owbc

There are about 25 other 'hot' cities in the US that are going through the same thing as Madison and the story is always the same--huge pushback whenever any new development is proposed. Only a small percentage of demand gets met within city limits. Development ends up sprawling outward which puts additional pressure on highways/infrastructure to keep up. Lower quality of life for those that have to commute into the city (although COVID has reduced commuting which is a good thing). At this point I think most people in urban planning recognize the downsides of restrictive zoning laws and more cities will follow the lead of Minneapolis in removing single-family zoning. I know I mentioned it earlier in the thread but I am now allowed to build 2 additional units on my lot in Seattle (although not everyone can do this, I'm allowed to because we are a block away from a bus route). My neighbor is putting a unit on top of their garage right now. So maybe that's how some of the housing pressure will get relieved in the long run. We looked into adding a unit but in the end we decided to put the renovation money into the master suite--not the best choice for ROI but certainly the best choice for our comfort.

As someone who owns one house that I live in, I struggle to see how the 20% price increase since I bought in 2018 helps me in any way. It doesn't help me with my mortgage payment. It doesn't give me more liquidity. It makes my property taxes higher. There's no way to realize that gain in value since I need somewhere to live. My house is not an investment, it's a basic need. If I had a second property it would be different, but I do not. Not to mention that the huge price increase is making things unaffordable for other people who aren't lucky enough to have a house like I do. Certainly the increase in crime and homelessness over the last year is noticeable. And that's with the eviction/foreclosure bans still in place. So as a whole the price increases are making things worse.

It is well-documented that as a country we're not building nearly enough housing to keep up with demand. That said, current surge is mostly caused by low interest rates plus people wanting more space during the pandemic. Here in Seattle the news likes to run stories about people leaving for cheaper 'Zoom towns' but the reality is that our housing prices are even more insane than everywhere else. The median price just hit $800,000. Is it overpriced? It's just supply and demand. Once you have the house, good luck trying to get any work done on it. And in the unlikely event that you can find a contractor, expect to pay 50% premiums due to materials and labor shortages

That was a long 15 years...

Despite all of the jokes and crude humor, the reddit wallstreetbets page has been a really good resource for a long time now. Their moderation techniques are state of the art, the top rated posts are usually excellent content. I've learned a ton about investing just from reading it and have been entertained at the same time. I don't participate much myself but I feel like I understand the basics of options trading. Much of the discussion is at a very high level--but when you actually look at the math it has made it clear to me that there really is no secret behind what the hedge funds are doing and anyone who has basic college-level training in mathematics and statistics can make informed trades. And people are very good at giving TLDR/ELI5 summaries that anyone can understand. That's the true reason why GME became a popular stock--because contributors on the forum explained what was happening and why at a level that I think is equivalent to what is discussed at the hedge funds (minus whatever insider information they have). None of that is going away after this--if anything even more people will realize that trading at a high level is within their reach. The fun part is speculating on what will happen on a regulatory level now that it's clear that the hedge funds can't get away with manipulating the market as easily as before. Regardless of what happens in the next week or two, their potential for future profits has been greatly reduced. They will have to be more conservative because of this new X-factor introduced into the market. Or they will have to come up with new and dirtier tricks--which will be difficult given all of the scrutiny right now. It's exciting to watch. There are also fun side effect such as the fact that AMC was able to pay off $600 million in debt the other day. It might have saved movie theatres.

The current GameStop situation might be a turning point in the stock gambling game, as it seems that some savvy individual investors have acquired enough expertise to figure out the dirty tricks that hedge funds use to make money and crowdsource against them. Certainly fun to watch the transfer of wealth to random people on the internet.

I've actually been ordering just cheese and jalapeno pizzas lately, it's a nice change up for when I get tired of my typical go to of pepperoni and pineapple. Wait, do you not order pepperoni + pineapple + jalapeno? It's my favorite pizza combination!

I think it's really cool that the optimism and hype for Tesla's technology drove people to invest in and believe in what Tesla stands for. Elon Musk is a big reason why batteries have come down in price much faster than expected. And now all of the traditional automakers are rushing to try and catch up with Tesla. That wouldn't have been possible without all of the bullish investment, it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Assuming the investment dollars continue to get re-invested into growth...

I just don't understand why you wouldn't just invest in stocks when you have so many corporations making absurd amounts of money right now. Amazon is at $3100 right now. It was $1900 a year ago, $1500 the year before that, $1200 the year before that, etc. etc. It's as close to guaranteed profit as you can get.

The US Dollar is going to drop because the US Treasury is like printer go brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr and prints money. If the last budget bill is any indication of what is ahead for the dollar it is going to drop some more. That was the policy of the current administration. There is a new one taking over in two weeks. We don't know what the new administration will do yet. It's possible that all future stimulus will be blocked by Congress.

Bitcoin is classic speculation in action. It behaves like a more volatile form of gold or similar commodities. The anti-correlation with the US dollar index is pretty obvious--BTC bottomed out on 3/16/2020, DXY peaked on 3/20/2020. Will the US dollar keep dropping in 2021? Probably, but not as much as 2020. And then you throw in the randomness of BTC speculation???

I'm hoping to build a detached ADU at some point since I have a huge 1970s-era carport that I would like to downsize. Seattle recently passed some nice legislation to make the process easier, if you pick a pre-approved design you can skip most of the permitting. I think it's a very smart way to address housing shortages without tearing up neighborhoods of single-family homes. A few companies have come up with some really cool pre-fab concepts for DADUs which are basically giant IKEA furniture that a motivated DIY person like myself can self-assemble. e.g. https://urbancottageseattle.com/shell-kits/

I've always looked at a vacation home as similar to owning a boat--the more friends of mine that buy vacation homes and boats, the better. But personally, heck no. I do like renting other people's AirBNBs. However, the real advantage is to be able to bring your pets along and lately it seems like hotels are more pet friendly than vacation homes are. Do people actually rent AirBNBs in Vegas??? Hotels are so cheap there. I would be terrified of renting my house there given how people party in Vegas.

