Gregmal

https://seekingalpha.com/news/3646407-equity-residential-sells-san-diego-apartment-property-pays-down-750m-of-notes 4.1 clip is pretty bullish, I would think.

I would think the only way to disrupt those fees are to have an all in one platform. The realtors are really the biggest cost cog. Title stuff is a joke. Mortgage stuff is another area of high profit too, but as someone who's done a good half dozen transactions over the past half decade Ive always gotten the impression that theres a whole lot of room to disrupt a rather archaic process. Ive dealt with realtors who are good, and also ones who are dumb as rocks. People who are dumb as rocks are largely the ones who have seen their high paying jobs disrupted the most by the tech revolution. Will be interesting to see how this plays out. No position although Ive long watched Zillow and wanted to buy but been a chicken.

Yup. The firms are definitely not your friends. Or even allies. If you are still with them and producing, they'll play ball sometimes. But if you leave, they can be your worst enemies. Have heard more stories than I can recall of retaliatory U5 filings, marking of peoples licenses, phantom "complaints" popping up after the fact, and fight to the death type stuff over who gets to retain the "clients"...which the advisor does all the work with but the firm believes are theirs. Compliance anywhere sucks. Its all CYA crap from people who only have an elementary understanding about what they think the regulators want to see. Most have never been producers so they have no appreciation for the various aspects and difficulties of certain tasks. Ive gotten into full blown fights with some of these idiots over shit like "you cant buy XIACF because its a pink sheet penny stock! The regulators arent going to like this!". And its so aggravating explaining, "no you retard, its a $50B company that trades on another exchange and has US listed ADRs"....its also hard to do so politely when the response, regardless of content presented is "yea but it trades on the Pink sheets and its a $2 stock!". End of rant...

I follow Brad a bit, and own some of the stocks he's covered. Generally speaking, I like him. But my 2c is that he does an incredible job of giving an overall surface review of the companies he writes about, but he sometimes misses some very important fundamental details that somebody writing about a stock shouldn't miss. Its probably the byproduct of writing 5 articles a day.

Moar EDIT

I'm generally just having some fun with this. I do think the politicians are pieces of shit. But you most certainly take this much more seriously than I do and with that said, dont think you should get too worked up over anything I post. My only contention is to highlight how from top to bottom the government is a joke and nobody's gameplan should be contingent upon them. One of my best friends growing up texted me the other day about possibly meeting up in Boca Raton and informed me that whether he would be able to or not was dependent upon the vaccine availably. He readily admitted that "perhaps I've gone overboard, but at this point Ive done nothing and have barely left my house since March, so I'm just going to play it safe"...I am totally cool with that and those who feel the same way. Sure I'll kid about it, but we should all be entitled to do and act as we are allowed by law and constitution. We should also be able to have a sense of humor, even in dark times. Congrats on your daughter too.

Looks like the NJ nursing homes won't get the vaccine on time. Bureaucrats had too many other, more important things to do and missed the deadline....

Bought some BKEP premarket on the big announcement. Swapping this in for the preferred shares I own and will sell during the day. Transformation is taking shape!

Need more reasons why this has become a joke on everyone? Just this weekend.... AOC, 30 years old....getting the vaccine despite a current shortage and not being at risk. Why? Cuomo, who has banned everything from dining to working out, wants to attend the Buffalo Bills game! Oy Vey, eh? And....Deborah Birx traveled with family out of state over Thanksgiving weekend! despite telling everyone else not to. You dont say!

Sorry to hear all this. There's a very ugly side to the business that most people never see or hear about. There's few other places or jobs where you can make the same type of money with such "freedom", but it definitely comes with costs. Hopefully things turn out OK for you. More to life than the next 10% portfolio fluctuation. Also, I dont know Roark at all. But I would just generally say that 95% of the folks Ive met in this business arent good people and be careful because most of the people who act like "friends" will quickly forget your name the second they no longer benefit financially from you.

