This week Tony answers questions from new QAV Club member Angela about three point trendlines, reinvesting strategies, and challenger stocks, and we analyze gold miner Ramelius Resources.
We try to go a little deeper on the Trump-Ukraine-Biden story than most of the media coverage. Apart from Trump and Joe Biden, we talk about the roles that Viktor Shokin, Mykola Zlochevsky, Viktor Yanukovich, Petro Poroshenko, Dmytro Firtash, Volodymyr Zelensky and Yuriy Lutsenko have in this story, along with American players Hunter Biden, Devon Archer and former CIA official, Cofer Black.
Although you may not think of Israel as part of the Cold War paradigm, it’s played such a huge role in American foreign policy, and we have to cover it. It’s also played, and continues to play, a huge role in the story of oil, which is, of course, a huge part of the Cold War story. Because, as you know, the Cold War was all about economics. In this episode, we give a quick overview of the creation of the State of Israel. In our next episodes we’re going to go deep into the story of Zionism.
On this episode we debunk more claims about the death of value investing and how it relates to the “Japanification” of the economy; I come up with a new nickname for Tony; And we answer a listener question about how quickly he invests new funds.
Our stock analysis of the week is the diversified leather manufacturer SCHAFFER CORPORATION (SFC).
Hand carving a piece of metal type for a printing press would take a skilled craftsman an entire day. Just setting one page of the Bible would take 2600 pieces of type. So Gutenberg needed to come up with an efficient way to manufacture type – which is a lot harder than it sounds. He also needed to invent the printing press. On this episode we go through how he did those things – and then talk about how it was all ripped out from underneath him, just as he was about to have his big victory.
The idea of Jews returning to Palestine had been around since they were evicted by the Romans, but in a modern sense it really started to take shape in the late 19th century after the pogroms in Russia. On this podcast we talk about the vision some of the early proponents of Zionism had, including Leo Pinsker, Moses Hess, and Theodor Herzl.
To kick off our Caligula series, we are doing a commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Written by Gore Vidal, directed by Tinto Brass, produced by Bob Guccione, starring Malcolm McDowell, Hellen Mirren, Peter O’Toole, John Gielgud, Teresa Ann Savoy, fucking, sucking, anal fisting, disembowelling, beheading, and more dicks and pussies than you can count. It’s truly a masterpiece that you need to give a second chance.
This week we have a guest – Cameron Britten from Share Analysis. As longtime listeners will be aware, Tony’s a big fan of several online tools and Share Analysis has been one of those for many years. They had a recent “re-platforming” event which took the service down for a few months. But they are back and we invited Cameron on to talk a little about the history and the future of the service. He also let us know that they are currently running an extended free trial service, so if aren’t already a member, jump over to their website and sign up today.
No stock analysis section of the show today, just the interview.
By 1881, on the eve of the start of the Zionist Jewish influx, Palestine’s population was 457,000—about 400,000 of them Muslims, 13,000–20,000 Jews, and 42,000 Christians (mostly Greek Orthodox). In addition, there were several thousand more Jews who were permanent residents of Palestine but not Ottoman citizens. The overwhelming majority of the population was Arab, about 70 percent rural. Most of the Jews and Christians lived in Jerusalem.
But then foreign Jews started buying land in Palestine. When the first Jews started to arrive from Russia, the governor of Jerusalem was ordered to bar Russian, Rumanian, and Bulgarian Jews from landing in Jaffa and Haifa. The following year he was instructed to stop the sale of state lands to Jews, even if they were Ottoman citizens. But they kept coming anyway.
Many of the Zionists had been lead to believe the land was mostly empty. Many people believe that still today. Of the Palestinians, many Zionists believed they were “primitive, dishonest, fatalistic, lazy, savage”. The Zionist leader Moshe Smilansky, in 1914 wrote:
“We must not forget that we are dealing here with a semi-savage people….”
The cause of the Zionists was supported by certain Western leaders, especially those who were Christian Zionists. Christian Zionists believe that the gathering of the Jews in Israel is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus.
A lot of people have asked us, in our great and unmatched wisdom, to explain what’s going on with Syria, Trump, Turkey and the Kurds.
Commercial opportunities for a printing press went beyond books. One of those was the Fall of Constantinople. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire lead by 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II defeated the army of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine Emperor. To tell this story we also need to talk about The Great Schism, how and why Christianity split into east and west camps. Because there’s nothing Jesus loves more than a little bit of Christian on Christian violence.
