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Wulaw Horn

Burnt Ends
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Posts posted by Wulaw Horn

  1. 12 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

    Looking for that chloroquine tank cleaner huh

    Lol. Never owned a pool before. Bought in December. Took the cover off and looked so cloudy you could hide a bunch of dead bodies in there. Tested the water quality at 20 percent. 

    Spent 300 and worked on the pool for a week and got it to 60%. Wife spent another $200 and worked on the pool for 3 days and it looks perfect. Tomorrow was the day to get water quality tested. Guess that isn’t going to happen. It’s clear, looks clean and smells right and the test at home looks ok- so I guess we are going swimming tomorrow. But won’t ever know if we succeeded at getting to 100% water quality. 

  2. 1 hour ago, Helobious said:

    Lol at “found a way around it”. I read the declaration. I had a very hard time thinking of a job that wasn’t covered under their “exempted businesses” section. The listed virtually every type of business on there.

    2 places I’ve gone in the last 2 weeks (only places I’ve gone other than grocery store). 1/2 price books and Leslie’s pool supply. 

  3. 52 minutes ago, Rusty Shackelford said:


    I can’t pull up the chart rn, but the 10 year bonds went lower from open to close (yields went up) while MBS also went up. Fed stepping in the purchase MBS obviously is detaching mortgage rates from fundamentals.

    Yes- fed is not going to let MBS fail/ crater. They want the housing market as strong as possible to stall of serious damage. If people have jobs that will work. If not... nothing gonna save this. 

    MBS closed at an all time high today- and my pricing was 1/4 worse than it was 2 months ago and 3/4 or so worse than it was 3 weeks ago. 

    Everything Phil posted in his explanation from his flagstar rep is dead on balls accurate. 

    • Like 2
  4. 49 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    I'll suggest that as a society, we regularly come to forks in the road when we need to decide who we are.  There are plenty of times we've chosen to be utter shitheels, racist pieces of shit, etc.

    And there are times when we have chosen to be what we claim to be, what we aspire to be.  We are at one hellacious fork in the road.  We have a choice of who we want to be, both during this crisis, and once we are out on the other side.  Some folks have chosen well -- I hope that momentum builds.  Momentum is a helluva thing.

    Momentum doesn’t exist- ask the numbers nerds and Herman. 

    Counterpoint- people don’t change. Your perception might- or the situations they are put in and their incentives for behaving a certain way might- but by and large they don’t change. 

    As to what you are talking about with the decision to do right or wrong that’s universal throughout every culture and the struggle since the dawn of time that’s always been observed. 

    I think the trajectory has been, on balance to get better and there’s some cognitive dissonance in the past 10 years especially brought on by the revolution brought about by social media and our interconnectedness. We will figure it out. 

  5. Just now, Brisketexan said:

    Just as an update, I'm seeing a lot of posts, discussion, etc. of folks doing right by each other.  Neighbors helping out older neighbors, that sort of thing.  And people all over doing their best to lighten the mood, to share some joy and laughs with people however they can -- just being good and decent to each other.  It does the heart good to see it.  It's what we MUST see more of.  It's not just the only way we get to the other side -- it's how we can be the kind of society we want to see on the other side.

    Keep it up, folks.  It's going to be a long haul.  Keep it up.  We have to.

    This is America, more or less. I hope you step away from the ledge some and see that. Even the people you probably think, on some level, are racist, cruel shitheels probably aren’t all that bad most of the time and in most situations. 

    At least that’s what I tell myself because dwelling on anything else is counterproductive 

    • Like 1
  6. 24 minutes ago, Rusty Shackelford said:

    @UTPhil2006 would you give some insight on what mortgage rates did today?

    Not Phil but am a broker... most of my pricing was worse today than yesterday- even with MBS having an Incredibly strong morning. My pricing didn’t get better and might have gotten worse. 

    Yesterday was a really good day for rates but today sucked relative to MBS market. My bet is that a lot of people locked yesterday (I locked 5 people sitting in line for a refinance to hit a certain rate and I moved 3 resales I’d locked Friday somewhere else. So 8 locks for me in the system. Give you a concrete example

    $400 sale- great credit- Friday I locked that at 3.875 with a 175 point yield to me. Monday afternoon I relock at 3.25 and my yield goes up to 187 bips.today- my production partner texts me that MBS are up 90 or 100 points so I go look at that deal to see if I’m moving it again and my pricing is ... 3.375 (worsened) with a yield at 168 bips (worse for me). Well, what sense does that make?  None, if you are just looking at market pricing, but the capacity is stretched thin in the system and there just isn’t much appetite to do any more deals right now for the lenders. 

