Gregmal

Thanks Mike!

Ive been busy lately and this probably warrants a longer response but Ill give the short one. 1) do whatever it takes. Worked 100 hour 5 day work weeks in the beginning. 1.5 of those non work hours per day were spent commuting. Be relentless, thats the difference between winners and losers. Just get the results. Need to crank adderall for a bit to get there...down the hatch those little fuckers go. Pitch an Asian client over the phone at 1am NY time? lets do it. Hop on a flight to Bermuda to have lunch with an existing relationship short notice...so what, done. You gotta want it and be willing to do whatever it takes to get the results. 2) invest wisely, be willing to challenge traditional perception of what investing and risk are. My first big purchase at 23 was an Audi because I dealt with clients and you cant drive a schmuck car. Investing in appearance mattered to a degree. Second investment was buying a house I could live in for 30 years and raise a family in. By 26 my critical infrastructure was in place. From there just invest the fuck out of the majority of my incoming cashflow and then make sure lifestyle scales up to reward myself, but with a massive lag so that its never outpacing my means. Now my goal is to just make sure my kids have the wealth to do whatever they want in life and with compounding and time on my side, its fairly easy.

Sure, but what they were talking about was that you couldn’t live well on $500k or whatever in nyc and my comment was just kinda like why TF would you want to when you can have a significantly higher quality of life moving out of the city while still being just a short drive away.

I think there is a HUGE in between ground with poverty on one end, and wealthy on the other. I’ve brought it up before, but eliminate the privileged Ivy League type, who get handed high paying jobs because dads friend knew a guy, and eliminate the really poor people who have no chance. Take your slightly above average husband and wife with 1 kid and another planned. What’s a reasonable salary? $200k combined? Now eliminate taxes, housing, food, and transportation. What’s left? How many friggin years now do they have to save EVERYTHING in order to retire? How about if they decide to enjoy life a little? The system is just so stacked that I understand why people lose hope. If they’re not financial wizards and just put the money in a savings account even at a 15% savings/income rate, they each need to work for what? 30-40 years while living like cheapskates? Fuck that.

I’ve had big and small houses and honestly my favorite place is a 1600 sq/Ft lakehouse because it’s small enough that everyone spends good time together and interacts. Our bigger house the girls are in the movie theatre, my sons doing legos in the living room, wife’s using the home office, I’m doing yard work…it’s cool but just kinda different. And we still only probably use 40% of the home.

I’ve just never got the “NYC is expensive” cries from people with families. Looked for 2 minutes, you can put down 30% and your monthly payment is lower than what you’d get in a mediocre nyc “luxury” building. Safe as can be. Great public school. Yard for the kids and dog. Tons of stuff for the wives- ranging from bs part time jobs to social clubs for the stay at homes. 20 minute train/bus to the city. My friends dad has drove in every day for 40 years and if you leave before “everyone else” decides to go to work, it’s a 15 minute commute. Yea parking and tolls are a bitch but it still beats living in the city. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/502-Prospect-St-Glen-Rock-NJ-07452/37919664_zpid/

Well the other issue is, and I dont mean to offend anyone cuz I have plenty of friends in Manhattan, but like WTF are you still doing in Manhattan at that point? Theres plenty of more appropriate and safe places to raise a family that are within 50 miles of NYC. So if things are tight on that income, its kinda your own fault.

All throughout the last 12-18 months we heard about how much trouble the market was in; supposedly because it was detached from reality with a recession “already underway” with the only thing holding it together being the “hopium” that there would be rate cuts. And how expensive everything was, and how everyone is “asleep at the wheel” because we “better listen to Powell” when he says there won’t be rate cuts this year. And there weren’t any rate cuts in 2023 and everything did fine anyway.

People still thought COVID was a big deal in late 2021 as well. Knowing when the keg is kicked is an underrated skill set.

Yea but despite those returns I heard he’s had a loser or two…

Yes it’s as old as time and bipartisan…when all else fails, pick a fight with (insert China, Russia, Middle East)….

Bottom line is you can’t have a realistic or rational conversation about China with 95% of the American or Canadian population.

Next thread, will the US meddle in Taiwan and provoke another war?

Yes the reason being that since then, the population of several groups of undesirables has exploded in NY. The largest group being government. Additionally, it’s now sport, to hoot and holler and protest about what other people are doing with their own private property.

Totally….we were excited hearing that Topgolf was looking to open near us in NJ a few years ago. In 2022 some stuff actually got approved at the local level in Parsippany. However after some updates it was stated that “there is no set opening date although they are hoping for 2026”….4-5 fuckin years lol. Then St Joe decided they want to do one and it gets approved in Dec 23 and will be open spring of 2025….some of these cities and regions are total jokes.

