Spekulatius

On that end, my wife is technically on a 32h work week, but had 55-60h the last few weeks, I clouding Cmas and new yearThey sometimes try to incentivize nurses coming in extra days with considerable cash bonuses (hundred of $ in addition to overtime). Burnout is a real problem and if a family member is sick it’s Game over for a few weeks (which is part of the issue with staffing it appears). Somewhat related, we got a message from our sons school yesterday that go from hybrid to fully online, because a student was tested positive and it turned out he attended a larger New Years party with many other students (against the current rules in MA) but they can’t identify them. ( I guess nobody wants admit breaking the rules) so without possibility for contact tracing, they shut it completely down for 2 weeks at least. Hope they had fun and it was worth it ??.

My own take is that instead of focusing on who should get it first too much is concentrate on getting ad many people vaccinated as possible quickly. The “who” is less important than the “how many”. Frontline workers don’t like to get the vaccine - “Next one please”. I think this is one thing that Israel gets right : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-vaccines.html Agreed, it's insane some places are only vaccinating during business hours when they have doses on hand to administer. In Canada some of the vaccination centers in the most populated province closed for the holidays even though they had vaccine available. Europe seems to have the same problems based on what read and hear from my brother and they are perhaps even worse.Germany has build up vaccination stops in addition to healthcare facilities to increase the capacity to give shots. Those should be open 16 h a day but somehow they are not. Then there was enough of BioNvax shots ordered and the Astra Oxford vaccine is late and the EU decided not to give any emergency authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines on principle apparently. It is quite infuriating to see how states and countries can botch this for one reason or another. I am guessing that this will all run more smoothly in 1-2 month but it sure is painful to watch. Now I start to sound like Gregmal :o.

They acquired a 51% stake in TEI, a NYC company (the stake was since lowered to 49% so they don't control it any more technically). Cost was 278.5HKD in 2019. I think that's where most IPO proceeds went. They may have overpaid for TEI (haven't really dug into this) which may be a strike against management. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tei-group-announces-equity-partnership-152512812.html I think Webbs involvement pretty much negates the risk of fraud as much as possible in HK. Overall, I like it, but feel i should dig a little bit more. Edit found some numbers on TEI (using CapitalIQ which I access over my Boston Library ) TEI : Transel Elevator and Electric Revenue: 54M Analogue bought 51% for $35.7M in 2019 Then sold back 2% to an individual (I assume a manager) for $1.4M in August 2020. So it seems like purchase price and the 2% sale roughly value this at 70M. Given what happened in NYC in 2020 that seems OK, but perhaps not too surprising, because Elevators need to be serviced whether they are running or not. $OTIS isn’t doing too badly either. Anyway I don’t know if the 2% sale had a sweetener in it or not but overall it to me that what they bought is probably roughly worth what they paid for most likely.

Ripple labs may not be a zero, but it is considerably impaired. I agree the company issuing a token (which can be used a currency) and the token itself are two different things, but I think the idea with this was always that the issued token is the main source of cash flow and quite frankly the main upside, as a company serves as the Fed of it’s issued currency so to speak. If a token really evolves into a valuable digital currency the upside could be huge. Also, the cash from issuing the token could be used to develop other blockchain use cases etc. This never made sense to me - why would a token that is connected to a private or public company ever would become valuable? The attractiveness of Bitcoin is that it is independent of everyone and untraceable, which I don’t think a token issued by a company wood ever be. Anyways, this fiasko looks like this makes XRP use as a blockchain currency much less likely.

I am pretty sure at value parity, Mr Bollore would just buy Bollore - they control already ODET that one is not going away from them so why buy more at value parity of Bollore stock? I think they will buy whatever gives them the best value within that Bollore spiderweb, from which nothing can escape.

The book 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Gilbert was a huge influence on my life when I read it. It was long ago, but the main points have always stuck with me. Recommended. I haven’t read the book, but this seems great advice. One thing is sure that happiness doesn’t scale with the money spent.

Squeeze outs are a real concern. I had a couple happen to me - BCAM.PA, HDG.AS and perhaps FPE.MI. In all cases owner operators are on the other side and they don’t like to overpay and like stile when their prey is weak [share prices are low). I made out OK, it the premiums aren’t huge and I was paid less than fair value. I don’t own ODET any more even though I like the underlying assets. I did a tax loss trade and switched to VIV, mostly for direct exposure Universal. I think eventually Vivendi also will get into the Bollore/ Odet maelstrom by Bollore slowly buying in and Vivendi buybacks bit it will take a while. i like this exposure better and th stock is also more liquid. It is an interesting strategy to use tax loss sales when you end up in the hole with one of those buys and just switch to Bollore, Vivendi or Odet.

I am sorry to hear this as well. A losing a close relative and particular a brother is a watershed moment. My thanks to all those who prevent more losses in lives this year @DocSnowball @Dalal.Holding and many others.

To deal with exactly this issue - we have an adjustable target total equity cost (adjusted for dividends since day-1), and a maximum market value forcing a capital repatriation. Within limits, as our MV rises, so does our target equity cost. Proceeds typically not repatriated until 3-6 months after they were raised. As we prefer concentrated positions, our downside is exposure to multi-year STRINGS of losses of 25-50%+/yr; hence, you aren't selling this to OPM. Our upside is that repatriated capital (as and when it occurs) pays off mortgages, funds education, capitalizes new opportunities, etc. Immediate benefits, that show up as incremental discretionary cash flow every month. Works for us, but everyone needs to evolve their own process. Good luck. SD On that end, after refinancing my mortgage at 2.75%, I don’t think prepaying is a good use of capital right now. I did end up prepaying some of mine at the end of 2019 (we were paying close to 4% back then) because my wife insisted. I guess it’s like everything else - mortgage is a form of leverage (one of the best forms of leverage) and one need to take this in account when considering the overall financial situation. As things stand currently, i just think there are a lot of ways to make better use of capital taking some short term, but little long term risk.

