Gregmal

I just wanna know why the adherence to the other religion? The one that involves perpetual bearishness and constant goalpost moving. Wasn't the consumer certainly tapped out this fall? Then for sure Q4 was when they were screwed. Now? Just meagerly kick the can down the road steady as she goes. Of course its gonna be second half of the year...again! Same with the lovely "index". Wasn't it unanimous amongst these experts that H1 was gonna be super rough, but then things rebound? Everyone and their mother said recession in H1 and then the bullish ones like JP Morgans dipshit, said full recovery in H2. One of my friends dad, a smart guy, CFO at a big Manhattan based supply company to the apparel industry, once said to me, I dont get all the fuss about stocks. If you hold on long enough, everyone is right. That sticks with me even though it was said probably a decade ago, because every day theres reminders of it. People just keep saying the same things, over and over, and eventually, they get to claim they "called it". So, do you wanna be right, or do you wanna make money?

Yea my rule of thumb varies but you don’t tip for a coffee or any sort of pickup food unless it’s an exceptionally unique situation. That sort of crap is a cash grab. Maybe ice cream where it’s a family business and high school kids working the counter…sure. But not stuff like Starbucks or whatever. Delivery which is never high end, it’s usually just a flat $5-10. If you sit down to eat, even a pizza joint, if someone is serving you, the greater of $20 of 25%. If you can afford to eat at a $400 a dinner place, you should be able to afford to tip $100. That’s how I think about it. Bar is $1 a drink. I’ve never seen a cocktail that takes longer than 3 minutes to make.

^ yup that’s the problem with these guessing exercises and “I disagree with the valuation” games. One or two minor things are off, and it’s rubbish.

I don’t get this at all. Just don’t tip for those things. If people don’t have the balls to click a button they deserve to be taxed.

My pushback is that you had a lot of things priced in last year. Whats left of the bear case, is basically just regular old, run of the mill, call it 50x a year every year until it works, recession guessing. And valuation shorting which at this point, everyone in the world should know is a horrible idea. Individually, its probably the difference between shorting Tesla, or shorting Google/Apple. One is really capital intensive and deteriorating, while the others are great businesses... its simply an arrogance exercise of "I disagree with the market's multiple" type thing.

Totally. I can’t think of a better category for pure inflation than wild caught fish.

Yea most grocery is higher but fries and canned soup I like because those markets have both real inflation inputs, plus also monopoly like characteristics, which should really present a nice window into the worst of the worst as far as “inflation + price gauging” is concerned. Hence the regularly fluctuating prices being so drastic, $1.50-$4.50 is quite the price range to see repeatedly show up on the shelves.

LOL I m waiting for the breakfast crisis headlines. We need 10% FF because eggs and OJ prices are soaring! Neither have nuffin to do with inflation....

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/24/greedflation-food-brands-may-be-profiteering-from-price-hikes.html Just more anecdotal evidence of whats really the root of remaining inflation. Some of my favorite inflation litmus tests while strolling through the stores are frozen French fries, and canned soup. Check the generic, and the name brands and how the prices move around. Its all pretty fascinating. Both follow very similar patterns now going on 6+ months. Regular everyday price is maybe 10-20% higher than pre covid. Maybe $3-3.50 for each on the name brand side and $2-2.50 for generic. Generic never moves. Randomly the name brand goes up for a bit to about $4-4.30. It holds there for a week or two, and then like clockwork you have these massive inventory blowout sales, $1.99 for the fries and like 4/$6 on the soup. Supply and demand.

It’s hard to ballpark in anything other than ranges but net I’d say 0-5% is closer than 5-10%. Energy was the big mover but commodities came down big. Housing and rental stuff mostly rose to its peak levels in Q3 2021 and it just sat there(no decline though for rents, modest for housing prices) in 2022. The only real inflation was likely heavily skewed to low-mid end blue collar work. Not aware of much in the white collar world. I don’t think any of my attorneys have raised rates since COVID started. Which is a different subject but much of white collar world was already very much aware of the ramifications of poorly performing stock markets in q1-2 of 2022. By the end, as some have already said, they’re more lucky to have jobs than be reaching for bonuses. Big story, I don’t think anything worthwhile on the inflation story front become evident until late 2023 or early 2024 at best. And I think it’s a mistake to attribute real losses via inflation to valuations because it’s anchored to a short term thing. I’d even say that same phenomena is why the “sticky” aspect remains a topic. It’s just interpreted wrong. But @SharperDingaanhas mentions it before. Corporation raise prices up “because of inflation”….then they stay there or keep raising and most of its just margin. Short term pain for long term gain, hardly a negative at all. Energy’s overblown too. No one has explained how 2014 had $100 oil but not a peep about an inflation crisis. So that alone I doubt does much.

