stevenkesslar

Stock market today: US stocks rise as Fed holds rates steady, projects 3 cuts this year
Inflation is now lower than its long term average, as I posted above.  Interest rates appear to be headed in that direction.
At least today, the stock market is on fire.  Had a larger one day gain than any day since this rally started last October.  If I had to bet, as I said above.  I'd bet an Glenn Neely and S & P 5700 on the horizon.
Where's the crisis?
 
 

A lot less.  $100?
That's a little bit of an arbitrary number.  But Boeing hit lows around there, plus or minus $20,  in 2016, 2020, and 2022.  Why not 2024?
The more ridiculous thing, knowing very little other than what Fitz-gerald sounds right about, is their EPS is -$3.87 for 2023.  Which is better than 2022.  And 2021.   And 2020.  And there is no dividend.
It seems like like one of those crazy AI stocks.  Except Marvel, as an example, only has a loss of -$0.19 for 2023.  And it is getting slammed today for not meeting expectations.  And it is smothered in the sweet fragrance of AI.  Not the stench of lawsuits, and airplane doors blowing off.  This could definitely nosedive.
 

Is it a package deal?  I mean, will Nicholas Galitzine fuck me?  Or is that extra?

Is it a package deal?  I mean, will Nicholas Galitzine fuck me?  Or is that extra?

Is it a package deal?  I mean, will Nicholas Galitzine fuck me?  Or is that extra?

I really needed that final scene after all the ugliness of Cohn & Co.  I won't spoil it either, but the ending was beautiful in its sadness.
Thanks to @MikeThomas for starting this thread.  Since I watch so little English-language TV & movies, I probably would have missed Fellow Travelers otherwise.  As tough to take as the series was at times, I really enjoyed it.

I highly recommend "All of Us Strangers."  Andrew Scott should have received an Oscars best actor nomination and Paul Mescal (be still my heart) should have received a best supporting actor nomination.

James I (he was also JamesVI of Scotland) was the son of Mary Queen of Scots, and he was notorious for his fondness for pretty young men: George Villiers was not his first favorite to be showered with titles and wealth. However, he was not just a pretty face--he eventually became Duke of Buckingham, and one of the most important figures in early 17th century European politics. He also became a close confederate of James's son, Charles I, who didn't mind his relationship with Charles's father; George was murdered just before his 36th birthday, while on his way to a military mission for Charles in France.
As the young Duke of Buckingham, George acquired land in Buckinghamshire, where he built a huge country house called Cliveden. At one point much of the original house was burned down and then rebuilt. Over the years it passed through many owners, including other noblemen, even the Prince of Wales, and the American millionaire William Astor, who passed it on to his son and his wife, the famed British political figure Nancy Astor, before it was finally acquired by the National Trust. In the 1970s, it was used by Stanford University as their international residential campus. A close friend of mine was teaching there at the time, and I went to visit him there for a few days. I was given Nancy Astor's bedroom for my stay.  True to tradition, my gay friend had a favorite pupil, who was a very pretty boy indeed. It is now a hotel, and if you want to lay out a lot of money for a room in the country for the night, you can make your own connection to George Villiers.
 

I'm very much enjoying 'Mary & George', currently airing in the UK on Sky Atlantic and due, I believe, in the US next month. Julianne Moore is terrific as the fearsome matriarch (with cut glass English accent) propelling her pretty second son, played by Nicholas Galitzine, to fame and fortune as lover of the king, James 1st as played by Tony Curran. I'll not give too much of the plot away but it all looks very handsome, there's some witty dialogue, some fairly entertaining sex scenes (given this is primetime UK telly) and its all based - apparently - on true events. There are some excellent performers also in secondary roles including Nicola Walker as one of Moore's acid tongued rivals at court, Trine Dyrholm as the long suffering Queen Anne and Mark O'Halloran as a quietly spoken but deadly Francis Bacon. All good fun! I'm only about halfway through but its very entertaining so far. 

It was always been "negotiable". 
I bought and sold quite a bit of real estate over the years. I never paid 6% commission. As soon as negotiations over the price of the property started, I’d turn to the real estate agents and say, "I’ll change my offer as soon as you lower your commission." Worked every time.

Exactly now it will be negotiable. Contrary to the popular belief in most cases it was 6% by default but no law required it, and many got cheaper rates based on competition, negotiation, etc. 

