Opening Comments
Video of the Day
Woke Strikes Again-To Kill A Mockingbird
Quick Bites
Markets, Bitcoin, Sternlicht on Market, SFO Tech Vacancies,
Colonial Pipeline, CDC Mask Guidelines, Cuomo on CDC, NYC Crime
Short Term Rentals, CA Laws, Omar, Stefanik, Terrorism Alert
12 Year Old Chess, University of CA System-SAT/ACT, UFOs
Virus/Vaccine
Real Estate
General Comment
Hamptons 20 priciest Home Sales in 2021
Jupiter Island $32.5mm Sale
Global Home Prices
Opening Comments
In today’s report, I tried to get more pictures for those Rosen Report readers with ADHD. Looking for feedback. Hitting send a little earlier to see how that impacts the open rates. The subject today is quite irritating for me as the woke crap has overtaken the education system.
Packing for 100 days of travel while living out of hotels is harder than one would imagine. No, I am not packing suits or blazers, but I am trying to find the happy medium of packing enough, but not too much given I will be hotel hopping across the Northeast. With the upcoming travel, I do not know about how frequently the Rosen Report will get sent. Depends on internet access in the podunk towns I will be in over the summer. Hopefully, my delivery issues improve and more of my readers can access the Rosen Report.
I wrote about the rental car fiasco. Readers suggested buying a used car or even an RV. I actually looked into both options. I paid $3.5k last year for 95 days of a massive SUV. I was quoted over $12k for the same car. I found one for about $6k, but it is a midsize, not oversize. The linked article goes into detail on the rental car shortage and lists the following destinations are hardest hit: Orlando, Denver, Las Vegas, Honolulu, Maui, Anchorage, Miami, Los Angeles, Seattle, Phoenix. In Hawaii, cars can go for $500/day relative to the $5/day in 2020 when no tourists were visiting. For perspective, that would have cost me $50k for the summer at $500/day. I would just buy a car for that price.
I received an email from my country club in the Northeast. They have openings for over 200 jobs and cannot fill them. Generally, the summer finds all kinds of seasonal workers, many of them college kids, but not this summer. I wrote about the unintended consequence of free money and here is a glaring example. Additionally, a friend owns a gas delivery company. They fill boats up with gas off of a truck using a long hose. He has posted job openings for $30-35/hour on multiple sites and barely gets calls. Those that do he claims have so little ability, he cannot hire them. How is it possible with this level of unemployment we have people offering $30-35/hr + tips, mind you, and there are not lines to fill these positions? I spoke with a restaurant owner in Palm Beach. Good news, 2021 is the best year so far and still going strong. The bad news is they cannot find help and people are working overtime and are exhausted. Business generally is far slower in May, but given more permanent residents, things remain busy. He is very frustrated he can’t find help. Maybe, if we don’t pay people to stay home and not work, they will want to work. Just a thought.
Jack went to practice the other day and I decided to fish for a few minutes. The 1st one is 4lb bass and second one closer to 6lbs. This is in selfie mode as I was alone. All bass are thrown back into the lakes.
Video of the day
The stupidity of people never ceases to amaze me. A moronic woman at Yellowstone National Park thought it would be a good idea to get out of her car to get close to Grizzly bears. She was warned, yet felt it to be smart to get within yards of these massive beasts. The bear began charging her, but turned away. Given the low IQ of this person, I am not sure the bear did the right thing for the rest of us, by not attacking. I was inadvertently close to a black bear on a golf course in Tahoe and I almost soiled myself. A grizzly is about 10 x more aggressive than a black bear. I would never get out of my car if a grizzly was close. Look at the paws on these things. The picture below is from the web and not of the incident described. Oh yeah, they run 35 MPH, so if they want to eat you, no getting away on foot. For perspective, Usain Bolt’s fastest speed was 28.8mph, but only for a couple seconds. Even he could not out run a grizzly.
