Gregmal

Agreed, there’s a lot of liberties taken. But I think the waterfront claim is valid. You’ve got the 104 acres in Walton, a few acres in Bay, Basically the entire stretch of Gulf County including submerged land, and then like 20 miles worth of ICW if you count both North and South. I cannot get to $2B net of debt on the assets he listed, but you can easily get to $1.5b. Which then comes back to the whole premise of what exactly is the significance of $500m here? If $500m is make or break to someone investing here they should just move on to easier things and stop wasting their time because 1) $500m is a rounding error on the asset base, and 2) it demonstrates that most likely the person has been lazy, or isn’t capable of valuing the land.

Yea I think that would be the best way to take a stab if you’re inclined. Gotta be well defined regional bets. Probably focus on quality as well.

This and the post you quoted are one of the best summarizations of the new age of investing. Buffett has largely gotten by unscathed because he’s made some great investments. But the above sort of textbook ideology has ruined the careers and returns of many an investor. Waiting for “the call” so to speak. A redux of past crises that ain’t coming. God like yesterday the impending housing crash of 2022 called by all the experts lol. And it turns out not only did we not crash, but the exact opposite of what they predicted occurred. Same with the general “market is expensive” crap. Hopefully within Berkshire post Buffett there is a little more effort to be proactive. What they don’t seem to realize, is that there’s a huge built in advantage in “being Berkshire”. And only waiting for “the call” to capitalize on it, is wasting that card.

What I've struggled with here all comes back to a few issues that kind of circle the same thing. What is the exact relationship between all this and its timeline for impact? Corporations and agencies can be wasteful...did they or do they have more office space than they needed? Most did. But youre on long term contracts in this space. Rate of change in terms of space usage over a 10-20 year lease...when did that lease start and how has its impact run its course? Each lease and floor of a building can obviously vary. If Amazon calls for a RTO, its to bring back existing capacity presumably, something they already have space for. But what about areas where they've already made an efficiency call? Why are they going to be in the market for more office space? What about the offices that they moved to Texas or Carolina? How does that impact my REIT in DC or LA? I have a little HIW I bought when these crashed in 2022, but I just think theres way too many variables and if youre gonna play something like this, you want building specific clarity with a few assets such as ESRT or ALX. I couldn't imagine trying to keep a handle on 300 buildings or something.

Or anything way, whether stocks are at highs, or lows, people make excuses why not to buy them.

Isn’t it exciting? You can be blindfolded and find decent value. Little bit more of this and you’ll be able to throw darts. Meanwhile 95% of the world is unknowingly staring at 7-10 stocks thinking the apocalypse is around the corner.

The Fed using the “these are the tools we have” and “the textbook says ….” is like a landscaper trying to build a house with a weedwhacker because “it’s the only tool they have”. Why not just use common sense and say efforts are better off spent doing pretty much anything else? Theres currently no signs of inflation and there hasn’t been for years. It’s been a straight line down with a few minor gyrations that have bizarrely caused screaming fits. All that’s keeping us from deflation is housing and things inflated BY HIGH RATES! And yet, now these clowns are literally making up future inflation, as evidenced by their “we think Trump policies may cause inflation” as their excuses for keeping things where they are. It’s basically comedy for the ruling class and tragedy for the rest.

100%. I’ve been utterly shocked at how many people the last 3-4 years have just blindly taken the inflation is solved by rates thesis as bible. It’s scary how ignorant it is. But hey, if it’s in the textbooks…and oh yea, there was this one time!

It’s not always simple, but it’s amusing now seeing the rage from A listers about homeless camps, drug addicts, and eco friendly programs getting the money instead of it going to wildfire management programs…it’s like hey YOU voted for this, you promoted these guys, you probably even had something to do with fundraisers for them, and now you don’t like their policies? Highlights the whole “dumb actor” stereotype and how it may not be just a stereotype.

Yea I think it’s hyperbole blaming the figureheads directly, but it’s a fundamental issue. You waste all this money on these useless virtue signal causes, and do it at the expense of existing infrastructure. Florida is meticulous about controlled burns and fire management training. Why is ANY state, still not actively working on updating their lines to buried/below ground? Cutting trees and maintaining brush is not hard. It creates jobs. Trump is of course being somewhat disingenuous with the water claims, but he’s not wrong. How many of these do you have to have before a real plan is formed? It all comes down to priorities and those are established by what people will vote for and what politicians can get away with.

