Back to the Office for Tech Workers

[Coronita]

Rare vintage wine makes better investments than most consumer grade jewelry BTW. At least you know what you are getting. Well sort of… People in asian pay $100-$150 for empty vintage wine bottles, because they take them and make fake wine and sell it over there with the same label. I’m not kidding.

[Anonymous]

Absolutely for the lay person they should only purchase bars or coins. Gold in jewelry form only makes sense if you have retail jewelry to off load them.

I have family in the jewelry business so bought a lot of gold jewelry through them during the “great recession” and honestly got most of it at far less than the $900-1000 spot price as there were a lot of desperate people hawking their gold in that period.

Some of the stuff I melted down to bars, but the nicer stuff I kept intact as it can be sold easily for double the spot gold price in jewelry form.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Absolutely for the lay person they should only purchase bars or coins. Gold in jewelry form only makes sense if you have retail jewelry to off load them.

I have family in the jewelry business so bought a lot of gold jewelry through them during the “great recession” and honestly got most of it at far less than the $900-1000 spot price as there were a lot of desperate people hawking their gold in that period.

Some of the stuff I melted down to bars, but the nicer stuff I kept intact as it can be sold easily for double the spot gold price in jewelry form.[/quote]

Well, did you pay sales tax for that, or did you do that (illegally) under the table 🙂

Also, come on man.. Before talking about how well gold investment worked out for you…It would have been more appropriate to first disclose that basically you have family in the business, and that your gold investment gain was primarily only from the special relationships you have with your family and not so much your investment dexterity that others have specifically for gold…because without that special advantage, you would not have been able to reproduce those gains that you specifically mentioned for gold, like any other investment asset class for which you do not have any sort of special advantage…….It’s no different than flyer who keeps claiming how much money and how easy it was for him make money in real estate in san diego, when the bulk of his wealth was inherited… just saying… Not there there is anything wrong with having a special advantage… But let’s at least be upfront and honest about it that that was the primary enabler, and not financial dexterity. Because let’s not mislead others who are trying to build their own wealth right now from the start… that these “easy” ways of making money for you with gold (and in real estate, for flyer’s case) are reproducible by others who don’t have those “special tools”

Afterall, the easiest way to make $1million is… to start out with $999,999

Also, you seemed to have taken advantage of unfortunate people that had no money and had to sell gold at firesale prices, some of them possibly passed down to them from their relatives…. I believe in a few threads back, you mentioned something about unaffordable housing and rent and how landlords jacking up rent was selfish and self centered….How are these two situations any different, besides, you being the one subject to the possibility of a landlord jacking up rent prices?

[sdrealtor]

Fraudzone

[Anonymous]

Wow you guys are really going mental here, sorry to even bother sharing my info on gold.
– First, if I had used my money to purchase the ETF GLD in 2009, it would be up over 100%
– Second I could have easily purchased gold bullion off the street for the market price. In which case my investment would have gone up over 100%. My “family advantage” only netted an additional 20% profit or so.
– Third, what kind of moron are you to suggest it is immoral or unethical to purchase gold off the “unfortunate”? They need money, I have money and pay competitive price. Do you think pawnshops are immoral too? Get the fuck out of here what that take.
– Bottom line, I made a shit load of money taking risk and shorting the housing market. I used some of that new found cash to purchase gold. I would (and will) do it all over again.

Also, I have never once said landlords were selfish for raising rents. I have always been in favor of free market capitalism. What I said is it is selfish to root for the Fed to keep money printing knowing that it is absolutely fucking over the majority of the population financially, just because it benefits your personal interests. The Federal Reserve blowing ginormous financial bubbles, encouraging risky speculation, and then the government bailing out banks and other failing companies when that bubble inevitably pops, is what I despise. That is the opposite of free market.

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Wow you guys are really going mental here, sorry to even bother sharing my info on gold.
– First, if I had used my money to purchase the ETF GLD in 2009, it would be up over 100%
– Second I could have easily purchased gold bullion off the street for the market price. In which case my investment would have gone up over 100%. My “family advantage” only netted an additional 20% profit or so.
– Third, what kind of moron are you to suggest it is immoral or unethical to purchase gold off the “unfortunate”? They need money, I have money and pay competitive price. Do you think pawnshops are immoral too? Get the fuck out of here what that take.
– Bottom line, I made a shit load of money taking risk and shorting the housing market. I used some of that new found cash to purchase gold. I would (and will) do it all over again.

