Gregmal

@Xerxes this style or type of market fear behavior is normal and what hinders people who can’t find a way to overcome it. Whenever real fears are rationally dismantled, I almost always expect to hear “well what about this”….with “this” being some super low, multiple standard deviation type catastrophic event. To which I’m like “ok, we’ll this cycle of worry never ends…do I spend my time repeatedly entertaining stupid what ifs….or do I just go put my time to work making investments”.

Powell says “quite a bit of room to raise rates”… Gregmal: checks rates… hmmmm, from 0? Sounds mathematically accurate. Goes back to being amazed at grown men and sophisticated investors being petrified of 25-50 bps hikes….

It’s even simpler than that. Look at the long term stock market chart. Pick your timeframe. 10/20/50/100 years? No difference Second, every event that the perma bears point to as being something you should be scared of? Is a generational buying opportunity.

Thanks for the clarification. Dont watch much tv. Just heard he was talking again and its like, how many times do we need to hear what this guy is peddling? Him and Faber have been doing their thing since I started investing.

So now Grantham is on TV talking about how things are going to be even more severe than he thought…last week! Some of these guys are such scammers. The more attention you give them the more they seek. Don’t know how anyone can take him seriously. What a fool.

Waiting for a 90 year old dude to die is like waiting for the market to crash, the illusion of it happening tomorrow is real, and then however many years later you realize you wasted your time. Or then it does happen and you’re still paying more than if you had just bought on day one. When Jobs died Apple was down 4-5%. So not much. And at this stage of the game I’d argue Jobs was way more important to Apple than Buffett is to Berkshire in todays form.

So for sure I’ve been one of the biggest inflation is happening mouth pieces for the last 5 quarters or so, but really, isn’t 90% of this really just self inflicted? Housing IMO is different. Low end restaurant and warehouse labor is different. But the end of the day, on the consumer good side, it’s really just a result of there being shortages everywhere. Why is this so terrifying to people? It’s easily solvable. Now I don’t think this gets fixed overnight. Instead of fixing the ports or allowing more oil to be drilled this administration basically just wants to sit around and talk COVID all day. Instead of sending messages on the supply chain, they’re wasting time sending people freakin testing kits LOL…but I don’t get why there’s so much concern. This isn’t an insurmountable problem. The last few polls show 80% of Americans view inflation as their largest concern…when will Snorlax get the message and stop obsessing over a cold? I definitely would have figured heading into mid terms there would be more focus on solving this. IMO once you see these measures we may start seeing deflation. Just something I’m keeping an eye on.

Haha yea IDK lately Ive struggled with the whole thing. As an investor, who cares about volume, which is a stupid trading technical. Valuation matters right? Nonetheless between PCYO and GEOS its like, yea, I'd pay above market so as long as theyre there......then theres YSACW which is just kinda like, OK the SPAC isnt in any sense of the definition a standard SPAC deal. Its really going to come down to execution, with guys who know how to execute. 60c for 5 years on the warrants? Why not. Bidding against yourself? Who cares if the price is right, right?

Your post actually got me thinking a little bit, and maybe a tad embarrassing, I swear I literally never look at or worry about the indexes, but damn, DOW 30 looks pretty awesome in terms of broad diversity to best in class stuff.

Yea it’s an utter beast on the balance sheet side and you have a stupid margin of safety on declines to really back up the truck. Per my convos with Mark I have the utmost confidence that what irks us, ie the “come on already” shouts from the bleachers as far as land acquisitions and buybacks go, is also what protects us. Guy is 1000% committed to being well capitalized and not making mistakes.

At these prices it will be soon. Been a top 5 but took some off mid teens as there’s a clear catalyst gap from phase 1- phase 2. Now we re getting into the heart of phase 2, oil and gas pickup means fracking revenue could blow up, and this transitions real nicely into the commercial phase which is where all the dollars start pouring in. Still early if you’re trying to time the move, but I think at these prices I’m cool with holding dead money for a couple quarters. Just wish the options were more liquid. I’d be shorting 10/12.5 puts all day here.

Finally got off some good slugs of PCYO last two days. 30% of daily volume be damned

Tilson is a breathing embodiment of high finance/WS. Go to Ivy League school. Make friends. Gets rich selling his connections and other bs. One of the worst investors Ive ever seen. Basically copied Bill Ackman when Ackman was crushing it and still managed to blow up his fund. Then taught courses on how to short for $2500 a pop when shorting was one of the primary reasons his fund sucked. Then started a newsletter LOL

No silly questions. Because there isnt really a right answer. I didnt invest through 1987 and 1999 but I immersed myself in material related to those events. Dig up newspapers that give you real time sentiment. Shit like that. BRK letters are good. If you can conceptualize events and then put them in context, you will be ahead of the game. For certain styles, unfortunately, you really just have to be in the market. You'll never know how truly terrible it is to be in a short squeeze if you've never been short over the weekend and some great news gets released. Shit like that. Overtime, you get that experience by being in a lot of different positions and seeing how they end up playing out. Psychology is one of the most underrated aspects of investing. Markets and cycles are always heavily driven by psychology. On position sizing, its personal. But if you are young and capable, you can almost never go too big. Up til maybe your mid 30s. By then you need to have something put in the bank. But my biggest regrets were being in my mid 20s and doing it the proper textbook way. Where I diversified and put less than 10% into a big winner by the name of GOOG. Of course, years later simply by earning, the GOOG position and all its success wasn't really relevant. Could I have risked 3-4x that? Absolutely. Even if it went down 50% 3-4x the allocation at that point in my life wouldnt be a big deal. So position sizing, assumptions matter. But project a position against your net worth 5-10 years out and ask if youre really making a worthwhile investment. Further on that. If you have a 6 figure portfolio in your 30s, but make 6 figures annually, again, a 10% loss can easily be replaced. Whereas if you have $5M and you're 50 and never plan on working again, you're going to go the @Viking route and try to preserve your wealth rather than grow it aggressively. Once you have what you need to live on your own terms, more isnt really more, at least not all the time. The other side of that, IMO, is that once you have what you need, you can have fun with anything over that. The @ERICOPOLY route I guess we can call it. So theres really different strokes for different folks. If you enjoy investing then theres added benefit. My only real advice is if you're doing it, know yourself, and immerse yourself in it. Ask questions(like you did) theres lots of people here you can learn from. I learn lots from folks all the time, sometimes they probably dont even realize it. 1) stick to quality. 2) size yourself properly. 3) realize where you are in your life and where you want to go. Money is just a means to an end.

