Spekulatius

I had the same thought. I realize PCYO is concentrated in one area and the big homebuilders are much more geographically diverse, but it's strange that PCYO hasn't really budged. PCYO lost all the high margin $ from the Oil and Gas industry ( both royalty and fracking water ). That’s not a problem a home builder has.

^ You can create a shiny metal surface with galvanizing; Powder coating can’t do that. Galvanizing allows you to put down a smooth continuous and decorative metal layer on a conducting surface ( mostly other metals) while powder coating can put down a compound on any surface that is sufficiently heat resistant and has chemical adherence between the substrate and the coating materials.

If the battery becomes a structural component of the car, every small crash will likely total the car. A battery failure of any sort will do the same. Hopefully, they thought this through. Even right now, it seems that Tesla cars are very expensive to repair.

PCG has been a basked case much more so than EIX. The regulation in CA is actually utility friendly in terms of returns, but the series of wildfires has caused serious issues, even though EIX hasn’t been at fault to a significant amount. I do think there is a decent chance that CA is going to fix their power grid issues and this could be very good for utilities operating there.

I also like EIX, which trades cheap-ish. CA need to buff their power grid , which means more investment in transmission assets and higher base Rates for utilities.

SRE is my favorite in the US and incidentally, I bought some shares today. SRE has a good track record growing over the years. Canadian Utilities (CU.TO) looks like good stock, probably best to own in an IRA for US investors where you get the CA withholding tax eliminated.

Bought a starter in GRA (catalysts, polymers). Sort of a COVID-19 recovery play. Also a starter in SRE (utility) Small adds to ORI, ANTM, ABEV

^ Has there ever been a time in Latin America or the Caribbean with no major disasters ( political, natural , economical ) of any kind within a 5 years timespan?

Ok, I live near NH and the economy for all practical purposes is open. As far as restaurants, they allowed indoor dining for quite some time (I am not sure it was ever really closed) and now at 100% capacity. Pretty much else is allowed to be open too. Live free or die... When you look at the reality on what is happening though then most places running friction of their capacity. Many places are takeout out only. Hotels are pretty empty on most parts (we travelled last month). We also travelled though upstate NY and it’s pretty much the same. There are probably more restriction in upstate NY but essentially, the feel is pretty much the same. We did find that in either location, business were pretty adherent to wearing masks etc. and other precautions. Now NH in a way is a lot Sweden ex their capital Stockholm, Imo. NH also has done quite well on so far with this epidemic, which is probably due to low population density, but also due to socioeconomic factors (low percentage of minorities within population etc). We live in MA near the NH border and enjoy the relative freedom, but would the same work in NYC it areas with a totally different socioeconomic profile? I kind of doubt it and the data shows otherwise. I also think it is not really straightforward to assume what works in one country/area will just work in another with the same results.

Interesting article about the ID.4 from VW. this is not vapourware, it is being produced and hits showrooms before Xmas (in German): https://www.spiegel.de/auto/fahrberichte/vw-id-4-im-test-kann-es-der-elektro-suv-von-volkswagen-mit-tesla-aufnehmen-a-f3d41599-9ab1-489e-99aa-4dc93b7f0b85 Article about Tesla‘s factory build near Berlin: https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-tesla-factory-near-berlin-elon-musk-shows-the-germans-how-to-move-quickly-a-a14a3415-a4ed-4d85-80c1-ec53b66ac0cb

The surge in Europe has been discussed here in this thread, now Denmark got its share too. Why do you expect partisan posts? Denmarks mortality is 110 cases/1M vs US at 617/1M so no question who is ahead here.

Is this really an interesting business? It’s already a duopoly with Epic, which also is going for land an expand strategy and may have the upper hand. Going into other industry verticals is a big question mark and I am not sure if it work, as there sure will run into other competitors. At this valuation, I think you are paying already for the option they they will be successful beyond just gaming, imo.

$ANTM and $ORI and a bit of $GOOGL

So much for due diligence. I agree heads need to roll.

Microcapclub has a great interview with Michael, available on YouTube: I like his way looking at operators (Mt Rushmore operators etc, chefs vs cooks etc.)

The ARM sale was just n set swap against richly valued NVDA stock. It remains to be seen how this works out. We don’t know the deal conditions either and if he negotiated a price floor.

I don’t see them producing 15% returns , this would be a very low probability. 10% returns are possible and if they can generate this somewhat consistently, one would get an additional return from rerating most likely. A few thing - with record low interest rate their prowess in bonds matter much less in the future than the past. They also need to generate decent return with their equity portfolio for a change. It seems to me a bit of a crapshoot if they can do this. What matter more than anything else is good underwriting. With lack of tailwind from bond investment income the combined rates for insurers will have to come down in order for them to earn adequate returns. FFH has made progress on this and it is important that they keep at it. We likely need combined ratio to average below 90% if the interest rates fall to near zero and stay there.

I like it better than VNO quite frankly, despite the discount to fair value being smaller and I think the thesis that DC real estate beats NY real estate in the next decade is correct. I bought a few shares this Friday.

