Lucas C

Your doctor checks your blood work. Nobody checks if your body actually functions. These 8 fitness tests will tell you more about your cardiac risk and longevity than any annual physical ever will:

@kshaughnessy2 Stop making shit up. The man has cancer. Spier, 60, has returned the client money in his $470 million Aquamarine Fund after doctors in September found that his glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer, had come back.

$470 Million Value Fund Closes as Founder Says the Game Has Changed A longtime Buffett-inspired fund manager in Zurich just gave up after years of lagging the market and believes the chances of beating it are only getting slimmer “…Spier’s lament reflects a growing malaise in investment management, with years of double-digit gains in US stocks putting managers under increasing pressure to justify their fees. Investors pulled $428.2 billion from US active mutual funds and exchange-traded funds last year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence, and put $268.2 billion into passive funds….” bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Investors don’t realize gold ALWAYS crashes during an oil-driven crisis. It happened in all major oil shock in the last 50 years - 1973, 1979, 1991, 2001, and 2022. In this thread, I'll break down exactly why it happens and what institutions expect happens next:

BREAKING: USD/JPY just broke 160. The last time this happened, the Bank of Japan spent billions of dollars trying to push it back down. USD/JPY measures how many Japanese yen you need to buy one US dollar. When the number goes up, the yen is getting weaker against the dollar. When it goes down, the yen is getting stronger. Right now the number is above 160, which means the yen is very weak by historical standards. The reason the yen is this weak comes down to one thing: the interest rate gap between the US and Japan. US interest rates are currently around 4.4%. Japan's interest rate is 0.5%. That gap is enormous. Because of this gap, traders have been doing carry trade. You borrow money in Japan at 0.5%, convert it to dollars, and park it in US assets earning 4.4%. The difference is your profit. As long as the yen stays weak or keeps getting weaker, this trade keeps working. Thousands of traders doing this same trade at the same time keeps pushing USD/JPY higher, which keeps the yen weak, which keeps the trade profitable. It feeds itself. The problem is that 160 is the level where Tokyo historically stops tolerating it. In 2024, when USD/JPY crossed 160, the Bank of Japan intervened directly in the currency market. They sold US dollars and bought Japanese yen to artificially push the yen stronger. The result was that USD/JPY dropped from 160 all the way down to 140 between mid July and the first week of August 2024. That is a 12.5% move in roughly three weeks. When that happened, it did not just affect the currency market. Everyone who had borrowed in yen suddenly found that their yen debt was getting more expensive in real terms as the yen strengthened. They were forced to sell assets to cover their positions. US bond yields dropped. Stock markets sold off. It caused a short but sharp shock across multiple asset classes simultaneously. Right now the setup is almost identical to what it was before that happened. USD/JPY is above 160. The carry trade is fully active again. The interest rate gap between the US and Japan has not closed meaningfully. And the Bank of Japan is watching the same level they intervened at last time. There are two ways this plays out from here. THE FIRST SCENARIO is that the Bank of Japan stays silent and does nothing. In that case, the next technical level to watch on the chart is 161.95, which is the all-time high for USD/JPY. That is approximately 1.7% above current levels. If USD/JPY reaches and breaks that level, it would be in completely new territory with no historical resistance above it. THE SECOND SCENARIO is that the Bank of Japan issues a verbal warning or intervenes directly in the market again. Based on what happened in 2024, a direct intervention could push USD/JPY down 4% or more within hours. That kind of sudden move would pressure carry trade positions immediately and could trigger another unwind across global assets. The level that separates these two scenarios is 161.95. Below it, the carry trade continues and the yen keeps weakening gradually. Above it, you are in uncharted territory and the probability of intervention increases significantly. If intervention happens, it will not just move the yen. It will move bond yields, stock markets, and gold simultaneously, exactly as it did in the summer of 2024. USD/JPY at these levels is one of the most important numbers in global markets right now. It is currently driving more cross asset movement than US bond yields or gold on their own.

After 9 years in the gym and helping over 900 people drop 20-80 pounds, here's every fitness tip I could come up with: 1. Stop drinking alcohol.

Stop buying a new charger if your Android battery runs out quickly. I used to think my cellphone was broken. Turns out it wasn’t. Android’s default settings are what waste battery power from the start. After I tweaked it myself, the battery that usually runs out at 3pm now lasts until late at night. Here’s how: (Save this before it disappears).