A lot of this is also skewed and fragmented regionally. Its a classic center of the world syndrome we see in places like NYC and LA...but productivity is plenty healthy in many places. I cant even name all the real world examples of this because there are so many, but it really is a regional thing. The reasons range from incentives, to work ethic, to legislative stuff...but its real. I saw guys putting up roofs and constructing a Walmart on Thanksgiving Day in FL...in NY you need to spend 3-5 years asking some scumbag politician permission and bribing union people just to get your building permit. I went to Short Hills the other week to get my wife a birthday gift at Cartier...something Ive done plenty times before...store was now closed and "appointment only" because animals in hoodies and goofy looking sneakers keep stealing with no repercussion. Ultimately jobs and productivity is a function of the business environment...and on top of it being very much a blue collar bull market for employment right now, its also area dependent. But too many people get sucked into the big city narrative stuff and thats gonna lead one astray.

The trade or momentum tailwind with these has always been the exciting part. Whether or not they become full blown gold or fiat or whatever...thats a long ways out and the most likely outcome is that its something in between but in between works because thats net adoption. But the opportunity to make money has always been huge, and its largely fueled by FOMO. Theres bubble characteristics, but we ve gotten these mini bubbles several times now even just in the last 5 years or so. Mini bubbles are also traditionally things that occur with early excitement about longer term, real advancements and life changing disruptor type shifts. Of course, the reason for the opportunity is purely because of lazy, arrogant, and bizarrely pompous financial people just immediately declaring this stuff to be worthless because THEY dont understand it. I mean when Munger, Buffett, and Dimon are full blown trashing stuff, its open season for all the self righteous, textbook value bros to start chirping and feeling good about making statements that really just brandish misplaced confidence and an information void. Ultimately, this is a recurring theme...people are lazy and just dont know how to value things unless there are easy shortcuts. The most classic of which is the simple, "whats the cashflow, now Ill decide a multiple, then we arrive at the valuation"...If this didnt exist Id have to have had to work so much harder to make a lot of my money...so Im thankful for its existence. But really...gold has no utility over bitcoin. Its got no utility over a tennis ball if the argument is just "make jewelry" cuz I can find tennis ball jewelry on Etsy or something too. What a silly argument. Two things matter, and its supply and demand. Inflation is a kicker. But ask people to try and estimate supply and demand and they get all mad and thinks its unfair they have to look forward and make predictions vs the simplicity and ease of looking backward at financial statements....errrr, yea where have we seen this before too? So I dont really own any of this stuff directly anymore; after the runup in 2021 I cleared it after a nice multi year multi bagger sprint, but do have a fairly reasonable private investment in Ripple and am fairly optimistic people willing to play ball in this space continue to make money. And thats the name of the game. Not "my cashflow analysis is better than yours"...

https://thecryptobasic.com/2024/01/11/ripple-ceo-confirms-no-ipo-soon-as-ripple-to-buy-back-285m-of-its-shares/ Whats funny is if one removed the name "Ripple", investors would be ejaculating all over the place at the chance to buy an early stage growth company at 50%+ discount to just its cash an equivalents, WHILE the company was buying back stock.

Nah I still have some but the other stuff just outgrew it.

MSG, JOE, Nintendo like 80% and then another 30% or so between FRP Holdings, Fairfax, and depending on the state of volatility, AIV.

Pretty much the same as I’ve been. Haven’t don’t much for awhile. eBay probably the only current candidate to become a new top 5.

All that becomes evident over time is that if folks wanna wage war, it should be against the real enemies of the people and that is journalists and high level academics. Its not school teachers or police officers, but these scumbags who hide behind meaningless but societally engrained auras of prestige. 95% of journalists nowadays promote partisan agendas and ideology rather than just finding the truth. These academics who make 6/7 figures teaching a few hours a week while preying on students and sitting on influential boards and societies; these are the ones creating toxic and poisonous substance that then permeates through America. They dictate what the kids get taught. Theyre the gatekeepers for what makes the news. They determine the narrative. Glad Ackman is exposing them as frauds, liars, and cheats. Same goes for Musk. And I dont care at all if some outlet or reporter can find a "gotcha" snippet that perhaps indicates either are hypocrites...

What’s amusing too is what these clown liberals are doing internally. Both Musk and Ackman were pretty prominent liberals not more than a decade ago.

Exactly. It’s hilarious and breathtakingly stupid. The same people pushing feminist independence and bs ideology now wanna “gotcha” Bill over something his second wife apparently did in her professional endeavors….I emphasize second wife because it’s not like it’s his high school sweetheart; they both got together after already being far down the career path. No rational person would decide this is a reasonable “gotcha”…fuck I met my wife early in college and couldn’t tell you a thing she did or wrote about, nor could I do so in regards to her career related work. Yet some elitist academic shitbag leaks to some low integrity journalist, and voila, now “they’ve really got him!”….nah, they’re about to get everything they deserve and more and it’s gonna be glorious. Literally one of the dumbest and most unnecessary “poke the bear” examples I’ve ever seen in my life.

Basically this. That and when you see guys with performance like this, you know their only real goal in the first place was to get lucky and do something crazy enough to get enough publicity to end up with eternal marketing material via Bloomberg and CNBC snippets. Which he definitely accomplished.