Spekulatius

I bought Bayer post merger too, but it doesn’t matter. Not only was the price paid too high, they also didn’t really consider the baggage that came with Monsanto. I generally think that the people who create a problem, aren’t the right one to solve it.

yes I think that could well be correct. The narrative "the bond market is smart and is bullish" could well be wrong, because as @wabuffo neatly pointed out, the bond market is just supply and demand and right now, there is little supply, so prices wen up (and bond yields down) due to a transient factor.

Baumann owns the Monsanto takeover that has cost shareholders dearly. He should have been canned a while ago. I prefer to see some “heads on sticks” as far as management is concerned, as a deterrent for similar future endeavors .

My understanding is that the taxation and regulation still allows these small illegal growers to compete with legal commercial growers I don’t really have an answer to most of your questions 1)-7). I do respect Aaron Edelheit because most of his stock picks turned out reasonably well. He talks very enthusiastic about all of them, so keep that in mind when you hear him mentioning Glass House. I am almost certain that Glass house won’t be the low cost producer. My reasons being the high Capex cost that Glass house is incurring as well as the relatively high cost to do business in California and Ventura county. I know one company in CA for example that acquired dirt cheap industrial buildings in the North Bay post the 2001 crash and started to do indoor growth including cannabis and I bet their Capex/ unit is a fraction of what Glass house is paying and investing just to name one example. This is in the same state and if we are talking other states, I am certain that costs are even lower. This doesn’t men that Glass house won’t work out, I would look at everything that is presented by SPAC with a few grains of salt, especially in the cannabis space.

Jamie would agree with you: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/jamie-dimon-jpmorgan-is-hoarding-cash-because-very-good-chance-inflation-here-to-stay.html He also understand the monetary pluming much better than said economist. Well if I had to chose one side argument, I think I would go along with the guy who bet's $500B on something (or at least the interest income from $500B).

I agree with @Libs Nd of course @wabuffohere. It looks like yields are artificially compressed for treasuries because there are not enough treasuries issued right now because the federal reserve account bonds is slowly run down. This sets up an interesting dynamic where despite inflation numbers being high and the economy running hot, the yields go lower. It is interesting from a trading perspective because many seem to draw the conclusion that the bond market “knows” that the inflation is a head fake and what we are seeing is just a result of a temporary supply Imbalance caused by monetary plumbing issues. If this is correct there money to be made betting on higher interest rates (once the Fed account balance is run down). and probably betting on growth stock/ high multiple stocks going down as well, because if discount rates moving up again. We have already seen in March 2021 how this can work against growth equities. It is an interesting thesis, but now one has to estimate the infliction Point which is when the Fed account balance reaches about $100B. Currently, we are at $633B which is probably worth about 1-2 month from now- I am guessing end of July when interest rate should start to move up again, if this hypothesis is correct. It seems that TLT puts with an out of money strike and a year end expiration date would be a good way to play this. Either it works, or it doesn’t but it is an alternative hypothesis that I like because I think it is underpriced. Any smarter way to play this? Puts on some growth stock index? ARKK?

Yes, that’s a pretty good writeup. I like the discussion of the Pharma business in particular. I think what is missing here though is that management is subpar, both in terms of capital allocation and shareholder communication and perhaps even operations. For that reason, I do consider some discount as appropriate. That said, I own some shares and bought more a few month ago when the shares took just another one of these dumps. I think it is still a bit undervalued, but a better management could unlock a lot of value from the three above average business that Bayer has. One thing that is not knows is that Bayer owns within it’s crop science business a precision agriculture software business (Climate) that’s seems to be the leader in their field and benefit from Bayers scale and their seed and crop science business scale: https://www.climate.com I don’t think the current valuations assigns any value to this business (and others).

It is not just politicians, it is homeowners as well. I have yet to see a homeowner who welcome when single family homes are replaced by multi family homes or a commercial development. There simply is self interest at work. Perhaps sharing economics in a smart way with the city and neighbors might help, but I doubt even that. The more expensive homes gets, the harder rezoning/ repurposing get’s ironically.

Bought this one for $10 at the NH liquor store a week or so ago. It is really hard to go wrong with Cabernet , Merlot or Zinfandel from Sonoma county. $10-$20/ bottle gets you good quality. Napa county is great too, but usually more expensive. Some vineyards from Mendocino county are Ok as well. For whites, I prefer Finger Lake Riesling or other white grapes or perhaps an unoaked Chardonnay from CA ( same location than above)

Adding a hypothetical 50% IPO pop to Jack Ma's value is a bit disingenuous. Also, how much did pay Jack Ma exactly for his Ant stake? If there is still 30% of $106B in value left for something he got basically for free, well that isn't that bad either.

