With all due respect it's hard not to be disrespectful to the...

With all due respect it's hard not to be disrespectful to the $QAN bulls. Nowhere in this forum is there any substantive reasoning for the ridiculous share price levels yet there is plenty of rational discussion for the short thesis.

To play devil's advocate here is the long thesis that not one single $QAN holder here has mentioned:

Qantas is enjoying a involuntary cartel situation due to the problems that Boeing has in bringing new planes to market. No airline can buy new planes so none of them are spending money on them. This suits an airline - as long as they are all in the same boat. The moment one airline starts taking delivery of Boeing's new planes then the others will have to catch up, otherwise they'll lose customers who would prefer to fly on newer planes.

So the airline industry is enjoying good cashflow mainly due to the inability to buy new planes causing them to amortise their existing fleet further than they otherwise would.

But, that won't last forever and when the new generation of overdue planes are available airlines will be taking on debt at these increasing interest rates to pay for them.

Everything else is bad for the industry: pent up demand for travel will fade as people get it out of their system and recession kicks in, inflation bites, interest rates are higher, business travel is permanently dented due to adoption of online meetings and working from home.

So there you go. The bull thesis that none of you geniuses have been able to articulate or, more likely, even understand. But long term, the airlines are floating up $hit creek and amongst all of them Qantas seems to have hoodwinked dumb shareholders into buying into an epic bubble without even knowing why.