21 Comments

These newsletters are so good!! Keep it up

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Thanks George!

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Great article! Well written and very informative. Thank you for your hard work!

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Thanks Alex!

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Great content! Thank you for the education and time that goes into it.

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Thank you, it's been a good read as always!

On the energy situation in Germany:

The gas storage in Germany is full so that we hopefully can bridge a shortage up to the end of the year. At that moment, (also hopefully) the LNG gas terminals are ready to use for imports via ships.

This situation still implies energy / gas prices spiking, the government tries to compensate this by relief packages.

(Small hint: the article says EU dependence of Russian gas would be 40%. According to you graphic, this matches Germany, while the EU is at 30%.)

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Thanks Felix! Great to know that you enjoyed it. Is there enough storage in Germany to last till the end of winter? Typically, storages have limited capacity.

Nice catch with the graph; I think its a bit older. The 40% is from a very recent BBC article, so I think its reliable

https://www.bbc.com/news/58888451

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No, the estimate is actually that the storage can last in the worst case for up to two months, which would be end of the year approximately depending on the winter. By that time, the LNG gas terminals might be ready for usage.

Thank you for the bbc article!

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Mt favorite part: For us individual investors, at the moment, it is best to reduce expenses, keep a diligent budget, stay employed and continue investing. In the meantime, let’s keep an eye out for global issues and hope that conditions will improve for everyone

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Yeah, its the best we can do to weather this storm

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Awesome study and article. Thanks you again

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Thanks Aurelien!

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Very good article. I am passing it on to family members who are not educated on how global factors affect us in US.

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Thank you! I rarely cover international crises, so its great to know that you found it insightful.

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What about the potential debacle of China vs Taiwan ? Should be an interest 2023 but over all I’m heavily bearish on the US market especially Nasdaq. Could we see a complete reversal of the covid bill run? Who knows but these are interesting times indeed. “…be greedy when others are fearful”

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hopefully that CHIPS bill can help us ease our dependence off Taiwan chip manufacturing before things escalate

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Agree with the article, it'll get worse before it gets better.

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That does seem likely atm

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That map of the movement of a chip around the world, while possible, is extremely unlikely these days. Most semiconductor manufacturing is performing all steps in Asia.

To be specific, steps 2 & 3 are *far* more likely to happen in, say, Taiwan than in the U.S.

I would buy that map if we were still in the early 1990s, it’s grossly out of date.

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It’s not that it’s impossible, just extremely unlikely. Intel devices *might* follow that path as that company is more U.S.-centric than the other IDMs (Integrated Device Manufacturers, the Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, TIs of this world), but I am not aware of any U.S. companies doing dicing (the sawing up of the wafers) in any significant volume in the U.S. Even wafer sorting (the “sorting” in the graphic) is only done in low volume in the U.S. to prove out the test program / hardware, then the volume work is handed off to the OSATs (OutSourced Assembly and Test houses) in Asia.

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