Almost every time I can think of, where something was supposed to either be a total train wreck or the next greatest thing, often the end result was something much more in the middle and quite boring. People adapt, often on the go, much more cogently than when they have forever to plan. When you sit around planning for the possibility of touching fire, you still dont really have a clue. When your feet feel the fire, its hot.

https://www.barrons.com/articles/barrons-10-best-stocks-for-2021-51608337138?source=content_type%3Areact%7Cfirst_level_url%3Anews%7Csection%3Amain_content%7Cbutton%3Abody_link Outside of AAPL at 32x earnings....pretty solid list. 4 of which I own, GOOG, BRK, GS, MSGE.

Just one more data point for the bubble. But, generally speaking, if they want to gamble, why not play house? I've done really well over time feeding the gambling crowd. This year selling puts to people who dont understand the greater details or simply judge a book by its cover has been the best way to take advantage of the option premiums. Good if not great companies that get swept up in rhetoric or false narratives where premiums are massive. Just mentioned RICK a couple days ago. Few other favorites would be FIZZ, DDS, SPG, PSTH, shit even Tesla a few months back, around the time of the split, I was able to short some (split adjusted) $4 puts for 30c with a June 2021 expiration. People often think of the dumb money, and its wise to enter that into your underwriting equation, but I've found it much more lucrative to feed to dumb money that thinks they're the smart money.

I saw a headline out of england hinting exactly that... Also I agree w/ Greg on the valuation difference between "blue chips" and the market darlings. It's huge. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9054817/Whats-TRUTH-Englands-new-strain-coronavirus.html I think the high likelihood here is that its just these cocksuckers doing what they do best...

Theres still some stuff thats reasonable of course. The steady as she goes stuff will always be fine. But the difference between that stuff and the majority of lets say the Nasdaq 100 or S&P 500 is wider than Ive ever seen. You've had people whining about "valuations" for the better part of the a decade now. And most of it has just been nonsense, incompetence, or jealousy fueled. We haven't until recently had any real, widespread euphoria or markers consistent with previous bubbles. Now there are plenty, including Tesla being worth more than BRK...again, among many other red flags. Not to mentioned sentiment. No ones bearish or scared of the market anymore. If there was ever a blow off top type setup, this little post election run would be a pretty good candidate. I'm still in all my core longer term stuff. Those are largely in the right places. RE, financials, etc....stuff thats not by any stretch expensive. But most people arent buying that kind of stuff anyway. Anyway, who knows. The beauty of the market is it can be unappealing today and then something falls out of the sky tomorrow.

Greg, With, or without, your decises at hand? [which to me seem to be the definition of a vacation, or perhaps not]? 2020 was unlike any year Ive experienced before. Like being in the Matrix movies, where you have so many different things coming at you all at once, in super high velocity. The mental exercise of process it all, individually, collectively, etc...literally nonstop from January-December and on the fly determining what was garbage, what was noise, what was relevant, etc. Between primaries, covid, politics crap, policy decisions, more covid, elections, post election....the byproduct was, IMO, more investment opportunities and especially trade setups than one could have ever dreamed of. But this amalgamation of opportunity does come at a cost. Ive been plugged in like never before and now heading into year end, see the opportunities waning. My family is at a unique point where wife and I can 100% work remotely(if need be), and the kids are sub 5 so the opportunity to do something cool without interfering with school is there. I am beyond pleased with how I'm exiting the year from an investment/trading perspective. With the current market landscape I am in no hurry to do anything. So its time to take advantage of other opportunities for a bit.

I hope so. Ive pared down more than I can remember in a very long while and even been putting on a bunch of shorts. Not so much lockdown related but valuations in some places are obscene and this is coupled with massive exuberance and even from many sophisticated investors, a lot of complacency. I think theres also the fact that many people simply won't listen to holiday lockdown orders. But business wise, the mid December to mid January period is always(at least in US) pretty subdued. So vs March which is just kind of normal period, holidays are different. I also think the market has largely caught on and realized that what happens in the next couple months just straight up doesnt matter very much bigger picture; granted there are some exceptions. WTI is clearly much more short term demand sensitive. That said, wouldn't mind a VIX spike to 50 and widespread 10-20% correction. But in terms of positioning, most reasonable investors and especially managers of other peoples money I think have locked in their nut for the year. Myself, I'll be putting the finishing touches on in the next two weeks but am largely in the position I desired to be going into year end. I'm taking a 10 week vacation in South Florida for the first couple of months in 2021. So whatever comes, I'm good.

