Gregmal

Looks like he made a bad trade. Hopefully he will be alright. All better! This guy is certainly entertaining.

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/20/2081326/0/en/Hamilton-Thorne-Reports-Financial-and-Operational-Results-for-the-Quarter-Ended-June-30-2020.html As I have caught myself saying with many other investments and their Q2 results....definitely could have been worse. Didnt get to hear the call as the kids demanded to go swimming, so I hope to review the transcript tonight, but at quick glance, the results seem respectable and the tone going forward, cautious. Hopefully more so the result of Mr. Wolf continuing to be an "underpromise, overdeliver" kind of guy, rather than a truly precarious environment.

Have you considered the possibility that the reason why things are going okay in Lombardy these days is because they actually made significant progress towards herd immunity during their atrocious outbreak in the spring? Lombardy is a region where the official numbers state that there have been 97k diagnosed cases and 17k deaths recorded for a region of 10m people. With a ~17% calculated CFR, clearly the official statistics are drastically under-counting the true number of cases in that region. So, run the calculation backwards, beginning with the number of deaths to infer a plausible number of infections in the region. If you are in the camp that believes that the IFR is likely around 0.5% or 0.6%, then the 17k deaths implies about 3 million infections. A region of 10m people with ~3m infections could be quite far advanced along the path to herd immunity. So, are the current daily numbers in Lombardy indicative of good management in the present, or poor management in the past? SJ Specifically around this exchange about herd immunity, in early June, the Bergamo province reported population antibody levels at 57% which would clearly not support the notion that much lower antibody levels prevalence would be sufficient herd immunity under any circumstances. However, the numbers suggest that herd immunity had become a contributing variable going forward, at least for those who could mount one (immune response). ----- Bergamo has meaning here because it's a nice city perched on a hill that marries well the ancient with the modern and is a great example of the mixed human nature of the Piedmont region. Its geographical features also make it an ideal place for the start or the finish of cycling race. It's also relevant because this CV threat, for me, became really real when first accounts (early March when choices had to be made for survival and when army trucks were handling coffins) of what was happening in hospitals made it to my email box. This is when i decided to establish a scorecard looking at the effectiveness of various national public health organizations and leaders across the world in dealing with this phenomenon.. The Bergamo province and Northern Italy had a similar experience compared to various areas of Spain, New York and my jurisdiction with a large spread occurring before the actual implementation of measures (spontaneous, encouraged and imposed). In hindsight, whatever the causes (close to high volume international airports, large events as super-spreading catalysts, older and more fragile population etc), it looks like every day counted and it is reasonable to suggest that the outcome would have been a 100x better if measures that were actually applied had been applied about 2 weeks earlier (with obviously a much lower cost). It's been shown that the viral load is highly determinant as to whether one catches the disease or not and how sick or dead one can become. The viral load concept can be applied to the population level and is one more argument suggesting that herd immunity is a dynamic concept. Bergamo showed that a high population viral load will drive up the population herd immunity required to contribute to flattening the curve. There are several quantifiable and sophisticated ways to report on what happened in Bergamo. Here's one example (and i'm sorry to say a preventable one): Note: to understand, there is no need to speak Italian or for fancy statistical knowledge. ----- Even though the value in the hotspot is 57%, Italy as a whole is far from herd immunity with only 2.5% antibodies overall. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-italians-covid-north.html Another tidbit, for whatever it’s worth. Italiy’sVOVID-19 fatality rate is 586/1M. When the US reaches 198k death (we are currently at 177k and increasing by almost 1k/day) we will be just as bad as Italy. That should occur around mid September at latest. I recall folks talking on Italy’s incompetence back in February. Well, it took a while but we have beaten them to it. What happens when NJ/NY are removed from the fatality rate? They are definitely in a league of their own. Well, if we remove the Lombardy from Italy’s fatality rate, Italy looks great too. You can check out worldodometer for the US state level fatality rates. Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Georgia, Florida and others all have fatality rates higher than Italy, so it’s not just NY either. FWIW, the highest fatality rate is with your state NJ, not NY. Of course if you add/remove areas it changes the picture. That was my point. You had folks saying "next Italy" so if we want to get technical, well, that was poorly worded if they really meant Lombardi, no? It is my belief NY/NJ numbers are skewed because testing was poorly done at the onset, but regardless, you had the usual suspects, those that now have amnesia, talking about "the next Italy"(when, as you mentioned, presumably they meant Lombardi) stating there would be more states resembling that, and others would be worse than NY/NJ, and quite frankly, they couldn't have been more wrong about that. We've been at "just wait 2 weeks" for several months now. Hospitals never got where everyone "knew" they were heading regarding capacity, thank god. And yea, Murphy in NJ is a total assclown. Same with Cuomo, boasting about how they're on the other side of the mountain and how theyre beating the virus when in reality they just got run over by a stampede(as the numbers do show), and now theyre claiming victory while still hiding as much is still restricted and/or shut down.