Woke Strikes Again-To Kill A Mockingbird
I have written extensively about the new woke teachings in many schools and now more fed up parents are speaking out. In the newest installment, our woke education system attacks my favorite book of all time, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. The book won a Pulitzer Prize and has sold over 40mm copies. It was praised for its sensitive treatment of a child’s awakening to racism and prejudice in the south. I wanted Jack, our son, to have the middle name, Atticus, because of how much I admired the main character and how he stood for what is right and moral.
In the book, Atticus Finch is a lawyer represents an innocent Black man, Tom Robinson, who was wrongfully accused of raping a white woman. Atticus defends Robinson because he feels the justice system should be color blind. Remember, the book takes place in the 1930s in Alabama. Atticus’ children, Scout and Jem are ridiculed at school given their father is supporting Robinson.
Now, in Loudon County, Virginia, there is a movement to suggest that the book causes, “Racial Trauma” due to white saviorism according to a middle school teacher, Andrewa Weiskpf. “If you don’t consider To Kill a Mockingbird racist, you have no business discussing any books, she said.” Weiskpf speaks just after 2:30 into the video.
Instead of, To Kill a Mockingbird, some of the new required reading is incredibly sexual in nature which I cannot include in the Rosen Report, but you can see in the above link. Two of the books cited are ”Monday’s Not Coming” by Tiffany D. Jackson and “#MurderTrending” by Gretchen McNeil. The excerpts of the inappropriate new required reading starts around the 8 minute mark. The language and sexual discussion is far more inappropriate than I would have thought allowed in schools. How can Harper Lee be inappropriate but vulgar sex talk be ok? What planet do we live on today? One parent said, “If this inappropriate to read to you, it is inappropriate to read to our children.”
The state of California has announced its new "Mathematics Framework" for students across the state. One of the authors of it is a Stanford professor, Boaler. Here's how she explained the plan. "I am very pleased to announce the new Mathematics Framework for California. Some highlights: a strong social justice orientation; all students should take the same courses, kindergarten through tenth grade.” It is around the 7:00 mark in the video.
I am not sure what is going on in this country, but feel strongly the path is a dangerous one. Math is now focusing on social justice? Cancelling amazing literature, forcing pornography on middle and high school students, pushing transgender reading on elementary school kids, requiring everyone take the same classes, eliminating mom and dad from allowed words, demonizing white children …. Does anyone else have a problem with this? The link has a 10 minute video. Anyone with children should watch it because it shows parents voicing concerns in an articulate manner with vivid examples of what is wrong with education today. The last man speaking was passionate as well and was ridiculed by the low IQ board presiding over the matter. It is important that parents speak up about issues which concern them despite the cancel culture.
I understand the new world requires everyone to be more sensitive. I get it, but where does it end? The path we are on is erasing the history of the US. Any school my children attend better not block To Kill a Mockingbird from the libraries. Because of this hoopla, my kids will be reading To Kill A Mockingbird at home. Rosen Report readers better order it before it is banned.
Quick Bites
U.S. stocks jumped on Friday led by technology shares and reopening trades, as Wall Street rebounded for a second day from steep losses earlier this week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 360 points, or nearly 1.1%, to 34,382. The S&P 500 gained 1.5% to 4,173. The Nasdaq, the relative underperformer for the week, snapped back by 2.3% to 13,429. The major averages experienced a roller-coaster week that saw the Dow drop nearly 1,200 points from Monday to Wednesday. The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq fell 4% and 5%, respectively, during that period. The indexes have since rebounded from the steep sell-off, but they still posted modest losses for the week as inflation fears hit sentiment. The Dow and the S&P 500 fell more than 1% each this week, while tech stocks got hit especially hard, pulling the Nasdaq down over 2.3% for the week.
