The Long Term Investor

For anyone interested in Warren Buffet....here is his annual letter:

https://fm.cnbc.com/applications/cnbc.com/resources/editorialfiles/2021/02/27/2020ltr.pdf

 

I was listening to the business radio on the way to a rehearsal yesterday. They were talking about the HUGE INCREASE in mortgage rates due to the Ten year Treasury yield.....and....how it would keep people from being able to buy houses. SO......this morning I look up the mortgage rates in Texas. Current rates for a.......30 year fixed purchase loan.......3.25% to 3.28%.

People NEED to get real........these rates are OUTRAGEOUSLY LOW. HISTORIC low rates. This does NOT represent a huge increase. The level of EXAGGERATION and FEAR MONGERING....is just way off the charts and way out of control. This sort of dishonesty and mis-information is dangerous. The vast majority of the population has lived their lives with much higher mortgage rates........NORMALLY in the 4.5-6.5% range. We are creating some REALLY TWISTED.......and dangerous........ expectations on the part of the young generations.

I also heard on a LOCAL real estate program yesterday.......that in the city of Austin and vicinity......home prices.......JUST FOR THE MONTH OF JANUARY........one month.......saw a 23.1% increase in median price. Even accounting for some big sales probably impacting that number.........that is one insane number. The market here is out of control and crazy. Buyers are waiving appraisals, waiving any and all contingencies, all cash offers are the norm. I have heard of some listings that are getting HUNDREDS of offers.

It is not unusual for our little area of 4200 homes to have ZERO homes for sale. I really watch the local real estate market closely and have always done that wherever we have lived. We go to open houses as a hobby. This BUMP UP in our local market is not just a few month event. The market here has been EXTREMELY STRONG for 1.5 years....or longer. I dont see this changing for at least 1-2 years.....if not longer. For the past year or two.....there has been no LULL from Thanksgiving through January like USED to be the norm. Of course......there is no inventory. Just about ANYTHING that comes on the market sells in ONE DAY.

There is one part of our area that has always been starter homes. SEVEN YEARS ago a home in that area would sell for $250,000 to $280,000. These would be pretty nice homes in the rest of the country....brick 3-4 bedrooms, great schools, two story, 2200 to 2800 sq ft. NOW.....seven years later....homes in that area are selling Quickly in the $550,000 to $590,000 range.

 

I will be out of touch tomorrow. I have a 500 mile road trip ahead of me.....drive 250 miles.....put in a few hours......and drive 250 miles back. Probably about 8:30 to 8:30.

BUT....for now....here is a nice little article on the general situation with the markets now. SOME very good simple advice for LONG TERM INVESTORS.

What to Do When the Market is Manic
Why doing a whole lot of nothing might be the ultimate contrarian approach.

https://www.morningstar.com/articles/1024959/what-to-do-when-the-market-is-manic

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"On Jan. 1, 2021, GameStop (GME) was a struggling brick-and-mortar retailer, trying to adapt an antiquated model to a world that’s been living online for much of the past year, and to serve customers who are consuming more Internet bandwidth and fewer video game cartridges. The company had lost money each of the past two years and was being pressured by investors--including Michael Burry of “The Big Short” fame--to get its act together.

Over the next few weeks, the company’s stock price spiked 2,484%, and it has subsequently plummeted nearly 90% from its Jan. 28 intraday high of $483 per share. The story of what was briefly the world’s favorite “meme stock” has been spun every which way by the media. It was even fodder for a Saturday Night Live skit. It made for good theater, but what are investors to make of this drama?



There’s Nothing New Under the Sun
First, a history lesson is in order. What happened with GameStop and all the other stocks swept up in this nonsense (I have to admit that I didn’t know Tootsie Roll Industries (TR) was a public firm until I saw it on a short list of the market’s biggest daily gainers) has happened before, and it will happen again. GameStop has been added to a long list of short squeezes throughout history. Stocks with a large amount of short interest (the percentage of the companies’ shares that are being sold short by investors betting against it) are ripe for a squeeze. If these stocks’ prices rise, it puts pressure on short-sellers. As the stock price goes higher, shorts’ losses mount. Once the bears begin to cry uncle and buy back the stock to cover their short positions, their exodus pushes prices higher still. Short squeezes are at least as old as markets. Northern Pacific Railway (1901), Piggly Wiggly (1923), and Volkswagen (2008) are just a few examples of historical short squeezes.