Have you considered the possibility that the reason why things are going okay in Lombardy these days is because they actually made significant progress towards herd immunity during their atrocious outbreak in the spring? Lombardy is a region where the official numbers state that there have been 97k diagnosed cases and 17k deaths recorded for a region of 10m people. With a ~17% calculated CFR, clearly the official statistics are drastically under-counting the true number of cases in that region. So, run the calculation backwards, beginning with the number of deaths to infer a plausible number of infections in the region. If you are in the camp that believes that the IFR is likely around 0.5% or 0.6%, then the 17k deaths implies about 3 million infections. A region of 10m people with ~3m infections could be quite far advanced along the path to herd immunity. So, are the current daily numbers in Lombardy indicative of good management in the present, or poor management in the past? SJ Specifically around this exchange about herd immunity, in early June, the Bergamo province reported population antibody levels at 57% which would clearly not support the notion that much lower antibody levels prevalence would be sufficient herd immunity under any circumstances. However, the numbers suggest that herd immunity had become a contributing variable going forward, at least for those who could mount one (immune response). ----- Bergamo has meaning here because it's a nice city perched on a hill that marries well the ancient with the modern and is a great example of the mixed human nature of the Piedmont region. Its geographical features also make it an ideal place for the start or the finish of cycling race. It's also relevant because this CV threat, for me, became really real when first accounts (early March when choices had to be made for survival and when army trucks were handling coffins) of what was happening in hospitals made it to my email box. This is when i decided to establish a scorecard looking at the effectiveness of various national public health organizations and leaders across the world in dealing with this phenomenon.. The Bergamo province and Northern Italy had a similar experience compared to various areas of Spain, New York and my jurisdiction with a large spread occurring before the actual implementation of measures (spontaneous, encouraged and imposed). In hindsight, whatever the causes (close to high volume international airports, large events as super-spreading catalysts, older and more fragile population etc), it looks like every day counted and it is reasonable to suggest that the outcome would have been a 100x better if measures that were actually applied had been applied about 2 weeks earlier (with obviously a much lower cost). It's been shown that the viral load is highly determinant as to whether one catches the disease or not and how sick or dead one can become. The viral load concept can be applied to the population level and is one more argument suggesting that herd immunity is a dynamic concept. Bergamo showed that a high population viral load will drive up the population herd immunity required to contribute to flattening the curve. There are several quantifiable and sophisticated ways to report on what happened in Bergamo. Here's one example (and i'm sorry to say a preventable one): Note: to understand, there is no need to speak Italian or for fancy statistical knowledge. ----- Even though the value in the hotspot is 57%, Italy as a whole is far from herd immunity with only 2.5% antibodies overall. https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-italians-covid-north.html Another tidbit, for whatever it’s worth. Italiy’sVOVID-19 fatality rate is 586/1M. When the US reaches 198k death (we are currently at 177k and increasing by almost 1k/day) we will be just as bad as Italy. That should occur around mid September at latest. I recall folks talking on Italy’s incompetence back in February. Well, it took a while but we have beaten them to it. What happens when NJ/NY are removed from the fatality rate? They are definitely in a league of their own.

Of course, crime could change everything, but his thesis is guilty of making the same mistake that plenty of folks made during the shutdowns; IE "OMG the numbers are terrible! Theyre the worst since (insert GFC, GD, etc)!" Duh. Obviously when things are shutdown, there will be little activity and the numbers will be bad. NYC is still more or less shutdown. It was the height of hilarity to see this fellow go to Empire State Building in July and act surprised it was at like 10-20% occupancy. Especially in NYC, office and retail/entertainment are inextricably intertwined. One won't really get its mojo back until the other does, if that makes sense.

Litt is basically the go to mouthpiece for anyone looking to write a doom and gloom, NYC is screwed, article. His thesis is twice posted on here. Basically that NYC office demand will be nonexistent til at least 2025 and all the players are doomed, especially ESRT since their buildings are "old". He has yet to, at least that Ive seen, give any mention on what these should be trading for or valued at, and has conveniently left out mentioning the extensive facelifts/renovations ESRT spent the better part of the last decade on. BG seems to know more about him than I do, but the opinion seems the same. A bit of a clown, more promotional than substance based.

Investing is boring. Just sit and watch everything go UP. Dude, thats it! Thats why, deep down some of us are drawn to the office REITs! Similar to the old adage, something about the occasional 2 being necessary in order to appreciate the 10s. I will leave out the rest of the analogy for the sake of the children. But now it makes sense. The office REIts are just there to make us appreciate everything else!

Yea but what if you hate Trump and just need an outlet?

LOL. Welcome to the club. Its hard "investing" sometimes. But I think with much of this stuff, if you dont care about headlines or narratives on a shorter term basis, and dont care where things may go next week or month, you'll do very well. People always seem to wonder what it takes to own stocks at ridiculous hind site prices. Well, situations like this. The whole office/retail RE isn't going to be worthless, IMO of course. I like ESRT or even PGRE a little better than VNO and the smaller size makes them easier to monetize their assets in a meaningful way. And typically, I think something like Simon is(for me) preferable to VNO for the simple reason that if you think retail can survive, Simon, owns the best. Maybe Unibal-Rodamco or a few others have some "nice" properties, but Simon is your go to for basically a monopoly on retail locations and leverage with the tenant base. I am a bit cloudier in my ability to pick office, simply because the above described advantage, doesnt really exist. I can probably name a half dozen or more REITS with really, really nice, tier A location office setups. So there's not as much of a pure play on just "a recovery" here, at least to me.

