Gregmal

What is the infatuation with trans on both sides though? Like .5% of the population should be a paragraph in one textbook that is 1/12 of the K-12 curriculum. Why is this stuff so prevalent? Ideas are powerful. Introducing them, period, can influence. Otherwise, why the worry over who posts Ukraine or COVID crap on Twitter and Facebook? I personally don’t care what people do with themselves or their spare time. I think Republicans have a serious issue regarding…quoting Elon Musk, “being in peoples bedrooms”. That said, I don’t want weirdos around my children, period. I consider a person with a mental disorder, problematic and an undesirable in regards to being around my family, and I consider a man or a woman who thinks they are something else, to be just that. We were eating at a hole in the wall place that came highly recommended for its food about a year ago. A normal looking white dude was at the bar, yelling about Jesus. He was not belligerent but singing loudly and talking to anyone in the place. He came over to our table and told my 3 year old daughter she was beautiful, and my son that Jesus was the original gangsta. We told him to fuck off and he backed off and then came back again trying to high 5 us and we just left. When did life get so complicated for people? Everyone has rights. We can like whatever we like and do whatever we want to do but pushing this shit upon other people is fundamentally wrong.

Yea lol I don’t know why but the highlight of my year was seeing Powell make a total joke of himself and the FRB a month ago. The fact that they’re still talking about inflation too is just icing on the cake. There should be job cuts at the Fed.

The larger issue for many is the gaslighting and just overall redefining of things based on an agenda combined with the notion that those seeking acceptance refuse to accept anyone who believes differently than them, often to the extent that those same people try to harm or ruin folks who simply disagree with them. If trans people are a tiny fraction of a fraction in terms of society, why is this stuff being promoted as if that number is like 30%? Why not campaign and stuff school books with propaganda promoting the health and safety of the indigenous people of the Sentinel Islands? I have a few simple rules that I live by and one of the bigger ones is don’t make your problems my problems and vice versa. Today certain types are all about making their problems everyone else’s problems. Some stuff is just plain weird. Fat people are fat. Nothing wrong with calling spades a spade or saying one would or wouldn’t want certain things for themselves or their families. Except today, we are seeing society try to convince us that if someone is 300 pounds, they’re not fat, and you are the one with the problem if you think they are. Or if they’re 300 pounds, a male, and wearing a wig and dress, that you’re the problem if you think they’re a fat weirdo. Much of these issues are derivatives of mental issues. Which whether it’s dressing funny, eating too much, crime, etc….just aren’t being addressed properly and are arguably even being ignore.

I think the bigger issue is that when its virtually impossible to raise a family in a safe environment, with good education options, thats a problem for a city. How exactly does one raise a family in NYC or Chicago these days? Hey Johnny, wanna go to the park with the homeless people, druggies, and gangbangers? Ride your bike down the street? Go play ball at the courts where there was a shooting the other day? Public schools are out of the question and unless you have $30k-$60k a year or more, per kid for private, what do you do? Move to Westchester LOL. Ive mentioned the peculiar nature of the anti-safety movement, but Im equally perplexed at the hatred of charter schools or general improvement in educational options in the places as well. Theres just such a political web of conflicting bs and a stalemate, probably intentional, on doing anything. Its a shame and I thought Adams was a step in the right direction, but even still, its gonna take awhile.

Meanwhile, the Feds send in camo dressed, assault rifle wielding teams by the dozen to arrest some 21 year old computer nerd who’s reading a book on his porch….

Look at hvac direct and you’ll get an idea what the actual equipment cost is. I had a 1.5 ton go in a rental last year. Got a crazy quote. Told them I’d buy a Goodman and pay them $200 an hour labor on the install. They magically found an Armstrong Air they could install for $4500.

I honestly don’t know what to make of this datapoint. I’m with you on it, but we re still sitting at 3.5% with 2:1 ratio. I leaned the way you just described but it’s failed to produce meaningful and actionable anything. For all the job cuts we are hearing of, the numbers keep coming in strong. This Id use homebuilders as a good proxy. Prepared? Probably better than ever before. Ran through backlogs, managed inventory, and adjusted. We ve now had 18 months of warning and time to shore up balance sheets, raise cash, do whatever. Who’s oblivious to a possible recession. Or slowdown at this point? Answer is probably the average middle class person, and that’s it. Anyone with money I’m sure has had their financial guidance screamed at them since last winter. Companies have been doing the same, hence job cuts. I think the odds of a slowdown, especially some drama around the debt ceiling too have rocketed up, mainly because of politicians and Fed incompetence, but it’s still not worth betting on all that heavily IMO.