    Also- the non QM market blew up over the weekend (don’t hear much talk about that), but that’s your jumbos, bank statement loan, bad credit, investment property squirrel deals and other stuff. No liquidity. Poof- those guys don’t exist anymore. 

    Thats what we’d have been looking at in the entire real estate market if fed hadn’t acted as decisively as they did 

    • Like 1
  7. immediate things I’m putting in place:

    1) save/hoard as much cash as possible 

    2) cut any unnecessary expenses related to anything other than the core of “running the business” that makes revenue appear- if it’s not something that directly helps me bring in revenue or is mission critical to my business I’m not doing it 

    3) be quick to cut staff when there’s no revenue to support them. They can be furloughed and brought back later- if this thing gets really bad you can’t carry them throughout the term, and benefits and help from the government should be pretty fast- better for Uncle Sam to carry them than it is you or I as the business owner- it might be the difference between being an ongoing business and not existing in 6 months 

    4) dig in hard core on who your customers are and where the demand comes from and measure the elasticity in demand going forward if we are in a recession/depression conditions 

    5) keep an eye on whatever your exit strategy is and pull the plug before it devours your current personal assets- don’t feed the business “until this is over” if that’s not viable- no shame in going out of business in this environment and you are likely to get the best of what we is coming from government/creditors if you move now with the mass of people and not later. Don’t be overly optimistic about what recovery looks like/ if you were barely making it right now what’s your future business look like with 20% less GDP- don’t be afraid to rip off the bandaid. 

    So far so good for me. I had a huge board built up due to rates falling (mortgage and title business- separate). I was afraid my revenue would drift toward zero if we got a shut down- but looks like we are essential so I’ve got revenue coming in to operate as normal. We will hoard as much cash as possible to tide us over but if we go into recession/depression I will be running as lean as possible. 

    Everything I’m devoted to right now is how to grow revenue- dig in with my past customers and try to take market share from the dipshits in my industry if a recession/depression hits. Will that. E enough?  No idea. 

    Finally/ be honest and transparent with employees. They only have a job as long as revenue comes in so everything they do at all times should be focused on bringing in revenue or mitigating costs. The better you are as an employee in these issues the more secure your job is. Do it humanely and in a positive way- but let them know times are tough and for this to work everyone has to pull on the rope to make it work. 

    Good luck to all. There will always be opportunities presented by the market in any situation. Take advantage of that. 

    • Like 6
  8. 20 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

     


    And how did you do that exactly? Just tell them verbally? Because if it’s just verbal, they will likely still try to get you to pay for repairs under the hope that you will be afraid of having to start the process over again.

     

    Doesn’t sound like it matters as he’s decided he’s going to renegotiate and cave to anything buyer asks for within reason. Which is the smart play in this market imo. 

  9. I’m shooting blanks after I got neutered but we just got in a little practice like we were trying to have a 4th kid. 4 year old Was sent to me and said mommy wants you- wife told me to lock the door and then she was naked. Weird that this happened with 3 kids awake on the other side of the door but I’m not complaining. 

    That would have never happened last year. 

  10. 2 hours ago, rage-a-holic said:

    Keeping video on uses a shit ton of extra bandwidth. Most companies have seen huge impacts on their IT infrastructure with the amount of people trying to work remotely; video shouldn't even be an option.

    And fuck the human condition. I don't want to see any of my co-workers. Ever. For any reason.

    Best screen name ever for you my man. Stay frosty. 

    • Haha 1
  11. 5 hours ago, MC Fresh Breath said:

    Folks like me feel a bit trapped.  I stand to lose a good amount of earnest money if I back out, although I think maybe I could claim something in the inspection report(?) and back out and keep it.

    That said, the area I'm in is as hot as Austin, possibly more.  Nobody knows what interest rates are going to do, nobody knows what inventory is going to be in the next 6-12 months, e.t.c.

    If you keep your job and plan on staying in the house long term everything is hunky dory. I’m not saying don’t go buy a house- I’m saying demand is higher right now than I’d have expected. 

  12. 3 hours ago, Rusty Shackelford said:

    Last night on 60 Minutes:

     

    Scott Pelley: Is the Fed just going to print money?

    Neel Kashkari: That's literally what Congress has told us to do. That's the authority that they've given us, to print money and provide liquidity into the financial system. And that's how we do it. We create it electronically. And then we can also print it with the Treasury Department, print it so that you can get money outta your ATM.

