BG2008

I would have thought that recent events have impaired NYC status as a safe haven. You can pick 1) NYC real estate with rampant zombie virus or 2) Potentially lawless emerging markets where currency may devalue

Fair. Perhaps professionally managed buildings are different. In my experience in lower income housing growing up, the landlord isn't without leverage. That's why I even brought up the point around negotiating a bit. Anyway, we've gotten off track on topic. Apologies for the detour. What kind of leverage are you talking about? Do tell.

Not shhughes1116, but hey here's my 0.02. Personally, I separate good managers and good leaders. Good managers are the ones who take care of the team. It's all cliche, but they are the ones who care that team members get responsibilities according to their strengths and weaknesses. And at the same time encourage team members to improve their weak sides. And care about team member personal and professional growth. Interface the team with higher management and other teams. Deal with politics. Build team spirit and camaraderie. Make sure the team is valued. Makes sure the team gets adequate support and renumeration. Good leaders are much less common. For me a good leader is someone who directs the team into new high value and/or high growth directions as they appear or even before they appear. It is someone who notices trends before others and gets the team positioned accordingly. Ideally it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but it doesn't have to be someone who produces iPhone. The leadership could be something less groundbreaking. It could be someone who first notices move to cloud computing and pushes company's product to be rewritten as SaaS on AWS. It could be someone like Munger who pushes Buffett to switch to moaty businesses. (Buffett himself is a leader in certain aspects too). It could be someone who noticed that ETFs are coming and converted mutual fund shop to ETF shop. Or just positioned the team inside the organization accordingly. Some people would call a person a leader even when that person focuses on existing strengths or focus areas and never changes direction. E.g. someone who gets a management role in a company known for frugality and keeps the team focused on saving every cent in product costs. Or someone who leads a team that produces a great software package and keeps that project steady on track. I personally don't consider such people leaders. IMO they are managers - without any negative connotation attached to that term. Of course, in the real world there are shades of grey . Most great managers have to show some leadership if they stay managers for a long time. They cannot stay at the same place or their team would become irrelevant. Converse is true less often: leaders can be lousy managers or not managers at all. I mostly agree with shhughes1116 that good manager can deal with distributed team. IMO it's not as easy as dealing with co-located team though. Personal interaction matters, shared activities in office matter. Remote manager loses a number of tools that help and faces higher hurdles to do best for the team. Jurgis, Thank you for such a great feedback.

shhughes1116 - Can you expand on this topic "I will share one interesting observation, at least in my opinion. Good leaders can lead, whether their staff is remote or in the office. Shitty managers are shitty managers, regardless of where their staff are located. I think remote work really highlights those that are good at leading and connecting with people, and those who believe leadership is randomly showing up at your office door to "make sure you are working". " As a way of background, I played a lot of sports in HS and my best friends and I are both captains of 2 teams. I have noticed the 2-3 classes above us had a lot more ego and a-holes. There were way more drama and infighting. As I have grown my business a bit, I have had to develop a rag tag of interns and analyst spread over the places. I really relish my junior year and particularly my senior year when everyone was on the same page. While a lot of my HS and college friends have faded away over the years, the guys that I played sports with can still pick up and grab a beer when we see each other. Any tips? Comments? Observations? Is it being thoughtful? Is it putting yourself in your employees' shoes? Is it articulating the responsibilities well? What do you deem to be most important?

Can you share specific names and subscriptions? I am wondering if this breaks the Saas model assumptions. They tend to be priced on a P/Rev model and it has worked wonders for shareholders. Gavin's take is that software and cloud is now 50% of IT spend vs 10% in 08/09. So, it is subject to price cut. I am waiting for FB and Goog to report their earnings and see how the ad spends. On the software that you subscribe to? Are there a competing product? How expensive are they? I really would love to get more participation on this topic as I find some Saas models attractively price at the moment. But if we have across the board 30% price cuts, it can really upset the apple cart.

Thank you to anyone who participated in this survey. Seems like the key response is that work from home will be heavily dependent on your job functions.

This is a great interview of Gavin Baker by Patrick O Shag on his podcast Invest Like The Best https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gavin-baker-investing-through-bear-market-invest-like/id1154105909?i=1000470286606 There is an anecdote where Gavin talks about how the sister of a friend who called their software subscription providers and got 50% price concessions within 1 hour. Gavin talked about how subscription and cloud spend is now 50% of the IT budget versus 10% during 2008/2009. Logically, CIO who are looking to cut IT expenses will try to negotiate lower software and cloud cost and it appears that the providers are conceding. Is anyone here experiencing that? Is anyone calling their software/cloud providers and successfully getting price cuts? Thanks in advance.

