Evidence Is Mounting That There Never Was A Shortage
A report from the Business News Network in Canada. “The average price of a Toronto home likely tumbled more than $100,000 in June from the frenzied peak prices of earlier this year, according to one Toronto realtor. The greater Toronto housing market took a sharp turn following Ontario’s 16 new measures to rein in the region, as listings skyrocketed and sales plunged. The average price should be ‘down around 12 to 15 per cent from the peak prices in April,’ John Pasalis, broker at Realosophy, told BNN in an email. A pullback of that size would mean the average price for June could be down some $110,000 to $138,000 from the April peak.”
“Before the abrupt turnaround, the greater Toronto market bore the hallmarks of an ‘unsustainably red-hot seller’s market,’ Lauren Haw, CEO and broker of record at Zoocasa, told BNN in an email. ‘We expect freehold sales to be down over 40 per cent and condo sales to be down more than 20 per cent compared to last June,’ said Haw. ‘This will feel severe versus 2016 numbers, but keep in mind 2016 had the highest year of [Toronto Real Estate Board] sales ever.’”
The Irish Independent. “The number of new and second-hand houses changing hands has collapsed in recent months, with only 324 transactions being registered in the first half of June. There are almost 48,000 vacant second-hand properties in Dublin and the surrounding counties. So why aren’t more of them changing hands? Lorcan Sirr, lecturer in housing studies at DIT, believes that the most recent downturn in transaction volumes may be at least partially due to the disappearance of cash buyers.”
“‘People see prices rising and they shove their own houses onto the market,’ he said. But will these new vendors have realistic price expectations or will their properties linger unsold for months on the market instead?”
From Standard Media in Kenya. “By the year 2020 when The Pinnacle is completed at a staggering height of 300 metres, three out of the five tallest buildings in Africa will be in Kenya, placing the country at the apex of the continent’s renewed battle for the sky. Unfortunately, the impressive streak of real estate development in Kenya that has defied predictions by doomsayers on an impending bubble burst has now hit a down cycle. This has left investors in a tricky situation and, although few of them would openly admit it, the increasing size of unoccupied space is now haunting a sector credited for pushing the country’s economic growth when the rest of Africa is in trouble.”
“And the signs are everywhere. The building with red drapes next to The Pinnacle’s site, more than 10 storeys high, does not have a single tenant more than a year after opening and it is alleged the owners are looking for a buyer. ‘There is still the right market for a good product at the right price,’ says James Hoddell, chief executive of real estate firm Mentor Management. ‘What is going on in the property market is what has been happening in the whole world. I think it is good for the buyers.’”
From Outlook India. “Our cities have changed beyond recognition—the last two decades have seen a feeding frenzy of construction, a permanent flux in the landscape. As urban spaces tried to cope with everyone’s idea of a ‘dream house’, the concrete mixers never stopped churning. Till now, that is. 30% is the average minimum fall in real estate prices in most parts of the country since 2015.”
“‘Residential real estate is going through its own pain and has been in decline since 2013,’ says Anshul Jain, MD (India), Cushman & Wakefield. ‘From 2010 to 2012, the market was overheated and many projects were launched nationwide. Prices doubled in three years and reached an unsustainable stage. Many new developers came into the market, but did not have the ability to deliver. There are no end users in the market now as the trust factor has gone away.’”
The Malaysian Star. “As dusk falls over the Klang Valley, it is easy to spot unoccupied units in the towering blocks which remain in pitch darkness. Many of these units have been sold, but remain unoccupied. The owners may have tried to rent or to re-sell them. This is a recurring theme in the property investment market, when over-investment or speculative purchase by investors hoping to make a quick disposal for capital gains do not materialise. This situation is not unique to Malaysia. It is happening in China, in parts of the US, Britain and other global capitals.”
“The overall property market slowdown has resulted in the rising number of homes hammered out in the auction market, says Socio-Economic Research Centre executive director Lee Heng Guie. Properties are long-term investments and the ability to hold is important. ‘The weak holders and investors, facing financial difficulties to service their mortgage repayment due to low rental income, or were unable to sell in an oversupply market, may be subject to foreclosure by the banks. And so the property enters the auction market,’ says Lee.”
