Buy? Sell? Hold?

Here’s 7 minutes on Trump/Musk’s firing of nuclear safety personnel.  Was it done legally?  Efficiently?  Will it help lower the price of groceries?  Who needs nuclear safety, anyway?  I’d love to know Carl’s opinion — and, as he writes me almost every day, he may well share it.  If he does, I will share his views.

So much more to say, including — tomorrow or soon — an idea for turning anxiety into action, but The Brutalist just started streaming and, while not for everyone, I was more or less riveted for 200 minutes last night.

Also . . .

Thanks for the feedback on yesterday’s “idea worth considering.”  Most of it was thumbs up, but Nathaniel M. wrote:

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I think this is a terrible idea.  One of the things that the extended primary system allows us to do is build infrastructure in the states for the general election, usually a year out or so from the general election. This would essentially hoover up donor dollars needed to retake the House, and either 1) force the eventual nominee to raise and spend at a time when donors and voters just want a break from politics (at a minimum the six months immediately following the election) or 2) lay off the staff they hired to win the primary and go dark for an extended period, which means they’d lose all momentum from the primary campaign season.

Now, I did help bring Ranked Choice Voting to Alaska (and a Top-Four primary system), so I think there’s a lot of value in finding a way to get it adopted everywhere.  I just don’t think this proposal is the way to do it.

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→ Objections worth considering (and he concluded with some kind words, which I appreciated), but I think that, even if for this one time only, the pros could far outweigh the cons.  There will be SO much Democratic time and energy focused on going to the polls in the mid-terms, whether for specific House and Senate candidates or for this added reason of expressing your preference for our next presidential nominee, I think it could definitely help us win back Congress and state legislatures . . . and that the energy will continue all the way through 2028.

All further thoughts welcome.

And now . . .

OPRT closed at $9.05 in after-hours trading, so most of us now have a double, triple, or quadruple by now.  Profit-taking in a tax-deferred retirement account wouldn’t be crazy (or if you’re somehow in a very low tax bracket).  But if the company does hit its projected $1.10 to $1.30 earnings per share this year, with prospects for further gains, one could see it gradually trading up to 12 or 15 times earnings — so maybe another double from here in a year or two.  I have no expertise to predict any of that; but I know for sure that selling here in a taxable account means giving up a good chunk of the gain, so I wouldn’t rush to do it if you bought your shares with money you could truly afford to lose.  Or maybe sell some, so you’re playing with house money.  Or sell but take a loss somewhere else to net out the gain.

PRMRF dropped from $22 to $12.75 in the last couple of days.  Even though we paid as little as $1 years ago, my heart still sank — until I saw that they’d paid out a one-time $10.42 special dividend ($15 Canadian), much of it a potentially tax-free return of capital.  It’s certainly not the screaming buy it once was; but the same tax thinking above may apply here.

CMRX, first suggested May 18, 2022, when it was trading under $2, closed at $4.83 last night — in part, I assume, on this announcement.  I sold half.

Editors Note: This article was originally published on February 19, 2025 on andrewtobias.com, syndicated with permission.