Gregmal

Like what a laugher the last 12 months have been. Economy needs help cuz of COVID, OMG! Oh no, new variants!!! Ah we need to kill the economy because it’s tooo strong. Inflations stealing from us! Ah! We re trying to kill the economy and now the economic outlook is bad! Stocks need to go down another 40%! WTF are we doing? Always something I suppose.

I have an older friend who a few months ago mentioned he met Grantham while at Goldman in the early 80s. Said he followed him because the dude was interesting and unique but he’s literally never been right about anything. Anyhow, totally agree. Folks continue to find 101 reasons not to invest when they’re all mostly irrelevant. It’s not hard finding something you like that will take care of the money you put into it. You just gotta stop finding excuses to avoid looking.

The continuous obsession with drawing comparisons to the 1970s is simply leading folks to the wrong conclusions, over and over and over. This is nothing at all like the 70s. It’s just so easy and lazy cuz “oh 70s was the golden age of inflation! Must be that! Let’s start forcing comp and using 70s lingo”. I also agree the economy is in better shape than a lot are saying, but it is slowing. We have people saying 2008 style stuff is right around the corner. At blatant lies and misrepresentation has been off the charts? It’s been so rampant in so many areas of the market the past couple years.

Ok so then how do we have inflation right now? Inflation doesn’t mean “wage growth”. The crazier part about all this is people running around shouting off snippets and catch phrases made popular on tv like “inflation coming in hot” and rampant inflation as they literally watch everything around them DEFLATE! And then what do they do? Point to some dumb backwards looking metric comparing last month to last year. COVID made people do all sorts of crazy shit and this whole manufactured inflation crisis seems to be a fitting end. Today basically seemed to confirm we get one more in September, maybe, and then most likely, it’s right into elections. It must be easy taking on jobs where the outcome is independent of your actions but you get credit anyway. But that’s politics. They need to solve problems and the easiest way to do that is to create the problem.

For sure. Just pointing out how misleading and bizarrely negative on the narrative side stuff is when really it’s nothing worth fretting. The inventory is a great example. A housing bear will proclaim “soaring inventory. Up 60%!” And then use this to support doom and gloom. Then you ask them if that’s up 60% from pre COVID levels or some stupid cherry picked metric from after that? And they predictably shut up or change the subject to another misleading headline.

But check this by asking the following question….what is currently going up right now? Absolutely nothing. It’s all just an eerie timing coincidence or proof that it’s predominantly supply chain and simply a time will fix it issue. Even the energy end of things which I expect to be strong longer term has taken a crap. The people really getting fucked right now are renters. Those 12 month leases are sticky

This thread or maybe the other inflation one, look at the progression of argument. It’s basically been a whack a mole of knee jerk solutions that basically get summed up as…quick! find anything that’s gone up or doing well and destroy it just cuz lol. Regardless of whether it’s real inflation that’s detrimental to the economy or the country.

I mean literally everything has fallen off a cliff except housing and even there you’re starting to see some relief in the form of supply. If we wanna say kill the jobs market just cuz, that’s fine. But at this point it’s got nothing to do with inflation. I think it’s significant more plausible that easy to produce shit getting disturbed by events we can see with our own eyes, like COVID restrictions, lockdowns, port jam ups, etc, caused prices to rise, and now they’re regressing back to normal. Absolutely nothing to do with jobs.

I guess it comes down to whether or not you think a good jobs market is the reason commodity based stuff that has never been an issue producing stays elevated. I think the bulk is supply chain related and irrelevant to the jobs market. I can afford literally millions of plastic spoons. I can buy as many of them as I want. If I get a pay raise, it shouldn’t have any bearing though because they’re easy to produce. That’s the case with literally 90% of the inflation argument. Earlier we had claims that cars and houses weren’t largely commodity derived or supply chain problems! As always, only time will tell.

People are making a really, REALLY big deal about what will ultimately be a mouse fart technical recession and then back to normal. How many will be hanging on every word and expression outta Powell at 2 today? Violent market moves for the next few days or weeks! Hilarious. I’m hitting some balls and then taking the kids to the water park.

That’s actually where I think you could see some magic if the ibuying works. If someone can buy through the cycle they’re gold. Easier said than done.

The realtors don’t really do anything your attorney won’t. The attorney might charge $1.5-2k. The nut kick is when you pay a realtor 5 figures and the attorney his chunk of change as well.

And it’s definitely not in the ballpark of most here but I’d still throw a CRISPR basket as having that sort of upside and scalability.

