Spekulatius

I do think there is some thing to the hypothesis that bullish option bets are driving the market higher. certainly the counterparts to an option buyer (whether it be a market maker or another institution) would need to hedge and probably buy the underlying. The other interesting tidbit about the market is that despite having very limited downside volatile recently, the VIX isn’t really going down, in fact it seems to creep up and was at 26.5 today. That’s historically quite a high value. We were around 14 at the beginning of the year for example and everything above 20 is pretty high. This is likely due to some hedging. I think Right now, the Momentum up feed on itself. As a large Institution, you can’t really afford to be out of the market and bonds don’t yield anything, so no alternative except maybe a bit of gold or bitcoin. So it’s probably trendfollowers doing their thing until the trend breaks. I do think that these type of markets are more prone to volatile events and sharp corrections. It is probably not productive to overthink this as there is no way of knowing who does what and why and does it even matter.

There’s word out there that Kroger is also launching their own at- home delivery subscription service. And Target. May the consumer win. Home delivery for groceries with in store pricing could be a game changer for Walmart, if they can pull it off. Amazons Whole foods with delivery can’t compete, because most of their prices are really high

I know you brought up SAP.TO (Saputo) and it looks interesting, as it is currently valued at a discount to its longer term metrics (EV/EBITDA, EV/ SALES). Looks like a GAARP stock which are hard to find nowadays. Is there any catalyst you can see near term? Looks like the shares have been hit hard by COVID-19 although the business seems to chug along quite well.

Shameless plug: This is my favorite website for fundamental research. The main thing has going for it is that all the information is in one place (valuation metrics, fundamental, balance sheet, income statement, CC transcripts) and most importantly, it works for most foreign stocks as well. While other websites like Koyfin have nicer charts, none of them offers information on foreign stocks, at least not in their Beta implementation.

Adding a bit of $CVS

I think a good mortgage broker will be helpful to get a good rate. Mortgage brokers typically are a much better source than banks. I believe the FICO cutoff for the best rates is at 760 or 770. Yes paying down CC debt may help, but keep in mind that there is a bit of a lag between eliminating balances and the FICO moving up. Moving funds from an investment into a checking account won’t accomplish anything. The lender just wants to see a cash balance somewhere that is high enough to advance the closing balance (which is substantial even with a no cost refinance)

People with RV‘s often don’t drive that much with them over the year. I doubt it makes a difference for gasoline or diesel consumption in the US, much less the world.

Disappointing for sure. Q2 was surprisingly poor at both HIIG and Arena. Zwirn's recent comments lead me to believe they don't expect anything exciting to happen at Arena until after the election. I no longer expect much growth in AUM this year and I don't assign much value to Arena Investors. I assume a nominal return on the Arena FINCOs and I am somewhat optimistic about improvements at HIIG under new leadership. I agree with the sentiment and have started to reduce my position at a loss 1) HIIG seems like a fixer upper. It is not clear to me that reserves are adequate 2) re Arena - I always thought that Arena was build for dislocations like we have experienced in credit markets, but I don’t see evidence that they can take advantage 3) The holding Co short on Cash and since itis burning cash with no income, they may have to raise equity or debt. The above is not exactly what I had in mind when initiated the position. I see easier way to make money, so I rather take a smallish loss now and move on.

Same rate here, so I am getting started as well. No closing costs supposedly but from prior experience there always seem to be a few hundred $ in incidentals effectively. I closed my last refinance with the same broker early this year ( just before Covid hit) in a bit more than a week. This time will take longer, since they have enormous volume apparently.

I looked at the NYC crime states and everything except shootings (which are up substantially) is down YoY and far below levels from way back. I agree the shootings are a concern, but the historical, perspective seems to indicate that this surge in crime is exaggerated way out of proportion. https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf

I think some 4G also uses sub 1GHZ range. Those lower frequency have more penetration in buildings (especially concrete) and less line of sight issues than the higher frequency. That’s was one issue when I had T-Mobile back then. They had generally good coverage outside but when at work inside a concrete building, the signal was very weak. I had no problem with ATT because ATT also had data on lower frequency bands with better building penetration. I wonder how large the market is for utility IOT. I don’t think it’s going to be $30B annually. First it is s large number and the regulators would need to approve this case by case and second there are alternative solutions out there. It’s an interesting company and I out this on my watch list.