This week on the show we talk about some difficulties getting Share Analysis to do what we want; a new analysis tool called QuickFS; stories about Warren Buffett; Cameron’s growing passion around QAV; changes to our portfolio involving Apollo Tourism and Stanmore Coal; and in our deep dive analysis this week we look at Mastermyne.
In 1453, when the Turks took Constantinople, Pope Nicky 5 wanted a crusade and authorized the sale of letters of indulgence—religious documents that released the buyers from penalties for their sins. And guess who printed them?
Then he finally got around to working on his masterpiece and the book he is most remembered for – the “42-line Bible,” aka the Gutenberg Bible. But just before the printing of the bibles was finished, his investor, Fust, took him to court and sued him for overdue repayment of the investment. And Gutenberg was ruined.
He eventually recovered and printed an even more complicated work – The Catholicon, a Latin grammar and a very detailed dictionary.
But the, in the early 1460s, an outright war between two contenders for the seat of archbishop of Mainz got in the way. And Gutenberg was ruined yet again.
He died in 1468, his contributions to printing pretty much forgotten.
This week we have more on the Biden business in the Ukraine including some background on the Euromaidan uprising, the role of energy supply in the regime change and Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the role of the United States (via USAID) in the overthrow of Yanukovych. As evidence for the latter, we play the leaked phone call between Victoria Nuland, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs at the United States Department of State, and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on January 28, 2014 where they discuss who the US is going to install as the new Ukrainian Prime Minister. We also play another leaked phone call from around the same time, between Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and E.U. Foreign Policy Chief Cathy Ashton, where they discuss who was responsible for the violence during the uprising.
At the beginning of the show I play a short clip from Unauthorized Disclosure podcast 36, featuring guest Matt Taibbi where they talk about how propaganda works in the USA right now.
We continue our live commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Picking up where we left off last week, still in Tiberius’ sex palace on Capri, with a lady holding a writhing legless lizard that she is apparently about to place inside her woo-hoo. Around the 18 minute mark of the film. This episode sees the death of Tiberius, the arrest of Macro, a bukake scene, Helen Mirren dancing and doing it doggy style, a possibly historically-inaccurate giant head mower, and Caligula providing a young couple with a wedding present to remember.
I found myself listening to Kenny Rogers’ The Gambler recently (one of my dad’s favourite songs when I was a kid) and it made me think of this week’s show.
“You gotta know when to hold ’em;
Know when to fold ’em.
Know when to walk away;
Know when to run.”
This week we have a lot of questions from club members about when to sell and three-point trendlines. We also talk about Tony’s horse that ran in the Cox Plate and why the checklist doesn’t have a debt-to-equity data point.
Our stock analysis this week is KSL – Kina Securities.
One fascinating witness of early zionism is Sir Ronald Storrs, who, in 1917 became, in his own words “the first military governor of Jerusalem since Pontius Pilate”. In 1940 he wrote a terrific little book, “Lawrence of Arabia, Zionism and Palestine.” This episode explain the roles of Chaim Weizmann, Herbert Samuel and World War I on Britain’s support for the zionist agenda in Palestine. The British were eager to get the Jews to help them defeat the Germans and Ottomans. They also hoped that supporting the zionist agenda would help them secure war loans from the United States – and bring the US into the war. They also hoped that putting a bunch of grateful Jews under a British protectorate in Palestine would help them secure the eastern approach to the Suez Canal, the jugular vein of British commerce.
It’s gloating time in the West with the suicide of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. On today’s show we examine the history of ISIS and how the United States and their allies created the conditions for ISIS and then proceeded to fund and arm it. We look at the media’s near complete lack of skepticism and analysis regarding ISIS and Trump’s claims as they dance on al-Baghdadi’s grave. Meanwhile, some studies suggest the US has lead to the death of an estimated 20 million people since the end of WWII, which makes ISIS’ body count seem like kindergarten.
We also cover the massive protests in Lebanon and Chile and ask why they aren’t getting the same kind of media coverage as similar, but less brutal, protests in Hong Kong and Venezuela.
We continue and finish our live commentary on the 1979 epic film, CALIGULA. Picking up where we left off last week, Caligula is fisting the married couple and he doesn’t even remove his ring. A dark and stormy night leads to night terrors, a super hot threesome between Caligula, his sister and Helen Mirren, a gratuitous but welcome sultry Italian lesbian scene, spinning plates, a Helen Mirren does Madonna dance scene, some torture, a horse in a bed, death, crazy, an orgy on a fake ship, and we close with brains being bashed out on the stairs. It’s one helluva film.