“Market misjudgments and the imperfection of market information create an oversupply. The availability of easy credit also fuels excessive speculative investment demand, driving house prices beyond the economic fundamental. As such, we have to go back to basic and economic arguments to intervene in the supply and demand market dynamics, says Lee.”
From Radio Australia. “For at least a decade, an Australian housing shortage has been a gospel truth amongst economists and policymakers, fingered as the major cause of Australia’s high home prices. But the evidence is mounting that there never was a shortage and, even if there was, that it will soon be eliminated by the stubborn east coast building boom that refuses to wither.”
“Australia still has a massive dwelling surplus nationally. Using an admittedly simple, but conservative, methodology, it seems that in my lifetime the nation has built at least half a million dwellings more than it needed to house its growing population. Amid lingering doubts about the sheer size of this apparent national dwelling surplus, I turned to Lindsay David and Philip Soos of LF Economics. They use a more sophisticated methodology for their housing supply and demand analysis, but their results are very similar.”
“Philip Soos observed that, over the past two decades, the periods of greatest excess housing supply had occurred while prices were rising, while periods of undersupply coincided with weaker price growth or falling values. It makes perfect sense. Here’s why. ‘Rising prices provide incentives to developers and builders to construct supply and offer it to the market,’ he explained. ‘We saw in the 2000s with the United States, Ireland and Spain, they went on absolute building sprees and yet, all the while, their economists were saying high prices were caused in part by shortages and that obviously wasn’t the case.’”
“It is almost impossible to maintain the argument that a housing shortage is the major reason that Australian home prices have almost doubled over the past decade having more than doubled over the decade before that. If a housing shortage isn’t the problem, a dwelling construction boom isn’t going to be the solution to Australia’s housing affordability woes.”
“The real answer probably lies in the level of speculative demand and ability to pay more for properties facilitated by record low interest rates, financial deregulation and investor subsidies such as negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.”
All of these articles are worth reading in full.
‘What is going on in the property market is what has been happening in the whole world…This is a recurring theme in the property investment market, when over-investment or speculative purchase by investors hoping to make a quick disposal for capital gains do not materialise. This situation is not unique to Malaysia. It is happening in China, in parts of the US, Britain and other global capitals.’
‘From 2010 to 2012, the market was overheated and many projects were launched nationwide. Prices doubled in three years and reached an unsustainable stage. Many new developers came into the market, but did not have the ability to deliver. There are no end users in the market now as the trust factor has gone away.’
‘The average price of a Toronto home likely tumbled more than $100,000 in June…as listings skyrocketed and sales plunged.’
‘The number of new and second-hand houses changing hands has collapsed in recent months, with only 324 transactions being registered in the first half of June. There are almost 48,000 vacant second-hand properties in Dublin and the surrounding counties. So why aren’t more of them changing hands?’
‘Rising prices provide incentives to developers and builders to construct supply and offer it to the market,’ he explained. ‘We saw in the 2000s with the United States, Ireland and Spain, they went on absolute building sprees and yet, all the while, their economists were saying high prices were caused in part by shortages and that obviously wasn’t the case.’
There has never been a shortage of housing.
‘We saw in the 2000s with the United States, Ireland and Spain, they went on absolute building sprees and yet, all the while, their economists were saying high prices were caused in part by shortages’
Isn’t that interesting, because they say the same thing now we heard endlessly in the early 2000’s. Right before guys in tuxedos started auctioning off new shacks in California (instantly making FB’s out of their recent buyers).
The obvious question is why economists say these things? For hundreds of years houses were adequately supplied and prices barely moved above inflation. I watched a video where Chinese developers were throwing up a tower in days, 24/7. San Francisco is at a 70 year high in construction, Boston 60 years. You will more commonly hear the word glut than shortage associated these days with New York City or Miami. And if these big cities with relatively strong economies can be overbuilt, why would there be a shortage in Boseman Montana or Omaha Nebraska?
There isn’t. Let’s take a little wander in time, to the last time shortage turned to glut. When the dam broke last decade, this wasn’t the only myth that was destroyed. Trees didn’t grow to the sky. That mobile home in California wasn’t worth a million bucks, soon to be three million. Suddenly people weren’t going to live with their parents into their 40’s to save a down payment. All new paradigm mental creations to explain away what hadn’t been logical ever before and never will be.
