Gregmal

What puzzles me is why people and outlets keep getting away with making all these “economy is in free fall” claims? Like that’s clearly not the case. Most of the economy is showing it’s both sound and resilient. And despite this, for the past two years we ve had people unaccountable for repeated claims to the contrary. I guess this is why I just prefer the stock market vs listening to every asshole looking for attention, or subscribers, or just ego stroking. In the market you can typically see the value of your opinions. Everywhere else it seems people just become broken records figuring hey or I hold on long enough eventually I’ll get to take my victory lap. It’s pathetic.

For all the bond fanfare, it honestly seems no better or different than stocks in that it’s a pickers market. The arguments so far have been bonds did great “here or there” but it then gets diced up and turns out long bonds did well here but lost 50% last few years. So then it’s short term bonds and notes but then you expand the timeline and those do terrible over the long haul. It’s no different at all than stocks. Buyer beware. The search for a magic cure all within the investor world continues. So far the one winner unfortunately seems to be index trackers and Berkshire.

Humor often adds context but it’s true. Like the best compliment most of these guys can receive is some variation of “oh you’re so smart” or “wow that’s a really insightful bit of analysis”….stuff that gets other people talking about them. Much is marketing because they are analysts; they don’t actually lift weight. Ask for performance numbers or even just a lame, raw, aggregate of hit rate of their predictions…eh we don’t go there. Example right now? See all those people who were super bearish sub SPY 4000 claiming “called it’s” and “told you sos” about the yield curve correcting and resulting in a market decline? They werent right. They missed the money making opp. But that’s not what they were ever after.

Yea watch long enough and you’ll see that the urge to be bearish, let alone really bearish, is often symptomatic of a small penis and a really deep need to be viewed as highly intelligent and sophisticated. Those things trump the urge to make money, which put those people in direct contrast to why most of us are in the market.

Those experts also bid DHI do like $70 last year and one Im pissed I didn’t pull the trigger in, FOR to like 40% of book. It’s really just another example of how quirky short term can get when the end product(listed stock) is basically just some vehicle for every two bit chump to gamble on a macro trade. Housing cant break because the Fed trapped everyone. My area is probably the poster boy for this. Not a ton of space to build, but there is some. Most of it though is zoned for AG or non residential use. The cost to build is too prohibitive, so no one is doing that. Inventory of homes is down 60% from pre COVID. People have both huge amounts of equity and sub 4% mortgages…the hell they’re ditching those. Easier to just tap a heloc if need be. Prices keep rising. Despite what the people staring at stock prices have to say.

It’s all just about routine and discipline. For a while I had a really easy one down. Breakfast, 4oz package smoked salmon and an avocado, 550 calories, costs less than $10. Lunch, some variation of a chicken Caesar Salad, 650 calories, costs like $5. Dinner, half pound of shrimp with a bit of rice or pasta. 600 calories, $12 3 Natty Light, 300 calories, $2.25 Was the shit. Might start again.

I mean if you stay under 2000 calories a day it’s incredibly hard to gain weight, especially with modest movement. The problem is, go to any restaurant, and you’ll see everyone’s been conditioned to eat 1500 calories a meal. And then snack in between.

Is it that hard to just walk 10,000-15,000 steps a day and stick to 3 meals? Even if 2-3 of those meals are fast food you’re probably ok. It’s like everywhere you look, government spending, personal consumption, even the sizes of the dishes you see at restaurants, cars, the obsession with social media, the shoes people wear these days….it just screams no self control or discipline.

Closed this out which now makes the higher leverage MGK puts totally on the house and then some. Also funded more Nintendo

And there exactly is the somewhat higher level truth. Which, not that I totally agree with it, is why there’s actually a decently logical case for owning some of these mega caps like Apple over bonds. Inflation protection. That and then there’s also the whole “hold to maturity” thing. Everyone thinks it’s just as easy as “holding”, but then the clock starts. How many 15/20/30 year horizons does one get in an investing lifetime? You can’t really find a single 20 year stretch in history where purchasing power didn’t greatly erode over a couple decades. That’s when you realize stocks are obviously better.

Think again, surprise, surprise, Tepper is pretty on point. No need to shit your pants, just recognize this ain’t the market of the most recent decade. Similar to what Ackman has said in its basis. You can absolutely own stocks. But fundamentals and valuations need to be in line with the current environment. My interpretation, fundamental investing matters once again, and that’s great.

This is the risk I see over the next 6 months or so. Nothing to do with PE multiples or bond rates or any of the smart guy stuff. It’s now psychological. No one’s made money in many stocks now for years. The shorts got wrung out, frustrated, and many even then went long. The longs got crushed and then got their recovery exit bounce. I don’t think prices are extreme by and large, but who’s left to buy here? Anyone really super excited about Apple or Amazon here?

Herman Wiemer Riesling is terrific

You must be wealthy. I do it up with Natty Light. Loved it as a kid. Never really understood why I needed to arbitrarily find something else to like just cuz I got older LOL. Although my bourbon habit has gotten a little fancy lately. Cant win em all I guess.