Also, I have never once said landlords were selfish for raising rents. I have always been in favor of free market capitalism. What I said is it is selfish to root for the Fed to keep money printing knowing that it is absolutely fucking over the majority of the population financially, just because it benefits your personal interests. The Federal Reserve blowing ginormous financial bubbles, encouraging risky speculation, and then the government bailing out banks and other failing companies when that bubble inevitably pops, is what I despise. That is the opposite of free market.[/quote]

No, we’re not going mental here. We’re just trying to follow your train of thought on this thread. It first started off about how return to work is somehow going to affect housing prices in san diego, despite folks stating that (1) not everyone is going back to the office (2) there’s high tech job expansion here and (3) there’s some people that moved here for other reasons. And then we followed you down the discussion about how housing prices are insane and that people will be in trouble, despite a good portion of purchases were done in the 2009/10 timeframe with low fixed rate mortgages and then some even refinanced to a 30year 3% or lower, and there’s no incentive for them to force sell, considering their payments are way lower than people are paying for rent, and also that was an opportunity of a lifetime….. Then you took us to the discussion about how the stock market is going to crash, and while we are in the middle of a correction, we haven’t returned back to 2019 levels (yet) at least…And then you mentioned something about day trading assuming we day trade/speculate and are doing so bigly and losing our shorts, despite contrary to your assumptions that most of us do not day trade or participate in speculation in a bigly way and that most of us do boring style DRIP investment over 15-20+years and track pretty much with the 4% rule of compounding, and that while we might speculate here and there, it’s not really material enough to affect the overall financial situation….Then on the other thread where you offered financial advice, we’re trying to follow the logic that you mentioned it’s a bad time to invest and that you took a short position in some stock…which we mentioned really isn’t investing, it’s speculating/gambling and a lot more risking than anyone else who’s doing a DRIP style investment…Somehow, you took us down the path about how Gold is a great investment since 2009, where you mentioned that the bulk of your gold purchase was below $1000 in 2009. But we showed you that gold really hasn’t done that well relative to everything else, because it went as high as $2100 before coming back down to the $1300/1400 only recently have we seen it cross $2100 mainly due to the war and uncertainty of ukraine, and I said that I like gold because it’s pretty and maybe I’ll melt something down and coat a gun. But then you said how retail gold jewelry is a great investment. I said, it wasn’t because most jewelry these day is 14k and worth less than what retail price people pay. Then you indicated that gold jewelry is a good investment. I refuted that because gold jewelry typically is priced way above the price of the gold content and retail purchases also include a 8% sales tax, unlike bullion…Then you indicated you did the bulk of your gold purchases by buying gold jewelry from a family jewelry store who bought gold from desperate people that needed money and sold off their family jewelry and told us you bought some of that desperately sold jewelry well below spot value…something that I pointed out really isn’t a investment that anyone could really do that doesn’t have privileged status to a jewelry store and/or pawn shop, no different that Flyer who has privileged inherited money to buy homes in San Diego and make money “easily”….And I just wonder why you felt it was immoral for landlords to charge tenants high rent prices, while it was not immmoral for a jewelry store to take advantage of someone desperate and not give a fair market value for the jewelry they are trying to sell…And then you said we are going mental, when we’re really just trying to follow your train of thought on investment/speculation….

I might have missed something here and there, but that’s the summary of where you took our discussion on both threads…

[sdrealtor]

[quote=Coronita]Rare vintage wine makes better investments than most consumer grade jewelry BTW. At least you know what you are getting. Well sort of… People in asian pay $100-$150 for empty vintage wine bottles, because they take them and make fake wine and sell it over there with the same label. I’m not kidding.[/quote]

Not far off. Just got some wine delivered. Cost for 6 bottles with tax and shipping is $783. Dropping it off to someone tomorrow who’s paying me $1900. That means the other 6 I bought are free (though I may sell down the road if my tastes change for even more) and I pocket a $340 profit. All the while our pal Chumlee here buys old watches on Craig’s list

[Coronita]

I just ordered 10 5 quart jugs of oil to my stock. I have 5 jugs left at home. Should be able to do oil changes for 2.5 years on the cars until the energy mess is straightened out or a car dies and I replace it with something electric

also bought about 50 oil filters. Each costs roughly $1 more than last year.

[sdrealtor]

I’ll drink to that

[Coronita]

[quote=sdrealtor]I’ll drink to that[/quote]

I tried drinking the oil, it didn’t taste so good. You know it’s too bad I need to get 3 different oil grades otherwise I’d just buy a big ole 55 gallon drum of oil, since it would take up less space.

German cars take 5w40 euro spec
Old Japanese cars take 5w30
New japanese cars take 0w20

Can’t mix and match…. I guess I could move all Japanese cars to 5w20 but I like to stick with the recommended oil weight from the manufacturer….

Too bad..

[Anonymous]

Seriously FLU you have some issues man. All of your responses are so long winded, I mean you just wrote more characters in this response than I have cumulatively in this entire thread. How on earth do you manage people in a professional environment with such poor writing skills?

You really need to learn how to paraphrase. I’ll summarize for you since you have reading comprehension issues:

There are several flashing red signs that the bubble is about to burst. I’ve provided several examples: Tech stocks getting creamed, Rising interest rates, end of covid, return to office, high inflation, all of the public RE companies getting ass hammered (zillow, Redfin, open), etc. etc.

I then said under these conditions it might not be wise to throw cash into the stock market at this moment. I also pointed out that money can be made in a down market, although not specifically advising anyone to do so. I also pointed out that my gold investments are going well. Whether I originally bought them at market price or via professional discount is irrelevant.

