The market feels somewhat broken in some areas. Check out Costco $COST . It trades at 55x forward P/E. This is by far the highest P/E in its history as a public company (see chart below). There are just over 900 Costco's globally and the stock trades at just under a $500B valuation, so it it is currently valued at about $500M per Costco box. If the stock were to trade at 40x, it would be down about 25% from the current levels. This is assume no downside risk to earnings. At the same time volatility on Costco stock is extremely low, so one can buy protection on their $COST holdings for very low premium. If the broader market corrects, I bet these low vol equities like $COST at extreme multiples lead the way. And it will be extremely obvious in hindsight.

Another cement plant take-out announced yesterday. Heidelsberg Cement acquiring a coastal single-cement plant asset, Giant Cement, for $600M, or 10x the next year's expected EBITDA. This seems to set a floor valuation for $MCEM (Monarch Cement) previously written that is 51% higher than prior close. The math is that $MCEM should do $105M+ of EBITDA next year and has $140M of net cash and investments. With a 3.6m share count, 10x EBITDA implies $330 per share. $MCEM would likely command a prior as its inland location allows it more protection from imports vs a coastal plant, and allows for greater pricing power.

Like when you went on cnbc and told everyone to short Blackstone and Apollo at the lows then covered and went long into the panic ?

Single family rents are imploding. The market and fed are not understanding that deflation is coming...not inflation. $TLT

$COST posts decelerating comps, declining renewal rate, and the most expensive retailer of any size on the planet. Operating margins declined 6bps yoy, not a great sign that a retailer trading at 50x P/E can't get leverage on positive 6% comps, when the comps are decelerating. The company is now openly acknowledging what I was saying earlier this year, which is that their discretionary products are under pressure. If they hadn't opened the store an additional hour for premium members the comps would have been 100bps+ lower. Meanwhile $AMZN grows much faster, actually innovates and trades at 25x P/E. Wonder how much of their comp sales were juiced by low quality / low margin gold bar sales. As they lap that comps will come under even more pressure. This seems like a 25x to 30x P/E stock, but unfortunately that's 40% to 50% lower.

$AMZN is changing the world....but it trades at half of the multiple of $COST 🤯

If $COST goes down to 40x P/E in the next month (still an astronomical P/E by historical standards for Costco), I will make about 50x to 100x on my $900 puts. This seems like a great risk/reward trade. Not sure why everyone doesn't do this or owners of Costco don't look to at least partially hedge my position

$MCEM CEO in its annual video update gave a strong forecast for $8 per ton price increase sticking and expectations for future price increases this year. It also guided to flat volumes this year. In addition he instructs any shareholders who want to sell their stock to reach out to the company. You can watch the full video here: monarchcement.com/wp-content…

$MCEM annual report out. New language added "Our commitment to creating shareholder value has never been stronger." In addition, it is interesting to see that the company moved most of its pension fund to cash last quarter. While this could be great market timing by the company, it is something one might do ahead of a sale of the company.

$COST CEO blows out of $3.35M of shares. #sellthedip

Nice surprise this morning on $MCEM uplist. Should improve visibility, liquidity and multiple of the stock over time. These are some of the first signs the company has shown of wanting to actively improve its share price and multiple.

$CRH commentary on infrastructure market is encouraging. $MCEM $VMC $MLM "I'm pleased to report that the underlying backdrop across our key markets remains positive. Infrastructure, our largest end market, continues to be underpinned by state and federal funding through the IIJA. Only 1/3 of IIJA highway funding has been deployed to date, highlighting the significant runway we have ahead of us.....As we look forward to really just reaffirm, I guess, what we had said back in March around kind of low single-digit growth in terms of underlying aggregate volumes and mid- to high single digits on pricing"

The adminstration is getting so cocky that they’re going to let Lutnick out of his cage and trot him out tomorrow on live TV.

Regardless of what $COST reports this week, remember this: If the company grows eps at 10% a year for the next 7 years and trades at 30x earnings at the end of those 7 years, you will roughly break even from these levels on a nominal basis, but will lose about 15% on real basis assuming 2% inflation or lose about 35% vs owning a 7 year risk free treasury bond. It is hard to argue that $TLT is not a much better bet than $COST here, particularly as the economy slows and inflation slows.