@RealPepeEscobar Is that 4 more weeks or by week 4, which is this weekend

Putin obviously knows stuff none of us do. This is from the head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, Alexander Shokhin - who I had the pleasure to meet in Moscow in 2024. Shokhin was at a closed-door meeting between Putin and the Russian business elite. Putin thinks the war on Iran will be "resolved" in max 4 weeks.

@thejobchick Didn't you say the layoffs was 20%? So like 16k employees, looks like it was only a few hundred employees?

Meta announces layoffs… and in the same breath hands execs stock options tied to a $9 TRILLION valuation. Do they not have PR… or do they just not care how this looks? Because timing like this doesn’t happen by accident. ALSO- Meta loses landmark social media addiction trial - $2.1M in punitive damages. Oh and this happened too re: pennystocks... Quite the day for Meta.

🧵👇 1/14 $FICO just got its face ripped off... stock is down 58% from highs and everyone is panicking but nobody is actually looking at whats happening under the hood

@Brad_Setser Love your posts, I don't always understand everything and need to re-read, but you are definitely the best poster that I follow

A thread on some work in progress, on China's US bond portfolio As the chart below shows, China's cumulative current account surplus has increased by $3 trillion since the end of 2019 -- and inflows into the US in the US BoP data have done nothing ... 1/

@QualityInvest5 bro, all you do is complain about your stocks going down...and btw, I'm in Adobe too, but maybe try adding value to the discussions instead of bitching all of the time. I've had to block you, don't have time to follow more bitching

$ADBE is being priced for significant declines At this point, as long as it grows, the stock will work from here 😂 What a joke

@QualityInvest5 Down so much, and it's still overpriced. It lost it's moat recently, and the major credit bureaus are behind Vantage 4.0. Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. This is not nothing, can you explain in details what locks customers to FICO scores over Vantage 4.0?

$FICO down 60% from all time highs over something that WONT impact their business This is the buying opportunity of a life time IMO

@DeepIceValue Guy Spier has very serious brain cancer...

Judging by the logic of the market.. I think I understand why Buffett retired $BRK.B, why Burry closed the fund and started a beef with $PLTR cult, why Guy Spier closed the fund, why Ackman became a speculator, and why Antonio went all-in on $GRND..

7 fitness tests every man over 40 should be able to pass. Most can't do more than 3. Test yourself. Be honest. = Thread =

@BlackScholesMan Hi Mike, can you explain to me why Anduril is so hyped? I feel like I've never heard about their products being used in any of these wars by or against the USA, Israel, Iran, Ukraine or Russia...

The war in Iran has exposed serious shortfalls in Western defense. These gaps need to get plugged and the money will follow. Here's how I think specific companies fit into each theme. 🧵

@Quality_stocksA Uber is not cheap, their profit doubled due tax revisions, it's above 1 PEG

Cheaper doesn't mean cheap. To know if the stock is actually cheap, you can for instance look at the PEG Here are 15 stocks with a PEG under 1 Sorted by PEG 🇺🇸 The Trade Desk $TTD 0.9 🇨🇭 Sportradar $SRAD 0.9 🇦🇺 Tasmea $TEA 0.9 🇺🇸 Fair Isaac $FICO 0.8 🇳🇱 Adyen $ADYEN 0.8 🇺🇸 Adobe $ADBE 0.8 🇺🇸 Microsoft $MSFT 0.8 🇦🇷 Mercadolibre $MELI 0.7 🇺🇸 Uber $UBER 0.6 🇺🇾 DLocal $DLO 0.6 🇺🇸 Applovin $APP 0.5 🇺🇸 NVdia $NVDA 0.3 🇺🇸 Shift4 Payments $FOUR 0.2 🇺🇸 Halozyme $HALO 0.1 🇺🇸 Harrow $HROW 0.1

@ArmchairAtty This is where it'd be great to figure out who her actual boss was, this guy deserves to be fired

Imagine you're pregnant. Imagine you learn you have an incompetent cervix that requires surgery. You get the surgery. You also get doctor's orders for bed rest & you ask your boss if you can work from home. But your boss denies it, so you have to go back to the office. You work in the office for a few days, until a desperate call from your husband to the company finally allows you to work from home. And then this...

@FromValue How would you compare MELI and SE?

$MELI trades at an EV/Gross Profit of just 6.18, the lowest in at least a decade, probably longer. What's your excuse for not buying the stock now? 🤔

@QualityInvest5 I don't like the new Dutch law about networth tax, most holders, assuming lots of Dutch investors will have to sell

$ADYEN NOW TRADING AT ITS LOWEST VALUATION SINCE GOING PUBLIC... ANY INTEREST?