Threat 1/ 👇: One of the characteristics that differentiate good investors from bad investors is the ability to identify OPTIONALITY in companies and their discipline to either get it for free or pay very little.

2/ Think about it as buying out of the money options, if you pay too much for something that has very small odds of happening you lose money. This is what happened in the 2000's crash, people bought internet stocks based on illusions, very few of them had any real business.

3/ The markets assign "perceived" higher valuations to some businesses and lots of investors scream how expensive everything is. Some are, but a lot are not, and not being able to identify the optionality of some businesses can destroy your opportunity to have outsize returns

4/ Estimating the odds of something that does not exist or it is very small to succeed and grow is very hard. For something new to work it is needed: The technology, the infrastructure, and the distribution, then new ideas can come which use those, they'll have + odds of success.

4/ Optionality gets "cheaper" once you find the above characteristics as the odds of a company with a new idea/project are higher. The thing is that anything that will come from the new ideas/projects won't be reflected in the financials, but that is where the opportunity lies

Press release

*Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning welcomes Sudan’s delisting from the SSTL*

The official delisting of Sudan from the list of states sponsors of terrorism by the US government marks a momentous turn in Sudan’s recent history. This achievement was (1/14)

one of the transitional government's top priorities, and now, it is considered one of its primary achievements. Sudan’s presence on the SSTL was one of the biggest obstacles to achieving economic stability and prosperity. Over the past year, the Transitional Government of (2/14)

Sudan carried out a series of negotiations, which included the Staff Monitored Program with the International Monetary Fund to restore credibility and confidence in the Sudanese economy.

The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning is pleased by the international (3/14)

community’s response to the aspiration of the Sudanese people, including their support for its economic reform program by providing more than $1.8 billion in support at the Berlin Conference.

The decision to delist Sudan will bring multiple benefits to our economy, and (4/14)

to the Sudanese people directly. First, from now on, Sudanese financial institutions can re-establish direct banking relationships with international banks, especially in the United States and Europe, such as Citi Bank and Barclays. Within the Ministry’s efforts to (5/14)

The Review: GW 12 - A thread

Hi everyone, welcome to the latest edition of “The Review” where I analyze the Premier League football played at the weekend:

#FPL #FPLCommunity @OfficialFPL

(Data taken from @FFScout and @FFH_HQ with consent)

Q: Who is the best differential striker?

A lot of FPL managers have sent in their questions regarding a differential striker this week as they see this as a way to make up some points over the condensed fixture schedule...

...Let us take a look at which of the following options are worth investing in:

Watkins vs Ings vs Ché Adams v Wood (this season)
Mins per shot inside the box: 39.1 vs 40 vs 57.5 vs 52
Mins per big chance: 81.8 vs 108.5 vs 172.5 vs 105
Mins per big chance created: 900 vs 760 vs 172.5 vs 941
xG: 5.72 vs 4.5 vs 3.62 vs 3.63

I think Watkins is the one who stands out here and given his fixtures (BUR wba CRY che mun), even without penalty duties he can represent good value. Considering that Villa are ranked first for shots inside the box and xG over the last six GWs, he’s an excellent pick...

This is incredibly shoddy work @TRF @hugo_greenhalgh @rachelmsavage @antozappulla and does not stand up the @Reuters principles of integrity, independence, and freedom from bias

My case is not "pushing back against transgender rights" it is case about belief discrimination.

It is about the right of people not to be discriminated against at work & by service providers for holding or not holding a belief about the nature of sex and gender identity.

Adding up some numbers in the public domain is not much of an investigation.

It is the work of a pocket calculator and 15 minutes.

The rest of the time was spent looking for the fabled shady right wing money... none was found

“Basically, money is being used to bully" says Clara Barker

Is Thompson Reuters saying that women like me, @BluskyeAllison @8RosarioSanchez are bullying the institutions that discriminated against us by having the temerity to raise money to hire lawyers ?

“It certainly feels like there (are) deeper pockets for those challenging our rights than those trying to protect our rights” says Clara .

The average donation to my crowd funder is £27

Question did @TuckerCarlson or @seanhannity or @IngrahamAngle even mention or dedicate a news block to what is quite possibly on of the largest hacks in US History?