What about the last gasp short thesis relying on insurance rates going up? LOLz..

Great example. Docks already built. Maybe some maintenance…insurance, sure. Otherwise? Where’s the costs, where’s the inflation? Nah it’s just an item those top 1-5% of the folks want and will pay for. Separately, I can’t really stand Jim, but he nails this. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/12/jim-cramer-the-feds-efforts-to-fight-housing-inflation-by-hiking-rates-has-backfired.html There’s one answer…build more. Whoops. Moral of the story, be long shelter, and the prosperity of the top 1-5%.

The problem with broken clocking it is that it’s not really unique or insightful because it’s almost always occurring just in differing forms. Of things mentioned: Again, context…historical recessions…there is not really a precedent for what occurred during COVID. So historical recessions IMO don’t carry much weight. Job losses? At 3.5% unemployment and still near 2:1 jobs for available person? This is bad if we go to 1.7:1? 1.5:1? Declining earnings. Again, from historical highs? That everyone(minus punters of course) knew were influenced by one offs? So we get the headline “declining earnings” and revert to what? Still rather “historically” reasonable and healthy number which are now a base? So then we take all these bad boogeyman words and phrases that could very well be true but not as impactful as advertised and then hit it over the head with the hammer of “I’m just making a valuation call” and voila everyone should bid things down 30-50% just cuz? The larger argument really I think involves the fact that this whole damn this has been so expected and orchestrated that it’s not exactly surprising anyone. Which to a degree hints at more being priced in than possibly a scenario where everyone is off in lalala land. In contrast to today where realistically the only relevant lala land I see is the one people fabricate as an excuse for the market trading at a valuation that “they” don’t agree with.

See the problem is not the rules or even the guns or cocaine. It’s when we have rules that aren’t enforced or there are double standards. The guy in the above video should have been locked away. He wasn’t. And Alan Weaselberg or whoever the Trump CFO is at Rikers for an apartment and school tuition LOL? If you are making guns and drugs legal…do it. What you have now though is people who don’t follow the laws endangering people who do. A law abiding citizen goes into an urban area behaving as if guns and drugs are illegal and is a sitting duck target for people who just don’t care or know they’ll be home inside 24 hours. Same with the tax code. It’s systemic to a degree, but also massively regional. How many people in Nevada or Florida are being bothered by the state over their tax returns?

I can live with predictions that age poorly. But the difference is these hedge fund schmucks borderline lie. Or make factual declarations hoping to control the narrative. This wording is epic because all he had to say is “it may not have a moat”. Or “I don’t understand the moat”. Instead he was “certain”. And last time I checked it’s not really possible for a person with an IQ over 70 to be certain of something, and then wrong to such a horrifying degree, unless you are completely arrogant and full of yourself. “I am quite certain that there is only a fairly shallow, narrow moat around its business."

NYC was a dump until Giuliani got creative to tackle organized crime in the 80s and that was that. Bloomberg too used common sense. All this shit is solvable but it has to come from the right place.

Yea idk I feel there’s always a million reasons to be bearish. Real wars or fake ones(Ukraine is a bs war and Iraq lasted what 20 years?)….viruses, recessions, energy problems….that’s life. But the catalysts for higher rates imo have evaporated. The argument for going 5+ is far easier with inflation 5+. The banking problems, slowing economy, and well, guaranteed collapse of the major inflation indicators over the next 6 months basically remove any sort of bridge for going much higher. Even, if as you argue burgers and mixed drinks at a restaurant cost too much, we re going to be in “restrictive” territory(using the lazy definition of cpi vs FFR)… so that whole game is now over. Im all for low out of pocket, high leverage trades…but the declarations have a cost if you put it to work. Internet predictions are awesome because shelf life is infinite. But anyone buying options, shorting, margining up, has costs and decay to worry about. Especially with the options, it has and seems to largely be a suckers bet.

Isn’t Seattle like one of the hardest hit real estate markets? Rent is goofy because you have 12-24 month contracts so theoretically a lot of people are still due for increases but in reality that’s not a price that’s going up but rather ones that’s catching up to where it got to a while ago. And yea, most of these things are totally bogus and dumb. Who chose a fresh whole chicken and breakfast sausage….what about the beyond meat sausage links lol.