We were getting back to reason. Then they started: housing was to create wealth in the mind of the public and save the economy. Every lever was pulled and stayed pulled. Prices shot up: “Oh, it’s just that prices had gone down too much!” we were told. Then as prices exceeded old highs that was discarded: “We aren’t building enough, it’s a shortage!”
And that’s why they do it. Yes, these economists who talk about shortages are plain and simply full of sh#t.
“All about the benjamins, baby” - Ma$e and P.Diddy
Perhaps the confusion is due to different definitions of shortage in play. One approach is to compare fundamental needs to the physical supply of houses, and by that definition the claimed shortage is highly dubious. But if financial central planners orchestrate policies to encourage speculators to snap up all available supply of residential housing at above-market prices in order to capture financially-engineered capital gains, then it is easy to see how an effective shortage of supply available for end-user purchase and owner-occupancy could develop.
But if financial central planners orchestrate policies to encourage speculators to snap up all available supply of residential housing at above-market prices in order to capture financially-engineered capital gains,
Isn’t that just another way to say “intentional re-inflation of the housing bubble”?
Yes it is.
In Bubble We Trust.
“There has never been a shortage of housing.”
Central Banks enjoy unfettered collusion and racketeering.
Collusion: secret or illegal cooperation or conspiracy, especially in order to cheat or deceive others.
Racketeering: a racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not exist, that will not be put into effect, or that would not otherwise exist if the racket did not exist.
“There has never been a shortage of housing.”
What happens when prices start rising rapidly is people don’t want to sell, they want to ride those bubble gains to the peak, THEN sell. When you add speculators of all types into the equation, and their thirst to buy anything, it leads to the appearance of a shortage since there’s not a lot listed for sale, and what is goes fast, but mistaking that for an actual shortage is a fool’s game.
Once the top is in, and obvious, it brings a price-crushing level of inventory onto the market, as everybody tries to exit in concert, and most are left twisting in the wind.
Most here understand this, but the mainstream media would like people to believe otherwise.
Then there’s this:
‘periods of greatest excess housing supply had occurred while prices were rising’…‘Rising prices provide incentives to developers and builders to construct supply and offer it to the market’
So while speculators hold out for top peso, market forces use that time to create even more supply. It’s difficult to convince speculators to do otherwise, but we certainly shouldn’t have governments and central banks putting their thumb on the scale or you could wind up massively oversupplied.
‘This has left investors in a tricky situation and, although few of them would openly admit it, the increasing size of unoccupied space is now haunting a sector credited for pushing the country’s economic growth when the rest of Africa is in trouble.’
‘And the signs are everywhere. The building with red drapes next to The Pinnacle’s site, more than 10 storeys high, does not have a single tenant more than a year after opening and it is alleged the owners are looking for a buyer’
‘As dusk falls over the Klang Valley, it is easy to spot unoccupied units in the towering blocks which remain in pitch darkness. Many of these units have been sold, but remain unoccupied. The owners may have tried to rent or to re-sell them. This is a recurring theme in the property investment market, when over-investment or speculative purchase by investors hoping to make a quick disposal for capital gains do not materialise. This situation is not unique to Malaysia. It is happening in China, in parts of the US, Britain and other global capitals.’
‘The weak holders and investors, facing financial difficulties to service their mortgage repayment due to low rental income, or were unable to sell in an oversupply market, may be subject to foreclosure by the banks. And so the property enters the auction market’
Then the fun really begins.
“There has never been a shortage of housing.”
What happens when prices start rising rapidly is people don’t want to sell, they want to ride those bubble gains to the peak, THEN sell. When you add speculators of all types into the equation, and their thirst to buy anything, it leads to the appearance of a shortage since there’s not a lot listed for sale, and what is goes fast, but mistaking that for an actual shortage is a fool’s game.
Once the top is in, and obvious, it brings a price-crushing level of inventory onto the market, as everybody tries to exit in concert, and most are left twisting in the wind.
Most here understand this, but the mainstream media would like people to believe otherwise.
But Ben’s comment was not about the mainstream media. It was about economists: “And that’s why they do it. Yes, these economists who talk about shortages are plain and simply full of sh#t.”
