Moi ? oh dans la vie, je me promène, je m’éclate, j’apprends des choses, je lis, j’admire la nature, je communique avec des gens, je m’émerveille, je profite, JE VIS, quoi !
Et toi, qu’est-ce que tu aimes dans la vie ?
Sunday, 6 June 2021
TU FAIS QUOI DANS LA VIE ?
Saturday, 5 June 2021
WE ARE NOT NOW THAT STRENGTH
I like you better without your beretta.
I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
...and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are,
we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are,
we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
https://youtu.be/ptqoSZgh7q8
Wednesday, 2 June 2021
VIETNAM HAS SO FAR ESCAPED COVID SHOULD I INVEST?
With those small numbers, they can reach out to F3. That's contact-of three removes and takes you to 200,000 people to track and quarantine. This is manageable.
And it does loads of sequencing, so it can know the characteristics of emerging top-dog strains, much more than would be expected for a lower to middle income.
It has a 4,500km border with Laos, Cambodia and China, that it has plugged. And flights in, almost none.
It was the first country to get a case outside China, last 20 Jan 2020. So what an achievement.
It switched from French to American English in 1975 after the war and ditched its trad alphabet for a 24 letter roman alphabet. This let it make use of computers early on and join the Internet when it started. I'm sure this is part of it.
Emerging Markets are risky at the moment, but Vietnam looks like a good placement.
Thursday, 27 May 2021
SHOULD I VISIT THE AIRPORT TO PREPARE MY FLIGHT DEPARTURE?
The airline booths are half empty. It's hot-booths now, no flights for your airline today? Then no booth and no-one to ask.
Airports are half empty, if that. You can only walk one way round, of course, it's all social distancing. So walk backwards.
You risk being stopped by finger-twitching Security because you are not a passenger that day. But stay - you can talk your way out with reassuring chit-chat.
Try to get into the covid test centres. If travelling on day D, go to test centre D-2 or miss your flight. So arrange your test wellin advance and find out where the Centres are. Last minute at the airport will probably be an even bigger rip-off. Pay for all the tests - can be really a lot money - do you really need to go?
No-one at the info desk. No info desk. No-one to answer questions. Check gov websites for your countries of departure and arrival.
But you know what, sometimes you have to have a break from your uncaring care home.
WHY COMMODITY PRICES ARE SURGING
Factors to consider:
Demand
1. Share price action
From March 23 to May 10 this year, big run up. Biggest customer, China, responds with all manner of clever detailed actions to knock back price. Since demand is increasing as far as we can see into the future, this tamping can only be short term. Copper has doubled in last year, for example.
2. Covid bounce-back
3. Batteries and energy-transition metals
For storage especially Lithium, wind turbines, electric vehicles. Energy-transition metals, copper and platinum group metals for example are now a pinch point because limited new supply.
Green demand - copper.
4. Paris 2015
The data shows a looming mismatch between the world’s strengthened climate ambitions, US rejoining, and the availability of critical minerals that are essential to realising those ambitions.
Means political pressure. Decarbonization could cost more than is currently estimated and will be a structurally inflationary force for some time.
Is political pressure a good thing for investors?
5. Biden's billions
The Biden administration views covid as an opportunity to pour money into its favoured interests – voters, welfare, public services.
The recovery package it has already forced through Congress was for $1.9 trillion. It’s asking for $3-4 trillion more.
6. Much greater and relatively stable demand. Copper is the new oil, but no equivalent to shale. 20k tonne by 2025?
Supply
Despite this boom, technology metals, such as cobalt, copper and lithium, are set for particularly large deficits.
Not investing because investors want dividends, not wasted investments as in last decade of boom pre 2012 which led to bust.
Capital spending this year is set to fall by 6% among major diversified mining companies and 10% among copper miners, according to analysts’ consensus. Mines typically take 10 to 15 years to develop.
2. Emerging imbalances
Between supply, stockpiles and demand have eventually this last year adjusted balances in favour of higher prices. Inventories are low. Covid has disrupted supply chains.
3. Resource quality
Is declining. Eg Chile copper 30pc grade contraction these last 15 years.
Profits
1. Rolling in lolly
$140 billion ebitda Rio BHP Glenmore cf 44b 2015.
2. Weakening dollar, in which contracts are written raises prices and profits.
Investor demand
1. Inflation
Commodities as hedge against inflation. Risk-off now means commodities-on. Ie commodities decorrelate, like before 2008.
2. Long memories are wrong memories
The LME metals index, a gauge of metals trading in London, fell 50 per cent over the five years post 2011 tank. The market capitalisation of London’s five largest listed mines fell 75 per cent.
But that was China coming out of max demand for industrialisation. Now, with the energy transition, demand will be worldwide. Investors had better think again.
3. Healthy balance sheets
Mining companies are also more disciplined and focused on shareholder returns than they were ten years ago. After a near-death experience in 2014, when the sector was left struggling to service debts piled up in the boom years, balance sheets are in much better shape.
4. Dividends and Valuations
Yields around 5% with excellent cover and rising revenues earnings and profits.