Yippit data out on $SOFI this morning showing PL volume down huge. That plus the Fitch report yesterday highlighting credit issues are weighing on the stock.

Very strong $MCEM (Monarch Cement) earnings. The best of the bunch. monarchcement.com/wp-content… Gross profits are up 20% yoy and pricing / volumes look strong

$COST is a lot more tied to high ticket discretionary spending by the affluent consumer than the market currently believes. Comps are going to decelerate materially as the higher end consumer pulls back. Much of the growth over the last couple years has been driven by non-food items. They are selling peloton bikes at Costco now, for example. I would be very wary of looking at how the stock behaves in prior downcycles. This will prove much more cyclical than your typical grocer. Margins on the non-food items are also higher than they are on food so expect negative margin mix shift. There is a lot of air to come out of this bubble stock as comps decelerate over the next month. See the table below:

$WBD -- rumors of Saudi interest emerging from multiple places. It would make a lot of sense. Feels like a floor at $23.50 and possible upside to $40+ if we get a bidding war with $CMCSA, $AAPL, Saudi and Paramount teddit.net/r/LeaksAndRumors/…

Dipping my toe in the water with a long position $CHGG. Hated and trading like a failing business with the stock down 95%+ from peak. 12 analysts cover it and zero have buys currently. Bloomberg and other data aggregators incorrectly show that it has substantial net debt, because it excludes $270M in long term investments. When including these the market cap is just over $200M with slight net cash. It trades at just over 3x P/E as well and generates substantial cash. This business has historically been hard to kill and has been able to evolve its business model. I imagine purely the data it has collected and owns is worth more than the current market cap. While it is clearly negatively impacted by ChatGPT and other AI tools, my quick checks indicate that it is able to offer a premium and differentated tool for its customers. I also like and view it bullish that the company last week announced that it is buying back its convertible debt at a discount to par. This is financially smart and not something a failing company would likely do.

$MERC is getting very silly and extremely oversold here, down 25%+ since it reported the quarter. The company has a very long liquidity run-way, no maturities until 2028, a cost-cutting program, and significant insider buying recently at above the current share price. The stock trades at a fraction of replacement cost (likely less than 1/3 of replacement cost) The shares at these levels represent an extremely cheap and mispriced option on a recovery in the pulp markets. It is easy to see how the share could triple from these levels as pulp markets normalize. Lastly, I believe pulp prices are essentially at the bottom, as no one is making money at these prices. We are likely about to start seeing capacity shutdowns. In addition, pulp inventories are starting to decline, which could set-up a nice bounce in pulp prices later this year. This is exactly the window where you want to buy beaten down commodity producers.

$ACN discussing merging with $WPP. This is almost too stupid to believe and reeks of desperation on Accenture's part. Probably the biggest red flag for this company so far, and there are many...

Unless you work at a pod and are getting daily credit card data and trading it on that. Unfortunately for the pods, as diligent as they are, the data is backward looking. It doesn't take into account that we just had massive snow in all of $MTN markets and consumers will respond to that. Perhaps why they're all scrambling to cover now.

Accenture $ACN headline beat but big decline in bookings and the full year guide implies a huge deceleration in growth to almost flat in Q4, and on weaker margins. It seems like this business will not grow or will shrink next year. Not sure why one would pay more than 12x to 15x peak of cycle EPS for this legacy IT outsourcing business which implies a share price that is 35% to 50% lower than the current price.

Haveli keeps buying more $BLND. Given they sit on the board and have a strong track record in software, and historically have only take a public stakes ahead of a buyout, this would seem to be a wildly bullish signal.

New position long $SMRT (Smartrent). The stock made new all-time lows today. This is a highly asymmetric situation where 64% of the market cap is in cash for a subscription software business, and where a take-out could get you 2x to 5x the current price. This is a subscription software business with a hardware sales component selling to large multifamily property owners. Think of it as the "Nest" for multifamily buildings. The market cap is $256M and it has $163M of net cash, for a TEV of just $92M. It currently trades at 0.5x sales. Effectively $0.85 cents per share or 63% of the current market cap is in cash. The install base seems very sticky, and it is annualizing at $75M of subscription sales, or $50M of subscription gross profits. On this basis it trades at just 1.2x subscription sales or 1.8x subscription gross profits. This is insanely low for a subscription business with essentially 100% retention. There is an activist involved (Land and Buildings) who has ridden this down over 50% but shows no signs of going away. A more reasonable valuation of 10x to 20x subscription gross profits yields a share price of $3.50 to $6 per share, or 263% to 450% higher. At the same time downside is heavily protected by the large cash stockpile and subscription revenues.

