SOMETHING INTERESTING

Peter Thiel turned his IRA into $5 billion. Sounds fun…
Here’s a thread on how he did it (click to read).

MARKET MOVERS

  • Insider look on how the supply chain is massively affecting single-family new builds. Great thread.

  • iBuying has been a big market disruptor in real estate markets, but it may not stick. The overwhelming majority of profits are coming from record home price appreciation, which is temporary and appears to be falling. The decline will certainly have a material impact on iBuyer gross profit margins, which have reached record highs during 2021. What goes up, must come down, which will leave more room for us investors. Read more here.

  • Multi-Family and Single-Family rent growth hits record high. The national average rent in multi-family buildings (now $1,539) rose 10.3% from a year earlier - the first double-digit rise in the dataset’s history. Over the past 10 years, the average pace of growth has been 2%. Single-family homes that were built-to-rent saw even bigger increases, with prices up 13.9% from a year earlier. These gains have triggered a surge in interest among institutional investors in housing as an asset class. Hmmm...You think?!  Read more here.

  • The hounds are ready to get their hands in the honey pot. President Biden’s SEC is ready to go ham on regulating cryptocurrency (saw this coming a mile away). Gary Gensler is trying to make the case that it can and will regulate whatever cryptocurrency investment schemes it decides fall under its purview.  The IRS classifies crypto as property. The CFTC considers it to be a commodity. And the SEC says that digital assets may be securities, depending on the facts and circumstances. While they make up their mind about what crypto is, we’ll just keep making profits on it and look for ways to keep it tax-free. Read more here.

  • Ever dream of being James Bond? Facebook, in partnership with Ray-Ban, just launched its first-ever line of smart glasses. With them you can listen to music and podcasts, make calls, take videos and photos using just your voice, and then, of course, upload them to the Facebook social media platform of your choice. Did we mention we’re bullish on Facebook? Read more here.

  • Companies getting creative on ways to attract and keep employees. Disney is offering $1,000 signing bonuses at their job fair (Read more here.). Amazon is offering free Bachelor's Degrees as a new perk as it battles to hire hourly workers in the tight U.S. labor market. Workers must continue working for Amazon either part-time or full-time. Listen to the discussion here (21:31).

WHAT TO WATCH

  • More homes are on the way (but don’t hold your breath…). The publicly traded home builders now have 35% more lots than they did one year ago (see this tweet for chart). Most of these lots need a lot of work before homes can be started, and the supply chain conundrum has yet to be solved, so this boom won't happen in the near future. Good news, it’s on the horizon.

  • Phasing out the Fed’s pandemic-era stimulus by the middle of 2022 could clear the path for an interest-rate increase. Read more here.

  • As we’ve been saying in this and this digest, car tech is burgeoning AND continuing to pave ways to keep us safer. The bipartisan infrastructure bill will mandate a new technology to prevent drunk driving. The technology involves breath-based or touch-based sensors. In tandem with the bill, the U.S. Department of Transportation is set to issue a new standard for advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology in new vehicles no later than three years after the bill’s enactment (potentially in 2024). Could mean car ride services like Uber & Lyft get an extra pump, too, with more people unable to take the risk and drive their cars inebriated. All-in-all we think it’s a good move for tech, auto, and road safety. Read more here.

  • Bullish on the solar industry + EV. Needham investment firm believes the solar industry will keep growing at a fast pace due to EV adoption, a focus on energy resilience, rising utility rates, and heightened environmental awareness. Keep an eye on Sunrun, one of the biggest players in the U.S. solar market, and anything related to energy and EV tech. Read more here.

  • The top 6 Finance apps in El Salvador's App Store are all Bitcoin apps. PayPal is #7. El Salvador's largest bank is #8. More on this to come, I’m sure. We’ll keep you in the know. Check out the tweet here.

FINAL THOUGHTS

"Richard Feynman said, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” The smarter you are I think the truer that becomes." (collaborativefund.com, Too Smart)

When looking at a data, try and disprove yourself. That is the way to keep your data in service of you, rather than the other way around. Sunk cost bias is real. Confirmation bias is real. The people who survive the ups and downs best know that their opinion can change and should change based on how much of the whole story they’re looking at.

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