Castanza

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-says-transistor-technology-could-130846233.html "It is 20%, the largest intra-node jump ever in our history," Raja Koduri, Intel's chief architect, said of the performance gain in an interview with Reuters. "It's actually same as what you would get with one full Moore's Law node of performance."

Did Enron have all 29,000 employees in on their coverup? Whether or not Tesla is involved in accounting fraud I have no opinion on.

WFC - Broke even on my position. Plenty of other good banks out there at good prices. I think the thesis should be kept relatively simple. Too many "if they dos" for my liking. Couple that with the current environment and I'd rather try to find a better place for my money. I do believe there will be plenty of opportunities to re-enter a position within the next year should I change my mind.

Grocery store price increases aren't necessarily due to inflation. I think they can be more attributed to a lack of production in the meat slaughterhouses and produce farms. Also price gouging to prevent hording is also an aspect. It probably would be better to watch prices on consumer goods that are not "necessary". You very well may find inflation there, but I cannot speak to that.

Bullshit! You pretty much have to wear a mask anywhere you go in Ontario for a long time. I was a Skeptical too. But they do live in a small town so maybe the guidelines there are different. At the very least I figured Toronto and big cities would have mandates.

I talked with my brother in-law today. He lives in Ontario and said that they haven’t been required to wear a mask up until just two weeks ago.

https://investoramnesia.com/2020/08/09/speculation-innovation/ Interesting read on EVs from a historical perspective. Hard to believe there were EV capable of 180 miles back in the early 1900’s

It's not just about vaporware. It's asking why the Zune couldn't take on the iPod. Can these big auto companies create EV products that ordinary folks actually desire? Do they have the software chops to build attractive UI that is on par with true luxury experience (ie. like Mac OS software vs Windows or iTunes vs Windows Media Player)? Their DNA is internal combustion and horsepower, not this other, newer form of customer desire that Tesla brings to the table. No one cares about "The Ultimate Driving Machine" or a roaring engine like they did 10-15 years ago. Nutty things like "Ludicrous mode" and holiday car show and car farts (yes...) and games you can play while charging are the rage, not whatever B.S. Cadillac execs think will resonate with current/future luxury buyers ("just throw a long, high res screen on the dash and port CUE to it")...but hey, I'm sure the focus groups/marketing studies GM ran concluded that "people want bigger screens!" Add to this that they cannot create EVs with comparable stats as Tesla at the same price points. There is more to Tesla's moat than meets the eye. It will not be easy to displace by the traditional guys... Talking about Tesla as a product is very different than talking about it as an investment. Are you really willing to buy TSLA at these prices? A market cap greater than how many auto companies combined with one tenth of the yearly sales of a single automaker.... To the fanboys. You can like Tesla’s as a car and hate them as an investment.

How do you feel about NIO?

M@&$?$ F$&@)%....what’s more valuable in this environment? Gold or Logistics?

My company which has a 45B market cap just decided to not renew office leases in California locations Chicago and possibly Miami and Phoenix. They also canceled the building of a new office building where I live which wasn’t even going to be started until 2025. My company is not in any type of fundamental trouble. They simply said they want to adapt to the changing work environment and will pursue permanent work from home accommodations. If they need office space for “employee get togethers” they said they will rent out work spaces for weeks at a time. They said employees have proven to be productive while working from home and that this frees up capital to improve the business in other areas. Edit: should have clarified. This is not across the board but for one business segment (tech/infrastructure)

Money has close to nothing to do with CEO quality. 2 (?) CEOs later Intel still has crappy leadership. Perhaps your experience is colored by hugely successful Microsoft transition to Nadella. I would say that this is more of an exception than the rule. I'd say AMD waited 10+ years for Lisa Su. IBM? Nokia? We'll see how Intel fares and when - if ever - it gets a great CEO. It's a fair point...."A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush." In the meantime, Intel is a highly profitable company with solid growth. But your point is taken that it could turn into the WFC of the chip market. ;D

Thanks for the recommendations, I will take a look.

