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horn4life

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Everything posted by horn4life

  1. And that is also why one of the time honored phrases of value in real estate is, "Location, location, location!"
  2. Guess I was free associating diamonds and gold. But I bet some of his friends call him diamond... 😉 On thing I hadn't really thought about regarding tariffs wil be the effect on auto insurance. insurance and housing have been some of the stickiest and worst drags on disposable income. If the replacement parts now cost 25% more, what percentage of that cost is factored into your monthly premium? I would assume the actual cost of parts is a fairly large component of the policy coverage? Will large used car parts dealers (which Insurance uses a lot) bump their prices to match new parts costs increases? Or not take that profit margin until they are forced to? 😉 If folks stop buying new cars, that will even further push up demand for a finite number of used car parts. Which all brings me to a stock that I can potentially take interest in betting on rising. MP is the other one I have a small taste of right now. LKQ - up 1.84% this last week, and .46% on Friday's bloodbath. WARNING - I have not done a lick of research on the stock beyond what I just searched for as I thought about used car parts. Anyhow - if it when up on Friday I am going to add it to my watch list. Could be completely unsound financially, but maybe worth taking a glance at? Anyhow there will certainly be pressure on auto insurers to increase their premiums, to cover the inflated costs of replacement parts.
  3. Jamie Diamond brought back about 4$ billion recently . If you have a 10% tariff on a commodity or a 20% tariff on a commodity, then the cost of that commodity goes up 10 ro 20%. Diamond and J.P. Morgan think it's smarter to have your gold delivered for the cost of shipping. Rather than the cost of shipping, plus 10 or 20% in a month. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/feb/01/jpmorgan-gold-bullion-trump-tariffs. Article is a month old. If we are lucky...
  4. You know when you sit back and think about it we have sort of dodged a bullet. If not for the massive level of incompetence, we were very, very, very lucky some dumbass add Jeffrey Goldberg to the INCREDIBLY FUCKING STUPID group chat. If not, the only folks that would know what a fucking security risks these dumbasses are, would be Russia and China. A billion dollars says our Russian Agent DNI appointee, was on her private fucking phone. Anybody want to bet otherwise.
  5. Hell I am the point where I am just hoping we have elections in two years. Right now I could completely see a GOP congress in lock step postpone the Federal Elections because of some Declaration of Emergency. I hope like fuck I am wrong, but tell me what GOP congressman or Senator would stand up and say no? They would actually say... yeah... if we can ever get past this emergency, we will not only have elections but President Trump will release his health and tax records! If we are just patient... a few more years...
  6. Is anyone at all surprised that the collection of least qualified cabinet members ever, managed to do something stupid barely two months on the job? Anyone? Is anyone surprised that everyone thus far in the administration has lied about the classification of the information? Or that the real problem is the person reporting the stupidity? This is where we are now. There are not longer public servants, there are chosen sycophants, with loyalty to one individual rather than the American people. And that is EXACTLY the way Trump wants it. There will be nothing more than a collective yawn from the GOP. Trump is lucky, he has the most cowardly, feckless, and lacking of any moral compass Congress this country has ever seen. So you have a collection of the dumbest making the decision making, wholly supported without question by the GOP cowards of congress. This level on stupidity is going on constantly now. And it's not going to change. Just get used to it. And when something horrific happens, remember... it will be Biden's fault... I guess there is a small glimmer of hope with the Supreme Court, but with nobody to enforce the law against the Executive Branch... good luck with that...