The Biogen drug does reduce the amyloid plaques, which was what it’s designed to do, but it does not objectively improve the patient outcome apparently. It seems that the plaques are a symptom but not the true underlying cause of the disease and reducing them does not help the patients. I think the last word isn’t really said about this. There will be some fallout from this decision. I also suspect some wheels have been greased there at the right spots on Biogen’s side.

For entertaining research, I recommend checking out the Murder Mountain Series in Netflix. It is a decent portrait of the illegal Marihuana grower in Humboldt county in CA. I used to live in the North Bay so i am somewhat familiar with the area. The Movie Series goes a bit into why so much Marihuana is still grown illegally, despite it being legalized in CA for quite some time ( onerous regulations, lifestyle of the growers, taxes are reasons). One thing is sure, cannabis is way cheaper in CA than in MA (where I live now). As far as towns competing for cannabis business, that’s really not happening, at least not in my area. Several towns (including the ones I live in) have voted down proposals for Marihuana business/ growers. So, I suspect supplies are continue to be tight here. There is a cannabis dispensary close buy that seems to have a gangbusters business despite the fact that you still can’t go inside the store yet, and it works on an online order/ pickup basis online. In the name of Research, ordered some cannabis infused gummy’s there which are pretty good ?. If I could get a share of such a business for a reasonable multiple, I would jump at it.

You can‘t beat the $YOLO ETF ticker symbol as far as cannabis is concerned.

https://www.statnews.com/2021/06/10/third-member-of-fda-expert-committee-resigns-over-controversial-alzheimers-therapy-decision/

I use OneNote and it works well enough. the main benefit that it synchs between the various mobile devices I use (iphone, ipad) so i don't lose important thoughts or links.

Seems like an interesting business, based on the metrics. Their business seems to be to sell newsletters to boomers and the silent generation:

Bankruptcy is extremely unlikely, especially with MRK holding the debt. I just don’t like the setup and risk reward at a staring point. if OGN goes below $20, I would take another look. It is also a good idea to have them get a quarter or two under their belt to get some confidence in management and an idea how fast exactly this icecube is melting.

I sold the few shares I received from the MRK spin-off as fast as I could - high debt load and melting icecube business makes for a tough proposition. It is similar to struggling generics companies ( ATRS, TEVA) in many ways. This looks like a sh$tco spin-off.

Sold my MITK in my tax deferred account. I am not too fond of the convertible debt issue a while ago.

This is more bullish than El Salvador allowing bitcoin as legal tender, imo. It is probably not too bullish for Coinbase and other crypto exchanges. Bullish for both BTC and IBKR...

Before I would call IBKR's customer service, i would just sell BABA and buy 9988 in HK. Ought to be way easier.

KVSA has a deal - looks like a dud to me: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001841873/000119312521186080/d584526dex992.htm A fairly large preclinical pipeline, one Ph1 drug and an AI platform? That doesn't seem worth $2.8B to me. I had a GTC order for KVSA below $10 outstanding which I cancelled right away (it would have filled). There are much better deals available in the public market with mid cap biotech stocks.

The greenhouse should come with water rights since it has been growing tomatoes before. I suspect those just grandfather in, but i don't think that they can access to more water than they had before. The other issue with water rights is that they can be overridden, if there is a shortage since supplying towns has higher priority than agriculture. that's one of the issue with perennial crop plants (like Pistachio at Boswell). If there is a severe drought it can mean that certain agricultural business get deprioritized and those crops could die. Less of an issue with marihuana of course but I think if push comes to shelf, I think weed growers likely get deprioritized earlier than other agricultural business in a drought situation. That's actually one reason I am skeptical of the claim that CA will be a low cost weed producer going forward in addition to high state taxes.

This was always a political motivated position. It is questionable if the drug works, based on data, but advocate groups likely influenced the decisions as well as the absence of any drug hitting the market for the last 20 years. The price is a political decision to. I suspect that 80% of those patience who get the drug will be on Medicare? So we all will pay for it and hence the government has a say on pricing, one way or the other.

I have no idea if BTC is going up or down. My comment of the 18k resistance zone is based on my reading of the BTC chart. BTC could as well bounce back and go up. I can understand why trades like BTC, it’s volatile and there are a lot of amateurs in the game who can be fleeced. I think some institution like Renaissance Tech who can skim the social media and determine trends ought to be in a position to make huge bank here, as is someone like Druckenmiller. Since there are no real fundamentals other than news that can be interpreted either way ( like some of the cryptic Elon Musk tweets) it is probably the greatest playground for traders there ever was.