zevach

How to Profit from the Commercial Real Estate Fallout

All the shopping malls that were built and bought from 2003-2007 were done under the assumption that the consumer had tons of cash to spend via the great housing inflation and the great bank loan scam. These two things will not repeat. There is no easy credit to spend at the malls anymore and it is not coming back. The CRE establishment is hoping that everything turns around in a year. Consumers flush with cash return to the malls to buy junk. That is not going to happen for a long time. All CRE has is hope, there are no green shoots just hot winds blowing across a dust bowl of overbuilt malls. Hoping for rain does not make it happen.

Beware Leveraged ETFs

These guys that comment on ETFs and compare them to buy and hold strategies have a hidden agenda.

ETFs are used to capture the trend of the underlying securities. There are few who think that they are long term holds as everyone knows that trends change overtime. Buy and hold investing lost everyone a lot of money over the last 10 years. I would rather play the trends. Get on and get off.

It is true you can loose your shirt faster in these ETFs (double and triple) faster than buying the underlying security but I like the advantage of the quick gain when volatility is high. Therefore, I only buy ETFs at the extremes. When the financial hit bottom in early march FAS was under 4 dollars I loaded up. I got off at 6.50 but so what. I made >50% return in a very short time frame. That is all I was looking for. Currently SRS is at an extreme and I am buying and holding until the CRE market bottoms again.

I really wonder what the real agenda of these authors and commentators (like Cramer) who don't like these ETFs.

Freddie and Fannie: Living in the Past

right on - looking outside ourselves as the cause or solution to any problem is the human way and of course we are doomed to failure over and over again. Welcome to the real world - fantasy land is nice but the dream will always end. Reality wins in the end. Everything and everyone has the day in the sunshine (15 minutes of fame) and then the brightness flares up somewhere else. China anyone.

The senate debated useless issues while Rome burned and the barbarians took over - something like that. Here we are again - we are no longer hungry so we debate and argue who is at fault. The hungry work harder than you and me.