Spekulatius

Here is my prediction for Texas, Arizona and Florida next week: Toilet paper will be sold out / hard to get. Same with guns most likely.

Oatmeal with Bacon. Yum!

It sounds like you made a transition from cigarbutt’s (Graftech) to growth stocks successfully. Congrats and good luck with your business.

More D-Fens: BAESY and a bit of LHX.

Are they marbled like this? Beef quality at Costco in Canada is excellent. If you want better you'd have to go to some super expensive specialized butcher. I've basically stopped buying from anywhere else. I don't see why it would be any different in the US. The only downside is that you have to buy like half a cow or something. But it looks like you're doing that already. We buy a lot of our meat at Costco too. The quality is excellent for the price. our local grocer Marketbasket Is a bit lower in quality, but they also keep prices low. We have seen a bit of upward pricing in March and April, but most of it has fallen back on line. Salmon , which we consume a lot, has gotten a bit cheaper to $7.99/ lbs. So we haven’t had too much of a problem. I did notice that some restaurants have raised their prices since COVID-19. We don’t eat out that much any more, so it doesn’t matter. The wineries I am a member of (or on the email list) have been pretty promotional, so that’s great too. I have enough in my basement to last a while anyways.

LoL Taleb Said that “Revenge is a moral obligation“ He also stated that “Time spent on revenge is never wasted” The best book on revenge ever written is “The count of Monte Christo”

Anectode: My wife told me that a Thai friend (with a Thai passport) has to quarantine for 2 weeks upon arrival in Thailand from the US. Apparently the US wasn’t on the quarantine list when he booked his travel. Good news is that the Thai government pays for his quarantine stay in a hotel and the food, because he is a Thai citizen ( he has an US passport as well). He did have a confirmation of a negative test COVID-19 Test result ( done 2 days before he left) but it didn’t matter.

I think when investing, one needs to remove emotion as much as possible. You have to think/be a socio-path. Its not "feel good" or anything to boast about, but its how things work. People essentially are cogs or data points. There is a great line from Big Short where Ben Rickard says, "you know what I hate about banking, it reduces people to numbers"....Part of the reason I moved out of the financial world as much as possible after getting setup, and have the goal to be removed from it completely within the next few years. Its not for everybody, but its how the game is played. Ask any PM honestly if they'd trade 1M senior citizens for an S&P rebound in 2021 and they all likely vote yes. I think if you are in the markets you have to be aware of these things and anticipate those directions. Its the stance that much of the US is taking through policy action. The problem with that is that people can collectively panic and react in unpredictable ways. This epidemic has the potential to kill perhaps 0.5% of the population or ~1.7M people based on current data If you just remove 1.7M people from the economy with a large skew toward older people, then you could conclude it’s not a big deal. However if you think it through and consider that those 1.7M people collectively have a lot of money and perhaps don’t want to die and there are ~30M people with a lot of money in the same risk group, Who will behave very differently then it starts to matter. Florida and Arizona might be good examples of this. Are older people still going to move there (these states are big destinations for retirees) while they let the Virus circulate freely? If they are already there, will those people spent money in restaurants etc? Unlike the millennials, those folks tend to have a lot of money, so it does matter what they think and how they feel. Florida has a big tourism industry on top of the retirees l so how this will be going? Even if you aren’t scared for your life, it’s not a great prospect to contract a disease that is far worse than having a flu for 2-3 weeks? Worth going to Disneyland for? Then there are European and Asian travelers which at this point are going to be a zero, as they will require quarantine upon coming back most likely. Most folks from these countries won’t bother visiting the US anyways for a while. So, I think the economic impact of this delayed wave in these states will be significant. The good news and the reason why Mr. Market hasn’t panicked yet, is they death rates are still low. I think they will go up somewhat but hopefully we will never seen the levels seen in the NE from March/April again anywhere.

Technically speaking, he doesn’t really manage the pandemic any more, as has moved on to other things, most likely campaigning.

The generational/ demographically shift is an issue, but it is a slow one. What is the mean age of a FB user? I guess it is probably above 50 in thr US. My son is on Snapchat and he also has an Instagram account. A lot of his classmates use Tiktok as well. I doubt he will ever get a FB account. The fragmentation through new competitor could occur fairly quickly., which could impair valuation quickly. The problem I am seeing is that the very thing that increases user engagement (free uncensored speech) although leads to a toxic environment which makes it an issue for the advertisers. How to serve both well is an issue and I am not sure there is a good solution for all platforms.

A CFO or CEO calling you back if you are a private investor is a strong plus, no matter what he tells you.

This is how they roll. Just look at the "scientists" they find that agree with them on climate change (while dismissing what is a consensus on the opposing side). Astounding level of delusion and/or intentional effort to mislead. Amusing that he says "lockdowns are too expensive". Now watch most of Europe move on from this and leave the U.S. in the dust while we struggle with our "isolate elderly" strategy and economy continues to take a long term beating even without lockdowns... If we follow the lead of folks like this, it will lead us to our doom. It’s not really a trade off. If Texas and Florida can’t get the Virus under control and the hospital run full, schools and Disneyland won’t open in fall. A crappy economy will be all but guaranteed.

Well you can always try to be nice first and have the option to become a jerk later. You can try it the other way around too, but then it usually doesn’t do much to be nice first or at least it will take a long time to get recognized.