While short squeezes aren’t anything new, in the case of GameStop, the actors and methods were uniquely modern. In this instance, a contingent of vocal GameStop bears were forced out of their short positions by a merry band of self-described “degenerates.” The latter group’s base of operations was the social media platform Reddit, specifically the “WallStreetBets” community. They used this platform to rally together and squeeze out the shorts—and it worked. But the gains were short-lived. After the shorts headed for the hills, the ragtag group turned on itself and ultimately disbanded. GameStop’s share price crashed.

Why Don’t Trees Grow to the Sky?
One theory as to why trees don’t grow to the sky suggests that gravity is the limiting factor. The taller trees grow, the harder they have to work to overcome gravity to pull water through their roots and distribute it to their extremities. Gravity has a similar effect in stock markets, though it goes by another name: fundamentals. Economic growth, earnings growth, inflation--these are the fundamental forces that shape markets. Markets will often defy fundamentals during shorter time frames, but over the long term there is no escaping them.

More on This Topic

No amount of fervor from a swarming horde of “degenerates” would have been enough to push GameStop’s share price to escape velocity. While its stock has since come back to Earth, this episode is--in my opinion--symptomatic of a market that has likely decoupled from fundamentals, for now.

Exhibit 2 plots the cyclically adjusted total return price/earnings, or CAPE, ratio for U.S. stocks and long-term interest rates going back to 1881. Measured by CAPE, stock valuations have rarely been more stretched. Only at the height of the tech bubble and shortly before the 1929 market crash did the CAPE ratio register higher than its February 2021 reading. Looking at U.S. stocks through the lens of Morningstar’s price/fair value estimate yields a similar result. As of Feb. 8, Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI) was trading at a price/fair value ratio of 1.09, indicating that U.S. stocks were trading about 9% above what they’re worth.

Meanwhile, interest rates have never been lower. Though they’ve ticked up recently, 10-year Treasury yields were a measly 1.18% as of Feb. 9. Accounting for inflation, yields on government bonds are firmly negative.



What’s an Investor to Do?
I think the market is in the middle of a manic episode. I see anecdotal evidence to support this everywhere I look: the hoopla about meme stocks, the boom in special purpose acquisition companies (or SPACs, the so-called blank-check companies), Tesla (TSLA) buying bitcoin, teenagers dispensing financial advice on TikTok, and more. But I think the strongest evidence is the growing chorus singing a familiar tune: “This time is different.” The fact of the matter is that it’s never different. Historically high stock valuations and historically low bond yields aren’t fertile ground for future growth. So, what is an investor to do?

Everyone knows the classic Warren Buffett-ism about being greedy when others are fearful and fearful when they’re greedy. I love the symmetry of this saying. It is the contrarian investor’s playbook distilled down to its essence.

Over the past year, investors had the opportunity to be both greedy and fearful. Greed might have done many investors some good in early 2020, when fears surrounding the global pandemic surged and markets plummeted. But it was a brief scare--at least for markets. In fact, it was the shortest bear market in history. One year later, as some people are still living under lockdown, many markets are at all-time highs. Now may be the time to be a bit fearful.



I don’t think investors should try to time the market and call a top. I do suggest that now is a good time to take a close look at your portfolio and ask some simple questions. Are you comfortable with your asset allocation? After markets bounced back, stocks might represent a bigger piece of your portfolio. This might be an opportune time to rebalance. Have low yields pushed you into risky sectors of the bond market in search of income? With junk-bond yields recently touching all-time lows, I am skeptical that investors are being paid enough to take risks in that corner of the bond market, among others. It might be time to de-risk your fixed-income allocation, especially as credit risk tends to be positively correlated to equity risk and can diminish the diversification potential of your fixed-income allocation.

Once you’ve reacquainted yourself with your portfolio and gotten comfortable with your asset allocations, your best bet is probably to walk away from it for a while. Late Vanguard founder Jack Bogle said, “The stock market is a giant distraction from the business of investing.” These words have never rung truer. In recent weeks the stock market has been a major distraction. Its movements have been influenced by newly minted retail investors, who themselves are looking for a distraction after months of leading virtual lives. The platforms they’re using to engage with each other are themselves distractions. And they make use of these platforms on the world’s best-ever distraction device--the supercomputer phones we carry around in our pockets every day. If there’s ever been a moment to tune out all this noise and drop these distractions, I’d argue it is right now. If markets’ performance over the past year has taught us anything, it’s that inaction is often the best course of action.

