Yetmoraborealis

But first: if you have plans to be in New York at some point, run don’t walk to Sweeney Todd.  If you’re a long time fan of the show, I need say no more: you will love it.  If you don’t know Stephen Sondheim’s demon barber of Fleet Street (really?), that’s fine: listen to the score once and you will be hooked for life.  Then come see it brought to life (and death) at the Barrow Street Theater.

There is an option to have a meat pie first.  You don’t need to bother with that.  If you’re hungry or thirsty, maybe get a bite or a drink first at The Spaniard, 100 yards away.

I have no stake in the show or the bar.

If you want to enrich me, see Spamilton.  (“Convulsively funny.” — New York Times)

It always worries me when one of my stocks goes up, let alone two — have we finally reached the top of this bull market? — but it’s still a nice problem to have.  Yesterday, I mentioned the quadruple we’ve gotten in PRMRF.  I sold some, because I don’t see how oil prices get a lot stronger as the world moves ever faster toward solar.  But clearly some people think the stock has further to run — e.g., whoever bought the shares I sold.  I’m in no rush to sell them all.

Meanwhile, FANH, our Chinese automobile insurance company — that traded under the symbol CISG when I first mentioned it nearly four years ago at $5.40 and again two years ago at $5.76 — seems finally to be hitting its stride, closing yesterday at $13.48.  I asked my smart friend, who owns a ton of it, what he thought and — for what it’s worth — he said he’s not selling.  He sees a bright future that could send the stock “much higher.”  Who knows?

The real question, of course, is whether Borealis will ever pay off for us.  I don’t know that either, but here is a link to last week’s IATA conference in Panama and — of particular interest — WheelTug’s presentation.  Some of the acronyms may be opaque, but if you’ve been following this saga for the last umpty-ump years, you’ll get the gist.  And near the end you’ll see the acronym EIS, which stands for Entry Into Service — which they show as “early 2019.”  Whether they will hit that target “on time” — or ever — is an open question.  But it’s clear from the presentation, and their inclusion in yet another IATA conference, that this is a serious effort, involving serious people.

(The WheelTug presenter, Jan Vana, integrated the Czech air force into NATO, among other things.  And I love that some years ago he took a job — in the winter, as I recall — as a ground guy at the Prague airport, with those plastic ear muffs in the freezing wind, guiding planes into the gate and seeing that the chucks (chocks? blocks?) were placed properly and the tugs connected to the nose-wheel struts — “three months?” I asked him . . . and he said, basically, “I need to know every detail of how this works, at the most granular level.”)

A bet on WheelTug’s controlling shareholder, Borealis (symbol: BOREF), may never pan out.  But the business case for aircraft that can maneuver with their little electric motor is compelling; and the company seems to be driving doggedly toward that goal.  If it ultimately fails for some reason, BOREF could hit zero.  If it succeeds, it’s not hard to imagine a $500 million valuation ($100 a share) or even several times that high.  So I hold on.

As always, buy only with money you can truly afford to lose.  And using “limit” orders — the stock is very thinly traded.