Gregmal

I mean its literally clockwork how predictable these guys are. Quiet for a while and then the first 3-5% pullback start cranking up the rhetoric about caution and chaos and doom and all that other stuff.

Grantham is the kinda guy who rather make 20% once a decade shorting something than 2-3x his money just being quiet and long Berkshire or an index.

Is that a typo? Been out with the kids today but how TF did that happen?

Yea but your gas and electric is gonna be $80k a year by the time you close.

Basically retirees and wealthy families fleeing the “other” areas. It’s why you see so many of the “NY rulez 4eva” folks always hating on JOE. There’s definitely some sort of complex there but when you really get into the weeds it’s pretty remarkably clear. The thing is it’s not even really just isolated to that, it’s relative to a lot of Florida as well. It’s a bubble in the literal sense that many of those communities are insulated. As a northern guy myself, I love the safety and schools where I live. Florida, despite it not really getting much attention, is up there in terms of crime/shitholeness with NYC in many areas. You can go a few miles outside of the wealthy areas of palm beach and be surrounded by criminals and gang bangers. Yuck. Somewhere like Origins(where that home is) for instance, you have so much space that’s controlled and isolated from all that. Add in that if you want a home there you either pay up for existing or get in line and wait 24 months for one to be built. There’s no supply. PCB is still quite rough, but it’s improving. West of that though….schools are good and getting better because of the wealth moving there, and crime is near nonexistent in some of these areas. Add in that climate and topography wise it’s not really Florida either, which is good. Florida is disgusting 60% of the year which sucks if you wanna live there for tax reasons. 80-90 and humid ain’t much better than 20 with snow. I’d personally prefer the later.

I just the think notion that basically inflation is now solely defined as a strong job market is beyond anything we can fathom and while I don’t think this is the case, but if the Fed people believe this…my goodness. It’s like what, in order for the world to be the way these people want it we need to be in a perpetual recession/depression lol?

Yes sir. There was a bit of discussion here around that time period, maybe summer 2021 about just that because there was an overwhelmingly political narrative going around that no one was working because of all the free money being given out. For sure this contributes, but it’s not even close to the key variable. The key variable is what you showed. COVID was basically the last straw for a huge segment of the population that didn’t really need to be working anyway.

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/50-W-Sandlefoot-Ln-Inlet-Beach-FL-32461/251160975_zpid/ Another one, under contract inside a week after a super bearish price cut resulting in only a $100k profit from the price paid....a year ago. A nice, but totally unremarkable home as well. GFC 2.0.

Nope. You're apparently better off going after those who are currently working. Increase unemployment for the sake of "defeating inflation".

Yea I really hope and am rooting for the average folks here. That the consumers hold tight and common sense prevails. This entire thing is unbelievable. There was no wallowing about the affordability or supply of Ferraris. Regular folks want trucks? Theyre willing to pay up for them? It must be stopped! That said Im aware of how the system works and the games are rigged and the scum running the game always seems to win so you wanna be ready for that. In a lot of ways similar to how a short seller trashes a company's reputation, gets their buddies to pile on shorting, then covers for a quick turn around profit and 6-12 months later it doesnt matter that it was all wrong and scammy but the company still got hurt.

Goldman is a totally different culture animal than most companies. You'll continue to see companies moving to more efficient locations, but I would think a return to office is something pushed very hard if the elites are indeed able to destroy the current problem of employee leverage. A friend told me two days ago she got a job offer from Bed Bath and Beyond in their marketing dept. Currently theyre offering 20% sign on, doing 3 days a week in office, and by Q4 gonna push 5 days a week in office. My only thought was like yo I thought they were filing for bankruptcy LOL. But if some zombie like Bed Bath is trying that I think everyone else will too. Right now the jobs market is good enough people can say no. What happens when they no longer have alternatives? Do we really think companies offer WFM out of the kindness of their hearts?

As I said earlier, when bankers get massive raises its cuz theyre deserving. When blue collar folks start getting them, we need to stomp that shit out....all because prices went up temporarily as a result of governments fucking up their covid responses....seems logical. I guess my only other wandering is...is there anything thats allowed to be good for folks or the economy? So far we've spent the last 9 month whack a moling from one thing to the next talking about how it needs to be killed. As a result, almost all have either regressed significantly, or stabilized. It would almost seem as if we are on some wild treasure hunt, looking for a treasure that doesnt exist but sticking TNT in anything and everything around us to find it.

And killing companies and costing people their jobs is the answer to "fixing" a good jobs market for everyday folks.....sometimes this stuff is just too hard to believe. The doctor also suggested killing the patient to solve the issue of indigestion..... There's been zero linkage or evidence that a strong jobs market and rising wages equates to todays inflation. Theres been plenty suggesting that supply chain bottlenecks does. So as literally everything continues to come down, why do we, without any real evidence, just keep insisting on destroying jobs? This isnt the 70s. People just dont seem to want to accept that.

Ok so we aren’t there yet, it’s early. But is anyone seeing the potential glimmer of hope here? The current conspiracy to destroy a wonderful jobs market in order to shift power back to the corporate elites is almost guaranteed to result in a large scale return to the office. Will it be pre COVID levels? No. Certain jobs just don’t need the office. But there’s many things that do and right now those companies just don’t have the leverage over their employees to pull it off.

