Gregmal

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?

Yup, yup. Meanwhile the uninformed are focusing on whether they can cover the dividend or not and how come the release showed they lost money last year!! Try plugging in modest price appreciation on Sun Belt assets and see what that does to the equation! Actually just try marking the current portfolio to market instead of gross reported GAAP based asset value...

Those order and backlog numbers are stunning. Sun Belt homebuilder on absolute fire? Dont pull my leg now! Who'd have seen that coming? Anyhow, painfully averaged up on the pullback in APTS. Still think there's probably $20 per share or so of upside over the next year or two given the profile of the company and especially the leveraged balance sheet. APTS - nice idea here Greg - thanks much! No problem my man! If you are bullish on that region the portfolio is incredible. Boner worthy even. Probably one of the most misunderstood and under recognized REITs out there. Similar in a lot of ways to CLPR. The majority of the mortgages are long term and fixed rate. Collections across the board have been incredibly strong. MF properties are class A in every sense and newest amongst any public company. Unique development pipeline and strategy....and of course the preferred shares, which are almost unanimously detested but quite genius in their purpose. Probably worthy of a thread but quite a lot to cover and Im somewhat lazy.

Those order and backlog numbers are stunning. Sun Belt homebuilder on absolute fire? Dont pull my leg now! Who'd have seen that coming? Anyhow, painfully averaged up on the pullback in APTS. Still think there's probably $20 per share or so of upside over the next year or two given the profile of the company and especially the leveraged balance sheet.

^The above is completely standard operating procedure at almost every firm these days. Especially KYC and AML stuff. Everyone is in full blown over your ass mode. That said, they are "required" to ask those questions. You are not generally required to answer. Or give satisfactory answers. But they need to show they "tried". Its all very predictable and par for the course. Same goes for the new "trusted contact" rule.

Sold MAA. Had discussed this one with many folks in later half of Q4. Said it was a super conservative, no brainer Sun Belt play and you could get 10-15% 2021 return with your eyes closed. Got it in 2.5 months. You're welcome. From here I think there's less ripe risk adjusted fruit.

Took a bit off the BTC holdings and bought a few Michael Jordan autos(real, hard signed ones, not NFT junk).....is it real yet? #asset allocationFTW

Its almost as if WS is working for us to create the ultimate product to sell short. Keep em coming.

I think Loop is a little bit of a conflicted actor....what I'd look at is the historical returns associated with post deal spacs. They are pretty brutal. The May 2020-now phenomena is probably IMO short lived and certainly unsustainable simply from the basis of how many spacs are now out there. Chart the number of spacs launched by year starting in 2015. In no uncertain terms a bubble. Mean reversion is inevitable. That doesnt mean the pre announcement and pre deal close window still cant be an amazing hunting ground for opportunity though.

You're welcome. March_Investor_Presentation_FINAL_2021.03.01.pdf

Doesnt SSTK own a whole library of digital crap? Perhaps some value investor could write it up as the new SOTP story...$100,000 price target/ thesis is basically GAAP accounting forcing them to obscure their treasure trove of assets. Im all for BTC because its the literal definition of legal front running. But this other shit is really kind of insane.

Bought a bunch of the 2023 $110s earlier in the week. Already got a number of mortgages; 3.25% on my primary, mid 4s in my investment properties. All 30 yr. On stocks/REITS I mainly have things I think do well regardless, IE multifamily, hard asset owner, low/no debt, but also a few more speculative names so the bulk of my position in the TLT puts I think of as a hedge. It also could just work regardless, without anything blowing up but rather the trend we have seen since vaccine announcement in November...continue. Treasury spread to REITS as of a couple months ago was obviously unsustainable. Great start to the year being super long BRK, long Sun Belt, long specific recovery, and short ARK+covid fads. I think it continues. I agree a hyper inflation move is a risk, so pointless to outright ignore it.

Inspired by LearningMachine and my man Cardboard, and also an obscenely fat real estate portfolio....I recently bought a nice chunk of longer dated TLT puts. Solid insurance I view it as.

Bought some BKEP premarket on the big announcement. Swapping this in for the preferred shares I own and will sell during the day. Transformation is taking shape! Whoa, whoa, whoa....buying the preferred at a big discount to par, selling at a premium to par and then swapping it into the much de-risked common before it makes a 50% move inside 4 months? Gregmal, how do you do it? Timing stocks is apparently impossible! Jokes aside, I bought some more of this yesterday. New management is kicking ass and taking names. Now pureplay infrastructure terminaling co with growth outlook. This along with AP stand to be massive winners from Joseph R. Biden's(hopefully the usual suspects arent offended by my mentioning of that name) eventual infrastructure push.

Camath basically got famous, as least in the capacity of being a money manger/finance guy, within the past 12-18 months and did almost all of it harnessing his branding power and hyping his "deals" to the moon. Not only has it already been shown to be unsustainable, but within its context, he's basically just the equivalent of a banking dude who got the hottest IPO's and claims he's the greatest but really is just tied to them popping a lot right out of the gate. Yea, he didnt even get through lockup expiration on many of these. He's the definition of a fad. At least ARK has consistently bought and held small companies, for many years, that turned into multi baggers or real world relevant names.....

There's definitely truth to that logic....but what if you dont want to have to be that active? In that case you should just buy a 30%+ position in Berkshire Hathaway, short some ARK stuff and then go on vacation for 6 weeks and not worry about anything! Trust me, I did it!