If none of my suggestions seem exciting, that’s because they aren’t. For most of us, successful long-term investing is painfully boring, like watching paint dry and grass grow at the same time. But doing a whole lot of nothing might be the ultimate contrarian approach in a market that’s gone manic."

MY COMMENT

NO.....nothing we are seeing now is new. Going back to the TULIP MANIA and every other time period of investing......there is NEVER anything new. Going back to when white rocks or shells or spices or whatever...... were currency and sources of value. Human behavior does not EVER change. I dont care what generation of investor you are........there is NOTHING new in what is going on right now......age old behaviors....just wrapped up in a different wrapper. It is NOT a new era....it is NOT a new normal.....the rules STILL apply same as always.

SO.....be careful out there.....dont expect that it is some NEW era and the old rules dont apply. They do and will apply and they will bite you in the BUTT. This is NOT the time.....it never is....to throw age old investing knowledge out the window. The rules apply as always....and in the end that will be a very good thing for REALITY based LONG TERM INVESTORS.

 

Emmett

When I am driving distances.....I like to listen to the semi-scam investment shows. It is entertaining to hear some guy drone on about buying or "investing" in crazy annuities or life insurance policy buy out vehicles or other crazy investment vehicles. Usually programs where they buy an hour of time every week and pretend that it is a real radio show....not one big hour long commercial.

I also like to listen to the CLASSIC RADIO on satellite radio. GREAT acting and actors on those shows. Drama, westerns, suspense, crime drama, science fiction, the supernatural, horror, etc, etc. They also play the original commercials. Very entertaining and also very educational to hear what was going on in society and culture back in the 1940's and 1950's. Some of the most interesting commercials are the WWII war years. It is really interesting to hear in those commercials what people were living with and burdened with as a result of the war....rationing, shortages, war bonds, etc, etc.

 

I like this guys writing style.......there are some good messages in this little article that are appropriate for the weekend.

Go Ahead, Covet Your Neighbor's Wife.

https://contrarianedge.com/go-ahead-covet-your-neighbors-wife/

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)



"I had a deep, existential, meaning-of-life type of conversation with a friend of mine, another value investor. I asked him, do you want Warren Buffett’s success?


He was somewhat stunned by the question, and asked: “Is that a rhetorical question?”

It was not.

I told him about a nugget of Jewish wisdom my wife shared with me. But first, let’s revisit one of the Ten Commandments: Don’t covet. Or more precisely, don’t covet your neighbor’s wife. To be even more precise, I am not talking about outright adultery here, but rather about thoughts you may have about the desirability of your neighbor’s wife. And to make it even clearer: not my neighbor’s wife (I don’t want my neighbor reading this and getting any ideas).

Here is that practical Jewish wisdom (severely paraphrased by me). Go ahead and covet your neighbor’s wife, but don’t just covet her beautiful eyes, her soft voice, and her stunning figure. Covet her in her entirety. Don’t forget about her mother who would insist you kiss her on the lips every time you see her and who loves to dispense unlimited quantities of unsolicited advice. Or her brother who needs to get bailed of jail every other week. Don’t forget about the hours that neighbor’s wife spends in front of the mirror (forgetting about her hubby and the kids) and her weekly shopping and spa trips that would empty your bank account in a New York second.

So covet away! But covet the whole package. The antidote to coveting is holistic coveting.

So when you covet Buffett’s success, do it holistically, too. Not just the empire he built and the billions he accumulated (that he’ll give away anyway) but the life he led. When I read Alice Schroeder’s The Snowball, the main point I got out of the book was not to be like Buffett. I was lucky I read it when my kids were still young. Buffett’s obsession with the stock market was anything but healthy. He got tomorrow’s newspaper delivered to him the evening before. He spent every living moment in his study, completely neglecting his wife and children. His wife, the love of his life, could not take this anymore and left him. So, do you still covet what Buffett has?

Would Buffett have achieved the degree of financial success that he has without sacrificing his marriage or neglecting his children? We will never have an answer to this question. Maybe he could have, but he would have been a billionaire with a small b and would not have the global adulation that came with his capital B wealth.

My gut sense tells me (though it could be completely wrong) that if he was given a do-over, Buffett would not focus on embracing tech companies early in his career (i.e. buying Microsoft or Apple at IPO) and would tweak how much attention he paid to his wife and kids.

The Bright Side of Coveting

Coveting is a lot less interesting to me than its more toxic cousin, envy. Envy is coveting (desiring) what another person has and then resenting the person for that. Envy poisons people’s lives. But if we learn how not to covet, we may be able to kill envy in its tracks.

