Gregmal

Is it just me or have posts begun getting cut up for ad placement? If so, Sanjeev...can we solve this problem the way everything else in the world gets solved? Those who dont want to see ads everywhere pay a few bucks to prevent this?

Either way you kind of have a problem. If you are quite wealthy or have a huge hoard of cash sitting around, your money is being devalued by the current printing extravaganza. People have been crying about housing bubbles in Canada for as long as I can remember. You willing to sit on cash for another decade? If not, and you are investing it, well, when/if the bubble pops the cash is probably not going to want to be pulled from your investments which will likely be depressed. In which case you will need financing. Except during blowups getting financing is a best a total bitch and at worst pretty damn hard. My 2c would be to do what I did. Settle on something in the suburbs about 45 minutes to 1 hour from the big city. Its definitely going to be cheaper. Not as inflated in price, and if you like the area and want to live there long term who cares? Buy something you know you can afford, dont reach. You can always renovate as well. Then down the line if things or life changes, you can operate from a position of strength.

Sold some MX. Paid down some margin. Started GILT. sold remainder MX. Go private at $29. $26 is good enough for me. How many stocks are you holding Greg? Seems like you have a bit in everything and baskets of SPACs and REITs. Right now probably between 50-60. Its segmented though. Top 6 ideas are close to 100% weighting(which includes about ~40% in BRK) and top 10 is about 115%. On top of that Ive got low 20%-ish allocation to pre deal spac but thats negligible in terms of capital at risk. Got a trading and tracking basket currently sitting around 25% which is lower than normal but Ive been trading a lot less this year since the setup I'm seeing is ripe and has a long runway. REITs(or RE related companies) are probably around 60-70% of my assets. Also got another high teens allocation to shorts/puts. Altogether it roughly works out to being fully margined BRK(a bet I found sound making at the 230s level), and slightly less than 80% invested otherwise one accounting for short/hedge positions. Numbers are roughly calculated without looking at a thing since last week so yes, I'm well margined, no Im not doing anything too insane, yes I like to be aggressive with conservative stuff and be a pussy with aggressive stuff....Cheers.

Sold some MX. Paid down some margin. Started GILT. sold remainder MX. Go private at $29. $26 is good enough for me.

The degree to which they've been hyping the shit out of these "new strains" and emphasizing words like "mutant" and phrases like "potentially deadly and contagious" is all one needs to see to know something fishy is up. Basically reads like a stock promotion type of deal. Press releases written by stock promoters getting paid to help the company insiders sell shares. "possibly evading new vaccines", "possibly more lethal", "possibly more contagious"....fuck off. They say "possibly" to lie without having repercussions. I woke up today and "potentially" a plane could crash into my house. Potentially my computer could blow up. Potentially a bear coming out of hibernation could walk into my house, sit down at the dining room table, and order my wife to make him waffles..... however none of those things are any more likely to occur today than they were yesterday, but when you take liberties with words and have no desire to be ethical or honest, you can deliberately create clicks by presenting things in specific ways.

I'd say it effects most people because folks have been told to stay locked in their homes. Folks have had their businesses shut down while still being required to pay property and business taxes. Folks have been fined for trying to work out at a gym. Folks have been given citations for walking alone on a beach. Folks have been told they arent allowed to travel or leave the state. Folks have been unable to buy basic food or groceries at various points. Folks have been forced to beg for stimulus money.... And personally in my case, Ive been in a state thats part of a region that has fucked things up so badly and financially slit its own wrists and keeps doubling down on this failure and now their solution is to further pick my pocket to pay for the things they claim they need to do in order to get out of the mess they and only they were so adamant about creating.

And as if that was signaling a top, BTC crashes. ~20% from the ATH, nearly 100% YTD, and more than 10x since lows 52 weeks ago....interesting definition of a crash.