Interesting read.  I’m curious as to how this will play out.  Having sold a house and paying a 6% realtor fee, I always felt it was a bit excessive.  However, a good realtor is worth their weight in gold especially when it comes to the legal ramifications of selling property.  Bad realtors (and there are plenty) can cause a property owner numerous headaches.  

OP note: Americans pay 100 billion per year in commissions, I'm sure they'll come up with a flat rate, luxury tax, passing advertisement charges to the seller, etc. 
Realtors settlement eliminates standard 6% commission
WWW.FOX9.COM Some are calling it a seismic settlement that could upend the bedrock of the residential real estate market.  

Well, I paid 5% on my first home, and 2% on the second.

but they're no longer going to have a monopoly, either.  (Ok, not 6% cheaper, but most analysis I've read suggests fees may drop to 2 - 3%.)
Kevin Slater. 

Agreed about the gorilla.  Although I would word it differently.  I'd just say massive government deficits are the 800 pound gorilla.
We have been here and done this before.  The phrase "bond vigilante" is being resurrected from the 1990's.  It's only a matter of time until some smart political operative cleverly updates Carville's line about how if he is reincarnated he wants to come back as the bond market.
One way to interpret Carville's line is that these problems tend to solve themselves, in several ways.  One, if we don't have inflation and we do have a booming stock market (spoiler alert:  the stock market is booming) that creates capital gains tax revenues that can be used to reduce deficits.  But that depends on something even more basic:  that people agree that this is a problem that needs to be solved.  The polls say most Americans agree that a soaring federal deficit is a problem that needs to be solved. 
We're polite gentleman here, so we don't talk about politics.  But that's the point.  Polite gentleman do polite and sensible things.  Somehow, in the 1990's, polite and sensible gentleman did that.  And ended up with a budget surplus even.  Surely polite and sensible gentlemen can figure out how to do it today, SO AS NOT TO HAVE MORE INFLATION AND FUCK UP THE  STOCK MARKET AND THINGS.  I mean, it's not like the polite and sensible gentleman who were alive way back in the 1990's were that much smarter than we are, right?  By the way, weren't at least a few us alive back in the 1990's?  🤔
As far as whether those two asset classes will not be "on fire" for much longer, do you know something I don't?  
I actually did think we'd have a correction by now, similar to the multi-month one that ended last October.  My go-to guy on this stuff is Glenn Neely, who practices a form of voodoo I don't understand  call Neowave Theory.  For whatever reason, he has correctly called every major bull and bear market going back to the 80's, when he got started, quite accurately.  He was saying until a few weeks ago that a correction would start in February.  February 13th, to be precise, when the S &P dropped by more than any day since this current rally stated last November.  Anyway, he has now recanted, and is saying the market clearly wants to drift higher.  And may be poised for another rally to 5700 or more.  It's all voodoo, so what do I know.  But he tends to right.  
My nerdy nephew thinks the 15 year bull market will end soon.  When I asked him why, he gave me three good answers:  1) Boomer retirements, 2) Job losses, 3)  Tax changes in things like corporate buybacks that draw money out of the stock market.  All three are great reasons that the stock market could flounder, in theory.  None of them seem imminent now.  If I had to choose, I'd go with Neely and S & P 5700.
My best argument for why a bull market could end soon is a commercial real estate crisis that could ultimately trigger a banking crisis, like in 2008. 
In fact, Morgan Stanley predicted that commercial real estate values could drop 40 %, triggering a crisis just as bad as the 2008 GFC.  That's the bad news.  The good news is this.  That prediction is now a year old.  The stock market is higher, inflation is lower, and the recession we are all desperately looking for is still to be found.  Jesus Fucking Christ!  We are all polite and sensible.  Can't we at least find this recession?  How difficult can that be?
If April 2023 - when Morgan Stanley said that - were like 2008, it would now be 2009.  We would all know that we are in deep doo.  Instead, we're in the money.  Middle class net worths are higher than ever, and rising.  This is not like 2008.  What am I missing?
Right or wrong, I've been buying stock in regional banks and REITS with high dividends.  If Steven Mnuchin and Pals and Tim Geithner And Friends and other hedge funds think it makes sense, they may have a point.  
My guess is what is happening is some vacant office space is being sold for cheap to hedge funds or investors that will turn it into badly needed housing, at a profit.  Is that a crisis, or an opportunity? 
A Record Number of Office Buildings Will Be Converted Into Apartments in 2024
 
Where's the crisis?
If we are going to be polite and sensible gentleman, as we should be, we should all conspire to make shitloads in the  stock market, pay our capital gains taxes, and force the assholes in Washington to spend it on deficit reduction, like in the 1990's.  Is that really too much to ask, guys?
 
