Gregmal

I’ve never seen a war or pseudo war that wasn’t taken advantage of by government or used to gain political standing at the expense of the average citizen. I was close enough to the direct effects and visuals of 9-11 to see the impacts of these pissing matches. Of course 9-11 wasn’t just “oh well gee these terrorists showed up out of nowhere and did this for no reason”…the reasons(one’s in which both us and the terrorists wholly believed to be on the “right side” of) ultimately stemmed from actions we took for years and even decades prior. You then look at what transpired over the next 2 decades! We re seeing it in Gaza right now. October 7 wasn’t the “starting point”…but now it’s like ok where does this end? This Russia Ukraine thing started years before the actual “invasion”. Of course, we were at the center of the provocation. You see the complete one sided nature of the reporting. Zelenskyy has turned into a rabid little dictator(assuming he wasn’t already one) and at the end of the day it’s the people of Russia and the people of Ukraine whom are getting fucked. They could have a settlement in a week if they wanted one, but that’s not being allowed to happen. Heck, look at what you see, and then imagine what you don’t see, in terms of the political strategy around OUR politicians when it comes to pushing for Ukraine and Israel aid!! There’s nothing humanitarian about it. Just “what benefits me” from government officials at the higher levels. So yea idk I differ from a lot of people I know on the subject but I really just dont support war and don’t support enabling one, let alone constantly being the ones who provoke, encourage and fund them. Our country certain does that.

Wars are complicated and we have this tabloid tendency through the propaganda arms to create this soccer match style “who do you want to see win” backdrop to them in order to simplify these things and get people to fall in line. Generally I’d prefer no wars. And I also prefer the US stop meddling in all these places and instigating more war. See what’s currently happening in Taiwan.

On the other side of the same coin, would love to see the headline “Xi raises concerns to Biden over continued support of Ukraine”….more us good, them bad, yay tribalism.

I saw this, and just thought....how disingenuous? https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/03/david-einhorn-thinks-inflation-is-reaccelerating-and-has-made-gold-a-very-large-position.html Aint this dude been long and loud gold since basically the GFC?

The biggest mistake Ive seen made over the last few years is that people really want to believe, and go to great lengths to convince themselves, that the market is as simple as "the Fed controls whether stocks go up or down"...I just dont know why this is the case or even would be. At this point pretty much everyone Im aware of has had fair notice as far how to position. In addition, to the last bolded part, why isnt this generally and loosely true, from a historical standpoint? Stocks are at an ATH, or pretty close to it. They are also a VOLATILE asset class. Is this statement untrue because "sometimes they go down"? Like Ive seen so many times talk of "in 2018 the market went down" and its like yea, stocks can do that sometimes, and fast forward 6 years and anyone who bought stocks from those panicking dopes in November and December 2018 has made a fortune...whats the point?

Anyway, back to the topic of 3%, largely high rate propelled inflation...and the topic of equities "not pricing it in", weren't the same exact things said about 4-5% rates? And outside of a couple short lived, headline fueled panic corrections....We're not at SPY 3000 or 4000 or even 5000? And sure we can argue about "absolute" all time highs after taking a hatchet to things in the adjustment category....but still, cant we all admit that we are still MILES away from where the persistent parade of "market isnt pricing things in" predictions have forecast we'd be? Nothing gives away a flawed argument more than extended periods of time going by where.... it simply doesnt occur.

Yup. At least from the people I know and speak with, the Central Americans are unmatched as far as work ethic go. Especially the ones from socialist regimes.

@Dinar you left out free prepaid debit cards! All in all I do agree though that literally once you get out of the lawless cesspools like NYC, these people generally contribute positively. One of the cool aspects of our annual winter break down the east coast is seeing a lot of cool places. We drive cuz its easier with the kids...do a few nights wherever, say Richmond, Hilton Head, Savannah, Raleigh, Knoxville....before going through Florida, which in and of itself is big and diverse. So much of the cool and happening places are an amalgamation of "people" coming together to make it work. Thats almost universal. Where things are gross? This shithubs like NYC, Baltimore/DC, etc....AND....cranky old rural white people areas where they think everyone is coming to take their....IDK what lol.