I agree to an extent but I think the real problem is whats "sinister" and whats being used as an excuse for the "inflation" handwaving. The issue is there has been no wage growth. For decades now. In 2007 a 30 pack of Natty was $15 and today its $19. so I guess where you get your beer depends. But in terms of life and living? Most people have been raped by big government/corporations and institutional wealth accumulation. Wage growth has really gone nowhere because the dynamic of power never lies with the laborers. GFC happens, largely caused by big corporations and government officials, and whats the end result? Many people lost their jobs and those that didnt took huge paycuts and were told to be grateful. At best, unless they are ladder jumping aggressively, the best they can hope for annually is 3% raises but unless you worked for a government agency, you didnt even get that. Most spent the past decade being told to take 2% and like it. We FINALLY just had a situation where the laborer was in control, finally about to turn the tables a little bit, and these guys used fake inflation driven predominantly by supply chain and covid restriction related issues, as the excuse to deliberately put an end to it. Its a real tragedy.

Generally speaking? Yes. Thats what happens when you have a government and their cahoots openly boasting of their desire to destroy jobs, crush wages for 90% of the population, and promote energy policies that will ultimately just cripple the affordability of whats left for anything else.

Devaluation of cash is just part of life and living in a developed society; its been occurring forever. My father still talks about how you used to be able to buy hanger steaks for $5 a pound too. Its like yea I know, and Im sure you also used to walk 7 miles a day to get to school, in the snow. What was happening pre covid, was never an issue. The issue and where everyone got up in arms, was what happened during and following covid. Except thats entirely over and all thats left hanging around is directly caused by these people. And yet they are still feeding us this stuff that just doesnt add up and defies logic.

I mean the answer is as old as time and no one has ever really presented any sort of valid point saying anything BUT THIS should be done. Build more! Riddle me this, with prices so high, why arent builders blasting out homes like theyre Big Mac meals? Because rates are too high for it to make any sense. Why are rents "stubbornly high"? Well cuz no one can afford to buy a home. Remember all the concern in 2021 that we were headed for a housing crash because experts like Ivy Zelman were projecting a 2M per year build rate? Jerry took care of that. Why? Especially if he's trying to solve the largest contributor to inflation...housing.

Then the other really big news event, is how we should celebrate that some lady hogged a senate seat, not only well past her years of usefulness, but literally until death!

All these scoundrels leech off each other. Yesterday a prime example. So we get the CNBC crew, holding their annual weasels in suits conference...making a big deal of it. Headliner? That guy with a financial position banking on higher rates. He introduces this position by touting it on Twitter where everyone gets whipped into a frenzy and bids the market towards his desired finish line. He then gets billed "headliner" with all his snippets retweeted and highlighted all over the media. Again, he's pushing this position that the media helps come to fruition. In return the media gets your eyeballs, which they benefit from. When his position is revealed to have made "lots of money", then they get to do it all again, this time adding in the featured presenter was "the guy who called xyz"...making it even more market moving and cant miss. You ask yourself what really changed in the month or two since "headliner" revealed his rate rise wager? The answer, fundamentally? Absolutely nothing!!! LOL Meanwhile where are the enforcement agencies? Oh theyre trying to convince us MaraLago is worth $18M and that its time to go get your covid booster again.....

It ignores it because it doesnt exist. There was no meaningful inflation in housing over the decade covering 2010-2020 and surprise, surprise, only started showing up when the government got involved. Then, right when every two bit builder is about to blow us into oblivion with new supply, they interfere again and trap everyone via the high rates that are "said" to be the answer LOL. If it sounds too farfetched to be true, thats because it is, and what theyre after isnt what theyre telling us theyre after.

Yea I think the million dollar question is whether this is an insider job meant to basic reset everything for 95% of people and implement a new agenda..such as all this ESG nonsense, or if its just their excuse to escape post GFC world monetary policy and just get back to kinda what everyone of that age believes normal is, IE 5% rates on savings and whatnot. The only thing that is clear, is that when people are acting, and their actions and words make zero sense, they are lying to you. And these guys have been lying to us for a while now. I mean it makes no sense to be saying inflation is entrenched and hike to hell on that premise and then after 70% of it disappears go "oh it was just supply chain driven". It doesnt make any sense to complain about shelter and housing being elevated when YOU are the single biggest contributor to that. So in a way its gonna be the ultimate exercise in deductive reasoning and dot connecting and from there you just gotta figure out how to express it in a way that makes money.

Yea what’s concerning me here is that we have no more real rate sensitive inflation at all. It’s housing and energy and even with those two being robust we re at like 3 and that’s gonna stay around those levels or go lower. What’s really changed though is NOW all these suited bozos are admitting most of the inflation was supply chain based! Which in other words, meant for that stuff to resolve, they didn’t even need to hike in the first place, at all! So not only were they hiking for something they didn’t need to be hiking for, but now they’re staring down an arbitrary number of 2%, yes totally made up and not based on anything, and like Kaskari or whomever that bald dope was making the rounds earlier in the week, they are now blatantly threatening that if the economy stays strong they are going to try to stop it. So as I suspected awhile ago, much of this has nothing to do with inflation, certainly not much to do with actual Fed controlled inflation, and seems to be something much more agenda driven. Imagine you have government officials openly rooting against the economy and telling us if we get raises or if millions don’t lose their jobs they’re gonna keep trying to hurt us? And where is the sleeping, slipping, stumbling President? No where to be seen.

Yea it’s a great market. It really just seems like no one has a clue what they’re doing. You have growth and trillion dollar size being bid like a Barry Honig stock promotion, people still paying single digit cap for junk like Realty Income, and cash, which is the ultimate depreciating asset, being called king. I have started doing a bit more on the negative/neutral side. Oil and water can’t mix.

So the media is lying again? Go figure