And from the Classics Department:
And on we go:
And speaking of strange positions:
Now get out of bed and go do something useful.
Category: Funny Stuff
What Price Collecting?
Lots of educational video to watch today, because… it’s the weekend!
One of the reasons why wealthy people are looking at hypercars as fungible assets and investment vehicles [sic] is because they are wealthy enough to ride the ups and downs of consumer demand — why, for example, a rusted-out 1950s-era Porsche 911 or 1960s E-type Jag can ask for, and get, a premium price for that piece of junk. Scarcity, of course, helps — which is why a rusted old 1956 Porsche 356 cabriolet will always be worth more than a worn-out 1975 Honda Civic: the first is worth restoring, the second is only worth recycling.
If you’re interested in learning about this business — even or especially if you can’t afford to play in it — then I would suggest you watch Cars & Money, Rob Moore’s excellent podcast channel with his partner, Carl Hartley of Tom Hartley Motors. Here’s one example. (All the podcast episodes are long, about twenty minutes too long in my opinion, but they’re peculiarly fascinating. This particular episode, you can quit at 1:28.00)
And speaking of watching, there’s the premium watch business, where Teddy Baldassarre, for example, plies his business. (Here’s one.)
But in this latter category, if you want to see all the costs of creating a watch collection — as an investment strategy — then please take a look at this one, (yeah, it’s A.I., but it’s factually correct) to find out how the big watch brands are bending collectors over the table:
(…and these guys are the worst, which is why I’ll never own a Rolex, because I’m not going to play their stupid game.)
Oh, and by the way: the actual purchase price of these items is only the first lightning-strike on the wallet. Then comes the (mandatory) servicing, the parts replacement, etc. etc. etc…. see how the insurance companies play ducks and drakes with your premiums.
Oh, and by the way, car manufacturers like Ferrari are equally guilty of the same kind of practices (which you’ll also learn from Cars & Money; watch out for the word “allocation”).
…and Porsche is just as bad.
If a fool and his money are soon parted, then the duration of “soon” is shrinking faster than a cheap Chinese cotton T-shirt in the clothes dryer.
And when baubles like watches and performance sports cars start becoming investment assets, the Finance Fucks in companies like Rolex are going to start making marketing decisions (pro tip: they already are).
It’s the utter cynicism of the whole business which gets up my nose. My only consolation is that the fools who’re being thus led around by the nose are the super-wealthy who can afford to pay those bullshit prices. And I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
Strategy Change
Well, why not?
A majority of idiots in Gen Z have moved money out of investments and into a sports betting account. Twenty-six percent of Gen Z say “they treat sports betting as a deliberate, ongoing component of their financial plans,” according to a Bloomberg report.
Nothing like “fair and balanced reporting”, is there? (I know, it’s Breitbart and not Fox News, but you get my drift.)
That 26 percent compares to 14 percent of Millennials, just six percent of Generation X, and one percent of Boomers.
“Sports betting is increasingly competing with traditional investing for younger Americans’ attention,” adds Bloomberg, “with more than a quarter of Gen Z investors saying they see gambling on sports as part of their long-term financial strategy.”
Gambling as a “long-term strategy.” The stupid; it hurts.
But let’s look at this whole thing from another angle.
The thing about sports betting is that if you take it seriously and look at the stats (as opposed to picking a horse because its name reminds you of yer Mum), there’s little difference between that and, say, playing the stock market. Oh wait, those are serious investment vehicles. [eyecross]
And let’s be honest: how many times have you seen one of those silly games where darts thrown into a random chart of stocks have yielded better results than those picked by analysts? (I would love to see some kind of comparison of long-term results from the darts vs. the analysts, played each day, week or month over a twenty-five year period.)
Pro tip: it’s all gambling. Whether it’s a horse crossing the line first (at 27-1 odds) or GlobalMegaCorp Inc.’s share price doubling over the next six months, who can say? Even better: who’s not going to make money over the result of the next Dallas Cowboys game by picking the other team?
The only way people are going to consistently lose money on sports betting is when they start playing the minutiae: points spreads, yardages, number of times Caitlin Clark is going to draw a flagrant foul for the rest of the WNBA season, etc. (In the stock market, those kinds of bets I mean investments are called “puts”, and while the rewards can be astonishing, mostly it’s just the old “dropping dollars down a drain” situation.)