Bitcoin took a dive after Musk suggested he would stop accepting it for payment for TSLA over environmental concerns until the problem was solved. He mentioned he was not selling the TSLA Bitcoin. However, a more recent story suggest Musk implied he may sell or has sold Bitcoin causing yet another leg lower today. Check out the chart. I think you can figure out when he said it. Bitcoin is approaching $45k. It was $62k+ a month ago. I have written about the substantial energy required to mine Bitcoin. I get it. However, this is a bit hypocritical. Musk flies a $70mm private plane. Is that energy efficient? It like the environmentalists all flying private planes to a climate summit. I believe Musk is a genius and is one of the biggest inventors and creators of our time. I feel he has too much market influence today and is a bit too vocal about things causing massive moves in stocks or crypto. To be clear, I am long Bitcoin and have historically been a big fan of Musk despite the fact he can Tweet a little less.
In multiple Rosen Reports, I have discussed the fact that I have a lot of respect for Barry Sternlicht as an investor. I also find him to be articulate and well informed. I have had fascinating conversations with him and have heard stories about this thorough attention to detail when building projects. “I do think the Fed, interest rates, are being suppressed by the government. .... We have to get off of this sugar-cane and Fluffernutter economy and get to the meat-and-the-potatoes economy,” Sternlicht said. “We have to get back to a sustainable economy and people coming back to work.” Barry Sternlicht told CNBC. The chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group said he is worried about labor and supply shortages, as well as government policy. He said his bullishness on the stock market has faded.
The semiconductor chip shortage is expected to cost the global automotive industry $110 billion in revenue in 2021, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. The forecast is up by 81.5% from an initial forecast of $60.6 billion in late January. A number of factors have contributed to the increase, including a fire at a chip supplier plant near Tokyo and weather-related kinks in the automotive supply chain
While software and internet companies continued their stratospheric ascent in 2020, the plush offices they call home sat dormant, leaving San Francisco’s commercial real estate market with an unfamiliar supply glut. Much of the financial fallout was borne by the very tech companies that led a decade-plus bull market and expansion spree, snapping up massive amounts of space at record prices and often subleasing out full floors to start-ups and out-of-town businesses that were seeking a Bay Area outpost. By the end of the first quarter of 2021, the amount of vacant sublease space in San Francisco had soared to 9.7 million square feet, up from about 3 million in late 2019, and accounted for 40% of all available commercial space in the city, according to commercial real estate firm Avison Young.
Although the pipeline is back up and running, the turmoil from the hack will last a while. Gas prices are through the roof in some areas of the east coast. Additionally, Colonial paid a meaningful ransom to the hackers. How scary is that? Colonial Pipeline paid a ransom to hackers after the company fell victim to a sweeping cyberattack, one source familiar with the situation confirmed to CNBC. A U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed to NBC News that Colonial paid nearly $5 million as a ransom to the cybercriminals. A Hummer in Florida was filled with 5 gallon gas cans, I presume due to the gas shortage. The truck caught fire and investigators are trying to determine the cause of the blaze.
Fully vaccinated people no longer need to wear a face mask or stay 6 feet away from others in most settings, whether outdoors or indoors, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in updated public health guidance released Thursday. There are a handful of instances where people will still need to wear masks — in a health-care setting or at a business that requires them.
There are many reasons Cuomo and DeBlasio need to find new jobs which are not in public service. Cuomo has been wrong on nearly everything and oh yea, he was accused of inappropriate conduct by numerous women. Despite the CDC announcing vaccinated people did not need masks, Cuomo is not so sure. Pandemic-weary New Yorkers had their hopes deflated Thursday when Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he wasn’t ready to ease the state’s mask mandate — even though the feds gave the green light for vaccinated Americans to finally show their faces and gather indoors again. In a late-afternoon statement, Cuomo said he and Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had yet to decide if the Empire State would adopt newly announced guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “In New York, we have always relied on the facts and the science to guide us throughout the worst of this pandemic and in our successful reopening,” Cuomo said. Look at Vegas. The Nevada Gaming Control Board issued new guidelines allowing casinos to choose whether to enforce mask mandates for vaccinated guests and employees. Wynn Las Vegas allowed vaccinated casino guests and employees to go maskless the same night. This article is called, “The sixth borough,” about the record NYers moving to Florida. Over 33k from 9/20 to 3/21.