That’s typically where the huge winners come from. Something eventually clicks and then it goes right and in hindsite it looked obvious. And it kind of was obvious. The pieces just needed to come together. I own Zillow, and we ve discussed the 15% dilution before. I own small ABNB as well. Uber also. Basket of RBLX, Nintendo and recently META. I generally try to find some businesses that fit what you’re going for here. Long runways and exposure to mega tails and some disruptive qualities.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/26/us-home-prices-to-plunge-substantially-on-cratering-demand/ another narrative grab garbage piece. After rising in some markets by 2-3x and generally 40-50% even in average ones, home prices may retreat 15-20%….oh no! if we say it perpetually, eventually we will be right. What losers. Housing continues to be the only asset class where you can have years of monthly price gains yet one or two months of single digit decreases means it’s blowing up.

Yea I mean I don’t totally know. I think I have kind of stumbled on the right track and many of the indicators seem to validate this, but I don’t really have super high conviction either way so spitballing back and forth different scenarios and questions is all there is to do until something bigger clarifies. Jobs are ultimately the holy grail for every president and regime. I think if most of the other stuff dissipates and you get enough donors cranky with their portfolio quotes that unless something is insanely burdensome, they back off with the rate stuff to a certain degree. 3-4% IMO won’t kill anything and we are maybe halfway there. Beyond that would be suicide.

I mean has the raise rates/inflation argument really devolved into “the job market is the reason we can’t produce 2x4s, Ford Explorers, and PVC pipes”?

This whole bs inflation story has been one ever changing series of goal posts. First cars where forever gonna be appreciating assets. Then that stops. Then it’s lumber and steel, then that flops. Then it’s wheat. Then that flops. Then it’s oil and gas and that flops too. Now it’s backward looking CPI and “job market is too good”. All as the excuse to raise rates which is pretty immaterial to the root cause of it but pretty destructive if unchecked. Like I said, a shitshow

Maybe, but I also think there’s a likely environment where you can have wage growth and all the stupid shit like cars, toilet paper, and French fries ones desires. The biggest amalgamation of differentiating variables here IMO is claiming that wage growth and jobs is the reason for supply and demand imbalance. It’s not. Those dumb COVID restrictions are. As recently as January and February you still had certain states pushing that shit. I said then 2-3 quarters straightens it out, regardless of rates. That already seems to be occurring. What happens if prices of easily producible stuff wrinkled by supply chain get sorted out and jobs market remain solid? I fail to see how that’s a problem. It would be a devastating mistake to kill the economy because folks mistook a solid jobs market for product imbalances rather than the real cause; government imposed COVID restrictions

But this doesn’t work on many levels. It’s insane to me how having a great job market for lower and middle class workers is a bad thing. that’s how the job situation is being spun. The alternative being people losing jobs and unemployment increasing which is bullshit. This is totally different than the supply and demand issue for goods like cars and paper towels which is supply chain related. Nothing to do with rates. Commodities effect 90% of this and again it’s just time before spot prices factor into the market for end product. and the last point, on the “squeeze” occurring, Walmart being the example…once again, you can’t have a robust labor market like we have, while at the same time claiming employers can simply say “tough times” like was insinuated above. Again, total bullshit. If there’s 2 jobs for every one opening the employee can ask Walmart for a raise and if Walmart balks they say peace out. The ONLY scenario in which what you describe, occurs, is when the Fed, or government, does something asinine, and kills the economy, and removes the workers job opportunity. In which case, like you said, they go to big corporate powerhouse Walmart, ask for a raise, and yea, Walmart says “tough times”, and now thanks to the raise rates and destroy the economy crowd, that worker is fucked.

Is this any different than what Target said a while back? This stuff just takes time to work through, and if it’s commodity based and supply chain related it’s already peaked. If I have an itch on my right hand, kicking a wall with my left foot is pretty useless. As is continuing to mess with interest rates over things related to government stupidity and time related supply issues. I’d love to see all these folks who voted for stimulus checks now lose their jobs after a few more rounds of rate hikes, but I have a hard time seeing how that’s better for them than paying 5-10% more for another few quarters. This whole thing has become a ridiculous shit show.

futures. this week basically has it all. so with a 23 VIX I think its a good hedge with lots of potential torque. Even back to 30 is several x.

Bought some slight OTM Aug 2 VIX calls.

So looking at the headlines...it seems pretty outrageous to declare this some sort of emergency. It seems pretty isolated and really anon issue for most. Yet they just cant help themselves with the headlines and fear mongering. Will people ever learn?

Its quite enjoyable seeing all the woke climate crusaders now being in this position. Only way way out. Can do it the easy way, or the hard way. Either way, I win.