I like the MF industry focus podcast. Not about moat per say, but they do bring up interesting and upcoming names from time to time: https://www.fool.com/podcasts/industry-focus/ The problem with many on twitter is that they are mostly momentum investors which of course are now mostly tech investors as well. I actually think our’s truly LibertyRPF is a great follow , if you like to get exposure to company with moats.

Ok...So I guess "the crash" will be in 6 mo then... You also said schools will open in most states by September which is possible but depends too much on local politicians. I think new case numbers will improve from here on out (have likely peaked nationwide), but "dramatically improved" is questionable. Furthermore, hospitalizations and deaths will have a longer tail due to inherent delays. I definitely do not think there is enough data to suggest we are close to herd immunity as you've suggested. But none of this really matters economically as the damage is done particularly to the U.S. due to a much longer drawn out and larger in magnitude pandemic than most industrialized countries (second round of fiscal stimulus in progress...). Those second and third order (largely economic) effects of the pandemic will have a long tail... Let's put it this way, if the US daily new cases do not drop to 20k or below by the end of August, I'll apologize in this thread. How about that? Moving goal posts? We had 49,600 positive cases yesterday and 1105 death. By mid September, we are on track to be worse than Italy in terms of normalized death rate (death/ 1M population). 49,600 is much more than 20,000 objectively.

Bought a bit of BMRN this week. I have been following the company for a while and after the recent drop, the valuation seem Ok, even if the Hemophilia treatment won’t pan out. I like their focus on rare diseases and they are self funding and at this point, I think the Hemophilia drug is more like a free option.

Sold most of my BAESY this week. It is the defense co, I have the least conviction in and it did well recently after the dividend payment was announced (they had deferred it after COVID-19 happened).

If you run a fraud, you definitely want auditors that work shit. Or does it make sense for managers to pay auditors to uncover your fraud?

TikTok would be worth more than $100B and perhaps $200B in any non distressed sale in the current environment.

Sam Zell should lead by example and go into a crowded office every day. What he means is that somebody else takes the lead while He runs his empire from a yacht. It’s all Bs anyways. There will be plenty of people and jobs going back to the cities if rents and RE becomes cheap enough.

Agreed, going through the annual report, it seems that they seem to be focused on growth rather than operational excellence. I also noticed a strange error in their annual report head page. That’s a pretty big yellow flag.

Actually, I think forced delisting of chinese companies from US stock exchanges could create up some interesting opportunities. Like what? Alibaba or Tencent. If they fall hard due to forced selling, I would be a buying in HK, if only for a swingtrade. Of course, that wouldn’t be a good private transaction, that would be a go chinese transaction.

+1. I think this post pretty much addressed everything.

Actually, I think forced delisting of chinese companies from US stock exchanges could create up some interesting opportunities.

I agree on Airbnb. I also think Nextdoor has a lot of potential growth possibilities and could become huge.

I listened a bit to the Author in a podcast (There are few out there ) and found his advice generic and useless, but each it‘s own.

I have heard and directly seen stories enormous wealth creating and distractions with stocks. I worked for a company that was later out by JDSU. Some folks I know who were just average hourly folks rode it all the way up and then down. Same with Nortel. A colleague I know worked for Lockheed and mentioned a guy who averaged doen into Lockheed stock when they got into trouble due to the Tristar (a commercial airplane ). He averaged all the down and got a 100 Bagger and that was back in the late 90‘s. I spent time on a message board in 2001 or so, where one poster went full bore Mirant (he thought it couldn’t fail) and he got wiped out when they declare bankruptcy. He later committed suicide supposedly. I guess there all kind of stories out there. One thing I know is that staying in the game is half the battle, at least. Index fund do ensure survival so that’s one of the reasons why they serve the vast majority quite well.