Liberty

Trump pathologically can't admit mistakes, and early on he needed to peddle some miracle cure to reassure people, so he jumped on the early positive news about HCQ but pushed it way way way farther than the evidence supported, so here we are. He can't really reverse on it, and his followers take their cues from him, rather than from the science. Heck, the feds bought 60 million doses, so even more incentives to say it works... Personally, I'll trust Fauci over Trump and his 'demon sperm and alien DNA' doctor on this topic. Meanwhile in New Zealand:

This thread is both entertaining and sad:

I'm fully invested and having one of my best years ever on the investment side, even picked up a few things in March and was lucky to do well on those. But I see that a global pandemic that has kill over 650k people in a few months despite almost the whole world shutting down (what would it have been otherwise?), and is currently out of control in the US and Brazil and India, a long time away from a vaccine, is a big problem even if my stocks are doing well.

Ok, this is a must watch. Playing with masks and blowtorches.. some nice backyard science:

False choice.

If a doctor treated 350 of 350 patients successfully that is a good data point. A normal person when they go to a doctor, they would be interested in how many cases the doctor treated and how many were successful. How do you know how successful he would have been without it without a control group? That, and given the doctor I'd need a lot more than her word before this even becomes and anecdote, much less a data point. The fatality rate for covid is 0.65%. (1-0.65)^350 is 10.2%. In other words there is a 10.2% chance of all 350 paitients recovering with no loss of life. Unlikely? There are a lot of covid patients and a lot of doctors treating them. Say there are 350 doctors each treating 350 patients. The likely hood of 1 doctor not losing any patients is 1-(1-0.102)^350 is essentially 100%. It depends a lot on the demographics of the patients too.. Were they mostly from a nearby long-term care facility for seniors or from a young high-income neighbourhood with mostly healthy young adults? You need to know a lot of things to know what you're looking at, which is why studies try to explicitly control for variables and why anecdotes can be misleading.

Pretty insane numbers: https://news.shopify.com/shopify-announces-second-quarter-2020-financial-results

If a doctor treated 350 of 350 patients successfully that is a good data point. A normal person when they go to a doctor, they would be interested in how many cases the doctor treated and how many were successful. How do you know how successful he would have been without it without a control group?

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/us/politics/russia-disinformation-coronavirus.html

Fiscal Q3: https://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2020/q3/Visa-Inc.-Q3-2020-Earnings-Release.pdf https://s1.q4cdn.com/050606653/files/doc_financials/2020/q3/Visa-Inc.-Q3-2020-Financial-Results-Presentation.pdf

Really enjoyed this interview with Kat Cole: http://investorfieldguide.com/kat-cole-how-to-operate-lessons-in-brand-distribution-and-leadership-invest-like-the-best-ep-184/ Great operator, very high IQ and EQ.

That makes sense to me, that there's a control premium. But from the POV that they're expecting an ok IRR on it, not that they made a killing and got it for a song and will make huge IRRs. And if you go back to when they originally bought the asset with Liberty and what they expected then, we're already pretty far from making a killing territory, I think.

Q2: http://investor.spglobal.com/file/Index?KeyFile=404763019

Q2 2020: https://www.ropertech.com/sites/default/files/Roper%20Q2%202020%20Earnings%20Presentation%20Final.pdf Posted some of my highlights from the call in this thread:

New acquisition at Volaris: https://vertikal.net/en/news/story/35842/volaris-adds-to-rental-software-stable

Intel restructuring, chief of engineering is out: https://newsroom.intel.com/news-releases/intel-changes-technology-organization/#gs.bbmg41

So you're saying their partners, Liberty Metals & Mining, are really dumb? I’d assume they’re more rational than dumb. Whatever they think is the value of that holding, it sounds like it’s worth more than that amount to them to exit investments that aren’t “green.” (Or maybe they have some insider info that Alberta is going to shut down coal plants even earlier than expected.) Well, they both were already wrong about the investment in the first place (it was supposed to last a lot longer), so I think it's not out of the conceivable that they may still be wrong about it, or at least, that there's a lot of uncertainty that must be discounted... But I'd say that the value of it is probably closer to what ALS is paying than anything else. Otherwise, if it was worth a lot more, Liberty would've sold it to someone else for a higher price. I think your last line is a bit of a leap. We are talking about an asset that is both expiring and in a disfavored industry. I doubt declining coal royalties are a huge, liquid and efficient market. Liberty could have been driven by the desire to get a full exit of coal and dispose of an ugly asset. A simple - let's be done with it. If that, I'm not sure there are many parties Liberty could have turned to. Seems to me as though Altius picked this up at a good price, but it's certainly possible the royalty will fade more quickly than expected. Either it's a good asset for Altius, or it's not. You can't have it both ways and have it be great financially for Altius but so ugly nobody else would touch it. If this is something that has a good chance of providing safe high IRRs, then the short-duration shouldn't matter and will be reflected in a DCF and priced appropriately by private equity or whatever.

So you're saying their partners, Liberty Metals & Mining, are really dumb? I’d assume they’re more rational than dumb. Whatever they think is the value of that holding, it sounds like it’s worth more than that amount to them to exit investments that aren’t “green.” (Or maybe they have some insider info that Alberta is going to shut down coal plants even earlier than expected.) Well, they both were already wrong about the investment in the first place (it was supposed to last a lot longer), so I think it's not out of the conceivable that they may still be wrong about it, or at least, that there's a lot of uncertainty that must be discounted... But I'd say that the value of it is probably closer to what ALS is paying than anything else. Otherwise, if it was worth a lot more, Liberty would've sold it to someone else for a higher price.

So you're saying their partners, Liberty Metals & Mining, are really dumb?

Good new interview with Gavin Baker:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-not-solve-coronavirus-crisis/2020/07/26/7fca9a92-cdb0-11ea-91f1-28aca4d833a0_story.html Good for those in red swing states, I guess... :-\

Google keeping almost all its 200,000 employees working from home "at least" until July 2021: https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-keep-employees-home-until-summer-2021-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-11595854201

It could be stronger immune systems due to living in squalor. Could be they're just not getting tested nearly as much because of much worse access to healthcare? Don't assume that the numbers (the map) represents reality accurately (the actual terrain).