Happy Flash Crash 2nd Anniversary. Lack of trust in stock markets is scaring away investors…
Filed under: Multifamily Investments, The Economy and Current Affairs
… small and Large. Sunday was the 2nd anniversary of the May 6th Flash Crash of 2010. High Frequency Trading (HFT) insiders have hacked the stock markets so they get a sneak peak at your, and everyone’s trades before they’re executed. Think of it like one player at the poker table can secretly see your cards, and everyone else’s before they bet- Want to play in that casino?
When the HFT trading robots all lock onto the same pattern they can take a major market like the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 700 points in 10 minutes and thus we all remember the Flash Crash. Now it so happened that that time the market recovered about 70% of the loss shortly after but the damage to confidence was done.
Once bitten, twice shy. Or as Joe Saluzzi and Sal Arnuk at Themis Trading (a specialty company that trades equities for large institutions and hedge funds- stock traders not OWS supporters) put it: ” traditional retail and institutional buyers and sellers of stock have been steadily waking up to the dangers of drinking at the increasingly dangerous ”stock market watering hole”. Like the animals on the Serengeti, who for years were accustomed to sipping long and heartily at their favorite spot, retail and institutional investors now see what’s beneath the surface. And they are deciding that the drink they crave is just not worth the risk.
It isn’t hard to blame them. They have witnessed a radical transformation of the best capital allocation market system in the world, into one where:
- 13 stock exchanges cater to hyper traders who game the system, chasing exchange rebates, and leveraging speed for the purpose of a nanosecond scalping dance.
- More than 40 dark pools together trade more than 1/3rd of all shares.
- Conflicts of interest abound as exchanges own stakes in Read more
Six lessons on the financial crisis that help explain why we’re still in one.
Filed under: Neuroscience and Behavioral Economics, The Economy and Current Affairs
Six lessons on crisis that help explain why we’re still in one:
- When you don’t reinvent institutions at a time of systemic failure, the problems they’re creating don’t just magically disappear.
- When you prop up (read: bail out) the institutions causing the crisis, instead of reinventing them, the crisis will deepen.
- When dysfunctional institutions prop one another up, prosperity’s a house of cards. Crisis becomes stagnation.
- When propping up failed institutions has drained your resources, you’ve turned a crisis into a catastrophe.
- The longer it takes you to see a crisis for what it truly is, the disproportionately worse it’s likely to get.
- When people who are prisoners of the
European debt-crisis issues are lessons for the US. We’re just a few years behind them and if we pay attention…
European debt-crisis issues are lessons for the US. They belong in the political debate. Both political parties are responsible for our growing debt issues. Bush ran up huge deficits. Obama continued them. Each party blames the other. See the whole post here: Back from Paris
Especially pay attention to item #4. that begins: Private holders of Greek debt had several years to get out…
For extra credit from ‘The Only Thing New In History’ department: Yet another sovereign debt crisis If that link no longer works use this one to see the PDF.
The bullet points:
- Having believed the myth that governments don’t default, many banks and investors will take huge losses in Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
- The historical regularity of government defaults—more than 250 have occurred since 1800*—gives the lie to the notion that holding sovereign debt is “risk-free.”
- The sovereign debt crisis of post–World War I Europe provides highly relevant lessons for today.
*Referencing Rogoff & Reinhart’s work in “This Time Is Different”. See ‘Whodunit’ in the column to the right for this essential book.
Multifamily is best Commercial RE sector but…. Video from Starpoint CEO Paul Daneshrad
Filed under: Commercial Real Estate, Multifamily Investments
Economists Prove Einstein’s Theory About Repeating Behavior And Expecting Different Results.
Mainstream economic theory (MsET) has two fundamental tenets that most thoughtful people (even economists) realize are wrong and yet economic decisions and importantly even Fed policy is still based on this flawed model. We know what Einstein said this defines and it’s true.
Problem #1 is the Efficient Market Theory (EMT) or Theory of Rational Expectations says that economic information is widely distributed and that we as individuals and collectively as a market of decision makers and consumers consistently make our choices based on what will give us the most benefit. This has been scientifically proven to be not the case way more often than we like to think. For more on this see “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely and “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Kahneman in the ‘On Our eReaders Now’ box in the far right column of this page.
The second problem is that MsET is built on the idea that the economy tends to be stable and that dislocations are temporary and tend to correct themselves back to stability somewhat like a train running down the tracks that gets thrown off from time to time. History teaches us that is not the case either. Most often we are moving away from or back towards stability and occasionally pass through stability but typically overshoot. It doesn’t take much imagination to see how these two errors cause problems for economists (and us) and leads to a dismal reputation for them.
I’ve been reading a lot on economics lately searching for a new improved model and have just found a number of articles that tackle those issues. They are lengthy but well worth the reads. The first two were posted by John Mauldin in his ‘Outside The Box’ (OTB) series where others write about and discuss their sometimes opposing views from John’s. Mauldin will begin each piece with an intro about the author and where he might differ from that point of view. His guests are typically people who deal at the highest levels and their insights are Read more
Multifamily Sales Close Out 2011 on the Rise, Lead by Garden Style.