I think what Spekulatius posted here is true, with regard to Europe. It will eventually change over time, I think [about air condition in homes]. I'm working on it for my own household. I think some threshold got broken here back in 2016 [i simply got enough of the heat in June 2016]. I have been told that persons of high age simply gradually "shut down", loosing their feeling of thirst and hunger. It creates a mess when we have heat waves. Old people are like leftovers. They require constant refrigeration so as to not spoil. ;D

Can you elaborate? Are the current management teams better/worse/different how? AMD is centered around products. From what I understand, they have a product road map for next 5 years or more clearly planned internally. If we look back the road map they announced from 2 years back, they pretty much delivered all the products across lines. Their R&D people is ranked near the top within the company (from what employees say). On the other hand, intel CEO is a finance guy and an outsider of the chip industry. I don't know anything particularly bad about him. But it is pretty hard to play catch up game with a non product guy. Intel also lost a lot of product talent for various reasons in the last decade. I found a few chip companies that were bought out by Intel. They all more or less had some nice designs or architectures or something Intel wanted, but people told me that they didn't think intel did anything with those (other than controlling the patents). Intel used to have a moat around manufacturing too, but that is gone now with the rise of TMSC. So I am not convinced that Intel will catch up product wise with high percentage certainty. What do you mean "catch up product wise?" Are you referencing a pipeline, quality, or competitive products? AMD CEO Dr. Su is a great leader. She has a background in engineering and really knows her stuff. Playing devils advocate to the Intel bears..... If Intel has managed to grow and innovate for the past decade despite a dog shit management team, what happens when they get their very own Dr. Su? Personally I think the resurgence in AMD is good for Intel. A bit of a kick in the pants. Make some changes and bring in the right people.

All this buzz over the 6-12m 7nm chipset delay but Intels 10nm chip still outperforms AMD 7nm chip in multiple categories. In the meantime it looks like Intel will outsource some more operations to TSMC while they refine their in-house process.

June 2020 AMD Revenue 1.93B, up 26.19% INTC Revenue 19.73B, up 19.58% AMD Net Income 1.57M, up 348.57% INTC Net Income 5.1B, up 22.16% AMD Diluted EPS 0.13, Up 333.33% INTC Diluted EPS 1.19, Up 29.35% AMD Net Profit Margin 8.13%%, up 255.02% INTC Net Profit Margin 25.88%, up 2.21% AMD P/E 165 :o INTC P/E 9

Interesting read Here is the syllabus for the course Jim teaches at Yale. Plenty of links to articles and book recommendations with specific chapters referenced. Not sure if Yale does open courses like MIT that would be easy to find online. http://portal.som.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/MGT%20848-01%20Financial%20Fraud%20A%20Forensic%20Approach%20-%20Spring-2%202015.pdf

Any YouTube Video Tutorials etc? I don't use their gear (not sure why anyone would pay those prices) but they have good instructional videos for loading a pack properly etc. In short, keep the weight high in the pack and close to your body. Use poles if you have bad knees. https://www.goruck.com/keep-training

Working from home was a bit of a change from the office. More distraction that can eat away at your time. I started using an app called Tomato Timer a few months ago after I continually caught myself being less productive. Changed my work pace and helped to keep me on track. I’m probably more productive than when in the office and will probably continue to use it once (if we ever) we go back. Also, I have been busting my ass three nights a week doing rucks. Exercise is important for mental health and productivity. It helps you feel accomplished through other means. The nights when my wife works I take a pack and load it up with 50lbs of sand pills I made. Head to a nearby trail that’s 8 miles out and back and start humping. I backpack a lot throughout the year so this is really just added training. Also really helped me improve my cardio. Getting closer to my 5 mile 40 minute goal.

