Gregmal

But as learned with Sears, it matters but what those properties are worth of they're not sold OR if the proceeds from the sale prop up the retail business. Not saying that M is going the way of JCP or Sears - just that I'm skeptical of the value department styles provide overall given my own shopping habits and prior investment experiences Macy's needs to demonstrate it is different than everyone else. The playbook for every failing business is more or less SHLD. Sell your valuable assets and keep the crap floating. Macys should immediately spin off a SRG like REIT, sell the Macys retail operations, and then just refocus on Bloomingdales. People buy cheap knock off shit on Amazon all the time. Whereas the moat of Bloomingdales is that no one buys that kind of designer shit they sell online due to knock offs.

added to MSGN in reasonable size @17.5

The highlighted are just proof IMO how people are stupid. Maybe you saw it differently, or maybe you just decided to work(or not make excuses), but those lowly minimum wage jobs offer a lot more than just cash. They offer job experience and industry knowledge. The problem is that with poor people, most are not ambitious at all and just want to do the minimum. They begrudge getting up at 7:30 so they can be at work at 8, and sit there staring at their watches counting down the time until lunch break, and then 5 pm. They should be soaking up knowledge; its free tuition. Its really not hard, if you have half a brain, to work in an industry for a couple years and then figure out how to make money in that industry somewhere else in the ecosystem.

From what I've heard, is its tough to fight an assessment when it is sponsored by the financial company with which you are currently utilizing for your loan origination. Many have "approved vendors". Additionally, its just not likely going to be accepted if you seek to bring in a third party, with a more favorable assessment, and ask the lender to replace their approved vendor. Even though many of us might be honest in our reasoning, the logic behind them disallowing these types of things makes sense. I know plenty of people who were getting crazy assessments ahead of home equity loans during to boom days... it was a scam. Pay the assessor $100 and pick your homes value. Which brings me to the only piece of advice I can probably give you...let it settle, and then do some due diligence(maybe have your interns do it lol) and find someone who can give you a decent appraisal and then look for a HELOC with a third party lender. You are in the city so I'd imagine your RE is a reasonably high % of your net worth/capital as you're young and shits expensive there. While I'm in the sticks as you city people call it, I made what I'd call a mistake of doing the same. I bought my home, which didn't kill me. But then followed up with some investment properties as well. All with large money down. And then I started looking at things and realizing that while I appreciated the magic inherent in a 30 year fixed, that I could reasonably expect to do better having much of this cash at my disposal. I looked at many of my options but quickly found out that any kind of RE based financial transaction will likely be expensive. Even my refi, which saved me 75 basis points, added about $8K to my principal balance. After exploring many different things, I just decided paying 3% at IB was my best option if I needed extra cash. EDIT: If its that low, maybe look to appeal your taxes as well. Then 6-12 months later get a real appraisal and take out a line of credit. Bang em on both ends..

What I think is retarded, is that none of this is forced, and much of this is because of selfishness and motives not really centered around education. Community college is available to everyone, and costs very little. If your goal is an education, why not do that? Its inexcusable to excuse student loans for people who chose to go to $30K+ per year universities, took room and board, and lets face it, basically were there for the "experience" and social aspects...

I had the same thing happen when doing a refi. There s a couple different things to consider. They base it on items that most people dont weigh consciously. Crap like how many sinks you have, capacity of your septic(probably not something you have to worry about), condition of various amenities, etc. I might have tried to contest it, however I had a town wide reassessment done the same year, and my assessment for that came in about 10-15% higher than my refi assessment. So I used the refi assessment to get the tax assessment lowered(about $2,000 in annual savings).

Hopefully not. They are already entitled enough as it is. Nothing will ever teach them responsibility. Working how/when you feel like it(only to complain about wages), daily trips to Starbucks, paying $9 for avocado toast... they're idiots.

The US legal system that gave this guy a 12 month sentence for all of this the first time? The US legal system that regularly lets celebrities and pro athletes off clean for major drug offenses if they do a 6 month rehab stint? The US legal system that lets a cop annihilate someone on video and doesn't produce even a day of probation? The US legal system that allows financial professionals and public company executives to line their pockets and pay fines without admitting guilt or having to give back all the ill gotten gains? Add in the Clintons and many other super high profile people here, and you bet; I have ZERO confidence ANYTHING, EVER comes from any of this. They might find a few small chumps to go after just to say they did something, but that's it. Our legal system is a total disgrace. I stopped being shocked long ago. How many times the same drug/DUI/firearm offenses that ruin the life(or severely impair them) of the average citizen, while famous people like Rose McGowan, Pacman Jones, TI, etc get literally nothing, over and over and over... EDIT: I'll also add, those people I listed are just pee on level famous. The folks Epstein was involved with are Illuminati level elites...

Definitely another inside job. This tool, or someone who was likely involved in this, clearly had to have pulled some strings to get this guy in the position to off himself. How else does this happen after he already tried and failed, and thereafter was placed on suicide watch. Yet still manages to commit suicide...Justice will not be served here and a lot of horrible people are currently breathing a lot easier.

AYR. Earnings from the cannabis companies this quarter have been incredibly robust, so I like this ahead of numbers. The peer group trades 30x EBITDA so with AYR pretty easily punching out 80-100M EBIDTA NTM, I like my chances here.

Find an introducing full service brokerage firm that clears through Axos(formerly Cor) Clearing. You can buy all the obscure pink sheeters your heart desires over there.

