Gregmal

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.

I would ask the question who invests with this mentality, but it seems a lot of people do. In general I don’t think one should be in the stock market if they think +/- 10% is a big deal either way. It’s just kind of arbitrary and in hindsite stating that buying the absolute top on the Nasdaq was a bad move, seems to be as well because even if you did, DCA take care of this and chances are you also bought lower than the top prior or have the ability to after as well. If I had listened to all the valuation experts warning about buying MSFT at the top of the tech bubble I’d never have bought a tech stock during the last decade. You just have to accept certain risks when investing and there’s ways to mitigate them. Over time the people who are certain they have the crystal ball…never do.

https://money.com/google-8-wrong-worst-predictions/?amp=true

Lol true, but generally speaking. If you know what you’re doing you can probably just sling derivatives and other exotic product. But for the normal persons, and I’m talking CDs, government bonds, etc…like where you get 5% with zero shot at anything more…..total waste.

IDK, I still just think that unless you are retired, or like maybe on the very back end of your career, buying bonds is the equivalent of admitting defeat or hitting from the ladies t. If you're in your 20s/30s/40s....you have time. More importantly, for an average person, the bulk of their growth will simply come from savings. Its just such a dangerous game sitting around thinking you re smarter than the market and sustainably so...as in "Ima make my nut shucking and jiving around between bonds and CDs and occasionally stocks"....as Ive said many times, it says something that even in year where it all worked for them... short sellers and bearish prognosticators....most of the actually lost money! And the ones that did make money...the amount they made hardly compensated them for the years of lagging due to such framework. Weathering drawdowns is as integral and normal an aspect of investing as taking punches is to a being a boxer. All you gotta do is avoid the knockout punches.

This is another really big flaw I see in the big bear arguments. I agree with “2021 was a peak year” and this should be obvious. It also goes without saying that it was not a normal time either. So there’s a lack of sophistication to an argument that things declining from what was a clear one off….equals…. the end of the world or some terrible situation. It’s why there’s a huge overblown sensationalism to the “see earnings and margins are coming down!” stuff.

Out of all the folks I know and have met who “outperform”, almost NONE and them spend any time trying to “outperform”. They just don’t even worry about it. Of the folks that do spend lots of time trying to outperform, pretty much none of them do. It’s such a useless exercise. Like Vinod mentioned, it’s impossible to have high inflation without top line growth somewhere. Eventually inflation goes away, the cycle takes fold…whatever. As long as you weren’t being too granular and were buying durable businesses or assets, you’re good. I mean really when you invest(again stressing investing not short term guessing games) the most important thing is not valuations or rates or inflation or whatever flavor of the month topic exists, but the larger and longer term prosperity of the area you are investing. If someone is massively bearish on the USA, why in the world would they own Berkshire Hathaway long term? Some of this stuff is just simple.

Well theres another very simple aspect to this, but its hypnotizing and very much a siren song for many the egomaniac who needs to be right or "call it". Stocks either go up, or down. Many times, those calling it, think they are geniuses simply because the direction matched the forecast, even when the logic/framework behind the forecast was totally wrong. So they sit around waiting to eventually be "right"...and generally speaking, if given enough time, one can almost always clip a window where they can claim to have called it. However, if instead of being deathly loyal to an ego and "being right"...one can also choose loyalty to making money...IMO..the reason one is in the markets, and in which case the whole "calling it" thing and sitting around waiting for that cookie...becomes a fools game.