Apparently NYC condos are better than cash if you are a South America family. Part of the reason why NYC RE prices continues to be high. Probably a hedge against political instability. https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-american-family-buys-eight-new-york-apartments-to-stash-cash-amid-coronavirus-11586952028?mod=trending_now_4

Grocery delivery has emerged to become a cottage industry of its own. Here in NYC, people who got laid off are offering grocery delivery for families who do not want to risk becoming infected. Getting a spot through Costco, Wholefoods, Chef's warehouse, or Baldor has been difficult.

WTF?

It's more that low income people are f&*cked ... again. John Oliver Coronavirus IV Haven't watched this yet. As I get older, I get more cynical and realize that people can make careers out of telling people that they are the oppressed. I wonder what these celebrities are like in person. The question is "Do the guy broadcasting to millions about structural unfairness eat caviar?"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/10/nyregion/nyc-7pm-cheer-thank-you-coronavirus.html People clapping at 7PM in NYC

My wife tells me that her family looks forward to me cooking the 2 dinners every weekend. They are helping with the 2 kiddos. So I cook up a storm, like steaks, crab legs, fish, etc. The supply chain is tough these days. Lots of fresh seafood has gone away and we are ordering delivery as the risk of catching the virus in NYC is actually quite high. I have noticed that there are no left over anymore lately. Somehow, we finish everything that I cook.

This is true. However, the initial commentary seemed more political than anything else, and while we would all like to think tha tthe general public is thoughtful and discerning it's just not reality. I think that the last election is more than enough to prove that point. Amongst my friend group (mid 30s) this is starting to bubble up as a topic whenever conversation turns to deficits and medicare, etc. Young people are just future old people. The boomers were the free spirit revolutionaries in their times with the summer of love and the anti-war movement and all the drugs and rock and roll experimentation with the long hair and bell bottoms and all that. Now they're decried as the old ossified establishment. The wheels keep turning. People are people ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Ha, this is funny and so true. The hippies are being ripped for being leeches of society. I can't wait till people make fun of millennial.

You have a valid point, but if it really gets to that level is there really nothing that can be done as a land lord? Especially in this high rise buildings, are there no options (cutting internet, for example) to at least force a conversation around ability to pay? It's one thing to not be able to pay, it's another thing to choose to not pay. So if one wants electricity or cable or internet, assuming they could be cut off unit by unit, why is a landlord obligated to provide that if the renter isn't paying rent? Dude, what state and city do you live in? You will be skinned and boiled alive for even thinking about cutting off utilities etc as a landlord in NYC.

By the way, these are amazing feedbacks and really helps to paint a better picture. I guess this is a very male dominated board. I kind of wish we had more female inputs where childcare decisions can be bought to the forefront.

Greg, Your mall comments = You're so Jersey. :) I spoke with an accounting employee and she said that "she can't get work done because the kids are home, but if they are in school, she would love to work from home."

I will start with the poll Fund Manager Finance NYC, USA Unexpected - Until I started a Keto diet, I packed on 5-10 pounds of weight every single year because working from home took away 6-10k steps each day when I used to take the subway into the city. Anyone who works from home should try reducing carbs from their diet. I do miss the water coolers and chatting with co-workers. It does get lonely sometimes and that is why we all have other investors/fund managers that we chat with regularly. I think Weight Watchers will have tremendous demand as people will put on a ton of weight being forced to stay home. On FB, many of my friends has already mentioned how they can't stop snacking.

Since there is a very robust thread on Vornado and office REITs, I think it is essential that we gauge whether the work from home trend is permanent or not. If you can also state the following, it will be very helpful if you can provide the following so that we can form some sort of data point Job title/description Industry you work in City and Country Anything expected or unexpected from being forced to work from home Thanks

Thank you

One thing that really annoys me about Buffet in the last 2-3 years is his constant preaching that stocks are not expensive if interest rates stays low. At the same time, Berkshire was building a war chest of $100bn of cash. It's one thing when Bill Ackman says that stocks are cheap with interest rate being low. It's another when it is the icon of value investing pretty much saying that paying 30x FCF is okay due to low interest rates.

Just to add the obvious, my restaurant and travel spends has gone down about 90% this year.

Just curious why electrical engineering is more of a growth industry than mechanical? I worked at a HVAC shop back in the days and we had a couple electrical guys in the office.

Mike, I would like buy you a few beers if we ever meet up. This is awesome feedback!

Kinsale Capital is an insurance company trading at 5x BV