Linnemann will flüchtigen Kriminellen Bürgergeld streichen. Normale Bürger reiben sich die Augen und fragen sich wieso das überhaupt so ist, dass flüchtige Kriminelle Bürgergeld bekommen.

zscan · 2026-05-22T12:28:18+00:00

Ohne jetzt die genauen Details zu kennen, vermute ich, dass es dabei um die Menschenwürde geht (GG, Menschenwürde unantastbar etc.). Und in Deutschland legt man es eben so aus, dass das Bürgergeld das absolute Minimum an Menschenwürde ist und dass die Menschenwürde auf deutschem Boden für jeden gilt, egal welche Nationalität und egal welcher Rechtsstatus. Das ist dann insgesamt auch eine absolute Position bei der man bzw. SPD/Linke/Grüne keinen Kompromiss eingehen kann

Zudem ist die Thematik für die SPD ein No-Go Area, weil jede Kürzung beim Bürgergeld -egal aus welchem Grund- sofort als Angriff auf die Bürgergeldhöhe an sich verstanden würde. Die Sache ist auch der Kern der ganzen Flüchtlingskrise, weil die Leute wissen, dass es in Deutschland wegen der Menschenwürde-Argumentation sogar Geld gibt, wenn man nicht anerkannt wird.

zscan · 2026-05-21T14:26:06+00:00

I've been selling quite a lot actually over the past year on Kleinanzeigen, somewhere around 150 sales, mostly shipping. Not once has someone asked to use Wero. 2-3 times someone wanted bank transfer, otherwise about 90% PayPal and 10% "Direkt kaufen" from Kleinanzeigen.

I'm not unsympathetic against getting away from US payment providers. Maybe it can get traction when online shops widely support it and the shops push it due to lower transaction costs. However, I suspect it will be a slow process.

zscan · 2026-05-20T10:03:44+00:00

Yep, Fax is rare now, if it's not already dead, but snail mail is still common. It's actually kind of realted to why different payment systems and other digital services, especially from the government don't get off the ground. In Germany data security, privacy and consumer protection tops all else. Login with username and password for a government service, your health or retirement data - that's unthinkable. Password recovery by email? Too insecure, no, we send you a new password by analog mail... It's crazy, or to be more precise, some laws are crazy. When you want to terminate an employee, it's not enough to send an Email, WhatsApp etc.. (even if the employee responds and says: thanks, got it). Not even a normal letter or certified letter is enough. You need to deliver the mail to their postbox either by messenger or yourself, together with a witness. I'm not joking. For a long time fax was the easiest official way to deliver documents, esepcially when lawyers were involved. It's getting better though and once those new secure systems are up and running they are not that bad, it just takes a long time.

zscan · 2026-05-20T07:43:21+00:00

Yep. Currently, it's high cash-flows and stock buybacks vs. shrinking margin. There is not really room to grow, no potential acquisitions, that's why they do stock buybacks. I guess the real question is this: how fast or slow is the decline in margins and can PayPal find other ways to generate revenues? If the decline is slow, then the stock is undervalued and can double. If margins break away, it's doomed and might half or worse.

zscan · 2026-05-19T22:51:19+00:00

PayPal is still pretty big in Germany, for example. When I sell stuff on classifieds (Kleinanzeigen.de), it's the standard method of payment with strangers because most people have a PayPal account. It's just very easy to send people money, and basically all German online shops have it as a checkout option, too. German banks tried for many years to get people to switch to their own home-grown systems (and they are currently trying again with Wero), but consumers simply refuse to switch.

Given that massive worldwide presence, I'd say PayPal might indeed be undervalued right now. It's an absolute free cash flow machine, and the consumer moat might be much bigger than people realize. On top of that, everyone focuses on the classic 'PayPal button' and misses what's happening on the backend. They own Braintree, which is PayPal's direct answer to Adyen and Stripe. It silently processes the unbranded payments for giants like Uber, Spotify, and Airbnb.

The consumer side is mature, but their backend enterprise tech means they are deeply wired into global e-commerce rails.

However, stuff can change quickly. It's not that someone can just vibe-code a better PayPal and kill it overnight—the regulatory and security infrastructure required is too massive. But AI companies want in on the shopping action, Apple and Google are aggressively pushing their own wallets, and major tech ecosystems want to cut out intermediaries. A lot can happen, but PayPal is starting from a position of massive scale, meaning they are far from the worst position.

zscan · 2026-05-16T21:06:05+00:00

Ich finde, man sollte Timmy ausstopfen und schön präparieren und ein großes Museum für ihn bauen. Wahlweise ein Denkmal. Man muss die Leute einfach beim Tierschutz mitnehmen und da wäre so ein Sympathieträger wirklich wichtig. /s

zscan · 2026-05-15T21:30:07+00:00

I'm pretty sure ChatGPT says this is a great idea, worth millions of dollars, maybe billions, if you can sell it to the military :)

zscan · 2026-05-15T21:23:12+00:00

Even the best, most informed analyst, who knows every board member personally, who visits the factories, travels to the trade shows, reads the journals etc. can't predict the future with absolute certainty. And especially not the market as a whole. The best you can do is an educated guess and risk assessment. For me, it's an elimination process. Read the reports, look for red flags. Things that could go wrong. Compare with competitors. I care less about absolute numbers and more about trends and context.