I’ll repeat that $SOFI is going to hurt a lot of retail investors soon. We’re worried about college grads and recent college grad employment. So the company sitting with $30B+ of high ticket personal loans to this cohort is exactly where I would not want to hide out. Layered in the absurd 8x+ tangible book value multiple, and the fact that book value would be a lot lower if they followed CECL accounting on their loans instead of phony market to model accounting, the risks are really continuing to mount.

BPO names getting wrecked today on terrible TCS outlook. $ACN, $INFY, $WIT, $CTSH. This is just the beginning. AI is not a good thing for outsourced IT body-shop model charging by the hour.

Love the ALTD function on Bloomberg. The last time the $ACN alternative data on Bloomberg was this bad in 2022, consulting bookings were down 14% the next quarter. This aligns with the numerous other red flags that have emerged on Accenture recently.👀

Swenson rolling around in his grave

We'll see how long the lazy passives keep defending $COST because its down 5% on a their earnings miss. Its "only" 52x P/E now😂. I have nothing against Costco the company but it is not worth more than 30x P/E especially as the economy slows and the union labor increases pressure margins. Pretty easy to see how this stock retraces to $600 to $700. Management probably sees this too and its why they didn't bother splitting the stock

$W CEO dumping stock like crazy, Trump putting furniture tariffs in place, and the business is performing poorly. Stock making new highs for the year makes zero sense.

About 20% of $COST sales are commercial, including universities, healthcare facilities and government agencies. The massive Sodexo guide today does not bode well for anything food service related in the commercial channel

Once in 2 to 3 year opportunity to pick up REITs at extremely discounted valuations here. $LXP at a 9% cap rate and 7.5% well-covered dividend yield for a well-covered sunbelt focused industrial REIT that benefits from onshoring. $AIV at a 10% cap rate -- apartment REIT focused on class B apartments and running a sale process currently. There is a longer list but these are two to do the work on if you are looking for a place to start

agreed. Time for a change. This union scuffle will prove to ultimately be a positive for the stock, as it has exposed the true incompetence of this $MTN management team to the world. A qualtity new CEO would be worth 20 to 40% in the share price, similar to $SBUX

Not to mention the company has to report earnings during that stretch.

Here we go $PTON. UBS upgrading from hold to buy on improved fundamentals data and upside to 2026. Perhaps it will finally catch up to the market rally today.

$SMRT CFO just filed after the close that he bought 10,000 shares. This was his first open market purchase ever. I would expect as well that the company resumes its share repurchase program shortly now that it is out of the blackout period. The stock is trading at just a 5% premium to net-net, and the company was fairly aggressive buyback back stock over the past year at much higher prices.

If you want a contrarian tariff roll-back play, I think $PTON is a great value here. It is down 20% in 2 days mostly because they manufacture their bikes in Taiwan and we tariffed Taiwan which was unexpected. However they make most of their money from subscriptions which should be pretty sticky. I expect Taiwan to be near the front of the line in terms of getting a deal to reduce these tariffs.

The market doesn’t believe they stick. If the market thought they’d stick the spy would be down 20%+ and 10 year yield would be sub 2%. This just means that the end point could be higher tariffs than the market anticipated

This note from the $BLND 8-K last night related to the departure of their Head of Finance struck me as odd. He chose to renegotiate the vesting of his restricted shares if the stock goes above $7 (The previous vesting price was substantially higher than this). This would still be more than 100% above the current share price. Given the short timeframe of just a few months, it seems like an odd thing add in the departure agreement. Makes me wonder if either this is a big positive customer win the pipeline or if there is a take-out coming soon. "Mr. Jafari will receive an additional payment in the amount of $200,000, less applicable withholdings, and, if at any time during the Advisor Period, the closing price per share of the Company’s Class A Common Stock is at least $7.00, then the 325,000 performance-based restricted stock units representing the first tranche of the equity grant made to Mr. Jafari on March 13, 2025, will vest upon the effectiveness of the supplemental release agreement." sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edg…

