Spekulatius

Added a bit of 9988.HK (BABA) in HK overnight.

Kicking the fallen ( investment managers) while they are down is our favorite activity here especially when the market is slow.

Interesting perspective, as always. (?) It's difficult to build on this from an analysis or investment point of view but there's the following question: who's going to pay for all this? The answer (which has been wrong so far) has been increased taxation but what the fukk do i know? MMT means we pay it forward.

I would be careful assuming that currency pegs remain in place. They can only remain in place if the underlying economy and fiscal policy (inflation) performs similar to the currency it is pegged to. If not, the currency peg will blow up, it is just a question when. The high interest rates that Helios is paying May be an indication of the credit risk that bond holders are seeing. Business like this often lever up in low interest rate currencies while having cash flows in volatile emerging market currencies. That’s some inherent risk that on needs to be aware of.

It's a very respectable attitude from your side. Agreed. I hope sampr01 will get a fair outcome and kudos for posting here about his situation. There is a tendency to only see people swimming victory laps so to speak (especially this year) but the reality is often different.

I agree that Picasso was an extremely well regarded poster and appears to be great stock picker. However, when you are responsible to invest other people’s money, risk management is even more important than being a good stock picker. The complaints are dating back to 2014 based on the Finra site. The following excerpt (from a lawfirm representing claimants ) is quite interesting: If true, this is more than just a trade going bad, it would be unresponsible gambling with other people’s money. https://frankowskifirm.com/stockbroker-dennis-phillip-ayre-named-as-respondent-in-1-4-million-arbitration-claim/ https://frankowskifirm.com/dennis-ayre-continues-to-rack-up-customer-complaints/

Sold HDG.AS and ATTO in my tax deferred accounts. I kept the positions in my taxable accounts.

Even Peacock has ~22M subscriber (most of them free, I guess) and it is US only. It has some kinks (I have experienced stuttering every once in a while) but a surprisingly good catalogue. I watched Moonlight Kingdom (one of Wes Anderson’s best) the other day and I like NBC as a free live TV option.

I own this and it looks like the family is going to take it out on the cheap: http://investor.hunterdouglasgroup.com/news-releases/news-release-details/agreement-recommended-all-cash-offer-eur-64-share-all-common I wonder about the chances that they up their bid.

NIC service business was similar to $LDOS. It can be regarded as an outfit to rent out bodies (or perhaps workers with security clearance). The tech (if there is any) isn’t owned but the company itself, but by the agencies. This is different than Palantir. They run a much higher gross margin business where Palantir owns the tech.

It is possible that years from now, the dish shrinks to an antenna in a phone. That’s a bit my beef with the tower business, is this really like an annuity or are the tower far less valuable 20 years from now? With a ~4% cash yield on assets, you need a long asset live (>30 years) to make this business a good one. Who know what the technology looks like 30 years from now. It’s different when you own RE - you can rebuild and reconfigure it and it likely still be worth something - most likely much more than it is right now due to inflation. Technology however works differently and often deflationary, which is a threat for the tower business.

I guess the fix for NYC is lower prices and lower rents. Families will move out and younger folks will backfill. Of course the solution with lower rents isn’t really great for landlords, but it could end up making NYC a more interesting and vibrant place. There is always opportunity after some wreckage.

Monish Pabrai is way better at marketing than at investing. That’s all there is to it.

I can see the case of an utility coming in and offering broadband when there isn’t really any competitive offering, like is the case in many rural areas. In those cases there are even subsidies to offering broadband. Some of the smaller telecoms like NUVR do a pretty nice living getting their Capex subsidized via A- CAM funding and I can’t see why they wouldn’t allow the electric utility to do something along the same lines to provide broadband to customers as well. I guess some rules would need to be established to prevent double dipping of the utility but I can’t see why there couldn’t be a workable solution, After all every household pretty much gets electricity unless it is totally of the grid. So why not offering broadband to underserved communities as well through the utility?

NOC sells their service business for $3.4B: https://investor.northropgrumman.com/news-releases/news-release-details/northrop-grumman-sell-federal-it-and-mission-support-business This continues the portfolio restructuring that has been ongoing with NOC. They spent $7.8B for Orbital Science in 2018 and this worked out very well. I think it makes sense for NOC to sell the weaker IT service business. They can do this non dilutive for earnings buy using the proceeds to buy back shares and reducing debt (which increased with the Orbital Science acquisition).

Is airbnb Facebook though? Also IIRC Facebook went on to trade below were it traded on its first day. So those who bought on the first day of trading could have bought even lower had they waited. Facebook greatly increased their TAM when they managed to dominate mobile in addition to their original stronghold in desktop. The acquisitions of Instagram and the heavily criticized acquisition of Whatsup also were masterstrokes. This ended up being a success because Zuck is a very strong operator. I am not sure ABNB is in the same position increasing their TAM but at this point, you are paying for this already.

Plastic surgery?

The only way I know is to buy them before the IPO using a facilitator for private market shares.

I wasn't really paying attention back in 1999, but from memory some cheap stuff (e.g. Utilities) did pretty well when the tech bubble burst - they were cheap because they were unfashionable. I'm hoping that this will happen again, rather than everything diving. Yes, there were a lot of really cheap stocks like Reits, utilities and industrials, insurance back then. You could see how the money got sucked out of boring sectors into hot growth, internet, optical network stocks and of course IPO’s. This happens now too, but not tot the same extend than in 1999. One should also keep in mind that the index (SP500) got quite tech heavy with stocks like MSFT, CSCO, YHOO so index investors got hammered quite badly too and of course the QQQ did even worse.

I have heard this record before: 1999 remastered.

PDLI

I guess no one here remembers the late 60‘s Hippie generation. The Hippies were far more radical and socialist than the Millenials are now and look at where we are.

Next year will be very interesting for Tesla because for the first time, there will be real coveting products. the ID.3 is out and the ID.4 from VW is launching and there are several more competing products in the higher end too. The ID.3 is already beating Tesla sales in several markets (which could be due to pent up demand for that certain car). I also think that if Space X ever becomes public (and it will) then it will be bearish for Tesla stock since those people that want to support Mars colonization will then have a better vehicle to do so. It also think that’s where most of Elon’s mindshare is now.

My Tikr showed a ~20% cumulative short position for SFIX. The better than expected earnings report likely scared them and contributed to the stocks ascend. #nevershort.

AZO