Spekulatius

At least some of thee recent surge might have been caused by Memorial Day activities . Timing would be about right - you get an infection and it multiplies though a family and you get a surge. If that’s the root cause I should mot likely ebb pretty soon. No surge in states that had high numbers before perhaps because people were more careful there? Hard to tell. Anecdotally, I have seen no evidence of Memorial Day parties with several families in my neighborhood.

A bank can always get impaired. It is a levered bet on the overall economy after all. If you believe the economy is going to hell, don’t buy bank stocks. I feel like recent comments from the Fed have made negative interest rates less likely? I think there current near zero interest rates are baked in and the banks have and can live with it. The question for me is if WFC at current prices is indeed a better bet than JPM, BAC or some of the regional banks trading below tangible book as well. BAC around tangible book with its more diverse Business model and still underrated (imo) management strikes me as a better risk reward than WFC if we get another pullback.

I agree on LAACZ. Owning nice productive assets with little leverage run by a good operator should beat non-productive assets like Gold or Bitcoin over the long run, or at least offers a better risk adjusted return. For a large cap investor PSA may offer a similar purpose (same asset class, low leverage and well managed) but it is not as cheap.

Maybe that are the people that are trading stocks like HTZ nowadays:

This is just anecdotal, but may add a little more color to anyone wanting to understand the industry. I've been to VicenzaOro many times & if you want quality, Italy is a great place to go (bring a very large wallet with you though). Hong Kong manufacturers (and Thai jewelers to a lesser extent) will copy just about anything & do a very good job of it, but will frequently use inferior quality gemstones (in particular, diamond melee). TBF they offer significantly lower prices, and something has to give, but even if you offer to pay a bit more for better melee, you'll be hard pressed to get the reliability of an Italian manufacturer. That plus the established haute couture names, make for an interesting segment of the market. Basically, there are 2 types of jewelers, those who sell branded (haute couture) merchandise with higher margins & slightly lower turns, and those who sell lesser brands & commoditized products at slightly lower margins & higher turns. Branded jewelers tend to have higher spend on required coop adds in order to promote brands. Commoditized jewelers will have more optionality with regards to participating in coop ads which become more requisite if they are members of buying groups and depending on the stroke of the brands they carry. --- Disclaimer: My hiatus from the offshore industry, into wholsale jewelery, was an abysmal failure. I'd have difficulty selling air conditioners on the equator. I think in this case, brand name, status attached to country of origin matter just as much a the quality of the merchandise. Northern Italy is well known for fine jewelers and Fope is a niche business with a global reach (85% of their revenues are foreign) that can exploit this, I think. Based on the price I paid 7 Euro and change), it trades at 7x EBIT. It’s too small for LVMH, but the new 59% owners have an investment banking background and saw value here. I hope they do t screw it up. I see a good chance they they follow up with a buyout when this COVID thing is over. I know this is a very different business than Fope & it's not intended as a comparison but Swatch bought Harry Winston around 2013. They don't break out the results in reports but they do say "Harry Winston will continue its dynamic growth trend in 2019". In recent reports they attribute slightly higher inventories to gold & gemstone purchases related to Harry Winston. They own the swinging luxury watch brands Breguet, Blancpain, Glashutte, Jaquet Droz & the more pedestrian Omega. Their lesser brands include Tissot, Longines, Hamilton, Rado & of course, Swatch. If you believe that the watch industry won't be decimated over time ;) (I've never been able to get comfortable with this possibility) these guys product the vast majority of the worlds mechanical movements & escarpments. If you claim to be a luxury timepiece manufacturer & you don't produce everything down to the tiniest little spring & screw, you're not as cherished by aficionados. Very clean balance sheet, possibly offset by high insider ownership which may or may not be aligned with the little people. The father built this company & the children could fritter it away. Annual reports are front loaded with society page fluff & the actual numbers are buried in the back. Some background on the FOPE deal: https://gioiellis.com/en/why-fope-was-sold-to-costamagna-and-morante/ I am familiar with Swatch. It a well run company, but I am a bit concerned that watches will have much less mindshare with future generations that grow up without using them or go straight to a smart watch (similar to what happened with stamps) I could imagine that there will be a market to build jewelers cases for smart watches, but Swatch wouldn’t have much of an edge here.

The Medallion fund doesn't do equities I believe and has been deliberately kept small to keep the high returns going. Their marketed funds have not been as successful due to size and different asset classes that they're involved in. Not true, Medallion does whatever Medallion wants to do. I'm sure most of it is equities. And "small" is $5b+ year in the fund returning 40-50% year after year, if not greater. Yes, they return all the excess capital annually, but that's still a lot of capital for those kind of returns. Amazing. I recall from reading the new book written on Jim Simon that Medallion's bread and butter was not equities; in fact, they had historically struggled to build profitable models on equities. A reason why Medallion pays out so much is that they've found it comparably difficult to reliably generate returns by trading new asset classes. According the book, they struggled in equities for a long time and then achieved a breakthrough, which allowed them to scale up to their current size of $10B. I m sure in the current mayhem in the stock markets, they make out like bandits this year.

