All Forum Posts by: Joshua Myers

I have an MBA, Masters in Finance, and passed all 3 levels of the CFA program. I also know several people working for pension funds, mutual funds, etfs, commercial banks and financial advisors. But I appreciate the education you just provided. It's always nice to get thorough explanations from people with limited knowledge and insight.

You don't study the market and you think active trading is for fools, BUT you're trying to time the market by predicting short term movements...... that makes sense. 

1. Pulling your money out of an Index fund in the middle of a crash is not the smart play for regular people.

2. What are the fees that Warren Buffet is charging? Do you understand Berkshire Hathaway at all?

 Why do you think we're losing reserve currency status? If anything the FED is cementing its position as the Worlds Central Bank even more by reviving swap lines and finding ways to provide even more dollar liquidity to other central banks. The EU and Japan aren't going to take that on when they're already in a panic over deflationary pressure. The idea of China taking up the role is comical and nonsensical in the middle of this. What major country or institution  wants the Peoples Bank of China running the show right now? For all the dollars flaws there just isn't an alternative.

@Adiel Gorel I'm a little confused by the title of this thread. We are already in a recession. Q1 ended in a contraction and no one is questioning that Q2 will be an even deeper contraction. The questions now are how long and how deep the recession will be, will the recovery be quick or prolonged, and what lasting changes (if any) the recession will bring.

For everyone talking about how great the economy was prior to the virus, we should remember that we were running a Trillion dollar budget deficit, the Fed was already pumping liquidity into the system because repo rates were spiking, and over 1/3 of economists and CFOs were predicting a recession in 2020 (the numbers go up when you ask about 2021). So there were cracks in the system prior to these shutdowns that were being smoothed over.

@Ron Fletcher @Krishnan T. @Rich Vogel I would make a direct link between current Fed and Treasury actions and a rise in inflation. If printing unlimited amounts of money and funneling cash directly into the economy was enough to cause inflation on it own then we would be seeing hyper inflation in Japan and several European countries.

Inflation is determined by money growth and the velocity of money, with velocity of money being the main determinant. Importantly for money growth we need to look at both public and private money growth. Think M0, M1, M2, M3, M4 and credit touching various asset classes. It's hard to tell what is happening to the overall money growth at the moment, but we know that private money growth has slowed (for obvious reasons) and public money growth has accelerated.

Velocity of money could potentially be impacted the same way that it was in 07-09, when people responded to uncertainty and reduced incomes by pulling back on spending to pay down debt, build up balance sheets, etc. Longer term we could see the deflationary pressures that Europe and Japan have been dealing with for some time (changes in demographics, increased savings rates to counter low yields, etc). 

@Bob Woelfel you're right that I was being diplomatic. Personally I got very liquid in early February and pulled out of a deal to keep cash on hand. But a lot of people either didn't hear the warnings (they weren't loud enough) or were given bad information (there was, and still is, a lot of bad information out there).

More importantly, as investors, right now we need to be looking forward and recognize that over the next few months things will change in ways that we can't predict. If we were caught off guard 2-4 weeks ago we should keep that in mind as we figure out our next steps. That was the larger point I was trying to make.

@Russell Brazil for April just one tenant is late, but she's late enough that I've gotten used to the late payments. I'm optimistic about getting rent from most tenants next month because they should qualify for the stimulus checks.

It's 2020 and we're "telling" our wives these things!! I'm sure you didn't mean it this way, but it still cracked me up...:)

I'm quoting this just to show how much our understanding and outlook has changed in a week. There was serious talk, by the President and others, about opening things up by Easter. That was going to be when the worst was behind us in a lot of peoples minds. I'm operating under the assumption that the situation and outlook will have changed just as drastically in the next 1-2 weeks. I don't know what exactly it will look like, but I doubt it will look like my current assumptions in either scope of scale.