Gregmal

Generally, home building is a shitty business. We all thought airlines changed too and then they showed the same susceptibility to slowdowns. Just give me the asset owners not the builders, assuming they have good balance sheets and reasonable managers. in either event, using GFC for any sort of modeling today shows a general lack of awareness. There’s nothing remotely similar. Even probably the homebuilder balance sheets and business models. Yup. When I see people making that baseline, I laugh. Get off the excel sheets and into the real world.

Institutional presence in SFH housing is still tiny. Tutes ain’t gonna be forced sellers of housing either. Demand there is still insatiable Part of my comfort in the thesis is that every Tom, Dick and Harry underwrites their bear thesis based on GFC but really, that was a once in a generation and maybe even a once in a lifetime event. And even there, it was what? 30% mark to market drawdowns? Things are nowhere close to that. But even that hardly sounds like such a big deal to me. Bring it.

Giamattis character was great up til recently when they seemingly went way overboard making him into some sort of deranged socialist criminal.

Yea Chuck breaking into random storage units and knowing exactly where hard drives are and then getting caught only to have to DA secretly covering his tracks while putting up a facade to trick prince, let alone the way foes always have their issues come to an immediate head to head battle….pushed this from being a time killing show with occasional value to just downright dumb.

Paul Giamatti is one of the most underrated actors out there. He and Kevin Spacey probably two of my all time favorites for these type of roles. Saw 21 was back on NFLX. Great movie as well.

Yes

Got caught up on Billions. It’s crazy how the shows liberal writers go so far out of the way to make SDNY prosecutors look like the corrupt scum that they are. Chuck has lost his mind and the little sidekick is even more deranged. True to life it seems.

FOR is an interesting name to go in there as well. A leveraged land bank controlled by DR Horton. Sole purpose of being public IMO is to transfer traditional homebuilder risks to public shareholders. Located in all the right spots but also probably the most sensitive to hiccups.

+1. Getting what they deserve. What kind of idiot buys this stuff? Oh yea, the smart money.

I generally dont complain. Its not worth the energy. If a restaurant I go to is awful, I just dont go back. If a hotel I stay at is shit, I just dont go back. If a service I order isnt up to par, I cancel future service. Airlines are a bit tougher because its oligopoly like, but even there, to most of the US, I would rather just drive. When I go South for the winter, instead of paying $2000 to fly the family, we just get in the car and do 5-7 hours of driving a day and then stay at a nice hotel. Still comes out the same or less than flying+renting a car+wasting hours standing around at airport.

https://www.crexi.com/properties/798025/california-silver-oaks-plaza-chick-fil-a-san-jose-ca 3.8 on Chick-Fil-A not even commenced yet, located in a socialist stronghold. Bbbbut! rates rising means CRE has to do poorly!

Says a lot when you rather own HP than cash LOL

Between Y, OXY, and now HP it doesn’t seem like big daddy Buff is too scared of this punch bowl boogeyman.

Its overrated. People dont understand anything more than basic academic concepts like RE is a bond substitute so if bonds go down RE has to as well. Its woefully wrong. Thats why cap rates haven't really moved much. You still want to own real estate. Oh look, a friggin Dutch Bros in AZ....4 cap. Isnt retail dead or something? Only Chick-fil-a gets 4 caps! Actually no, theyre still getting 3s even with 2-3% 10 years. Imagine that? https://www.crexi.com/properties/779033/arizona-nec-of-avondale-blvd-and-dale-earnhardt-dr-avondale

I see this getting stomped out soon too. Almost all the negatives are inflicted by our government and fixable. November will be big in terms of removing a lot of the stupid policy related inflation. Sanctions are doing nothing but harming normal people and even now US citizens. I got a laugh this morning out of news how the US was going to block Russian bonds payments. After a month of fake news reports that Russia was going to refuse to pay and thus default turning out to be utter fabrications, now we refuse to let them pay, and make it come true that they “default”. And again who gets fucked? Foreign bond holders…. The US government is waging war on its citizens because it needs an excuse to push its agenda. Notice everything that comes out is fear mongering. A few days ago, “we’re going to have a shortage of COVID vaccines if you don’t push your elected officials to pass a new $10b package”….it’s all a scam. Or how Warren is talking about going after big banks for “funding” oil and gas. While going after oil and gas for “gauging”. And it’s like, well, if no one funds them prices going even higher dumbass.