Warren Buffett nailed it when he said, “As an investor, you get something out of all the deadly sins – except for envy. Being envious of someone else is pretty stupid. Wishing them badly, or wishing you did as well as they did – all it does is ruin your day. Doesn’t hurt them at all, and there’s zero upside to it.”

Charlie Munger, Buffett’s partner, made an interesting contribution on the topic of envy:

Mozart … here’s the greatest musical talent maybe that ever lived. And what was his life like? It was bitterly unhappy, and he died young. That’s the life of Mozart. What the hell did Mozart do to screw it up? Two things that are guaranteed to create a lot of misery – he overspent his income scrupulously – that’s number one. That is really stupid. And that other thing was, his life was full of jealousies and resentments. If you overspend your income and be full of jealousy and resentments, you can have a lousy, unhappy life and die young. All you’ve got to do is learn from Mozart.

Stoics have an interesting approach to coveting (and thus envy). They apply Epictetus’ dichotomy of control (the crown jewel of Stoicism) to it. They divide things into internals and externals. Internals– our values, attitudes, behavior, and yes, desires too – are up to us. We get to make choices as to what we desire. Desires are in our immediate control.

Everything that is not up to us – and the laundry list there is very long – is external. The neighbor’s wife and Buffett’s wealth are externals. Hitching our wagon to the desire of external things beyond our control is subjecting ourselves to a miserable existence. (I discuss this subject in much greater detail in my write-up of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck.)

We have a lot of power within us to get rid of suffering if we make the decision not to want wrong things. Seneca explained it perfectly: “No person has the power to have everything they want, but it is in their power not to want what they don’t have, and to cheerfully put to good use what they do have.”

But this is where things get interesting. Stoics would recommend that you look at Buffett and desire his virtues that you admire – make them internal. I’ve talked about what I have learned from Buffett’s mistakes, but there is so much more I’ve learned from him.

Here are a few examples.

The newspaper test. How would you feel about any given action if you knew it was going to be written up the next day in the newspaper? Reputation takes a lifetime to build and five minutes to lose. In other words, always behave honorably. Always!

Buffett’s definition of success (he probably came to it later in life). Behave in a way that makes people you care about love you. He said, “If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.”

Buffett has a friend who survived the Holocaust. When she looks at people, she only asks one question: Would they hide me? Buffett said, “When you are 70 and you look back at your life, and you have a lot of people who would hide you, then you’ll have had a very successful life.”

“Praise by name, criticize by category.” You’ll never hear Buffett speak negatively about anyone in public, and at the same time he is generous with his public praise of specific individuals.

Charlie Munger characterized Buffett as “a constant learning machine.” That is a very admirable quality. I’ve attended almost a dozen Berkshire Hathaway meetings, where Buffett and Munger answer questions from shareholders for almost six hours, taking only a lunch break. Every single time, I’ve learned something new from each of them.

Buffett had a tremendous impact on me as a writer. His annual letters, despite discussing often complex, boring finance subjects, are educational, interesting, funny, and accessible to an average reader.

And of course, he had an immense impact on me and millions of others as an investor."

MY COMMENT

Some good life lessons in this little article.....especially regarding family and life. PLUS.....a little bit of investing knowledge on the side. Perfect weekend material.

 

OK you got it Emmett. I am holding you PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for ALL the markets tomorrow. It is ALL up to you.......dont screw it up. Millions of investors are depending on you tomorrow.

 

THIS little article pretty well sums up what is coming up over the next week for the markets. WHETHER or not the markets will care about any of this stuff.....versus media drama......is another question.

February jobs report, Zoom earnings: What to know in the week ahead

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/febr...what-to-know-in-the-week-ahead-135224254.html

(BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content)

"After last week's volatile bout of stock trading, investors this week are set to focus on new labor market data, as well as a dwindling batch of quarterly earnings results.

The U.S. Labor Department's February jobs report set for release on Friday will be one of the main reports of the week, offering a fresh look at the state of the labor market recovery after back-to-back disappointments in each of the January and December reports.

Consensus economists are expecting to see that non-farm payrolls rose by 150,000 in February, accelerating from the tepid gain of 49,000 a month earlier. The unemployment rate likely ticked up to 6.4% from 6.3%, though any increase could be in part the result of rising labor force participation as unemployed Americans resume their job searches in anticipation of more business reopenings.