I ve said before I don’t think the published numbers are true. I am not sure we can ever get a real “exact” print if that’s what’s required either. Between h2 2020 and Q1 2022 there was probably 30-40% cumulative inflation with the bulk occurring in the 12 months from q42020-q42021, almost directly attributed to stimulus payments. Anyone who went grocery shopping, dining, or ventured out into the world saw it. Fueled on the low end by q2-3 2020 seeing massive plunges in just about everything and then on the backend massive shortages of same products that, like energy/oil, got panic sold in the early COVID stage, production shut/cut massive, and then didn’t get fixed til mid 2022. Inflation was minuscule on 2022 but every is captivated by energy prices which, drum roll, have always been volatile.

Yet people sit on cash, or tout their 4% guvs and pretend to be rich. The narratives can’t all be correct. All the companies who raised prices on lumber(just using as an example) took the immediate hit, and now have better margins because of it assuming they held those price increases. Exactly what’s working for homebuilders for instance. Plus, we all know inflation wasn’t really 8-10% last year. Can we stop peddling that? Same way inflation wasn’t 6% in 2021.

Economic hurricane to mild recession in 4 weeks?

Anyone else wondering how long until the usual suspects abandon the newly popular "recession" thesis and jump straight to the debt ceiling drama as their reasons for systematic bearishness and high cash balances?

Once upon a time people complained about his risk management. Wonder how many of them did that last few years?

Haha yea. I dunno. But it’s gonna close sooner than later and 70c-$1 for up to $5 upside in totally market neutral fashion seems like solid use of borrowed monies lol

Add to INDT and starter in RFP on the dip to 21.20. Not really sure why. 5% margin still works.

Ill never forget how early in my career, maybe 2011 or so, how many jerk offs smugly went on TV and pontificated about 14x for the SPY being “a little too rich” for their taste, seeing as how much “uncertainty” was in the economy and broader markets. How the long term averages were 15x ish, so there just wasn’t a favorable risk/reward, or so they said. I don’t recall their names but I would hope none of them currently have jobs. Those people are the worst. Not just wrong; everyone is allowed to be wrong, but doing so in such an arrogant and condescending way. And turning out to be idiots.

Exactly, I am blown away by the idea of anything else. If rates stay higher than they are today it’s because of inflation. Why in the F would anyone want to own a paper asset in that situation? The reason, it seems to me, is that most people who buy stocks don’t actually understand that they are buying ownership of anything. They are simply invested in the day to day quote.

They just reflect the original entity. Sometimes annoying to track depending on ratios but by all means its reflective of if you owned the underlying today.

Networks $1B if they dont own the digital, $2.5B if they do...still dont think anyones figured this out although the company has said they do. Garden $2B worst case just cuz everyone else uses it. Likely way higher Rockettes $800m Tao $400m air rights $500m other venue+scrap $500m Sphere $1.3B You dont even need to do work here. Its over $100 with ease. You have zero liquidity or BK risk. Its a bizarre setup because it seems after $60 broke all you have to do is scream Sphere and another 10% comes off even though right now you arent even paying for it. Look at the recent headlines on Tao, spinoff, acqusitions...Sphere has been planned for almost a decade but its popular to just throw off speculation that everything they do is "to fund the Sphere"...employees showed up at work today "to fund the Sphere". Spinoff "to fund the Sphere". Revised spinoff..."to fund the Sphere". Tao "to fund the sphere"..The hysterics control the narrative right now for sure. Same with Networks. Rust Belt RSNs are crappy assets. But owning the overall content and streaming rights is hotter than even and demanding massive numbers. Networks isnt Rust Belt baseball, but like Sphere, everyone just screams melting ice cube and we get into negative EV territory.

December calls give you time for that and then the spinoff is included. I'm more concerned with a delay than cost overruns. Even another $300M is a rounding error against the NAV. However, having construction drag on into 2024+ would be a nightmare.

Same way you do in any other environment. Drown out the noise and buy shit people cant do without.

Hit a solid slug of MSGE Dec $40 calls last week or so.

When I think of hope, and dream, and all that, largely it refers to looking at something and having to connect a lot of bridges via assumptions to make something then vastly different. The market is largely what it is today. The market is where it is...much of it off significantly. So what resembles optimism and hope for a thesis? That, or envisions of a scenario in which things go much lower because of all the bold? How do we determine that "the market" is just "figuring" all these kind of loose assumptions into everything instead of discounting them? I'd hate to miss that was without question some utterly tremendous investment opportunity because of a hunch and a lot of assumptions that might make the market go down 10-20% more. Theres been A LOT, in many areas of the market. One of the things I dont get is that in general, people treat this in and out thing as a mitigation strategy for volatility. But volatility is one of the dominant aspects of investing in stocks. Like why would someone looking to invest in stocks, not being OK with volatility? Or worry about 10-20% fluctuations? THAT is what stocks do, by nature. It would be like wanting Chinese food but trying to avoid the carbs or msg. Or desiring pizza but saying hold the bread and the cheese. So I just dont get the point to holding a perspective that seeks to do the same.