Gregmal

Remember how Twitter was regularly called worthless. All the cashflow analysis for years declared at best it was worth probably half of what it ended up getting sold for. In the end it ended up being worth $54 a share. That is what somebody with the money to acquire it, paid for it. Lesson? All these super certain declarations of what things are worth, are worth a lot less than the people declaring them, seem to think. Funny thing is the Twitter example is just one. You can do this for plenty of companies. Green Mountain Coffee, Netflix, Intuitive Surgical? Even Nvidia a few years ago had people screaming. Arrogance gets people nowhere.

I absolutely enjoy reading things like this and watching people on TV say things like this because 1) it continues to erode the little remaining trust anyone has in MSM(the consequences of their actions), and 2) if the authors are not lying, it is wholly rewarding to me, to see these people "frightened" by the fact that they've internalized all the sensational nonsense they've pedaled hook, line, and sinker. In a way, it poetic and its accountability at its best. They fabricated and then bought into all this lunacy for so long, that they are now suffering in terms of quality of life because of it. Thats awesome.

I wonder if we can do the COBF community a favor and kill the “top” thread by getting it locked down because of politics. Maybe then folks will get back to investing rather than worrying about what the exact tick will be before the next correction.

Yea well you evolved and are better off because of that decision. Many don’t. See the guy you quoted in that post, Hussman lol

Exactly, the biggest freeloader out there is the one who wants something for nothing and that to a T is what a lot of the people whining about savers getting screwed by ZIRP were. A healthily functioning society requires investment in the future of society, which in simpler terms is putting money to work and why risk is often rewarded. Theres no sympathy for the 60 year old retiree who refused to do anything but own risk free fixed income.

I say this in a way marveling at James, because having been here a while, I think its worth pointing out some of his evolution, and giving him credit for finding something in his wheelhouse and running with it. As the above post highlights, at one point in his tenure here, he sounded a bit like Blake. 40% cash! All I can say is we all have our own investing journeys and the only mandate is not to become hypnotized by literature or experts.

OK yes, HE didnt cause SVB, but HE created the situation and post mortem the story is "stupid actors that didnt manage risk" for SVB, but Powell nearly caused a widespread run on the whole banking system, almost exclusively over the issue of "MTM" on long duration fixed income....something he is supposed to be overseeing as a regulator. None of that stuff needed to happen. And if YOU are responsible for the stress tests, should YOU then know where the system limits lay? I dont think people fully understand the insanity of this. ZIRP is neither necessary or healthy. Super violent rerates though can hurt people and break things. Theres the arrogant finance guy retort that "this was the point", but I dont buy it, especially if youre the benevolent overseer and protector of the less fortunate that many claimed he viewed himself as in his inflation "fight". You know the stories no one hears? Folks whom lost their jobs because of all the corporations trying to front run "the reset" in 2022/3. All the people whom lost deposits or had to walk from their new homes because they no longer qualified for the mortgage. The people whom worked low end jobs barely getting by whom went from having $25-30 an hour job offers everywhere they looked to now just being back to punching in and hoping they get 3% annually. Thats where this jackass screwed the pooch big time. In what world, banking crisis or affordability crisis, did going from 0-5% in half a year make any sense? It was one of the most reckless things Ive ever seen from a guv guy.

Decrease is which prices? Decrease is deflation, which is apparently bad. But for housing, theres an age old hack and that is to build. Increase affordability or incentives to build you create jobs and solve the issue. Powell just doesnt get this, and its been shocking how long now he's been going on about this inflation thing when all thats left is housing. The current Fed's obsession here is only made more peculiar by the fact that none seem to have really been willing to admit reality and that is that despite their mandate, certain elements of inflation have nothing to do with them, and theres nothing they can do about it. Look at insurance...insurance rates go up because housing costs are elevated and because of weather events. Hiking rates won't stop wildfires....so yea, definitely think its time for a change. If nothing else, Trump gets building. So this will be a low hanging fruit.