Back then, there was a real fear that the Fed was going to run out of Treasuries as it was acting as a direct lender to financial firms that were desperate to exchange bad collateral for good (US Treasuries). At the time, the program was euphemistically known as "Treasuries for trash". Thus this announcement was declaring that the US Treasury was issuing $585b of T-Bills directly to the Fed and in return the Fed was crediting the US Treasury with $585b in settlement balances in its General account. The US Treasury did this to give the Fed more "ammunition". We've seen this again in this crisis, where the US Treasury has added $114b in "equity" to absorb first losses from some of the new Fed lending programs that could expose the Fed to losses. If the Treasury's Fed account can go negative, that constraint is eliminated and the Treasury may spend an infinite amount of dollars without any revenue. Even though the US left the gold standard in 1971, I think the old concepts when the US dollar was subordinated to gold have refused to die - even if they are no longer applicable. Through trial and error, we are finding that since severing the link to gold, the US Treasury has more fiscal capacity than we previously thought. Dick Cheney turned out to be an armchair Nobel economist when he said "deficits don't matter" - even if his utterance may have been a cynical exhortation to Congress to pass the Bush tax cuts in the early aughts. The reality is if you look at the Fed and the US Treasury on a consolidated basis - their three forms of private sector financial assets are all debts in that they are liabilities of their consolidated balance sheet (currency in circulation, bank reserves, Treasury debt). What is cash? It is a Federal Government IOU. In fact, here is a UK 20 pound note. These banknotes have a smiling Queen Elizabeth saying "I promise to pay bearer on demand the sum of twenty pounds". It sure sounds like some form of IOU. It seems like one could present a 20 pound note to the Queen, and she will give you a ...hmm...uhh... a shiny and new 20 pound note in exchange. 8) If one accepts that currency and banknotes are IOUs, then why is US Treasury Debt the only one of the three forms of Federal government liabilities that we consider debt? We think of money as a unit of account but what if it is really government debt? Why are they IOUs? Because banknotes are basically scrip that the private sector must obtain in order to extinguish its Federal tax (and fee) obligations that are imposed on the private sector by the government. The Federal government must operate in a deficit with the private sector so as to allow the private sector to accumulate the government's money to pay its taxes. Once the cycle starts, it becomes a flywheel that almost makes the original premise secondary (i.e., that the government's money is really a sort of "tax anticipation note payable"). Recently when States like California and Illinois got into financial trouble they would issue IOUs to suppliers. These IOUs were accepted locally because attached to these IOUs was a provision where the IOUs could be used to extinguish State govt tax and fee liabilities. Thus, not only were they accepted, but they also achieved some limited local circulation in commercial transactions with banks, for example. There are other historical examples. During the War of 1812, a cash-strapped (and gold-strapped) US government issued short-term US Treasury debt that paid a low nominal interest rate (but could also be used to extinguish tax liabilities). These notes circulated widely and some even continued to circulate well past their redemption date (and thus no long paid any interest). They continued to circulate because they became a form of banknote (money) as they could be presented to the Federal government for payment of taxes or tariffs owed. I think this forms the basis of MMT's theoretical framework and I am generally sympathetic to it. My problem with MMT is that it has been embraced largely by the left and thus it is hard to separate its explanatory features from its prescriptive (Green New Deal, Guaranteed Employment, etc). It also refuses to reconcile the opposing forces of fiscal capacity expansion versus currency debasement or give a nod to the economic benefits of low taxes and sound money. MMT-adherents tend to ignore the currency debasement part even when the evidence piles up (eg., gold). wabuffo Thanks for sharing your thoughts and explanations throughout this thread wabuffo. Was wondering if you have any books or resources you recommend to become better versed in this area? You clearly have spent a lot of time on this topic. thanks

Seems overweight from a Buffett perspective. Also, Apple's valuation seems a bit stretched right now. On the flip side BRK nets about 800m in dividends.

Thanks for sharing. Certainly some things to mull over.

Castanza, You are a naughty boy! [ ; - D ][Actually, you remind me a bit about myself ...] ;D

So strip clubs are open and schools are closed? Interesting priorities, if true. Everyone in a strip club is probably already running a low grade fever anyways ?