Economists know exactly what they are doing and they are not the least bit confused about the “definition” of a shortage or what’s really going on here. They are the ones who help create and prop up these bubbles.
Economists know exactly what they are doing and they are not the least bit confused about the “definition” of a shortage or what’s really going on here. They are the ones who help create and prop up these bubbles.
Economists know who signs their paychecks, and shill accordingly.
They are also the ones who deny the existence of the Bubble, even as they enact measures to deliberately reflate it to its former ginormous proportions.
It should be noted in all of these countries above, no cratering market was caused by subprime loans.
Remember Bernanke testifying to Congress that subprime was “contained”?
Only it wasn’t. And the problems with subprime borrowers were eclipsed by the much greater problem of prime lender FBs.
But no one could’ve seen it coming. No one.
‘Remember Bernanke testifying to Congress that subprime was “contained”?’
I remember at the time, circa August 2007, pointing out to a former professor who happens to be a fellow MIT alumnus to Gentle Ben, that it wasn’t contained. Money talks, bullsh!t walks.
Remember Bernanke testifying to Congress that subprime was “contained”?
You rang?
That day, my new handle was born.
Economic 101 says price floors, like the GSE conforming loan limit create surpluses, not floors. So these economists crying shortage are either colossally incompetent or completely compromised. You choose; current evidence supports either read.
I meant shortages, not floors. Derp.
70 month average for new vehicle loanz:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/car-buyers-stretch-loan-payments-to-record-lengths-to-get-in-pricier-vehicles-2017-07-03
Broke. @ss. Loosers
The day after obama changed 200 years of contract law and destroyed the GM bondholders and almost left untouched his yuge union campaign donors of the UAW…
GM will be bankrupt again within a decade.
This time - DJT will follow the law.
I said….
I understand screwing the bondholders, that’s the risk they take but GM screwed the taxpayers out of $10 billion and we never demanded they pay us first instead of buying back their stock.
DJT will follow the law ??
LOL.
Consider the fake news source and ignore it.
GM will be bankrupt again within a decade.
Not so sure about that. They were able to negotiate new UAW contracts that pay new hires a lot less than the old timers. They shut down old factories, reducing excess capacity. They modernized their product line. No more pushrod 4’s or V6’s. They have a 10 speed automatic coming out.
They are too dependent on pick up truck sales, but the same is true of Ford and Chrysler.
“There are no end users in the market now…”
Just like in the U.S.
“The real answer probably lies in the level of speculative demand and ability to pay more for properties facilitated by record low interest rates, financial deregulation and investor subsidies such as negative gearing and the capital gains tax discount.”
And again!
So many myths. I’ve asked a thousand times, if these markets are so red hot, why does the government have to subsidize and back the loans?
Experiment: put California’s loan cap where the rest of the US is. Crater.
You want to buy a house anywhere in the US this week: go find a private lender. Crater. Just the idea of not backing trillions in loans (which the market didn’t used to need, mind you, and prices were reasonable too), if that idea was floated publicly, the REIC would drop on you like a ton of stucco. “Oh the agony! We’ll be eating gruel in no time!”
Uh, Mr Realtor, I thought there was a shortage and everybody in Denver is rich, even the renters? That reminds me, why did this happen?
June 8, 2017
Lawsuit Describes Conduct Reminiscent Of 2004
A report from the Denver Post in Colorado. “Four ex-employees accuse Aurora-based American Financial Corp. in a lawsuit of firing them after trying to expose the company’s alleged mortgage fraud. The mortgage originator allegedly misled at least a half-dozen banks and finance companies with faked documents and consumer loan applications, according to the whistle-blower lawsuit. The action in Arapahoe County district court claims managers at the company knew of the alleged mortgage fraud the employees discovered and, in some cases, worked hard to try to cover it up.”