In response, all I hear from you clowns is “Opportunity of a lifetime”. You guys really don’t have any more useful advice to offer other than to go back in a time machine to 2012 and buy real estate?

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Seriously FLU you have some issues man. All of your responses are so long winded, I mean you just wrote more characters in this response than I have cumulatively in this entire thread. How on earth do you manage people in a professional environment with such poor writing skills?

You really need to learn how to paraphrase. I’ll summarize for you since you have reading comprehension issues:

There are several flashing red signs that the bubble is about to burst. I’ve provided several examples: Tech stocks getting creamed, Rising interest rates, end of covid, return to office, high inflation, all of the public RE companies getting ass hammered (zillow, Redfin, open), etc. etc.

I then said under these conditions it might not be wise to throw cash into the stock market at this moment. I also pointed out that money can be made in a down market, although not specifically advising anyone to do so. I also pointed out that my gold investments are going well. Whether I originally bought them at market price or via professional discount is irrelevant.

In response, all I hear from you clowns is “Opportunity of a lifetime”. You guys really don’t have any more useful advice to offer other than to go back in a time machine to 2012 and buy real estate?[/quote]

I’m in tech, I don’t need to have professional writing skills. I just need to send memes.

And yahoo founder jerry yang wrote emails completely in lower case with no punctuation. I think he made a fortunate… how did you do during the same time?

Besides this is a blog. I just like to write long ass responses to weird ass speculation…..

I’m doing fine professionally, thanks for asking. I guess I don’t work in such an anal retentive industry….sorry if you do.

My reading comprehension is just fine. I’m just going where your rambling is going…

Real estate in 2009 was an opportunity of a lifetime here in SD. No doubt about it. Buying gold jewelry from broke people probably isn’t an opportunity of a lifetime since Americans probably over extend all the time…but ….. The magnitude of people selling off their jewelry out of desperation back in 2009 might have been an opportunity of a lifetime. Not my cup of tea to make money, but nothing wrong with it…I prefer higher rent prices that track inflation once someone moves out…

[Coronita]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-08/the-wealthy-bid-big-to-win-homes-in-supply-strapped-u-s-markets?srnd=premium

Ouch…. Got to hurt….

Wealthy Bid Big to Win Homes in Supply-Strapped U.S. Markets

The impatient and moneyed, trying to get ahead of expected increases in U.S. mortgage rates, are doing what it takes to win bidding wars for homes. That means going big.

This year through mid-February, 5,897 homes sold for at least $100,000 above the asking price, up from 2,241 a year earlier, according to a report by Redfin Corp. In the San Jose, California, metro area, 46% of sale prices reached that threshold, a jump from 20%.

San Jose, CA 46%
San Francisco, CA 40
Oakland, CA 30
Seattle, WA 17
Anaheim, CA 15
Los Angeles, CA 11
San Diego, CA 11
Boston, MA 5
Denver, CO 3
Newark, NJ 3

[Anonymous]

Look, I’m not rambling. I was very clear and concise about the mounting evidence that the 12 year long bubble is finally bursting.

You are the one rambling. And SDR with his endless reminders of missed opportunities is not constructive and has no relevance to the present day situation.

I am in no way bragging about the success of my gold, just pointing out that it made sense at the time (to me) that that’s where I should focus my investing and that it hasn’t been a bad investment. Had I taken all my money and dumped it in RE at that time would I be more wealthy today, hell yes. But on that same token, if I dumped all my money in the Stock market in 2009-2010 I would be so wealthy right now that the current prices of RE would be negligible. But I didn’t do that so let’s move on and deal with the present situation shall we?

[Coronita]

[quote=deadzone]Look, I’m not rambling. I was very clear and concise about the mounting evidence that the 12 year long bubble is finally bursting.

You are the one rambling. And SDR with his endless reminders of missed opportunities is not constructive and has no relevance to the present day situation.

I am in no way bragging about the success of my gold, just pointing out that it made sense at the time (to me) that that’s where I should focus my investing and that it hasn’t been a bad investment. Had I taken all my money and dumped it in RE at that time would I be more wealthy today, hell yes. But on that same token, if I dumped all my money in the Stock market in 2009-2010 I would be so wealthy right now that the current prices of RE would be negligible. But I didn’t do that so let’s move on and deal with the present situation shall we?[/quote]

Of course you are rambling. You started this thread as rambling

[quote=dz rambling]
Covid is over now for all intents and purposes. Amazon announced return to the office (3 days a week) and no longer requiring vaccine.

You knew this was coming, other large tech companies will follow suite. This change in addition to tech stocks getting absolutely hammered in the stock market this year will pretty much put an end to the “Bay area tech worker moving to ___ for remote work”.

Just another ominous sign for the housing market along with rapidly rising interest rates. Anybody flipping houses now is going to get rammed hard. I think Zillow was wise to get out of that business when they did.
[/quote]

That’s rambling…Not that there is anything wrong with rambling. We don’t mind people rambling. But you seem to, except your own.

I’m just keeping this thread on page 1, so we all remember.

[Author]

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