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My 2011 SFH purchase had payments a bit above rent, partly because I only put down 5% and had to pay a higher rate and PMI, and partly because it was a teardown on a huge lot without great rental value.

About a year later I did a cash-in refi and my payment dropped from 2450 to 1950, and that knocked it well below rent value, and a huge positive after accounting for tax benefit and the principal part of the monthly payment.

My 2015 house and 2016 condo purchases were 20% down and slightly cash flow positive from the get-go.

Cash flow is an arbitrary measure though. Given the many benefits of homeownership, when payments are below rent that’s a sign RE is a screaming good buy, but many excellent entry points will be cash flow negative.

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Sometimes investing isn’t hard intellectually, the hard part is sticking to your guns.

I am getting that kind of conviction now on oil stocks.

People are already starting to pile into them, but their firehose gusher profits, real actual profit not techco “pro forma” profit, is so high they still have very low multiples.

The only real issue oilcos have is political risk and cost inflation.

But political risk can be largely avoided by sticking to companies focused on the US and Canada, and also by just keeping a diverse portfolio. And cost inflation only matters if they want to ramp up production. For milking existing wells, inflation is a benefit since capital costs are baked in at old prices and marginal costs are small.

The spike in natural gas costs in Europe the past year has been stunning, and barely put a dent in demand. I believe we’ll see this worldwide over the next year with oil and NGLs.

On top of these profits, refining margins I believe will also increase. Nobody in their right mind would build a big new refinery if it were even possible, making the existing ones more valuable each year.

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My shorts listed in the post above are down today by ~10% for coin, rcl and mstr, 14% for lyft, 8% for dash and uber.

No longer short dash. I was also short SNAP a small amount and I covered the last bit of that old position when it dropped 40% this morning. Covered half of my lyft short.

My increasing bullishness on energy led me to buy XOM calls today dated mostly mid-August.

I also purchased some long and deeply out of the money puts in AAPL and several Taiwanese companies because I am worried about a Chinese invasion. The $250 I spent is a little insurance policy.

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A small disadvantage of having a very expensive rental is your tenants have high expectations.

I’d tell them “no” to the exterior wash.

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Organic local and beautiful baby arugula at People’s Coop is 6.89/lb. A pound is a fairly large bag.

I also regularly see the giant clamshells of organic arugula for $5.

He either was overpriced or perhaps had micro-arugula, which is much more expensive.

I adore these microgreens however. Micro cilantro, broccoli, peas, red lettuce. They are generally around $30-40/lb, but taste so good that you don’t need dressing or toppings on it.

They are so objectively great I expect the price to decrease somewhat as they catch on.

By the way, when I purchased my rental house there was macro-arugula: several weedlike stalks that were 8 feet high and with central stems 2 cm in diameter. The leaves were still tender but it was ugly and overgrown so it had to go. Kale can also grow into 4ft tall bushes in our mild climate.

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I am completely indifferent to Mello Roos and HOA fees. They just mechanically reduce the value of the property by their discounted present value.

A quick way to estimate is to multiply the annual amount by 20, and consider that the discount in property price over a no HOA or Mello SFH. You can make a case that 15 or 25 are better multipliers, but I think 20 is reasonable.

If people really cared that much about avoiding HOAs, the builder could pre-fund it and raise the purchase price. But I don’t think they actually care and I don’t think you should care other than doing a quick NPV mental adjustment.

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1976 African-American pop art painting goes for $15 million at auction

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-13/why-this-fund-manager-paid-15-million-for-a-painting-estimated-at-200-000

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I would have done it for 1k for sure. At the hospital a kit was handed to us that had a lifetime cost of $9400, and I ultimately went with the scholarly recommendation not to do a private bank.

This is the second time I’ve seen US medical authorities treat salubrious upscale parts of Mexico like a leper colony on the Ganges. Before my study abroad in Mexico, they gave me malaria drugs. That’s prudent for a trip to Veracruz, but I was in a wealthy town in the mountains, climate somewhat akin to Julian or Flagstaff, far from any risk of malaria.

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I started another oil stock position in Repsol, the Spanish oil major. Half their production is in the USA and they refine and sell in Europe and Latin America. I also added this week two more Canadian oil majors, IMO and CNQ.

I dug up some supply numbers. The Ukraine war has caused Russian production to fall to an 18 year low, by roughly a million bbl /day. Meanwhile China’s covid lockdowns are reducing their imports by 1.2 million, almost a perfect cancellation. Russia production will keep declining, but China I imagine is going to join the rest of the world soon and end its lockdowns.

Buffet seems to agree. He now has 15% of OXY worth $9 billion and also keeps buying Chevron.

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“ And getting harrassed by homeless and van lifers is part of daily life. Or come up the coast and enjoy pristine uncrowded, undeveloped beaches owned and preserved by the state”

You’re being a dickhead again. Cut it out.

In fact I am going to just block you. All you do is spam and troll for referrals and crap on everyone and everything other your neighborhood. I will politely ask you to do the same and avoid polluting threads I create.

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“Personally, I don’t think its healthy.”

Get a rental property, you’ll feel much better.

“ go back to being sleepy San Diego”

Move to sleepy Alpine, Spring Valley, or Julian, and if you need a little urban or beach escape, come on over to OB where it mostly still looks like the 1970s, even if property values are 20 times higher.

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Flyer, congratulations on the art. Even if you don’t ever intend to sell, it still feels like winning a game when they appreciate.

There are some art submarkets that are weak. Antique furniture is in a deep and long depression, many items down 90% from the peak.

Older European paintings, from before about 1800, also are not doing too well, outside of the very top of that market, e.g. Da Vinci’s Jesus painting. (IMO it is genuine)

I enjoy coin collecting but worry sometimes that the old white guy demographic is going to evaporate and not be replaced by new collectors. That has already happened with stamps and baseball cards to a large extent. They aren’t dead but far less popular than in the past.

To both keep my collecting focused and protect it from price declines, I generally won’t pay more than 100% over melt value for silver coins and 25% over for gold, and don’t buy non-precious metal coins at all. Indeed the boundary between coin collecting and precious metal investment is a little blurred, since some of my favorite items were acquired at roughly melt value, like a whole roll of very cool William Tell silver 5 swiss francs.

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Update:

I went to Total Wine in Mission Valley. WOW! It just opened a couple months ago, and is about 4 times bigger than the Roaecrans Bevmo.

Prices are quite good, but the selection and general organization was amazing.

There was a huge 12 ft by 6 ft shelf area just with Irish whiskey for example.

Given the large inexplicable price drop I got 4 bottles of Schladerer Kirsch. They also had a cheaper one for $25 that was inferior but would be fine for cocktails or cooking.

They had a beautiful pear eau de vie from Alsace with a full pear floating in it, ship in a bottle style.

https://www.totalwine.com/spirits/brandy-cognac/eau-de-vie/massenez-poire-in-bottle/p/10948750

They attach the bottle to a pear tree and it grows inside.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-tree-full-of-bottled-pears.amp

The pear brandy is interesting, it tastes almost like plain vodka at first but leaves an intense and natural pear aftertaste.

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Flu I did look into this. The cost of private cord banking is huge, and the probability of benefit very low.

No cases of leukemia etc in either of our extended families.

The benefit would typically not be to the donor but to a close relative.

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I have a baby but we have a 20lb surplus of mother’s milk in the freezer.

We looked into selling or donating it, goes as much as $5 an oz. The admin and handling work is too much.

We wanted to donate the cord, but the cord bank couldn’t take it because our trip to Cabo disqualified us based on some rare disease in Mexico.

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