Did what I do when I ain’t got shit else to do…bought more FRPH

Like theres just always this NEED for some sensational story in the markets, on the news, on social media. Its gotta be an omg a recession, spiking inflation, stagflation, housing crash, mega bubble in progress...lately it seems to have devolved into even more head scratching and ultimately silly things like "braces for the CPI" and "frets over rate cuts" and "wondering if its March or June", "waits on Powell"....and IDK, if youre actually concerned with making sound investments, isnt it just kinda OK to be like yea economy will be solid but not spectacular, and inflation 3-4% with some noise month to month...and just leave it at that? I honestly chalk most of it up to underperforming fund managers and institutional investors who need excuses for why their sophisticated trades dont work, why they cant beat an index, and why they buy stuff that doesnt make sense.

How frequently does the analyst crowd change their positions or arrive at new updates? I don’t know because I don’t follow them because I’ve never found analyst to be good at anything investing related. If they were, they wouldn’t be analysts. The consensus is probably in the ballpark, finally. It was clear in 2021/22/23/and still 24, that like 75% of the peak CPI inflation was supply chain related and the rest housing and service related. IE fairly little has ANY relation to raised interest rates, and some, like housing, only made worse by it. Slowly it seems many have come around to realizing what should have been obvious from the get go. Where were all those analysts and what were the forecasts in say December 21/22/23? If there are still people forecasting recessions, when is their credibility totally shot? If there are people who were calling these vicious wage-price spirals or hyper inflation, when do we stop paying attention to them? So much of this nonsensical game has been rinse and repeated, just like COVID, to where it’s hard to imagine why anyone still falls for it. One uptick in COVID cases/inflation data and it’s “rah-rah see the boogeyman is coming” every time, just like clockwork. But the bigger picture isn’t or at least hasn’t changed. This discussion been going on in the random tops and bottoms thread as well as some of the inflation ones. Maybe the bulk of the market has finally gotten to where it should’ve been years ago, but we still have the people who have been wrong about recessions and inflation trying to drum up those animal spirits and it’s just like ok when will they get on with their lives? Bigger picture, does 3 25 bps rate cuts impact ones investing? 0? How about a hike or two? Because if one’s looking out at anything much further than the next few quarters the majority of those things are totally arbitrary and irrelevant but like in mid 2022, if enough of these people scream loud enough we can move the market a little, and they can do the “see I told you so!”s even though virtually nothing they forecast happened…no recession, no housing crisis, no hyper inflation. But when the market endures it’s "bullshit", and because of "mother of all bubbles", and "hopium", and "the election"…just seems like it’s awfully tiring and not too profitable playing these games when there’s plenty of ways to just sit on your ass and make money.

In order for inflation to get anywhere near 5% we'd need a "raging" economy. I think 3-4% is here and fine and they'll likely cut as they said a few times but I think rates in the 3-4% camp are fine. We dont need 0%, and we dont need, but can probably live with the 4-5% we are at now although thats probably benefitting savers more than necessary. In general though its just the constant noise, from the same folks. We were lied to about the recession that was "already underway" for 3 years. Now that seems finally abandoned because the "inflation is here to stay" crowd gets a couple prints that confirm all their biases....after those same folks told us we needed more than "a couple" down prints to confirm inflation was subsiding.

Even China seems to have bottomed and is undoubtedly cheap. The inflation screamers just remind me of the covid variant screamers in 2021. Like just let it go already lol.

LOL it just seems simple from a risk reward although Im not sure I am enticed enough to put it on because I dont really see a massive recession on the horizon. The futures options same deal except they kinda fall into the options category where I need to be somewhat right on the timing or the option is a zero. But generally, it just seems like a lot of the mouthy "gotcha" like talking heads are back with "there won't be...gasp....rate cuts this year"...and its like "ok, so we stay where we are, whats the problem?....to which we get some iteration of "the market is priced for perfection"...which I think to myself, "ok, but weren't you same people saying this 500/1000/1500 SPY points ago too? "...I mean even if we get another HIKE....uhhh...its not gonna be more than 25/50....and only if the economy keep raging...so who TF cares? Seems like everyone is trying to day trade their way into next week or months news...meanwhile theyre missing the old economy stocks that largely sucked the past decade...ripping. Citi is hot fire right now. GM dont look now, even that turd catching a bid. Energy is good to go. Entertainment is sound. Building stuff is blazing....but yea...it all comes down to March CPI....will they, or won't they? It all comes down to this! Some of this shit is so stupid. And oh yea, AI is a bubble!