“The employees – Stacia and Chris Springer, Steffen Mehnert and Sandra Reynolds – say in the lawsuit that they were suspended and then fired after bringing their concerns to higher-ups in March 2017. Chris Springer, Mehnert and Reynolds were mortgage consultants, and Stacia Springer was a pre-qualification specialist. The company defended its track record in a statement issued to The Denver Post, saying it will defend itself ‘vigorously against this meritless lawsuit and the false allegations …’”
“The lawsuit describes conduct reminiscent of the type that helped bring about the real-estate collapse and ensuing financial crisis that began in 2004. Among the allegations the quartet make against American Financing include intentionally falsifying loan information, faking signatures, withholding negative financial information about an applicant and faking compliance with key deadlines – all of them critical to whether a bank will approve or buy an existing loan.”
“Some of the alleged fraud was brazen, including assertions that potential borrowers’ income tax returns were intentionally withheld to hide potentially adverse information, relying instead on their W-2 forms.”
“The 23-page lawsuit lays out a detailed timeline of how the employees each reported concerns of fraud to supervisors over several weeks, only to be told not to talk about it to others, or not to come to work at all. After their suspension, the lawsuit says company supervisors looked through the employees’ desks and computers, allegedly shredding paperwork that related to the suspected fraud.”
“The employees said they were fired in retaliation for talking to a lawyer about their predicament. The lawsuit says a complaint about the alleged mortgage fraud was filed with the Colorado Division of Regulatory Agencies, which oversees mortgage brokers through its division of real estate, but that nothing was done.”
http://thehousingbubbleblog.com/?p=10110
Funny that there hasn’t been any follow up to this.
Have banks eat their bad loans - crater
Require 20% downpayments - crater
Require a job and money in the bank to cover all debts at a 40% debt/income ratio - crater
Get government out of the home mortgage market - crater
Get government to stop buying votes - crater
Allow banks to go bankrupt and their executives to go to jail - crater
“For those who thumb their nose at us, I promise vigorous enforcement.”
– Attorney General Janet Reno, in 1994, announcing a fair-lending discrimination settlement
Stop buying mortgage backed securities - crater.
Sell your trillion$ of MBS - double crater.
Stop driving interest rates down - crater.
One could find craters all day.
Crater is coming to a nation near you. Capital will seize and the recent memory of 2007-2008 will return with a vengeance. The game of lower interest rates will have no effect as everyone realizes the broken con. Long-term, those younger than 40 will steer clear of 1) home purchase and 2) stock market investment, having watched both “wealth-producing” ventures ravage their parents and friends. End result is massive, worsening glut and depression of home prices until such time as trust in the system is recreated. The stock and bond market will be crushed as well until said trust is recreated. The gig economy cannot absorb all the upcoming unemployed FBs. I feel bad for any recent/upcoming retirees that aren’t in cash.
My question is, where will yield-seeking dollars flood to and destroy next?
Eventually it will be “if a butterfly flaps its wings…”
Obviously it will not be possible to do what traditional Republican philosophy suggests would be the correct course of action, which is to get Uncle Sam, Aunt Janet and cousins Fannie and Freddie out of the affordable residential real estate business. Because the instantaneous and irrevocable result would be: CR8R.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ill-funded-police-pensions-put-cities-in-a-bind-1499180342
“traditional Republican philosophy…”
As in abolishing debt slavery?
“As in abolishing debt slavery?”
The horror.
Pension plan = take your money now, don’t give it back later.
Archive: Volume 117 No. 2 February, 2017
What’s up with our pension fund?
by Armen Donelian
Member to Member
I recently received a memo, “Important Information from the Board of Trustees of the American Federation of Musicians and Employer’s Pension Plan.” Basically, it says the AFM pension plan – my pension plan, your pension plan for anyone reading this – is up the creek without a paddle.
Allegro readers may remember my letter published in the October 2014 issue in which I asked pointed questions about the Trustees’ Annual Funding Notice and Notice of Critical Status. I’m proud that my letter provoked an open dialogue by the trustees about this important issue.
…
I must ask: Why is an army of fund managers with a budget of $25 million dollars unable to turn the AFM-EPF around?
…
It would be interesting to see what would happen if the Fannie/Freddie conforming loan amounts were tied to the Consumer Price Index.
It would also be interesting to do a back test and see how the rates of increase between the conforming loan amounts compare to the CPI. Does anyone know where to find the data?
If anyone in the REIC starts bellyachin’, we can always point to the private sector and have it provide Jumbo loans (i.e., loans with principal amounts above the conforming level).
