Gregmal

Because the above approach involves living in a vacuum. Just saying indicator a, indicator b, and indicator c….nope, steer clear of stocks! Looking at those companies, admittedly just examples, forces you to envision these gargantuan sell offs and ask yourself 1) what really changes based on the assumptions, 2) why wouldn’t those just be layup opportunities, and 3) what if the really terrible things just never happen…are those bad things to own anyway? I mean does nobody believe in just finding good companies and investing through the cycle? Because the benefit there….is that 3 of the 123 predicted recessions actually end up happening. Bailing on good investments on the other 120 false alarms is guaranteed to produce poor long term results.

GS, UBER, MKL, CLF, HIW, FFH, CVX, NFLX Bunch of totally random and rather diverse group of stocks. “The market” thing is a lazy crock of crap. Which of these haven’t bottomed or are at risk of new lows because the analysts lower their excel targets or unemployment ticks up to 4%? I have trouble seeing how for most stocks, you didn’t already have your chance. Of course there’s exceptions like with Google or Vornado, but by and large the “everywhere” opportunity already occurred.

I would think this sort of thesis or whatever would fall into a different category. Finance is wayyyy too full of these open ended, never ending, types of predictions. It’s how folks spent the past decade shorting FANG or Tesla because “it’s a bubble”…after a certain period of time, even just purely from a risk management perspective, you need to settle up. Index or not(which is another subject we ve discussed) the bottom for now is very clearly in. It seems we are right back into good old fashioned valuation short territory, which is basically what the case is when a thesis hinges on “everyone’s gonna miss earnings” or “analysts are all gonna get together and revise estimates down” or something. Possible, but not realistic. If we never draw the line then what’s the point of any of this? Can I just openly keep arguing that the top isn’t in because sometime down the line we will make an all time high again? Can I still argue that 2008s bottom isn’t in?

African pompano which is a gorgeous fish, mackerel, and some yellowtail. Shark fishing tonight in honor of CPI.

Well, with respect to kind of what I perceived John’s gist to be….the bottom is clearly past us. We don’t need to keep a thread about the bottom going because people want to regurgitate the same “stocks are expensive” stuff we’ve heard for a decade or argue over 3.5 or 4% inflation. Maybe it’s time for another thread that more aptly fits those topics. For one, I thought the Kuppy on Inflation thread was good, but apparently he doesn’t like the vaccines and doing double or triple digits green every year is poor risk management.

Check @wabuffo updates. It’s all coming down and now they’ll grasp for OER to keep the gig going. It’s remarkable

Agree. There’s an awful lot of people who seem to be trying to make something out of nothing. Get on with your lives folks.

Try to fish with Paul every year when Im down in the Keys. https://www.budnmarys.com/boats/relentless/ My dad used to have a boat like that. However much fun they are, theyre 10x the work. Can't beat the fishing though. In NJ I have a low maintenance Lund.

What’s the CPI print gonna be? What’s the Fed gonna say? Who friggin cares. Go fish.

Why is it that in the finance world, the word recession is like the ultimate punchline/gotcha/drop your jaw and say oh no! situation? Haven’t we lived through tons of them? I’m personally just kind of in the camp that recessions are part or life and subsequently investing and that great companies at good enough prices tend to come out stronger through each cycle.

Yea Santa Rosa is the general area, but to me that’s more west. Like out by the Walmart and stuff. Seaside is kinda in between Watercolor and Watersound and east of that is Rosemary which is also synonymous with Inlet Beach which on GPS also sometimes shows up as PCB. You’ll have 3 different addresses for 3 houses on the same block lol. School system is simple, it’s just South Walton. Easiest otherwise is just to use zip 32461

We originally wanted to be in that area. My best friend lives in Wellington and works in Palm Beach. But even there, it’s too much of a pocket area. Few miles one way or another and you leave the gated communities and you’re at a payday lender or pawn shop. Ran into the same thing with St John’s which is gorgeous and was also a candidate. I also have a preference for the more moderate weather. South Florida is horrible with the heat from May-September. So we ended up in Rosemary Beach or whatever it’s called(they change it a lot since it’s unincorporated). South Walton school system. Schools like this. https://www.seasideschools.net/#calendar1390/20230209/month Go there and eat at Amici or something on a Tuesday night in December. Look around. You ll see what I mean. St Joe and the other wealthy communities plus state conservative land and parks basically prevent encroachment. It’s one of the few places I can say I have a very high degree of confidence in assuming that it will not change for the worse over the timespan in which my kids grow up. https://sowal.com/event/seaside-school-race-expo-silent-auction