To be fair though, I dont think there are many folks more guilty of undermining public confidence in a vaccine than the two folks currently holding the title President and VP, along with a lot of their friends and allies. At the end of the day, everyone needs to make an assessment for themselves and thats all there is to it. I never got a flu shot until I had kids. Certain things, much like trades or investments, set themselves up differently to everyone. I just dont see the merit in making ones decision on anything a public figurehead says, or even on the supposed "wellbeing of strangers"...is it fair to me my income gets ransacked because poor people cant get it together, or because my governor who I didnt vote for and dont support wants to push bogus programs I want nothing to do with? Maybe they should be more considerate too! Right? Nope, thats not how the world works. Take care of yourself and your loved ones. Do everything you can for them and everyone else, in one context or another, can fuck off or learn to do the same. I'll let this comment be my last here as I already feel like this is wading into politics and I dont really care all that much, like I stated earlier. I got the vaccine because it was important to the people who's opinions I value. And thats it for me. Every should have their own say.

Sold some Oct $7.5 puts on APTS, and picked up a few more shares. Small add to MSGE as well.

Everyone on my wife's side of the family is a nurse. So probably preferential treatment lol. My attitude was that I'll get it when its available and I dont really care too much when that actually is. Could be next year for all I care. Mother in law said they had an opening and booked me for the following week. Shrugged my shoulders and said "ok"...its more important to other people than it is to me but in terms of peace of mind, especially for others in the family.....it is what it is. I'd also caution anyone that they seemed to make a very big deal about "keeping the card"....the doctor indicated that doing so may be helpful for traveling in the future....

Interesting points from everyone. One really does need to wonder and be skeptical of much of the handling, especially the motive. For instance you had 25% crowd capacity at sporting events in FL/TX etc, back in December and January, meanwhile in NY they didnt allow ANYTHING until a week or two ago and even still, its only 10%....when calls for doom and gloom are made, and the makers of the calls are WRONG, you NEVER get a mea culpa or an apology....you just get the next iteration of the agenda driven story or some stupid aphorism like "better safe than sorry". Much like how Ive regularly, for most of my career heard people saying the "doing this or that" in the markets will "eventually blow you up"....except when it never does they never eat their words they just double down on an unprovable reiteration of their same academically inspired jargon...at some point you have to just say fuck em. Theyre the ones who have no clue what they are doing. Which for private persons/businesses, is OK...as capitalism weeds this shit out. For public officials who have control over peoples lives....its entirely NOT acceptable. Personally, Dr. Fauci was saying no masks at the height of the panic in March/April 2020 and now after being vaccinated he's wearing not one, but two masks. All I know is I dont want to be like THAT GUY.... I got the 1st shot a few weeks ago and am scheduled for the second one next week. I've done enough shit in my life that if a vaccine does me in....so be it.

Fidelity to launch a BTC ETF. Who's next?

People receive money to give blood, jizz, etc all the time. Lots of people take money in exchange for carrying someone else's baby or for participating in medical studies, etc. Plenty of of people in general, even with their normal jobs...do things they dont want to, in exchange for money. If the virus is as serious as many claim, this should be a no brainer but like many other things involving government....it seems to elude them.

They really should have just gave people vaccination checks instead of all this "do nothing" stimulus money.

Let me join the party. A bit of BABA I'll have what theyre having!

Trimmed some of the completely margined positions I have in WM and ARE.

https://www.coindesk.com/judge-in-sec-case-drops-bombshells-that-are-positive-for-ripple-xrp-says-lawyer That and Tetragons garbage suit was laughed at https://www.financemagnates.com/cryptocurrency/news/tetragon-lost-case-to-reclaim-175-million-ripple-investment/