    Well don’t I feel like a fucking asshole 

    • Haha 1
  13. 22 minutes ago, Captainant said:

    Yeah, it's almost like we're four to six weeks behind in our response. But we aren't allowed to comment on how past decisions affect our current state of preparedness otherwise people shout you down because that's political?

    Right now we're addressing the PPE and ICU problem. That's something we saw coming as far back as January. Using that as a yardstick of how far behind we are, I'm guessing it won't be until late April or early May when we see proactive treatment start to get some actual attention and resources.

    In a world where we aren’t capable of doing two things st once, sure. PPE and ICU and ventilator stuff is a logistics question. What  you are talking about is a treatment issue. We are capable of doing both things at once. 

    • Like 1
  14. 1 hour ago, washparkhorn said:

    I cannot imagine an alternative at this point. 

    There is a lot of room according to macroeconomists before the debt is a problem for the US (tens of trillions in room). 

    What is safer at this point (or almost as safe)? I don't know. 

    And we cannot downplay how our military strength plays a role in keeping the dollar on top. 

    But I am all ears.

    This is spot on. Also, I think sometimes people fundamentally misunderstand what programs like fed injecting liquidity into the system do. It’s not like we are printing money. It’s 1’s and 0’s and more about public perception than anything else. A dollar has no value other than what we all agree it has. Same with gold (beyond industrial use). Same with diamonds. Same with pretty much all this stuff we use as a store of value outside something like oil or whatever used to be used in a mercantile system. It’s a credibility play, I’m not concerned for reasons you mentioned and truly, over a long enough timeframe ( a couple years) they will probably make money on the deal. 

    Look at MR Potter during the depression in its a wonderful life at the time of the bank run buying up assets. That’s what I see the fed doing right now to calm everyone the fuck down. 

    As to to your point about this being a relative safety play absolutely 100% agree. We are, at worst, the tallest midget and I don’t see that changing in my working lifetime (I’m a man! I’m 41!). 

  15. 38 minutes ago, G650 said:

    I actually disagree pretty strongly with this in a way. You are using where the restaurant industry has been as your reference, and not where it's going. Sit down dining has been dying a slow death already, and delivery/takeout has been ascendant. This is going to accelerate that realignment.

     

    But you are correct that places that are not equipped or skillful at this are pissing in the wind, and are definitely dead men walking.

    Sorry- I was t super clear and a little bombastic- what I meant was this- absent change of what your organization actually is you can’t get through this by switching to takeout and hoping your take is the same. If you are a takeout/delivery place you need 500 square feet of non prime real estate and a simple and streamlined menu with individual items that can sell for well more than you make them for. 

    So, basically the opposite of almost every restaurant you go to now/ which hopes to break even on food and makes all their money with mark up on beverages. 

  16. 1 hour ago, closetojumping said:

    I don’t really disagree that retail, of various types and in various ways, has been in trouble and this event is a kill shot for them. 

    I think your method is an oversimplification for various businesses, but it’s a fine rule of thumb for small business, sure. 

    I think service-based retail has both not been in trouble and might continue to not be in trouble and might actually thrive. That includes well-run restaurants. Things like grooming salons for men, hair and nail salons for women, I don’t see those things disappearing. Most women aren’t sitting around right now and talking about how much they realize they don’t miss someone else doing their hair and nails. I don’t think there’s a good replacement for a lot of that other than bad self-service. I think day spas and med spas fit that space as well. 

    Gyms, movies, appliance stores, and that ilk? Yeah, I think they’re not well protected and a lot of people are finding out right now that they may not need them the way they thought they did. 

    To me, restaurants and bars fall in the former space. A lot of home-cooked meals are nice, but they’re also conjuring the need to not be doing as many of them in the future. I see less restaurants but still a ton of them and hopefully better run when back operating. 

    Yes- everywhere I wrote business I meant to write small business, and by small business I’m talking about something like 20 employees, tops

    heres my question on your med spa type place- how many customers do you need to break even, and how many customers are you currently getting. If those numbers are really close to each other than post virus you are dead meat because your demand will be off... unless.:. You are the most well run business in that area and space in which case you are Forest Gump and you are rich. I agree- demand will still be there for women to go and do that. They seem all of a sudden not Going to want to do that. But demand will also be down because this thing is, at a minimum, sending us into a recession and when you see GDP numbers of —25 and -30 thrown around by smart people what’s that going to do to a luxury business like your day spa? If Your break even numbers and your current customer numbers are close then I’d argue you don’t have a business coming out of this unless you can consolidate existing demand spread over multiple stores into your location, or you can figure out a way to make more money per client/trip to the spa than you previously have (call that the Walgreens method if you read good to great which I’m sure You have)

    I’m going to stop here because if you recall we had a conversation IRL on the other site where I know what you were doing about 8 years ago so I know who you are (lost your contact information a couple cell phones ago) and I know right now I’m the dumb guy giving advice to the smart guy on how to run a business, but I get the sense you are tossing around ideas and brain storming so I don’t think I’ve overstepped my bounds just yet. 

