JMN

[Gunnar S. Holm @holmisthename]

Feel behind in life?

Torstein Hagen started Viking Cruises with 4 riverboats in Russia, at 54 years old.

[JMN @Turing1k]

Today’s inspection!

[Ben Carlson @awealthofcs]

The stock market bottomed 2 years ago

Inflation peaked 2.5 years ago

The unemployment rate has averaged 3.8% for the past 2 years

Real GDP keeps growing at ~3%

We need to stop arguing about what kind of landing we're gonna have

We just had a soft landing. That was it

[Aaron @aarongrt]

Real

[The Contrarian Desk @contrariandesk]

$GME is up 20% because Roaring Kitty posted a photo on X after 3 years of silence.

[BowTiedBull.eth - Read Pinned or NGMI @BowTiedBull]

You guys are more interested in protesting foreign wars in the Middle East vs. the cost of living going up 30%.

Not sure why Americans have garbage priorities.

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

America Has Become A Society Of Gamblers

You can see this everywhere you look. Zero-day options are dominating public markets. Meme coins are bought and sold like 1980’s boiler room penny stocks. Major sport leagues are integrating sports betting into every corner of their operations.

Risk taking might as well be the 28th amendment to the US Constitution at this point.

This is what happens when a nation’s currency is being destroyed. People continue to fall behind financially and the wealth inequality gap widens. Rather than seeing a path to financial security, the average person loses hope.

There is no path to a brighter future.

Once hope is lost, the gambler’s mindset takes over. So what if they lose a little money on a 100:1 odds bet? The alternative is a life of debt and financial pressure.

Gambling is the best of two bad choices — at least the individual feels a degree of agency when selecting which bet to make. This is insane behavior when viewed through a logical lens, but it makes complete sense when you view it through human psychology.

Gambling gives people hope in a broken economy.

You may not think that the US economy is broken, but the average American would disagree. It is now less expensive to rent than purchase in all 50 major metros. Citizens owe more than $1.1 trillion on credit card balances. More than 43 million Americans have federal student loan debt, with the average balance being more than $37,000.

The US dollar has lost 25% of its purchase power since January 2020. For every $1 someone had 4 years ago, they can only buy $0.75 worth of goods today.

Given these facts, gambling doesn’t seem so illogical.

There are only two paths to fixing the problem. Either the United States figures out how to stop the accelerated debasement of the currency, which would allow citizens to gain restored confidence in the protection of their hard-earned economic value, or citizens will have to resist the urge to gamble and instead seek out alternative assets that help them outperform the inflation they are experiencing.

It is hard to tell someone to buy the S&P 500 when they feel like they have to find 10x investment opportunities to stay ahead.

Singles and doubles have created many millionaires. Home run swings lead to many strike outs. But this data doesn’t matter when people have lost hope. They need the light at the end of the tunnel, which is being shined brightest today by zero-day options, meme coins, and sports betting.

Many of us may not agree with it. We must acknowledge what is happening though.

The future damage created by this development is hard to comprehend. An entire generation is growing up in a different regime and it is unlikely they can be coaxed back into value investing, dollar-cost averaging, and other timeless investing principles.

YOLO and FOMO rule the day. Such a sad reality.

[StripMallGuy @realEstateTrent]

I believe that in order for someone to consider themselves a real estate investor, they need an edge.

What advantage do you have that others don't?

If you don't have such an edge, are you investing, or simply speculating?

A couple examples of advantages that provide an edge:

[High Yield Harry @HighyieldHarry]

Love how they totally glossed over Jack Dorsey here

[Former MM PE Backed CFO @cfo_mm]

"So are these real costs?"
"Yes, they are real, but you just add them back."
"Where do they go then?"
"They go just go away - it's called Adjusted EBITDA. We just pretend they are gone"
"And then people buy the company based on that?"
"Yes, Tucker. It's called modern capitalism."

[Chris Powers @fortworthchris]

When Barry Sternlicht was 32 y/o he started Starwood with Bob Faith and an assistant. 18 months later, after acquiring 8,000 MF units, he sold to Sam Zell’s Equity Residential REIT in return for 20% ownership.

By the time he was 37 they owned Starwood Hotels and Lodgings Trust, the largest Hotel REIT in the world with $20B AUM and 120,000+ employees across the globe.

Today Starwood Capital Group and affiliated entities manage over $120B in assets across the globe and have become the giant in the room.

Today’s episode is full of incredible stories of how they climbed to the top of the real estate world:

0:00 - AI & Hotels
6:34 - The Midas touch
8:16 - Scaling to 120k people in 7 years
14:00 - Shared Pair REITs
27:15 - Thoughts on Blackstone
35:25 - How to buy a REIT
39:45 - Taking a company from $1B in AUM to $10B
48:50 - How did you keep Starwood Capital moving while you stepped away?
58:22 - Selling Caesar’s Palace
1:07:53 - Thoughts on the market in 2024

[GeniusThinking @GeniusGTX]

A "cognitive bias" is a systematic error in thinking that ruins decision-making.

The 12 most powerful cognitive biases I've found:

[Watcher.Guru @WatcherGuru]

JUST IN: 🇺🇸 Former President Trump says he will fire FED Chair Jerome Powell if elected in 2024.

[EDDIE CHENG @ecomEddie]

I just read about a phenomenon I can't stop thinking about…

The Cobra Effect:

[JMN @Turing1k]

@NoCapCapitalLLC Djarums 🤫

[Composer by SoFi @ComposerTrade]

Analysts no longer believe the Fed will start cutting rates in March

In just a month, futures markets have taken the odds from 90% to 40%