Yea I noticed the PGRE property. I also was surprised to find Crystal Springs Resort. Awesome place I go to all the time, and on more than one occasion Ive come quite close to buying some properties over there. I always heard that the management fucks the unit owners, basically timeshares with more liquidity. These documents definitely added detail to support that notion.

Ive been earmarking what I can find on the Parkmerced property/loan for more thorough reading this weekend. It doesnt seem to be ideal but I also think you've got some time for things to work out. The property was sold in 2011 for $1.4B. You've got probably one of the best located 150 acre pieces of land in the state/country. What I read thats appealing on the 5k+ new units is they are exempt from rent control. The loan IIRC has a second 5 yr option, no? And an option for 30% ownership...which, I think is appealing if the market solidifies. I would think, as we've seen, lender issues that are covid related can be worked through. I dont think the current owners are just letting it go, and if and when shit hits the fan I think its likely enough time has passed that you may not be sitting in "distressed" property value territory. They were "troubled" in 2014 too. https://www.sfgate.com/business/bottomline/article/Troubled-Parkmerced-development-gets-new-5920452.php That said, this isnt a high conviction assessment. I am currently looking at these assets as if the loan doesnt get full value. But I see the odds of it being a 0 as low. For that area, a 3 something cap with the ability to almost triple the number of units and have rent control exemption is hardly "expensive". WFH may hurt office, and trickle out into "home"...but this is still a coveted location in an area people want to be. My understanding is that these units are not nosebleed expensive and kind of in the value territory as far as pricing is concerned. My experience here on the east coast has been that the higher end of the market is very volatile, but the entry/value territory much firmer in terms of holding price/demand. I guess we will see. I'm also curious to hear other opinions. From $4-ish..I dont think we need the mezzanine loan to do great, but if we get full value this is a home run from here. Either way, I am beginning to look at this as a moderately well defined event driven investment.....for 2024!

For whatever reason, this one is always super interesting on the quadruple witching days.

Sold ANGI swing position.

^It was, but IMO there was also a lot of other stuff floating around where you could make some easy money. In hind site, you definitely cant argue with buying the package(especially if you sold AIV at $12! on the spin), but right now there's substantially less value/opportunity I see, substantially more evidence of the bubble expanding(such as all those IPOs last 2 weeks), and IMO a couple weeks left until the clock strikes midnight and everyone does their predictable "its a new year, lets get serious again" routine. Ive got a lot planned for that oh so special week between Xmas and New Years where Robinhood hunting season is in full swing! Agree on AIV, but Ive never let overhangs or "no catalysts" stop me. Bring on the $3s!

Elon Musk is probably the only person in the world who could start a gold mining company and find a way to make money selling gold that cost $800 an oz to get out of the ground, for $300 an oz. This may in fact be the fallback for Boring...should flamethrowers cease being profitable. Unless he's planning to use SpaceX to mine asteroids...which would be a game changer!

Added a few more MX and BAM EDIT: also got allocated some IIIIU

Thats definitely accurate; I think Bombshells has been a tremendous surprise albeit up against a very low bar. The effect you describe is probably true to an extent, but there is also a yin and yang thing going on here. With the reopening you might see some waning on the restaurant side, but the bread and butter is the clubs and the margin that come with it and that will undoubtedly accelerate. There is also some merit to this being yet another example of luck/solid management, being heavily concentrated location wise in a business friendly state like Texas. Ive got some shares(not a huge position though) but Ive found the real gravy train here is just quietly shorting short/mid duration OTM puts. If the shorts want to miss the forest for the trees, give em rope. Eventually they'll be wandering alone amongst all those tress, with a rope, and, well.....they'll have some options.