In 1492, Lorenzo The Magnificent died. His heir was his eldest son, 20 year old Piero de’ Medici, a useless turd. The Pope died soon afterwards and was replaced by the corrupt Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI. Savonarola proclaimed that the “Sword of the Lord” would soon descend upon Florence for its wicked ways. In this case, the sword would soon be carried another 20 year old ruler – King Charles VIII of France.
Is the United States a failed state? Or is it just failing? Today we break down some of the various definitions of a “failed state” and try to work out how the USA rates against them. And why it matters, even to non-Americans.
We chat about a couple of recent articles (see below) and then talk about Tony’s recent alerts involving LYL and KCN. Next we run AMI through the QAV Checklist and answer some questions about why the “buy list” is so large and whether or not we should/could shorten it using Stock Doctor filters.
In his sermons in early 1491, Savonarola attacked the people and priests who thought of Christianity as a merely ceremonial religion. He also criticised how ignorant the people were of the doctrines of Christianity, ‘thieving priests’ who sold lucrative posts and Church offices to the wealthy, and he claimed the clerics and people were all sodomites and attacked the oppression of the poor, by unjust taxation.
When Caligula was assassinated in 41, Claudius hid in a room of the palace called the Hermaeum, and then behind a curtain on a balcony. According to Suetonius, he was discovered by a soldier named Gratus – Gratitude –
who said to his colleagues: “This is a Germanicus; come on, let us choose him for our emperor.” But many in the Senate wanted to see him dead and a return to the republic.
Another 90 minute Club episode this week! Investor, “unemployed shoe salesman” and new board member of The Australian Shareholders Association, Steven Mabb, joins us to talk about the value that the ASA brings to retail shareholders and tries to sell Tony on becoming a member. Then we get into this week’s questions, including how long Tony waits before selling a “non-performing” stock; whether or not TK would sell a stock in his portfolio because it’s QAV score dropped below 0.1; whether or not TK would wait to see what the US market does before he buys something locally; and whether or not he has tried applying Benjamin Graham’s formula for capitalization rates for growth stocks.
The near catastrophe of the Seventh Offensive led to recriminations between the British and Tito but it showed the Germans regarded Tito as a serious foe. Himmler said in a speech later in 1944: ‘He is our enemy, but I wish we had a dozen Titos in Germany, men who were leaders and had such great resolution and good nerves that though they were constantly encircled they would never give in.’ Meanwhile, the Western media described him variously as a lesbian, Russian officer, a Ukrainian, a Polish count or a Polish Jew, while many believed that he did not exist at all and that TITO was an acronym for Third International Terrorist Organisation. Eventually Churchill decided he had to meet this man for himself. But while his relationship with Churchill improved, things with Stalin got worse.
For most of his life, Claudius was the Rosemary Kennedy of the Caesars. Without the ice pick lobotomy. Hidden from the public. If he wasn’t allowed to participate in Roman affairs, he would look elsewhere. He became a historian, writing a ton of books about his family, the Carthaginians, and about Etruscan history. But he wasn’t boring. He was a bit of a womaniser, and loved to watch games in the arena, gambling, eating, drinking. Things only started to turn around for him when became Caligula’s co-consul in 37 – but whether or not this was Caligula’s little joke is hard to say.
On this episode we talk about why we are not trying to compete with APT investors; Tony’s recent stock buys and analysis; how he uses his “watch list” and why we’ve changed its name to the “buy list”; why we’re still manually calculating the price-to-cash ratio instead of using Stock Doctor’s figure; improved wording on how to draw a three-point trend SELL line; and why sometimes a stock with great numbers might have a falling knife.
The first 50 years of Tiberius Claudius Nero’s life was a mixture of wealth, power and cruelty. With symptoms similar to cerebral palsy, the young Claudius was called “a monstrosity of a human being, one that Nature began and never finished” – by his own mother. He was kept out of public life and power by his adoptive grandfather, Augustus, and his successor, Tiberius. He was treated as a fool and a joke by his nephew, Caligula. But after Caligula’s assassination, he took power by force, becoming Rome’s first true IMPERATOR.
Tony’s stock broker of 25+ years, Alex Hay, a partner at broking firm EL&C Baillieu, joins us again today to talk about the different kinds of buy & sell orders and how to use them. Outside of that, Tony and I also talk about our dummy portfolio, which made it back into the black, and some excel formula errors we’ve picked up recently in the checklist.
In 1487 Savonarola left Florence for a new assignment in Bologna, to continue his studies toward a degree of master of sacred theology while teaching juniors. But apparently it didn’t go well. He wasn’t given his masters and his academic career was terminated. For the next few years he was sent around Italy to preach. He finally gets reassigned BACK to San Marco in Florence. Probably at the request of Lorenzo, on the recommendation of Pico della Mirandola, the self-proclaimed smartest motherfucker in the world. Now that he has the blessing and interest of Lorenzo and Pico, he’s in an entirely new situation. People care what he has to say. And he preaches about the coming of the Apocalypse.
At the second session of AVNOJ, 29 November 1943, the delegates became a legislative assembly under the Presidency of Tito, who was proclaimed Marshal. But this momentous occasion was followed with tragedy. During the winter of 1943–4 the Germans carried out ‘Operation Kugelblitz’ (‘Thunderbolt’), which the Partisans called the Sixth Offensive. In January 1944 Fitzroy Maclean came back to Bosnia with two remarkable proofs of Winston Churchill’s regard for Tito. One of them was Winston’s son Randolph Churchill, “a flabby bully”, who was now an officer in the British military mission. The head of the Soviet Mission was the Red Army’s General Korneyev, “an incurable drunkard”, according to Stalin. The Americans weren’t really interested. Their main target was the British Empire.
Here’s our recent chat with Tobias Carlisle, author of several books on value investing, including ‘The Acquirer’s Multiple: How the Billionaire Contrarians of Deep Value Beat the Market’, and the managing director of The Aquirers Fund.
We run the checklist over SFR, review Tony’s recent journal entries, and then answer your questions about capital gains tax, share consolidations, 3PTL lines, why TK was buying BPT, OFX’s cash situation, forsaking profit by waiting for sell line breaches, leveraging your home to buy shares, how the “Manually entered scores” tab works on the checklist, and whether or not TK has seen better/worse/same returns when his allocations allowed him to buy small/micro caps. We also review the EOFY positions for our dummy portfolio and TK’s portfolio.