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yields on the 3-year and 5-year Treasury notes at record lows of 0.17% and 0.29%.

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brg, I believe cheap mortgages, subsidized by Fannie and the mortgage interest deduction, are the Constitutional right of every American.

How did you negotiate it lower? Did you just politely ask, or threaten to pull out?

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I used to do CC bonus churning which caused my lowest score to go low as 770, near the danger zone to get the best mortgage rates.

Not a problem now, it has been two years since I did this and now have 848 with whatever score chase and amex provide on their website for free.

Golden age of churning and $750-$1000 per new CC bonus is now over.

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Fees?

Sebonic via Zillow, which is what I used for my last purchase, has a refi rate of 2.99 0 fees right now and 2.818 with 1 point. This is for 480k on 1+ mil property.

I’m inclined to 0 points or less likely go negative points.

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SD County is the USA’s largest producer of nursery plants, centered in inland Encinitas, and also avocados. If you want to farm, those are what we’re well suited for.

You’re not going to get anyone to come to your place and pay $150 for a cactus though. Maybe if you throw in delivery and installation.

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Plant milkweed in your yard. You’ll get dozens of Monarchs, and they’ll reproduce with their pretty green black and white caterpillars everywhere.

Milkweed likes a lot of water, but is otherwise very simple. Can survive a couple weeks without water if you forget, likes both sun and shade, likes both rich and dried out powdery soil.

California’s monarch population is down 95% since the 1980’s.

This $20 project will make your yard nicer and help save them.

I suggest buying two or three mature plants from a garden center for $6-10 each, then planting the seeds as they produce them. If you just start by buying seeds you’ll have to wait too long and might not plant them correctly.

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None of the restaurants I go to have closed. Here’s some suggestions around OB and Bay Park:

1. Takai/OB Sushi Sushi Newport at Cable – Owner Tim is very nice. Rather than have two sushi places on the same block, one is converting to Chinese. Hopefully will be better than the one awful Chinese place on Newport now. Very good quality at fairly low prices. $8 rainbow rolls are great.

2. JV’s Mexican, southern end of Morena Blvd – best casual Mexican in San Diego, possible to get low carb, several good grilled fish entrees. Standout is the salmon soft tacos.

3. Third Corner, Voltaire and W Pt Loma, – Amazing late night happy hour. Don’t know of any other place W of the 5 with a high end kitchen open in this 10-12pm time slot. Pretty good during the day and early evening too.

4. Pure Thai – top of the Voltaire hill – Excellent lunch specials. Never had anything not delicious there.

5. Blue Water Grill – Santa Monica Ave at the beach – Best fish tacos in SD, beach view. Seems expensive until you see that a single $6 or 7 taco is enough for a light meal.

6. Bulls Smokin’ BBQ, side street between Morena and W Morena – As good as Phil’s with no lines. Nice big place with giant open windows and outdoor areas for social distancing.

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Here’s the national average rate:

“The average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages backed by the FHA increased to 3.35 percent from 3.33 percent, with points decreasing to 0.22 from 0.23 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans. The effective rate increased from last week.

The average contract interest rate for 15-year fixed-rate mortgages increased to 2.81 percent from 2.80 percent, with points increasing to 0.30 from 0.28 (including the origination fee) for 80 percent LTV loans. The effective rate increased from last week.”

I have found 760+ credit + 30%+ down + online lender gets you about .3 lower than the national average rate with 0 points.

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ETF management fees add up over time. For long term holdings and SHTF scenarios, go physical.

Right now GLD is 0.4% a year. I think it used to be higher.

When it first came out, it was 1/10 of an oz per share. Now at 165 with gold at 1775, it is obviously less than this because of management fees over many years.

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I have more silver than gold. So far the wrong allocation, as gold has outperformed going from 1200 to 1750 while silver only 15 to 18. Though you can easily sell silver for 20-21/oz because there is a shortage of physical silver for sale. I don’t expect that premium to last however, probably in a few months the “physical premium” will go back to its normal $0.75 – $1 an ounce.

