This is an unprecedented housing market that simultaneously has collapsing sales demand, construction demand still higher than capacity, and some evidence of falling prices.
On the price bit, I think there will be a lot of takes, even from insiders, that prices are declining more precipitously now than in 2006-2010 because builders learned their lessons. But the real reason for the difference is that we have been in a novel supply chain constraint context, which was associated with unsustainably high builder margins, and as declining demand softens the pressure on supply, builders can adjust back to normal margins in order to unload inventory. That's an entirely different issue than what happened in 2006-2010 when demand fell well below the capacity to build.
Note that while single family starts have declined markedly from their highs, they have just now been reduced to a level slightly lower than current building capacity. And multi-unit starts continue to rise, even though starts are now and have recently been well above the rate of completions. Some funding constraints are probably hitting the single-family builders because of high rates, but multi-unit developers are moving full steam ahead.
Census numbers on September sales will be out soon.
Ah, sorry. Typo. 600,000 units under construction, which is a measurement at any moment in time while the 2 million units a year is a rate. Thanks for noting. I'll correct the post.
It seems like the fundamental defense against spurious but compassionate claims is to reciprocate the compassion with more accurate claims.
Like... Black Lives Matter! Yes. One can quite easily turn that into an unobjectionable statement. Because Black Lives Matter, instead of Defunding the Police, we should be compassionate toward the (overwhelmingly) Black victims of crime, and help them, you know, not be victimized.
I would bet the stock you picked was NOT "the most volatile" - but was highly volatile AND you were lucky (/skillful?) to pick it when was low and also lucky it went up when it did.
Arnold should have joined the contest, while noting the usual real money long term superiority of a diversified portfolio. Perhaps showing how choosing a small percentage of each actually chosen stock would have been far better than choosing any of the under-performing - and a huge part of successful investing is avoiding the losses.
I'm not sure how skilled it was... basically I just picked a penny stock that happened to double in value during the contest. To defend the CSPI tournament a bit, they do try to mitigate the relative rank incentive a bit by evaluating other factors besides profit in the final decision. If someone makes it into the top 5 placing a bunch of long-shot bets that just turn out lucky they won't be selected as the winner.
If our civilization has " have no conceptual defense against any claims made as calls for empathy and compassion, no matter how extreme, pathological" because of it's Christian roots, then how did Christianity manage to function for twenty centuries?
True most of those centuries were a dark age, but did that have anything to do with being too compassionate?
Ranked choice voting would seem to violate one man one vote along with not actually truly reflecting voter choice. There is multiple lines of research showing differences between "ranking" ahead of time and one on one choice. Saving the cost of run offs seems to be a bad choice. If it did not favor the "deep state" does anyone think it would be allowed. I am unconvinced if Alaska republican voters had to actually pull the lever for a D vs R that they would vote D. The amount that ranked the D second probably thought their candidate would be first or second and the "vote" did not count. Oops.
Great interview & ideas in NS Lyon's interview by Matthew:
>>the world is forcibly reconfigured by at least three simultaneous revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.<<
Along with rapid tech change is that older folk are very much NOT "wiser" with new tech - and therefore much much less respected by tech savvy youngsters.
NS Lyons also hints at the rich, spoiled brat impatience against reality; we're all oppressed by gravity.
>>we live in a cultural civilization that is fundamentally terrified of the messiness of reality, and which does whatever it takes to try to free ourselves from its limits – even, now, from fundamentals like biology. <<
I don't think it's terror so much as outrage against reality. The outrage that the next meal you eat is NOT the "best ever"; that each day is not the "best ever". Like spoiled brats.
"That is why I declined when the principal at my high school asked me to sponsor a team of students in a stock-picking contest. In real life, you should choose a diversified portfolio, in order to minimize risk for any given expected return. In a stock-picking contest with a limited play-money budget, you cannot win with a diversified portfolio. You need to plunge into the most volatile security you can find, and hope for the best."
This makes no sense- you are conflating two different goals- the identification of good stock predictors and the prudent management of money. If you are going to refuse to participate in a contest of this sort, do so for a more valid reason such as the contest doesn't cover a long enough time period to perform its stated goal of identifying good predictors.
No, the problem that Arnold highlighted is that a contest-style payoff function, of e.g. 1 if you finish with the highest-value portfolio and 0 otherwise, makes the exercise practically useless.
This is an unprecedented housing market that simultaneously has collapsing sales demand, construction demand still higher than capacity, and some evidence of falling prices.
On the price bit, I think there will be a lot of takes, even from insiders, that prices are declining more precipitously now than in 2006-2010 because builders learned their lessons. But the real reason for the difference is that we have been in a novel supply chain constraint context, which was associated with unsustainably high builder margins, and as declining demand softens the pressure on supply, builders can adjust back to normal margins in order to unload inventory. That's an entirely different issue than what happened in 2006-2010 when demand fell well below the capacity to build.
