Spekulatius

My buys were BABA, AMZN, COST and FROG.

This is the golden age of stock promoters. Chamath is one of the best, but nobody beats Elon Musk.

I would try to find something your child is interested in, e.g., sports --> Nike, cosmetics --> L'Oreal, TV --> Netflix. If the first company "analysis" goes well, then try another more generic company in the same or a related industry. Someone learn a lot just by trying to understand the differences in gross margins between, say, Nike and Jerash Holdings. (Of course, this is stolen from Buffett's lessons about See's Candies, etc.) Perhaps the Motley Fool website? They do a good job summarizing what the companies do in an easy to understand format.

Quarterly tendies raised to $26/unit. https://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/LAACZ/news/Distribution-Announcement?id=292681

This aspect is interesting because it may explain (IMO) some of the cash build-up at holdco. When Mr. Buffett made the PCP acquisition, he paid a normalized PE of 18 (earnings yield of about 5.5%). The idea then was that the rest of the return would come from growth (organic and acquisitions). From 2003 to 2015, operating earnings had grown at a CAGR of 15-16%. When announced, many people suggested that the switch in investment mindset (pay more for growth) was the right one and many suggested that he had under-paid for the acquisition (i just checked for fun what people here said at the time). So, for this specific transaction, the outcome is likely to be satisfactory over time but the price paid was too high as a result of assumptions that were initially too optimistic. Of course, it's easy to say in retrospect. PCP is unlike Heico as was asked before. PCP is basically in the precision metal forming business while Heiko makes parts. PCP was first hit by the energy , while it was acquired in 2016 after the crash, t(r lingering effects also caused energy generation (turbines etc) which was one of PCP’s end markets, Then came COVID-19 which affected aerospace where PCP had redirected some of their capacity in the mean time. I also think that PCP was over optimized to show earnings when Buffet bought it. At least recall reading about this issue at the time of the acquisition. I think it was a so- spur chase when he bought it already and that was totally exposed with COVID-19. Lubrizol actually is another not so great purchase, but better than PCP. I believe Berkshire had to write off some goodwill on the Lubrizol acquisition as well.

I believe it is always on the 52nd day after the IPO, at least that seems to be the rule.

The patent expiring in 2023 should be a huge concern. If not directly affecting market share it will affect the Premium it can charge over competitors who just duplicate. A2 milk’s formulation. It won’t be like drug going generic but likely more used but still could affect profit margins considerably.

FWIW, just bought some more COST shares yesterday AH after they missed earnings. Anecdotally, I also just ordered a washer dryer set from them to stop endless complaints from my wife about the washer 'eating' her laundry. COST e-commerce is a massive opportunity and they have not been good at it traditionally (the website is still so so), but they are getting much better. I love them for big ticket items because of their better return policies.

Why not? If you sit at home and don’t drive much, why not shop for a cheaper insurance? I generally agree on PGR being fairly reasonably priced, but I do think that the advent of self driving cars will keep a lid on the exit multiple. At some point, they have to pivot into other kind of insurance and it is unclear if they have much of an advantage in anything but car insurance, plus the tails are longer, which drives different economics.

A Titti bar chain and Fintwit favorite trading for 5x sales. What could go wrong?

GOOG is slower growing than AMZN and that’s where the lower multiple is coming from. They have a better track record expanding in new business - AWS, Advertising, Alexa etc. GOOG has Google bets but those in total do not seem to be well run.

Hear hear! And most importantly welcome back, Gregmal.

COST, AMZN and a small add to VNT

This is one of those stocks that actually doesn’t have benefited from multiple expansion like so many other stocks. The share price appreciation , which was considerable, has been “earned” with increasing revenues and earnings and the multiple roughly stayed the same. Most other stocks have benefited from multiple expansion, but not AMZN. This is somewhat surprising to me, but that’s what the numbers show:

No opinion on the stock. I have been to a grocery outlet a few times years ago when I lived in CA. In my opinion, Aldi beats the pants of this store concept from a customer perspective. No position, but I would rather own some expensive COST stock or DG.