C-SPAN re-aired this piece recorded in April last night:
https://www.c-span.org/video/?427125-2/interview-david-horowitz
Until American Jews stop supporting socialism, asset inflation and weak dollar policies I’ll view their impact on American society with ultimate disdain.
Really enjoyed the video.
My favorite part was when Horowitz was asked to identify the greatest threat to the United States. His reply was, “She lost the election.”
Just came across this video from Peter Thiel, the guy nails it and this was back in 1996!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6cxRYgqfHY
Here’s a video of a sample of totally dumbed-down ignorant American pukes who do not know what the celebration of the Fourth of July is all about …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyhCOPh48ew
A nation of dummies.
Here’s some more …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-Be9f7Ovgg
Not too many snowflakes back then…
http://www.breitbart.com/radio/2017/07/04/patrick-k-odonnell-elite-unit-iron-men-saved-george-washingtons-army-changed-history/
Suddenly for sale signs r popping up
7/5 deathcross approaches
Funny you should mention….
1 million square feet of empty office space on one short street.
Silicon Valley Begins to Crack Visibly
by Wolf Richter • Jul 2, 2017
Chilling photos of for-lease signs lining the Great America Parkway
http://wolfstreet.com/2017/07/02/silicon-valley-commercial-real-estate-bubble/
dc commercial has sckd since 2011
1 million square feet of empty office space on one short street ??
So. You fail to understand who owns these buildings and what the cost of entry is. It’s like saying Bill Gates owns some property that’s vacant.
Please enlighten us.
Please enlighten us ??
Why waste the keyboard time. You would not believe anything I offered anyway.
I might believe it. And there are probably hundreds of lurkers who would appreciate your insight.
That’s my neighborhood. Lots of space and endless renovation with nobody moving in along Montegue too since I got here last August. It’s interesting to me that there is so much empty commercial space and yet apartment rents in the same area are still so high.
Results 1 -120 of 2500 filtered search for “one month free”
https://denver.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=1+month+free&availabilityMode=0
I lost someone.
Seattle +7% =funny
https://www.zillow.com/seattle-wa/home-values/
So many warnings, so much denial!
This chart screams ‘get out of the market!’
Published: July 4, 2017 7:03 a.m. ET
‘The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom’
Everett/Universal
Get out?
By Shawn Langlois
Social-media editor
If you’re looking for warning signs in this market, you don’t have to look too far. The Fed winds are no longer at our backs, equity valuations are getting increasingly stretched, and the political climate isn’t exactly stable, to name just a few.
Yet, investors continue to feast on a steady diet of new highs, with the Dow breaking into uncharted territory on Monday.
Not a huge surprise, really. As Bob Farrell, the Merrill Lynch investing legend, once said about stock-market trends: “The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom.”
It remains to be seen if the market is anywhere near a top, of course, but if this chart, which Steve Blumenthal of CMG Capital described as an illustration of Farrell’s views, is any indication, we are approaching the “point of maximum financial risk.”
So, investors are moving from “thrill” to “euphoria,” according to this chart. Coming soon: Denial, fear, desperation… panic!
Blumenthal put it like this: “When your caddy is advising you to buy Facebook as mine did recently; or when cabdrivers are driving around with quote trek machines trading stocks, as they were in 1999; or when waiters and waitresses are flipping investment properties with access to no-doc mortgages, as they were in 2007, you can’t help but scratch your head knowing that this time isn’t different.”
The challenge — a HUGE challenge, historically — is somehow getting from “you are here” to “your best opportunity is here” without getting crushed.
…
Professor Bear -
If this is true, and no one knows for sure how the future will unfold, what actionable advice would you give to the millions of 401k investors who use only a single target date mutual fund as their 401k portfolio?
Hey, I’m not your investment advisor, but I would like to say that I hated having my 401K in a stupid no choice mutual fund. Employer match was the only reason I did that and by 2000 we had more flexibility and I was able to escape that crash.
BTW “Ol’Bubba” you can set up any kind of IRA and probably have your funds swapped from the employer’s 401K plan to your personally managed IRA, no tax penalty. You might have to be 59 1/2 age. Requires a cooperative employer.
