Gregmal

Don’t think it’s inclusive but Cheeca Lodge is A+. Chef Michaels and Kaiyo are right next door as well and easily the best food in the area.

Haha add in some ALCO and recently raised FRPH allocation and that’s pretty much it!

Somehow I have a feeling this topic may get interesting lol

Yea there’s definitely beneficiaries but it’s harder to gauge what’s sustainable in some ways. People last year said steel/iron ore “had to” come down because it always does and that’s the cycle. Same for lumber. People claimed there was a real estate bubble in the US before COVID, during COVID, and after COVID. Entertainment for instance, secular tailwind pre COVID and now people can’t get enough. Outdoor related stuff…same thing. That’s what I’m having trouble gauging.

How do you classify earnings enhanced by COVID? It seems flawed to draw that conclusion because 1) Government and COVID stole a year of earnings in 2020 and for some companies most of 2021 earnings. Airlines for instance are just finally being able to fly without restrictions 2) the true COVID fad companies like peloton and zoom are off like 90% already.

Why not a bit of everything? It’s all highly personal. But what elevated my investing to another level is when I came to the conclusion that you should ALWAYS have something that is working. It is more about correlation than diversification.

There is a difference between stretching, and not being able to afford. People who had no business getting loans got approved for houses they had no business being in, at the max that could be justified using an ARM with a teaser rate. Totally different than anything we had or likely will ever see again in the housing market. Too many people are still scarred by the GFC to have anything resembling a repeat occur for a long time.

Alico. You have land and oranges that pay the bills til it is sold ALX. Power center, 731, cash+other MSG Knicks Rangers.

Yea I never lament not being older, but sometimes wish I had an extra ten years in front of me career wise so I could have had the fallout of GFC to build upon with direct real estate. I hope we see those sort of prices again, but there’s plenty of places in the world where folks have been waiting decades for that.

All one needs to know is that repeatedly politicians play games for their own benefit and regular, normal people bear the consequences. It’s true in Ukraine, Russia, US, Africa…basically everywhere. Ukraine may be the victim, although again I’d say it’s the people of both Ukraine and Russia who are suffering, the militants are getting what they signed up for, and the politicians are playing high level Xbox. But now we ve repeatedly seen stories attempting to shape narrative and sentiment around Ukraine; where remember the “go fuck yourself Russia” heros that died? Only to have actually been captured, and then miraculously, RETURNED, UNHARMED? One must ask why?

So the ghost of Ukraine story was a complete HOAX. Wonder why Twitter didnt ban it or individuals posting it.... Anyhow, like I said, anyone thinking they are getting ANYTHING resembling an accurate portrayal of the whole story is delusional. Thankfully this situation isnt really relevant to the markets anymore. It never should have been.

I would encourage folks who think housing is slowing down to go check out a few open houses in their area. Had one top local realtor tell me she stopped doing them because 1) they started resembling house parties because so many folks showed up, and 2) they weren't necessary because often the houses end up going under contract before the showing. This is in run of the mill north NJ. Slowing down is the phrase folks are throwing around. And yes, mortgages origination is down, and then is no inventory. But this has zero to do with what existing homes for sale are seeing in terms of pricing and demand. Good post here from Kuppy https://adventuresincapitalism.com/2022/05/02/in-defense-of-housing/

Closed my $300 June QQQ puts and then shorted a bunch more for ~$12. This seems overdone.

I’d agree. But it’s the cost of admission. Disneyland is also overpriced. He who has the gold makes the rules. Childhood friend of mine left NJ bc he couldn’t get a cop job due to all the red tape. Was welcomed open arms in Palm Beach and now does private details for Ken Griffin and all those fellas in that circle. Purchased a home outside Boca in 2019 for $600k. It’s now worth north of a mil. In a way, being overvalued insulates value. Keeps a whole row of buyers(like me in FL for instance) sitting and waiting for the next pullback which usually takes much longer to occur than everyone hopes. Again look up north to Canada.

https://fortune.com/2022/04/27/how-likely-home-prices-decline-in-every-major-housing-market-corelogic/amp/

But now is a good time to have a high cash allocation? You can hold cash forever, make a purchase, and have the market cut right through it shortly there after. Bottom line, and I don’t think it’s really disputable, is that holding any amount of cash for an extended period of time leads to underperformance. Even if you cherry pick the hell out of the historical data, there are very few actual prolonged periods where you’d have been better off hold it vs just rolling up the sleeves and buying something of quality at an average or better price.

Yea I was wondering if you saw a specific angle or trade associated with the data point. I largely think the biggest data/numbers are hard to do anything with because of the fact that they are so widely followed.

Duh LOL. Tilson is establishment Wall Street. A clown who was given everything, took his fees, sold his "wisdom", and now parades around like he's hot shit because he has money.

I would almost guarantee you I’ve made more money in the stock market than Whitney Tilson. Despite all the advantages he was given.

LOL Tilson. I recall reading something from him in 2015 about how the only 2 stocks you needed to own for life were Berkshire Hathaway and Howard Hughes. 50% is a far better batting average than he usually puts up. Completely ignoring the stupidity of the premise that the average person should only own 2 stocks, regardless of what they are. Now, after calling Howard Hughes 1 of only 2 stocks one needs to own for life, he's predicting the end of real estate. Whatever that means. Seems par for the course.

Significant in the context of what though? I don’t see it’s significance relative to company specific earnings which are being reported for the same period. Like just in general as interpreted by the Fed or what?

Swing some ALCO into more AIV and VRE

Exactly. In a simple way, a stock will either go up, or it will go down. From there, you probably don’t need to worry too much about why it goes up assuming you are long. So then focus on mitigating the reasons it would go down. The majority of macro are easy to hedge. So then really you only need to focus on company specific. Even within all that there is tons of volatility in which you get small moves for no reason. The biggest thing I try to focus on is avoiding substantial impairments on large positions. Those are tough to recover from. Everything else is a relatively easy and solvable problem. A 2% position goes down 70%? Well the more it goes down the less relevant it is to you overall portfolio. And if it’s 70% down but you still like it, it’s a hell of an opportunity. If not, you need a small fluctuation on the rest of your portfolio to make up for it.

The thing most fail to understand with housing is that it is very, very hard to become a forced seller. I mean it all comes down to lending standards and sure some brokers are great at "making the equation work", but generally speaking, you have to be deemed a credible borrower or you dont get the loan to buy the house. And if the situation isnt right, or one people want to accept, people generally just dont sell. The only way a demand problem is solved, is through building more. Except the builders also "should" have financial incentives. And there is also limited space to build in MSAs where people want to be. You can keep going further out, and that works, but it doesnt make the better located properties any less desirable.

The other thing as well is that over the course of my investing life, I’ve kind of become less and less enchanted with those sort of “apply a discount rate” or “project multiples going out x years” and all that sort of traditional analyst stuff. Not to say there’s never any value in it but most of the time it’s got too many underlying variables and if one’s off the majority of the conclusions are useless. Even the best analysts I’ve seen, when making projections, rarely demonstrate the ability to forecast correctly more often than not. Conversely, it’s a lot of the sentiment in what Buffett and Munger and even a guy like Ackman portray when they describe what they like to invest in. Moats. Brand power. Superb management. It’s easier IMO to simplify these things because if you check the boxes in the second paragraph, chances are you’ll do better than average. Whereas in a scenario where Costco reverts to a lower multiple, in a vacuum, it goes lower. But general guess what also happens? So do the shitty Costco knockoff companies or less established retailers. The reason for the multiple decline is generally a macro reason, applied across the board, and the better companies tend to get less punished than the “cheap” shitty ones.