I haven’t seen nothing yet either. They typically sent out the annual report either late June or even late July. Only last year they were early in late May.

I don't know, that story sounds like bullshit to me. Bill Brewster is legit, but he stated himself that he hasn’t really seen the brokerage account balance yet. So he can’t confirm that part. Robin hood had problem with margin before, so maybe Bill’s relative used a cheat code loophole: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/05/some-robinhood-users-were-able-to-trade-with-unlimited-borrowed-money.html

You're not thinking like asset-lite second-level thinker. They can outsource the outsourcing! Then they could provide outsourced outsourced truck as a service. It's all hydrogen anyway! Hint, hint: what do you get when you burn hydrogen? Spoiler: hot air More like hot water.

Somebody is going to buy trading sardines for $1B. I wonder if motivates some companies to file, especially if their stock Is already popular with day traders, as way to raise funds. A lot of E&P stocks would fit that bill perfectly. What are you going to do as a short seller? Logic went out the window a while ago...

I think you are mistaken. I don’t work in finance, but I see pretty regular turnover with engineers, managers and techs. It’s the weirdest recession in have ever seen.

I agree on HDS being a quality outfit. I have owned it recently for a very short time but regret selling it. They have handled COVID-19 well and the business is more resilient than I thought. They are really getting ahead of their competition too (mostly small outfits). Bought starters in NOC and GMED today. I also added to MRK bit. GMED skews toward the growth side (at least I hope so if their robotics tech works out) and NOC and MRK are quality outfits with a reasonable valuation and resilient business.

^ Moving at least part of the cash into a liquid gold ETF seems like a good idea, especially when interest rates truly go to zero or negative.

At least I admire the honesty... The risk section of the prospectus will be something to behold. Of course the inhabitants of Sherwood Forest won’t read it anyways, so it doesn’t matter.

Starter in WSBC, a cheap regional bank with a decent track record.

Yes, it is important to keep the hospitals open. The most critical number to look at is hospitalizations, which isn’t really impacted by testing rate. I also look at %positive tested. What you don’t want to see is all these three (including tested positive #) indicators shooting up rapidly, which is the code in AZ, FL and a few other stated right now. Any lockdown will be driven by hospital utilization’s. Color of the state (blue or red) won’t matter. Once hospital space gets tight, I think any state will start various lockdown measures.

Thanks for sharing. He is very optimistic that the dance can be maintained at low cost indefinitely, until vaccines are available. If true, doesn’t this support the general market level now? The economy may function almost ok, barring some mass entertainment events which need >50/100 people together. Do you share such an optimistic view? Let’s say California and North east manage the dance, and the mid west, Texas, Arizona fail and need another hammer lockdown. How big an impact is that to the US economy? I just went thought the article and I think it is pretty good. It matches the info I could gather from various sources. The problem with the herd immunity is that it takes a long time, as the Swedes found out and in the case of the US, the current IFR numbers suggest it would cost a lot of lives. We have had 120k death so far caused by the disease and with herd immunity it could be 10x as much. A lot of European countries have already case numbers so low they they can open up and have schools up and running for example. So essentially, they are already ahead of the US in how the economy can operate. This is due to the more effective and stronger shutdown measures. As far as the impact of several states like Texas, AZ, AL and other having high infection rates for a long time and what it means for the economy it’s really hard to tell. Maybe the population in states themselves ignores this and carries on. However, what about travel into and from these states? It’s free movement generally, but will people from COVID-19 free states will want to travel into these states? It will cause some issues for sure. I think we will have to see how this works. I am sure that real virus containment in the US isn’t really an option any more. https://www.aa.com.tr/en/asia-pacific/no-new-coronavirus-cases-found-in-japan/1870548 No new coronavirus cases found in Japan Japan did not have mandatory lockdowns. Yet they went to zero. The other day Spekulatius was arguing about protests and saying because protestors wear masks so it should be ok. So.....why then stronger shutdown measures are needed? Wear a mask and you can do anything, per Spekulatius logic. I never said the protest are Ok. I did state there are 3 factors that mitigate infections - mask wearing ( mostly) , younger crowd and protest being outdoors. Japan did have shutdowns. The larger cities ( Tokyo) were shutdown fairly early. The did not have a countrywide shutdown however.

