Is Hoarding in My Genes?

9-8-21

• Opening Comments

• Picture of the Day-Flying Through A Tunnel

• Is Hoarding in My Genes

• Mike Cembalest’s Latest

• Crazy China R/E Company Story-Evergrande

• Quick Bites

  • Markets, Bitcoin, Wages

  • Chips for Cars, Ford Hired Apple’s Head of Cars

  • Fauci-Gain of Function, Men Abandoning College

  • STOCK Act, The Taliban Five Update

  • 26 Words to Make You Sound Smarter, Hit by TSLA-NOT,

  • Futuristic Mercedes Reads Minds, Woke City-Telosa

• Virus/Vaccine

  • Data

  • Mu

  • Miami Deaths

  • Vaccine Alters Women’s Menstruation

  • Rugters Bans Virtual Student for No Vaccine

• Real Estate

  • Boca House Story

  • Miami Rental Ad and a House Sold for $4,500/ft

  • High End NYC Busy at $4mm+

  • LA $500mm Home Into Receivership

Opening Comments

Happy New Year to all those who celebrate.

I took my son, Jack, up to Jupiter for a trainer today. Andrew Cummings worked for the famous trainer, Joey D, who works with many PGA tour stars. Andrew recently went off on his own and met with Jack at the request of Jack’s new coach, Jeff Smith. Andrew also works with members of the PGA Tour. When I tell my 15-year-old son something, I am a moron and I clearly don’t know what I am talking about. However, when Andrew said the same things I have been saying, Jack followed his every word. Son of a … Youth is wasted on the young. I did not understand this comment when my mother said it to me 40 years ago, but do now that I am a parent. In short, Jack needs to eat 4-5 full meals/day to put on weight, as 5’11” and 120 lbs is a bit light to compete against the big kids.

Picture of the Day

One of my avid readers, Ed, sent me this incredible story of a pilot flying through two tunnels. It looks like the wings miss the tunnel walls by inches. I would be throwing up with fear in this plane. Watch the video for yourself. AMAZING.

Is Hoarding in My Genes?

I had a great Aunt and Uncle who collected papers and magazines (not pictured above). I was quite young, but remember going to their house and literally bedrooms were filled to the ceiling with yellowed newspapers, junk mail and stacks of magazines that had been there for decades. Can you imagine if there had been a fire? My aunt also collected tiny samples of soaps, shampoos and lotions from hotels for over 50 years. I thought it was odd that anyone would keep thousands and thousands of old useless things.

There is another story of a crazy fire at 740 Park Avenue. A couple were rumored to have kept old magazines in a sauna in the apartment. A cleaning lady inadvertently hit the '‘on button” and the rest is history. The fire damaged a few apartments. Remember, 740 Park is one of the highest end co-ops in NYC.

What is it about people who can’t throw stuff away? What do they believe they will do with an old newspaper or magazine? For those long-time readers, you know I am a high-strung person with various forms of ADD and even a bit of OCD. When we lived in a co-op in NYC, we had a pretty large apartment of approximately 4,500 square feet with a decent sized bin in the basement for storage. When we moved to Florida, we got rid of so much crap; it was actually cathartic. Why did we hold on to junk in the bin or in the back of our neat closet for so long? How did we accumulate so much to be given away or thrown away? I really could not tell you the answer.

We moved to Florida to a house almost 2x the size of our apartment and it includes a 4 car air-conditioned garage. I tricked out the closets in the house as the new home came with no built out closets. I installed a crazy storage unit for the garage as well. Guess what? Despite being incredibly neat, clean (no shoes in the house), organized… we have accumulated so much crap that I had to rent a 5’x7’x8’ storage bin this week. How did we get here?

I will make no excuses and am actually ashamed. However, I will try to explain. We have two cars and a golf cart. Since I moved to Florida, I have collected 30 fishing rods for use on my boat and have about a dozen surfboards. Four bicycles take up a lot of space and then talk about the golf equipment, suitcases and tools, paint and house related items and the garage is full.

I am quite irritated it has come to this as my bedroom closet is immaculate with everything in its place (matching hangers, organized light to dark, solids to prints) yet we could not fit everything in our house? Below are a couple pictures of my closet to prove how crazy organized I keep it.

