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John T. Reed’s news blog

Did an NFL player become a profitable house rehab flipper?

Posted by John Reed on

Today’s WSJ says NFL player Kyle Van Noy is a skilled real estate rehab flipper. I was going to check if that was true, but the article fails to give enough information. The key fact that is missing is how much did comparable houses that were not rehabbed go up in value during the same period. Probably about the same. . Hardly any rehab is profitable. Van Noy appears to have spent $320K n renovations to three houses. That is less than the difference between the purchase and sale prices in each case. But A. we do not know the...

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Wall Street Journal overreacts to higher FNMA/FHLMC mortgage limit

Posted by John Reed on

Today’s WSJ editorialized that raising the FNMA/FHLMC mortgage limit in high-cost markets to near $1million will cause another subprime crisis. What? I read every book on that crisis and saw the movie and speeches and panel discussions including the people involved. . Raising FNMA/FHLMC limits played NO role in the subprime crisis. Here is the history of the limits. https://www.hsh.com/mortgage/a-history-of-conforming-fanniefreddie-loan-limits.html  The subprime crash was in 2009. In the years leading up to that the limit was raised to $417,000 in 2006 and stayed at that amount through 2016. As its name explains, the subprime crisis was caused by making loans...

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Bring back kick returns

Posted by John Reed on

I have an article condemning uncompetitive football plays because they are boring. By uncompetitive, I mean at least one team is not trying to do anything. Sounds like a soccer penalty kick. . One of my suggestions was adopted in the NFL. I wanted the ball moved back to the 25 for a kicked 1-point PAT. Leave it at the two for 2-pt. PATs. Did they adopt that because of me. I doubt it. . But I wrote the article before they did that. . https://www.johntreed.com/.../boring-football-plays-that... The result was what I predicted. PAT kicks stopped being automatic, a.k.a. uncompetitive and...

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Forget traditional retirement financial planning. It’s nuts.

Posted by John Reed on

Today’s WSJ has an article about retirement. Its main point is the 4% rule is out of date. The new rule is 3.3%. That is the amount of your life savings you should spend during your first year of retirement. In one part of the article, they assume you have 50% of your savings in stocks and 50% in bonds. Jesus H. Christ on a crutch! I am not an estate-planning expert. The problem is apparently neither are those who say they are. In order to make a how much to spend your first retirement year recommendation, you have to...

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Jason Zweig’s advice on which stocks to buy during double digit inflation is ill-advised for that and especially for higher inflation

Posted by John Reed on

Jason Zweig's WSJ column Saturday was titled "An Investor's Guide to Deflating Inflation Fears." . A more accurate title would be how common stocks and bonds did in past moderately high inflation. Who cares? What to be in and out of in inflation is quite well identified BY THE DEFINITION of inflation. . It is a loss in purchasing power of the USD. So you want to avoid USD-denominated assets, own assets not denominated in USD, and owe USD-denominated debt. Sufficient liquidity for routine and rainy-day expenses is also necessary. . Zweig says T-bills had a slight negative return from...

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