Thanks for sharing. He is very optimistic that the dance can be maintained at low cost indefinitely, until vaccines are available. If true, doesn’t this support the general market level now? The economy may function almost ok, barring some mass entertainment events which need >50/100 people together. Do you share such an optimistic view? Let’s say California and North east manage the dance, and the mid west, Texas, Arizona fail and need another hammer lockdown. How big an impact is that to the US economy? I just went thought the article and I think it is pretty good. It matches the info I could gather from various sources. The problem with the herd immunity is that it takes a long time, as the Swedes found out and in the case of the US, the current IFR numbers suggest it would cost a lot of lives. We have had 120k death so far caused by the disease and with herd immunity it could be 10x as much. A lot of European countries have already case numbers so low they they can open up and have schools up and running for example. So essentially, they are already ahead of the US in how the economy can operate. This is due to the more effective and stronger shutdown measures. As far as the impact of several states like Texas, AZ, AL and other having high infection rates for a long time and what it means for the economy it’s really hard to tell. Maybe the population in states themselves ignores this and carries on. However, what about travel into and from these states? It’s free movement generally, but will people from COVID-19 free states will want to travel into these states? It will cause some issues for sure. I think we will have to see how this works. I am sure that real virus containment in the US isn’t really an option any more.

Yes, good point. Dry air dries out the sinuses /mucus which is the body’s defense mechanism against respiratory viruses. We know already that workers meat processing planets tend to get COVID -19 partly because standing I cold and dry air for long periods of time makes them more susceptible. So a pickup in virus activity in winter is very likely.

This is just anecdotal, but may add a little more color to anyone wanting to understand the industry. I've been to VicenzaOro many times & if you want quality, Italy is a great place to go (bring a very large wallet with you though). Hong Kong manufacturers (and Thai jewelers to a lesser extent) will copy just about anything & do a very good job of it, but will frequently use inferior quality gemstones (in particular, diamond melee). TBF they offer significantly lower prices, and something has to give, but even if you offer to pay a bit more for better melee, you'll be hard pressed to get the reliability of an Italian manufacturer. That plus the established haute couture names, make for an interesting segment of the market. Basically, there are 2 types of jewelers, those who sell branded (haute couture) merchandise with higher margins & slightly lower turns, and those who sell lesser brands & commoditized products at slightly lower margins & higher turns. Branded jewelers tend to have higher spend on required coop adds in order to promote brands. Commoditized jewelers will have more optionality with regards to participating in coop ads which become more requisite if they are members of buying groups and depending on the stroke of the brands they carry. --- Disclaimer: My hiatus from the offshore industry, into wholsale jewelery, was an abysmal failure. I'd have difficulty selling air conditioners on the equator. I think in this case, brand name, status attached to country of origin matter just as much a the quality of the merchandise. Northern Italy is well known for fine jewelers and Fope is a niche business with a global reach (85% of their revenues are foreign) that can exploit this, I think. Based on the price I paid 7 Euro and change), it trades at 7x EBIT. It’s too small for LVMH, but the new 59% owners have an investment banking background and saw value here. I hope they don‘t screw it up. I see a good chance they they follow up with a buyout when this COVID thing is over.

I wrote this before, but when people see other people doing “risky” things, they intuitively think it is safe (social proof food concept). Ironically it is just the opposite - going to an empty restaurant is way less risky than going to a full one for example. I am not sure how much of a cofactor colder weather is. People are mostly indoors and most infections occur indoors as well. it might increase the susceptibility of the respiratory system but then on the other hand, the epidemic has been raging pretty well in warmer climates as well (Italy, Spain, Brazil etc).

The CARES act helps Main Street much more so than TARP did in 2008. TARP was pure trickle down, while the PPP loan programs, the UI insurance boost in particular as well as the Economic impact checks are pure helicopter money. The current response is much more holistic and of course way more expensive. There is a real question what happens when the sugar rush from all this helicopter money wears off.

Thanks for all the responses. I found a guy on eBay who offers a custom iMac 21.5 Retina 4k 2019 3.0ghz i5 with a 500gb SSD & 32gb DDR4 2666mhz memory, for $1649. The items are listed as "open box" & they have over x5000, 100% positive feedback. They operate out of Tulsa, OK & even with all the glowing feedback, I'm skeptical, given the astounding prices. I'll probably get over my skepticism this evening. If you're really on a budget or simply want to get the most bang for you buck why not build a system? If you like MAC OS then it's understandable. I attached a sample build that would be magnitudes better for $1900. The hardware beats what you can buy at Apple for the same price, but will the system really perform better in real world application? I am not sure about this. I am going to need to look at a new notebook later this year. My current one is a 2012 Dell running the now unsupported Windows 7. I probably are going to look at MacBook too because I hate Windows 10 (I have it at work)

wow. Thank you very much! This is very helpful! I was wondering why their non-GAAP revenue is only 1% higher than GAAP. What's the reason to even bother? Now I understand that it seems to make sense to have this. With that said..... RP's non-GAAP eps is a total shit show. They added back Amortization, interest expense, income tax expense, stock comp and call it non-GAAP eps. Jeeze...... :o Fun fact: Stock based compensation expense for WDAY is ~24% of their revenue. You really can’t make this up.

Isn’t TCO a short here? They have tons of debt. Also some of their assets are in JV in South Korea, which probably limits their cash flow access.