Spekulatius

I have worked at 3 different companies and got an inside look into a few more and R&D spent isn’t equally applied even within the same industry. In the industry I work in,a typical R&D spent is in the single digits, but I did work for a company that had R&D spent of almost 20%. However much of this R&D spent was mostly one off spent to get a certain product ready for a specific customer and in my opinion it really was sort of an Opex spent, because it didn’t really create a lasting benefit for anything but a specific use case that likely was a one off (custom). My take from this is that one should take reported R&D spent with a grain of salt and should be suspect of outliers and see if it created any visible moat in terms of sales growth or higher gross margins. If it doesn’t it either waste of just misclassified.

Bought a few throw away 2/19 short term puts on DVA. Will be interesting to see if they do better than FMS.

Mine are as follows. I have a few more in another account that are not listed (mostly foreign holdings). Largest one is LAACZ because I #neversell and need to make filling out the K-1 worth it. ABEV AMNF ANTM AZO BABA BAYRY BERY BMRN BMY BNTGY CBOE CMCSA CVS FAF FB GD GMED GOOG JNJ LAACZ LHX LMT MITK MMAC MNPP MO MRK NOC NUVR ORI PKE QUCT RNR SIMO SRE UELKY VIVHY VMW VNT

Jim Simons: I am sure the math checks out.

Added a bit of MRK. Stock has done nothing recently despite pretty decent results. Same with BMY (I own a little bought during the CELG merger selloff). Those are the two Pharma stocks I follow closely, and they are cheaper than they have been for years, despite decent top line growth. I probably add more BMY too.

This is like LOLZ wtfpwn stupid outside money dudes... ::) Maybe these outside money funds are just sacrificial lambs to feed the employee owned beast?

^ The -25% is mostly due to stock based comp which doesn’t count? If anything, I think Apple is undercharging relative to Android which has the same take rate. It is also amazing that Apple phones have only roughly a 14% world wide market share, yet generates 75-80% of the revenue. Also, how come this business is still worth ~$30B? Can‘t have it both ways. But overall, I agree, if Apple can keep this up, the App Store 30% royalty is worth a lot.

^ Yes, that’s how it works. FWIW, Minecraft has its own ecosystem that may actually be undermonitized. I know a tech at work who builds models of European castles in Minecraft and he is part of a online Minecraft group that is exchanging models, but outside of the Minecraft ecosystem. I kind rolled myself eyes when he talked to me about the details they go through to generate models so he stopped talking. I probably have listen longer to find out what is going on and the implications of this for business like this. As far as Roblox is concerned, I do think they may have tough comps next year as parents crack down on screentime more when regular kids activities resume. Last year was a disaster as most sports were cancelled or severely curtailed and school went partly online so screentime went through the roof. Smaller kids access is more controlled by parents (or should be) so I expect some reversal to the mean in terms of online games.

If the Fed ever wants to prick a bubble without hurting the economy, targeting BTC and the other cryptos is one way to do it. As crypto becomes larger, it is almost inevitable in some way, the question is what and when.

As your alter ego, I would say that you are a sexist who worships Billy Ackman but can't stand the success of a woman who managed to catch lightning in a bottle with her stock picks. ;) Ok, you two. It's this kind of thinking that is going to lead to missing out. Cathie herself has said investment firms not set up like Ark are going to be depriving investors of the biggest opportunities of our lifetime. I can hardly imaging what fate must await you two Negative Nelly's. ;) I guess I too am going to be missing out, and I'd like to add that I think many people overlook that the WSB crowd seems to not only like Cathie Woods, but the WSB crowd buys the ARK funds, they buy the funds' constituents, and they speculate and buy the anticipated additions to the funds. How is that for creating additional reflexivity? People who think the WSB and ARK phenomena are separate unrelated events of irrationality may be overlooking connections between the two. Add Bitcoin to it to make it three.

the Motley Fool Industryfocus podcast had an episode about Roblox recently that is worth a listen. Another thing I failed to mention is that the lifetime value of Roblox zu stones is limited by the fact that they outgrow the game whe they get about 12-13 years old. My son is 15 and I asked him about this game and he was well aware or it. But mentioned that nobody in his age group plays this any more. So this is a GME that is payed by 6-12 years old mostly. now if Roblox can extend the duration, it could be a huge leap to increasing the franchise value, but I not sure there is much evidence they can pull this off. This is not an evergreen game like Minecraft in terms of players age.

I expect user engagement and time spent on the platform to go down once we are past the epidemic. This was a pretty unusual time which has helped gaming platforms for kids tremendously, imo. It’s a business worth following but not worth buying for $30B imo.

^ Stocks are also the least affordable ever, but no one sees it that way.

That's a nice list here. I have similar views on diversification, FWIW.

Try this link, it should work: https://app.tikr.com/register?ref=o94y6y Koyfin is also worth a look (I use both): https://app.koyfin.com/home

Pretty good ad from Fidelity:

I come statement doesn’t look that great: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1532981/000117152020000426/eps9278.htm Was written up in VIC as a short at ~$16: https://www.valueinvestorsclub.com/idea/EROS_INTERNATIONAL_PLC/4402308714#messages Interesting comment that the company sued short sellers, which seemed to have been right. This was for the predecessor, but I don’t think it matter as I think same people are behind it. It does seem like a stock, the WSB crowd might like, low share price, low float, some story etc.

