Spekulatius

I enjoyed listening to the song and her voice definitely has soul. I subscribed to her as well so I can keep track of her progress. I found many times that unknown songwriters in coffee houses etc perform beautiful songs gems that would probably be very popular when a well known branded musician would performed them.

All the defense contractors are cheap - NOC and even the blue chip LMT. I have added to LMT recently. I own GD as well, but too a bit off as I think they NOC and LMT are even better deals right now.

For me at least, questions at this level of generality are intractable. Perhaps you could attack the problem by focusing much further down the funnel. For example, perhaps you could try to answer a question like this one: How much gas will the Transco pipeline be transporting in 5 years? The question is fundamental to any investment Williams. Trying to answer it will produce a good amount of learning on where gas is produced, where and for what purpose it is used, whether those uses are likely to go away, and, if not, whether there is a viable alternative energy source in the forseeable future. To take another specific example, what was the valuation (e.g., EV/EBITDA) of Magellan Midstream in July 2014 and what is it today? I do think they crude or refined good pipelines are declining assets, but they still got probably 30 years of life in them. What is debatable is the rate of decline and how much profitability they can retain while declining. Same with refineries , gas stations and to a lesser extend natural gas pipelines, which I think has more life in them. The problem with dealing with those finite live assets is that your upside is capped, but not your downside. They work when bought at the right price, but multiple expansion is unlikely to bail you out, in fact you will more likely have to deal with multiple compression, so make sure that management returns cash aggressively.

I have a neighbor who uses Facebook to do weekly vacation rentals of their place. They've been doing this for years now, and the property has stayed booked constantly. When someone makes a rental request, they look at their feed and if they like it, they rent. If they see a bunch of craziness, no rental for you. They live in Atlanta and have family members do the cleaning & a lawn service for the yard. They have been refusing renters since hurricane Sally, which damaged the roof & resulted in water intrusion. They were here a week ago to oversee repairs, and told me the place is booked starting this Spring and through the end of the year. I see many of the same renters from year to year. It's very high touch property management / marketing, but they save the commissions and more importantly, they never have damages from fools renting from them. The social feed tells anyone who looks at it a lot about who you are and it’s hard to fake. I have used the FB Market Place and found it to be much better than the anonymity of Craigslist for that very reason. I thought the dating part of FB is not widely realized - did thet change? I don’t see a dating tab on my Facebook app and there doesn’t seem to be an app either. I am not looking at odd goods right now but they spurred my curiosity. @Johnny - yes Trump getting the ban hammer in Twitter and Facebook is a watershed moment. I am not sure what to make of it. There is the argument that both platforms are still private property and there is a viewpoint there they are public utilities. Right now, the status is not well defined, Imo but that needs to change. Google’s threatening to ban Parler for lack of moderation is even more far reaching.

This is pretty much the Tesla (and other momo stock) thesis:

Sure there was, it was just celebratory and positive since it was The Good Kind of Interference And Other Issues: Facebook's Effort to Suppress the Hunter Biden NY Post Story Gave it Half the Reach of Major Anti-Trump Scoops https://www.newsweek.com/facebooks-effort-suppress-hunter-biden-ny-post-story-gave-it-half-reach-major-anti-trump-scoops-1539954 I'm not saying they didn't do the correct strategic thing here--I just think the underlying phenomenon here are so insanely complex that trying to game this stuff out 8 years is butterfly-effect territory. And like I said, I don't think they're getting that much credit from liberals for this very hard work. Look at what's going on right now: Facebook and Twitter are banning the sitting President, who just two months ago got 74 million Americans to vote for him. And the polite society consensus is that they should have done this 10 years ago and any delay is inexcusable and impermissible. This is not a stable situation, and I don't think we should be too complacent about the precarious political position Facebook will remain in for the remainder of its existence. Well, maybe Trump should open a TikTok account. That would be the ultimate irony ?

Where do you think the preferred trade when there is no amendment by January 20th?, because I think that’s the way more likely outcome. I would say around $4, give or take. That’s based on where they traded before Trump Geotagging eclectic and when Trump is gone, they could just get back to the same price point, absent any Executive action. It’s a simple point of view, but do you have a better one? I think there is quite some lack of crucial think here. Every bullish aspect here is celebrated but where is the post mortem when the predicted events don’t occur. Fair example, just a short while ago, the story came up that three Fannie Mae staff should be ready to work over the holidays to work on financials etc presumable to get ready for privatization. Well did they work over the weekend! If email that they may require to wrote leaked out what would you expect the fact that dozens if not more staff worked over the holidays would have leaked out as well. And if it didn’t leak out and you invert your logic what does it mean? Anyways, we will see who is right, I think most of the time value of the executive action option value has deflated but not all. $4 is probably the downside here for the $25 nominal value preferred, give or take.

Interesting company. Thanks for sharing. It also has an interesting valuation - roughly 50x forward revenue ( give it take). The Motley Fool Industryfocus Podcast discusses AI in their 12/4 episode.