Violence continues in NYC at an elevated rate. One straphanger was robbed at gunpoint and two others socked in the face early Sunday morning in another round of public transit violence, according to law enforcement sources. A suspect in multiple stabbings from Friday was caught with a bloody knife. One of the attacks left a victim blind in one eye. I lived in NYC almost 25 years and never once felt uncomfrotable and rode the subway virtually everyday. I am back in NYC this summer and will not be getting on the subway. DeBlasio and Cuomo and doing doing their jobs by protecting the citizens and tourists. Multiple readers told me they feel less comfortable uptown then downtown given there are more people around downtown. Here are the April 2021 crime stats. I had mentioned them recently. Not pretty.
The short term rental market was up 5.4% relative to the same period in 2019. This is another example of pent up demand and the summer which should have more people out and travelling rather than stuck at home.
Despite my love of the weather and lifestyle in Southern California, I believe it is now largely uninhabitable. I would not consider moving there anytime soon between the taxes, the treatment of the tax paying, law abiding citizens and the favoritism towards criminals. An Los Angeles Times investigation revealed that, among other things, fires related to homeless encampments have nearly tripled. According to the paper, in the first four months of this year there were 24 such blazes a day. Those calls accounted for 54% of all fires responded to by LAFD.
In a message to constituents, LA Councilman, Mike Bonin, defended his effort to explore housing homeless people in temporary cabins and camping sites in West Side parks and beach parking lots.
Here is an even more troubling example. The man who shot and killed a California police officer (pictured below) and tried to strangle an 8-year-old boy was on parole when he opened fire on the officer earlier this week before being fatally shot himself. Lance Lowe, 30, was imprisoned in March 2018 and faced a five-year sentence for a grand theft auto with use of a firearm out of Los Angeles County, FOX 40 reported. He was originally charged with firearms offenses but all were dismissed except for the auto theft. There are real consequences for various programs such as bail reform, letting violent criminals out of prison, shortening sentences, making shoplifting a misdemeanor…Unfortunately, these acts hurt the citizens who are paying the bills of the states. The idiots running CA got it wrong yet again. CA is not the only state, but they raised the level of shoplifting to be considered a felony. What happened? Shoplifting was up sharply. Who does that hurt? Small businesses who then have to raise prices for law abiding citizens. There are now crime rings who steal and fence in an organized manner. Some criminals take calculators into stores to be sure they are below the $950 felony threshold. Congrats CA DA’s, great job of screwing your constituents.
Representative Ilhan Omar Tweets hat Israel is committing “an act of terrorism” by carrying out airstrikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. One news agency suggested that as of Sunday afternoon, over 3,000 rockets have been launched at Israel since Monday and they have intercepted approximately 90% of them. Israel pounded Gaza on Saturday, destroying a tower block that housed news media organisations, while Palestinian rockets hit Tel Aviv with no sign of an end to almost a week of fighting. Israel shared “smoking gun” evidence with the Biden administration that Hamas militants were operating out of tower block destroyed. Is Omar kidding me? Elections have consequences and when anti-Israel, anti-Semitic people are elected to high public office, it is dangerous. Look at her history. Lots of questionable actions including $3.7mm of her campaign funds being spent on her husband’s consulting firm ahead of the November election. Talk about hate, she crushes Israel at every turn. How in the hell does she get elected to office in America?
The media building reduced to rubble mentioned in the article. Israel had evidence Hamas operations were in the building.
House Republicans voted to make Rep. Elise Stefanik their conference chair, days after ousting Rep. Liz Cheney from the role over her opposition to former President Donald Trump. Stefanik, a fourth-term congresswoman from New York, garnered clout within her party in 2019 when she defended Trump during his first impeachment trial. Cheney has been denounced within her party for refusing to stop blasting Trump for spreading baseless conspiracy theories about his election loss.