-THREAD-
#Germany #USA #Rammstein #RheinlandPfalz #MilitaryBase #Russia #Alert

On 12 December, Ramstein Air Base in Germany, America's central European military facility, a alert went of and

alerted its staff to a "real-world missile launch in the European theater" only to later assess the incident as "part of a training exercise" without providing any details as to what prompted the alarm.

According to several US defense officials cited by CNN, a Russian military exercise is believed to have recently triggered a ballistic missile launch alarm' at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

Computerized alarm updates were issued by staff at the base and in the surrounding areas on 12 December, with a missile warning also being sounded at Ramstein via a loudspeaker system.

An all-clear was issued after a brief spell of alarm, according to the officials, whose initial assessment was that the incident might have been caused when a launch was detected by highly classified US intelligence satellites.

Thread: When I started doing investigative journalism full time, I fully understood the responsibility I was taking on. In a sea of disinformation from all sides, I vowed to be a place people could come where they knew they were getting the truth, even if painful.

As time went on and I looked at the landscape around me, I widened my goal. How could I start a new company that was FILLED with people who had the same commitment to honest journalism that I did? With the help of some amazing people, @UncoverDC was born.

We have a set of standards at @UncoverDC that I am honored to say are much different than elsewhere. Straight news, with NO partisan spin, investigative journalism, and opinion. This is what we do at @UncoverDC and we do it really well.

Since we “opened” a year and a half ago we have had some amazing accomplishments. I shared some of them in this post: “One year of Actual Journalism”

We’ve come so far even since this article, and I think it’s because we value and respect all of you so much as our equal. UncoverDC is for everyone. You are all a part of this family. A lot of folks have told me that what I will say next has been to my detriment.

Right, screw it. Here's a thread on *that* FBLive by Alex Cairnie about #Govanhill. Lets do a watch-through shall we? (Mind, I'm a resident of Govanhill, and a sociologist. I'm also 5'3, and a visibly queer woman so if half his claims are true I should be living in terror)

00:30: Welcomes viewers and uses points out that his videos are only getting attention b/c they're 'horrific'. Directs folk to his Youtube page. So already clout hunting.

1:08: "I've been warned to stay out of Govanhill. I'm a marked man" (proceeds to use a beanie as a disguise)

1:30 "Laughing and joking aside, here's somebodys front garden." Proceeds to show litter and claim its thrown from windows and this is 'common'. I know a handful of streets with litter issues like this, but its neither common nor unique to #govanhill and other deprived areas.

2:10 "Don't be under any illusion I'm only showing you the bad bits" - only shows you the bad bits.

3:45: He's had offers of help, but hes said no because hes not responsible for 'anybody elses safety' Good lord.

5:01: "Its not that bad. But its not all good either" -Correct

6:00: TW: child abuse - He starts claiming to have been contacted by a health professional and told about child abuse 'in the area'. Huge ethical issues here as the 'professional' who has 'been in the game a long time' is reporting to Facebook Dude and not authorities.

Open letter to all S&P 500 benchmarked managers:

On Friday 12/18 at market close, $TSLA will enter the S&P 500 Index at an approximate 1.5% weight - the sixth largest weight in the S&P 500 index after $AAPL, $MSFT, $AMZN, $GOOGL, and $FB.

2/Goldman says 90% of you don’t own $TSLA, and you probably never had much interest in owning it, since it trades at 169x consensus 2021 EPS, and is +665% YTD. Surely you can ignore it for a little longer, and wait for it to come back down to Earth.

That would be a huge mistake.

3/ CNBC talking heads who know nothing about $TSLA have long proclaimed it to be overvalued. Celebrity shorts and sell side analysts who blindly compare it to other auto companies have been wrong about TSLA for years. Investors who I think are smart sound like empty suits...

4/ when they try to explain why $TSLA keeps going up.

I’ll tell you why $TSLA keeps going up, and why it could double again in 2021 (at 1.5% wt, a double will cost you 150 bp performance).

First, EVs will soon replace gas-powered cars, yet EVs today are just 3% of global SAAR.

5/ As with IPhone, once a customer goes EV, he/she never goes back. By 2025, EVs are likely to be 20% of global SAAR. Do the math: 20/3 = 6.7x = 46% CAGR.

Second, $TSLA is by far the global EV market leader, with 25% YTD global EV share. TSLA continues to grow its share...

