Gregmal

Government seizing assets. What would we call rent control? Mathematically, the difference between market rate, and government forced rate, can be extracted to an NOI figure. Put a cap rate on the whole thing. Government stole 30-40% of your property.

How do you think this compares, to say the stealth confiscation of one’s freedom and upward mobility through things like hooking people on welfare programs, ridiculous taxes, telling them if they want to be successful the must get degrees that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars that most don’t have and can only acquire through selling their future, and, oh by the way, a real theft, the fact that regardless of where you move, the US government stakes claim to a high percentage of your lifetime earnings solely because of where you were born…a decision no one I am aware of has control over? Which is very subtly a way to discourage people from leaving. Its just a matter of presentation. Some are brutally forthright about the theft, others hide it better. People bring up someone like Jack Ma. But Jack grew enormously wealthy and then forgot the rules of engagement where he was playing. Same thing we are seeing with Trump now.

I mean there’s this common misconception that where you are born in terms of geographic location matters. Really all that matters is whether you are born into wealth or not. If you aren’t, then what? Well we do a great job of selling “the American dream” as an “anyone can do it” thing and it’s great marketing, but the truth is if you work hard and are half intelligent and especially if you can network or build relationships, you’ll do well whether it’s NYC, London, Dubai, Moscow, Hong Kong, etc. I’d even go as far as to say it’s harder than ever to do it in America today with all the institutional gatekeeping. Mandatory college degrees. Useless designations that cost money to acquire like MBAs. Onerous tax system. Cancel culture. Etc. all made in America.

Our ideas of what is ideal in terms of lifestyle is wholly influenced by where we are located. Go out to Nebraska farmland or inner city in California and most people probably think the UAE is filled with terrorists and any foreigner who goes there will be kidnapped and beheaded. Meanwhile many places in the UAE make much of the US look like a third world country. Then go to South American cities and find the throngs of women who WANT nothing more than to just find a good husband so they can pop out kids and take care of them. All this shit is perspective, but all of our perspectives are jaded but what we are accustomed to. And especially flawed is much of the North American perspective in that…”everyone wants what we have”.

Why pick Afghanistan though? Their lives would be monumentally different if they lived in Paterson, NJ or Detroit, Michigan. A wealthy Chinese or Russian family could easily make the same point to their kids….”imagine living in the Bronx? Or south side of Chicago?”. The world we live in is filled with cherry picked, divisive rhetoric. Really, whether it’s America, Afghanistan, Ukraine, France, or China….most people are just trying to live their lives and do their best and it’s consistently the government and establishment folks causing problems and chaos through interference.

It’s complex, but it’s also simple. We play this game and brainwash our citizens to think “us good, them bad”….but that’s not the case. My gosh how many times in MSM and even manifesting on this board I hear generalized stereotypes stated matter of factly about the “us vs them” relationship that is nothing but propaganda. These arrogant schmucks sit here and claim “in China you go missing for speaking up” and “Putin is Hitler 2.0” and all sorts of laughable stuff. Meanwhile here, look at what we do state by state and at the federal level with our judicial system or federal agencies like the FBI, IRS, etc! Different rules for the haves and have nots. Any guess what you would have gotten tagged with if you were Hunter Biden lol? Mike Pence, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton all had classified docs that were improperly handled…Trump? 36 charges lol. Imagine how much of this goes on with normal people that we just don’t hear about? The rule of law in America is largely a farce. All this under the guise of what? World peace? US the benevolent land of prosperity, freedom and koombaya? Where the truth is it is very easy to generically and lazily deduce entire populations and cultures into slapstick representations of lesser thans held tightly within the scope and lens of our society shaped by the puppet masters. Different places have different cultural norms. We just like to mouth off because we think we are superior. If you live in China or Russia or UAE it is culturally different. Often by choice. Are there some who for whatever reason rather not be there? Sure. But that’s everywhere. Here we brainwash our people into thinking everyone living in China hates it, and is oppressed and dying to leave but can’t because of evil dictators. Same with Russia. But you know how many pro athletes, NHL guys from Russia get over here and happily go back or spend time in both countries? Our citizens and MSM spend a lot of time creating these narratives and divisive storylines and I think all you can do as an individual is respect the truth and norms of others, even if we don’t understand them. As a citizen, I’m kinda tired of them playing these games and wasting tons of money solely out of the need to play politics or some elites only world chess game. Pretending we are “sending aid” to Ukraine while the Lindsey Grahams and Joe Bidens drink scotch together laughing about playing faux War with other peoples soldiers….after of course briefing the media on how we need to craft a “poor oppressed Ukraine against a big bad evil Russian dictator state” narrative around it in order to sell it to the minions.