Financial Independence Retire Early It has a bit of a cult following online, but the basic idea is to save at least half your income by living simply and investing enough to retire very, very early. As you can imagine, it's popular with some in the 20-something tech crowd who are living in studio apartments while bringing in six-figure incomes.

As someone who lives in a tech city it sometimes feels like 'everyone' works in tech now. So it's interesting to hear these perspectives. With Amazon giving out so much stock-based compensation I think it is causing everyone else in tech to do the same. Even for mid-level managers. Getting back to the 'investment' perspective, I've seen a number of friends take 'Funemployment' time after working in tech for a few years and saving those lofty bonuses and stock grants. I have another friend who is practicing 'FIRE' and hopes to retire in his 40s. Although I think he's too intellectually curious to do that.

That's actually pretty unusual that a private company's retirement package is superior to public sector. Do you get a pension as well, besides the plan you contribute to yourself? Nope, no pension. I think it's becoming standard for private sector benefits to be better than public sector--at least at tech companies. I also switched to her health insurance since it was $50/month cheaper than my public sector plan (which has gotten way more expensive in recent years). The main point I'm trying to make is how crazy stock-based compensation is and how significant the transfer of wealth is that is occurring right now. I grew up in an average middle-class Wisconsin family and my father was smart with his money his entire life and built up a comfortable retirement. I could do the same thing with my government job and still be falling farther and farther behind the top 5-10% of the country. My wife's career was the first window I got into how things really work...obviously with compensation in the form of stock options there is a risk of them being worthless, but with the government pumping up the stock market it's more like 200-300% gains this year. And I'm like great, I made 10% on my retirement fund this year. The situation in the tech cities is all the same...when you get hired you get a bunch of stock options which vest in a year or two...at that point, especially with tech stocks the way they are, $50,000 suddenly appears in your bank account overnight. Which many are using as down-payments on houses. There's no "saving" involved, the money appears and you can suddenly afford a house. That's the way it is for first-time home buyers these days. And those are for entry level software-type jobs at Amazon...management/director-level compensation is completely off the charts.

I have a government job with a retirement plan in TIAA that I’ve been contributing to for a couple years now. My wife gets a quarterly stock vest from her company that is worth more than the entire value of my retirement account. Plus her company matches at a higher % than the government does. That’s the reality of the world these days.

As a millennial I despise talking to anyone on the phone, especially customer service. I also can't imagine watching baseball on the TV. Like you sit there and watch baseball on the TV? Like, what else do you do at the same time?

You're completely out of touch. I work a government job and our org has seen a 10% cut this year. Lost headcount. Extra work for everyone. We haven't seen a penny of any of these stimulus bills. The majority of this country is paycheck-to-paycheck. This country would be better off as a whole if the stock market was doing worse and that wealth was going to small businesses and hourly workers.

Some of the inflation is also related to tariffs. Especially construction materials. Yes, technically the corporations do not own the wealth. But the increased value is derived from government borrowing and gobbling up the market share of small businesses. So it's all related. The way I look at it is you might *think* you are doing well in the stock market, but if you are married to someone who has vesting stock options in one of these companies you quickly learn that you're making peanuts. I say this as someone who is benefitting from this and I think it's absurd. And then you think about the majority of Americans who have nothing invested and no pathway to receive any of it other than a $600 check.

Just looking back at this from June...LOL. The share price of my wife's company is now triple its pre-pandemic value. This has to be the biggest transfer of wealth to corporations and the 1% in American history. It's so messed up.

In COVID times my wife’s company now pays for our gigabit Internet. As a public sector employee I’m kind of irritated that the “at least we have good benefits to make up for the low salary” thing is no longer true. I even switched to her health insurance this year since it is both better and cheaper than what the state offers. For Hulu I think we lasted about 3 days before we started paying for no commercials. When Internet is free and you don’t have cable it’s not a big deal to have a handful of subscriptions. I also benefit from being out-of-market for the Brewers.

Who does the broadcasting and production for the YouTube MLB games? It can’t be that hard. ESPN just fired a bunch of production staff so now would be the time for the Brewers to take over their own production. Still not seeing why they need a TV network though, why not produce the games and sell them to any provider willing to pay? I find it hard to believe that one of the local channels in Wisconsin wouldn’t buy that programming. Not sure how they did it in the past? (like in the 90s when MSC games were on channel 18???) Not saying it would be easy but the Brewers are the ones getting screwed by MLB’s broadcasting rules more than any other team. So if any team is going to be the one to try and blow it up...

I don't see what the benefit is to going with an RSN, especially Sinclair. The revenue numbers are ugly, the demographics are ugly, and the potential audience continues to shrink. Plus Sinclair is going to rebrand FSWisconsin as a casino/gambling channel to compensate for it bleeding cash? Mark A should stay as far away from that mess as possible. From a business perspective it seems kind of nuts that money would be much of a factor at all in these TV deals. Audience is the only metric that should matter, which means no exclusive contracts. License the broadcast to as many providers as possible.

I'm most of the way through Schitt's Creek now. I didn't love it as much as some people but there are a couple episodes that are absolute perfection. Several of my friends are constantly quoting Letterkenny so while I'm on Canadian shows that may be the next one...