One thing that’s kind of dawned on me too, evaluating things the past couple years as a parent, is how a lot of that-parenting- element has changed too. I was always blown away as a teenager and early 20 something how in Florida, us northerners were so much quicker and street savvy. Sharp I guess you could call it. Like you’d go down there and just notice how peers were slower. Maybe it is the way of life, idk and I never really understood it, but presumably it was cultural. Even the year I spent there for college, locals were amazed that I was from “the city”. Which I always thought was weird bc living 10 miles from heart of NYC my whole life it was just a normal place….but they did that with my siblings and other folks I knew from up north noticed the same sort of thing. I guess comparable to the way people from Nebraska think of Disneyland. Oh wow that’s crazy it must be awesome living near Disney. Whereas when you actually do live there, you don’t think anything of it. Nowadays though, spending lots of time in both places. It’s changed. The kids up north are soft. They’re not well rounded. They’re confused. Which is ultimately the point I came to when looking at where I want my kids going to school. Private schools in Florida have wait lists out years, more being built, and at least the area where I’m headed, vocational schools specifically for math, science and engineering. In NJ, they fight over bathrooms and give litter boxes to kids who show up to school claiming to be cats.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-08/nyc-wealth-exodus-drives-billionaire-s-bet-on-south-florida-boom?sref=MTy2GeXk Its crazy to me how many of my NY friends are so invested in fighting the melting ice cube situation. Like its personal or something. No, its not cyclical this time...unless something major policy wise changes. No, your restaurants are not special anymore...the chefs are moving to South Florida too. No the chicks aint hotter either, especially in January....Its as clear an investment theme as you'll ever see. Embrace it and make money. This past week Ive been in Florida and you see Super Bowl Party ads and signs everywhere. Meanwhile my phone keeps getting texts from NJ government about "make sure you get your covid booster for the big game"...its just stunning how different things are in the two areas and how oblivious the NY/NJ/CT region is to whats happening simply due to a bizarre and arrogant superiority complex.

I think you missed the memo. They claimed cap rates blew out big time but supposedly it’s a lagging indicator and they moved the original lag date from q2 to q4 2022 and then again to q3/4 2023. The proof is that some guy on Twitter bought a value add strip center with an apartment on top, somewhere in Missouri, at like a 7 cap…. Yes, it was always this amusing from day 1.

Yea for sure I know you're one of the good guys. I just kinda rant on the talking points because a lot of these are the ones manipulated by the bad actors and bullshit artists. Any way you cut it, a market and economy where everything is plummeting, like say, last summer, is not a healthy one. So the obvious skepticism from people who are deceptively lobbying everyone else that this is the answer, is bs and should be called out. Its just coincidental theyre hoarding cash or shorting the market...nothing to see there(shrug)...yea fuckin right. If "everything plummeting" is not the answer, we will obviously have situations where some stuff goes up and some down and thats just always the way things have worked generally speaking, with a gradual longer term bias to the upside. Many last year in H2 got conditioned to scream anytime, anything, went up. I just look forward to what looks like a more normal, normal, going forward. Which should include 4-5% interest rates, not 0 and not 7.

I also kind of became desensitized to the used car and commodity inputs as a bellwether because last time the inflationistas screamed about them they fell off a cliff shortly thereafter and in response to this the inflationistas changed the goalposts and moved on to other more convenient bellwethers. Have we come full circle?

Yup. Except now we ve been conditioned to see them as signs of the coming apocalypse. They’re not

It’s like everytime the market has had a few up weeks or makes a 5-10% move back up the past 6 months there’s a whole crowd of people who are aghast and screaming about retail mania and bubbles again and it’s just like “wtf are we doing”?

Of course, they’re trying very hard to create “gasp”, “oh no it’s back” moments. As with every ride, there’s gonna be fluctuations but the overall direction is what clearly matters and that’s down. Which if you understand the “ups and downs” part, consistent even with random walk stuff..it’s not surprising at all. Nor nothing to fret. Most of these day in the life fluctuations have occurred for decades, only now have we been trained to scrupulously pick them apart.

Another one of the pillars of rounding out your investment strategy/acumen is realizing that when you do buy and sell you don’t need to obsessively fret over hitting tops or bottoms.

More thesis validation today.

Work hard and do whatever makes you the most obscene amount of money until you have somewhat of a base….then get aspirational and make lifestyle choices.

This is quite possibly the most life altering perspective one can have, and it requires a great deal of internalizing the investment process. When I started out and had little money, every fluctuation was a big deal. Over time you can’t help but notice how many, most, almost all….of the well timed sales look foolish if given enough time. The long game is just as simple as Buffett has shown it to be…accumulating. Not churning, flipping, etc.

What do you think of MBS type stuff?