  7. so... how fucked am I? Well parked the trailer at my neighbors after our monthlong coast trip in November... 2023... Unfortunately my Dad's back went out, and he was the care giver for my Mom, so I pretty much lost all of 2024, to family service, outside of a few trips. And this weekend my neighbor got a registered letter about a code violation, and I needed to move the trailer ASAP. Probably tagged it and the high winds blew it off, but long story short I did about two days of prep in one day, to get the damn thing moved. Of course this is the first time I have done absolutely nothing to it for more than a year. Roof looks like crap, need to reseal around vents and A/C, and have a small crack in my shower skylight. I spend about 3 hours just trying to recondition the slide out seals and clean out all the flaking from the roof from between the seals, but got everything working to clos us without tearing the seals. They are getting fragile with now maintenance. But now as you can tell the rig is getting beat up on top. Going to need to re-tape the seam on the slide out that is deteriorating, and decide what to do on the roof. Still have not checked the water system since winterizing it, nor the A/C as it have been just sitting. The only thing that bugged me was my electric trailer brakes were not working. Going to do some electrical testing next time out. Hoping it's not a rebuild on those, but hell it could all be rusted together after a year idle after a month in the sea breeze, even with a good washdown. So new roof for RV I assume? I need to make sure everything else works first, but I never had flaking before like this for sure, but the unit is 8 years old now and UV light eats shit over time, ESPECIALLY without any maintenance. But figure I need to come up with a plan to fix her and start using her again, or fix and sell her. But I want to keep her and hit the coast again. So what should be my plan of attack on the roof? Going to need to replace the awning as well.
  8. Yeah - that's why you don't keep your baggie behind your driver's license... But we all have our flaws, and fuck "It was the 80's". You would have had to have been a monster nerd not to have been around it to some degree then. And yes... coke is addictive... it is not good stuff. Sorry he fell short of your NFL Hall of Fame mark of success... But in the early 80's Simms was a genuinely nice guy. Like night and day hanging out with him and Craig James for example. Both like the cola, but one was a nice guy, the other was... a prick. So regardless of Simms flawlessness as a human, I remember him as an amazing football player, and a guy who did not let his status on campus explode his head beyond reason. He was a large part of the reason when I came to UT in 1979, I got to enjoy some pretty nice seasons and an undergrad. And for that I will always have respect for a guy who I liked on and off the field.
  9. That video gave me chills - the sort of guy you are happy to have represent your school.
  10. Yeah Sims was a good guy. Used to hang a lot in Paradise as well. Dude was prototypical of what you see today in a leaner more athletic players on defense. And I agree Ken would say, son't put your junk behind our Driver's license. Sad to see that he has passed. A genuine good guy.
  11. But on topic- I snore. And I don't sleep. Like I am up at 5 am, and I can almost never just lay down and fall asleep. Then I wake up to pee.. and I toss and turn. To be honest I fall asleep on the couch half the time and rather than sneak in and wake her up. She REALLY NEEDS her sleep. She's asleep 10 at the very latest and might sleep until 7 if not needed to visit a facility that day. What funny is when we are on vacation we end up being more in the same rhythm, because we are spending every waking moment together, so we sleep fine together. So I guess the answer is Sorta. The problem is more me, in that my body fights sleep and I almost need the TV background noise to fall asleep. She can't stand that. In fact the worst night of sleep I ever got was at 5000 acre ranch in Brady. Because there was almost no background noise, each chirp of a cricket, or owl hoot was like thunder. I can however always fall asleep at the beach. Something about the waves rhythmic repitition. In face some wave video on YouTube has helped me when I was really having a hard time sleeping.
  12. IS that when your tongue gets out of rhythm?
  13. Well to be truthful someone's Temper led us to this moment. And he coaches at Old Miss... wah... wah...
  14. Peter Thiel on broken real estate system Anyhow interesting article that popped up in my feed. This is actually one of my concerns with my younger daughter, being able to own her own place. Interestingly, I was going to question affordability with lumber prices on the rising about 20% in the last 6 months playing into the problem. I was unsure of this statement, so I pulled up a ten year lumber price chart. And I found it interesting just to look at a 10 year chart. I could not get the image to imbed, sorry. But I was actually surprised by the spike coming out of covid, and before rate increases. But is demand or speculation driving up prices right now? https://www.macrotrends.net/2637/lumber-prices-historical-chart-data Anyhow curious to see what you think about Thiel's thinking on the fundamentals of pricing, and what your thoughts are on how to make entry level homes more affordable.
  15. I did barely miss out on a crazy deal. If (and it was a long time ago) i recall correctly, right before all shit got lose at Enron, they were trying to dump some condos the corp had apparently bought. Apparently it was a good portion of a complex and they were dumping two bedroom gulf facing 2/2 condos for Like $37K? Enron was brutal. Really hurt Houston at the time as I recall. But I was long gone to Austin by that time.