This is kind of besides the point, but I believe that quote you always see from CNBC about "you gotta be in the market because the 10 best days account for all of the return in any given year". It's such a cherry-picked fact. When did those trading days occur? Probably during periods of heightened volatility where the market was swinging up and down wildly. So in order to get the best trading days you had to stomach the worst trading days too. I've never actually looked at this before, but it confirms my suspicion about the "best trading days" garbage CNBC feeds retail investors. The attachment shows the 2020 trading days ranked in order (by absolute value of returns) and shows you that the best and worst days were clustered around March and April with a few exceptions outside that time. If you state how much of the market return occurs in a few best days, you also need to state how much of a decline you could have avoided being out of the market for the few worst days to make this assessment more symmetrical.,

Interesting idea. I just did my 30 min of due diligence ;D and so far I like what I see. one thing I can’t emphasize enough is they David Webb’s involvement is a strong positive as it literally guarantees we are not looking at a fraud here. They also pay a very nice dividend. No position yet.

My own take is that instead of focusing on who should get it first too much is concentrate on getting as many people vaccinated as possible quickly. The “who” is less important than the “how many”. Frontline workers don’t like to get the vaccine - “Next one please”. I think this is one thing that Israel gets right : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/01/world/middleeast/israel-coronavirus-vaccines.html

I am at a hair less than 10% this year. One excuse is that I managed it with way less volatility than the SP500. I am happy with the result, it could have been way better than that. This year was the year for the bold but I can’t afford 50% hits in my age. Pluses were waiting out some declines from early to mid March and mistake was waiting too long until the end of April to do something and partly those went into the wrong sectors (not tech heavy enough, defense stocks etc). I am pretty happy with my portfolio as is right now and I think everyone who made some money, stayed healthy, and has a job is a winner in my book.

One thing is certain, DASH makes Uber look good and cheap.

My own picks for 2020 were Megacable and DD. Both didn’t really work (went on a COVID-19 hellride ) but stocks recovered. I sold them on the downdraft for what I consider better opportunities. Megacable is still on my watchlist - their Operation performance was Ok, but being located in Mexico for sure didn’t help. US cablecos (which I owned but subsequently for decent returns) were the better choice.

Happy New Year all Cheers nwoodman Thank you for sharing. It's interesting to eyeball the chart showing the dramatic growth of alternate capital sources and relatively slow growth of traditional sources. "Reinsurance disintermediation appears to be gaining traction as global capital pools seek higher returns and uncorrelated asset classes in a low return world." (Slide 38.) This is a narrative heard before (i.e. MKL/Nephila), but the chart really helps illuminate the drastic change over the past 10 years or so..... Isn't this the primary argument for why insurance rates have been low? Crowding out and too much capital? It's why I've been so skeptical that this hard market will last, because I don't see anything changing the trend of outside capital flooding the industry at lower rates of return. Any thoughts anyone has on this and why it's not expect led to affect this hard market would be helpful. Yes, I think it is correct to assume that hybrid capital which can be quickly ramped up has shortened the hard cycle duration. It is instructive to read the annual report and presentation from RNR (a very good underwriter which also manages several hybrid capital pools) on this matter. I am a little more guarded in my view of insurers here than most because of low interest rates and any hard market arbitraged away by hybrid capital that can quickly swoop in.

I think $BABA has one of the best risk reward ratios of any large cap stocks here at current prices. Short term volatility is pretty much a given, but in the long run, I think buyer should do well here.

Gheez Castanza, we are 9 month into this, your wife is a nurse and that’s how well you are informed? You are correct, there are no LT studies on the vaccine and there is Little known a out the LT effects of COVID-19 either, except indications that there are some that could be a problem. Most importantly, the vaccine will absolutely absolutely prevents you from carrying COVID-19 and infecting others - in fact that’s one of the main benefits of vaccination.

The distribution plan in IL and Chicago is similar to what is being done elsewhere. For the initial week, "they" chose to prioritize regional "hub" hospitals where prevalence has been high (the candidates there include frontline healthcare workers). Early distribution plans also include nursing homes (residents and at-risk staff) and first-line responders. Over time, it can be assumed that the age profile will skew higher. Same here. Frontline workers first without age consideration.

Yes, Rudy was well respected then but now has become a shadow of his former self. Blasio is simply not able to govern the city effectively in a time it really matters (like Rudy did around 9/11/2001). I think there will be a big reset coming, one way or another.

Reduced SIMO a bit.

I heard Munger talk during one of these meetings and he was saying how they are investing for the long run. If I had to pick a 90 year to lead a SaaS business, it would be those clowns. I am sure hotshot 25 year old software engineers line up to start working for the Daily Journal in of going to work for the likes of Google, Snowflake etc. What’s the point of getting rich quickly with stock options anyways?

I can see wabuffo‘s point. If the treasury issues a t-bill to Pimco, it would in exchange for cash. Now the treasury would hold cash. Nothing would change (no money creation , just an asset swap) until they spent the cash.

What’s the success rate of 90 year olds running SAAS business? Asking for a friend.

Well, the activist is already in and his fund owns the majority of the shares. We know how well this structure works - check out Mr Big’s BH or Premier Diworsified. That said, I still don’t think there is evidence that SYTE share price is manipulated by Mr Kiel.