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This Week in the Markets. Hopefully you all got what you wanted for Christmas, or that your gifts were directionally accurate as to your wish list. Regarding gifts, the markets give them, but also taketh away.
But those are the big picture numbers. Look at what the winners and losers are like under the surface. On the chart below Occidental Petroleum is the standout, with its pure Permian Basin Texas oil exposure. But the rest of the companies have been no performance slouches themselves. In terms of gasoline prices, we have come well off the highs from earlier this year and are now slightly below on the national level. And that for sure provides some hope that consumer inflation factors may have finally mellowed.
For those looking to venture further down the gas price rabbit hole, AAA provides you entre. Before we move on to some more of the more mundane, yet highly profitable trades of the year, I want to throw one piece of cautionary wood on the speculators fire.
And that is to never underestimate the power or mean reversion. If you are quick, and think you can time tops and bottoms, swing away. Over the long term, the upward trend is very much your friend. All was not lost over the past two years, even given the massive swings on the monetary pendulum. Good old-fashioned things that we eat and drink everyday have sold well during the pandemic, and the stocks have of said companies have done very well too.
Not bad for a gaggle of proletariat friendly companies just chugging on down the tracks. Still shocked, and will be forever, at the sheer largess of the response to the Covid pandemic from central bankers. I say that from the perspective that, like the rest of you, I lived through the Global Financial Crisis and Great Recession. That was truly a global financial pandemic, one where the overnight paper market froze. While an outsized reaction was necessary at first, that faded.
Where is there Alpha when asset classes become highly correlated and the only way you are wrong is by not being long enough of risk assets? No more monkey business, mister. All this next chart is missing is the last twelve months of awful performance for stocks and bonds as the Fed finally started down the path of a legit quantitative tightening cycle. But you get the idea. New Year, new you, new markets.
Here is news to those not tuning into CNBC daily, the once iron sided stock of Tesla is taking on water badly this year. While most of this has to do with legitimate slowing in demand from China, and higher promotions here at home, a non-inconsequential piece of the equation is from the distraction that Twitter has become to new owner Elon Musk.
Maybe I missed all this news because I neither own a Tesla nor am at all active on Twitter, two things that have probably kept me sane. So, all you short sellers making money hand over fist in SNAP, you can thank me. He made the comment at the annual meeting of this little legal publication called the Daily Journal.
Regardless the venue, the message rings true. People are envious of what other have. Having started our food business, SkinnyDips, with my business partner one year ago, I see the dual side of envy. Fortunately, we are close. Very close. Our world was selling ideas a hedge fund might want to use to hedge.
But he said it with such an emphatic tone it left an indelible mark. Thanks for the advice, Herb. Even though I shouted it from every rooftop and sent it to every legit hedge fund I knew, there was no love to be found. But at least I got off the shot and successfully practiced the old school craft one more time.
You like apples, Zuckerberg? Always look on the bright side of life. You can thank the Fed for some of that good fortune, but if you kept your mind about you when everyone else was losing theirs, remember, you did just fine. In my weekly browsing of things financial media related I came across a great article on the Roy Carroll, a multi billionaire living in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Roy made his money in real estate, and still does, using a simple mantra. The Guru of Greensborough ran in Forbes earlier this month and is well worth the time and effort. At this point, if you have had enough of markets and want to get back to your coffee or cocktail, feel free to peel off.
For what comes next is my first foray into something new. My goal is to not only inform and entertain you, but also an attempt to parlay these past seven years of writing into something with broader commercial appeal. Read that as, I want to go live an interesting life, meet people from every walk of it and every field of business, write about it in a way that compels readers to continue down the rabbit hole of intellectual curiosity. All while having a very good time doing it, in an irreverent manner.
With a little Tony Bourdain thrown in for good measure. At the end of the day, if you are going go delusional, might as well jump in the deep end and go full delusional. So saddle up. He had a great line he gave to his wife about six years ago when he was struggling to get traction in his career, while living in a crappy apartment in North Hollywood.
And he did. Now back to reality. A week ago, my alarm went off at am in a perfectly normal house by the beach in Santa Barbara, California where the temperature that day was going to toggle between 70 and 74 degrees. Startled as I was, and with much trepidation having it be the holidays and all, I chose to make my flight, and to go see what the big deal was. Red Lodge, Montana was the destination.
And I managed to make it there at dusk. Purpose of the trip, on top of taking care of my new Montana resident affairs, was to follow through on a promise to help a friend open his high mountain lodge for winter adventurers. There is not a soul for 20 miles in any direction. This is the same place in the warm summer months. Not bad looking for being over years old. It was a motley crew with my addition, but I had a job to do and a commitment to follow through on.
See, while the boys might know their way around a snowmobile in winter, collectively they are at risk of burning water in the kitchen.
So, as a friend, I agreed to come up and grease the wheels on a regular menu for guests and show everyone how to run the kitchen. Fortunately, they were sponges for the information, and the guests sponges for the food.
It was like being the host of Restaurant Impossible where Chef Robert Irvine goes into a struggling place of culinary business and does his best to get it turned around. All along the drive from Red Lodge to get there I heard from Jerett about the economics of the business he had purchased a year ago, the challenges he faces operating in a national forest, making a profit with inconsistent bookings, getting guests to open their wallets, and simply the blocking and tackling of how to keep an off the grid business running during a harsh winter.
And we had a lot of fun trying to figure it out. Back to the business. As is the case in every tourist reliant mountain town, you make your money from June 15th through September 15th, and then hold on for the rest of the time.
One more funny story about the shop. As I walked around the shop my mind went to how much better it could be with nicer fleece, more books, better snacks, etc. But what do you mean, there is so much opportunity here?
Come on, there must be more to it? Point being the guy knew where his margin was and stayed focused there. Like I mentioned, we had a lot of fun with it while we were up there, everyone kind of enjoying the absurdity of this little band of traveling gypsies spending Christmas Eve and Day together. As a writer, it felt like exactly where I wanted to be this year. The extremes brought it out in me. I started to tell friends who were checking in on me that this experience was one part Deadliest Catch, one part Yellowstone, and one part Tony Bourdain.
If not, we are going to lose power and start freezing our asses off. Since this is my show, I get to do a little show and tell as well. Everyone I know and have taken up there has a picture of themselves with it. It just happened to look very cool in winter.
Goons, every single one of them. Montana is in an interesting place right now. Here, there has been a massive blowup in real estate values for out of state money.
There is a snowballs chance in hell that incomes for residents can at all kept pace with that. Here is your map showing where populations grew over the past two years. Mountain states, Texas, and a little of the Carolinas is where people went. I hope you enjoyed the material this week. It really is a joy to write and is the best cocktail I know of. My interest is parlaying this into something of economic value to either readers, or better yet, paying advertisers or publishers. I welcome your thoughts, critiques, ideas, marginal jokes, and of course support.
And to those who doubted me when I burnt the boats two weeks ago and declared my independence from California, I give you this.
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