A national terrorism alert issued Friday warns that violent extremists may take advantage of the easing of pandemic restrictions to conduct attacks. The alert does not cite any specific threats. But it warns of potential danger from an increasingly complex and volatile mix that includes domestic terrorists inspired by various grievances, racial or ethnic hatred and influences from abroad. Those threats were exacerbated by COVID-19, which spawned conspiracy theories and deepened anger at the government in some quarters over the shutdown of the economy. As virus conditions improve, the alert says new dangers loom.
Incredible 12-year-old chess player takes the world by storm. Abhimanyu Mishra is set to become the youngest Grandmaster ever. His latest tournament, the just concluded Budapest First Saturday, was his most impressive to date. It was his third Grandmaster event in a row with only a couple of days break between them, yet he simply ran away from the field, scoring an unbeaten 8/9 with a winning margin of three points. His tournament performance rating (TPR) was 2739, the level of the world top 20 Grandmasters. It was almost certainly the youngest 2700+ TPR in chess history, and the first ever by a pre-teen. He did not play competitive chess for 6 months due to the pandemic. In March, he defeated a 2,521 rated Russian Grandmaster in only 19 moves.
I only know about chess tournaments from Jack. I taught him and he got quite good and had a solid rating of around 1,000 in 5th grade. He quit because it is not golf and in Florida, chess basically does not exist. In NYC, chess is in public schools, in Florida, it is not discussed in $35k private schools. For a 12-year-old to have a 2,700+ rating in a tournament is insanity. The #1 chess player in the world has been Magnus Carlsen who has an overall rating of 2748. The 12 year old has an overall rating of 2408. For perspective, Jack played against Magnus Carlsen in a charity event and he played him one on one. It was the equivalent of me playing Nadal in tennis today or Jordan in basketball at his peak. Not fun for Nadal or Jordan and embarrassing for me. Carlsen had Jack pinned in no time and let him flail a bit to give him confidence. Jack just told me he thought he it took Carlsen 5 minutes. It was closer to 1 min 30 seconds and Magnus did not check mate him for 5 minutes because he had 10 games going simultaneously and showed mercy. Pictures of Jack below against Magnus 7 years ago almost to the day. Jack is now taller than Magnus. Funny.
The University of California has agreed to not require the SAT or ACT in the 10-campus system which has more than 280k students. SAT and ACT scores won't be considered for admission for students applying for entry between fall 2021 and spring 2025. However, the scores that are submitted voluntarily can be used for course placement after a student is admitted. I feel standardized tests such as the SAT and ACT are a bit unfair. Wealthy people pay for tutors and not everyone can afford that angle. One woman I know has a business which prepares students for college and one family spent $750k on tutoring, essay writing, and interview preparation to get their kid into his dream school. Holy cow! I can help my kids prepare with tutoring, but ain’t no way I am spending six figures on test prep. By the way, on the $750k story, the kid got in and could not handle the academics and required another $100k/year in tutoring to get him through. Yea, that seems fair, NOT!
Yet another UFO citing from a US Navy ship. Each week, it seems there is another one. I feel the US Government has a duty to inform the citizens about what they know. The link has a short video which shows a UFO over the ocean and then crashing into the water. I am a firm believer that the earth is not the only inhabitable planet. I will again let the alien community know that I am available for observation. If you bring me to a different planet, I hope it helps make me look younger and take strokes off my golf game. Video taken aboard a US Navy ship off the coast of San Diego shows a mysterious, spherical object flying in the air before disappearing into the ocean, reports said Friday. The footage is the source of two freeze frame images of unidentified flying objects previously released that a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed was recorded by US Navy personnel, FOX 8 reported. The black and white clip, taken aboard the USS Omaha in July 2019, shows a small round object flying parallel to the ocean, hovering for a moment before it drops into the water out of sight. “Whoa, it’s getting close,” a voice can be heard saying in the clip as the craft got closer to the water’s edge. In another siting story, a former Navy pilot says he witnessed UFOs flying in restricted airspace off the coast of Virginia nearly every day for two years beginning in 2019. Former Navy Lt. Ryan Graves tells CBS’s “60 Minutes” that the unidentified vessels — like ones seen in a Pentagon-confirmed US Navy video near San Diego — are a security threat.