Golf Section

Some Suits

I love baseball caps

The one thing I need to go through is all my suits. When I worked on Wall Street, I had 25 suits and in Florida, I have gone 2 years without putting one on. I have a funny feeling they don’t all fit the way they should as gravity is catching up to me, but maybe I will need them one day? Wow, that is the kind of thinking that got me in this mess in the first place. Can it be that I got the hoarding gene from my Great Aunt and Uncle after all?

Mike Cembalest’s Latest

If you have read the Rosen Report for any period of time, you know I am a big fan of Mike Cembalest and his thoughtful research pieces. This one is entitled. “Your Fall 2021 Syllabus,” and is a fun take on a bunch of timely topics.

Crazy China R/E Company Story

I made this more prominent rather than putting it in Quick Bites as it seems a bit incredible. China Evergrande Group is an investment holding company, which engages in the development, investment, and management of real estate properties. The firm also involves in property construction, hotel operations, finance business, internet business, and health industry business. It operates through the following segments: Property Development, Property Investment, Property Management Services, and Other Businesses and has 123k employees. One article suggested $300bn in total liabilities. The rating agencies mentioned there is $37bn due within one year. Fitch cut it to CC and Moody’s to Ca (near default). Interest payments to bonds have been suspended. Looks like an incredible fall for what articles are calling, “the world’s most indebted developer.” I believe at one point bond trading was suspended and bonds were trading at 24c despite maturing in 2025. I am no expert on this company and a lot of articles are in Chinese, but figured I would flag it for those who want to learn more. Seems as though the Chinese regulators are imposing more stringent rules on Evergrande given the debt levels which is contributing to the turmoil. This link is to another interesting Bloomberg article on the Evergrande topic.

Quick Bites

• The Dow and S&P 500 fell for a third straight day on Wednesday as investors reassess the economic growth outlook following a smooth ride in the market so far this year. The Dow fell 69 points to 35,031 and the S&P 500 dipped 0.1% to 4,514. The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell nearly 0.6% to 15,287, dropping for the first session in five. The 30-stock average closed in the red for its third trading day in a row. On Tuesday, the Dow fell more than 260 points, adding to Friday’s losses after a disappointing August jobs report. September’s outlook also remains clouded by the coronavirus delta variant. Shares of Coinbase fell 3.2% after the cryptocurrency exchange revealed it received a notice of possible enforcement action from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Coupa Software fell 4.2% despite its better-than-expected quarterly financial results. “We see a bumpy September-October as the final stages of a mid-cycle transition play out,” Morgan Stanley chief cross-asset strategist Andrew Sheets said in a note. “The next two months carry an outsized risk to growth, policy and the legislative agenda.”

• The price of bitcoin fell Tuesday and Wednesday after breaking through $52,000 late Monday, reaching its highest level since May. The price action comes on the day El Salvador is set to adopt the largest cryptocurrency by market cap as legal tender, becoming the first country to do so. Bitcoin dropped as much as 16% on Tuesday morning. Bitcoin closed at $46k on Wednesday.  Ether is at $3,500. El Salvador’s experiment with Bitcoin -- the biggest test of the token’s real-world usefulness -- had a rocky start because of technical glitches to the official digital wallet that later appeared to be resolved. President Nayib Bukele said on Twitter the country now holds 550 Bitcoins after buying when the price fell. 

• I know the market is suggesting we don’t have an inflation problem, but everything I see has me a little concerned. August’s jobs report, besides being a big disappointment on the 235,000 headline number, also showed that wages are rising even with weak hiring. Average hourly earnings jumped 0.6% for the month, about double what Wall Street had been expecting, and the increase from a year ago stood at a robust 4.3%, up from a 4% rise a month ago. Even leisure and hospitality, which saw zero net job growth in August, saw wages jump 1.3% for the month and 10.3% on the year. In a related article, wages for hourly limited-service restaurant workers climbed 10% in the second quarter compared with a year ago, according to a new report from industry tracker Black Box Intelligence and Snagajob. It’s the largest quarterly jump in years. For comparison, hourly limited-service employees saw their wages rise just 4.1% in the first quarter compared with a year prior. Job openings outnumbered the unemployed by more than 2 million in July as companies struggled to fill a record number of vacancies, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which the Federal Reserve watches closely for signs of slack in employment, showed 10.9 million positions open. That was much higher than the FactSet estimate of 9.9 million and the June total of 10.18 million. That number swamped the 8.7 million level of those out of work and looking for jobs in July. JOLTS data runs a month behind the regular nonfarm payrolls data, which reported growth of 1.05 million for July.

