Spekulatius

I looked at INTC and I think their moat is rapidly dwindling. The moat consistent of three parts (design prowess, 8086 architecture, and manufacturing tech). In manufacturing tech, they were leading with TSMC and Samsung and now they have fallen behind significantly. Design was always intertwined with their 8086 architecture and it seems now that many companies have access to the better TSMC manufacturing tech and can design better chips - look at what AMD has done and what Apple is doing. Another thing - INTC often has tried throwing large amounts on money in new promising sectors but had never succeeded. one example was optical networking 15 years ago. It was a total failure. Now they are trying the driverless car tech. It may lead to the same result. INTC is at a cross way - they either need to double up and catch up on manufacturing tech or call it a day and go fabless. https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/speculation-intel-will-become-fabless.2549870/

LOL, that women “dancing” in front of the police car. FWIW, if I were to guess the demographic that is mit likely to skirt mask rules based on my limited observations, it would be a young black male in his twenties.

Fascinating, the COVID-19 lockdowns (or other factors related to COVID-19) may have reduce the number of very prematurely born baby’s. Nobody knows why: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/19/health/coronavirus-premature-birth.html

Or maybe strongly held beliefs (backed up in many case by previous large Fairfax projects) are being held on to even in the face of disconfirming evidence. “For some of our most important beliefs, we have no evidence at all, except that people we love and trust hold these beliefs. Considering how little we know, the confidence we have in our beliefs is preposterous—and it is also essential.” —2002 Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman Moat beliefs aren't necessary to change, which is why people don't change them. However, if a management team begins to take shareholder unfriendly actions, it's usually best to assume those actions will continue and not change back. You can see that on this board on the Biglari thread. Many folks were defending how optically cheap that was long after it became obvious that ~100% of the value was going to Biglari and ~0% to outside shareholders. I don't think Fairfax is at that level, but there are enough examples of shareholder unfriendly actions that a management discount is absolutely appropriate. Maybe that hasn't always been true, but like Munger said: "We all are learning, modifying, or destroying ideas all the time. Rapid destruction of your ideas when the time is right is one of the most valuable qualities you can acquire. You must force yourself to consider arguments on the other side." Dismissing cogent arguments as paranoia is pretty obviously an ad hominem attack, imo. FFH is run like a Family business and outside shareholders have no recourse and are just along for the ride. This is fine and doesn’t matter much when they are performing but it does matter a lot when they don’t (as is the case here) and warrants a discount. FFH and Biglari are just different shades of grey here’s with BH being extreme and uninvestible. FFH is just a much milder form of nepotism. That’s the real danger with family run business. If they perform Mr Market Will not care much about the lack of influence for outside shareholder, but if not, Mr Market will discount a steeper and steeper discount to fair value based on perception of management capability (or lack thereof), much more so than with a truly public company, where an activist could jump in and shake things up.

It is good advice. But given that in most office buildings in North America you cannot open windows that's not really that applicable. Cover my ass here: I don't know what's the window situation in those low rise campuses in silicon valley. The company I work for has all person -person meetings cancelled indefinitely. Conference rooms have been closed since March. We do the meetings online now, but there are far less meetings now. I can’t say I miss any of this. Edit : Ouch - 5k posts. I clearly spent too much time here.

It's an interesting point. I've thought about this in the past because it kinda works like that with HIV. I'm not sure how it will shake out. But I am sure sooner rather than later this issue will come before the courts. It’s a bigger issue for business than for individuals, imo. Imagine an outbreak in a large office building etc. FWIW, I wonder how these meat processor for example deal with this. They likely get sued already.

Yes a smaller military budget would br a headwind, but the composition matters. The thinking expressed before is that future spending will go more towards high tech and less towards boots on the ground. This is based on the the threats from China and Russia increasing and become ing more sophisticated. Our future military might become much smaller, but also more technologically advanced. This would be a very good news for defense contractors.

I think the answer is found here : https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1636519/000119312520117288/d836296dex991.htm Increase in operating lease expense (2019): $67.96M

Here is what comes to my mind: Peter Ustinov was the ? as they say knowadays.

Thanks, couldn't get past the paywall but this SA page provided insights in the comments section. https://seekingalpha.com/news/3507213-brookfield-to-take-25-stake-in-dominions-cove-point-in-2b-deal I would love to be a fly on the wall in the meetings where Brookfield determines their fair value marks. Between this, the overpriced Railroad they bought, the GCP shopping malls, the Forest REIT projects etc. The mental gymnastics will sure make the flys head spin. It would probably kamikaze into cow poop to feel better afterwards.