36. Every year I feel as though I am peaking, but continue to surprise myself. But life definitely is starting to sneak up on me. Guess it’s the mid life phase. Probably lived half my life already. Almost certainly lived my best overall years. Even my oldest son, nearly 7 now, I look at and it’s like “fuck, he s growing up”. See my parents starting to resemble old people which is weird. My friends and I complain about achy backs, knees, shoulders…old people shit lol. Start getting tired earlier in the evening than I used to in my 20s. So idk, but it’s indeed been part of my pivot over the last couple years to a less consuming investment style and more durable approach to allocating capital. Gotta enjoy what you have and make the most of it all. It’s great when money becomes a less integral part of that equation.

Yup. And what was strange was all the very deliberate attempts to control the narrative. The blatant lying. All trying to get people to part ways with their properties. Housing is crashing. Omg mortgage volume is down. Builders are impaired. Just blatant lies or misrepresentation. Like duh mortgage volume is down, so what, rates doubled! It was the greatest crash in history and what were the numbers last year? Basically flat-modestly up for national home prices. Most decent areas actually increased? Meanwhile really behind the scenes you still see crazy demand and still see JPM raising money for SFH and BX raising money for residential. I do think it’s been an effort to control the resources. Rents are cheap currently compared to owning which is why rents aren’t going down anytime soon. But much of this has been a total farce and the morons at the Fed are either ignorant academic schmucks or basically attempting to rig the game like they did in 2007.

In between you’ll have the Starbucks effect playing out as well. So much of the homebuyer base is filled with folks who don’t want Folgers ground coffee, they want a $2 K cup or a $7 Starbucks the same as they don’t want boomers 3500 sq/ft McMansion or the 1950s colonial on an acre. They want new build with 10 ft ceilings and a redonkulous kitchen as the home centerpiece. On the Fed, I think it’s both. You saw it firsthand amongst most of the wealthy circles last year. The hush hush “great reset” talk. Everyone cutting back spending, selling their stocks, battening down the hatches BEFORE rates hikes even started! There’s a certain nod nod wink wink element to all this corruption. So it’s great seeing all those people get left in the dust now with their cash and 5% CDs.

The Feds “mandate is to fight inflation” they say. 1/3 of inflation is housing. These geniuses employed thousands of economists and piss away billions of dollars annually paying these nimrods….and the answer to fighting inflation they come up with? Make housing even more expensive! And now, even after everything else has plummeted, not just stopped inflating, but deflated in many cases, they sit sit here and say the overall number, is still “stubbornly high” lol even though they’re the reason why.

Has nothing to do with the Glazers. No right minded individual parting with billions is going to partner with the Glazers as it would undoubtedly impair the brand and make it significantly harder to create value in an entity that only really gains value through its brand power. I’ve mentioned in the MANU thread but there’s a huge difference between Dolan and Jones and those guys. They never yank their fans around with false hope of a sale. It would totally shock me if the Glazers put this out there in such a fashion, got the hopes up, and then backed out. There would definitely be riots. It’s would massively damage the brand.

Yea the setup was visible from 100 miles away. -Sour the population on housing…check -Under build for a decade…check -Pandemic reminds everyone why they love them some space and a backyard -low rates and a big liquidity boost flush out the remainder of the past decades inventory -load up homebuilders with 2 years worth of order backlog -raise rates to make housing MORE unaffordable while letting homebuilders adjust to the new environment as they work through a historic backlog at fat margins which shore up the balance sheets Whoops JPow? Whoops Mrs Zelman and all the experts? Did no one see this coming? I said in 2021 we were basically in like the 2/3 inning of a historic run for housing. Setup mirrors the tech bubble 1999 and then the tech run we ve had the last decade or so. First act(2005) will look like a minnow compared to this one. We re probably in the 4th inning or so. Anyone who can’t see it isn’t looking.