• Car manufacturers including Ford, Volkswagen and Daimler are still struggling to deal with the impact of the global chip shortage, with executives from each of the companies warning a lack of silicon is likely to remain a problem. Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, Daimler CEO Ola Kallenius and Ford Europe chairman of the management board Gunnar Herrmann told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach at the Munich Motor Show on Monday that it’s hard to tell when the complex issue will be resolved.

• Ford Motor Co. is hiring the head of Apple Inc.’s car project away from the iPhone maker, a stunning development that brings the 118-year-old automaker an executive with Silicon Valley chops. Doug Field is coming aboard as chief advanced technology and embedded systems officer, Ford said in a statement. Field also previously worked as a top engineer at Tesla Inc. between two stints at Apple -- most recently as a vice president in its special projects group -- and played a major role at Tesla launching the Model 3 sedan. The hire is a coup for Ford, which has made major strides under Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley in convincing investors it can compete with Tesla and others on electric vehicles and technology. I spoke with people who follow this far more closely than I do and the feeling was this is a very big deal.

• Dr. Anthony Fauci has been accused by critics of lying after newly released documents appear to contradict his claims that the National Institute of Health did not fund gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan lab. Senator Rand Paul led the criticism against Fauci on Tuesday after the documents, obtained by The Intercept, detailed grants given to EcoHealth Alliance — the nonprofit that funneled federal funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research. Included in the trove of documents is a previously unpublished grant proposal that EcoHealth Alliance, which is run by Peter Daszak, filed with Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease. Fauci has repeatedly insisted that NIH funding of the Wuhan lab does not constitute as “gain-of-function” research, which modifies the biological agent, and in the case of a virus, could increase its transmissibility or virulence. “I have already asked the DOJ to review Fauci’s testimony for lying to Congress,” Rand wrote. “This report should make it abundantly clear that he needs to be held accountable.” On 6-6-21, my piece was entitled, “Fauci Ouchie” and suggested it was time for Fauci to move on as I lost confidence in him with his countless missteps and bad advice. I stand by my call from three months ago.

• Great WSJ article sent to me by one of my most avid readers which discusses how men are abandoning college at a rapid rate. I have written about my view that many people should not attend a four year college today. If I had to guess, I would think 30-40% of the people who attend a traditional four-year college should instead go to some sort of vocational school for months, not years. I don’t believe the economics of a degree make that much sense any more for many people. If you have straight A’s, great SAT scores and want to be in finance, computer and other sciences, engineering, medical or law school, I get it. If you are going to an Ivy League school or what I call, “Near Ivy,” I would do it. Going for some lame degree and spending $300k or more to get it makes little sense to me in many cases. Coming out of school with a weak degree and average grades makes it nearly impossible to get a high paying job and in many cases, you are straddled with debt. Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels. At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline. This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education. I had to take a picture of my screen as I could not get the image to fit any other way. It can be seen more clearly in the link above.

• A government watchdog group asked the Office of Congressional Ethics last week to investigate Assistant Speaker of the House Katherine Clark, D-Mass., for apparently failing to timely disclose up to $285,000 in financial transactions — making the potential successor to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the latest among numerous House and Senate members to face ethics complaints about allegedly violating the STOCK Act.  The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, better known as the STOCK Act, has gained renewed attention during the COVID-19 pandemic when some lawmakers were suspected of using information from government roles to profit. Broadly, it prohibits members of Congress, congressional staffers and certain members of the executive branch and federal judiciary from engaging in insider trading based on information they learn through their government jobs. I have no view on this specific situation, but feel strongly all politicians in a position of insider information should be held accountable. In a related story, Dallas Fed President Kaplan also made a bunch of stock trades. Again, I don’t like it.