 

Agreed about the gorilla.  Although I would word it differently.  I'd just say massive government deficits are the 800 pound gorilla.
We have been here and done this before.  The phrase "bond vigilante" is being resurrected from the 1990's.  It's only a matter of time until some smart political operative cleverly updates Carville's line about how if he is reincarnated he wants to come back as the bond market.
One way to interpret Carville's line is that these problems tend to solve themselves, in several ways.  One, if we don't have inflation and we do have a booming stock market (spoiler alert:  the stock market is booming) that creates capital gains tax revenues that can be used to reduce deficits.  But that depends on something even more basic:  that people agree that this is a problem that needs to be solved.  The polls say most Americans agree that a soaring federal deficit is a problem that needs to be solved. 
We're polite gentleman here, so we don't talk about politics.  But that's the point.  Polite gentleman do polite and sensible things.  Somehow, in the 1990's, polite and sensible gentleman did that.  And ended up with a budget surplus even.  Surely polite and sensible gentlemen can figure out how to do it today, SO AS NOT TO HAVE MORE INFLATION AND FUCK UP THE  STOCK MARKET AND THINGS.  I mean, it's not like the polite and sensible gentleman who were alive way back in the 1990's were that much smarter than we are, right?  By the way, weren't at least a few us alive back in the 1990's?  🤔
As far as whether those two asset classes will not be "on fire" for much longer, do you know something I don't?  
I actually did think we'd have a correction by now, similar to the multi-month one that ended last October.  My go-to guy on this stuff is Glenn Neely, who practices a form of voodoo I don't understand  call Neowave Theory.  For whatever reason, he has correctly called every major bull and bear market going back to the 80's, when he got started, quite accurately.  He was saying until a few weeks ago that a correction would start in February.  February 13th, to be precise, when the S &P dropped by more than any day since this current rally stated last November.  Anyway, he has now recanted, and is saying the market clearly wants to drift higher.  And may be poised for another rally to 5700 or more.  It's all voodoo, so what do I know.  But he tends to right.  
My nerdy nephew thinks the 15 year bull market will end soon.  When I asked him why, he gave me three good answers:  1) Boomer retirements, 2) Job losses, 3)  Tax changes in things like corporate buybacks that draw money out of the stock market.  All three are great reasons that the stock market could flounder, in theory.  None of them seem imminent now.  If I had to choose, I'd go with Neely and S & P 5700.
My best argument for why a bull market could end soon is a commercial real estate crisis that could ultimately trigger a banking crisis, like in 2008. 
In fact, Morgan Stanley predicted that commercial real estate values could drop 40 %, triggering a crisis just as bad as the 2008 GFC.  That's the bad news.  The good news is this.  That prediction is now a year old.  The stock market is higher, inflation is lower, and the recession we are all desperately looking for is still to be found.  Jesus Fucking Christ!  We are all polite and sensible.  Can't we at least find this recession?  How difficult can that be?
If April 2023 - when Morgan Stanley said that - were like 2008, it would now be 2009.  We would all know that we are in deep doo.  Instead, we're in the money.  Middle class net worths are higher than ever, and rising.  This is not like 2008.  What am I missing?
Right or wrong, I've been buying stock in regional banks and REITS with high dividends.  If Steven Mnuchin and Pals and Tim Geithner And Friends and other hedge funds think it makes sense, they may have a point.  
My guess is what is happening is some vacant office space is being sold for cheap to hedge funds or investors that will turn it into badly needed housing, at a profit.  Is that a crisis, or an opportunity? 
A Record Number of Office Buildings Will Be Converted Into Apartments in 2024
 
Where's the crisis?
If we are going to be polite and sensible gentleman, as we should be, we should all conspire to make shitloads in the  stock market, pay our capital gains taxes, and force the assholes in Washington to spend it on deficit reduction, like in the 1990's.  Is that really too much to ask, guys?
 
 

So we've redefined "transitory" again?

One lousy inflation report does not make a crisis.   Let’s see how the trend goes in the coming months. 
 
Recoveries from inflation are almost never completely linear. There will be bumps in the road which are normal and expected. 