The problem in a bigger context for the US and much of Western society is that when life gets to a certain level and relatively speaking, peak quality, we begin making up problems or entertaining ourselves with bogus ones. Which is what we have now. Most of our “serious” political issues are a total joke.

Gas prices rising into summer would depend on how much. Long way to go to get back to $120 a barrel and $5 at the pump. In which case, they’d be EQUAL to a year ago. Housing is still the entire process influence here, at 60%. It’s funny because the same jabronis saying real estate is collapsing are pitching rate hikes cuz housing is bizarrely tracked at 8.5% y/y which we all know isn’t representative of reality. Separately, the “used car prices are rising” folks are quiet again. Year over year…is that -11%?

I just wanna know when I can bust out my SPY 3000 hat. Been told for a while it’s coming. Been told to place all my focus on not just 50-100 basis points here and there but tenths of a percent fluctuations in poorly calculated monthly measures. Where’s the payoff? Or at least a way to massively lever a bet to todays figures? Is there anyone out here who thinks that July numbers will be equal to or higher than these?

Most of the narrative is set at the top. It’s not just crime…there’s crime everywhere, it’s how you handle it. Memphis is a dump. Atlanta has crime up to wazoo. But nobody brandishes these things like NY/Chicago and SF. The politicians boast about being soft on crime. You regularly see folks getting absolutely nothing for things that should warrant prison sentences. What did we think would happen when we said “only criminals can get business licenses to open a pot shop”??? We really wonder why there’s this sort of stuff happening? When guys with 3 dozen monthly offenses keep being allowed in the subways…. Plenty of places have, and have always had crime problems. Miami in the 80s was the king of crime. Some make efforts to deal with it. Some, like say Buckhead in Atlanta take matters into their own hands. The problem for NYC is they treat their cops like shit. Embolden criminals. And then brag about it. It’s basically Disney for lowlifes. Now I’m really sounding old, but when I was a kid if you got caught with a gun, registered or not, out in public, in NY….you were going to jail. Plain and simple. If it was unregistered…you’re doing like 5-10 years. Now you’re home for dinner and don’t have to worry about court for years.

Maybe VNO can get tax credits for letting homeless people live in their empty office space…

De Blasio killed NYC. Plain and simple. Then COVID destroyed office. It’s gonna be awhile before it gets fixed, that’s for sure. Chicago will fade into irrelevancy. CA will bounce back first.

The fuckin guy shot at cops and was released lol. Thats like whole different level beyond comprehension. You wanna drive away retailers because you refuse to prosecute petty theft…whatever. Letting people run around with guns and even shoot them and just be like yea go home but make sure you show up for trial in two years???? They’re getting everything they deserve in these states.

Yup. Walmart shutting stores in Chicago as well. Wonder where they’re opening them. I’m younger, but never thought I would see the day where safety was controversial. Look at this shit…..how was this guy on the streets???? https://nypost.com/2023/04/11/gunman-nabbed-in-cold-blooded-nyc-smoke-shop-slay-another-deadly-weekend-shooting-cops/amp/

The people who are bearish are almost always bearish. Their longs are savvy “trades” and otherwise seem perpetually positioned the same way. That Universa Fund comes to mind for mastering the art of…schemes. Although they all claim Q421 as their basis. This is precisely the noise most investors are better off ignoring.

Like there’s never, even in 2021 November, been a time where one couldn’t put in the work, and find a company or business or asset that they found attractive, and then just accumulated the position. In fact I’d wager there is a huge bias with the famously over quoted, hindsite top tick dates like “last year cash did better than stocks stuff” if you move the goalposts back a bit…those scary sounding quotes become less relevant. For instance people also told us stocks were uninvestable in March and April of 2020 and now with hindsite look how many people claim to have been buyers and talk about it as if it was a no brainer? People also told us in 2018 a recession was right around the corner and the easy money bubble was gonna burst. Even here, how much more leeway do we keep giving the doomsday people? The $3000 predictions? Cuz we have and can continue to say “next quarter/year” etc…But…I’d say over the past 12 months there’s been plenty of glorious investment opportunity such that any of the 4-5% coupon just looks irrelevant.