Gregmal

If you're talking risk, why would you choose long term decline/challenges over near term and fixable? Seems short sighted. Tobacco has been a great investment almost forever and probably still will be, but everyone is gunning for it and even the companies themselves have acknowledged this time is probably a bit different. If you're worried about bad management and excessive overhead I would say tobacco is easily the biggest culprit of that than utilities or reits. Just go check out the MO thread....It as if you almost have to model a certain 9-10 figure number for "wasted resources" given what these guys have done on a consistent basis the past decade. Energy and even the pipelines have looked good for years and have still gotten wrecked. Again, they're probably good money longer term as well but the past half decade have been brutal and they haven't even really started getting attacked from a regulatory perspective. I mean people were pounding the table on stuff like CVX, KMI, WMB and ET 5 years ago and whats changed? Outside of the capital structures, and that certainly hasn't been for the better. RE is what? People scared and scarred bc of COVID but prices already imply $150-$300 sq/ft for things CURRENTLY going off at $600-$800 a square ft. At a time period which is probably near the darkest of the cycle. The biggest risk in RE right now is a long shot that the 1031 gets axed but otherwise...no one is coming for the sector and much of it simply takes care of itself. It also doesnt really matter whether management wants to sell or not unless you are dealing with dual class shares or high concentration of insider ownership. Its even potentially an area of upside as the acquirer can capitalize the G&A which almost all usually gets axed in a deal. Someone like BAM aint keeping on existing management for an office property acquisition and they sure as heck aint standing down from a deal simply because a C suite doesnt want to sell, should they have an angle to acquire it any way. Its also important to distinguish and not confuse assets vs businesses. Its something I ve long looked at and studied and is quite important. If you can find an asset like for instance a subsurface royalty or a ground lease with 15 year duration and rent increases, you're not really going to have to worry a whole lot about overhead and G&A because the operations are typically slim. If you're looking at a business, then you always find excuses to increases hiring, marketing, r&d, etc...its a big piece of the puzzle and most companies are hybrids but the true gems are purely asset. Something like TPL or some of the triple net lease stuff.

Yup. The concern I have with energy is that its going to be a continuous target, politically. Banks are tough too, and still way to susceptible to disruption. But RE and Utilities...are going to do very well. Covid is just a short term distraction for many. It will all come into focus soon enough. The great ones see things that are obvious before they are obvious, as I believe Flatt has done here.

Speaking of hoarding....my neighborhood has toilet paper everywhere. Looks like the kids were active last night. Or maybe just lazy benevolence....putting a few rolls up in the trees for everyone just in case there are shortages later.

If I got your take wrong, I apologize. At least you didnt counter with "bbbut 225k deaths!". However my recollection is that you've been ultra critical of the US specifically(without calling out the worst offenders like NY/NJ/MA), and spent time justifying lockdowns and draconian government power grabs. Which under no circumstance, given the data we have now, are warranted.

Interesting, a country with 90M people and 0 deaths...1, do you really believe that? 2, are you aware of cultural differences/effects? 3, is it possible that the virus just isn't as deadly as it was when NY/NJ/MA and Lombardi were doing their thing? As for the whole "the virus doesnt care" thing....this is just further part of the problem of giving this thing superpowers and all sorts of scary personalities hoping to whip up a frenzy....The flu doesnt care, chicken pox doesnt care either. Neither does HIV, and after asking, neither does peanut butter. We dont stop the world and usurp peoples freedoms and livelihoods for any of them. As someone mentioned in another thread, pretty soon you are gonna see the teachers unions pushing to make school hybrid/remote every year, during flu season. Because the flu can be pretty nasty too.

Agree on Queens Gambit. Very good.

The nice thing about this thread is(barring the editors) its all documented. You have consistently danced from one "example" of "success" to the next and consistently exaggerated the severity of the "virus". Europe was the example, then they weren't. China "cant be believed", now "they did it the right way"...NY was peculiarly, "the example" but when they go back into lockdown you find some "flaw" that now moves to why some other place is your current example. Pretty amusing. Its like going month to month talking about who the best investor in the world is and why they are successful based on a monthly return figure.....Orthopa's post, #8015 pretty much sums up everything. Shutting places down because of rising case numbers is retarded and will have consequences. People want nothing to do with this...outside of the extreme liberals who want the politicians to control everything.

I was looking at various covid tracker sites and have yet to find one that counts the number of small business fatalities, or the ones in critical condition. Unlike people, these are generally not asymptomatic. The jobs lost are huge, and the consequences on families is real. In the beginning, there were people making the case that the shutdowns didnt cause this, but rather people not wanting to go out did. This has been shown to be utterly false. An open economy will do better than a closed one. This isn't even debatable. I dont want to make too big a deal of the economic rebound, because just like it was preposterous to go shouting about "OMG worst numbers since Great Depression!" when duh, its obvious thats whats going to happen when you force businesses to close, but its worth noting that when things are allowed to remain open they can do OK. This now seems to be consensus, outside of a few like Jurgis in the other thread thinking that unlike every other profession, teachers will just drop dead the second they go back to the classroom like its an M. Night Shyamalan movie. Will there be a point when people hold politicians accountable for shutdowns? The election has basically come down to voting on shutdowns and subsequent handouts. How disrespectful to the people who have fought for our freedoms, that folks now give them away to their local politicians in exchange for some stimulus money. Land of the free no more.

Governor Goldman, back at it! https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/nj-gov-on-a-covid-19-lockdown-if-we-have-to-shut-the-whole-place-down-we-will-205402414.html “This is real. People are dying,” --- This is life. People die every day Philip....but its a great campaign soundbite.

