Gregmal

I dont buy Cramer's argument. It is valid, but meaningless IMO. Wall Street is filled with money obsessed whores. Add to the list the plethora of underperforming hedge funds and money managers who preach a "value investing" style. If there's money to be made in energy, they'll go there. Just look at the activity on sites like this with the tobacco stocks and lately even stuff like XOM. While its admirable on the surface(but also more a manipulative look at me Im woke or whatever move by the pension funds and such) it won't hold. If its green, buyers will go there. If, over the long run, pension fund managers underperform they'll face pressure and ultimately start letting the things that matter dictate their investments. Its just easy right now when you can buy Tesla and claim to be a socially responsible fund.

This was actually a good read and probably bolstered my belief in what I wrote earlier. Lets see what the confirmed numbers look like in a week or maybe a month. But so far, you have barely 100 total cases outside of China and 0 deaths. You also have a death count that is bolstered by people with other conditions and complications, which is always important to consider as well, even with the common flu.

I was reviewing some information with a couple folks for a portfolio company today, and of distinct notation was a recent corporate action taken. We were trying to pin down where this came from. After a bit of analysis, the read was that the move was made out of weakness rather than strength. This was determined because the CEO is a bit of a character, and a boastful, boisterous cheerleader. It was concluded that his reasoning for action had to be to fill a need that was expected to be filled elsewhere, but didn't materialize. How did we know? Because if it had, he would have announced it a few minutes later.... Same sort of deducing can be used here. I dont doubt all of the ground work details, and I sympathize with those effected, but am of the belief that what we are hearing about and its impacts on us here in the US of A, are entirely blown out of proportion and unwarranted. Yes, China may play games with their news outlets and censor people. But here? Fear sells and these news outlets are propaganda peddlers and this virus is a money maker for them in regards to clicks and page views. Its is and will be drummed up as much as humanly possible. Not to be callous, but I'll be concerned when I can no longer count on one hand the number of deaths in one specific state. Or maybe collectively hear about a few dozen total deaths in America.

There will certainly be no shortage of Chinesepeoplephobia in America now....

got a little more pcyo

Its actually quite funny. Multiple days ago now, I accidentally started a thread on Simon Property Group in the General Discussion section. It still hasn't been moved to the correct place. Put up a thread with even a mouse fart sized hint of politics, Sanjeev will be here to move it in like 27.3333 minutes flat. And fwiw, ILMN had earnings which is why it was down.

Indeed all true. One interesting theory Ive heard is the wealth gap explanation. The same premise regarding how the top 1% keep getting richer at the expense of the middle class while the poor stay stuck....in business terms, the wealth gap involves a select few companies basically controlling the avenues to resources the rest of business world depends upon, and just slowly erodes middle and lower class companies. I dont think theres a correct answer, but its just odd seeing so many once respected companies looking like shit and thinking, what does the market do to these companies if we see things turn south?

MSGN a hair under 15 and DD at 52.7

Ive been chatting with a lot of folks and most of the time the lens of investment is one of a value investor. I continue to be amazed by the abundance of traditional businesses that are "cheap" but troubled. Look at some of the threads here for example. DD, AMC, XOM, GHC, certain types of real estate...dont get hung up on the specific examples. The contrast between these businesses and the ones RuleNumberOne likes to talk about is incredible. But beyond that, it got me thinking. All the classic value investors and books about such things talk about cycles and buying when things are out of favor and then achieving these heroic returns from being a contrarian. The TBTF trade was really the last classic example of this that worked. But otherwise, everything now, for at least the last half decade if not a bit longer, IMO has just stayed out of favor and continued its decline. Almost as if cycles dont exist and just transitioned to permanent secular declines. Commodity names have sucked forever now. Miners too. Many different types of real estate. Financials, Insurance, media, healthcare, energy, auto....quite a lot here. In a market many describe as in a bubble, and a few percent off all time highs, the list of traditional businesses at shitty valuations and often described by rational investors as having "too much hair" is incredible. So I guess the million dollar question is, do these ever become cyclical again(IE as in trade at premium valuations), or have we for some reason, maybe Fed induced, caused there to be a hitch in the way investments and businesses are valued? More or less rendering these things permanently challenged and essentially just part of some which ice cube can melt the slowest contest?

Sold all(but a minor tracking position) the remainder of my BX.

The only thing that can justify the price movements is perhaps concluding that the market is now starting to realize rates will be forever low and thus rerating equities accordingly. Of course, this still kind of begs the question, do equities need to be expensive just because bonds are astronomically priced? The answer is probably yes, and its a powerful thing having pretty much all governments being buyers of debt to infinity. I guess as investors, we can only hope they never stop.

