Gregmal

I see wages rising as a massive lagging event resulting from all the noise made over the past 6-12 months. If you put shit out there enough eventually even the dodo worker catches on and companies have to play ball. The wage increases are probably the last leg of all the cause and effect. It is of absolutely no surprise that at the utter peak of mania on inflation talk, workers are seeking the largest increases yet. In fact, it makes perfect sense. Weren’t we just saying a few months ago how we had to stop inflation because they’re too dumb to ask for pay hikes? Now they are and it’s terrible? Oil to be honest, I’m starting to wonder if I got caught by that same pump and dump money flow action on as well. The long term story is there for sure, but like with everything else, plummet, recover, super spike, tank. I got the spike but missed the down move probably because of political views influencing my belief oil was destined to stay much higher for much longer. Investment wise I haven’t really done jack other than add to what I already like. Got much less short exposure than I did earlier, covered all my tech stuff because it seems they bottomed first, and just have a larger than normal handful of IWM puts expiring in q4 cuz I had a shit ton of realized gains I was ok offsetting and 2) think all this noise dissipates and we have a conclusion of the inflation story by end q3/q4. But like with COVID, I’ve just grown so tired of all these bullshit artists on the news and internet purposely screaming fire and trying to manipulate the narrative and the way investment decisions are made. On the highest levels like with Ackman they’re actually trying to manipulate monetary policy! Lowest level you have the Twitter clowns. In between CNBC and Bloomberg crowd. Fuck these people. I always enjoyed the days where Nasdaq was off 3%, S&P 2.5% and Dow 1.5% but the headline is “Dow plummets 500 points!”….which is the least newsworthy of all but simply most effective since 500 is a “big” number. Shows in a nutshell what the agenda is.

Well I still have a good amount of October and November IWM puts so by my count we ve got like 50% downside til Kyle Bass’s “another 30-40% down; they’re JUST. GETTING. STARTED!”Prediction. In the meantime these clowns can keep peddling their bullshit, trying to manipulate the market, and trying to scare people into a few bucks profit on their short position.

It’s a step in the wrong direction fundamentally, but when you do the math it’s kinda much ado about nothing. Still way more efficient than dividends.

I know wage-price spiral is the catchy new buzz word. Unfortunately there has been zero sign of that in the real world.

Wasn’t it awesome how pissed off and aggressive all the bearish folks got about a great jobs report today? How hard they tried to slant and manipulate it as a negative thing? The obvious hand wave of “job growth = inflation = Fed HAS TO raise!”…..such self serving pieces of shit.

Prices going down in Philly and up in Orlando is stagflation?

Brother in Philly: is this what a recession is? Cheap stocks and plummeting rents? Not renewing my existing lease and taking something nicer for $600 a month less. Sister in Orlando: so bummed. My renewal came in again. After going from $1500 to $1800 last year they offered me $1970 for 18 months. I was able to plead my case and they agreed to come down to $1910 but only for 9 months. Tale of two cities

If things were that bad with the hospitals, surely now that things have normalized they’ve begun rapidly building and expanding capacity? Showing they learned from their mistakes?

I mean just in general, let’s remember how people who didn’t wear masks were chastised even though behind the scenes any medical professional worth a damn will tell you they’re pointless….how mercilessly those folks got singled out and harassed and blamed even though it was purely out of ignorance. but here….you really kind of need to go out of your way to get this, and everyone’s just like “have some compassion!” And “let’s not go there” LOL

So not overwhelming a hospital was the reason folks were threatened with losing their jobs for now showing paperwork? Quite possibly the only thing in America that faction believe you should need to show paperwork for….

Same. More ALCO. Selling off on awful orange sales which was known back in February but only thing that matters is land sales and value which is still “robust” on the demand side, to use their words. Great payout in the meantime.

So I thought I was out, but you pulled me back in! LOL Anyway, it’s ironic because a couple months ago the rallying cry was “say gay!” In response to a bill that had nothing to do with gay. Now they are basically agreeing, don’t say gay. Cute. Anyway, it’s dumb, hypocritical, and I actually agree with Sanjeev, detrimental to the overall well-being of the gay community. One of my best, and longest tenured investors is a gay man. Not cuz I’ve made him a reasonable sized fortune with the peanuts he threw me starting off. But because he is an awesome person. He lived closeted in Russia working for a top 5 global law firm, being “the man” until he retired. His exact words to me on the subject….”Greg, my problem with this whole thing is simple. It gives gay people another black eye due to nothing but shallow stereotypes. I’ve lived with my partner for two decades. Monogamously. Depending on my location the legality of which was different. But we loved each other and were loyal to each other. And again, here we go with this stereotype, thanks to a degenerate faction of the community, which probably represents little more of our community than that guy Peterson who murdered his family represents of the straight community; that we are just horny animals engaging in non stop orgies with anything that breathes.” Is this any different than the NY Post articles about yet another colored person murdering a fast food worker over cold French fries? I assure you that the African American community is not Hamburglers with guns. But the behavior of a few continue to give ammunition to the naysayers. Stop feeding the stereotypes and we can then realize what’s real and what isn’t. Monkeypox is just the latest hoax. There IS a vaccine. And your probability of contraction, is negligible. So do we really need to be creating headlines and declaring yet another state of emergency? Especially in places like NY and CA which to my knowledge, have yet to do the same for real, actual emergencies like crime and homelessness? I don’t think so.