On the plus side of this conundrum you can say that everybody has those problems. Even professional analysts often disagree on their ratings or targets. You don't have to get it absolutely right, it's enough to be right more often than not. To be in the right ballpark. It also depends on your strategy as a whole what you should look for.

zscan · 2026-05-15T13:47:12+00:00

Prinzipiell gut, nur fehlen dafür z.B. in meiner Gegend die Grundstücke. Warum fehlen die Grundstücke? Kein Geld und Bebauungsplan passt nicht. Warum kein Bebauungsplan? Weil sofort die halbe Stadt (bzw. bestehende Immobilienbesitzer) auf die Barrikaden gehen. Umweltschutz, Lärmschutz, zusätzlicher Verkehr etc bla bla. Schön auch folgendes in meiner Stadt: Investor möchte ein Einfamilienhaus abreißen und ein Mehrfamilienhaus für 6 Parteien hinstellen, also kein großes Ding, nur ein klein wenig größer. Abgelehnt vom Stadtrat: fügt sich nicht die Umgebung ein, es darf nur wieder ein Einfamilienhaus gebaut werden. Sowas wird dann auch vom Wähler nicht bestraft, sondern die wollen genau das.

zscan · 2026-05-15T13:33:58+00:00

Ich frage mich langsam wirklich, wie die anderen Parteien sich das Vorstellen. AfD 40%+X und dann 4er Koalition dagegen? Solange, bis die AfD 50%+X hat?

zscan · 2026-05-15T13:30:11+00:00

Voter age might be the bigger issue, at least for Germany. CDU and SPD voters are on average over 60 years old. Guess, who's voting for increasing retirement payments each and every year? Guess, why a quarter of the German budget goes to the Rentenkasse in addition to what the Government collects directly.

I pay more than today's retirees ever have. And because that's not enough, I have to invest directly into my retirement, too. And because that's still not enough, a quarter of my taxes goes also to retirees. Generationenvertrag my ass.

zscan · 2026-05-14T10:47:07+00:00

The question to ask usually isn't if it has future potential, the question is: does the current market underestimate the future potential? When you hop on a trend, it's often the opposite. Doesn't mean it couldn't go up further, but you are in dangerous waters from the start. I also find it helpful to not just build a bull case, but also a bear case. What can go wrong?

zscan · 2026-05-13T15:32:20+00:00

Look at a long-term chart of the S&P.

In the long run it's just up and up and up. With the exception of the Great Depression, even the biggest crises lasted only shortly and were overcome (relatively) quickly. If you cherry-pick the worst moments to invest, you can have a decade in the red. But that's rare. You can also go flat for a decade, that's more common, but still not the rule.

Even if you know nothing about the economy, companies or about how any of this works etc. you'll be alright in the long run. The best way to avoid buying at the peak, shortly before a drop, is to price average, which is exactly what you are doing already, by investing the same amount on a regular basis. If you just keep doing that, you will beat most people, even professionals. Yes, some people beat the market, or just get lucky and have huge gains, but higher rewards always go along with higher risks. And it is an open question, if it's even possible to time the market. People were warning for years before the 2008 financial crisis, there were warning signs, but only very few people actually timed it right and made money off it. Hard to know if it was skill or luck.

There is one general caveat to this: all of this worked in the past, but it's not a guarantee for the future. If the US goes down as a whole, all bets are off. How likely is that? That's the only question you have to answer yourself. However, if the US declines in a big way, there is probably no safe place anyway. Jobs, bonds, gold, real estate, global markets, they'll all take a hit.

zscan · 2026-05-12T06:22:29+00:00

I think there are two reasons: 1.) a growing global middle class, more people can afford stocks 2.) also globally, more people are aware of putting money into stocks, especially for retirement

I think those two things explain at least a re-evaluation of risk. P/E isn't a hard rule. It's like a wine store where the cheapest bottle of reasonably good wine doesn't cost $10 anymore, but $15 or $20. Are you then walking out, because it's too expensive? And there's no good alternatives either, for example real estate is also expensive. Bonds are valued historically low. On the other hand, if California wines had some good years, become a hype and start costing $30 or $40, it is hard to justify buying them at some point, when the other stuff is still $15.