Virus/Vaccine
Given the continued improvements in COVID-19 data, I am no longer going to give details each report unless there is something of substance. Cases, hospitalizations and deaths continue to go in the right direction. Cases and hospitalizations are now under 35k. Peak was 250k and 135k for cases and hospitalizations respectively. My bigger focus is on the vaccine roll out which has been disappointing in recent weeks. More than 1.43 billion doses have been administered across 176 countries, according to data collected by Bloomberg. The latest rate was roughly 23.2 million doses a day. In the U.S., 271 million doses have been given so far. In the last week, an average of 1.93 million doses per day were administered.Unfortunately, we are again heading in the wrong direction on doses administered. It has been a disappointing 30 days with respect to the roll out.
I think the WHO is a sham. If I were President, I would not fund them. They could not have been more wrong about the pandemic or more aligned with China in my opinion. I am a firm believer that China needs to pay for this global pandemic which was made worse by lies. Remember, they bought up all the PPE and lied about the spread. I do not know the answer, but believe it is not the status quo with our relationship with China or the WHO. A group of top scientists from around the globe has pushed back on the World Health Organization’s conclusion that it is “extremely unlikely” COVID-19 leaked from a Wuhan lab — insisting the theory is “viable” and deserves “a proper investigation.” Eighteen prominent scientists, including a Harvard University epidemiologist and a Stanford University microbiologist, are calling for a “transparent” and “data-driven” probe into the origins of the pandemic that has killed more than 3.34 million people worldwide as of Friday. “Theories of accidental release from a lab and zoonotic spillover both remain viable,” the scientists wrote in a letter published Thursday in the journal Science.
NY positivity rate dropped for 40 straight days. It stand just over 1% today compared with 8% in January. Nationally, the positivity rate is down to 3.1% compared with 13.1% in January.
Real Estate
General Comment
Everywhere I look, home inventory is low. I was just speaking with someone from Toronto. I had heard things are cooling there and mentioned that. He laughed and said, “$1mm homes have 30-40 offers and they are selling for $1.5mm.” What I find interesting is that inventory is so low right now, but turnover is very high. I am seeing fractional inventory relative to historic levels and would have assumed that meant less volumes. WRONG! The reason is it might have taken 6 months to sell a home previously and now it takes days or a couple weeks. If you had an inventory of 10 homes with an average of 6 month turnover or 3 homes turning every 2 weeks, you get a lot more volume with fewer homes. I wrote about Greenwich, CT last week and the April records. It looks like the 1st week of May set records again according to Mark Pruner.
Hamptons 20 Priciest Home Sales in 2021
This article updated 5/14/21 shows the 20 highest price home sales this year and the range is from $8.7 to $60mm.
Dick Fuld’s Jupiter Island Home Sold for $32.5mm
My friend, Devin Kay, sold the home cited in this WSJ article. It has 3.3 acres and 265 feet of ocean frontage with a total of 14,971 feet across the main and guest houses. Mark Brodsky, founder of Aurelius Capital, bought the home according to the article.
Global Home Prices
To me, global home prices are one of the biggest surprises resulting from the pandemic. Among the 37 wealthy countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), real house prices rose by almost 7% between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the fourth quarter of 2020 — the fastest year-on-year growth in the past two decades. The move higher is notable, but in South Florida, prices seem to be going up 6.7% every other month or sooner. In West Boca, some homes have doubled in a year. In my community, I would guess home prices are up 40% or more in a year. In Miami, on the water, it is far greater than 50%. The article discusses different markets across the globe.