Spekulatius

I am surprised this doesn’t print money - where does all this expense go? It isn’t even stock based compensation (~$100M in 2019). $1B in R&D in 2019....

Side effects have been an issue with the RNA vaccines, I believe, so the FDA will look out for these when thee trial results are published. The standard vaccines (Adenovirus etc) have a better known side effect profile.

Another letter from Bronte. I put this here because he talks a lot about behavioral aspects of the Coronavirus as well as investing implications. I understand many here don’t like him, but I find his reasoning very sound: http://files.brontecapital.com/amalthea/Amalthea_Letter_202009.pdf

Pretty good article explaining why people do what they do: https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/state-and-regional/iowa/surging-virus-cases-get-a-shrug-in-many-midwestern-towns/article_b1022b5a-d490-5b1f-b99e-58f9911ebce3.html

^ That’s a very good analysis. Thank you for taking the time to lay it out.

^ I think you should revise your post and avoid value statements. i don’t generally watch Fox news (I don’t have cable TV) so this is solely meant from an investment perspective. I owned the stock before and got two good trades out of it and one went bust when I sold at $24-25. My thesis at that point is that Fox owns right leaning media and now I am not sure any more it’s a given. I assume the pie (for right leaning media) stays the same and if Newsmax or another source can get a much larger slice of the pie, then this has to come from Foxnews viewership. Foxnews constitutes the vast majority of FOX Corporation’s value so this could be material even if only 20% of the viewership get lost, as the NBC news article stipulates. It is pretty simple conceptually, but I don’t know how to handicap the probabilities. I think it would be priced in if FOX trades around $20/ share (the recent lows in March) but maybe not fully at $26.

Ross812’s charts are interesting, but I think some of the narrowing gap is just the result of equity valuations tanking (in the 1920’s and in the 1970’s) not because the people at the bottom were doing better. That’s not exactly the kind of mean reversion we want. I think some government interventions like trying to make the education system better and create more equity there might help. The higher minimum wages have helped somewhat (those get decided at the state level) despite what some persist say - the higher unemployment due to higher labor cost just hadn’t happened. I don’t see more regulation helping in general though. I do green overall that social mobility is the bigger (and probably only real ) problem, not wealth inequality. Of course both are somewhat connected to each other, but it seems to me that social upwards mobility has been waning over the years in the US, but also in Europe.

How much does it matter, unless you own UK stocks? The Uk is a pretty inconsequential trade partner for the US and more important for the EU, but it’s not that important either. Boris Johnson is hard to read and seemingly unable to make decisions. Maybe his wavering is some sort of 3D chess or reflects his inability to make decisions which may become an even bigger deal with Cunningham (his advisor and maybe more) gone. I do agree some sort of emergency skinny deal is likely, if there is a hard Brexit. I don’t think it matters for most of us. I do think that London as a financial center will be much less important going forward than in the past.

How credible is the threat that as a fallout from the election, Foxnews could get hew competition? It seems like Newsmax is the most credible contender and it is easy to see that if Trump endorses (or invests in them) they could peel of 20% of Foxes viewer, as this article stipulates? https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/trump-separates-fox-news-what-s-next-both-n1245549 I don’t have cable, but when I had, I don’t think newsmax was anywhere in the channel lineup. Is this the case now? the other one seems to be OAN which I don’t think has much distribution either. With streaming , distribution would be easy to achieve with some marketing, if those two outlets bundle together and gain some heft. When ai looked at this a while ago, the thesis is that Foxnews owns right wing media for the foreseeable future, but now, I am not that sure. (No position currently).

Bosch is Great. Many seasons to watch. One I am currently enjoying mainly for the style is “The Liberator”. Its a hybrid/ graphic novel visual style and tells the story of a WW2 unit: Amazon has a series in a somewhat similar style “Undone” which I also like a lot (that one has great storytelling too).