Quite an impressive inventory of properties. The management internalization expense makes things look horrible until you look at the potential savings going forward. I put green arrows next to the lines that I assume represent the savings (see attachment). I'm also assuming the $180m expense closed the deal. Thanks, I'm in. Yup, the internalization of the manager and the student housing sale were the big ones last year thats seemed to indicate a fundamental shift...both planned before the pandemic even began, rather than being a result of it or anything perceived to be out of desperation. The last call talks a bit about the focus going forward, on fixing up the issues around the capital structure which leaves nothing other than to assume they plan to possibly get rid of more of the preferred, or if nothing else, slow down the pace of issuance. It's Friday after the close so Im wrapping shit up for the week and Ill get into it at a later point, but the preferred were brilliant for what they allowed the company to do and capitalized on a great regulatory loophole...but getting those wound down would greatly benefit existing shareholders. My only caveat, which didnt stop me from buying, and won't stop me from continuing to do so...is management. Things are a little convoluted because we had the external manager issue prior...but if you were a holder of the common pre 2021...and especially pre 2020, it seemed as if there was a growth at all costs/kingdom builder mentality....only problem(or benefit if you are buying now) is that they basically bought stuff that was good if not great, and now just turned into gold because of the pandemic. So they got lucky in terms of emphasizing growth and being focused on the right dirt. Could have just as easily been buying properties in NY/CA etc....moving forward, the signal I get from the moves made in 2020 and the recent call, is that theyre going to be more selective and a little bit more skewed towards getting the common back to a level that makes sense. Some of the preferred issues have warrants or conversion features in the high teens and around $20(none are publicly traded unfortunately)...I also think theres some alignment within the compensation structutre....it is predicated on a TSR and peer group outperformance rather than just buy more sq/ft or whatever. Further, just roughly speaking, you have tremendous leverage to upside. Probably trades conservatively at a 50% discount to NAV and every 10% increase in the portfolio translates to roughly $10 per share on the common. A lot has to go wrong/really, really blow up for things to go poorly at the current price. More than half the asset value is in multifamily. And if you want an idea how undervalued that portfolio is, look at the Creekside sale that took place not long ago.

I looked at both S-1 and I can come to terms with CPNG but what is really OSCR bus8 es model, is it like LMND for health insurance. Their numbers look atrocious. Both GOOG health care IPO‘s AMWL and OSCR look underwhelming to me. I havent even come close to a deep dive, and yea, the approach is at best scattershot, but the impression I have gotten is that somewhat like LMND, theyre focusing on developing the brand. Its not very efficiently rolled out, but they have a little bit of everything...their own clinics, the tele health offering, pricing models that "appear' transparent and are generally received well by their customers. My guess is that they would be burning many times more money if they put all of this into motion in all their markets, all at once. All in all I think its probably burned through a good bit of money experimenting and will continue to do so. At the same time trying a lot of things in a scattershot way sort of lets you feel out the sensitivities of what works and what doesnt. Its in the right place at perhaps the right time....there does seem to be bipartisan support for fixing a lot of the issues in healthcare....so you'll need to cross a few bridges to get there, but there are bridges which lead this to being a bit of a disruptor. At the least its a small starter that will compel me to do a bit more work on it while the market is beating the shit out of companies like this...and if nothing else I'll probably be able to unload it later once things settle down. $32 was the original low point of the IPO range that ended up being revised upwards twice to $39. So I'll take my chances there.

TPL at the close.

Took a wee little starter in OSCR and CPNG.

Yea I'm not hating on everyone in the field...but the truth is that too many finance folks are too full of themselves(or just in general take themselves way too seriously) and many think they are hot shit because of how much money they make, but the truth is they dont deserve to make the money they do and its not hard doing what they do. Look at this guy Keith....chills in his basement and has fun with it. Plenty of others have mentioned similar things...I think(although I wasnt around for those days) ERICOPOLY even talked about how he'd spend some time researching and then just go for walks on the beach...I cant say I do things much differently. Its a shame folks just dont know any better and therein lies the problem.....the system is setup so that people are not properly educated in matters relating to financial markets and investing. And I can take some good guesses as to why that is....

Well duh! The CFAs, MBAs, CFPs are just marketing gimmicks. One of my good friends is a CFA. Some years back when he was training I asked him what he was so focused on. He said he's working on the 2nd test. I laughed and jokingly told him he's one of the worst investors Ive ever met....if he got the designation, it would just be misleading to people who didnt know any better! He goes "yea but I can make more money with it"....aint that the truth. My younger brother took level 1 and 2 of the CFA exams while in Med School. He's a bit of a math nerd and he did it for fun. Said it was a total waste of time. Folks love pitching "long term" investment strategies....because "long term" generates more fees than short term....

Total boss....Another example of how NOT HARD it is being in the finance biz. Anyone managing money making more than $150k a year is grossly overpaid in relation to the work they do. Myself included!

Its kind of hilarious in a warped way how the answer in regards to pretty much every social/economic issue is that it benefits the rich....Darwinism is inevitable. Unfortunately. Oh your phone bill went up 8%? Ah, I made some good money on my telcos last year! Oh rent went up a lot? Yea my MF reits were raining cash on me all year! $4 gas? Did I say I owned TPL?