Filed under: Multifamily Investments, The Economy and Current Affairs
A recent report from New York–based commercial real estate research firm Real Capital Analytics (RCA) reveals that apartment sales figures closed out 2011 on a positive note. The firm’s “2011 Year in Review” report shows that the fourth quarter of 2011 netted $16.6 billion in sales, the highest quarterly volume racked up since 2007. This marks a 16 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 24 percent bump from fourth-quarter apartment sales in 2010. Among the more optimistic data revealed in the report was the rebound of garden-sector sales.
Garden properties ended up 47 percent ahead of the 2010 figures, and it appears that the sales momentum experienced in the fourth quarter will carry over into the first quarter this year. “Given the stable cap rate environment for garden properties, compared to sinking caps in mid-/high-rise, that trend is likely to continue in 2012,” projects Thypin.
See the whole AHF article here: Apartment Sales Close Out 2011 on the Rise
Leading Indicators and the Risk of a Blindside Recession. In-depth on economic indicators from John Hussman
Over the past few weeks, investors used to setting their economic expectations based on a “stream of anecdotes” approach have seen their economic views evolve roughly as follows:
“After a brief ‘scare’ during the third quarter, economic reports have come in better than expectations for weeks – a sign that the economy is on a gradual but predictable growth path; Purchasing managers reports out of China and Europe have firmed, and the U.S. Purchasing Managers Indices have advanced, albeit in the low 50′s, but confirming a favorable positive trend, and indicating that the U.S. is strong enough to pull the global economy back to a growth path, or at least sidestep any downturn…”
“Unfortunately, in all of these cases, the inference being drawn from these data points is not supported by the data set of economic evidence that is presently available, which is instead historically associated with a much more difficult outcome. Specifically, the data set continues to imply a nearly immediate global economic downturn… Frankly, I’ll be surprised if the U.S. gets through the first quarter without a downturn.” (Underlining mine)
Definitely worth a careful read: http://bit.ly/ArTDyK John Hussman is a value investor and a serious student of the economy, we may not always agree with him but we should not dismiss his research.
Top Ten Reasons To Own Apartments Now
Filed under: Multifamily Investments, Value Investor's Guide to Apartment Buildings
I believe that apartment building investment should be a core holding for every successful conservative investor. Briefly here are the top ten reasons for low risk investors:
1. Monthly Income. Properly acquired apartments generate monthly checks in 6-8% or higher annual cash on cash returns.
2. Straight forward, conservative investment strategy. Buying existing apartment buildings with good due diligence means that you know what you’re getting going into the investment. Apartments are not subject to sudden changes in investor sentiment and/or valuations.
3. The numbers determine the value. Apartments are valued based on rents less expenses (Net Operating Income) and increases in rents can go straight to the bottom line increasing the value.
4. Inflation protection. Rents rise with inflation and with 12 month leases every year there is the opportunity to adjust rates. With fixed rate financing your income goes up while your biggest cost stays the same. Read more
It’s painful, it’s ugly, it’s what a real estate bottom feels like.
Filed under: Multifamily Investments, The Economy and Current Affairs, Value Investor's Guide to Apartment Buildings
Does the market feel like you are in the opening sequence from Terminator II? Are you fighting amidst the wreckage of the previous boom? Surrounded by foreclosures, scarce money, economic gloom and doom? Real estate going into nuclear winter? That’s what market bottoms feel like and as investors we need to get comfortable with that feeling because this is our time to make solid, reasoned investments that produce good results on improving fundamentals. Conditions like this create the opportunities for savvy investors who were patient through the bubble and have waited for the speculative, greater fool market to come to its inevitable end.
Many great real estate investors got their start in rough times like Sam Zell of Equity Residential for instance. He started out buying properties from distressed owners in the late sixties. Tom Barrack of Colony Capital waded through the carnage of the S&L meltdown to buy properties at a discount. Barry Sternlicht of Starwood Capital also started in the wake of the S&L crisis buying multifamily properties. What will your story be? It’s time get to work and seize the opportunities. Put on your hardhat though because it’s about to start raining real estate, and while not every distressed property is worth pursuing if you stick to your niche and learn your market good deals will surface. Read more
5 signs we’re not heading into Depression 2.0
In a series of emails with Vince Farrell, CIO of Soleill Securities we were discussing his comments on CNBC about the contrast between 1929 and now. His point was that the policy decisions being made now are the correct ones and that there are a number of protections in place, as a result of the depression, that will prevent this recession from becoming a depression.
Briefly here are Vince’s points that are both necessary steps to preventing depression and signs of hope for the future:
On World Trade-
Then: Smoot Hawley Tariffs enacted, result, world trade falls by two-thirds (66%!)
Now: During the last G7 meeting, members agree to “do no harm” in terms of protectionism. Read more
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