Rule of thumb: the more complex the bet, the more likely you’re going to lose.
But I digress. I have no problem with a small segment of Da Yoot trying a different way to increase their moolah. I’m more interested in why they’re doing it, but not that interested, any more than I’m interested in why people still go to casinos, or why they bet on which raindrop reaches the bottom of the windowpane first.
Or whether Whizzbang Technologies’ IPO will yield 45% growth of stock value on the first day’s call.
I should point out that in my own yoot, I once got suckered into a golf game called “Yardbucks”, in which each yard of the golf course was worth a yard: lose a 375-yard hole, and you’re down $375. (There are typically more than 6,000 yards in an average golf course.)
I ended up losing only $15, and I only managed to lose that little because I won the last hole, a par-five 568-yard monster by fluking a 15-yard putt.
More to the point, I think I sweated out well over a gallon in those four hours, and I’m pretty sure I did lasting damage to my heart. I’ve never gambled on golf, or any other sport since.
Theft
Of course, the foundation policy of all Marxist policymakers and politicians is to punish the rich. So nobody should be surprised that Hizzoner Comrade Mamdani of NYfC has a plan to tax residences in Manhattan that are adjudged to be non-primary — i.e. the so-called pied-à-terre dwellings of those people who need a place to doss down during the week before fleeing to their houses in Lawn Guyland or Scawsdale for the weekend.
To my surprise, this little smash ‘n grab tax thievery has had its peepee severely whacked by a judge:
Staten Island Supreme Court Justice Wayne Ozzi issued a temporary restraining order effectively prohibiting any action on the luxury second home tax until an August 31 hearing on a lawsuit filed by three disgruntled homeowners.
Ozzi also hit out at Mamdani’s decision to release a list of the homeowners who could potentially be hit by the tax, many of whom were sent notices warning they would be liable unless they filed an exemption.
‘No law permitted or required the City to publish such a list of the names, addresses and property values of more than 900,000 New York City homeowners, or to publicize that list through an irregular, mid-year publication,’ Ozzi wrote in his decision.
‘[The judgment] annuls and vacates [the] city’s mailed notices, and any determination that such mailed notices constitute proper notice under tax law.’
He added that city officials should have conducted an ‘individualized statutorily-required initial determination’ before issuing the notices to homeowners, so as to not place the burden on the property owners.
The judge then barred city officials from taking any further action on the 17,000 notices sent by the Department of Finance, which warned they would face a five-figure tax bill unless they requested an exemption.
Hubba hubba. For once, a New York judge got it right.
Sadly, it’s not going to end there, because the Marxists’ ravenous appetite to punish the wealthy and successful knows no bounds — even legal ones like this one — and at some point in the future, sure as sugar, those taxes will be imposed.
While I hate Marxists with a passion, especially when they engage in theft of this nature, I have to suspect that among those 900,000 unfortunate people are an awful lot — 50%? 60%? — who can be reliably counted on to vote Democrat in their elections, because New York. So in this case, they’re getting what they voted for, good and hard.
And I’m not sympathetic.
Monday Funnies
And from the Classics Department:
On with the regular programming:
And speaking of our beloved educators:
And one last admonition (I assume for female students):
Homework? I think so.
Almost Righteous
Executive summary: This miserable scrote decided (for reasons now only known to himself) to go on a little extemporaneous murder of anyone who happened to be within range of his gun, ending up with three dead victims and over half a dozen badly-wounded ones.
He may well have gone on to greater things, but being that this was in Idaho, there happened to be an armed citizen in the immediate area, who jumped out of his car and popped off a shot or two in the scumbag’s general direction. Said scumbag, alarmed that he might himself be shot and hearing police sirens in the distance, saved Our Hero the cost of an extra bullet and society of legal costs by just wasting [sic] himself.
Had Our Hero’s aim been true, this would have been Righteous, but he missed, hence the title of this post.
Lesson learned: you never know when a little trip to get a burger — even at an In-N-Out in Idaho — might put you in the proximity of scum like the above, so whatever the reason, if your trip is a short one always carry your frigging gun.
And, of course, in Vulcan’s name: practice, practice, practice.
Afterthought: We should ban In-N-Out Burger restaurants. After all, if it saves just ONE life…