In December and January, service-related jobs bore the brunt of payroll declines, as a resurgence in new COVID-19 cases around the holidays led to new social distancing restrictions that weighed on jobs in high-contact fields. Leisure and hospitality payrolls dropped by 61,000 in January, following a plunge of more than half a million in December.

However, COVID-19 new cases and hospitalizations have fallen precipitously after a spike at the beginning of the year, allowing some restrictions to ease. The February jobs report will likely reflect a pick-up in employment as a result of these improving virus-related trends.

"We expect leisure and hospitality employment to increase based on restaurant activity data and also look for modest rebounds in other industries, consistent with high-frequency data on jobless claims and alternate employment indicators," Nomura economist Lewis Alexander wrote in a note Friday.

"However, the report will likely still show some pockets of weakness. Cold temperatures during the survey week, ahead of the disruptions that affected a large swathe of the country in mid-February, likely weighed on construction employment," he added. "Moreover, seasonal distortions that boosted private and state and local educational employment in January will likely result in employment declines for those industries in February."

"Altogether, we expect the February employment report to show increasing labor market strength, but believe a swifter recovery is more likely to take hold later this year as vaccinations continue," Alexander said.

Indeed, the U.S. economy as a whole remains about 9.9 million payrolls short of its pre-pandemic levels from February 2020, and the unemployment rate remains well above February 2020's 50-year low of 3.5%.

Other economists have suggested the actual state of the labor market is even worse than the headline data suggests.

"If you count in addition to the almost 10 million who are registered as unemployed, if you add in the 4 million who have dropped out of the labor force — for health reasons, because they have child care responsibilities — and 2 million people who have reduced hours or pay, we’re looking at an unemployment rate that really is close to 10%," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told New York Times reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin last week.

The still-weak labor market has served as particularly strong impetus for lawmakers to remain highly supportive in their policy decisions. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell reiterated in his semiannual monetary policy testimony before Congress last week that the economy is "a long way from our employment and inflation goals," and that it would likely take "some time for substantial further progress to be achieved." Those remarks suggested the Federal Reserve would maintain its highly accommodative monetary policy stance, with interest rates near zero and asset purchases at a massive rate of $120 billion per month.

And extending direct support for those still unemployed due to the pandemic remains a key near-term concern for congressional lawmakers. Federal unemployment benefits authorized under the latest $900 billion virus relief package in December are poised to expire in mid-March, which could leave millions of Americans without aid to weather the next several months before vaccines are more widely distributed.

Zoom earnings
Quarterly results from one of the darlings of the stay-at-home trade are on deck this week.

Zoom Video Communications (ZM) is slated to report fiscal fourth-quarter results after market close on Monday. With many workers set to begin returning to their offices later this year, the specter of slowing growth remains a key concern.

Zoom, once a little-known tech service before the pandemic, has grown revenue in excess of 300% in each of the last two quarters, as the meeting software became the go-to platform for workplaces, friends and families to stay connected and schools to conduct remote learning. Customers with more than 10 employees jumped by 485% and 458%, respectively, in its October and July quarters.

The video conferencing company is expected to extend this streak of strong growth for the fourth quarter, with sales anticipated to rise 331% to $811.04 million in the three months ended in January, according to Bloomberg consensus data. However, this would still mark a deceleration from the previous quarter's 367% top-line growth, and Zoom's guidance at the time for the fourth-quarter slowdown had led to a swift sell-off in December.

"Given the uncertainty around the timing of reopening and impact to churn rates ... we anticipate relatively conservative guidance that implies FY22 ending annualized run rate growth (best proxy for new business) likely in line with current Street expectations of +12% year-over-year," Credit Suisse analyst Brad Zelnick wrote in a note on Friday. "We believe this slowdown in forward-looking metrics is inevitable given Zoom’s current scale."

At the same time, rapid expansion in Zoom's newer Zoom Phone cloud-based phone platform may help buoy the business even as adoption of the flagship meeting software moderates. Zoom Phone reached 1 million seats in January, or within two years of launch, and expanded its global coverage of the service to 44 countries.

"While Zoom Phone will help offset a slowdown in Zoom Meetings growth, we believe current expectations already embed meaningful adoption of Zoom Phone," Zelnick added.

Zelnick rated Zoom as Underperform based on valuation, following the stock's run-up of nearly 400% in 2020. However, the stock traded roughly flat for the month of February, as investors rotated away from the high-growth tech stocks that had so strongly outperformed during the pandemic last year.