Same here. Got a few shares in one account. I buy a few more, if it falls below $320. I guess valuations do matter after all as COST has drastically underperformed the market since summer.

Can't buy a fraction of a deeply OTM call option though, as far as I know. First world problems ;D. Does anyone else think that AMZN looks cheap here? Bought a few shares here around $3060.

I sort of missed this. So the old style icon has now become a digital collectible.

https://app.tikr.com/register?ref=o94y6y

It will be interesting to hear Wabuffo‘s opinion, but UBI alone won’t cause all that much inflation. It will increase spending and deficits but that alone won’t really cause inflation, in particular as they likely will go hand in hand with a stronger USD. I do think that increases in minimum wage could increase inflation as they affect services and goods that part of the basket goods and services that is used to calculate inflation. Min wage has been stagnant for a long time before that, which I think was deflationary. I think the bigger question for investors and in particular growth investors is that if longer term interest rates stay relatively high (steeper yield curve), some of the weird justification for the high growth stocks multiples is harder and harder to justify. After all, from a monetary perspective, we might look more like 2018 or 2016 and multiples at those points in time weren’t really that extended for growth stocks than they are right now.

I am not sure you are talking about the past future but recently, the USD has been very weak relative to the EUR, GBP and Yen and the US interest rates have been moving up (Euro and Uk interest rates not so much). I do think the USD will strengthen - I don’t know what is chicken or egg, but the interest rate differential relative to the EUR and the GBP suggests the USD is now attractive: Maybe it is just an indication that the economic recovery in the US will be stronger than in the Euro Zone or the UK. I do think the inflation scare could end up just like 2010/11 inflation scare - a short flare that ended up meaning very little in the long run.

Also ironic - the market (SP500) goes up today ~2.7% because the JNJ vaccine gets approved and JNJ stock goes up 0.8%.

+1 It is hard to believe that Morris will have any employees left after the acquisition is completed. Assuming a combined 25% tax rate for Altice, tax benefit is no more than $78M (if the entire $310M purchase price were to be written off immediately). So it means that post-synergy EBITDA of at least $31M vs the current $13M! Perhaps they are taking what Malone calls "Roman" acquisition strategy a bit far. The roman's didn't kill everybody after the conquered land, quite the opposite. This is more like a Neutron bomb warfare where you get rid of everything living but keep the buildings intact. I wonder how the first employee hands on (hand's up?) meeting goes.

Seems like the only thing that matters at this point is vaccination. UK is currently ~31% US is currently at ~21% Europe around 7% and Canada ~5% of the population. I don’t follow Canada, but Germany is a total disaster. Supply of vaccine is lacking and it looks now that Germany won’t approve the Asta Zeneca vaccine for people above 64 years old (lack off efficacy), but at the same time, they don’t give shots to people below 64 either because of priority for older people. You can’t really make this up. BioNtec now build a production facility in Marburg for more vaccine, but it isn’t ready yet (EU failed to order enough and they ordered too late) but I hear now that the supply from Marburg may not even get sent to Germany first. We have done a lot of critique on Trump’s “ Warp Speed” but since the current vaccine supply situation is the consequence of decisions made ~6 month ago (mostly) he has done a better job than Europe throwing money at everything basically. Given the cost of maybe wasting $10B vs spending trillions of stimulus that was an easy choice to make (imo) but it appears that nickel and dime-ing in the EU and wasting time seemed like good idea for some at that time, but now really backfires. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

That portfolio has probably the lowest price/ book ratio that has been listed so far. A long time ago, I took a look at 5161.T (Nishikawa Rubber). What interested me a while ago was that they made speciality parts like Earthquake dampeners for buildings etc. i never drilled much beyond that but it looked indeed incredible cheap.