It’s really kind of funny how the market works. 12-18 months ago everyone was convinced it was transitory inflation. And you wanted to position for that to be untrue. And now the masses are all talking about how inflation is here to stay and, well, you probably want to be positioned differently now that everyone is there. Essentially this is why not everyone can make money or outperform. Gotta be ahead of the crowds.

I think theres a tendency to overthink it. I mean people are making a big fuss over the "inverted yield" curve, and "what does the bond market know" and I just think "who cares" and "why its anyone wasting their time with bonds to begin with"?? Only relevance of the interest rate to most people is what you need to finance and what you can generate above that.

Yea. I love the 2014 but at 150k miles and where used car pricing is, I can’t pass. As great as it is, one event, that is normal or not exactly unexpected of a used car, such as a transmission, and I’m paying roughly the difference between trading up, maybe $7-10k. Except if my 2014 goes and I need a new transmission, I pay for it, and still own a 2014. I am not certain what kind of market is out there but if possible to transfer a lease, this probably seems like a reasonable route for someone looking to buy a newish car. The buyout prices are based on pre batshit residuals. I was getting an oil change on the IS last week and the Toyota place has a 2019 RAV4 with 49k miles in the show room for $34k. Crazy times

Tencent and xiaomi

So just had this fall into my lap. Mother in law has a 2020 Lexus NX on lease. Hates it. Got a new car. Politely made fun of my 2014 IS with 150k miles on it. So she offered to let me buyout the car after the lease expiration. $22k for the above with 24,000 miles. Turned around and hit up Carvana for a quote on the 2014 Lexus. ~$13k. Yea, Tibetan Mastiff teeth marks in the drivers side door panel and all.

Thanks @Viking. The tax advantage accounts make tons of sense then. Agree on investing vs making money. Who cares about the terminology. Appreciate the detail on the process. No one’s is perfect and regardless you always have to evolve to stay ahead of the markets.

It’s not really meant to be an “ouch” comment but just a question of…you really don’t think there is ANY businesses out there, in the entire universe, that are worth investing in, on a basis of anything more than just guessing week to week or month to month fluctuations? Commenting about how “oh another February 2020” when even that example proved to be a silly excuse to sell everything(resetting the holding period shot clock) unless you bought back the same exposure inside of what, 3-4 months? That doesn’t really sound like investing at all to me. Is “investing” really just confined to avoiding short term dips(also described as buying opportunity)? In the process accumulating only short term capital gains tax rates? It seems woefully inefficient even ignoring the whole inflation thing. Did following Stelco for long periods of time prove to be of any benefit if the objective was then to toss it to the curb when the ceo was tricking everyone into giving up their shares into his buyback? Generally speaking I’m all for playing the short term movements but underneath it there needs to be some underpinning of a core investment strategy. Or so one would think.

Yea I would avoid financials like the plague. The Citi thread is both funny and on point. There’s never been a market hiccup where the banks don’t take it up the butt. Even the ones doing well get whacked with multiple contraction. a good area I’ve found recently as rates go up and spreads blow out is merger arbs. Seems to be 10% irr growing on trees there. Also just doing nothing and shorting OTM puts on high quality stuff is a way to be monetizing volatility.

Agreed NVR at 4400 looks pretty good.

Viking I don’t think you’ve ever seen a shadow that didn’t prompt you to conclude a higher cash allocation is warranted. As has been mentioned before, you could have gone to sleep in February of 2020, fully invested, and woke up a few months later barely noticing and been higher 12 months later. Running around full of fear all the time is no way to invest.