A lot of these things were well on their way to being solved a few years ago. Never in my life have I seen a job market like we did in 2021 and 2022. Anyone who needed a better job could get one. Middle class folks could snap and get 20% raises with some WFH thrown in. The minimum wagers just had to drive past a Burger King on the way to work to see a $25 an hour offer. And this was killed because the government and corporate bigwigs hated seeing that transfer of power so they used the oldest, stupidest trick in the book…shout inflation as an excuse to claim a good economy was bad. They claimed things were “too expensive” and then took actions that make the most expensive things, like housing and auto related stuff, waayyyy more expensive. All of this to take back power from the….eh cough, beat inflation! Now the inflation is gone, nothing to show for it except the lasting impacts of more expensive financing reverberating through housing, insurance, financing, etc...and we wonder why the average guy cant get ahead lol. EDIT: I quoted @Castanza but was replying to the post about inflation and wages diverging creating affordability issues.

It’s actually funny how NOW they care about how badly the elected officials they voted for fucked things up…saving the smelt >>>A list inconvenience! Texas, Georgia, Florida, get ready for another wave of migrants!

I’ve long had the suspicion that despite all the “just buy the index” talk, very few actually just do that.

Opportunity is what you make of it. If you do what everyone else does you get what everyone else gets. If you think differently you have the chance to arrive at different outcomes. I have a bunch of friends whom have top 5-10% jobs. Most avoid the stock market. Some do real estate. Whatever. But even of them, the ones who want to just save their paychecks and earn 5% are fully committed to working for 30+ years. To each their own.

Conversely I’ve also heard that the market is detached from reality and that “everyone is being greedy and euphoric/irrational” in…2012, 2013, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2023, 2024, 2025…

Yea it seems pretty clear untying gold from the currency is what caused the rerating of the dollar for the next decade. Nevertheless it created generations of academics who now study and claim to be “inflation” experts. It’s why everyone missed the obviousness of supply chains being the route of covid inflation. Force anything to have a long term tied at the hip relationship, and then set it free, crazy shit will happen.

It is kinda crazy. Growing up, in school, media, history books, etc, Jimmy Carter was pretty much universally heralded as the uncontested worst president ever, with no one else even close. Last 5 years or so they did everything they could to turn him into a hero. And now we re shutting down markets for him…

Being in the market works. Hoarding cash and lecturing everyone about how dumb they are for being in the market is a sure fire way to a long and unhappy career as a W2.

Easiest test is whatever one’s macro, micro, or whatever opinion, ask them their top 3-5 ideas. Cash isn’t an idea. Neither is ambiguous crap like rolling options. Neither is day trading pointless fluctuations. Plain and simple, what’s actionable based on what you think? Then time tells us who’s right and who’s wrong.

Marks during covid was pure comedic genius.

Hogwash. #MOAB

Yup. Whenever I hear these long macro diatribes I immediately think one of two things…naive, or selling a newsletter lol.

Yea what is it that we havent experienced before? 5% rates? 7% mortgages? Tax cuts? Inflation is nowhere to be found despite people trying to sell you a story due to a slight uptrend in treasuries during a low liquidity holiday window. The recession has been obsessively called and then "pushed back" 6-12 months now every 6-12 months since covid happened. And before then it was a depression about to occur. Things are pretty freaking boring and unspectacular right now.

It’s largely based on gut feelings. Generally if I’ve got a good year going I’ll do it into year end to lock some stuff in. House money approach. Or if there’s some new macro concern lingering it’s worth exploring. The biggest no nos though are just pointlessly throwing money away either proactively with negative or short positions, or passively with too much cash/equivalents on already know stuff. The market is expensive isn’t a thesis. Or post covid, more covid isn’t a thesis, or post inflation, inflation isn’t a thesis. It’s always the first bout that gets the biggest returns. If you played a little bearish on covid in early 2020 you got paid. Anyone who played it after Spring 2020 got hosed. Same with inflation, same with rates, same with the recession post GFC. You generally get one shot at a payday on a macro thesis, after that it’s priced in.

Sometimes I hedge with index options. Mainly though I just view things on a look through basis. Stuff like FRPH or MSGS or even BRK are pretty easy to model stress related drawdown expectations. So from there I can determine what’s worth borrowing against. Obviously if you say Berkshire doesn’t have 50% downsides from here, you’ll get feedback that “there was this one time”….but I ignore that because in order to get to 50% drawdown it has to get to 10 or 20% drawdown and during that period of time I can adapt and adjust. Or stated another way, if you don’t think Berkshire has 50% downside, and the market wants to challenge you on that, and you didn’t think to have something on somewhere to capitalize on that…then you shouldn’t be using margin. But the example I stated a few years ago still sums it up well, you can be 70% long Berkshire, 50% long MSFT and GOOG, and have 10% long index puts….you’ll be fine.