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Welcome, dear reader, to our annual Golden Turkey Awards.  But for my commitment to absolute fairness and concern over the appearance of impropriety, I would have awarded the first Golden Turkey Award to Dechert for actually getting the Golden Turkey Awards done this year.  What a crazy year end.  The market is insane.

On the other hand, while time is short, there’s plenty to bloviate about.  I remember last year we were absolutely ready for the end of the Trump administration because the Biden administration promised a “dull is cool” vibe.  Well, dull has been a failure.  The farrago of lingering Covid, a return to something which is clearly not normalcy, but something new and with a pond full of black swans flopping around, it is not dull.  So, how’s that working out for you?  The follies of 2021 at least make writing this column easier.  So, we went digging for inanity for the purpose of making gentle fun of things that broadly annoy us and, shockingly, we found things to talk about.  So, here we are once again.Continue Reading 2021 Golden Turkeys

It’s coming up on awards season.  The Emmys were last week and weirdly, I got a thought bubble about nominees in the Black Swan category, walking the red carpet looking for attention!  Think the Masquerade scene from Phantom of the Opera when the Phantom comes prancing down the stairs to harsh the festivities (at least he sang well).  

We have some obvious nominees today.  But are they the real thing?  Will they move markets?  We have, with some reason, become inured to the disruptive headlines howling about threats to our way of life.  Is there simply too much chaos out there to pick out the things which are really relevant from the noise?  Our 24-hour news cycle is hardly helpful, is it?  The talking heads, with practiced expressions of concern, seriousness of purpose and faux competence, serve up our daily quantum of fear and distress (Film at 11!).  Don’t they seem almost gleeful to report yet another potential disaster?  With breathy anxiety, designed to tug at our atavistic fight or flight instincts, they repurpose as news exaggeration, hyperbole, vague allegations, unconfirmed reports and sheer speculation.

The scary part is, of course, that buried and obscured in all that noise might be real news, things that investors and market participants really ought to be paying attention to because they will matter.  The trick is sussing out the stuff that matters from the stuff that doesn’t.

So, we really do need to take into account these aspirational swans.  One of them could be that figurative dead archduke.

Let’s take a stroll along the red carpet and chat up some of these swans.Continue Reading Does A Red Carpet Full Of Black Swans Matter?

Last week, over 4,200 of our closest friends met virtually for the annual January conference by the Commercial Real Estate Finance Council, which is usually held in Miami. While we have all learned to go without in the last year, going without seeing the “smart resort wear” of our colleagues was almost too much to bear. Thankfully, CREFC put together an informative and interactive conference – complete with a virtual lobby that played in between sessions featuring a guy on his cell phone walking in circles. Talk about realistic! Best of all, CREFC honored the real reason we attend conferences and provided a “virtual swag bag.” All in all, CREFC did the best they could under the circumstances and we agree that’s all we ask of anyone or thing at this point.
Continue Reading CREFC Annual Conference: The Virtual Edition

Happy Inauguration Day (I hope).

Every turning of the year makes for a convenient point to look backwards, and of course, forward, but this year seems to actually denote some sort of inflection point and, as a card-carrying member of the blogosphere, I feel compelled to burden you with my views as to what the next year will hold for us all.  I am unburdened by anxiety or discomfiture in doing so, as the prediction business is one of asymmetrical risk and reward.  An anodyne exercise, I trust.  No one actually expects talking heads to be right, and no one remembers when you’re wrong; but in the blind cat finding a dead mouse type of way, if you are right, you get to annoyingly trumpet your breathtakingly erudite and accurate prediction over and over again for the rest of the year.

After predicting a terrific 2020 last January, how wrong could I be this time?
Continue Reading Elections Matter: My Dead Nuts Certain Guarantees for 2021