You definitely have to be a little careful selling the puts this far along in the process because an outcome is really your enemy there. But yea, these are the sort of gold mines you live for. Its why you need to be constantly looking for opportunities instead of whining about the market or the Fed or whatever. Been hitting this since late last year. The volatility alone is pretty awesome. The puts have consistently had $1-2 on the premiums for 5-10% out of the money 2-4 week expirations. Very similar to CLF in 2021.

Man, everyones so bullish!

Yea if you're long, or a buyer of MANU here, you are solely betting on a full takeover deal with Sheikh. They've tried manufacturing a lot of leverage, but for the reasons Ive detailed in the thread, see no other reasonable alternative in terms of outcomes. Price doesnt matter. It will be higher than this.

The one thing that 100% of the time losses value over time.

Just more perspective, at least stuff that resonates with me. I am sometimes willing to admit that I’ve been accused at being an excellent catalyst trader or sometimes referred to as a “market timer”. I sold CIBR at $32 and $BX at 62 in Feb 2020 right before the market briefly crashed. I top ticked big techs 2022 Q1. MSFT I sold at $290. Google at $2700. WM I sold at $166. Costco at $560. You’d be hard pressed to execute on “timing” as good as this most times. Frankly I consider myself lucky with most of these. And despite this, looking at them all today, it’s pretty conclusive that it wasn’t necessary at all and I’d probably have owned even more of these great names at better prices had I not had a sellers bias. So much of this shit is mental.

No. Daily leverage resets.

All Im pointing out is that I became a significantly better investor and certainly better at making money in the market once I started giving weight to what variables the market tends to care about. A decade ago it was nonstop talk from all these bearish assholes who now lie and say they called the bull market, about "money printing bubbles"....Shit I never would have bought Costco if I continued giving credibility to the people that whinnied about "its expensive"....I am NOT saying the market is always super efficient, its not, but generally is. I am not saying ignore everything. But I am saying that when the market doesnt react the way you expect it to, to the catalyst variables your thesis is banking on...at some point you need to discount those variables and eventually, probably just throw them out entirely. Remove "expensive" from Costcos investment profile and its 100% a no brainer investment and has been for ages. So? If the market hasn't cared about this metric, adapt and start making money, or continuing caring about something that isnt an important variable....its a choice and about flexibility and adapting mental framework.

Yes. What is the magnitude of your prediction on anything with an investable thesis? Quantify, any of it? Because so much of the forecasting for the past almost 3 years now, has been 1) based on predictions that were entirely wrong, 2) based on predictions that came true but the market didnt give a shit about. Thats not how one makes money in the market. So what is it?

Remember, the original goalposts where in Q4 2021. The consumer was putting Xmas trees on their credit cards apparently. Then it was Q1 22 when stimmies stopped. Then it was summer 22 because of savings being depleted and rate hikes. Then "back half of 22" cuz apparently we still believed all that but were waiting for credit cards to be maxed out. Then "definitely Q1 23". Then q2/3 2023. Now "back half of 23"....Keep at it though.

In what context and why does it matter? You keep harping on these super granular, almost irrelevant nuanced things and being surprised the bigger picture stuff is responsible for the market ripping? Can I envision a scenario where the regular old, mostly blue collar worker has more purchasing power in 2025? 100%. Most costs keeping moderating and coming down and these jobs are still good and in demand. And again, if they dont...quantify it? If they lose 3% of purchasing power thats blowing up the market? Its the same as "theyre gonna raise twice more"...like ok.. cool. How do you make money from that. I dont care about spending time on things that arent able to be monetized via an investment or a trade. So far, this sort of micro focus, has yielded nothing.

So basically we are back to regular old run of the mill recession guessing?

Is the last 25 or 50 bps of hikes really the catalyst to "send the markets off a cliff"? Even if theres 2 more, the biggest slug of this is behind us. We are also closer to when the Fed itself is indicating they intend to cut rates. Basically, this is following a very similar thematic arc to COVID. The further we get into it the more certain folks bring up their doomsday intensity, but at the same time, the story is better known, worst parts behind us, and light begins to shine at the end of the tunnel which is why the markets never retouch the original lows and general continue making higher ones. Its very hard to fool the broader markets twice with the same story. Each time, like with all the covid variant bs selloffs, less and less people fall for it. So, you can be Wiley Coyote, or the Roadrunner....you choose.

Yea. Wait til we start reporting June/July/August. Like I said a year ago...3s are a certainty and we may even go negative. The consensus amongst everyone else was 5.....any wonders the market rallied?