Or pretty much any finance professional publicly presenting ideas and acting on them.

Pipeline for new content? New content for India produced in CA, the most expensive location to produce films. That seemingly makes not sense. These out of country listings (company operating in country X and listing in country Y) are a yellow flag to being with and I think one would need to have a good handle on the Indian consumer space to gage the investing merit. Also, while then first incarnation of Eros was recapitalized , aren’t it still the same players here?

^ LOL, This was presented at MOI Global apparently: https://moiglobal.com/naveen-jeereddi-202101/ Why did they merge with an CA film studio (STX) if they want to distribute films in India?

Sounds about right and the cost is coming down to over time, but what advantage does 23andme exactly have here? They would need to start from scratch just like everyone else.

Yeah, that’s my question too. For me gold looks like a better bet, especially in a scenario where interest rates are artificially held back and inflation runs hot, like some have alluded to may happen. So, I keep buying small chunks of IAU in one account where I have the most cash (and IRA account). I sort of regard it as a cash alternative knowing too well that it can develop downside volatility in a choppy market. Guys, he's buying TLT for deflation/falling rates scenario, not for inflation/rising rates... ::) He actually explicitly said: I am aware of this, but gold could do well in a deflation as well, if there is concern about the financial system. It will however certainly do well better in a situation that I alluded to, where we have inflation and artificially suppressed interest rates.

Yeah, that’s my question too. For me gold looks like a better bet, especially in a scenario where interest rates are artificially held back and inflation runs hot, like some have alluded to may happen. So, I keep buying small chunks of IAU in one account where I have the most cash (and IRA account). I sort of regard it as a cash alternative knowing too well that it can develop downside volatility in a choppy market.

I am not so sure of this. Collecting genetic data from general population without proper study design is not as much value other than serving as a data for mining in early research setting for pharma/biotech. That is a mature market with very limited TAM for their kind of data (Target Discovery on Pg 25 from the sec doc above). The only sample they get as per my understanding is saliva which is of limited value as you can get only germline information (genetic information passed by heredity). This type of germline information has limited explanatory power in most diseases other than rare genetic diseases. Furthermore, you cannot ask a followup question on this data because the sample is not there anymore most of the time or is not appropriate for the disease area. As opposed to germline information, somatic mutations happen all through the life of human being starting accumulation all the way after conception during embryo development. They can also be organ / tissue specific. This data is not captured in such saliva based tests from 23andme. The real value of the data happens in translational science setting where they are allowed to use the leftover samples (blood, marrow, biopsy, etc) collected in clinical trials on disease subjects and matched healthy controls. These samples are valuable because they by definition have matching controls for things like age, gender, and other related traits in the disease area. Now you can run genetic test on these samples and get much more informative and comparative data and effect of genes for your therapeutic development. You can even do new experiments for example on blood or biopsy collected from patients and healthy by treating the blood sample with drugs and measuring the effect. My thinking is they will have to pivot completely to therapeutics to maintain their value. No idea if 3.5 billion is a good value for their current business model. Lastly, other than decode genetics, another interesting comparator to 23andme is color genomics (now just color inc - https://www.color.com/). They brought a cheap genetic test to market (even cheaper originally than 23andme if I am not mistaken) to collect such data. But they could not make a business model out of the data they collected. So now they are "diversifying" into other areas like health information systems, lab tests etc. Not an expert here but I can confirm that they sequence only a small percentage of the genome. That being said the full tests aren’t super expensive I think (could be wrong) and they should pivot to sequencing the whole genome or at least the important parts for protein creation. Jurgis or whomever, is that what you think they are thinking of doing based on press? Yes, they can pivot to sequencing the whole genome, but that’s way more expensive and it also means that they basically need to start from scratch. That said, I think the stock will sell well. 23andme is a well known “brand name”, CEO has Google association, well known SPAC sponsor. This should be enough for a pop, but it’s probably something you want to rent rather than own.

That’s a pretty insightful post here that deserves some reflection and I think you clearly are onto something. It is probably particular important for micro and small cap fund manager but does apply to larger larger players as well. For microcaps it happens quite often that despite similar fundamental, some stocks move and other don’t or move much later to the game. The difference doesn’t seem to have much to do with fundamental and they are more likely due to funds flow. It is clear that some manager can create their own fund flow first with their own buying and then through buying from their sphere of influence - by publishing their research or just folks that follow what they are doing or possibly even collusion or cooperation. For ARKK for example, we can look at PACB which has been here discussed as a failed merger arb and really as a standalone business doesn’t seem to be viable. Well, it has been a ten bagger since ARKK started to buy it, but is it really a much better business than it was a year ago, It doesn’t look much different to me, but now we got a buyer (ARKK) with a cloud of other buyers that probably just follow. Right now, I wonder how many other stocks are like this, fund manager X starts buying, the stock moves and than other buy as well, because the stock moves or well known manager x is buying...