SRG is a company that Pabrai has been following for years and probably understands quite well http://www.chaiwithpabrai.com/blog/my-two-cents-on-seritage-growth-properties-barrons How do you guys find these thing? I did a search for Mohnish Pabrai and the latest filing filing didn’t show. Same when I searched for SRG. https://www.sec.gov/cgi-bin/browse-edgar?action=getcompany&CIK=0001173334&type=&dateb=&owner=include&count=40&search_text=

Is there a reason why you prefer something like SDS over just shorting ES? I don’t see it, but I may be missing something. IRA accounts can’t use margins so shorting is not possible. That might be one use case for SDS. Puts are preferable imo, but are expensive right now due to high volatility (VIX~28 right now)

Yeah, I was looking at this too. The NIM trends for WFC and BAC are terrifying as they approach 2%. Combine this reduced earnings power with the potential for large losses from the loan book and you have a real problem. Deposits surged. Hard to employ such a massive influx of deposits judiciously in a quarter. 23% at BAC!?! That is some deposit growth. Their specific guidance was that they were not sure of the durability of the deposit base and I am total agreement and have done the same at my banks. Otherwise you get caught in a liquidity bind when it flows out as quick as it came in. Good point on deposit growth (far exceeding loan growth) causing NIM to drop. I think it is likely a major contributor. BAC earnings were actually pretty good, even taken out the gangbuster results from their investment banking operation.

Yeah, I was looking at this too. The NIM trends for WFC and BAC are terrifying as they approach 2%. Combine this reduced earnings power with the potential for large losses from the loan book and you have a real problem.

$SPAQ down a good amount. Beware Boredom! $SDS also has a dry cough. Sold the SPAQ warrants Monday at the open. Was just banking on the Fisker announcement confirmation, which happened. SDS sucks, but to me, especially if you consistently reposition it, it can be a cheaper hedging alternative. Dont at all recommend holding over night for more than a day or two tops, as the decay will kill you. Thx. I always wonder how folks deal with trades, especially losing ones. I had a small one going on with a “BLM“ Bank, but that was cheap stock that I wouldn’t have mind owning for a bit too. That trade made a little profit. Typically, I find these things just a distraction and rather stay away, but sometimes there is an urge to do something.

LOL. Reminds me of my grandparents (from Germany) stories during WW2 when news from the war would be in the radio mostly. Then all of a sudden no news about a certain war theatre/ battle any more. My grandma then had to switch to BBC to find out what happened ( they had a German language Channel on Longwave) which was illegal of course . Needless to say this isn’t what winning looks like typically.

I like the risk reward for EIX better And bought a little recently. Better company with way less issues , but higher valuation ( albeit still discounted) . Pays a dividend. One foot hurdle vs 3 foot hurdle (PCG).

Sold my MSGS on that vaccine spike yesterday. I like other stocks better.

Well, beware of November then, if that is what you think is holding this up. Personally, I think the markets have come to terms that March was a media hoax and that while the virus is real, it is much closer to the flu than some doomsday bug. To the extent that politicians dont shut the economy down, things will grind it out, with the weaker numbers more than offset by confirmation of long term ZIRP and the goldilocks scenario where mainstreet needs stimulus for a longer time than Wall St does. I am still quite bearish, but this seems to be my read on why the market is trading where it is. Further, as BG mentioned, we had extreme excess and exuberance in some social media and biotech maybe 5 years ago, tech and pot 3 or so years ago, etc, which shook itself out. There certainly isn't a case that there arent stocks you can buy for reasonable valuations right now. But as always, you have to pay up for quality. If you wanted firesale prices, you should have been buying in March. I wouldn't be opposed to a real bear market. I would actually welcome it. I'm just saying that we're not close to 1999 levels from a euphoria (or valuation) perspective in my opinion. The 1999 stock market was very bifurcated with a lot of cheap but also very expensive pensive stocks. The well known quality large cap stocks were very expensive as were fat growing tech stocks, many of which had questionable business model. Now, the bubble seems to be in stocks like TESLA (and it’s imitators), SHOP, SAAS companies as well as millennial stocks like LMND. This pretty much looks like 1999 to me, except they in 1999 interest rates were higher, but also the economy was in much better shape.

This is a deeply philosophical question that scholars have not nearly contemplated enough.

$SPAQ down a good amount. Beware Boredom! $SDS also has a dry cough.

CBOE and a bit more LHX were my recent buys.

There is some organic growth, but it is lumpy because it depends on trading volume. Seems a bit like the political add cycle where even years (2018,2020) are better than uneven ones. I looked at this truck in the past and it never seemed that interesting to me, as the multiples were on the high side relative to growth. But now, with the multiple on the lower side of its historical range, while the market has moved to the very high side, CBOE seems more attractive. In addition, the current upheaval in the economy doesn’t really hurts CBOE and in fact it benefits from volatility, so I think it’s now more attractive from that angle as well. I agree on a ~10% expected return going forward and may be that’s not the greatest bet out there, but it is a very low risk bet with no potential to blow up, unlike a bank stock for example. It’s a bit like my smallish SCHW position I recently acquired and maybe even better than the latter because it doesn’t suffer as much from falling interest rates.

They IPO’d in 2010 @$29. They earned around more than $1.1that year. This year, they are a earning $5. That’s a 5x improvement in 10 years which isn’t bad. The stock trades at ~18x earnings. Earnings benefit from volatility (which means more trading typically) so thry may go down a little just like they flatlined in 2010 and 2011 after the Great Recession , but the stock trades cheaper than it traded back then. To be fair, after the IPO, the share price sank to the low 20’s. Still from a 10,000 foot perspective, this doesn’t seem like a bad deal, relative to it s past. I kind find many quality business where this is the case, most trade a elevated multiples compared to their past. I try to find the reason why - there must be an issue that I am not aware of VIX blowup? It still seems like people trade these things and now a retail version comes out apparently ::).

Adds to CBOE and LHX