“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.” ~ Obi Wan Kenobi I’ll bet you thought that old Obi Wan was talking about Mos Eisley, right? Well, he wasn’t. It’s a little known fact that when he said that, he was actually referring to real estate investing in the City of Detroit. Shocking? You wouldn’t think so if you’ve been here. Not only have I been to Detroit, I live here.…
Category: Current Events
Don’t Fight the Tape
We had this old saying back in my investment banking days: “Don’t fight the tape.†It was a phrase that we used in finance that basically cautioned you not to bet or trade against the trend in the markets. It was a REALLY old saying because the term “tape” referred to the ticker tape machine that the old timers used to have on their desks to get stock prices delivered to them before AOL, E-Trade, and iPhones.…
My own terrible experience with simultaneous deflation AND inflation
I read a great post today about the impact high debt levels are having around the world. It’s from the Sovereign Man blog at sovereignman.com. I highly recommend that you subscribe. His perspective is unique and definitely thought provoking. I’m reposting it here with full attribution to the author, Simon Black…. September 10, 2015 Santiago, Chile Yesterday was a pretty big day. First (and perhaps most importantly) my post-Italy no carb detox came to an…
Oh No – Not Another Google-Research Apartment Forecast!
It’s a race I guess. Every time a quarter end gets close, all the economists start falling all over each other to be first out with their forecast for the next quarter. Having studied Econ myself in college, the one thing I’d really like to see is a scoreboard that shows how accurate these past forecasts are. But that’ll never happen. Because as soon as people saw how consistently worthless the forecasts are, and how…
Multi-Family Economic Forecasts: Smoking Crack or Inside Track?
The real estate investment services firm Marcus and Millichap came out with an interesting statement last week. The headline that their chief forecaster, Hessam Nadji, used was “Recovery Threatened, But This Is Not 2008â€. And he finished his overall summary by writing “The downgrade of the U.S. government’s credit rating by S&P has sent global stock markets into a frenzy, posing a threat to the already fragile U.S. economic recovery. However, there are stark differences…
Cash Flow Mercenary TV: Pick Your Poison
You think the Greek “debt crisis” is something bad happening to someone else way far away? Think again.