    I mention all this merely to say that sometimes smart people that know lots of things over complicate decision making and this is a reminder to keep it simple stupid on the med spa thing. That isn’t a complicated business I’m sure. Yes, demand is still going to be there. Yes, demand is definitely going down some (not because of existential threat posed by virus but bc of economic impact on our country), figure out what % of your customers you will lose, for how long- and where your break even is and plan accordingly. 

    My analysis of all the sector of service based retail and restaurants is the same as for the day spa. Demand still there and will always be there, but also way down to economic catastrophe I think is coming which will lead to lots of consolidation for ~5-7 years I’d guess (maybe overly pessimistic) before we see the pendulum swing back the other way 

  17. 7 minutes ago, FondrenRoad said:

    Won't happen. We value shareholder returns over labor costs and even American wellbeing. Other countries can produce drugs more affordably. Some of them while even paying a living wage. We can't.  

    Nobody that owns a US drug patent gives a shit about you.  Wake up.

    We produce items here that we believe to be in our national security interests when it comes to war fighting. We have strategic oil reserves. We do a lot of stuff for national security. I’m not saying med manufacturing will play out that way but it wouldn’t be unprecedented. 

    • Like 1
  18. 45 minutes ago, closetojumping said:

    Holy fuck. You are harshing my mellow like a mean motherfucker here, Wulaw. Good lord. 

    In truth, yeah. This thread is somewhat focused on restaurants and bars, which is understandable, but there are a lot of retail and service businesses going through an existential crisis led by this black swan event. 

    We’re silent owners of a day spa and they’ve done well, but haven’t been bathing in dough, for years. The prior owner mismanaged the place after buying it and we bought it below its value when she said “uncle”. The active partner running the place is a start-up chick who’s done well and was looking for a break for a while. Almost immediately it was a bigger ball of wax than we’d figured and the prior owner had lied about some stuff. 

    3 years later, the day-to-day partner has turned the corner and distributions plus expansion were on the table for 2020. Then this. They had to close down due to state mandate yesterday. You’ve got employees, clients, partners, landlords, and vendors all suddenly confused. What do you do?

    My view is that the business is still Amazon-proof. So it isn’t corona-proof. What is? Not much. So then what is the play? My input has been that we marshal our resources and fund the payroll of the staff for two months. Let this thing roll through, and then get back to work. When you get back to work, be on the lookout for dead or dying competitors and buy and grow. Give clients immediate free shit to get the women back in and getting back to a routine. 

    If I’m right and we do what I’m thinking, people keep their jobs and we are Forrest Gump with the last shrimp boat working in the market. If I’m wrong, well, it would be a meaningful loss in the end. Right now it is hard to know the right move. If there is a fundamental shift in the way people think of health and wellness, which way does it go? 

    Academically, it’s all interesting stuff. In the real world, the price of poker at these tables is big boy stuff until dust settles, and at that point, winners and losers will already be determined. 

    Do you really disagree with anything I’m saying in my analysis though?  

    Look, I have a very simple way of looking at business and it’s never steered me wrong at it goes like this:

    all that matters is your break even point to run an outfit or operation in a sustainable manner, and then the marginal profit that every good or service sold- above the break even point- brings into the operation. That’s it. Nothing else really matters to me when planning or running a business. 

    • Like 1
  19. 1 hour ago, jimmyjazz said:

    I'll offer a counterargument:

    People who have spent years dropping $15 a person or more at least once a day at local restaurants are going to learn how to cook for themselves, as the rest of us have been doing for years.  I suspect there will be a significantly larger portion of the population who appreciates eating for $0.30 on the dollar compared to restaurant food.  Good luck clawing that back.

    Yep- this is what’s going to kill the restaurant industry in the aftermath of this thing- not the rent or loss of production which can be worked through, but rather the change in behavior from customers. Not all of them but when you are working with a margin where literally 10 or 15 covers a day might be the difference between making or breaking your business than yeah- that gets really tough. Mom and dad owned a breakfast/lunch place. A good hard rain on Saturday or Sunday would be the difference between a profitable week and a loss on the week. Good luck with a new normal that sees 20 or 30% less demand. 

    • Like 1
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