Market starting to pick up on this $ACN. Amazing how many red flags it takes to get one Wall Street firm to slap a sell on it. TCS freezes hiring, every IT outsourcing firm posts terrible numbers, yet the market is very slow to react

Once the market is fully on board with the fact that Trump, Bessent and Musk are just trying to goalseek the 10 year yield to ~3% the market will make more sense to people. Just buy $TLT so we can be done with this

DOE is going ahead with Hanford vit plant. This should help to lift the cloud of confusion $PESI

New position in $MERC. I have followed this business over time, and been waiting for the right moment to get big. I built a toe-hold position over the last few days. It looks like the largest owner agrees the stock is cheap, as he backed up the truck recently and now owns over 25% of the company. I love buying beaten down commodity manufacturing businesses at less than half of replacement cost. Stock could easily double from these levels over the next few months. Mercer International Insider Bought Shares Worth $2,470,000, According to a Recent SEC Filing (MT Newswires) Peter R Kellogg, 10% Owner, on July 22, 2025, executed a purchase for 760,000 shares in Mercer International (MERC) for $2,470,000. Following the Form 4 filing with the SEC, Kellogg has control over a total of 23,455,000 common shares of the company, with 610,000 shares held directly and 22,845,000 controlled indirectly.

I predict the air is about to come out of AI infrastructure momentum stocks $VST, $NVDA, $DLR . Deepseek seems to be a game changer in terms of resource depends for LLMs. Time to exit before the market catches up over the weekend. Monday could be quite bloody

$RKT with the index arb speculators getting blown out today, great time to add to the position on the technical selling. Stock should recover and move higher, perhaps by the end of the day, and very likely by end of week.

Puck Media is reporting this morning that Brian Roberts (CEO of $CMCSA) spent time in the last couple weeks in Saudi Arabia meeting with PIF. This lends credence to the rumors that Saudi is interested in going after $WBD.

Haveli just filed an amended 13-D and got approval to buy up to 25% of $BLND. The set-up from here as the mortgage market continues to rebound seems very good. “Purpose of Transaction   This Amendment No. 1 amends and supplements the Original Schedule 13D by adding the following: On August 17, 2025, the Board, at the request of Aggregator, provided written approval for Aggregator to acquire beneficial ownership of up to 24.9% of the Issuer's outstanding Class A Common Stock. Prior to that approval, the Investment Agreement restricted, subject to certain customary exceptions, Aggregator from acquiring beneficial ownership of more than 19.9% of the Issuer's outstanding Class A Common Stock.”

Tariffs didn't cause inflation last time. The market is overestimating the impact. The dollar has already strengthened by more than the amount of the tariffs, so there is no inflation there. Housing however are 40% of CPI, and will be an anchor on inflation as it continues to come down. Unfortunately the fed uses OER to calculate housing inflation, which resulted in them being way behind the curve last time to raise rates, and now they are behind the curve again as rents plummet

$RDFN getting a $100M payment from $Z and restructuring to improve margins. This seems like a massive win for $RDFN as it extends the liquidity runway materially which has been an overhang on the stock.

Trump, Bessent and Musk must be pretty frustrated that all of this tanking has only gotten them 10 or 15bps on the 10 year so far. The tanking will continue until we get the long bonds to 3% or better. Everyone just buy $tlt so we can get this over with more quickly.

momentum unwind

Haveli loading up on more $BLND common stock the last few days. Not a surprise after they received permission to raise their stake to 24.9% earlier this week.

If you're shorting bonds here or shorting rate sensitive equities, it feels like you're fighting both the Trump put and the Fed put. At the same time those securities and stocks have been the biggest laggards. It feels like REITs and rate sensitive equities could have a significant catch-up trade.