Did some repositioning. Finished exiting GM stock and transferred into slightly larger share equivalent $30 calls. Closed my GM puts as well. Its either gonna go or its not. My stop loss built in with the strike, and after about a half decade, if it doesnt perk up Im fine having been wrong and calling it a day here. Exited 30% of BX and replaced it with BRK.B and SPG. Reduced some margin in the process.

I've leased maybe a half dozen offices in varying locations from NYC to the suburbs of it, over the past decade. Never have I shared space and cant imagine how for some businesses, this type of layout isn't a complete nonstarter from the get go. But, I do think it is indicative of some companies last ditch efforts to attract the millennial crowd and herd them into an office. But it will likely be short lived. Which leads me to my conclusion, that in the world of RE investment, certain things are safe, and certain ones arent(duh). Residential to me cant be virtualized(again, duh). Retail as we've discussed ad naseum, is being forced to change and can be very much at risk. Industrial, I think is the second safest space after residential. But IMO, what is most at risk, way more so than even retail, is office space. Theres just no need for it on a lot of levels and when you combine this with the future generations and their "lets explore bc I have ADD" mentality, companies will continue to shift out of traditional office. Much like with retail, sure you will still have some big trophy office campuses. But the days of just throwing up cubicles and guiding thousands of employees, like cattle, into an office, is not the way of the future. WeWorks "idea" wasn't revolutionary, it was reactionary.

I dont think its worth drawing ANY conclusions at this point simply because the sample sizes for any of them would be unreliable. But with any early phase experiment, paying attention to these things is important. There may be correlations, there may not be. Some, that are not there today, may eventually show up, and vice versa.

Again perky and behaving like a safe haven asset.

Basically, theres a huge concentration of subs with Comcast and Altice/Optimum. Both of which have potential renewal issues. Much has been discussed on the MSGN thread previously, and now on top of that, you have the fact that the company was just willing to repurchase 25% of the shares at 16.75 and still have a sizable buyback in place, plus the resources to do much more. My investment confidence however still doesnt really involve sub counts or decline rates, although admittedly, that will drive this thing short term. But on an absolutely basis, the rights to televise Knicks and Ranger games is worth something, and theres no way its worth less than what the Cincinnati Reds or whomever else are worth. To someone like Amazon the acquisition is a rounding error but could be reasonably impactful to certain of their own ventures. Or, it can be reacquired by the MSG stub which is was spun out from. A lot of ways to win. In the meantime all the FCF will go toward repurchases and debt reduction.

bought back some msgn

Id start by looking in the Baupost portfolio. Theres been no more prominent an underperforming bitch and moaner over the last half decade than Klarman.

Yup, go to the 10K and control F "peer group".

Another thing I think worth pointing out is that people seem to severely overrate the difficulty of finding “multibaggers”. Assuming you are able to establish certain “quality control” criteria, I think folks would be surprised by frequency that their holdings did 2x or more over the course of a 5-10 year holding period, should you just leave them the heck alone; especially if can time your purchases with some sort of macro based pullback.

It’s not really anything more sophisticated than a “throw a wide net, catch a lot of different stuff” approach with some salesmanship incorporated. Criteria for selection all fit the same pattern. Large TAM, high growth rate, large short interest, fairly new approach to tackling some “need”. A lot of picks and shovel plays too. It’s not hard to understand or screen your own “rule breakers”. For every Netflix there are a half dozen Westport innovations. For every Sierra Wireless, someone with half a brain, on their own can find an Inseego or Skyworks.

They are apparently building a 1000 bed hospital from scratch in 6 days. I found that to be impressive. Any chance those guys will come work for any of my real estate development ventures?

Trimmed some more BX. These things are unstoppable right now it seems. EDIT, sold a small sliver of my GOOG shares too. Felt dirty doing so...which may indicate an emotional attachment to them(not a good thing), but am almost certainly convinced that there will be points to rebuy them lower and since its paying down margin, a better safe than sorry decision.

Yea I think there are tons of misconceptions and false narrative around margin. For instance if I had 120% of the portfolio in BRK(or substitute any name of your liking) and then further margining that position bought a mixture of put options and hedges I have zero risk of being wiped out. Now take the same example and just diversify out, or engage positions that have little to no correlation or even behave inversely. Its quite simple while at the same time a little bit complex. But at the end of the day if you are a good shooter the objective should be to take as many uncontested shots as possible. Just make sure you dont get caught up chasing around your ball when you miss.

Anyone stalking shitty biotech companies that are temporarily soaring on the coronavirus news? Here's a few I'm watching. NVAX, BCRX, INO, NNVC and NBRV. I am in no way condoning shorting these(although I probably will myself). There are many dynamics both fundamental in particularly technical that could make them horrible shorts if you time it wrong....but theres definitely sucker money flooding these things, many of them have already rung the register and done an offering on the first sign of an uptick, and there will certainly be a retreat back to where they were prior. Curious if anyone is playing this temporary "theme" and how?