  16. I might suggest you find one or more places to "paper trade" stocks. A lot easier to learn on paper than losing paper dollars. You might look for more conservative companies that pay off nice dividends. Select dividend reinvestment and do nothing and it will grow over time. If history is any indicator. Great dividend reinvestment story. My wife's MOM's sister worked as a secretary her entire life as was very frugal. But she had invested in Frito Lay, at the behest of an uncle in the early 1960's. PEPSICO swallowed Frito Lay in 1965. She passed away in 2015, and to the surprise of all her siblings... she had over $7 million in Pepsico stock. Dividend reinvestment, and stock splits over the decades, made that sucker grow but she never took anything out.
  17. That's not why. I just think that we will become a less and less desirable place for foreigners to spend their money. I thought there were about 80% fewer internationals on SoCo during SXSW this year. The fortune article I think may have grossly underestimated the decline. I view the US much like I view the way the wife and I choose which restaurants we go to. We choose the places where we like the people, and spend our money there. This is going to be one of those things that I do not think will flesh out for a while. And trying to anticipate BEFORE everyone else figures things out is a very good thing in investing. I need to so some research on this, but perhaps I can yuse the power of surly combined with my lack of time, and let you guys help me with the research. have a great day all
  18. So anybody have any ideas on betting against companies in the US that might have high exposure to international tourism? After seeing the lack of internationals at SXSW, and Fortunes report on declining international travel to the US, I think there may be an opportunity here. But what companies would be hurt most if international travel dropped substantially? Thanks in advance.
  19. Too conservative, but as has been said it depends on your risk evel confort. But you have said the performance has been meh... Since you are 52 you also need to decide how long you want or need to work. Is 62 your number, is 68 your number? That makes a difference as well. But no risk, no reward. Of course IMHO you might wait a couple months to really reallocate. As Meh performance is better than red line performance downward. But I am not ready to be optimistic on this market until I understand more of the political and tariff risks. Our 401K is very conservatively allocated right now in bonds and maybe 30% stocks. Our risky account, is 40% cash, and 60% betting against the market. The only thing I really wish I had done differently was shove aftertax dollars into a Roth, that I could be playing around in the market with. I could have tripled or quadrupled that money in the last 2 years, tax free. Instead I am gonna have to write a very large check next year on regular and cap gain income. But talk to somebody and decide you level of risk acceptance. THAT is the first step. Then you use, that risk acceptance to balance your portifolio in a similar manner.
  20. I would say grasshopper that when it comes to the westerns Wayne died in, 3 out of 7 correct answers only makes master Po giggle at the grasshopper. Master Po say, "Score good enough for A&M" 😉
  21. oh grasshopper... Name the several Westerns John Wayne died in?
  22. HaHa. BUT in a good way!!! I believe that being nice to others brings good Karma. And I also believe that most people are good. And hope you get some tight lines before the wind starts to stir.
  23. So my coming back from music from SoCo, is who has more last stands? John Wayne... or Rodney Perry? Just sayin'.
  24. horn4life

    SXSW 2025

    ha I skipped that set - watched the Point, and came back for CJ Chenier, since I never saw his Dad. Today I have Restos at one SoCo Stomp Day 5 w/ Eve Monsees & Mike Buck (6:30), Freedom Rockets (5:15), Molecular Steve (4:00), Jo Alice (2:45), Pelvis Wrestley (1:30) [inside]; Shinyribs (6:15), Uncle Lucius (4:45), Barfield the Tyrant (3:30), Kelley Mickwee (2:15), Restos (1:00) [outside Continental club-
  25. horn4life

    SXSW 2025

    The one thing I really noticed this weekend was a LOT fewer international travelers. Like maybe 80+% fewer, where on SoCo they have made up a lot the last few years. So many fewer I was trying to think of US companies with a lot of exposure to international travel. OR is it that folks are simply pulling back on spending in the US? It was crowded of course, but not as crowded as last year. I want to see what the economic impact was of SXSW compared to last year after the sales taxes are tallied. Restos at 1 pm at the SoCo Stomp, be there or be square!
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