• I was opposed to the idea of swapping a known US Army deserter, Bowe Bergdhal, for the Taliban Five when it happened in 2014. Well, that “trade” did not work out so well in my opinion. When he deserted, servicemen were badly injured trying to find him. Four of the five Taliban members released from Guantanamo Bay by the Obama administration in 2014 in exchange for admitted US Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl are part of the Islamic fundamentalist group’s new hard-line government in Afghanistan, according to local media reports. As Bergdhal returned to the United States, the Taliban Five were flown to Qatar, where much of the Taliban’s political leadership resided at the time. Among those aghast by the price paid for Bergdahl’s return was then Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who told CBS’ “Face the Nation” that the Taliban Five were “the hardest of the hard core” and “the highest high-risk people.”

• These 26 words can make you sound smarter-but “most people use them the wrong way,” say grammar experts. It has probably happened more than once at work: You wanted to sound smart, so you used a word you thought would impress people — but instead ended up looking like you had no idea what you were talking about. As hosts of the podcast “You’re Saying It Wrong” and co-authors of several grammar books, we’ve come across many offenders over our years of talking to people about words. These are the “swap-outs” that have the potential to make you sound smarter, but most people use them the wrong way. My readers should enjoy this article and might learn something. That is, unless you are an English major from a fancy pants liberal arts school and know it already.

• Authorities arrested a Louisiana man who called 911 to report being struck by a Tesla after police reviewed video footage from the car that told a different story. Around 4 p.m. Friday, the Slidell Police Department said 47-year-old Arthur Bates Jr. called 911, saying the Tesla had backed into him and caused back, leg and neck injuries. Bates had said the driver of the Tesla fled the scene, but when officers got in contact with the driver, they said Bates actually fabricated the whole event – and there was proof he did. "Unbeknownst to Bates, Tesla’s (sic) record all the footage of their cameras. When Slidell Police officers reviewed the Tesla’s video footage, it became apparent that Bates was lying and staged the entire event."  Rosen Report readers, don’t lie about being hit by a TSLA as they have cameras which will show you lied. Just a thought to protect my readers. I had no idea the cameras in a TSLA record everything. I own one. Good to know.

• Are you annoyed by constantly going through the menus on your car's touchscreen? Mercedes-Benz has a very futuristic solution. On Monday, at the IAA Mobility 2021 show in Munich, Germany, the company displayed the next iteration of its Vision AVTR concept car, first shown at CES 2020. According to Mercedes-Benz, the car now has tech that lets you perform certain tasks just by thinking about them. It's based on visual perception — the car has light dots projected on the car's digital dashboard, and a BCI (brain-computer interface) device with wearable electrodes is attached to the back of the user's head.

• Former Walmart executive and e-commerce billionaire Marc Lore wants to build the world’s first woke city from scratch — somewhere in the US. Lore last week unveiled plans for his utopia, called Telosa, from the ancient Greek word Telos, meaning “highest purpose.” “The mission of Telosa is to create a more equitable, sustainable future. That’s our North Star,” Lore said in a promotional video. “We are going to be the most open, the most fair and the most inclusive city in the world.” Key to the city’s plans is Lore’s economic vision, called “Equitism,” in which the land upon which the city is built will be donated to a community endowment.

Virus/Vaccine

• Cases grew 1% for the prior two-week period and you can see in the 1st chart below we have clearly peaked on 9/2. My readers know that two months ago I wrote that delta would peak in late August/early September. Just think, cases were +1% and were +172% a little over one month ago. Although hospitalizations and deaths continue to climb, they are growing at a slower rate now than weeks prior. The charts of hospitalizations and deaths are peaking now as well.

  

• Since being discovered in Colombia in January, the mu variant of COVID-19 has spread to nearly four dozen countries and has made its presence known in Hawaii and Alaska. It has so far been found in 49 states with Nebraska being the only state to not have a mu variant case detected. Health officials believe mu is even more transmissible that the delta variant and has the potential to resist vaccines. California has reported the highest number of the latest variant with 384. A total of 167 of those cases were found in Los Angeles County.

