Gregmal

Haha thanks. Yea been itching for years now for a FL property and maybe it’s a combination of impulse and trying to time the market, but there’s been a bit of an opening on the new build side as the COVID backlog winds down so I figured with 12 months+ rentals still strong might as well check off another bucket list item.

Housing secured.

I just continue to be amazed by the hypocrisy and general contradictions. “The market” is really not much changed and as far as levels go…STILL just meagerly sitting around 4000 SPY. Yet people are acting like we have had some wild, rip roaring rally, and their evidence?…now they wanna talk individual stocks…

For someone who seemingly has a decent name brand, the way Chanos conducts himself is an embarrassment. The stuff is so misleading, including how they show his top short positions, like TSLA being -44% on the year as if he s successful without telling you that he's been short it for years and has likely lost tons of money on it. All I know is if I was that age, peddling my bs on Twitter, misrepresenting things often and clearly trying to influence the outcome of my own positions, the way he does, I'd ask someone to put me out of my misery.

Well thats cuz privileged Bergen County white kids generally arent interesting in working for minimum wage. In that area specifically, the Hispanics have taken a lot of the lower end labor jobs, the QSR type stuff. Half my siblings worked at Van Dyk's (on the Ridgewood border) in high school. Ice cream shops are a totally different game. That $20 you talk of also needs to be off the books and come with free ice cream lol.

I marvel at this even within the States. In NJ its $10 for a Big Mac meal and yea like $8 for breakfast. The dollar menu is now the $3 each menu. In Georgia or Tennessee? You can still get 2 1/4 pounders with fries and a drink for $5.

Basically everyone and their mother who was asked for a comment or soundbite in H2 of last year was calling for a hard landing. Now we have a few weeks of very predictable data coming through, and half them have changed their minds again. Even Jamie Dimon, who is one of my favorites, goes from hurricane to mild in what? 4 weeks? Thats why its best to just ignore the noise.

Off the top of my head I dont know of many that can rival the trio of AZO, DDS, and NVR.

The issue with Apple is its a great company at an OK-ish at best price when the alternatives are 3 football fields better. Its like having to pick between a high end steakhouse burger for $45, a Big Mac for $7, or a diner burger for $10. Why even waste your time on the former?

Nah I rent them. Or use derivatives. Warrants or leaps do the job.

Yea I agree with that on the large MF stuff. Too big to get bids but should have a decent reset runway after all the whackos screamed about 6% cap rates and somehow that got priced in to most of them, deservedly or not.

Yea winners gone win.

You are right. But go forward, they have to keep that up, and grow it, and thats largely just to hold their 20-25x multiples. At some point the law of large numbers is real. I mean for real, give me a materials company, or an insurance company, or an oil rigger at 5-10x and a sub $20B market cap over that all day.

Everyone is talking about the $30T debt ceiling or whatever. Then theres AAPL and MSFT at $2T. AMZN at $1T. How freaking arrogant/lazy do you have to be to think that you're gonna get any sort of worthwhile longer term returns out of those things at those numbers if the go forward numbers are driven by real earnings power/growth? Even Google I struggle with but with regulation and a few spinoffs, you can get a better reset figure on the base. But seriously...TF are people thinking?

So basically class B(really like C+/B-) Sun Belt operator Nexpoint just unloaded two properties. BOTH at sub 5 caps and both using TTM NOI. Soon I think we see divergence in the market as the liars who spent last year talking about huge cap rate blowouts and everything CRE crashing continue to be exposed. I forget exactly who it was, may have been the hedge eye guy or something, claiming rents peaked in Sun belt in Q3 2021 and how everyone should be long coastal reits like AVB. Well, that was totally wrong as pretty much everyone comped big positives again in 2022, but nevertheless stuff like that never stops the "I called it" seekers....continually throughout the year retweeting their own junk and marveling at "OMG look how much MAA and CPT are down"...all while completely ignoring that their AVBs and ESSs are down just as much, if not even more, and thats without ever really rising much above their pre covid highs. Classic baby with the bathwater situations and again, not surprising, because most WS narrative is originated and controlled from NY, at least at the onset. If we are still at sub 5 on Class B, with the fundamentals still holdings, there is again going to be fortunes made. Part of the reason I started some HIW today. You actually have real demand for office, and growing rents in many places.....but to the market and the narrative creators....if VNO or SLG are having all these problems...everyone must be! LOL nope. Just cuz your kingdom is crumbling doesnt mean the rest are. Same shit with San Jose vs the Texas MSAs.

Tech stocks are dead. They were the leaders of the past decade. Same thing happening as post 1999 era transition. Theres no better example of the baton pass than the chart of something like FFH/BRK/MKL... Energy. Companies who make money are and will be en vogue again. My gut says the people still staring at the indexes are also still staring at the AAPLs, MSFTs, and AMZNs of the world. They'd be better off not doing that cuz they're blinded by the dark.

Fake news.

@TwoCitiesCapital Indeed, but its a slippery slope and not one I believe most are capable of mentally handling. But in general, thats why I use plenty of margin. Its forces you to be judicious and attentive to risk. But at the end of the day its not your money so any returns are better than nothing. As such, lets say a position like VRE, which I just toggled with and eventually decided was worth selling despite still kinda being overall bullish on it, the decision kicker was ultimately that derisking and putting some money in the bank wouldnt kill me. Same thing with the FANG stuff I owned around this time last year. I like it, but dont need it, and am more than fully invested. I'll live without it. But going below 1.1x to me is just a complete no-no. Further, do folks really need any further evidence that new leadership has emerged? Or is everyone just staring at the lazy, easy, everyone's doing it, indexes?

Starter in HIW.

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.