TBH I probably agree with you more than I let on with some regards. I wouldnt even fully say that everything I throw out there is held in high conviction. Most of it is, but sometimes simply smashing ideas together, especially with other thoughtful people, helps form a useful Frankenstein. These sort of places are great because you see enough of everything.

Managing your buying power(cash, liquidity, etc, whatever you want to call it) and sizing your positions properly are IMO two of the most important things. If you get those right, you can make a lot of mistakes and live to tell about it. Theres lot of people who get 4/5 right and the 1 wrong kills them. And then theres people who get 9/10 right but if its too small it doesnt matter. Balance and evolve. The right answer today isnt always the right answer tomorrow(or even an hour from now).

Man look at all you fundamental investors patting yourselves on the back over day trading gains! Just kidding. But important to remember sometimes volatility and investing are related and sometimes they’re not. 80% of what I saw selling off in the morning was total nonsense. End of the day it turned out to be just that. If it hadn’t, would you feel any different?

All fair. I just think there’s way too much attention being paid to the Fed. It would be one thing if there was nothing worth investing in out there but that’s certainly not the case. Plus, as was my point before, hindsite everyone seems to predict 100% correct, but the real time going forward track records are much lower. So becoming “too certain” with respect to correlation to what in the past has proven challenging to handicap… just think there’s easier things to focus on. Like fundamentals of companies you own or seek to own. Let the Fed do what they want and let short term participants carry on as they wish.

The decline in Dec of 2018 was speculated to be a number of things, it seems after the fact it became consensus “Fed”….IMO it seemed like a slower version of the 2010 flash crash which was mainly algo driven, but whatever. Either way, again, you’re talking about a 3 week correction and acting like it was a turning point? In 2018-19 the Fed raised rates and maintained the entire time they were monitoring the situation. When consensus became that they may be moving too fast, they slowed down? Why would they all of a sudden abandon caution after a decade of being really caution? Cuz they want to ruin Biden? Makes no sense. If March 2020 was so obvious, why were you 100% in cash? This ain’t meant as a slight but over and over again I see people doing this hindsite stuff. With all that liquidity how come everyone was so bearish? Not just in 2020 but most of the decade! With all the rate hikes in 2018 why only a brief 3 week run of the mill correction? Even now, if the fed hikes as expected, you think the consensus of sophisticated investors will simply decide to stop investing? Throw in the towel? Come on

I mean I’ve literally been hearing about this Fed punch bowl for what seems like an eternity and it’s always the gold and cash hoarders and idk, if a thesis is wrong for that long maybe it’s just not as potent as we think it should be? We had a period where Fed tightened, raised rates, etc. Ended up being pretty spectacularly uneventful for the “punch bowl bear” thesis. Are we all really just afraid of having to invest on fundamentals ?

I am not sure all the underpinnings of this are entirely there. Is it possible to have a 10% correction in the stock market? What about 20%? Should shitty companies that got bid up for silly reasons get punished shortly thereafter? That’s perfectly sensible to me. Will people who don’t know how to invest sell their stocks because other people are selling? Sure. I don’t see why there always needs to be a lot more to it than that. The Fed put doesn’t need to be there, unless the bet is that the Fed destroys the economy…which…seems like a poor bet to me. Much of the short trade I think is done. The decline in the stuff that deserves it have been huge. It could still continue but my take is there’s better use of time than shorting for the last couple drops in the bottle. Otherwise? What? Shorting good companies hoping they go down tomorrow or the day after? Not a game I wanna play. Can you explain where you see a bubble in real estate? Every thesis I’ve heard basically simplifies to “prices went up 20% in a year” which doesn’t really seem like a bubble to me, especially compared to where the rest of the world is with it. Or relative to where real estate prices have been for the past decade plus. Sometimes I think we try to hard to see what we want to see. The Fed raised rates and all that in 2018/19 and we were fine. +32% if I recall. However all we hear about is a 3 week correction in December. All in all this whole “the Fed controls stock market returns” narrative has been around forever and I kind of think it’s repeatedly been shown to be a mistake to fall back on assuming it’s true every time we have a few down days or weeks.

Exactly. A bunch of folks have spent a decade over investing because everything went up and a bunch of folks spent a decade shorting or being under invested because everything went up. Now people everywhere think the world is ending because of……a two week correction in the amount of ….10%. We can talk about the Fed all we want but NEN is illiquid as they come and has done A-ok. Saying the market needs liquidity to go up makes no sense. You simply need to remember what the purpose of it is. And if you’re “investing”, then I am not sure what Fed liquidity has to do with it. Rates, sure. But it’s definitely overblown

You’re double counting. If the inflation is causing economic weakness you have no need to raise rates because supply and demand will take care of it. So saying an economic slowdown, plus fed raising rates substantially? Not happening.

For those looking to do this….who knows what VIX 35+ means?

Sold NKLA puts, trimmed 20% of AAPL puts, and cut GOOG. bought MSGS, MSFT, BC, BAC with proceeds. Picking at more PCYO but volume ain’t great.