• A 30-year teaching veteran was one of 15 Miami-Dade County public school staff members who died of COVID-19 in just 10 days as Florida continues to reel amid the continuing, overwhelming toll of an unfettered pandemic. “It’s a tremendous loss,” said a school official, referring to the death of longtime teacher Abe Coleman, 55, earlier this week. “The number of lives that he impacted are countless. So many young men had the benefit of him intervening in their lives and pointing them in the right direction,” Marcus Bright, who works with a local education program 5000 Role Models of Excellence, told NBC-6 TV. Coleman taught at Holmes Elementary School in Miami’s Liberty City area, which is a primarily Black neighborhood with 42% of the population living below the poverty line.

• Shana Clauson was in line to get her first dose of the Moderna shot in March when she saw menstruators on social media discussing how their periods had been altered — earlier, heavier and more painful than usual — after they got their coronavirus vaccinations. Clauson, a 45-year-old who lives in Hudson, Wis., went ahead and got the shot — and, a few days later, also got an earlier and heavier period than she was used to. A few weeks later, in early April, she told The Lily that she was frustrated with the lack of research on whether the vaccines impacted menstrual cycles. “Is this not being discussed, or is it even being looked at or researched because it’s a ‘woman’s issue?’ ”Clauson asked at the time. “I hope that if this is going to be a side effect for women, that it’s being addressed and women know this could happen.” Last week, she got her wish: The National Institutes of Health has awarded $1.67 million to researchers at five institutions to study potential links between coronavirus vaccinations and menstruation, the agency announced Aug. 30. I personally know of 4 post-menopausal women who have bleed immediately after receiving the vaccine. I am not here to be an alarmist, but am here to suggest that we do not know all of the potential ramifications given how short of a time span of data we are seeing. Again, I am vaccinated and my kids each received one dose. My children have received EVERY vaccine on time including HPV, so I am hardly the anti-vax guy. I do feel COVID vaccines are effective at the stated goal, but do worry about long potential term side effects and this article highlights a recently unknown side effect. I have now read a dozen articles on the topic outlined in this bullet and it is clear more research is needed. At this point, I feel the risks are skewed in favor of the vaccine and sure hope it stays that way.

• A New Jersey student has said he is barred from taking classes at Rutgers University because he has not been vaccinated — even though he is only studying virtually from home. Logan Hollar, 22, told NJ.com that he largely ignored the school’s COVID mandate “because all my classes were remote” from his Sandyston home, some 70 miles from Rutgers’ campus in New Brunswick. But he was locked out of his Rutgers email and related accounts when he went to pay his tuition at the end of last month — and was told that he needed to be vaccinated even though he has no plans to attend in person. I am all for the vaccine, but I adamantly disagree that Rutgers should be banning students from virtual learning for not getting vaccinated.

Real Estate

• A friend bid on a house in Boca (not on the market at the time). The house sold 9 months ago for approximately $7mm. My friend bid mid 10s and did not even get a response as they feel coming to the market for $12mm will result in a frenzy (was listed yesterday). The house is 20 years old and needs work in my opinion as I toured the house with my friend. It probably trades somewhere in the $11.2-11.5 range. It is on the water, but “Come on Man,” that would be up approximately 60% in 9 months. How is this sustainable? In one of the biggest missed investment opportunities in my life, I could have bought up so much property for 30-40% of today’s prices, but I did not pull the trigger when I should have on additional investments.

• This is a good example of how crazy the South Florida market is today. When I moved here 4 years ago, I am not convinced anyone would have been advertising this one. Shockingly, condo owners are not jumping at the opportunity to rent something fro $200k/month. A house on Venetian Islands in Miami sold for $4,500/ft. The buyer was from San Francisco. The address was 122 West Dilido and given it was not listed, I don’t have any good pictures. The price totaled $23mm and was a more recent build.

• Manhattan’s luxury market just had its busiest week-before-Labor Day in 15 years. Buyers signed 23 contracts for residential properties in Manhattan asking $4mm or more last week.

• A Los Angeles mega-mansion once expected to list for $500 million has gone into receivership after the owner defaulted on more than $165 million in loans and debt, according to court filings. The 105,000-square-foot Bel Air estate, known as “The One,” was placed into receivership and is expected to be relisted at a lower price. The receivership marks a stunning reversal for “The One” and its flashy developer, Nile Niami, who often touted the property as his “life mission.” If he can’t sell the house in this market, it is clearly overvalued in my opinion.