Red Lion

Completely agreed that they are fee machines for the sponson, this is why I invest in all these alt asset managers. I love being on the receiving end of that. On the other hand, if the private REIT model gets broken that's definitely going to slow down BX's growth rate considerably and probably bring it in to closer valuation alignment with its peers.

Right now BX is trading at 20X its trailing FRE with carry/disposition gains for free. The BAM when issued shares are trading close to 30X trailing FRE and they won't be getting carry over the next few years. It's going to be really interesting to see where things level out after the spinoff is complete. I'm sitting on a sack of cash waiting to buy BAM shares after the spinoff, but if the when issued shares are any indication I may end up making an investment in BX instead which would be an overall positive for my portfolio diversification since I already have a bigger position in BAM than BX by about 2:1. Obviously BX just put out some bad news today about limiting redemptions at BREIT, and BREIT has been a remarkable success story over the last several years. It will be important to watch this to see if BX suffers any type of reputational damage over this move.

Rolled out my BX puts down to $70 from $80 for a net credit, although now I'm holding them until June instead of January. I'm still building up my BX position selectively, right now it's trading almost exactly at my cost basis and I think it's likely BX takes out its lows if the market turns south again particularly with this bad news about BREIT redemptions out today.

There's certainly no shortage of money blown on the underprivileged, needy, and homeless in San Francisco. Wait a minute, homeless is a bad word in San Francisco now. "Unhoused" is the new politically correct term. San Francisco was recently building tiny homes for the unhoused and the price tag came in over $800k a piece.

I bought back my January 20 puts on CG, CCI, DLR, DIS. This pushes my tax liability into 2022 instead of 2023 which sucks, but they're going to be short term gains either way, and I don't like all the tail risk for such minimal remaining time decay.

That's a frightening thought. But of course, these are the same people that have literally dug innumerable tunnels straight into major American cities, have built submarines to transport drugs in the amazon river, etc. So the thought of an underground blockchain network seems completely feasible. You say it better than me, but I completely agree that crypto is a refuge for those that want to partake in illegal activities that are non-traceable.

Well my point was to provide an answer the original question about whether large players might be manipulating the market to hold crypto prices up. There's the motive, ability, and know how, so it's probably happening. It's fairly well documented that this has happened with most of the above items as well like Diamonds, silver, expensive watches, avocados, what have you, etc. I'm sure that there's a lot of diamonds and gold and expensive watches in the same hands. I literally just cited two articles showing that the Sinaloa and Cali cartels are using more BTC than ever via smurfing to avoid large transactions. One from earlier this year and one from 2020. This is what's called the tip of the iceberg. I would actually expect that some of the shitcoins were probably cartel fronts at some level foisted on dumbass retail investors in a classic pump and dump. Just like these stupid in app games that can be used to launder drug money in thousands of small transactions, but probably even less ability to track. No one will ever know the true numbers, because such a small percentage of crime is ever solved, especially international drug crime. And I can guarantee you that these players aren't keeping hundreds of millions in one wallet like the morons referenced earlier in the thread.

Very interesting.

I do you know how federal law enforcement work? they watch one case for years and years. Make deals with many unsavory characters as it serves them and then eventually make one arrest to make a big point while 99% of criminals continue to chug along. Our federal law enforcement literally still investigates marijuana through the mail schemes and so on and will collect evidence for 6 years before making an arrest. The thought that somehow they can magically control crypto to the same extent as financial institutions seems absurd to me, but maybe I really just don’t get it and this time it’s different.

I match your article and raise you another article. https://apnews.com/article/business-caribbean-mexico-crime-drug-cartels-1bb5ebf84fbf71baf6a845648bad4990 https://www.reuters.com/article/mexico-bitcoin-insight/latin-american-crime-cartels-turn-to-cryptocurrencies-for-money-laundering-idUSKBN28I1KD can keep playing this game all day and I don’t even invest in crypto. I do know that the Mexican drug cartels are using btc increasingly up to this day and avoiding money laundering protocols. I think you are overly dismissive of this point, but honestly it probably helps the investment case for crypto more than it hurts, so maybe a moot point.

