are comparable. The real economic growth was higher than it was today. Interest rates and inflation were higher and asset prices were lower. If you owned a house back than that was worth $100k (adjusted for inflations since then) and now a similar house is worth 500k - are we really 5x richer?

The letter is a joke. When you read it, you would think that FFH is crushing it, yet book value went down and the earnings are a black zero. Leverage on a Holding level is up. They have underperformed virtually any other insurance company follow in terms business performance. Unless they perform better, I don’t see why this would rerate higher.

Because printing money doesn’t do anything. The Fed can print all the money they want, it doesn’t do anything if it is put in a locker. Only spending money does and that’s why 2020/21 is different as the Treasury sent out stimulus checks for example to almost everyone (=helicopter money). In 2008, we printed money but effectively put it into a locker. Later there was a a lot of talk about QE, but QE didn’t really give you or me an extra dollar to spent so I don’t think it has done much. Today we are printing money and the treasury is sending checks out within the $1.9T stimulus package which is 9.1% of GDP. We have some slack in the economy to absorb some stimulus , but not 9.1% our economy. So, I think we will see inflation, but it likely will be a short term spike.

Well, the $1.9T stimulus bill has passed so that will keep the supply of USD going. Total US GDP is 20.9T, so this spending is 9.1% of the GDP. I don’t know when the stimulus bill kicks in and the duration, but it sure looks like it will have an inflationary to me. Those are USD hitting the economy and most of it goes into spending and as we have seen in the past, part of this gets invested in stocks as well.

Yes, the value difference between FISV and SQ is mind boggling. FWIW, a lot of traditional financial companies have fintech under the hood that would be worth a pretty penny stand-alone. For example this is what I found for a smaller holding of mine (FAF): https://twitter.com/clownbuck/status/1366914907644526594?s=21

I am just a bystander, but check in Cathiesark.com every once in a while. The fund seems to get more concentrated and the largest position In each fund is just below 10% (position limit?) - typically, it’s TSLA. I found it interesting that they own 7.7% in Teladoc shares. https://cathiesark.com/ark-funds-combined/complete-holdings Some funds have scary buying pattern - ARKW being one example: https://cathiesark.com/arkw/trends