The Counterintuitive Opportunity in China's State-Owned Enterprise Sector; Thank You, Elon Musk; A nice shout-out from Scott Galloway; $8 million sailboat for sale
1) Continuing my coverage of the best ideas I heard at last week's Value Investing Seminar in Trani, Italy, I wanted to share this presentation by Florian Weidinger, the CEO of Santa Lucia Asset Management: "The Counterintuitive Opportunity in China's State-Owned Enterprise Sector."
I view any investment in China or in a Chinese stock as outside of my circle of competence, but if that's not true for you, I think Florian makes an interesting case for these widely hated stocks. Here are three key slides from his presentation:
On a related note, if you'd like to be added to my personal e-mail list focused on China (roughly two e-mails per week), simply send a blank e-mail to: china-subscribe@mailer.kasecapital.com.
2) My colleague Herb Greenberg published this spot-on open letter to Elon Musk in his Empire Financial Daily yesterday, taking him to task for a variety of missteps with Twitter: Thank You, Elon Musk. Excerpt:
Dear Elon,
I owe you a debt of gratitude.
I've been on Twitter since 2008, well before Twitter was Twitter. I've been on LinkedIn and Facebook for almost just as long, but Twitter became my primary go-to for news, ideas, and online social engagement.
For years, it was my first scroll of the morning – replacing formal newspaper websites as the quickest way to see what I might have missed overnight.
Whether sitting at my desk looking for a reason to procrastinate, standing in a checkout line waiting to pay for groceries, or even walking the dog, I would check Twitter throughout the day. It was a fantastic time-waster, and I enjoyed allowing myself to be sucked into the social media vortex... in the process, often learning something I didn't know in 280 characters or less...
Then you came along, Elon...
In a world that I would argue already was spiraling toward social media fatigue, the new Twitter left me exhausted.
It's like your newfound "power" went to your head, and you believed your own press clippings or, put more simply, your own B.S.
You had no filter, no editor, and nobody obviously willing to tell you, "No, please don't say that."
You became polarizing... and instead of reeling in the toxicity that was turning Twitter into a cesspool, you seemed to relish in adding more arsenic and stink.
It was like I was watching Back to the Future and Biff somehow had emerged as the hero.
Twitter, instead of being a digital town hall, turned devolved into Dysfunction Junction.
While all this was going on, things started to change...
Suddenly, I realized Twitter wasn't my first read of the day... or even my second or third. Almost organically, I was back to first checking out the newspapers and e-mails I get from various news sites linking me to stories I might find interesting.
At the same time, I realized I was spending considerably less time scrolling through my personally curated Twitter news feed. And I don't think I'm alone, because my chronological feed of the 1,056 people I follow has become a shell of its former self.
3) Longtime readers know what a huge fan I am of my friend, NYU marketing professor Scott Galloway. I think he's a provocative, brilliant thinker, so I read or listen to him almost every day.
Among many other things, he co-hosts the Pivot podcast twice a week with tech journalist Kara Swisher. In yesterday's episode, they answered listeners' questions about Tesla's (TSLA) charging network, the Hollywood writers' strike, and what global policies will save the world.
Near the end, a listener asked them what they read and how they get information. At the end of his answer (at 45:48), Scott was kind enough to give me a shout-out as one of the people who send him interesting stuff.
Thank you, Scott! I'm glad you appreciate what I do for you – and many, many others...
I consume information all day every day – mostly reading e-mails, newspapers, and websites, but also listening to podcasts and Audible books and watching YouTube videos.
When I come across content that I think would be of interest to my friends and readers, I shoot them a quick e-mail, sometimes individually (for example, a couple of times a month for my heroes Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger) and otherwise via mass e-mails that range from daily to monthly.
In addition to this daily e-mail, I have 20 smaller personal ones, covering the things I'm most interested in like politics, Ukraine, Africa, China, COVID, Tesla, weight-loss drugs, fitness/adventure sports, education reform, dogs, tennis, skiing, etc.
4) In yesterday's e-mail, I described the Swan shipyard in Jakobstad, Finland, which will produce 28 luxurious, bespoke sailboats this year, ranging in in size from 48 to 128 feet in length and costing $1.7 to $25 million.
These boats typically take two years from order to delivery: roughly one year of backlog and one year to manufacture.
But if you have $8 million burning a hole in your pocket, want to own one of these bad boys brand new, and don't want to wait, there's an unusual situation right now...
Someone who bought a spectacular 78-footer has fallen terminally ill, so cannot take delivery and is instead trying to sell it. (The asking price is €7.8 million, but my friend thinks it might go for closer to €7, which is $7.7 million.)
Believe me, I'm not trying to sell you anything. But in the same way I like to see beautiful homes/apartments, I was curious to see the boat (lifestyles of the rich and famous, right?), so I took a tour. I was blown away – it is simply spectacular, as you can see in these pictures:
If you want to see more details, I posted a 6:40 video of it here, and here's Swan's 2:27 video. If you want more information about this or any Swan boat, you can e-mail Thorsten Flack by clicking here. Even though I won't get a commission, tell him I sent you!
Best regards,
Whitney
P.S. I welcome your feedback at WTDfeedback@empirefinancialresearch.com.