At least in the US, mortality rates don’t seem that low. There are still 800-900 death daily. I would have expected this number to drop off hospitalization rates dropped since July, but this time we seem a lag that is longer than the typical 2-3 weeks and death remain stubbornly high here. 800-900 death daily translates into ~300k death in 12 month, so it’s not negligible. It would translates into a 10% increase in overall population mortality (order of magnitude). I think the mortality will drop off, but there is also a chance that we get yet another surge from thanksgiving and the winter season. As to what this means for the stock Market, I think it is priced in, plus the Market doesn’t really care much about death rates of this Order of magnitude. Lack of second stimulus package , school not opening (and thus crippling the economy) and lingering uncertainty about election are likely bigger factors.

I feel like I am in a split world where one half of the people think we should lockdown forever (to "play it safe") and the other half has been working for the past 6 months and being fully exposed to the virus, so they have gotten over it already. For the white collar office worker that can work from home indefinitely, nothing will make it safe enough. Say we have a vaccine that is 75% effective (which is probably too optimistic). If the current probability of death is too high, is cutting it down by 75% low enough for them to go rushing back onto the subways and going back to the office? Probably not. Is some not very healthy middle aged person with 1% of death going to come out at 0.25% of death? Meanwhile, on the other side, you have someone who has been working at Walmarts, supermarkets, delivery, supply chain, etc that have been working through the pandemic and they are sick of the lockdowns trashing the economy and their kids' futures. Many of them have already been infected (in big cities, probably the majority of them). They've already taken the risk and all the benefits of the lockdown all go to this protected class of white collar workers. Some people seem to be trapped into this indentured servant role where they prefer not to work at a Walmart, but they can't quit (no unemployment for voluntarily quitting), they can't change jobs because everything is closed, and they make less money working than someone sitting at home collecting enhanced unemployment, so obviously they are screaming about how the lockdowns are a violation of human rights, because they feel like they are in a slave class. I'm not really sure how we get out of this. The virus is not catastrophic, which is why most places are partially reopen. But it's also not completely safe. Maybe people didn't respect the flu before, but even if we get COVID down to the same level as the flu (i.e. we have a COVID vaccine that is about as effective as the flus), is that good enough for all the WFH crowd to come back out? If something that is 3x the flu is too dangerous, is the flu itself too dangerous to come back out? And at what point is it too unfair to the people that have been working through the pandemic that they revolt? The world isn’t black and white at all. Most people who have been working in offices, retail or as first responders haven’t been exposed at all. I know myself (working in office) and my wife (nurse) haven’t been and nobody in my wife’s team (12 nurses) has gotten sick. A few more people in my office buildings (~200 people) have gotten it, but not from exposure at the work place. Many regions in the US still have very little viral exposure. I live 35 Miles away from Boston in a pretty rural setting and the cumulative exposure rate (tested positive) is much less then 1% of the population. Working with proper precautions is actually pretty safe, imo. I am much more concerned about some restaurant settings, bars and gyms and wouldn’t go into any of those. Well I go into restaurants when traveling, but there have been a few cases where we left when we saw the setting and lack of ventilation or precautions taken. Others seem to do a good job, so it all depends. I have little concerns about going to work in my suburban office (have been going all along). I do think that some higher density settings and shared work places are more concerning. I also think that opening schools with precautions should be pretty safe, but suspect that teacher unions (which are mostly pushing for remote learning) are the driving force in most school districts.

WFCF

From zero to 50% War risk based on a fact that everyone new already. This makes no sense to me whatsoever. This was a stupid but in the end inconsequential incident. I think chances of war are very remote.

Of course they are suing. This deal is done for, but TIF probably will get a little bit of cash out of it to settle. The undisturbed, pre COVID price of TIF is ~$85/ share if I see this correctly. Hi, why do you think this deal is done for? Because the positions seem hardened and I don’t think Arnault is someone who flip flops.

Furthermore, it demonstrates that a competitor can come out of nowhere and take serious mindshare and perhaps market share. Unlike in the past, Facebook can’t buy these competitors any more. It remains to be seen how much of a competitors TikTok remains without having the secret sauce of the AI algo developed in China. Perhaps, they can come up with a good replacement algo, perhaps not.

Yes, Snowflakes product indeed is sandwiched between other tools and runs on top of the cloud layer, that’s one reason why their gross margin is relatively low (62%), which makes it even pricier , if you use EV/Gross Margin as a relevant valuation metric. Not that this matters at these multiples. Bill Gurley of course goes bonkers over the first day pop and somewhat rightly so. But then again, there is scarcity in play here - $3-4B in available product is nothing in today’s market. What always surprises me that with an IPO, institutions are not supposed to flip their allocated shares, but if this is indeed true, how would one be able to buy any shares then and why do more shares trade during the first day then where issued? I understand that there are day traders at work here, flipping the same shares many times over. I think the fairer “IPO” would be direct listing with no lockup in place for any pre IPO shareholder.