Generally speaking, it seems like 401(k)s are structured to corral the sheople into investment classes that will get clobbered when the economy crashes. Blue’s advice may be worth a look. Generally speaking, good luck!
This was really a question about asset allocation in the face of comments such as:
“warning signs” ,
“The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom.”
“and we are approaching the “point of maximum financial risk.””
Generally speaking, the investment choices in my 401k are low cost Vanguard mutual funds and for a 401k, it’s better than most.
It all boils down to the risk/return conundrum. Equity assets, especially U.S. equities (S&P 500, Russell 1000, Russell 2000, Russell 3000) are richly priced. The yield curve is pretty flat and as of Monday’s close the 10 year Treasury was 2.35% and the 30 year Treasury was 2.86%.
It’s just a very puzzling, low return investment environment.
For what it’s worth, I’m over weighted on cash and short duration fixed income vehicles, and have been so for well over a year.
Off topic but an interesting read …
A snippet: Voters don’t vote their self-interests, they vote their values.
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/05/02/berkeley-author-george-lakoff-says-dont-underestimate-trump/
‘Lakoff believes it’s a mistake for Democratic politicians to move toward the center in an effort to reach more moderate voters. The Republicans have moved further to the right, and they continue to win elections. What Democrats need to do is articulate their message in terms of metaphors that voters can understand, and stick to their core values, Lakoff said.’
‘In terms of messaging, though, he doesn’t believe either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren have it quite right. “Bernie has a schtick,” he said. “He has great goals, I appreciate his goals, but he is very stubborn. He doesn’t understand conservatives or framing, and he isn’t going to change. He’s been successful with what he’s doing, and that’s enough for him,” Lakoff said. “I talked with him several times, with no effect. He wouldn’t remember it, and couldn’t have cared less.”
‘Elizabeth Warren “has come the closest to articulating the idea about citizens caring about each other and working through government to provide maximum freedom for everybody,” he said. “But Elizabeth has a problem: she is shrill, and there is a prejudice against shrill women.”
From what I used to call the Daily Oxide:
‘There is a new group named WTF Democrats. Laugh at them with me.’
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2017/7/4/1677877/-There-is-a-new-group-named-WTF-Democrats-Laugh-at-them-with-me
‘Well sure, making engineers cheaper is important to.. employers of engineers, such as tech billionaires.’
The way our system is set up, there will be two dominate parties. But I don’t think “Maxine Waters, WTF - California” is going to be one of them.
(BTW, Trump wasn’t “Republicans have moved further to the right”). It just shows how irrelevant left/right crap has become.
“…she is shrill…”
Screech 2.0. I don’t believe the male half of the U.S. electorate will back her.
1.0 *almost* won even dragging the ghosts of 1994-1998 behind her like a ball and chain. I’m not sure that it would be impossible for Warren.
Hilarious.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-07-05/cnn-blackmails-reddit-user-over-trump-wrestling-video-threatens-expose-identity
“While the White House has said the video didn’t come from Reddit, CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski - a total d*ck, went on a deep dive, uncovering now-deleted posts from ‘HanA**holeSolo’ which the network deemed offensive. CNN decided not to publish the the user’s personal details, for now, because HanA**holeSolo has ’showed his remorse’ for the ‘offending posts’ and ‘ugly behavior’ - effectively threatening to expose a private citizen if he doesn’t stay in line.”
Is this a great country, or what?
The Dems seem hell bent on become more irrelevant and unelectable with each passing day.
Here is some truly awesome news. F__k Zilldo and their fake inflated Zestimates. Long live Freedom of Speech. Long live America.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/06/29/an-online-housing-giant-picked-a-fight-with-a-one-woman-blog-and-lost/?tid=hybrid_mostsharedarticles_1_na&utm_term=.32156d54fa9c
Gosh, I am so thankful I don’t have to think for myself, since those financial media Real Journalists would surely not steer me wrong with their “buy moar stawks!” perma-bullishness in our boundless economic expansion.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-stock-jockeys-ought-to-buy-any-fed-fueled-dip-2017-07-05
Prime London housing market stalls as owners struggle to sell
Financial Times-Jul 4, 2017
Prime London housing market stalls as owners struggle to sell … The slump in properties achieving a sale comes as prices for expensive homes decline …