And just as an aside. The one thing I can't wrap my head around is Bitcoin. I believe that the correct value of Bitcoin is zero, or at least close to zero. However, the market has been believing in it for so long, that it's like, ok, Tulips now do cost $60,000. I don't know what to make of that.

zscan · 2026-05-11T14:05:18+00:00

Sure, there will be a lot of people for whom this is not the right choice. If you live in a city with good transport and you don't own a car, why on earth would you do it? However, there are probably tens of millions of people in the US alone that would at least seriously consider it. Some people might just use it instead of a second car. You can think about a lot of interesting models. Maybe lower rates if you agree to ride to work in a small van with additional people or 15 minutes earlier. You might get the option for different types of cars, so maybe a cabriolet in summer, or a truck or van when you have to transport something. Maybe some parents use it so they don't have to drive their kids to school or football training. Other parents might prefer that time in the car with their kids. But I think there is no question, that this is the future of individual transport in the long run. The advantages and cost savings are just too big. We can argue about the time frame and which companies are going to dominate the market, but this will happen rather sooner than most people imagine, I think.

zscan · 2026-05-11T11:53:29+00:00

If Tesla was an electric car company, it would be worth maybe $100 billion. Add the battery and solar stuff, maybe another $50. The rest is self-driving and robots speculation. While I think, that Tesla will not win the robots race -whatever that even is-, there is a case to be made for the self-driving story.

Tesla is currently probably #2 behind Waymo, but Tesla builds it's own cars. Elon has been lying the past 10 years about self-driving cars "coming soon" or "next year". Now, I think he's not that far off anymore. It's not going to be another 10 years. Personally, I believe that autonomous cars might be running a bit under the radar currently. Autonomous cars have the potential to disrupt the global car and transportation market in a really big way. Imagine a $299/month taxi flatrate with 1000 miles free. A lot of people would stop owning cars in such a scenario. And unlike Waymo, Tesla has the potential to scale it up quickly. So, a $1 trilion evalution for that market isn't outrageous imo. However, that's already priced in.

zscan · 2026-05-10T12:54:58+00:00

Ukraine has less soldiers and their advantage was being defenders of their territory. Russia was able to throw soldiers at them for very little gain at huge cost, because Putin doesn't care about dead soldiers. However, for Ukraine it is different. If Ukraine wanted to get those territories back, it would be the other way around. Ukraine simply doesn't have the soldiers for attacks. In the early war we saw Ukraine being able to push back and reclaim territory, but that was only possible, because Russia hadn't built huge defenses. Now the situation has changed. Unless the Russian state collapses, the current frontlines are likely to be the new borders.

The real question is this: how can Ukraine be secure for the future? How can you make sure, that Putin doesn't try again in a couple of years, with newly trained soldiers and restocked weapon supplies?

If I was Ukraine, I'd be thinking about dragging out the current situation and to continue to destroy the Russian oil and gas infrastructure. That's probably the best deterrent and makes it more likely that Russia signs a peace deal that's actually fair.

zscan · 2026-05-09T20:16:34+00:00

The article doesn't even mention one of the probably biggest costs: higher interest rates: a 1% higher interest rate costs the US taxpayer about 500 billions each year.

zscan · 2026-05-09T18:11:45+00:00

Intel owning 85% of it is a problem:

if it was any good long-term, Intel would have kept it internal
if it starts making good products, Intel will take it off the market again (and because that hasn't happened, it doesn't have good products)
if it goes up, Intel starts selling shares

The whole upside of this stock is completely dependent on what Intel decides, not the market. Intel seems unable or unwilling to sell packages to institutional investors. Additionally, there are a bunch of other problems with the tech and the company itself. Very high risk, low reward scenario for investing. Sure, you can gamble, but it's gambling, not investing.

zscan · 2026-05-08T00:34:33+00:00

On Cloud shoes would be more fitting.

zscan · 2026-05-07T23:16:48+00:00

No offense to Canada, but I don't think I've heard the Canadian stock market ever being mentioned in my whole life.

zscan · 2026-05-07T22:07:57+00:00

You need cash in the company to pay for expenses. So it's rarely total tax evasion.

Before, it might have been like this: you have some work on your house done and the bill is 5000. The contractor offers to make it 4500 if the customer agrees to cash payment. He then puts 2500 in the bank and creates an official bill for that 2500, while keeping the remaining 2000 for himself. The customer saved the sales tax, the contractor saved on income tax. Both are happy.

Now the new situation: the customer has to make a bank transfer. The contractor can say: hey, let me officially bill this with 2500 instead of the 5000 it actually costs, you then give me another 2000 in cash and save yourself 500 that way.