The main problem with "Lift All Voices" as a justification for the Black National Anthem is the word "All." In order to achieve "All," the Woke are going to have to cook up more different unique national anthems than they have gender pronouns.

Mathematically speaking.

1/

And why would the Black community be the first to get their own anthem over the American Indians? The Indians used to have all the land, and they still do have some of it.

(use of "American Indian" here is intentional, as that's what they prefer to call themselves)

2/

This "inclusion by division" game is just the "separate but equal" logic for 1950s segregation reskinned, but when the Woke self segregate, they self segregate based on Krenshaw's Intersectional Matrix of Oppression, which in Theory is necessarily near infinite in size.

3/

When the Woke did this with gender pronouns we went from 2 genders to 37 genders to infinite genders in the span of about 5 years, but the trans folks discovered this really didn't help them out on Tinder, so they pivoted back to "trans women are women" to try and get dates.

4/

The only people left doing the "gender pronouns" game are the ones signaling their Wokeness on Twitter to their in-group, the trans women in the dating community aren't even doing it anymore. They've gone back to 2.

5/

I just wish I knew what an online harm actually was

Funny to see the online harms bill positioned as a blow against big tech when it will give them the power to make sweeping decisions on enforcement while simultaneously making it much harder for smaller competitors

Rule of politics: displays of strength are often signs of weakness. Online harms delegates many aspects of justice to tech companies. It's effectively an admission that the state can't do the work itself

This might be only practical way to proceed, given the scale of the challenge. But as the tech companies are going to be writing their own rules, then enforcing them, it embeds the existing way of doing things to an astonishing degree

The duty of care idea comes from health and safety, but I think the best analogy is financial market regulation pre-2008. It's trying to answer the question: how do we protect people* without interrupting the existing way of working?

*Defined as: keeping stories out of the news

1. Sweden, the "model" country taken by so many. Time for an update on the situation including the terrible numbers and ICU-related news.
A thread
⬇️⬇️⬇️

2. First numbers. Usually I only compare to neighbouring countries when I do this. Reminder: since demographics, social systems and behaviours, and health systems etc... are so different between the nordics and the rest of the world, comparisons between nordics make sense.

3. And nordic countries because of their low density of population, great healthcare system and already long existing social distancing rules were bound to do good during a pandemic.

4. And they all did, except Sweden which now has numbers comparable to countries with much worst starting conditions for a pandemic. Let's see on the number of cases.
Analysis here: Sweden is almost as bad as the US for cases/Million

5. And way worse than all other European countries considered. By far! And now I know most people could say that it's because we test more in Sweden: false. Testing is saturated so the number are likely higher even and this is disproved by the positivity rate.

Playbook: "Reality, meet D.C.”

MAYBE IT’S THE COLD, the impending wintry mix that’s bearing down on Washington. Maybe it’s because we’re about to leave 2020 -- that wretched, disgusting year -- in the rear view.

WHO KNOWS WHAT EXACTLY PROMPTED THIS, but reality is beginning to intrude in Washington.

REALITY 1) @JOEBIDEN is going to be the president. This was obvious to most breathing, thinking human beings with a pulse, but many Republican members of Congress were willfully blind to it.

BUT A FEW OF THEM BEGAN JOINING THE REST OF US on Planet Earth on Monday. @SenThomTillis called BIDEN the “presumptive president.” @LindseyGrahamSC -- who was calling around to state election officials a few weeks ago -- said “it’s a very, very narrow path for the president."

@SenThomTillis @LindseyGrahamSC SEN. ROY BLUNT (R-Mo.), the chair of the inauguration, said: “We’ll deal with Vice President Biden as the president-elect. The president continues obviously to have all the options he has available to him, but the electoral vote today was significant.”

@SenThomTillis @LindseyGrahamSC RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN took it further than most Republicans, straight up congratulating BIDEN after a month of saying he was waiting for the process to play out.