$COST multiple expansion vs the rest of $XLP continues. Interesting that one of the most cyclical and risky components of $XLP is also its largest holding currently, at 10% of the entire staples ETF. It seems quite clear that the passive monkey / quant bot crowd is just hiding out in this pretending that it is safe or misinterpreting the data. Let's break this down: 1) 50%+ of gross profits are likely on hard goods that are at least somewhat discretionary and not grocery. More cyclical than the rest of $XLP 2) 10%+ of stores are in Canada and are likely being hit by boycott -- the most of any US big box retailer 3) 20%+ of sales are likely commercial and non consumer. We have a lot of datapoints showing that commercial food sales are taking a hit 4) sizeable insider selling 5) 2+ Standard Deviation higher than the historical multiple at 50x+ forward P/E 6) Margins already stopped expanding last quarter. Can only imagine what they will do this quarter. If there is any rationality to the outperformance, it is the quant bots are getting confused by seeing the traffic driven by people rushing to buy the loss leader products like eggs which they are selling probably at zero or negative margins. So if they do somehow manage to hit sales expectations, the margins are going to miss big. This stock is just one EPS miss away from rerating back to 30x or lower, which is 40%+ lower in the share price. And if larger misses materialize 60%+ is possible.

$ACN new bookings down 3% last quarter ended February and it likely got a lot worse in March.

right on queue from the conference call: "Second, in recent weeks, we are seeing an elevated level of what was already significant uncertainty in the global economic and geopolitical environment, marking a shift from our first-quarter FY25 earnings report in December."

$GOOG again being terrible at fitting the dying narrative

Pretty misleading to post lift pass ticket costs for $MTN and other ski resorts as they’re purposely raising prices to drive people to buy Epic pass, which is a reasonable price if you ski more than 10 days a year.

Fed statement should likely cause the yield curve to flatten then invert. $TLT. Growth is slowing, the AI capex boom is over, funding in DC is getting curtailed as are DC jobs, and housing rents and prices are dropping

This is the takes victory laps part of the Ackman cycle, we just need you to raise a SPV now to reach peak Ackman

Mortgage apps up 30% this week...very good for $RKT $BLND

This case against $RICK is looking more and more like a sham. An overreaching AG looking to score some political points with salacious sounding details. This case seemed fishy to me right away. With the stock trading at a discount to real estate liquidation value and a 10%+ digit free cash flow multiple, it seems poised for a quick recovery.

Public TK in California, and soon to be in NYC and many other places, is going to murder $BFAM. Already happening in CA, one of their biggest states

$MKC $WMT $COST $XLP Big McCormick miss is another bearish sign for consumer staples. This company touches a significant portion of the food supply chain. The negative datapoints are stacking up and we are barely into the consumer slowdown and global boycotts of US consumables.

Outside of $BLND, Haveli Investments has only taken a stake in one public company previously -- CouchBase. The outcome was that after acquiring a 9.6% stake in CouchBase they took it private at a 30%+ premium. It seems like they are following a similar playbook with $BLND. It will be interesting to see how the game of chess plays out over the coming months. They most recently acquired shares in August at $3.05. It seems to make that there is a standing bid for the company in the $4 to $5 range.

Something might be brewing at $SMRT. I just noticed Morgan Stanley—the company’s banker—put the stock under a “restricted” rating on 5/8/25, a few weeks after the CEO was fired. That usually signals MNPI and behind-the-scenes advisory. Given the setup and very discounted valuation, MS is likely engaged in a strategic role requiring a pause in coverage. This would not be a surprise as SAAS companies with 100% retention, 15% to 20% organic growth, and trading at close to 0.5x EV / SaaS revenues are likely to attract interest.

You giving lessons on short selling and out buying too I hope?

I guess you didn’t have enough short exposure. Not too late to adjust your portfolio and make money on the other side.

Worth a listen on $CHGG. At 3x P/E with no debt the risk reward seems excellent to own $CHGG at these levels.

$COST , putting political stuff aside which is why this post went viral (despite being on an investing thread), the company is a lot more cyclical than the market perception. Seems like the thesis is starting to play out.

Both tariffs and European infrastructure stimulus have favorable spillover effects to the US cement market, and are helpful to $MCEM, $MLM and $VMC. Canada and Mexico account for 7% of North American cement imports. In addition, European cement producers like Heidelberg and Buzzi are going to the roof on European infrastructure plans. In particular $MCEM should benefit, in addition to $VMC and $MLM.