Muh-knee....Its almost always, all about the Benjamins. The best companies just do a great job manipulating their imagine.

Yes, how did Cisco do post dot.com boom? Has it ever recouped the valuation it once had? Even though routers and switches dominated the world, Cisco joined the market exuberance and justified its valuation over another 30 years. Sounds like a lost twin decade is more of a potential issue for Tesla investors than for GM investors. Sooo then monetizing(or at least partially monetizing) one of the euphoria businesses, that, on a real, dollar earning basis, contributes zero to GM core, would be sensible, no? If Ebay can spin out PayPal, GM can spinout Cruise.

The spinoff creates two radically different, pureplay businesses and likely appeases two different investor bases. EVs/autonomous vehicles have yet to really demonstrate any sort of profit model. Teslas profitability at this point relies on ZEV credits. So to split out the two rewards long term holders who saw this investment through; a liquidity event of sorts, but also refines GM core business to what I'd imagine most investors look to own in the first place...a profit machine truck/SUV company. Its financial engineering, but at GM, its about damn time they start caring about "the market" and their "valuation". You just ran through the greatest profit cycle in history and all shareholders have to show are paper losses. Patience and all that mumbo jumbo are great, but a lost decade when investing is pretty devastating.

Yes, they could. But then again, they could have done a lot of things that seemed like common sense; that would have benefited shareholders, but didnt/havent. Especially for a tech company like Cruise, employees hate not having liquidity then huge chunks of their comp is generally in the form of shares.

For the sake of those that have stuck with this, I hope they follow through. But they've played this game plenty of times before, and yet, still, here we are talking about "spinning off the EV biz"...again.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/florida-keys-spot-one-best-130000496.html Dives moderately into the numbers on rental income

Jon Litt, haha, he's kind of like those perma bears every time we have a crisis. Ive found one of the better WS marketing tools is to come out with a thesis, after the big event has occurred, in hopes of confusing people into thinking you "called it" ahead of time. Happens every time we have a major event/crisis. I was amused by his picture of Empire State in June titled "85% empty" or something like that. I was surely expecting 90% occupancy. What a let down.

Agree. The crime is whats concerning to me. The covid will go away and people will come back if its safe. I think rents settling somewhere, even lower, helps this out, given spreads vs norm. But people won't come back if NYC becomes Chicago. I think a Biden win has a better likelihood to soothe some of the unrest, however Joe is not extreme left enough for many of those protesting, and on top of that, my feel is that the criminals and gun toting thugs dont care either way.

I dont know guys, everywhere I turn I see articles about the death of NY, all of which seem to quote Jonathan Litt, who thinks these are all going to 0....He posted a picture of Times Square in July, and said there was not a lot of people!

Added to MSGE & S, ILMN

https://nypost.com/2020/08/17/shocking-images-show-packed-wuhan-pool-party-in-former-coronavirus-ground-zero/ CLEARLY! concerned about the virus....

You know, as they say, the first 50 bags are much harder than the next 50!

primer/fluff piece on Authentic/Sparc venture. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/17/barneys-savior-authentic-brands-has-about-1-billion-to-buy-more-troubled-retailers.html

Sooo...lots has and hasn't changed here since all the +1 worthy "it fell when everything else did, I knew it was bs" stuff happened back in March. The larger question regarding the "thesis" here(if you will call it a thesis for the funny money), is still: -scarcity -acceptance/adoption as store of value -lack of government interference The first two seemed to have only strengthened with recent events, and while the third issue is still up for debate, it seems less of a risk as incompetence festers elsewhere(all that money printing) and banks now, even some of the TBTF ones, start getting involved. Is there any reason this is not likely to be taking out ATHs? There's certainly a lot of funky stuff trading at bubble type valuations right now, but this at least is in its own universe of uniqueness as an "asset"(if you will give it that benefit of the doubt). It may, as I said much earlier in this thread, be another case of the little guy catching on before the institution, and after a "scare the little guy out and accumulate" campaign from the institutions for the past couple years, it may be time for a new chapter here.

How many people "knew" better than to buy AMZN, TSLA, NFLX, FB, or even lesser known equivalents like TDG, HEI, WING, etc only to have it go completely the other way? Conversely, how many people "knew" of all the value in....dont know if I want to start naming names because its sensitive and subjective, so if you disagree with the name, try to focus more on my point.... SD, SHLD, SRG, etc? The truth is that most people dont really know, and even most of the ones that "do", dont escape the same fate. The trick is really just to find something you are comfortable with, company or strategy wise, and be consistent with its application.

RBACU