Gregmal

Can you point me to anything or anyone meaningful who is wildly bullish? I mean even Cramer is now telling people sell on any rally and realistically, here, where we have people who have some experience, the sentiment is at best basically, “I see some long term value and small caps are cheap”. Hardly any craziness.

So largely the underlying basis for investment was what? It seems common theme to be an established business, profitable, little debt? Just guess-working from some of the stuff you mentioned. Any exceptions at time of purchase? IE 50x PE or debt at 90% of EV?

Here’s mine. So in the early 2000s, bankers, hedge funds, and big corporations found ways to make extraordinary amounts of money by gaming the system. This ultimately blew up the financial system and caused normal people to lose their homes, see their retirement savings wiped out, and widespread unemployment. In an attempt to make this right, there was an underlying pledge by many of those same insiders, who never really lost their wealth, to make those people whole again by reinflating the system. The side benefit is that their assets would increase substantially as well. Unforeseen, was that the average person was still too scarred to ever really get back into the game, or too poor to participate, until the back end of the decade and early 2020s. Just in time for the system to fuck them again. Advice: only buy indestructible hard assets and things with a durable and dynamic ability to generate cash flow.

Yea I’ve heard a lot of smart and rational stuff supporting the stop/start thesis. It’s kind of where I think we go as well. Which again bodes well for the Berkshires and Fairfax’s of the world.

I have too much time on my hands now with my kids at school during the day now. But call a few headhunters. Very different market of late as far as white collar jobs in the NY/NJ area go. Got the idea to do so because my wife told me her company was mandating a return to office of 3 days a week and eventually 5. Told anyone not willing to pack their bags. There aren’t jobs everywhere like there were in the spring. Got the same sort of thing from a few contractor friends. Housing has slowed. All that’s left is probably restaurant stuff which should go strong into the holidays.

What’s the Fed paying attention to in CPI? Last year or this year? Just curious. Anyone paying attention to rentals could see this beginning in August. All those COVID boost rolls have finally been brought to market and now stabilize or modestly regress as supply comes to market.

Idk but even with a poor report you have to wonder what kind of jackass is bidding down Berkshire to $250? Someone with a 2 week time horizon? At some point this stuff is absurd and overdone. Is there anyone who really thinks next summer we re printing 5-10% CPIs?

More on the topic So as Sanjeev mentioned, no this is nothing at all like 2008. The only way it ever even gets there is if they recklessly jack up rates too high. But I guess this is what the hedge fund bro trade is….scream inflation is too high and that they MUST raise to stop it, while being positioned for them blowing up the economy by doing so…..

Although again noteworthy and perhaps on the day to day obsessing for folks, the VIX was a pretty big tell. Even at the lows to open, VIX was down 2%

Well, 1) does the market need to go down 3-5% every CPI or job report? This is like the bogus shit we saw in March 2020 where every new case of the sniffles gave people an excuse to sell off stocks another 500-1000 points. This is almost impossible to justify using any sort of long term model. 2) Biden said inflation has gotten to the 2% level!-sarcasm of course(the same day he raised SS benefits 8%) 3) maybe too many people are just unhealthily focused on day to day bs and things just got oversold? It is possible to have earnings with 5% inflation. So much of the number is still influenced by lagging housing data, especially OER. Or maybe it’s just a bounce and tomorrow gives it all back and next week is new lows? Who cares? This guy cleans up the analysis.

Yup. Same here. Great stuff.

Kinda like how Disney wanted to build in the Panhandle and Ed Ball turned them down because he didn’t want to deal with carnival people. So Disney went to Orlando and the rest is history.

It’s been such an obvious effort to manipulate the market(especially oil) and when it can’t be manipulated anymore it’s gonna be fun.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/13/cnbcs-jim-cramer-rips-clowns-who-bought-stocks-before-inflation-report/ I’ll just quota Sanjeev. Monkeys pick bottoms. The ramification of ONE CPI report on one’s lifetime investing decisions is absurdly meaningless. Irrelevant. What they did today or tomorrow or next week is pretty meaningless too. Fuck this guy fostering all these fake WS money scheme narratives.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/13/biden-admin-asked-saudi-arabia-to-postpone-opec-cut-by-a-month-saudis-say.html Sounds like we need to have impeachment proceedings

Wabuffo sees what’s happening.

That’s a totally separate and interesting dynamic. So on one end you have the White House fighting tooth and nail to avoid the recession, while apparently the Fed is trying to create one. White House is trying to create more jobs, the Fed wants to see them disappear. Fed wants to curtail spending, the White House doubles down on spending. Who will win?

1929 was a bubble and also a depression in between wars. The popular thing to do right now is to revisit the “valuation short” neighborhood but I think the tea leaves have already said that’s bullshit and stupid same as it has been. Pepsi showed some inflation resilience and is trading not far from highs at 25x. Costco too. WM too. AAPL as well. Premium world class businesses still demand premiums. So even if we look at FANG, which I hate and have since January, what’s the argument? 10x trough earnings? There’s enough marginal businesses with cracks showing and poor metrics, like airlines/cruises/automakers, Tesla, that worrying about index multiples and valuation shorts I think is pointless. Market will still pay up for quality businesses and those are fairly valued especially the ones that don’t mind inflation. Bag of Cheetos or Doritos at Shop rite just went from $3.99-$5.49 last week. Looks like we need to hike another 150 bps so people with pre diabetes can afford the whole enchilada.

Yea we were talking about debt levels in the other thread and these are 100% an example of that but in a bad way. All the EV has been shifted to the debt. Dilution galore. Already capital intensive. The bull argument probably hinges on another market contradiction. The economy is too hot right? That’s the whole problem I suppose. So if that persists, they probably earn quite a bit more than what is currently in the share price. For me, these aren’t businesses I wanna hang around and find out whether the Fed actually destroys the economy with.

I also think just blanketing total debt figures lacks context. How much is fixed rate? Also why isnt it relative to EV? Business debt 10T to 19 over 15 years, so what? I have massively more debt than I did in 2007. I’m also 35 vs 20 then. But my debt/net worth ratio was way worse in 2007.

Oh yea also decided to test drive TSLS lol. See if it has autopilot mode

Little more Fairfax and few VIX 40 weeklies as insurance. Armageddon tomorrow!

100%. And 150% what @dealraker said too. That also doesn’t mean that these things aren’t real or impactful to folks. Which is why it makes sense for these guys to chill with the rhetoric and realize this issue needs to be managed properly. Some of the underlying rationale for rate hikes into oblivion are based on virtually nothing. Such as, inflation is going to be 5-10% in perpetuity unless something drastic is done. Huh? Based on what LOL? If I changed that number to 25% in perpetuity it would have just as much logical standing. Crusading for stock market crashes and job losses….which combined for those losing their jobs is devastating and shouldn’t be the baseline all over saving a few bucks on groceries.

I mean my wife the other day was like does it make sense to keep contributing to my retirement account? And I don’t follow any of her shit because she only works for health insurance and her earnings don’t really matter that much, but I asked what she meant and she said she started the year with ~$40k, put in $5k and had employer contributions of $3k. Current balance is $35k or something. So I was just like eh whatever it’s not meaningful money anyway, so don’t worry about it. But I’d hate to be her coworkers in their 50s or 60s, that’s for sure.

As earnings increase so does contributions. Money you put into a retirement account largely doesn’t matter in your 20s and 30s. Same type of stuff you’ve mentioned before about stage of the game being different for everyone. Outside of basically everyone who owned a house in 2008, who got set back the most? People on the back end of their work career(or so they thought I guess)