The Cyberpandemic has Begun: SolarWinds + FireEye - Anything can happen

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in Australia, suffer grossly disproportionate rates of disadvantage against all measures of socio-economic status.
1-

State, territory & federal governments have introduced programs, & continue to seek to identify further methods, for redressing this disadvantage.
2-

A plethora of government programs have proven to be inadequate when considered against the requirement to raise Indigenous People to a position of equality in Australian society.
3-

The final report card for the 2008-2020 Closing-The-Gap-Program found the program only partially met 2 of the 7 outcome. 12 years on Aboriginal People still have a life expectancy a full decade less than white

Sadly there is little understanding within Australian society of the requirement to and legitimacy of adopting special measures.
5-

Moderna data has arrived at the FDA.... I'll be tweeting about the 54-page document by the FDA https://t.co/rh3K9BvqgO The brief from Moderna is much smaller than BNT/Pfizer's - only 84 pages (+ a 7-page presentation) https://t.co/EWDYzYwf2g 1/n

..Efficacy data is for 27,817 people randomized to either vaccine or placebo; & there's safety data for 30,350 people. I'll get started with the adverse events data, because that has been a question mark for this vaccine...2/n

...The FDA raises lymphadenopathy & Bell's palsy again. More people with lymphadenopathy with Moderna's vaccine than BNT/Pfizer's: 173 in vaccine group, 95 in placebo. Bell's palsy similar. Frequency of serious adverse events (SAEs) low: 1.0% in vaccine & placebo arms...3/n

...FDA expressed no concern about any SAE: 7 SAEs were determined by FDA to be vaccine-related or potentially so (more than the sponsor deemed related) - several from nausea/vomiting. People died at the same rate as would expected for their age groups, the FDA concluded...4/n

...A developmental/reproductive toxicity study report was included: FDA identified no serious concern about adverse impact on pregnancy or perinatal/postnatal development. All up, no safety concern that would prevent emergency authorization... 5/n

What are Mentalism & Magic Trick?
Mentalism & Magic Trick is a performing art that focuses on the mind and imagination.
https://t.co/UcUzHTX7Ug

When performed correctly, mentalism & magic trick can make the performer appear as if he or she possesses extraordinary powers or incredible mental prowess.

Practitioners of mentalism will usually avoid mixing traditional & magic tricks and theatrical props into their act. Instead, mentalism focusses on things like mind reading and predicting the future. This is why many mentalists do not consider themselves to be magicians.

Practitioners, known as mentalists, appear to demonstrate highly developed mental or intuitive abilities. Performances may appear to include hypnosis, telepathy, clairvoyance, divination, precognition, psychokinesis, mediumship, mind control, memory feats, deduction, and rapid

Mentalists are sometimes categorized as psychic entertainers, although that category also contains non-mentalist performers such as psychic readers and bizarrists.

So one thing about the use of titles thing is: where I live we all call each other by titles unless we are close friends and family.

Anybody I have a professional relationship with, or a coworker, or a neighbor.

Like this morning I’m headed to the dentist ...

...with a private car driver I have known for a year and a half, and I said buenos días señor Ronny, and he said buenos días señora Abby.

If I just called him Ronny then since we aren’t super close I would be signaling a perceived class status difference also.

For sure anybody who is a professional person I always address with their title as well so as not to be implying a perceived intimacy that isn’t there.

Same if I’m referring to them in absentia, in which case I may refer to even my family and close friends thus, like

“My dentist, la doctora Marleni, is the sister of one of my best friends and the cousin of several others and our families have always been close.”

We also call each other titles out of affection and in a teasing way. I get called “boss” when it’s my turn to take blame or...

...buy the next case of beer.

Also there are titles for tradesfolk. I could be the boss but if there’s a construction guy fixing the walkway or something I’m gonna call him maestro out of respect for his expertise and because that’s his title.

In your business, how do you handle the sales and price and T&C parts of the sales?

Specifically, when clients try to haggle, or try to make you play by their rules - what do you do?

It’s very common to then start to appease the buyer - and it's a grave mistake.

[Thread]

When you start to reduce your price, or you agree tot terms you’re not happy with, you’re setting up for an experience that will disappoint your buyer and you as well.

In fact, the more you let go of your own rules, the lower level of customer satisfaction, no matter how good of a job you do.

Saw this tweet the other day:

“Just said goodbye to a potential client because they wanted me to go against everything I've learned and start work without a deposit payment.

"But we're BIG and you're small. You can be flexible."

"No. It's because I'm small that I can't be."

Now this is a correct and true response - but it’s also the wrong one.

Because how big a client is doesn’t have to affect your terms and conditions, and shouldn’t.

Because with that reply, the client heard ‘you’re right, you’re bigger and therefore dominant.