“The Word of the Day today children is Contango. Everyone take out your worksheets and your Number 2 pencils.” People of a certain age will remember those instructions from grammar school. Those same people will no doubt also remember the oil shocks of the 1970s. What does it mean when the options price of a … Continue reading Contango
Flying over Phoenix, Arizona I looked down at the two options Americans have for property development. There are large scale high rise towers in dense urban clusters. And there are low density peripheral subdivisions out along the highways. The Phoenix metroplex gradually breaks apart as cul-de-sacs give way to irrigated farmland and then the desolate … Continue reading The People Aquarium
¿Plomo o plata? Lead or silver? Your money or your life? That’s what the world is mulling these days. Do we preserve our health and trash the global economy? Or do we trash our collective health to preserve our finances? I know, I know. It’s a false narrative. The dead are a tiny sliver of … Continue reading ¿Plomo o Plata?
I was fortunate to have the best tenants on the planet for a while. I loved them. (Still do.) But as time went on their family grew and with the birth of their third child it became clear they would be leaving. I was pretty aggressive in trying to find creative ways to keep them … Continue reading Confessions of a California Landlord
I’m going to drag out an old linguistic trope. The Chinese word for “crisis” is composed of two characters meaning “danger” and “opportunity.” In reality it’s a false translation by westerners, but the larger point being made is still valid. New opportunities do, in fact, arise during periods of chaos. The trick is to be … Continue reading 灾害
Granola Shotgun 