I actually think, although haven’t thought too heavily, about how decent a hedge trade it would be to go long an obnoxious amount of like 20 year treasuries on margin. Right so buying puts is generally a sophisticated white collar guys way of throwing money in the garbage. Shorting as well is largely a fools game. But if I can borrow/margin at 6-7%, while getting paid 4.5%, what’s my upside and what’s my downside? The never relenting “inflation fanatics” who have seen inflation everywhere for much of the last decade or so still see it, and after nearly two years of monthly declines in the data we get an expected hiccup or two…no it doesn’t mean we re heading back to 5-10%…but it’s given us a neat setup as a few of the fringe participants start leaning on the very short term data because gee, if we can’t trade or gamble on every daily or weekly theme…whats the point? So really, if I go long a monstrous amount of the 20 year treasury, maybe I assume 10-15% upside risk if we run back to last years highs which were basically just a well timed Ackman pump? Plus the margin rate minus the interest so call it another 3? But if shit hits the skids….Fed drooling to cut. Could we hit 30-50% upside? Definitely think so. So a heads I’m hedging and not losing much and my longs soar on more good data, tails I have a hero trade on my hands at de minimus cost….

I think this is such an awesome underlying aspect that really helps separate and categorize a lot of market participants. One thing was so obvious this entire time and that is that the “raise rates to fight inflation” thing just wasn’t really applicable to the majority of the “issues” over the past 3-4 years. Rates had and have very little impact on anything, and it’s only the academics that kept thinking we needed another hike after every monthly CPI print. If nothing else, the reckless rate hikes just added probably 3-5 years to a housing bull market that was already due to run for most of the next decade. Otherwise, a monkey could see 3/4 of the “inflation” was really just supply chain related and then most of the 25% that wasn’t was housing related and only exacerbated by higher rates. Nevertheless we still hear the same old folks going off about hikes and cuts and the money supply and all these textbooky talking points and thankfully, much of the Fed falls into that camp and it’s why it’s been so easy to dance around this theme and exploit it. Basically the TLDR; so much of the market deeply desires the market to be predictable and fall in line with what the textbooks told them, and when it falls outside those bounds, they insist on still trying to quantify if within that framework, even though the new framework isn’t exactly that hard to apply…it just simply requires being capable of thinking outside the box.

Yea idk. It just seems so obvious at this point that the whole “what’s the Fed gonna do” and “how many rate cuts/increases” game is a fools game. Remember SPY 3000?

Yea, stocks are supposed to be volatile. Its a feature, not a bug.

NIce. Yea these guys are doing something incredible. Sports monetization is all about the licensing and Rubin has basically used Fanatics plus initial ownership in a couple teams to infiltrate that ecosystem. It started out as just apparel and now its basically in everything. This will be a royalty like machine on the Big 4 American Leagues. The key of course, is you need the teams and leagues to grant you the licenses...and well, he's allowed the Players Unions to be large investors in Fanatics....how brilliant. Its now in the Players interests to let Fanatics make as much money as possible.

Yea, thats why I honestly dont care AT ALL, either way about election interference. Everyone does it, if your people are too stupid not to be influenced then thats their fault. The problem I do have? Its with the people that sit here, either because they are stupid, or dishonest, and scream about election interference as if its a problem and isolated to one group or another.

https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-ukraine-hypocrisy

Look at what John McCain and the CIA did in Ukraine in 2014! Then see all the brainwashed Americans justify funding the war because "Russia invaded a sovereign nation!"....its just so annoying we have to put up with this kind of ignorance/stupidity in the general society.

Even this terror attack in Russia…see how obviously different it’s being reported/treated versus other mass casualty attacks? The Post even had an article rife with insinuation that the perpetrators were victims of torture afterwards! And then of course the conspiracy theories that “Putin did it”, just without the disclaimers warning you it’s fake news.

Is it not one of the absolute stupidest exercises imaginable as an investor to sit around trying to guess "this or that" in terms of "what will outperform"? First, many have a hard enough time as it is, just picking things that make money in absolute terms. 2) no one Ive seen, even amongst the greatest investors of all time, has consistently demonstrated an advantage guessing these things, they instead just focus on finding those one or two high conviction ideas....and 3) isnt it also doubly dumb from a simple logic point of view given that theres like 10,000+ listed investments out there and there will also be one that "woulda done better"?

I dont know why people would care. I mean AOC was a bartender and now look at her? Simply electing someone will allow them to enrich themselves. I'd only remotely care, and in a good way, if it was someone like Bloomberg, Trump, Schultz...who actually made their money in the real world rather than a Paul Ryan or Joe Biden who basically enriched themselves off the whole "elected official, public servant" schtick. But Im not sure its a huge deal either way to be like "oh everyone needs to know this guy is loaded"...