DCF on current Income projections make miners fairly valued. But analysts will revise these valuations when the factors listed above are seen in play, giving many years of double-digit TSR.
Tuesday, 25 May 2021
PRINCIPLES OF APPROPRIATENESS
Some Rules :
Can buy at sales price less than intrinsic value.
Aim to sell at above intrinsic value.
IV for property = annual rent / yield (quick and dirty solution.)
Intrinsic value is equal to the present value of all its future incomes - dividends for a share, rents for a property.
#2 Principle of Conservation
Understand why things are as they are before making it better.
Eg, a wall might keep in central heating or keep out cooking smells
#3 Principle of Relative Spending
Spend commensurate with quality. Eg for property. For rung one property, rung 1 rehab. Rung 5 property, rung 5 rehab. Not rung 5 spending on rung 1 property. Not appropriate.
#4 PRINCIPLE OF THE NEGOCE
Any concession you need something in return.
Monday, 24 May 2021
JULY 1ST WILL BE A FLOP
It is likely that few will attend the grand reopening party in Phuket on July 1st, in just a few weeks, bringing further humiliation to Thai authorities.
Covid related restrictions abound across the planet, meaning only those with a serious need visit other countries - businessmen, diplomats, perhaps those seeking cures.
So it is unrealistic to expect even an uptick in foreign tourism under current covid waves and defending restrictions. And domestic tourism is of little interest, even without covid - the numbers are potentially there, but not the money.
Tourism is (was) a fifth of the economy, seven million plus Thai people count on tourism for a living, making this industry of great importance especially to poorer Thai people.
Dreams of replacing lost GDP and employment with the electric vehicle are absurd : at best, the e.v. will be concentrated in the Pathum Thani area, while tourism is nationwide.
What is to be done?
It is pointless trying to remove or refine restrictions for a July 1st 2021 opening. It discredited and humiliates Thailand. Despite ministers' words, there has been no marketing.
All effort should be bent on a reopening for high season 2022. Not wasted on a July 21 distraction.
The objectives are 90% of the entire population vaccinated, the existing tourism assets preserved and upgraded, a test-trace-treat project up and running, a public awareness program mask-space-hygiene, field hospitals.
To re-open tourism requires all local people vaccinated, a vaccine passport, deals with principal departure countries over health cover, a government-backed compensation scheme covering cancellations (the ex-national carrier is in bankruptcy), clarity and stability on testing (antigen preferable to pcr and timing), internal travel restrictions.
Without this credible program of government actions, Thailand is likely to lose its tourist industry and - worse - the backing of international investors and its o
wn people.
The govt must focus on the medium term and put its hands in its pockets.
PS
Cheapest PCR tests
https://j.mp/3vX3AhW
Best travel insurance
https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/05/coronavirus-what-it-means-for-your-travel-insurance/
Saturday, 22 May 2021
PUT TOURISM IN A COMA AND FOCUS ON THE VIRUS
https://thethaiger.com/hot-news/tourism/thailand-focuses-on-international-but-needs-domestic-tourism#comment-383625
It is just a story.
What the author doesn't say is that the economy runs 20% on the foreign currency from intl tourism and you simply cannot replace that slug from within the domestic economy. Never mind that domestic tourism would only infect the whole country.
If Thai strategists were to follow his advice, and succeed, what are his proposals for generating the other, say, 10%? The electric car?
It is true - and has been often remarked - that expecting intl tourism in the midst of this pandemic is a madness.
What could be done is to hibernate the industry (it is now in large part destroyed) by upgrading assets and retraining staff; and to focus on defeating the virus.
Had the govt spent a bit of its foreign reserves on improvements and vaccines, it would come out ready for a bumper high season 2021/2
The objective should be to hibernate the industry and race to defeat the virus, after which the industry can be re-animated.
Not waste resources trying to squeeze ordinary Thais, with low incomes and already high debts.
Friday, 21 May 2021
Monday, 17 May 2021
CHINA - QUADRUPLE DIP
https://is.gd/graSwy
A view i have held and spoken of for 20 years. The danger is that a
state organised as China will seek to deflect the inevitable domestic
upheaval against and threatneing the hegmony of the CCP by foreign
'adventures'. Prepare for world war 3.
Reply
The strategy is a big big fireworks party for 2049, so maybe you're right about war.
China is trying to clear the gun rails this decade, in preparation.
But it's a war it will lose. And more likely if it starts to seriously challenge the USA, its a war the US will start. The US will never never, but never, tolerate a rival, not even a regional hegemon.
The real risk to world peace comes from a US bent on converting the world to its model of Liberal democracy.
In this case, we see Bashir - model journalist - exposed as ambitious, greedy and dishonest.
We see The BBC - the nation's broadcaster at home and abroad - as corrupt and evasive.
We see Prince Charles - future King, husband and father of two little boys - as pompous, selfish and irresponsible.
And ultimately we wonder why the Queen - who grants the BBC its Royal charter - is still out to lunch on the century's most important family crisis.