I guess we've come full circle. America was established by a bunch of folks tired of outrageous taxes, constant persecution for their beliefs, and overreaching governments....self governing I believe was the major theme. Now look at us!

Again, the fallacy of CASES! OMG! What a disaster...these people are total idiots. As I posted earlier...UF GAME CANCELLED BECAUSE OF COVID OUTBREAK......(tiny print) All 21 players are either asymptotic or show minor symptoms... Can we please create some place where a certain percentage of the population lives where there are high taxes, shutdowns every time one catches the flu. and absurd rules around things like soda, plastic bags and police officers doing their jobs...and another where there are no taxes, and people just live their lives??

I'm actually, on a very speculative and short term basis looking at buying a tiny amount of OTM SPY calls thinking that Trumps gonna drop some kind of vaccine announcement over the weekend right ahead of the election. Still got a good bit of spec money after the 8 bagger on DDS options a few weeks ago. Swung a lot of it to the core portfolio for money sucking REITs, but I still think we see some sort of shenanigan around stimulus or vaccine in an attempt to buy off voters next week. On hedging, IDK, still waiting for something to come to me. Ive just been gradually reducing speculative exposure and limiting what I do to things where you have a bit of an event driven, high payoff trade. Otherwise trying to be more disciplined about longs and raising liquidity. My few Nov 20 put plays are kind of set. Not looking at being too aggressive on the hedges.

I agree. But theyve already got their hands on every dime you take in from an employer. Every dime you receive from interest/dividends. Mandate(until recently) you buy inflated healthcare or pay a tax, tax your purchases(on goods that have been assembled largely with taxes incurred along the way) ranging from gas to the car itself and then year after year, DMV fees, insurance surcharges(and mandates)....after all that is settled they want a cut of your families worth, simply because someone died? Its just appalling. Sure they provide a lot of the benefits you mentioned, but thats also funded in good bit from the taxpayers pocket anyway or in a manner as I described above with the whole car/driving example. And if they didnt provide this, I am sure a private enterprise would have, if the venture made sense to begin with.

All of this still eludes the main issue here...why is the government entitle to this?

Added a little more MX. Good earnings and continued momentum. Volume should help remove some of the Brigade overhang. Cardboard.....lookin good.

Yea, its this simple, and just leave it at that. How do "poor" Americans compare to poor people in other countries? Hint: they're the top 1% of the poor.

I think it really depends on your interpretation and timelines. Harding has mentioned before the preference towards installing a dividend. You are going to have a good chunk of cash coming in, continuously, which bridges the gap to sustained recurring revenue. This Q alone we should see payments reflecting the final 115 lots delivered. You've also got, IIRC, maybe $15-20M more in reimbursables accruing 6-7% from the municipality. The tax base, despite covid, has nearly doubled this year. In 2018 Dan Kozlowski pitch this at one of the conferences and the internal research conducted(again, another Denver guy) indicated an undiscounted NAV of about $2B. So on the lower, short term end, yea there's maybe 50-100% upside which if I had to guess, is probably largely just taking a loose stab at what completion of phase 1 gets you. But at the same time, I see the company earning $1 per share or so(give a take a little for various reasons) from here on out...so depending upon what they do with that there could be more upside(or downside). From here, or even the low teens...to me this is a classic swing big setup, one of my favorites...as long term downside from these prices is pretty limited and upside is pretty significant.

Thanks for sharing that. Been a busy week for me, so I didnt catch that. All I'd add, is again that its interesting how many local guys are invested in Pure Cycle. A big part of that is likely seeing firsthand whats taking place there and how the Front Range is really the last developable location in that region.

Inheritance tax is disgusting. What has the government done to stake claim to that money? They already likely taxed the heck out of that money while it was being accumulated...whether a dry cleaner business or dividends from stock.

Yea I sold a bunch of stuff(or trimmed in most cases) in the November-February lead up solely on valuation concerns as well as concerns about the potential Presidential nominee for the Democrats as for a while it seemed very likely to be a Sanders/Harris/Warren type rather than Biden. Nothing really related to COVID. I guess the question here is, how sustainable are the recent premiums given to some of these names...or do they give any of that back. In the early stages of COVID the issue everyone brought up with GOOG was "OMG ad spend will fall off a cliff"...I personally think the antitrust issues are a bigger thing for GOOG, although those may end up being a net positive and maybe even a catalyst.

I hope so. I've just been watching this damn thing for so long and everytime there is a glimmer of something possibly positive its deemed a sign that things will be turning the corner any day now, with huge upside. The company is positioned for bad times in a good market, good times in a bad market...I mean at some point you just have to look at the past 10 years of decisions and mistakes and give credit where it is due. This isn't a company in an out of favor sector like O&G, or retail... I get that its gotten the short end of the covid stick similar to other insurance, banking and RE firms....but its supposed to be a company with "the smart guys" who are ahead of the curve. And its not and it hasn't been for over a decade now. Is there any case to say that on a risk adjusted basis you arent just better off owning WFC or BRK?

Geez, I hadn't looked at this one in a good while. What a total dumpster fire.

Nice start. QQQ's down about 1% a/h. As described, the MSFT experience indeed with FB, AMZN and AAPL. Google was super impressive but not really one of the stocks I view as having been put on steroids by the covid situation, so a bit different than some of the others.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/29/alphabet-googl-earnings-q3-2020.html Blowout. Still have a nice core position, but regret having sold some of this in the beginning of the year on "valuation" concerns. Yet another reminder, just like with COST and SAM, that buying AND selling quality companies with the prime focus being "valuation", is stupid.

https://seekingalpha.com/pr/18063318-dupont-reports-third-quarter-2020-results This has been quiet. Stock was in favor/popular for a bit, then went out of favor not coincidentally as it got really, really cheap...now its just humming along nicely.