Finally finished the last episode last night.  If the measure of great film is it makes you think and feel a lot, including lots of conflicted feelings, this was an LGBTQ masterpiece.  But also a very hard watch.  Even though both male leads are adorable eye candy.  Do they have an award for eye candy that is nevertheless painful to watch?  🤔  Matt and Johnny  deserve awards for that alone.  As well as for their subtle performances.
I ended up reading Reddit discussions of each of the last three episodes, since I was curious what others thought.  Some thought Hawk was a selfish monster who never really loved anyone.  Others thought he was madly in love, but it always came out sideways.  Pretty much everyone loved Tim.  Although several people got the memo that Hawk's actions in the 50's had a certain cruel logic to them.  Given that government and society were breathing down the necks of men who loved men.
I found the 60's and 70's episodes particularly frustrating.  The world was literally on fire.  And Nyswaner situated Tim and the supporting characters right in the middle of these freedom movements.  But most of the plot was about how Hawk and his family were trapped, and lost, in a cage of Hawk's own creation.  I kept wanting those episodes to be about Tim, and how he was changing.  That actually could make a good sequel.  But I understand why the focus was on how Hawk was stuck.  In some alternative Gay universe, this movie will win a porn award for the most horrific three way ever. 🤢
Given that none of this was in the book, it was necessary to take the movie where it wanted to go.  Which was a path to repentance and redemption for Hawk.  That was very moving, even if Hawk was not easy to love.
The film went to very emotionally searing places that the book didn't.  I think it will stand as a masterpiece and memorial to all the lives and loves that were lost due to homophobia and hate.  Including internalized homophobia, and self-hatred.  So the ending fit quite well. Hate you, Roy.  Love you, Tim. 
And I'm delighted that Matt Bomer gets to live the life the character he played never did.  That - and all the lives and love and commitment that went into making it even possible - redeems everything.

The S &P 500 is at all time highs.  I'm making money hand over fist.
Oh, and like everyone middle class, my net worth is way up.  
Here's what YCharts says:
Higher prices suck, for sure.  But wage growth has been exceeding inflation for about a year now.

 
So do I think it's gonna screw up the economy and investing that wages are growing faster than inflation?  No, I don't.  Sorry.  
If we are talking about personal investing, rather than the unchanging dirge about inflation, here's something odd.  I did think we were about to enter into a correction phase in the S & P.  It has certainly been on a roll.  One reason why, among several, is Glenn Neely, who I have mentioned before. It's all kind of voodoo Neowave theory.  But on big calls, Neely has been correct most of the time.  Like when the 2000 downturn started, and when the GFC started and the market plunged. In both times at the very beginning he said, "Get out!"
So in February he was saying, and I quote, "upside progress should be minimal to non-existent for the rest of this quarter."  He thought Feb. 12 was when the decline would start, since the S & P had the biggest one day drop since this rally started right after Halloween.  I actually closed out about half my shares in SOXL, at something like a 150 % profit.  Although the ones I bought last October and still have got up to about a 200 % profit.
Anyhoo, funny thing.  The market kept going up.  SOXL exploded.  Something about all this investment in chips and new factories that the US is leading the way on.  How did that happen, anyway?  So Neely was wrong, and he has now flipped.  He's now saying the market seems to want to keep going up.  Now he's saying "the S&P will not drop much (even if it wastes time) before beginning a new advancing phase."  Rally on!  I bought 1000 shares of SOXL back, hoping to enjoy the next ride up.
Point is, while this unwavering dirge about inflation has been going on, the stock market has been on fire.  And home prices are going up, too.  Again, average middle class net worth is higher than it has ever been.  Inflation, after it's huge jump from 3.09 % in January to 3.15 % in February, is still below the long term average.
If this is how it works when things suck, can we make it so things suck all the time?  😉