Here is an update on September construction: https://kevinerdmann.substack.com/p/september-residential-construction
Note that while single family starts have declined markedly from their highs, they have just now been reduced to a level slightly lower than current building capacity. And multi-unit starts continue to rise, even though starts are now and have recently been well above the rate of completions. Some funding constraints are probably hitting the single-family builders because of high rates, but multi-unit developers are moving full steam ahead.
Census numbers on September sales will be out soon.
It's great to read your comments here, but I don't understand your units:
>>At the current rate of construction capacity, a normal market would have about 600 units under construction, <<
but your conclusion:
>>in a market not constrained by the supply chain, we could be building at least 2 million units a year. <<
Is that 600 thousand under construction, or 600 a day, or what?
(Obviously I don't read your blog often enough ... but numbers used should always be clearly identified by authors.)
Ah, sorry. Typo. 600,000 units under construction, which is a measurement at any moment in time while the 2 million units a year is a rate. Thanks for noting. I'll correct the post.
It seems like the fundamental defense against spurious but compassionate claims is to reciprocate the compassion with more accurate claims.
Like... Black Lives Matter! Yes. One can quite easily turn that into an unobjectionable statement. Because Black Lives Matter, instead of Defunding the Police, we should be compassionate toward the (overwhelmingly) Black victims of crime, and help them, you know, not be victimized.
“you cannot win with a diversified portfolio. You need to plunge into the most volatile security you can find”
I actually won a stock-picking contest as a youth doing precisely that.
(Also for Yancey)
I would bet the stock you picked was NOT "the most volatile" - but was highly volatile AND you were lucky (/skillful?) to pick it when was low and also lucky it went up when it did.
Arnold should have joined the contest, while noting the usual real money long term superiority of a diversified portfolio. Perhaps showing how choosing a small percentage of each actually chosen stock would have been far better than choosing any of the under-performing - and a huge part of successful investing is avoiding the losses.
I'm not sure how skilled it was... basically I just picked a penny stock that happened to double in value during the contest. To defend the CSPI tournament a bit, they do try to mitigate the relative rank incentive a bit by evaluating other factors besides profit in the final decision. If someone makes it into the top 5 placing a bunch of long-shot bets that just turn out lucky they won't be selected as the winner.
If our civilization has " have no conceptual defense against any claims made as calls for empathy and compassion, no matter how extreme, pathological" because of it's Christian roots, then how did Christianity manage to function for twenty centuries?
True most of those centuries were a dark age, but did that have anything to do with being too compassionate?
Ranked choice voting would seem to violate one man one vote along with not actually truly reflecting voter choice. There is multiple lines of research showing differences between "ranking" ahead of time and one on one choice. Saving the cost of run offs seems to be a bad choice. If it did not favor the "deep state" does anyone think it would be allowed. I am unconvinced if Alaska republican voters had to actually pull the lever for a D vs R that they would vote D. The amount that ranked the D second probably thought their candidate would be first or second and the "vote" did not count. Oops.
Great interview & ideas in NS Lyon's interview by Matthew:
>>the world is forcibly reconfigured by at least three simultaneous revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.<<
Along with rapid tech change is that older folk are very much NOT "wiser" with new tech - and therefore much much less respected by tech savvy youngsters.
NS Lyons also hints at the rich, spoiled brat impatience against reality; we're all oppressed by gravity.
>>we live in a cultural civilization that is fundamentally terrified of the messiness of reality, and which does whatever it takes to try to free ourselves from its limits – even, now, from fundamentals like biology. <<
I don't think it's terror so much as outrage against reality. The outrage that the next meal you eat is NOT the "best ever"; that each day is not the "best ever". Like spoiled brats.
"That is why I declined when the principal at my high school asked me to sponsor a team of students in a stock-picking contest. In real life, you should choose a diversified portfolio, in order to minimize risk for any given expected return. In a stock-picking contest with a limited play-money budget, you cannot win with a diversified portfolio. You need to plunge into the most volatile security you can find, and hope for the best."
This makes no sense- you are conflating two different goals- the identification of good stock predictors and the prudent management of money. If you are going to refuse to participate in a contest of this sort, do so for a more valid reason such as the contest doesn't cover a long enough time period to perform its stated goal of identifying good predictors.
No, the problem that Arnold highlighted is that a contest-style payoff function, of e.g. 1 if you finish with the highest-value portfolio and 0 otherwise, makes the exercise practically useless.
LUCK, and knowing that luck often dominates analysis, is a very important lesson.
There are much-less-ridiculous ways to teach that lesson.