If he’s concerned with housing costs and “the common man” which was the whole argument for this little ruse then yea you could halt runoff or even resume. You have how many hundreds of economists getting paid billions at the Fed to come up with these solutions and all we re getting is…what we re getting lol? So sure you and I are fine. I’m probably buying another house this year and have over 7 figures of sub 4% 30 years as well…but for regular folks or especially the younger part of the workforce? How long do they need to go through this freeze out caused by some guy chasing academic theory and invisible boogeymen? Rents should’ve and would’ve collapsed at the rate they were building a few years ago. How many people are in starter homes that can’t sell them because even just replacing that home would cost 2x, let alone upsizing? Of course building solves this, but all his handwaving(for credibility points) also allowed everyone to reposition, so again, how long is it fair to put a very large percentage of the workforces lives on hold…so some elitist can feel good about his “credibility”?

So we can agree he handled Covid well. What he’s done since then is poor, but even if we disagree on that, what he’s doing now is inexcusable. Let go of your 15 minutes Fauci 2.0. There’s no inflation right now, and hasn’t been for a while. Strip out housing and derivatives of it and we might even be negative. There’s zero excuse for mortgages to still be 7-8% when the dominating issue for most, especially lower and middle income, is housing costs. Instead he’s jawboning about credibility and literally making up stuff about future inflation occurring.

Covid great, sure. SVB he caused. And inflation he totally overreacted to and chased his tail. It was transitory all along he just got the timeline wrong. Same timeline a bunch of us here accurately predicted almost to the month. Now he’s just chasing things that don’t exist.

Which credit crisis was that? Only one I’m aware of was the one he caused by forcing banks to hold certain securities, then stress testing them and saying all good, and then recklessly jacking up rates more than 2x his own stress test scenarios in a matter of mere months solely because he was concerned about a few hedge fund guys attacking his credibility.

What exactly is he doing right now then? Besides fabricating future inflation based on theory? Cuz what he’s done was make an early “transitory” call, then cave after a year and call transitory supply chain driven covid inflation entrenched and “sticky”; fabricate some wage price spiral nonsense that never occurred, and then completely miss that while at 2-3% CPI, that the predominant source of the remaining inflation, housing, was his fault…..total idiot.

The best is yet to come and that’s Jerome Powells exit. It’s great knowing that elitist piece of shit who spends his time obsessing over guessing what other people think of irrelevant crap like “his credibility” and chasing stupid academic theories at the expensive of the average Americans food and shelter costs is gonna be packing his bags next year.

And if the "war" does end, make sure to count how many "Trump wasnt really responsible for fixing this" mea culpas we get from the usual suspects.

Nah. Didn’t we just have the guys and the media backers who lied for months in late 2020 about “Trump pardoning his family”….lose what little credibility there was left? At this point we can admit this is what government is, and stop with the illusions that it’s these benevolent “public servants”. America has full disclosure, every man for himself….

Probably an understanding that eventually folding DJT into X is the cost Musk pays for TikTok.

I would die of laughter if Elon got TikTok. The libs would lose their shit and it would be so amazing to watch the meltdowns. Be better than watching MSNBC on election night.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/david-einhorn-says-we-have-reached-the-fartcoin-stage-of-the-market-cycle.html LOL an LP really needs to slap this guy. A forever example of someone who rather remain pompous and think he's smarter than everyone else at the expense of making money.

This is kinda stupid if you think about it. If you start a company, you also own 100% of it...thats just common sense, not a gotcha moment.

Has anyone wondered what the impact would be if Europe and Canada diverted all the funds allocated to these dumb ass climate and diversity programs and instead put them to work in useful ways? Folks complain about Trump targeting these countries, but the truth is that everyone, including the US, have seemingly been resting on their laurels for the better part of the last decade. If everyone simply gets back to basics and stops the virtue signaling I can’t help but think this would be incredibly positive for productivity.

Ok, but I also wouldn’t confuse irrational exuberance with widespread suckery and scams. Especially with hard to understand new technology. It wasn’t irrational exuberance in 2010 when everything China went bonkers. I think the likeliest culprit is that simply the internet and these social media platforms allow proverbial wildfires to spread easier. I would be hesitant to extrapolate this to anything meaningful for the broader market or real businesses.

Im happy to answer questions in the JOE thread per @John Hjorth's suggestion, to the extent things dont get too redundant; in which case Ive probably already answered what I can. But to reiterate, all youre gonna extract from 2021/22s numbers is the builder sentiment form 2018-2020; and that they sold a lot of Camp Creek(a finite community) lots at $400-500k per.

And people wonder why US trades at 25x….

LOL another Twitter winner.