Monthly Archives: January 2025

Some thoughts on DeepSeek- The Black Swan for MAG7 or something else ?

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For various reasons, I was able to spend much more time on this topic since Sunday than I would usually have. On Sunday morning, the topic somehow picked my interested and I have been trying to understand as a Non-Expert what is going on here.

For full disclosure: I have no positions in any of the MAG7 stocks, but that might make me equally biased than someone who has mortgaged his family home to invest in NVDIA.

On Sunday Morning, I initially used mostly Twitter, but during the day this was overflooded with MAGA Crap. Twitter is still a good place at an early stage for “virally developing situations”, bit it gets washed with (AI written) turd pretty quickly.

The DeepSeek topic is interesting on many dimensions. Here are some facts (taken from Wikipedia, but confirmed by other sources):

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Some links 03/2025

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Ben Evan’s “State of AI” presentation is a must read

Despite lackluster performance, David Einhorn’s Q4 letter is worth reading

Annual letter time: Partners Fund 2024 letter, Rubicon Stockpicker 2024 letter, Compound Interest 2024 letter

An interesting new Subtack called “Building Things that last” has just launched with a few great posts

For me, the story of the week: Chinese LLM Deepseek seems to be (almost) on par with the OpenAI &Co at a much lower cost. Maybe it’s just Chinese propaganda, maybe it’s not.

A very detailed Nvidia short case including an (expert) assessment of Deepseek

The “Behind the Balance Sheet” Substack and Podcast are both worth the time

Jensen-Group (ISIN BE0003858751) – Hidden European Champion at a “Dirt Cheap” price

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Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH !!!!!

As mentioned in the Performance review, I had already build up a new position in late 2024 in a new stock. This time I will try something new: I will only post a few sections of the write-up and only those who send me an email will receive the full version (for free of course).. The reason for this is that I am really interested how many of the readers are actally reading the full document. The bonus song of course is included in this post at the end.

      0. Investment meme

For some strange reason, I felt the urge to start the pitch with this rather “German humor” meme:

  1. Elevator pitch:

Jensen-Group, a company originally from Denmark, now listed in Belgium, is a 420 mn EUR market cap “hidden champion” that is the world market leader in “Heavy laundry” equipment and automation. The company is run in third generation by the Jensen family which still controls 40% of the shares.

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Some links 02/2025

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Nice year end review from the “no deep dives” Substack with some interesting positions

Wintergem Substack with an update on Hingham Savings Bank

Famous short activist Hindenburg announced to stop operating

Are Cannabis spiked drinks really replacing alcohol in the US ?

I had linked to the study last time, here is a summary of how Ozempic/Wegovy seem to change people’s eating habits

Fascinating story about the development of the Video Game “Star Citizen” that might cross the 1 bn USD budget soon

FT Alphaville on how overvalued the USD actually is (Hint: a lot)

Performance review 2024 – Comment “Extrapolate the past at your own peril”

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2024 overview
There is no way around it: 2024 was a in absolute terms AND relative terms really bad. The Value & Opportunity portfolio lost -2,5 % (including dividends, no taxes, AOC fund as of 30.09.2023) against +4,9% for the Benchmark (Eurostoxx50 (25%), Eurostoxx small 200 (25%), DAX (30%), MDAX (20%), all performance indices including Dividends). Links to previous Performance reviews can be found on the Performance Page of the blog.

Some other funds that I follow have performed as follows in 2024:

Partners Fund TGV:  4,8%
Profitlich/Schmidlin: +9,0%

Over the 14 years from 12/31/2010 to 12/31/2024, the portfolio gained +387% against +168% for the Benchmark (before taxes). In CAGR numbers this translates into 12% p.a. for the portfolio vs. 7,3% p.a. for the Benchmark.  

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Some links 1/2025

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A very entertaining “future 10 year asset allocator” review from AQR’s Cliff Assness

Short seller Hindenburg once again swings out against Carvana

An interesting and inspiring story about a family that produces cymbals since 400 years

A decent list of 2025 top picks from UK investors/Bloggers

An interesting paper on how food demand seems to change with GLP-1 drug intake

“Big potato” is now controlling the US French fries market

A great post on what happened in the AI/LLM space in 2024