bill fleckenstein

@StuntPope @ttmygh how this period of govt interference in all aspects of daily life ends is such an important topic, that the blowback is worth it...big principles (like free speech) are in jeopardy these days and are vastly more important than any grief i get or how many followers i may have.

@turtlespeed2020 grade matters more than anything when it comes to fuel costs (ex hydro) mattering a lot or not much. think about it.

Another storyline is Gulf countries are selling gold to pay their bills AND spike in oil prices eats into gold miner profits. Juniors may not hedge their energy needs but major gold producers partially are. $AEM $NEM $B One year chart, 200DMA vs GLD Chat GPT says: Energy (especially diesel) is typically:~10–20% of AISC for gold miners So when oil spikes: $20–30/bbl move → $50–150/oz AISC impact (rough rule of thumb) 🟡 Barrick Gold (B) Approach: selective / opportunistic hedging Uses fuel hedges (diesel, oil-linked) in certain regions Hedging is not systematic across the whole portfolio Heavy exposure to Africa (e.g., Mali, Congo (DRC)) where: power = diesel-heavy logistics = oil-sensitive More exposed to oil price volatility than peers Hedging tends to be tactical, not structural 🟢 Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM) Approach: conservative + structural mitigation Uses periodic diesel hedging, especially in remote Canadian operations Significant effort to reduce fuel exposure structurally: Electrification of mines Grid power in places like Canada and Finland Northern mines (Nunavut) still rely on diesel, so some exposure remains Lower oil sensitivity overall vs peers Not because of heavy hedging, but due to better energy mix 🔵 Newmont (NEM) Approach: structured hedging + diversification Regularly uses fuel hedging programs (diesel, natural gas) Large, diversified portfolio across: United States Australia Ghana Increasing use of: renewables (solar, wind hybrids) long-term power contracts Moderate oil exposure, but: better hedged than Barrick less structurally advantaged than AEM

@Idttlol @Michael951413 Virtue signaling has zero to do with actual empathy, its all just posturing, with no understanding of t h e actual consequences of the policies being championed.

@fleckcap @Michael951413 Still disagree. Most of this trash is people posturing and worrying about optics. A person with genuine empathy (both cognitive and affective) would not be able to stomach this ruling.

@Idttlol @Michael951413 lets say, selective empathy instead.

@fleckcap @Michael951413 This isn’t empathy, it’s a lack of it.

@TedNugent Sadly, critical race theory ruined the thinking ability of a lot of people.

@bassamus she would have to be much smarter to be disingenuous.

this is your "well informed" senator ... disingenuous vs clueless? which is worse ?

@johnondrasik Why does anyone care what people,who pretend to be someone else for a living, "think" about anything? It's not like they've demonstrated rigorous analytical abilities repeatedly and been correct.

Eddie must have missed Hamas live streaming the raping, murdering, and kidnapping of innocent concert goers on Oct 7th. You can’t despise these pseudo-intellectual poseurs enough. 🐑

@A1776Fred @DrMichaelOren brilliant, the nyt is such trash.

@DrMichaelOren “The Times can also report that numerous unnamed government officials have leaked the US is working on a bomb that will kill tens of thousands of civilians if it is used, which will be a war crime.”

If the New York Times reported the war in 1944 as it’s reporting the war today. President Roosevelt continues to pursue a war for which he failed to prepare the United States. Though there have been some significant military achievements, especially in North Africa, U.S. forces remained bogged down in the Pacific and severely bloodied in strategically meaningless places like Tarawa and Guadalcanal. The Italian campaign has totally stalled, with an appalling loss of American life that will soon be surpassed by the utterly reckless and inevitably doomed invasion of France. Meanwhile, the innocent people of Japan and Germany continue to suffer. The damage to both their countries and the impact on the world economy is incalculable. The chances of a negotiated settlement appear more than ever remote. And all of this because the impressionable Roosevelt was duped into going to war by that master manipulator, Churchill.

@JohnCleese 👍

This sounds like a 'fair swap'

@EndWokeness not much he says ever does.

This tweet didn't age well 😬

@ciucci_mark @Houseofyogi 👍 yep,it kinda does.

@Houseofyogi @fleckcap this reminds me of so many of your columns over the years!

