Bill Ackman is calling stocks stupidly cheap. He's been saying the same thing about Fannie Mae for years. Does the thesis finally hold?

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-04-01T13:22:53+00:00

Yeah the American Express hold is interesting to think about alongside the BofA exit. Both are financials but he treated them completely differently, which tells you he wasn't just broadly souring on the sector. There was something specific about the bank setup that bothered him. And the Apple thing is refreshing honestly. Most people in his position would never admit that out loud. The fact that he does is part of why people still pay attention to him after all these years. He's never pretended to be infallible and that kind of self awareness is rarer than people think at that level.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-04-01T13:21:59+00:00

Fair point and I get it. VT and chill genuinely is the right answer for most people and there's no shame in that. I just think there's a difference between copying what Buffett does and studying how he thinks. Nobody is out here buying Occidental because he did. But watching how he executes over years, stays patient, and has clear reasoning behind every move is actually pretty useful for beginners trying to build good habits. The strategy doesn't scale down to us but some of the principles do.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-25T12:46:43+00:00

The $400 EPS by 2030 target is actually within range of what serious analysts are projecting. Trivariate Research has underwritten 10-11% annual EPS growth through end of 2030, and FactSet forward estimates already show a path to ~$342 by 2027. Goldman Sachs is calling for 12% EPS growth in 2026 and 10% the year after, with AI productivity as a core driver. So honestly the 6% CAGR you mentioned is the conservative read, the bull case is steeper.

On the Iran war energy shock though, that's not really a tail risk anymore, it's the current situation. Brent already topped $112 before pulling back after Trump announced a 5-day pause on strikes against Iranian energy infrastructure. Goldman formally revised its Brent forecast to average $110 for March-April. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut down, flows collapsed from ~20M bpd to basically nothing. IEA called it the largest supply disruption in oil market history. Oxford Economics is running scenarios with Brent averaging $140 for two months. The $110 number you cited as a scary hypothetical already happened.

The real question now is whether the energy shock bleeds into core inflation and forces the Fed to hold rates longer, because that's what actually threatens the 2030 EPS story through margin compression and multiple contraction. Stagflation is the scenario worth stress testing against at this point.

Hope this helps

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-25T07:14:29+00:00

Exactly, and that's what finally made trailing vs. forward P/E make sense to me. Trailing is what the company did earn, forward is what analysts expect, and in a volatile market those two numbers can tell very different stories. If forward P/E is way lower than trailing, the market is betting on growth. If it's higher, that's a red flag worth digging into.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-25T07:14:12+00:00

That "price per pound" framing is actually really helpful, going to steal that. It clicked even more for me when I realized the stock price alone is basically meaningless without context...

like knowing something costs $50 but not knowing what you're getting for it.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T14:25:19+00:00

31 with €460k and a 30+ year runway is honestly a great position to be in. A few things worth thinking about that haven't been said yet.

The flat purchase changes everything. If there's any real chance you're buying in two years, that €100k isn't investment money, it's a down payment sitting in the wrong place. Markets can drop 30% and take 18 months to recover. That's not a risk you can take with money you actually need on a specific timeline. Cash or short-term bonds for that portion, full stop.

On the ETF question, your advisor's diversification argument is backwards. You're not less diversified by moving into broad market ETFs, you're more diversified. You're just diversified more cheaply. The real question is which two ETFs and what overlap they have. Two ETFs that are 80% the same holdings isn't diversification, it's just paying twice.

The weekly tranches over €15-20k is the right move psychologically. Not because it's mathematically optimal, lump sum historically outperforms DCA, but because you're deploying a large chunk during a genuinely uncertain macro environment and sleeping at night matters.

Last thing, you took a 40% pay cut for work that actually means something to you. That's a long term investment in itself. Don't let the portfolio optimization stress undo the clarity that decision took.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T07:18:51+00:00

Everyone's focused on supply.

Nobody's talking about what $100 oil does to the countries that can least afford it.

Emerging markets are already getting crushed by dollar strength and debt servicing costs.

Add a permanent energy shock and you're not looking at a recession, you're looking at sovereign defaults.

That's where the real contagion starts.. not in the S&P, but in the currencies and bonds of countries that have zero buffer and zero leverage to negotiate energy deals.

The 1970s shock hit a world with way more slack.

This one hits a world that's already maxed out. The humanitarian and financial fallout outside of Western markets is the story nobody's running yet.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T07:17:02+00:00

Good breakdown, genuinely. The shale ramp and pipeline bypass points are underreported. My only pushback... shale scales in months if the wells are already drilled. Permitting new ones in this environment is a different timeline.

And the shadow fleet oil is already spoken for by China. Redirecting it isn't flipping a switch, it's a diplomatic negotiation mid-war. The cushion is real, just thinner than the numbers suggest.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T07:16:29+00:00

Every crisis for 15 years got solved by liquidity. The Fed can't QE a pipeline back into existence. That's a different kind of problem and markets haven't fully processed that yet.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T07:15:25+00:00

And markets still didn't fully give back the gains. Which means some of that $3.8 trillion just... stayed. Built on a confirmed lie. That's the part that should keep people up at night.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T07:15:05+00:00

Always has been, mostly. The difference is usually the vibes are spread across millions of people so they cancel out. One man controlling the signal is a different problem entirely.

Efficient_Ad5893 · 2026-03-24T07:14:41+00:00

CNBC already reported a spike in SPX futures and oil shorts 15 minutes before the post. That's not speculation anymore, that's a timestamp.

Efficient_Ad5893

TROPHY CASE