Gregmal

So I haven’t been doing a whole lot and while on vacation am not inspired to be doing much more than small trades/swings but if the product of Fed liquidity was snuffing out volatility, is the new trade to be long volatility? Of course the calls and in general VIX futures are a tough long trade. Is the winning formula to short VIX puts? Seems pretty much a given volatility should remain elevated as “whatever” people expect to play out continues to do so or not do so over the coming months.

Ya I dont really think its wise to ever go in too heavy on a market timing call, but if I were to place some bear chips at the table..... tech is really kinda low reward/ high risk right now IMO. Housing, Land, Entertainment, and Energy for this old geezer. EDIT: Actually bought a starter in MCW today

Now AMZN beats and the QQQs and related cos go up. A day after FB sent them all down. A day after GOOG sent them up. People have officially lost their minds. Or maybe it just happened slowly over a 10 year stretch. I find it amusing.

Even the ones that just posted awesome earnings are for some reason trading lower after these couple duds. Too many retards in the market and too many know nothing participants and index/etf products. It’s gonna drag down everything.

Search, Android, Youtube, self driving and AI units, cash. Google is a total monster. Apple is probably overvalued but its excellent as well. MSFT I dont see a weakness to not even regulatory. The rest, rightfully having issues.

All I know is that if things keep playing out that way they are, theres gonna be an ugly divorce. The romance that basically the entire market has with the FANGs won't last forever. Its perfectly normal in the course of history for good companies to trade at 15x if theres question marks or headwinds. We're still seemingly at the "every dip is buyable because theyre beautiful" phase.

GOOG and MSFT are diversified behemoths. Basically high quality tech ETF. The one dimensional one trick ponies are getting walloped.

What’s more is Sahm is actually one of the better ones. There’s so much malaise and complacency with folks and the bar for investments just seems lower than I can ever recall. We ve come around to the baseline being “if they hit numbers and you give it a 35x”….. just another data point and red flag to take notice of

You can clone Kerrisdale, who's lazy VIC pitch just went full public. If you assume a ridiculous multiple on 23 estimates you can get 25% upside from $185 LOL. Yea, thats hedge fund investing these days. 2/20 baby!

I feel like a geezer remembering the days of pre split GOOG(no GOOGL) going nowhere at $500 a share because everyone was obsessed with clicks and all that dumb shit. Now it’s roses and rainbows and that’s nice but certainly the cycle of in favor/out of favor is skewed at the moment. And has been for a few years. Whereas I still don’t see anyone pounding their chests about XOM, FCX, PXD, etc lol. One day we ll see that again too.

Yea that’s why I’ve been open to swapping out some of the big tech stuff I have. You can very easily see the next decade being kind to the best of breed companies in the energy/commodity sector. Tech? Not so much. Even the FANGs, great companies and all, but I can easily envision environments that are challenging for them. The baton always gets passed when rallies occur sector wide over multiple year periods.

Now imagine if XOM got even a fraction of the rerating benefit those others got over the next decade?

July and September NFLX puts

It’s easy to see why this service is valued on the institutional level. The feckless suites who have to allocate OPM largely care about one thing and that’s self preservation/enrichment and CYA. They’d sign up all day for 3% returns and no volatility as long as they got their salaries and bonus in perpetuity. So there’s that. On an individual level though, idk but I’ve always thought that once your life quality was cemented, the rest just kind of isn’t as important. So like, if $2m covers your shit for the foreseeable future, why in the world would you be such a baby with respect to dealing with volatility on the rest? If you don’t need the money tomorrow why do you care what it does tomorrow? It’s so dumb logically.

He has done very well. The big mistake most people make is using that basis and also assuming that most of his investors have also done well.

Eh I think they’re all valid criticisms and things that contribute to the performance of these guys. But we can agree to disagree and revisit the next time the next letter comes out and he still wants to blame the same things as for his poor performance even though he s not expected to perform.

Yea I mean my main thing is like yo stop making excuses. Start being accountable to your investors. Klarman and Einhorn and all these guys have enough capital to go activist. Or make bids. To do SOMETHING. Yet they’re lazy and sit on their asses and put up horrible numbers insisting on doing it their way. I don’t think there’s anything admirable about a one dimensional investor. That’s what makes Buffett so amazing. Tepper too. Ackman as well. Look at how they evolve constantly.

It’s far easier to respect and learn from people who earned it. Who build their wealth with their own hard work. You know they put their money where their mouth is. They grew from a base that most normal people can relate to. Rather than a privileged Johnny who’s spent his whole life being silver spooned…went to great school mom and dad paid for, never worked a real job, and often when he s wrong throws temper tantrums or blames everyone else which is the big thing I see over and over again with Klarman. His underperformance is always someone else’s fault.

It’s a show. His general advice is pretty good for what it is. I’ve found few fundamentally better than “there’s always a bull market somewhere”. Met him before too…really nice down to earth guy. But the rest is just tv rubbish and especially his individual stock picks.

Eh I guess my gist is that they’re spoiled brats who have these big egos and shrouds of secrecy, generally don’t like being transparent, and I find it odd people give a shit what they do or say because you can look at the results and see a lot of it doesn’t add up or that they make their money in deals normal people can’t do. There’s rarely anything replicable you can learn from their investment styles(other than being extremely arrogant and entitled) and even less from how they are as people. So when I see these “ooh what did Seth do?” Or “why did monish sell?” “Eihnorn just bought XYZ” stuff it’s like who gives a shit. You have enough evidence to conclude the caliber of investor they are and don’t really need to read another quarterly letter making excuses about excess and the Fed and punch bowls and all that “I’m smarter which is why I underperform” crap.

Assuming HBS stands for…… Harvard Business School…then that’s kind of my point. None of these guys did real work or grinded through shit jobs saving their $100k a year for 5+ years hoping to launch their funds. They never put up with being shit on by bosses while working 12 hours a day. They were just given it.

We hear it all the time from bear oriented funds….why should we care about one year? Especially 15 years ago….

Yea not to mention that none of these guys are transparent at all about how they even made their money to begin with. Most of them were given money from mom and dad or made it doing sleazy shit and really if you never once had to worry about the basic shit 95% of normal folks do, “managing money” is easy. IMO how and when folks get their first mil or two changes everything. The Einhorns of the world who graduated Ivy League and then were given a half mil to play with didn’t earn shit and never had to deal with real adversity. Can’t imagine life was too tough for the Klarmans of the world either.

Yup. Klarman is another clown. “I’m smarter than everyone else and my underperformance is better and more sophisticated than your outperformance so don’t question me and don’t you dare publish my letters”…LOL

Used to own it. Total shame what happened to the company. Literally nothing from the clown report turned out accurate but reputational damage here was massive. Basically pure smash and grab as Cohodes calls it.