I've read like half a dozen articles suggesting that the reason Tim And Friends and Steve and Friends are showing up is that the hedge fund folks smell a commercial real estate recovery.  It makes sense.  First, as incompetent as government can be, it's a good guess the two former Treasury Secretaries have some idea what they are doing.  Second, inflation is down, and interest rates have likely peaked.  Now the question is when do rates start to come down.  Personally I think the doomsayers predicting we will have 500 regional bank closures are full of it.  The more likely scenario is a coming commercial real estate recovery that our pals at the hedge funds want in on for cheap.
I just dumped half the shares I bought in NYCB at $4 at a small profit and am just waiting to see if it goes up toward $5 before I dump the rest.  I bought some shares in a few others regional banks that have dividends of 6- 7 %.  And I will buy more when I close out NYCB completely.  Steve and Friends cut the dividend at NYCB to a penny a quarter once they took control.  It had already been cut from 17 cents a quarter to 5 cents a quarter.  Steve and Friends get hundreds of thousands of shares at $2 a share.  Which basically means they already have a 100 % profit.  So it does seem like, "We get it all.  And you get none."  I think this one was a legal bank robbery.   
I'll follow it for the next couple months.  The shareholders who owned $11 shares before the "crisis" have been posting on message boards about how Sandro DiNello, who rode the GFC foreclosure wave to fame and fortune like Steve and Friends, and who became the NYCB CEO a week or so before the "crisis" led to the vultures sweeping in, seemed to do everything he possibly could to create an environment of crisis.   We'll see.  They are NOT on the FDIC's problem bank list.  And when asked at their presser what the delinquency rates are on these supposedly toxic NYC rent-stabilized multi-family loans, they said they are low.  So it's not at all clear that the bank has real loan problems.  We'll learn soon enough.

The media has focused on the amount of assets held by Silicon Valley, First Republic, and Signature.  Which is fair.  But it still boils down to a few bank failures.  As opposed to something like 500 bank failures during the GFC.  The problems at the banks that went under a year ago had to do with interest rates, and also crypto.  So if this were a similar crisis where things were cascading out of control, like foreclosures and bank failures did continuously from 2008 to 2012 or so,, I think we would know that by now.
This is an indicator of recovery, not crisis, I think.
Hedge funds bet on U.S. real estate rebound
 

The S &P 500 is at all time highs.  I'm making money hand over fist.
Oh, and like everyone middle class, my net worth is way up.  
Here's what YCharts says:
Higher prices suck, for sure.  But wage growth has been exceeding inflation for about a year now.

 
So do I think it's gonna screw up the economy and investing that wages are growing faster than inflation?  No, I don't.  Sorry.  
If we are talking about personal investing, rather than the unchanging dirge about inflation, here's something odd.  I did think we were about to enter into a correction phase in the S & P.  It has certainly been on a roll.  One reason why, among several, is Glenn Neely, who I have mentioned before. It's all kind of voodoo Neowave theory.  But on big calls, Neely has been correct most of the time.  Like when the 2000 downturn started, and when the GFC started and the market plunged. In both times at the very beginning he said, "Get out!"
So in February he was saying, and I quote, "upside progress should be minimal to non-existent for the rest of this quarter."  He thought Feb. 12 was when the decline would start, since the S & P had the biggest one day drop since this rally started right after Halloween.  I actually closed out about half my shares in SOXL, at something like a 150 % profit.  Although the ones I bought last October and still have got up to about a 200 % profit.
Anyhoo, funny thing.  The market kept going up.  SOXL exploded.  Something about all this investment in chips and new factories that the US is leading the way on.  How did that happen, anyway?  So Neely was wrong, and he has now flipped.  He's now saying the market seems to want to keep going up.  Now he's saying "the S&P will not drop much (even if it wastes time) before beginning a new advancing phase."  Rally on!  I bought 1000 shares of SOXL back, hoping to enjoy the next ride up.
Point is, while this unwavering dirge about inflation has been going on, the stock market has been on fire.  And home prices are going up, too.  Again, average middle class net worth is higher than it has ever been.  Inflation, after it's huge jump from 3.09 % in January to 3.15 % in February, is still below the long term average.
If this is how it works when things suck, can we make it so things suck all the time?  😉

Yep.
I heavily monetized vacation properties during lockdown, leading me to buy additional homes (to rent).
Mexico City, Key West, Galveston, Port Aransas and Puerto Vallarta...  All on airbnb/vrbo.
Haven't touched my portfolio otherwise and it's rebounded from any dip.
 