Par for the course for those types. Also drive leased cars and live paycheck to paycheck, aided of course by American Express.

Busy day. Opened ESGR, ILMN, added BUR

Did you buy JOE in December? If so, you did great. I'm still a holder. Been selling off a little of HHC. Still like the company and the assets, but I see some cheaper stuff out there and I'm overweight in real estate (also own SRG and TPHS). Same deal for me, just somewhat different names. Too much cheap real estate. If I can easily determine a real estate company is sitting on assets(or debt) that won't turn the equity into a 0, just wait for a big enough pullback or margin of safety and then buy it on margin. The downside is not all of those can be long term holdings. I have learned that lesson via companies like Keck Seng, where compounding over long periods is hard if management overpays for assets. Right now, I still hold HHC, but I'm more interested in adding to Griffin Industrial and FRP Holdings. Griffin seems clearly undervalued to NAV, NAV appears to be growing, and you can see a 3-5 plan (maybe sooner) on how that gap would close, particularly if interest rates stay low. FRP's NAV, on the other hand, is tougher to estimate, but you get to invest alongside the Bakers at the same prices (or lower) that they are buying back shares. You could do much worse than simply giving the Bakers your money via FRP and watch them act prudently and harvest assets at the right time, as they've done many times in the past. And if you want to see what a great asset looks, just look at what they don't sell -- royalties on rock piles. One real-estate related company that I've haven't seen discussed on here is Canterbury Park Holdings. That may interest some on here, but it's much more of a single asset real estate play, and the attached race track operating business is having issues. Aha! You've been using the same strategy? Buying below FRPH disclosed repurchase prices has worked well. Have not heard of Canterbury. Sounds a little like Dover Downs. Thanks

Great topic. I dabbled with various VIX option strategies for a bit and saw what you guys pretty much described... it just isn't economical over the longer term. I'd need a pretty big hunch or gut feel to pull the trigger on something like that now and would probably go for longer dated SPY or bank puts. In regards to the last post, which is a great one, I kind of have the opposite approach. I'm fine screwing around with my own money. No one ever went poor losing a few percent. You can always make it back, whether through earning it, or through investing. I take risks and make stupid speculative plays with my money that I would never do with someone else's money. Someone trusting you with their money is a very fragile thing built on trust and there's too many jackoffs out there who manage OPM in egregiously self serving ways.

Also added some more CLF calls (glutton for punishment) and am eyeing some $150 BRK calls if we get a little closer to $190

FRPH

Well, at the least I hope now people can stop fooling themselves with twisted logical narratives about Warren's secret strategy with the buybacks. At or around these prices, it is clear he has no interest in allocating meaningful capital to buybacks.

repurchased some CLF

Off the top of my head, as of a few years ago something like 70% lost money after the first year and 85%+ over a longer period of time I forget. Some of the ones that worked from recollection would be Tile Shop(now in the bust category though), Del Taco, Twinkies(Hostess), AYR(although this is still early). Easier to just be an IPO investor, cash out, and play the free warrants.

Did you buy JOE in December? If so, you did great. I'm still a holder. Been selling off a little of HHC. Still like the company and the assets, but I see some cheaper stuff out there and I'm overweight in real estate (also own SRG and TPHS). Same deal for me, just somewhat different names. Too much cheap real estate. If I can easily determine a real estate company is sitting on assets(or debt) that won't turn the equity into a 0, just wait for a big enough pullback or margin of safety and then buy it on margin. The downside is not all of those can be long term holdings.

100% with Google. The greatest investment might have been Youtube which at the time some thought would destroy the company. Waymo has been great and specular in its own right in that it isn't really something that has relied on the existing user base. Although Waze does help with it. Thats been a project that to me, has validated their ability to go outside the core business and put something real together. Entire sectors dinged when AMZN announces its looking into a new business venture, so I argue this is priced into AMZN. Netflix I guess I just fail to appreciate, but outside of first mover status, I fail to see what keeps others from taking that space eventually. Content is king. Disney and ATT have made HUGE moves in the past few years. They're playing the long game. Microsoft is just a beast. I've never appreciated it for how diverse it's businesses are until it went bonkers. I remember looking at this in maybe 2013 at $35 or so and thinking it would outperform an index but not by much. Totally wrong. They've got nearly a dozen billion dollar businesses and the scale to do whatever they want. Interestingly enough they also seem to escape any anti trust talk. FB to me is a ticking timebomb. They have the users but growth just shifts from one(FB) to another(Instagram/Whatsapp) business and eventually needs to be more than just an ad company who does sketchy shit with your info. To me they resemble Google when all they had was search.

Buying OR selling based on a rate cut/hike is pretty stupid. Plenty of people here(well maybe not plenty, but a few) made a fortune when the idiots took over in November/December because of a meaningless rate hike... Same thing.

Bought some MSGN and MSB with proceeds from NVTA. Broadly speaking, today is just another example of what happens when retards take control of the stock market. Opportunity for the rest of us. If you were "surprised" by the widely expected rate hike and decide to just start dumping everything, you might as well just give me your money now...

Goog point pupil. I recall hearing a lot of the same thing around 2012 and then taking a peek at many of the market favorites. My thoughts were basically the same. WTF are people talking about? Most of these companies are HUGELY net cash.... I see more or less the same today, just to a slightly lesser extent.