$PESI, the Hanford plant is starting out ahead of schedule. No idea why this isn't a $15+ stock soon. It is better now than before all of this noise started a few weeks ago. opb.org/article/2025/09/26/a…

Biggest area of opportunity in the market right now IMO. Seasonal weakness happening right on schedule, expect an uplift in late October into November $RKT $BLND

Truflation is showing actual US inflation at 1.37%, well below the Fed's target, and it is dropping rapidly. It is a much better indictor of real-time inflation than the flawed and highly lagging CPI metric, and hasn't been this soft in the US since 2020 as we were in the midst of a global pandemic pre-vaccine. Real yields are the highest they've been since at least the 1990s. If this continues will will be in a recession very shortly, if not already. In my opinion, $TLT is a gift here as real yields have not been this high since at least the mid 1990s. truflation.com/

New long position in $BLND after my good run in $RKT and several other names linked in existing home sales. It has some catching up to do.

Missed this insider buy from a director at $MERC last week. The set-up from here remains excellent. Float is small and the stock is a highly leveraged call option with a ~3 year duration. Multiple insiders have been accumulating at or above these levels. The current valuation is well below replacement cost of the underlying assets. Pulp prices have likely bottomed and will start to turn up later this year. Hard to find out of favor and undervalued assets in this market but I believe this fits the bill. sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…

$MTN reported strong earnings last night. Although the stock is up about 20% from when I posted my bull case at the end of October, I think there is still significant upside in the near term. Most importantly Epic pass sales are accelerating significantly recently, and were up 7% on a dollar sales basis this quarter. This compares to alternative data sources and consensus that shows it down. The bears and shorts are trying to pick at somewhat softer lodging bookings at Whistler that were flagged in the release since Whistler is the biggest part of EBITDA. This shows a complete misunderstanding of the business and will be proven very incorrect, as Whistler is on track to have one of its best years ever. There is already excellent snow, and they are expected to get about 4 ft of snow over the next 4 days. whistlerblackcomb.com/the-mo…. Now that the business is back to growth, and essentially the cheapest its ever been going back 10 years, there isn't really any leg to stand on for the bear case.

October has been a tough month but finally chopped some wood this week and got solidly positive. Time to step back and be proud of my last couple year crushing the market with a low net / low volatility portfolio. Not as high absolute returns as many, but my worst month was negative 2% and I was up 15% at the April lows. I sleep better at night this way and continue to make money / preserve capital in market drawdowns.

$COST look out below! Affluent consumer already pulling back and they couldn't even make numbers when affluent consumer was feeling flush. Multiple 2 standard deviations higher than history. Even if they don't miss numbers (which they will as the consumer pulls back) there is 30% to 40% downside in the stock to the historical average multiple of 30x to 35x. No idea who is buying the stock at 50x+ a shaky consensus forward EPS estimate.

Recently initiated a new short in the child daycare center operator $BFAM (Bright Horizons). Putting aside the fact that they clearly have weak hiring and training practices demonstrated by horrible abuse at their Columbus Circle location (nytimes.com/2025/07/31/nyreg…) , the proliferation of Universal PreK, lead by California, is already pressuring enrollment, and this pressure is going to continue to grow. If Mamdani is elected, expect a big push towards Universal PreK in NYC. They are a premium product but clearly have issues with controls, and California and New York are two of their biggest states. The stock still trades at 26x forward earnings despite numerous red flags and signs of slowing growth and steady insider selling

Fitch raising its default assumptions on two $SOFI trusts this morning. They would only do this if losses were starting to spike. But the bulls will just keep repeating the mantra that Noto said everything was ok, and ignore the data that is staring them in the face. Reminds me of during the GFC when I told my long only friend that there was a bank run at Wachovia (they had a big position and I was short), and they told me that it couldn't be true, because they had called IR who told them that there was no bank run.

costco.com/ it is a tell that their homepage is highlighting big ticket home furnishing items and gold bars.