NO ONE could have predicted this https://adventuresincapitalism.com/2021/09/29/will-esg-create-the-next-lehman-moment/

I don’t even know what to make of “nothing is predictable” because such a stance is so absolutely opposed to basically every merit of investing. There’s literally no point investing if you believe nothing is predictable. That, and well everything is predictable you just need to locate the proper pieces and then watch it come together. If you can’t find the pieces with a degree of confidence then just move on to stuff where you better can. If you don’t bother to put in the work, then sure, you’ll never see anything come together and you’re just guessing. Oodles of money have been made in the past year. Energy has been detailed on this site for over a year. Rates were too. Apartment REITs went apeshit. The vaccine needle popped the peloton and zoom bubbles. But yea, idk. To each their own. Like literally look at the energy topics. Every month it’s like “energy is a no brainer” and then it’s like “it’s easy in hindsite but not going forward”…then the next boatload of money is made, and it’s “energy is a no brainer”/“nothing is knowable”…rinse and repeat all over again.

LOL i dunno it just seems like a lot of these people just desire attention. Ackman won big for you and I with PSTH but you have to admit the guy is an attention whore. I don’t know about every single player involved and their motives but it just seems overdone. If we have to go to 5% FF for a bit to “solve” this there isn’t a single thing im holding that I’d sell. It just seems like the whole thing is a massive circle jerk amongst the 1970s and GFC crowd. Surely the end game isn’t as extreme as either of those situations.

It’s like in July when everyone was yelling about inflation and it’s like ok what’s going up? Nothing. So how is there inflation? Oh jobs! Looks like we need widespread unemployment to have things stabilize. Then it’s like wait what? And you start to see how crazy this all is. People with home equity can borrow at 5%. Maybe it’s 3% maybe it’s 6%. Who cares? This has been true for decades. Folks who don’t have assets or good credit aren’t borrowing at 5%, it’s like 25-30%. Maybe 15% or they’re diligent looking. This isn’t inflation. It’s just normal economic activity. What is good though, is there now seems to be a clear collar on the rates rising hysteria. For a while there was enough babbling about high single digit and low double digit rates that you had to entertain it even though it was clearly preposterous. Now it’s like 5% Fed funds rate for a year. And it’s like so what? People are better off completely ignoring Powell. He says he’s data dependent and he’s also proven to have political motivation. The data and the motivation more or less assure you this is at its end. Maybe you get 50 or 75 points in a few weeks. When it’s all said and done I think we look back on this and marvel at the utter insanity of folks making a big deal about 3-4% treasuries. During GFC they were like 5.

The consumer being healthy and credit being available to those with good credit profile isn’t inflation and it’s not a dilemma. Wasn’t the argument that inflation is hurting the consumer? I think the most sinister thing with inflation is that it seems to have unlimited definitions.

To be fair, the bear case is pretty good. Everything that is actually good is bad and anything bad is game over. And either way the Fed has to destroy everything in order to insure we solve inflation which has already peaked and few understand anyway….

There’s two sides that need to get evaluated. Too often people arrive at one, then stop. All the time we see “omg recession” type bullshit. Followed by something along the lines of “earnings are going to evaporate”. But the next leg, and it’s just as important, is..what follows? If we have a recession and then a recovery who gives two shits about the dip? Look at the whole pathetic market reaction in real time, to COVID. As tough as Powell and friends talk, they openly admit the goal is to raise and then bring it back down. So of course you have to be sensible with how and where you invest, but really, even if we get 4-6% rates for a few years and then they come back down, so what? Once upon a time those were entirely normal and healthy rates and I am still not unconvinced that this still isn’t the case. God forbid we get back to a point where you actually have to do some work to make money. No more tech companies at 1000x earnings? Good!

What you heard from Powell on Friday was basically what some folks refer to as the Fed call. Basically, for the time being, its in his interest to keep things subdued. So we got a bit of a rally; IMO largely caused by folks seeing the peak is already in with inflation and that the world doesnt end with a 3-4% Fed funds rate. You had book marking into Q2 end as well which exacerbated the selloff...but largely, I think Powell wants to keep people from getting too aggressive. Otherwise literally nothing has changed and if you were enlightened by anything Powell said then obviously one is not doing their own work because it was nothing new, just different adjectives and sequencing, probably for effect.

Its loosely relevant but not that much. 2022 has become the year where folks have convinced the world that anything positive occurring in the economy or world is actually bad LOL. That and too much of the market is only basically interested in trading whats gonna be said next week or month.

Having student loans is largely the result of a lifestyle choice. Going off to party for 4 years while studying something the statistics tell you is a total waste, is a choice. Whereas the pandemic loans were a result of....brace yourself as I know its been some years now and revisionist history is grand, many governments.... fined, even imprisoned and otherwise shut down small and mid sized businesses; they made them against the law and those allowed to operate were burdened with bogus restrictions, and then these government folks told everyone else they could only shop at big corporate stores like Walmart. So yea, I totally see the gotcha-ness of all those making that comparison......

Zelman isn’t wrong but she’s also not right. The major crux of the thesis has to do with demographics and household formation. But they have for almost a decade. So it’s akin to folks saying the Fed has propped up the stock market for the past 10 years. Broken record. This time is different. The whole 9. If they propped up the market and it was so obvious why were you in cash or short? Demographic and millennial trends didn’t change during COVID, what changed is the urgency and obviousness to many existing homeowners as well as potential ones with respect to what they want to deal with and where they wanna live. Is it really a coincidence Florida and Texas are the biggest winners? You need a lot of building to satisfy many of those markets. It doesn’t matter if the 30 year olds wait another 5-10 years to start families. My entire life, as a tri state area resident, its always been a given that folks leave and go to Florida at a certain age. If they didn’t have 2nd homes, they’d retire there. Now you have young and middle age families deciding to make the move. Literally everyone I know not smack dab in the middle of the 5 boroughs views the move as a matter of when and not if. Housing markets have always been regional. This has and will continue to be very apparent. Only so many people want to pay 3-4% of their home value in taxes every year while having to deal with woke politics. Two of the major reasons I’ve loved NJ is safety of my area and quality of school system. Start attacking those things and you literally have nothing left.