I think shorter duration TIPS look like a really good alternative to I-bonds right now. You're getting about 140 more basis points of yield without any penalty. Even if rates keep going up the short duration should minimize any short term mark to market losses. The big risk to this would be the CPI going negative in a big way over the next few years. Even this can be mitigated by buying the 5 years treasuries at auction or close to the initial price without inflation adjustments since the TIPS will always be worth the original price at a minimum. Here's one maturing 1/15/26, 2% TIPS, trading at $100.38 pricing, YTM is 1.87% plus inflation. Cusip 912810FS2

To clarify, I never said we should get rid of BTC because of bad actors. I never even said that we should regulate it or not. I just said I think there are bad actors at play that have positions that no one can quantify, and these are the types of players that don't follow the rules and would absolutely manipulate a market to their advantage if they can get away with it.

I think you're the one who scoffed at me for making a similar point earlier this year. I think there are some counterpoints to your position. The fact that you're making this argument after Silk Road doesn't pass the smell test to me, there was already huge involvement in 2013 at far lower Bitcoin prices. I am unaware of any regulatory or police framework that has evolved since 2013 to significantly lock down Bitcoin (or other crypto) drug transactions other than shutting down the Silk Road itself. The drug cartels were already heavily involved at the very earliest days and presumably made massive profits on any BTC that wasn't immediately liquidated. Have you ever read about Pablo Escobar? He was burying oil drums full of $100 bills all over two continents because there was so much cash there was no way to launder it. You say there is no value to a criminal organization in using BTC, but clearly they disagreed in pre 2013 Silk Road days. Also, I would argue that BTC clearly would have significant advantages over USD (physical cash) in the Pablo Escobar example again. Let's say you're delivering 1000 kilos of cocaine to your New Mexico connection and expect 1,000 bitcoins delivered to different wallets in small denominations, this seems like there would obviously be far more gray area to avoid detection by using BTC instead of USD. Is it possibly traceable by law enforcement? Sure. Is this subject to the scrutiny that US financial institutions are required by law to comply with? Hell no. I don't disagree that the USD is more common for criminal enterprise than BTC. It's also more common for every kind of enterprise everywhere in the world, and probably an unrealistic hurdle to compare BTC to the world reserve currency. I'm sure BTC is more common than ETH, and ETH more common than Dogecoin and so on. To put this another way, I bet there's more financial crimes committed in BTC than NZD by a long shot. Going back to the original point. There's clearly lots of shady players that have been involved, and might be involved, they certainly aren't filing public disclosures or SEC filings or even tax returns. Are some of those players big enough to manipulate the market? Almost certainly. Are they? If they think they can gain financial advantage, almost certainly.

I think a lot of the big fish criminals do keep proceeds in bitcoin as an investment, but I will admit that I can't back that up at all because I don't know how to trace BTC.

I’m more interested in copper and lithium. Figuring out how to put on that trade is a much harder question. Presumably with miners, but I have a checkered past with mining investments honestly.

From day 1, Bitcoin has had a huge tie to organized crime, cartels, drug trafficking, human trafficking, hackers, bad nation state actors, etc. Presumably many or all of these players are still involved at a significant level. I would expect all of these players would have similar incentives to save the market.

Started a position in JOE today, larger than my typical starting position in 8th place, neck and neck with META and GOOGL.

I've been using fairly short term bear spreads on SPY and QQQ this year with great results (overall). I have had a lot more success with spreads than straight puts.

@Viking would you mind sharing some of your commodities investment ideas?

$80 Jan 20 BX puts

Averaged up on FRFHF and rolled over a big chunk of t bills that matured today to 2/28 t bills at 4.2 ytm.

Sold $145 strike AVB puts for January 20. $115 CCI puts January 20 Still got a few limit orders for puts hanging out there on some of the bigger REITs

Sold $80 DIS puts expiring January 20 2023.

Sold a $200 PUT on ESS expiring January 20 23 for $8.40.

That makes sense, I can imagine that the lag can be substantial, and there's always political risk that the regulator may not approve rate cases every when they aren't hitting their regulated limit to avoid crazy electricity prices. However, I will say that living in Northern California in the PG&E territory, customers could definitely pay 400-500% more for electricity across the United States if they had to. Our electricity rates are just absurd here.