With household infection, there probably isn't much you can do (you are probably infected by the time you realize that someone is sick). But in terms of office space or retail space, if "circulating air" is what is important, then air filters should also do a decent job because the good ones are rated to filter out particles as small as viruses. I have a theory that stuff like dust (which is all over the place indoors) could be a potential transmission vector as people are breathing it into their nose and breathing it back out and dust or pollen can fly around the air because they are "fluffy" and have large surface area and low density. This could be one of the reasons why masks seems to work in reducing infections even though they are ineffective at filtering out virus-sized particles in a laboratory. Virus infections could actually come from the virus riding on larger particles that we breathe deep into our lungs and breathe back out. Outdoors, the dust is dissipated pretty quickly so we don't keep re-breathing the same particles. Yeah, dust playing a role is possible, especially when the air is dry and electrostatic charges can play a huge role on how smaller particles like Viruses move in the air and attach themselves to other surfaces or particulars. The air circulation advice is great, but how many people or even business are going to be able to upgrade or change their air circulation systems (heating/ cooling) in a way that actually makes sense. Filtration System tend to be upstream, so upgrading the filters really won’t do anything if other expel in the same room add to the Virus load in the air. Depending on the restive location, air flow can even be detrimental as it can spread the Virus all over the in air. The idea situation would be to have the air flow like in a clean room, from the ceiling down and leaving through exhaust vents near the wall base all over in the room, but I don’t know any office that has this. I guess in some offices you could just vent though open windows , but that doesn’t work in high density multistory building where you can’t even open windows. In any case, I think the recent wave in infection at least partly was kicked off by Memorial Day parties and get together. Its a weak hypothesis thigh, based on the timing of the wave and the fact why mostly younger people are getting infected now. If correct , things are probably going to get worse after the 4th of July. I guess We will just have to see.

Key for the bull thesis is not how much the almost certainly dealing leaflet business is worth, it is whether the CEO can pull a “Blue Chip stamp” Hattrick like Buffet did.

Easy to say, but how do you increase circulation in your house? You can open up windows and negate your air conditioning? This is also missing the fact that one spends a lot of time in the house (10h+) no matter what , if you count sleeping? How do you get infected in your own home to begin with? When another family member is infected, then the rest of the household is screwed in most cases anyways and cross infection is almost inevitable, unless you follow A strict regime where the infected member is quarantined one room in and everyone wears masks in the house upon contact. Then there are still issues with bathrooms and kitchen as common areas. Now if you host parties with extended family members (who typically don’t live in your house) or friends then that’s a huge risk and they often has been found the root cause of infection clusters . But those things happen during all seasons, but when weather is nice it could be done outsides, reducing the risk somewhat. the better option would be not to host such events and keep them to same household members.

Looks like any social media platforms and Twitter in particular have a serious issue here with companies boycotting because they want to censor some content and others leaving because their content is censored too much: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/27/parler-ceo-wants-liberal-to-join-the-pro-trump-crowd-on-the-app.html I do think this will inevitably lead to me fragmentation in this space.

At this point , putting every infected in a hospital wouldn’t be possible because we don’t have the capacity. That may be an option at the beginning when few are infected. But help from the government to bring food etc to infected to help with quarantine as well as monetary as well as better testing and tracking might be ways to reduce the spread. In any case, it is correct that the death rate so far remain low. Hopefully it stays this way. It is already bad that health care facilities are closed for non. COVID-19 cases as this is akin to rationing. COVID-19 besides that the beds places a heavy burden on the personal due to need to keep Segregated COVID sections and the need to wear PPE, which becomes an issue in the longer run.

The problem with these declining business is the limited upside. you make some money when you are right, which you. Gibt well be in this case, but you loose a lot of you don’t. So in other words, you don’t get the benefit of the fat tail upside. Cigarbutt’s example seem to show exactly why cigarbutt’s are a bad idea generally.

Short report (from reddit): https://landandbuildings.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/LandB-NYC-Office-Facing-Existential-Hurricane-1.pdf

It seems to me that Trump has pretty much given up fighting the virus - the task force meetings ceased about 8 weeks ago (with one recent exception). I guess it is all up the Gouverneurs now.

Yes, that’s the issue, but it is similar to the issue any bank has as well. If you invest in SCHW or any other broker or bank, you need to look past that. SCHW is valued higher on a PE basis, but it doesn’t really have the risk of crippling credit losses that banks may face. So, there are some gives and takes compared to banks.

I searched and surprisingly didn’t see a topic in the investment section. How can there not be a topic open in an investment board for the largest asset manager? Too obvious? I recently got interested in this after a few folks on twitter pointed out that SCHW is a business that shares most of its efficiency gains with their customer. Short term, this hurts the bottom line, but in the long run, it allows them to grow more than their competitors as they have the lowest cost to service apparently and keep pushing the boundaries for market share gains. With interest rates heading down, their top line is going to be hurting but I am guessing that eventually, their low costs and better service and larger scale means they have a moat which is hard to overcome and will eventually be rewarding for owners, science the current valuation isn’t exactly demanding. I hope to get some discussion going here.

Sure yo can covert mall space into offices, but offices have problems already. Using them as logistics hubs would work too, but that would be a lesser use and imply much lower rents. I think the eine closed malls are going to have a tough time, outdoors/ open air super centers are going to have a much better performance both short term and longer term. I could see a monster mall like the Roosevelt mall in LI becoming a tear down eventually.

Same here, got both PDLI and BRK.b. PDLI’s Management mentioned something about benefiting from Cares tax changes, which can be substantial, since it is replied retroactively. Do you have any idea what sums we are talking about.