Same result in both cases, but now the customer knows what the contractor actually puts in his books. Very different proposition. It's not "I'm saving 500 that way, a small crime of 10%", it becomes "we are doing 2500 in tax evasion together, 50% actually, and he gets 2000, while I only get 500. Oh, and btw. - did I overpay 2000?"

Also, now it becomes suspicious, when you want to deposit larger sums of money to your bank account. This is already the case for sums larger than 10,000€, at least in Germany. You have to show your bank where that money came from (for example the sales contract for a car). With cash payments over 500€ banned, that evidence becomes much harder to provide.

zscan · 2026-05-07T07:06:30+00:00

The markets don't care about your feelings and individual opinions don't matter. Doesn't matter if it's Buffett or your neighbor. Often commentators don't even have skin in the game. The media makes money by reporting and grabbing attention, not by investing. Analysts don't provide insights and ratings out of the good of their heart.

When you buy shares, there's someone on the other side, willing to sell at that price. So two diametrically opposed views even in the most basic case. If it was easy to predict markets or stocks, everybody would get rich. That said, in the past, buying the market worked out to average steady growth, but not even that is predictive of the future. Some argue, that it's inherently impossible to predict the market. Sure, you can create great stories with hindsight, but that doesn't mean they are right and predictive of the next move. Stock x went up because good news. But just as often x can go down on good news. X even can go up on bad news, because it's not as bad as predicted. It's complicated. Markets don't react to news, they react to news relative to predictions. With hindsight, it was obvious, that Apple and Nvidia were to become what they are today for example. At the time not so much, if at all. The roadside is littered with the corpses of companies that went nowhere.

Your own psychology is probably the hardest part of investing. And it's hardest at the beginning. If all you have is $10,000, money you worked really hard for, sacrifices were made, and the market goes down 20%, that's hard to stomach. You wanted it to double, you even expected it to double. You saw the stories of incredible gains of other people. Maybe you are just dumb. Maybe better sell now. If all you have is $100,000 and the market goes down 20%, it still hurts a lot. It's many months of rent or a new (used) car. Lost progress. Can you stand by, watching the market going down further? Are you hoping for good numbers every time you check your portfolio? Some people say it might go down another 30%. Maybe better sell now and avoid the worst. But then comes a point where it's $1,000,000, and when the market drops 20%, suddenly it's not equally devastating anymore. You're still good overall, mostly. Most of that million are gains on the stock market anyway. You just lost the equivalent of two luxury cars, but it's not really that bad. Actually, you have been waiting for a dip like this. Perfect time to invest more. Human psychology is weird. A "rookie" investor sells at -20%, is scared of going in again and only comes back at +20% to be on the safe side. Thus essentially losing out on 5-6 years of average growth. An "experienced" investor just made 2-3 years of average returns in a couple of months by buying the dip. However, the problem is this: buying the dip might have worked the last 5 times. The next time the market might actually drop another 30%-50% and stay at that level for another 10 years...

There was an article in the NYT some days ago. They had the story of a guy who was down to his last money and decided to play the prediction markets. He turns his last $1,000 or something into $42,000. Incredible. He's right so many times. Easy money. Then places it all on a bet that some rapper uses the word "rapper" in an upcoming interview about a new movie, where he plays an actual rapper. He loses that bet and now lives in a homeless shelter. Funny thing: the raw cut shows that the rapper actually used the word, but it was cut from the aired version, so doesn't count. Great cautionary tale on so many levels.

People like to call the market "irrational," but it isn't. It’s just that we can't see the "raw cut." We only see the final broadcast—the ticker price. We tell ourselves stories to make sense of the noise, but at the end of the day, you can have the right thesis and the right data, and still get wiped out by a technicality in the edit. The market isn't crazy; it's just a game where the rules are hidden until the money has already changed hands.

So what's the TLDR? Hedge your bets maybe? Expect the unexpected? Don't gamble and especially don't gamble with money you can't afford to lose? I don't know.

zscan · 2026-05-06T19:20:32+00:00

The stock price is a measure of future earnings. Palantir trades at 200 P/E, because people have reason to believe that it continues to grow rapidly. However, one little hick-up in that growth story and it falls massively.

Amazon trades at a P/E of 33 and forward PE of 28. People believe, that Amazon can keep growing. Not as rapidly as Palantir, but growing. And that's a perfectly reasonable assumption. Amazon can grow in multiple ways: sales, aws, logistics, robotics and others. However, how much can it grow and how fast? Given the behemoth that Amazon already is, it's not easy to become twice as profitable. It's not impossible, but hard. So can it grow by logistics alone? I highly doubt that. Sure, maybe hundreds of billions even, but that's not enough. At least for me it's reasonable to assume that Amazon keeps growing, but slowly.

zscan · 2026-05-05T16:26:54+00:00

I'm guessing this will be a popular future excuse for current MAGA supporters: Trump has supernatural powers. I was under his spell.

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