Silver shows a higher propensity to spike however. It hit 50 about 15 years ago, and in 1980 it also hit 50, which is an inflation adjusted 150/oz.

Governments hold gigantic gold reserves, but few have any silver reserves. Either a decision to stockpile silver, or a decision to sell gold, could let silver greatly outperform. China in particular has been a big buyer of gold, even though they had a silver rather than gold standard for most of their history.

The recent low of $250 for gold was partly attributed to the UK government selling off its gold stockpile:

“The UK eventually sold about 395 tons of gold over 17 auctions from July 1999 to March 2002, at an average price of about US$275 per ounce”

My two favorite gold coins are 20 francs that are .1873 oz (both French and Swiss are the same size) and $5 us coins that are .2324 oz. A few years ago using ebay and credit card promos, I was able to get them at 2 or even 3.5% below spot price when spot was $1200. Wish I had got a lot more.

1oz bars and coins are heavily targeted by counterfeiters, and also harder to sell.

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Long list here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2020/05/03/coronavirus-bankruptcy-tracker-these-major-companies-are-failing-amid-the-shutdown/

Doesn’t include shutdowns not related to bankruptcy, like the complete closing of the Lord & Taylor department store chain by Hudson’s Bay.

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“I like to visit San Francisco, but I would never want to live there.”

Ever visit the St Francis Wood/Sherwood Forest neighborhood? Within city limits and fairly accessible, but also very suburban. One of the nicest neighborhoods I’ve ever been in. It is expensive of course, but not as much as I expected.

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Euro value stocks have been under-performing for a long time. I know because I have patiently held them.

I don’t mind too much, they still have gone up, and are quite safe. Some of the dividends are very high, plenty above 6% and maintained with strong earnings for a long time.

I did very well with Telecom Italia, but sold because of the risk of Italy leaving the Euro.

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Showing a regulatory taking is very hard, there isn’t much chance unless the regulation hurts the value of the land by at least half. Don’t think apartment complexes in LA are down half in value, or even 5%, solely because of this regulation.

The part that a tenant can pay late and then not repay for a year is a stronger case for the landlords. That’s changing a contract signed by both parties solely and drastically in one party’s favor. The cities and states very much can regulate rental contracts with rules like this, but whether they can retroactively on existing leases is a much harder question.

Emergency powers during a pandemic is a powerful argument. However, the law isn’t limited to evictions because of pandemic job losses, e.g., a movie theater employee. Further, it seems like this isn’t directly about the pandemic, but the second order economic effects. The cost of the pandemic is being shifting to and heavily concentrated upon one discrete group.

This all seems like anti-landlord overkill. Already, as a practical matter, evictions were stopped for months because of court closures, and the remaining ones will take even longer than normal. The law needlessly hits landlords even harder than this, with seemingly no benefit for public health.

This is also about LA being cheap: they want to help impacted households who can’t afford the rent, but rather than provide assistance with public funds, they are just dictating rent is free. That in theory it can be collected later is for practical purposes meaningless in most cases, because most tenants are judgment proof.

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NKLA is a pretend electric car company that hopes to follow the Tesla model. And it is working, 0 revenue, 0 products, but has stock worth more than many actual car companies.

DUO is a Chinese company called Fangdd Network Group. It went from 10 to 115 yesterday, on no news, because people confused it with “FANG” stocks. Since then it has fallen almost 90% to 15.

While it isn’t fun to get in on good short sells early, every time I’ve had high conviction on them, I end up wishing later on I had gone in bigger.

Just got in the mail a few days ago a notice that my short to 0 of BankUnited is now super-duper delisted. Something about no transfer agent for 7 years means it is considered permanently gone, not even a pink sheet stock.

The type of craziness going on now is a bullhorn blaring we’re approaching the top of a bubble. Low information inexperienced retail buyers flooding the market, time and again, is the last stage of a stock bubble before the crash.

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