Don't be IBM and fumble an 18yr head start on AI IBM was the most valuable company on Earth. Invented the hard drive. The PC. The floppy disk. The ATM. DRAM. SQL. The barcode. Most US patents 29 years straight. 405,000 employees. 70% mainframe market share. Today: $231 billion. 67th in the world. Anthropic. Founded 2021. Four years old. $380 billion. Every piece of the bag was fumbled... Invented the PC. Sold to Lenovo: $1.75 billion. Invented the hard drive. Sold to Hitachi: $2 billion. Server business. Sold to Lenovo. Basically nothing. Now the chips. This is pure comedy. IBM was the largest semiconductor manufacturer on Earth. Fabs in New York. Fabs in Vermont. 16,000 patents. They PAID GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion cash to take it. Gave away the factories. Gave away the patents. $4.7 billion write-down. IBM had American fabs. They paid to close them. And the same Democrats who scream about chips going overseas are the ones whose policies made it too expensive to build here. We wouldn't have TSMC/Taiwan issues today. Decisions have consequences. TSMC: $700 billion. Nvidia: $5 trillion. IBM paid to exit chips right before chips became the most valuable industry on Earth. Incredible timing. Deep Blue beats Kasparov. Live television. First machine to outthink a human world champion. IBM owned AI. Not as a buzzword. As a fact. On camera. In front of the whole planet. OpenAI did not exist for another 18 years. Anthropic for another 24. Nvidia was making cards so teenagers could play Halo. Google was two grad students sharing a dorm room. IBM had an 18-year head start on the entire AI industry. What did they do with it. They dismantled Deep Blue. Put it in a museum. Same mentality as every socialist (cough dems) who wants to regulate AI before it ships. Celebrate the breakthrough. Kill the follow-through. Watson wins Jeopardy. Destroys the two greatest players alive on national TV. Most famous AI brand on the planet. IBM spends billions on Watson Health. AI that cures cancer. Their engineers flagged it unsafe. Instead of fixing it they sold it for scraps. Then killed the brand entirely. Loser mentality. IBM Research. Decades of NLP work. The compute. The talent. The CEO looks at LLMs and says "no thanks." Two years later ChatGPT launches. 100 million users in two months. The entire economy reorganizes around the exact technology IBM looked at and said nah. That is like having Google's algorithm in 1997 and deciding to build a phonebook. The suits and the consultants took over. Same thing that kills every city, every agency, every institution that picks socialism over competition. $201 billion in buybacks over 25 years. More on buybacks than CAPEX. They could have funded every AI lab on Earth with that money. Instead they bought their own stock while the stock went down. Revenue down 22 straight quarters. Nobody fired. Name another job where you lose $95 billion in market cap and get a raise. Actually don't. That job only exists at IBM and in Congress. Buffett bought $12 billion in IBM. The greatest investor alive. Held six years. Dumped it on CNBC. "I was wrong." Put the money in Apple. Best investment in Berkshire history. They had the patents. The labs. The engineers. The brand. An 18-year head start on AI. Replaced the builders with bureaucrats. Chose buybacks over R&D. Chose administration over competition. Lost everything. Now look at who wants to run the same playbook on the AI economy. Bernie wants data center moratoriums. Tax the builders before they finish building. Ro Khanna represents $18 trillion in Silicon Valley market cap. Apple. Nvidia. Google. His district built AI. He just held a Stanford town hall with Bernie called "Who Controls AI: The Oligarchs or The People." Wants to tax unrealized gains. Pause data centers. Put unions on AI boards. Redistribute wealth that hasn't been created yet. His own district is trying to primary him. Not because he's too progressive. Because he's trying to kneecap the industry that made his district the most valuable zip code on Earth. That is IBM energy. Tax the engineers. Slow the builders. Add a committee. Wonder why nothing works. Gavin ran California from a $97 billion surplus into a $68 billion deficit. Lost 789 companies. Tesla. SpaceX. Oracle. Chevron. 200,000 people leaving per year. And he thinks he should have a say in how AI gets built nationally. The guy who can't keep In-N-Out Burger in California wants to regulate the most important technology since electricity. These aren't hypotheticals. This is the IBM playbook in real time. Replace engineers with regulators. Replace competition with committees. Replace building with administrating. And act shocked when the talent leaves and the lead disappears. IBM went from first to 67th. 1.43% a year for 28 years. A savings account beat that. Don't let them do it to America. Name a bigger fumble. I'll wait.

@stevemur Progressive is too kind,they are people with a liberal philosophy but zero common sense and zero self awareness. Disaster is the only possible outcome.

Can Progressives govern? It really is becoming increasingly clear that no, they cannot. They are beholden to public sector unions (SEIU, AFT, NEA, etc), and see budgets primarily as redistribution and retribution mechanisms, not as the necessary source of funds for effective state services. What if the "Affordability Crisis" is just... modern American Progressivism? stevemurch.com/say-it-with-me…

@goldbug49 thats an ai generated voice near as i can tell.

@fleckcap Is this really Druckenmiller? youtube.com/watch?v=4iRoQ5…

@bassamus some 21 whites have a fair bit of botrytis, so id be careful, 22s seem promising but they are still a little young to really tell. i really dislike 22 reds though 23 seem interesting.

@fleckcap Sorry 22 and 23 also for reds

@bassamus opened this 5 hours early. Stunning 18 whites finally start to blossom.

@bassamus 09 had too much premox, so I don't have any. I agree 14, 18 and 20 as well. In chablis 08 raveneau is the best imo.

@fleckcap i'm a bit of late comer to burg and whites in particular but 18 and 14 are my absolute favorites.. my compadres who've been at it as long as you ranked 09 1st..being in its prime window and the 18 could stew a few more years.

@KaMiller1 @bassamus Cellar temperature.

@fleckcap @bassamus At what temperature did you serve it? And did you aerate it at other than room temperature?

@bassamus I've had the 00 batard 3x but always a Domaine related function.last one was slightly premoxed.

@bassamus Yes it does.ive never seen the drc batard except at Domaine functions. A rare bird.

Glory to the whites !!! Does that make me racist? @fleckcap

@LookingGlas1989 @bassamus Yes you can tell. Everything is different: extract,length, complexity, balance etc. Try a couple blind you will see. Not always true but mostly it is.

@fleckcap @bassamus Besides the price, what’s the biggest difference between a $50 & $500 dollar white wine? I don’t think I could tell.