$ACN So much smoke here, it is obvious this company desperate to fudge accounting, bend the truth and acquire anything in sight to hide the fact that its core business is melting. teddit.net/r/accenture/comme… Is there any hope left for Accenture? Europe A rant about Accenture in Europe Since Julie Sweet came, the org is only concerned about shareholders and US Market. Bad performance in US Market? No promotions/hike Bad Performance in home Market? No promotions/hike Same story of not reaching projected growth while at same time acquiring lots of companies (sometimes bigger than accenture in that market). Where is the money coming from if you are not meeting targets? The attrition is so bad that we cant even staff existing project. Hiring freez is from 3 years now. Bench is just mediocore. I remember the day when we used to have a dynamic talent pool, now we have duds who cant even go past client screen. Forget about bunch of people resigning, we are staring at whole department/area resigning in a quarter. Now they have started hiring but they are so behind the market in compensation that their low ball offers are not attracting good talent. They keep talking about AI but did not even open big pockets to hire bright AI talent. Dont know how long they can keep selling fresh grads as AI Engineer. Accenture started charging client more with promise thay they will promote the talent but ended up with no promotion or 0% hike. Client is furious with and switching towards other providers. Best performers are leaving with no tangible replacements available. There is no reward for good performance, promotions only happen if you threaten to leave. Discrimination is at peak! The org is now hostile towards people leaving by threatening with non competes or unreasonable agreements.

Having just returned from a trip to San Francisco, I can say definitively that Waymo is coolest technology that I've experienced in years. Better than ChatGPT. Now long $GOOG at 18x EPS with it owning over 90% of Waymo and with Waymo contributing no earnings

Hat tip to China. Manus is insane. They have just straight up lapped us on AI after we had a head start. I would be very worried if I were India. Moats are going to be tested very quickly around many software and contract IT type of businesses.

$CHGG, though it actually has net cash (Bloomberg is wrong). Announced a buyback of a big slug of converts last week at a discount. If you believe there is an ongoing business stock can go up 5x+ and hard to see how it’s a zero at this point

$ACN $BAH $SAIC $CACI $LDOS Government Contractors: "Don't worry, our DOD business is safe" DOD:

$SMRT, Apologies to anyone that followed me into this horrific long call from a couple months ago. I have had some good calls on SMID caps in the last 6 months since I started posting on X, including Napa takeout, Peloton turnaround (pre-Einhorn) and Redfin takeout, and others, but this is a stain on that track record. That said, I had the opportunity to speak with the interim CEO earlier this week and came away feeling good enough to double down. I came away sensing that the CEO departure had nothing to do with the business, and was in some way related to the CEO's personal conduct. The stock is now trading at about 80% of my estimate of net-net value, and realistically nothing has changed about the business. I get the sense that the Board knows there is urgency and they are under the gun to get this mess fixed. It sounds like their are several good candidates for CEO that the company is already considering based on their prior process. I also get the sense that the interim CEO, John Dorman, is very close to the business and feels good about the progress that the company had been making under the short tenure of the prior CEO. The company is reporting earnings in early May and I am hopeful that we get updates on the business performance and strategy on that call in a few weeks.

$PESI, a interesting small-cap idiosyncratic company where we don't need to really think about the economy or tariffs. Hanford DOE contract is turning on later this year has the potential to be transformational. The company gave firm guidance for Q2 yesterday that indicates estimates need to come up materially. Good balance sheet and replacement value of the assets is likely $15+. After this quarter the bear case downside seems to be gone, and the potential to re-rate materially seems quite high.

OpenAI now just openly gunning for Accenture and other IT consulting firms. $ACN $WIT $CTSH $INFY "OpenAI has begun offering highly customised artificial intelligence (AI) services starting at $10 million, according to a report by The Information. With early clients reportedly including the US Department of Defense and Southeast Asian app Grab, this move positions the tech firm in direct competition with consulting giants like Palantir and Accenture." business-standard.com/compan…

Interesting. What do you think they changed in this version that is making it lie?

Sellside so scared to cut $COST to SELL so they just keep dancing around itt. Don't want to throw those LO clients under the bus. How else do explain 40 analysts covering it and zero sells (I don't count Morningstar)?

$COST and $WMT... $AMZN new private label push is not good for you

$BLND is poised to benefit from the unlocking of the housing market

1) Recently initiated a position in $MTN (Vail Mountain Resorts). This is a phenomenal asset and the stock is trading at a 6+ year low (excluding a brief period during COVID). The set-up from here appears excellent and there are at least 3 ways to win here.

Agreed. And the stock has materially lagged peers and the market over the last month. It is increasingly clear that the inland cement producers like $MCEM are fairing much better than the overall market.

I see this same thing getting reposted everywhere today without a real source. I’ve been all in on DOGE having a big impact on government well before it was popular but I don’t think the housing market is having any material issues. Is this just fake propaganda getting reposted everywhere or is it real?

$ACN clearly company is doing very well and everything is awesome