Gregmal

That’s all fair, but there was a certain smugness from so, so many people all through H2 last year; condescension, bravado, they knew it all….among so many of the predictions…you couldn’t trust the P/E on forward anything because “the E was going to fall off a cliff”….I just wonder what those people have to say? Do they try to claim their prediction was correct because of a modest earnings reversion coupled with a higher(much higher from some of the starting points) index? Do they kick the can down the road and just keep saying next quarter, next year? Do they nut up and just admit they didn’t know shit? It’s probably the only reason I ever go check in on Twitter anymore….most of them are still singing the same stale tunes. It’s enjoyable to see it. It’s so enjoyable KNOWING that at best they have not made any money and at worst they’ve gotten their asses handed to them. Huge earnings collapses, Homebuilder impairments. Mother of all bubbles popping. These people are court jesters. I would even turn on CNBC except they never hold anyone accountable. They just put on Tom Lee and Cramer when the market is bullish and then flip to Grantham and Grant when it’s bearish.

Was reading through an old email chain from last year. Had a good laugh recalling all the folks who found themselves clever and edgy regurgitating various punchlines in regards to "the market" valuation because of "the E falling off"....Q3 is their last shot at that. Dont hold your breath.

Theres different problems everywhere. Some are better than others. We were in Seaside a few months ago and the family of the kids our kids were playing with were hardcore Jehovahs Witness nuts. Its was annoying, but better than dealing with garbage everywhere, druggies all over the street, and knowing that every block you walk on, likely puts you within a couple hundred feet of a violent criminal.

Is this “coup” what wasn’t why the Nasdaq crashed 1% today?

Tell me about it. I’m still waiting for the feel good scientific study about how much world we ve saved as a state since banning plastic bags and straws in NJ. I get 3 text messages from the health dept a month about staying updated on COVID boosters, but the fake scientists can not seem to manufacture any data categorizing why we aren’t allowed to use plastic bags at the grocery store.

It’s not “fake” but my god we ve been hearing about all these super big deals with massive global implications and major incoming consequence from all the usual suspects since February of last year. And the result? Nada. Wheat futures are volatile. Lol big deal. -30% oil prices? People have been trying to scream “HUGE STORY” with this Russia/Ukraine thing, for reasons I don’t quite understand, and as someone who is just looking at investment angles…find it both annoying and bizarre.

Yea. Sure. Tell us more about Russia sabotaging pipelines, false flag drone attacks on the Kremlin, and that dam strike! This whole thing has been laughable. The EU nat gas crisis. Zelenskys 11 figure grift, China invading Taiwan next. Oh boy.

So another hyped up, American media created cocktail, that turns out impotent. Nice.

I don’t understand why financial markets should care, at all. When this started, everyone made a huge deal of this. Told us how devastating it would be. How much it would push inflation higher long term. And that turned out to be completely wrong. Essentially a nothing burger. Oil was $90 a barrel pre war. Today it’s barely holding $70. This was little more than reality TV for the warmongers and pro USA propaganda for the media and politicians. So sure, there’s a new twist in Russia, but why should we care in terms of its larger impact here?

Sports is becoming a joke. Was watching the Yankees game tonight and Michael Kay on Aaron Judges injury update..."spoke to Boone and said he's making progress. Today he was able to get in the pool!"... Twenty years ago Scott Stevens nearly killed Paul Kariya in the Stanley Cup finals and Kariya comes back the next period and scores a wicked goal on a sniper snapshot from top of the circle. Now, a generational baseball talent stubs his toe on the warning track and a month later is courageously getting in the pool....

There’s one settlement for 3M

Yea I’m looking to free up some stuff and hit puts. Can get $2 on the Jan 24 $30 which creates a synthetic double digit yield all for the privilege of buying this for 30c on the dollar.

Yea as long as you can get reasonably comfortable with the likelihood of the investment exceeding the cost of putting it on, IE your access to capital, then it’s easy. IE if you can borrow at 6% and expect the investment to do 8-10%….I almost never worry about stuff like “beating the market” or whatever. You look to take shots you know you can make. The results tend to take care of themself.

Before the “way off top” of $69k from todays $30k, we had a mere few years ago a $19k top and a $3k price. I agree the next high may be a while, but don’t think the arguments against Bitcoin that have repeatedly and wrongly been made now for a decade have any more merit today. It’s effectively the same stuff the short Tesla and perpetual doomers do. Market goes up 3%, it’s fuckin bullshit and built on idiots just speculating. Market then pulls back 1%…see, I’m vindicated, I knew it! I also agree, Bitcoin on nothing. The rest are garbage. I do own Ripple preferred stock, but that’s a tad different than just speculating on the future of digital gold.

Sold DG. Nothing changed but $17 a share in a week or two is good enough for me

Yea I definitely concur that you need to let your winners run. When to sell? Idk but I sell or reduce stuff when I no longer feel comfortable with it. If you are honest with yourself you can really just feel the ground shifting on stuff. The thesis changing. Fundamentals deteriorating. An important distinction is secular versus cyclical. If I like something long term secular I care less about the cyclical. But if I’m playing with a secularly challenged or just plain old shitty biz, you want to be decisive. Big reason I got out of GM years ago. So I guess much of this also helps having a catalyst. REITs out of COVID had the sunbelt wave and then with a lag the widespread recovery where even the shitty blue state stuff recovered. Once that played out there’s much less reason to hang around unless you have an AIV or VRE type catalyst. VRE to me it seemed lost its catalyst when they refused to entertain selling in a good environment. So I sold.

No mass inventory impairments from KB. Where oh where are all the impairments!

Also, a stepdad is not a dad.

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.