Some are, some aren’t. Why can Costco pay people well and trade at 40x, why does shop rite do it right, why are chick fila workers always smiling, why do Publix workers love working there? Meanwhile every A&P I’ve ever been to has shut and food emporium I’ve seen 3 locations fail inside a decade just in my county. That’s business. Restaurant business is another good example. You can’t get tables at decent waterfront places near me. Booked til September. This was back in June. People who go there pay obscene prices. Workers make good money. Then look at QSR. I think it’s both situational, sometimes regional and worker specific, and while not macro, not totally micro, call it midcro. I guess I see enough ways businesses can exist and have happy and decently paid employees. When I started my biz back in 2012 I couldn’t believe how for basically $20 an hour back then, you could more or less own people and get them to do whatever you wanted. That’s not a nice way of stating it, but that’s how it was. Or you could get a revolving door of mediocre labor for $12 an hour. $10 off the books, It seemed too good to be true. I guess maybe this starts fitting into this whole ESG thing… I dunno. But the talk these days, especially with inflation, seems to paint outcomes that are too binary which I don’t think is accurate at all.

The grocery store owner simply needs to open his checkbook because the workers enable the store to run profitably. Most of these people have never had any leverage, now they do. What I think also is under discussed is the mirage effect in employment. Where did you say all the labor demand was? Oooh, services. So all the stuff that kind of got held back and is now experiencing the reopening rush…Which too, will pass. I started my life back up sooner then most after March 2020. Summer of 2020 and especially in FL winter ‘21 I went out to eat and did more shit than I’d probably done the previous 4 years inside of 6 months. Now? I don’t even really go out to eat any more. Order sushi once a week. These things are eb and flow and create an illusion no different than when you saw the rampant big tech hiring sprees in 2020/21, fintech in 2021, etc. Companies see crazy demand and they react and then it passes and they slam on the breaks when they should have just chilled from the get go. Housing is a great example. Why are builders looking to hire anyone for pretty much any price? Because home prices are crazy. Why are home prices crazy? A lot of it has to do with the bottleneck around supply chain. So it’s actually an interesting dilemma where you see this gold mine, but like a little investor taking advantage of a 99 share odd lot, there’s only so much you can do to capitalize. Then once the supply chain corrects, the prices have to adjust, and if you misread your inputs or relied on higher prices and margins….time to backtrack. So as before, much is just time. By year end I think stuff comes down big. And by spring/summer 2023 I think we re actually comping lower on much of the cpi inputs.

I mean where was the rage tweeting on wage growth from Bill Ackman when he was writing himself 9 and 10 figure checks? Oh yea, I forgot, when wealthy folks do it, it’s cuz they’re talented, deserving, and superior. When normal people get raises it’s cuz there’s something wrong! Can’t possibly be that they’re undervalued and have been for a long time. Only the haves deserve their raises.

Eh you’re probably right. I personally tuned out on all this virus nonsense and hysteria probably sometime around June 2020 and just decided to get on with my life and laugh at the people who wouldn’t. Can’t say I’d do it differently. In fact my quality of life and my investment portfolio are both better off because of it.

Here’s why I’m not worried about that AT ALL. Services is largely middle class and under jobs. Demand there is strong, yes. But the job market is bifurcated. White collar and tech, financial services? That job market is getting crushed this year. So the top end of the jobs market is mediocre at best and the bottom and middle end are historically strong? One, I think that is great. And two…where were all inflation story peddlers when wages for tech and finance guys were going ballistic? When homes in Whitefish Montana went bonkers? When Tesla sales of $100k+ cars took off? Oh yea they were the biggest cheerleaders while the little guy got fucked. Now the tables have turned and I just don’t see how it’s a problem if the supply chain stuff gets fixed. It even makes me bullish and sets the stage for the roaring 20s to really unfold.

This is a very real possibility in developing places but here? It would be a hoax similar to ones past. For all the bitching about food price increases it’s like yo, sure your multigrain bread is now $7 a loaf…but store brand white bread is 99c. Oh a Big Mac is $11 now? Filet $30 a pound? Costco sells 18 burgers for $15 and London broil ain’t expensive. But we are a land of whiny and entitled brats and the media and politicians will take every opportunity they can get to create a new problem to get everyone fixated on.

Nah they just DGAF about the standard operating procedure. Love how those guys roll.

The inflation game is done. Peak hysteria has passed. Now the last leg of the “inflation is rampant and must be brought back down” argument is that the stock market has bounced a few percent lol. Stick a fork in it. Everything else continues to, wait for it, deflate.

It’s above average or better in a number of areas I expect to do well and is fairly cheap with trophy quality IP. Be long eyeballs on screens.

To my original point, it seems we are socially at the point where discretion and sensitivity is only advised when the group being discussed isnt deemed likely to be conservative/republican/independent/heck even moderate liberal like Musk. Anyhow, enough for me here.

Also, I'd add that the covid virus spread to people indiscriminately, through air. This one, the statistics regarding carry and spread...well, to be proper, I'll just say....have some clear correlations.

adding to Nintendo

Everyone is overreacting, as usual. My man nails it here