I don’t know much about their Alibaba connection, except that Alibaba pops up on their CC. I don’t think at this point it is an important business but may become more important in the future. https://app.tikr.com/stock/transcript?cid=2672153&tid=22894213&ts=2127249&e=691062925# The ASP for their controllers come down over time, but I don’t see any indications of severe pricing fluctuations like with memory chips - it is more the volumes that fluctuate than the pricing. Their gross margins were pretty stable for years around 50% so costs come down together with prices apparently.

Those that think communist countries have wealth equality have never been (or studied) a communist country. People there are about as equal than the animals in Orwell’s Animal farm.

Ironically got it at the Trump “victory” party. I guess this is badly needed “positive” news for the Trump team. Gesundheit!

This is a fairly cheap semiconductor fabless manufacturer with their main product being memory controller. The thesis condenses in this post by Elroy from another message board. Elroy has been tracking this stock for years and generally is spot on: https://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=32950278&srchtxt=SIMO This is a stock that Greenblatt would like with high ROI and good cash conversion and a cash rich balance sheet. Gross margins are stable around 50%, but products are somewhat commoditized and revenues can be lumpy. Balance sheet is cash rich.

Looks interesting with revenue growth, stable margins, and high ROIC. This thing deserves a thread of its own, IMO. Maybe this is similar to MU, cyclical, long-term trend is upwards, buy when others are looking the other way? SIMO’s memory controller business is a much better business than MU, imo, because there is less pricing fluctuation and it is fabless. Gross margins are fairly stable around 50%, so it’s not as good as a CPU or analog business, but much better than totally commoditized segments like memory. I can start a thread and write a few lines, but my thesis isn’t deep: it’s just an OK to good and somewhat lumpy business that is cheep.

SIMO - Greenblatt/ Magic formula type semiconductor stock.

I looked at this - also coming from the VIC writeup. I moved on because I avoid as a rule of thumb externally managed entities. Maybe this one deserves an exception, but I can’t find strong arguments why.

Red States may not shut down entirely, but their cities may. El Paso was shut down, because hospitals were at close to 100% of capacity. Except for a few die hard states like the Dakotas, most will do the same if hospitals are out of capacity due to COVID-19. I do agree that you are correct that the president will not shut down the country - that never happened anyways. It will be up to the states to make the decisions, but I think this will be driven by hospital utilization more than anything.

COVID-19 is good for the business. Some of the survivors have shot kidneys and require dialysis for the rest of their lives.

^ This does not bode well for Intel.

Betting on widening credit spreads is probably a cheaper way to hedge than buying equity puts right now. Is there a way for retail investors to do this?

I would’ve careful with assumptions about industrial use of Silver, as in most cases a lot of progress is made to reduce the amount of material needed per unit over time, especially when the input is expensive. Also Al and Cu can replace Silver in most applications if things really get silly.

Weren't they just suggesting that asymptomatic covid carriers could continue to work in a hospital's covid hot-zone? The patients in the hot-zone all have covid anyway, so does it really matter if some of the staff also have covid? I guess there's the viral-load argument that the staff could contribute to the viral load in the air, but that seems to me like a pretty marginal effect. Now, if they were suggesting that a covid-positive doctor work in a hospital's cold-zone, there might be some serious ethical and legal considerations.... SJ No, not every patient in a CoVID-19 hotspot zone has CoVID-19 and not every employee or nurse or doctor has it, but with these lack of precautions they probably will. We are basically seeing a repeat of NYC in March in a rural setting with less people. I think mortality rates will be quite bad.

The vaccine on the horizon does not change the fact that the Xmas shopping season is going to be shot for B&M only retailers and next years travel season still is going to be impaired because many destinations will require vaccination and that just won’t be available for all. In addition, vacations need to be planned ahead and that’s just tough to do. I think we are going to look at close to normal in fall 2021.

A few SAAS stocks that I am in: FROG - has pretty good metrics and a smallish market cap. Close to IPO price ($44), I would be interested. NCNO - bank operating system. Seems that management is very agile and Gespanns their offerings. Perhaps a long runaway, but it isn’t a hyper fast grower. SPLK - seems like they have a competitive moat. On premise to SAAS transition has stalled top line and earnings metrics but this should be over by 2021. I owned this for a while (bought in September) , but sold went it popped 20% on now news.