No.
That's the short answer .  Now here's the diatribe.  I find this fascinating.
It's not a bad idea right now.  If I go by the Yahoo conversations of regular small investors who own the stock, they think maybe in a week after the deal is closed and the psychodrama settles down it could be worth $5.  Somebody who maybe knows what they are talking about says diluted book value is $6.  Or maybe in a year the A Team soon to be in charge will get it to $10.  Mnuchin and pals did this for a reason.  But they got in for $2 a share.  Which is a fire sale price.
Part of my thinking is that what I could buy it for over the last weeks, which averages $3.87 a share, with a 20 cent a year dividend is 5 % a year.  Not bad.  Hold on to it for a few years, and maybe double what I bought it for.  That's what Steve And Friends did on a big scale with Indymac/One West a decade ago.  But there was a press conference at NYCB on the deal at 8 Am today.  And they announced they are cutting the dividend to one cent a quarter.  So it went from 17 cents a quarter to five cents in January, and now to one cent.  How's that for deflation?  
I think what is even more clear today is that this mainly benefits hedge funds.   It helps when you are a former Treasury Secretary, or Comptroller, of course.  And that is a non-partisan investor statement.  Mnuchin's hedge fund is one color, and has a lot of Saudi and Arab wealth in it.  But there is this:
Why private equity has been involved in every recent bank deal
Turns out the PacWest acquisition last year was a $400 million deal for Warburg Pincus.  Same as Steve paid.  Warburg Pincus is run by Tim Geithner.  Name sounds familiar.  Anyone heard of him?  Something about bailouts? 
These Treasury Secretaries sure get around.  And make very powerful friends.  😉
I posted this in part because this is an absolutely fascinating investment story to me.  These people are vultures.  The Yahoo conversation board on this deal is a very fun read.  Most people are small investors like me who just take it for what it is.  Very savvy sharks who have "regulatory bullet proofing" superpowers (I loved that phrase) were allowed into the pool.  And there are a slew of comments from people who have owned the stock for years.  They feel like they were just eaten alive.  And they were.  Their share price is down like 75 % in one year, even after the "rescue."  And their dividend went from 17 cents a quarter to a penny.  Times are hard, I guess.  But if you want evidence that this is a rigged insider game, this is a textbook example. 
Now that I understand how this played out, it does feel an organized bank robbery.  Mnuchin approached the bank, whose Board Chair he has known for a long time, weeks or maybe months ago.  The $2 fire sale price was finalized yesterday when the stock stopped trading.  How convenient that someone leaked this to the WSJ.  And their reporting just happened to create enough fear and panic to get the price down to just about what Steve And Friends obviously wanted to pay.  Such swell guys!  One long-time stock holder posted about how the bank management seems like they have been systematically trying to create as much fear and panic as possible.  Okay.  But why would anyone do that?  🙄
The other reason I posted this is that I think there is good news in all of this for small investors.  If this rolling CRE loan/regional bank "crisis" is what is supposed to cause the recession that wipes out our stock market gains and our home equity, I think it is a dud.  More likely, it is a narrative that can be used by hedge funds to manufacture or at least "enhance" a crisis that doesn't really exist.  At least not yet.
Anecdotally, one analyst asked the CEO of NYCB today what their actual loan delinquency rate on rent-stabilized multi-family mortgages is.  That is what is supposedly causing the problem.  He did not gibe a specific number, but said low.  They said when you underwrite loans conservatively with 50 to 60 % loan to value ratios, the loans tend to perform.  And are performing.  Even when values go down, like they have in New York thanks to COVID and a 2019 pro-tenant law.  Maybe that was all BS from a bank struggling to survive.  But I don't think NYCB is on death's door.  Apparently, neither do Steve And Friends.  I think they are sharks in a feeding frenzy.  And there is more of this to come, as both CNBC articles I posted suggest.  And it's because the vultures and sharks think values are going up, not down.  They want in, for cheap.
The narrative about how festering CRE loans are going to infect more and more banks (this guy says it will take out 500 banks in the next few years) and take the stock market and economy down with it seems like it is mostly bullshit to me.
Here's the Fed's long term chart on all delinquency rates on all business loans by all commercial banks.  Granted, a very broad category.  But delinquencies are lower than ever.  Where's the crisis?
 
Delinquency Rates for Commercial Properties Increased in Fourth-Quarter 2023

That's not great news for banks who make CRE loans.  But if you call it a crisis, it looks like in most categories the crisis has passed.  Or is mostly declining.  It makes sense that in multi-family, there is no crisis.  Higher inflation is caused in large part by higher rents.  How does that hurt landlords of apartment buildings?  The problem with hotels that were vacant during a pandemic is obvious.  But they are not vacant today, if they survived.  The office problem is getting worse.  But it is not a crisis, it seems.  And probably never will be.
Like I said, I think this is mostly good news for small investors.  If some CRE loans go bad, and it makes a regional bank vulnerable, just call Steve And Friends.  Or Tim And Friends.  They are there to help.  They have money we don't have.  And they are always looking for fire sales.  Real, or manufactured.    😉