Interesting enough, both ARKK and ARKG come up in Fidelity as Hard to borrow although they weren’t expensive to borrow ( 0.5% annually for ARKK). Can you get short squeezed out of an ETF?

There was no talk about interference or other issues in the latest election regarding Facebook. The stuff that doesn’t happen is often more important than the stuff that does happen. People love firefighters but there are no monuments for folks who prevented fires. The absence of any news in my opinion means that Facebook must have done some thing right.

More likely they buy Tesla options. The March $1000 strike looks like it goes for ~$220, a bargain. A Stimmy check buys you almost 10 of them. I think those must be the March 1000 puts you are talking about. True, looked in the wrong column. $1000 March calls are $50, so a stimmt check buys you exposure to 80 Tesla stocks.

More likely they buy Tesla options. The March $1000 strike looks like it goes for ~$220, a bargain. A Stimmy check buys you almost 10 of them.

Once something becomes crazy expensive, what prevents it from become even crazier expensive? I don’t think any of the incremental buyers. (God bless them) looks at stuff like market cap, revenues or earnings at all. The thesis evolves probably round Elon Musk going to Mars (whether that’s is bullish for Tesla is another matter) or simple that the Stock is at $1000 by summer, because that’s how the chart looks. Shorting this setup seems risky to me.

Our town made news today, for all the wrong reasons: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/massachusetts-high-school-halts-person-classes-after-teens-attend-new-n1252857

No suprise. Interactive Brokers should hurry up to approve my margins account... want to short Tesla since it finally hit my shorting target of 700B What is magical about $700B? Tesla is the magical stock that goes up when growth stocks go up and it goes up when value stocks go up.

25% in something like Atlas is really gutsy, imo, especially since you have more exposure with Fairfax being at 20% is even higher.

Yeah, but those were OUR dates, based on assumptions that sometimes turned out wrong. The question is whether Mnuchin ever had a "date" other than last minute. We may never know, but while time is running out, the last minute has not yet arrived. What makes you believe something will happen at the last minute? That’s another one of OUR dates? These papers are like call option that on January 20, imo. At least the executive action part of the value will expire. I am not sure what the lawsuit part is worth. Even if executive action were to occur, there is a strong likelihood that it will just be reversed. Yep. Now Dems control House, Senate, and presidency. Nothing will be done in the next 4 years at least. Or Mnuchin will say, "I don't want to leave this up to Dems" and he'll sign the PSPA amendment. Which will most likely promptly reversed 2 weeks later. Just a general observation from binary net situations, I have found that in most cases absent much indications of progress and with deadlines approaching these often trade on more hope than facts. I guess we will know in two weeks.

^TYX (30 year treasury) at 18.25 - highest level since late February 2020

Yeah, but those were OUR dates, based on assumptions that sometimes turned out wrong. The question is whether Mnuchin ever had a "date" other than last minute. We may never know, but while time is running out, the last minute has not yet arrived. What makes you believe something will happen at the last minute? That’s another one of OUR dates? These papers are like call option that on January 20, imo. At least the executive action part of the value will expire. I am not sure what the lawsuit part is worth. Even if executive action were to occur, there is a strong likelihood that it will just be reversed.

I agree on the importance of organic growth. It makes or break the thesis for Lilak. the broadband/ cable business is a much better business in the Us compare to anywhere else. Thats why Charter has worked and LBTY and LILA didn’t. LiLA isn't really solely a broadband business as they have a lot lower quality mobile (prepaid) as you mentioned. Currency risk hurts and cannot be fully hedged out.

Is this game even fixable? It seems that the issues are partly related to the homebuild Game Engine. If I understand it correctly, the game works reassembly well on PC but is total crap on the PS4/5 and on the XBOX - is this correct?

Added a bit $LMT

They have done many deals, why should this one make a difference? What could get this stock working is to make the current assets work better and rationalize the company, produce organic growth and reduce debt. They should be selling assets, not buying more.

Dates came and passed with no result. I recall the last key date was 12/9 and I don’t think that anything happened then either. Two weeks from now, Mnuchin is out, the administration will change and everything will get a new hard look. Back in 2016 when Trump got elected, the thesis was that Mnuchin would help out his hedge fund buddies and get Fannie and Freddie privatized again at favorable conditions. This didn’t happen, unless they waited for the last two weeks to do it. The lawsuits didn’t go anywhere either. I don’t see much reason why the preferred and stocks don’t fall back to where they traded in 2016. I know I am only a casual observer but that‘s how I see it - a classic way of thesis creep.

I know you want everyone to focus on BABA, but seriously there is no equivalence between the CCP and the American government morally. In terms of getting things done maybe you could say the CCP is better. Even though I’m ambivalent in my opinion of the CCP from my previous post, I feel like people saying Washington is just as bad morally as Xi really need to hear pushback. Agreed on this. However, I think it is also noteworthy that the hard to quantify political risk was always there. It’s a repeat of 2018 when Tencent had issues getting games approved and the famous (in China) actress Fan BingBing disappeared for 4 month etc. So in my opinion, not much has changed it‘s now just in everyone face until it blows over (usually).