Somebody asked me last week what I thought rates were going to do. |
I told them the truth. I have no idea...but probably not down this year. |
Then they asked about oil. About AI and jobs. About the commercial debt wall everyone keeps writing about. And somewhere in the middle of me half-answering all of it, I caught myself doing the exact thing I tell other people not to do. I was pretending to have a confident take on stuff I don't actually control. |
So I stopped... |
The second half of this year has more moving at once than I can keep straight. Inflation came back when it was supposed to be cooling. The Fed is stuck and openly arguing with itself. Oil ran way up during the war and then fell back, and gas still costs more than it did a year ago. AI is quietly changing who companies hire and what they spend money on. And a wave of commercial real estate debt is coming due into the middle of all of it. |
Any one of those is a full-time job to understand. There are people who do nothing but study one of them. |
I am not one of those people. In fact, most of my 'feed' is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu memes. |
The Trap I Keep Watching People Fall Into |
Here's what I see a lot of investors doing right now. They've decided they need to understand the macro before they can make a move. So they read everything, listen to everybody, and end up more confused than when they started. Then they do nothing, and they wait and see. |
That's paralysis. |
The mistake is thinking you need a correct opinion on all of it to act. You don't. The macro is not your deal. The macro is the weather. You don't get to vote on it, and you definitely don't get to predict it. |
What you get to decide is what you do when it's raining. |
What I Actually Do With It |
I gave up on the forecast. Instead I keep operating. |
I underwrite every deal like I'm going to be wrong about the next two years. If it only works when rates drop, or when prices go up, or when the economy cooperates, I pass. If it works while I'm wrong, I'm interested. I have said it before in previous newsletters and webinars for instance "The FED is not your business partner, stop waiting for them." |
A few things that haven't changed for me no matter what the headlines do: |
It has to cash flow today. Not after a rate cut. Not next year. Today. Why take the risk otherwise? I keep liquidity. The thing that kills investors in a downturn isn't a price drop, it's running out of room to wait it out. Every deal needs more than one way out. If the only exit is selling into a market that might be softer in six months, that's not a plan, that's a hope. I'm not trying to call the bottom. Nobody rings a bell. You make more money buying late and surviving than you do nailing a bottom you can't see anyway.
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None of that requires me to know what the Fed does in September. That's the whole point. The rules work whether I read the macro right or not. |
Staying in My Lane |
The honest version is this. I'm a guy who buys houses. I've done it close to 700 times now. That's the thing I actually know. |
I don't know oil. I don't know where AI lands. I can read a CPI report, but I'm not going to pretend I can tell you what it means six months out cause I really have no clue. |
So I stopped trying to be all of those people. Instead I find the people who actually are those people, I listen hard, and then I go do the one thing I know how to do with whatever they tell me. |
That turns out to be a much calmer way to operate. I don't need a take on everything. I need a take on my next deal. |
Which Is Basically Why We're Doing This |
Every year Ken McElroy and I tell each other next year will be calmer. Every year it isn't. That's pretty much why we started doing these in the first place. |
The world moved again, so we're not waiting. On July 2 we're going live, free, with the people I actually listen to on the stuff I don't pretend to know. |
George Gammon on the macro, where rates and liquidity are actually headed. Chris Martenson connecting the dots most people don't catch until after they've happened. Lior Weinstein on what AI is really doing inside businesses, past the hype. Ken on the commercial side and the debt coming due. And me doing what I always do on these: the translation layer. Take all of it and bring it back down to what an operator actually does on Monday morning. |
It's free. It runs about three hours. The replay goes to everyone who registers, so sign up even if you can't make it live. |
Register free here: CLICK HERE |
Come think it through with us. You don't need an opinion on all of it. Neither do I. You just need to know what you're going to do about it. |
Good luck. It's that sort of market right now. |
Tarl Yarber |
(Once again, I personally write these...) |