Earnings Calendar

• Monday: Workhorse Group (WKHS) before market open; Zoom Video Communications (ZM), Novavax (NVAX), Clover Health Investments (CLOV), Nio (NIO) after market close
  
  
• Tuesday: Kohl's (KSS), Target (TGT) before market open; Nordstrom (JWN), Box Inc. (BOX) after market close
  
  
• Wednesday: Dollar Tree (DLTR) before market open; Okta (OKTA), Snowflake (SNOW), Vroom Inc (VRM), Splunk (SPLK) after market close
  
  
• Thursday: Kroger (KR) before market open; Opendoor Technologies (OPEN), Broadcom (AVGO), SmileDirectClub (SDC), Costco (COST), The Gap (GPS) after market close
  
  
• Friday: N/A

Economic Calendar

• Monday: Markit US Manufacturing PMI, February final (58.5 expected, 58.5 in prior print); Construction spending month-over-month, January, (0.8% expected, 1.0% in December); ISM Manufacturing index, February (58.6 expected, 58.7 in January)
  
  
• Tuesday: Ward Total Vehicle Sales, February (16.40 million expected, 16.63 million in January)
  
  
• Wednesday: MBA Mortgage Applications, week ended February 26 (-11.4% during prior week); ADP Employment Change, February (170,000 expected, 174,000 in January); Markit US Composite PMI, February final (58.8 in prior print); Markit US Services PMI, February final (58.9 expected, 58.9 in prior print); ISM Services Index, February (58.6 expected, 58.7 in January)
  
  
• Thursday: Challenger Job Cuts, February (17.4% in January); Initial jobless claims, week ended February 27 (793,000 expected, 730,000 during prior week); Continuing claims, week ended February 20 (4.419 million during prior week); Factory orders, January (1.3% expected, 1.1% in December)
  
  
• Friday: Change in non-farm payrolls, February (150,000 expected, 49,000 in January); Unemployment rate, February (6.4% expected, 6.3% in January); Average hourly earnings, month-over-month, (0.2% expected, 0.2% in January); Labor force participation rate, February (61.4% in January); Trade Balance, January (-$67.5 billion expected, -$66.6 billion in December); Consumer credit, January ($12.000 billion expected, $9.734 billion in December)"

MY COMMENT

WOW.........YELLEN is saying that the real rate of unemployment is 10%. Not too sure I believe this.....probably.....just political spin to talk down where we are right now for future PR purposes.

I am SURPRISED to see this little article ADMIT that in February 2020 right before the pandemic....unemployment was at 3.5%.....a 50 year low. AND......at record rates for all minorities, women, and others. I dont think we will see those types of numbers again any time soon.

The BIG events that are of interest to me.....earnings. SNOWFLAKE on Wednesday after the close.......and.....COSTCO on Thursday after the close. FOR the short term gamblers......no doubt....SNOWFLAKE will be down the day after earnings, Thursday........and.....COSTCO will be down the day after earnings, Friday. ASSUMING.....the follow the usual path following earnings REGARDLESS of how good they might be.

 

WELL.....Zukodany......that is why you simply invest according to the business FUNDAMENTALS......and....for the long term.

Does any of that......."general"......economic stuff matter? I dont know....I dont even really care. Does it even mean anything? I dont know.

It is HARD enough to figure out a particular businesses to invest in. Trying to figure out the ENTIRE economy....impossible. SO......I invest in the BIG CAP cream of the crop for the very long term.....instead.

 

Yeah.....JaysonW.....you have made some REALLY SERIOUS money on a home in Round Rock since 2002.....my CONDOLENCES on the taxes.

We bought in Austin the first time in 2012. We started looking in 2009 and there were great deals due to the 2008/2009 near economic collapse. Unfortunately it took us until 2012 to sell our small horse ranch in the country. That is the dirty little secrete of selling property in the country....it takes a long time to sell....even if you are a premium property. In our county in the country there were over 100 listings of $1MIL or above......and in an average year......5 would sell. So you just have to wait your turn.

We had a number of homes that were on our short list during that time that we would have bought.......in the $850,000 to $950,000 range if our country place had sold. We are........so glad now........that we did not buy them because they have increased so much that the taxes would have driven us out. There is no way I would be willing to pay taxes of $35,000 to $50,000 on a house.

 

Stock futures are....ON FIRE....at the moment. BUT....by the open...who knows. At the least....I would rather see the futures up by large amounts than the opposite. I dont give any weight to the futures. Probably due to ten year treasury yields being at about 1.4%.