Les Mons Vert → “Outright Lies” →Bangkok Days

Hey Neighbor. Homeowner tenure is spiking, specifically in California and around high-income East Coast metros. In 2005, the average someone hadn’t moved in 6.5 years. Last year, it was 11.8 nationally, 19.4 in Los Angeles, and 15.2 in New York according to a Redfin survey. Decreasing housing stock and increasing mortgage rates have people stuck.

No wonder the second home market is flourishing even as the economy wobbles.

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→ Last week, Ford sales exec Mike O’Brien retired after 32 years and emailed out a thank you to his colleagues. Appended to that (no doubt gracious) note was a list of malapropisms and mixed metaphors catalogued over decades of meeting. That list – a bizarre litany of colliding half-thoughts – illustrates the constraints of corporate language and the weird poetry of colliding cliches. Some gems:

• Mazel Tov Cocktail

• Terrorize the Data

• Milk it to Death

• Elephant in the Closet

• Grindy READ MORE

→ Over at Just a Thought, Andrew Ettinger ponders why adults stop practicing: “By 30, your identity has begun to calcify around what you do, not how you get better. You are proud of your achievements and your routine, despite its glaring absence of any[thing] resembling practice. The result is complacency — a sense that you've arrived somewhere, when in fact, you were merely propelled forward by a moving walkway.” READ MORE

→ For those raised to be polite – most of us, really – defiance must be learned. Also, practiced. LISTEN^[1]

Please join other six- and seven-figure investors sharing their thinking on the people that think about their money. Though some results from the three minute survey will be shared with the full Upper Middle readership, a total breakdown will be shared only with participants and Upper Middle Research members. How’s that for a guaranteed return?

Most of the REI co-op members who spend the winter slogging up Rt. 93 or the Taconic – with its vigilant deer and skittish cops – to ski Vermont’s A-cup mountains and finger contemporary nonfiction in its indie bookstores won’t make the trip this weekend. The blue squares on Killington are slushy. But the fleece people will be back. They always come back. They don’t just like the place; they’re deeply invested.

Vermont has the highest percentage of second homes to primary residences of any state that isn’t Maine. It’s a vibe thing. Vermont offers East Coast Costcocrats what Princeton sociologist Meaghan Stiman calls self-place continuity. Queechee feels like home in a way the suburbs don’t. That feeling is why suburbanites buy condos in Queechee’s golf course sub development: 

Their primary residences have better kitchens. Vermont has a better brand. 

Marketers claim the hallmark of a great brand is that it can be imagined as a hotel. The classic example is the Nike Hotel^[2]. Easy to picture. In a similar way, the Vermont Hotel – all that exposed wood, taxidermy, New England diffidence, colonial portraiture, and maple syrup  – loads faster than a Midjourney image. Vermont has a much more limited tourist infrastructure than neighboring New Hampshire, with its libertarian politics and Darden networkers, but is also has Ben & Jerry & Bernie & Phish & Teddy Bears & cheddar & a progressive tax code & twice as many Birkenstock dealers per capita. Like Patagucci or Reformation, Vermont is a high-end hippy brand.

That’s no accident. In 1932, Scott and Helen Nearing, two painters in Manhattan’s nascent downtown arts scene, moved to a forest tract outside Winhall and became subsistence farmers. In 1954, they published a book about it. Despite coming out after the Nearings decamped to Maine, Living the Good Life: How to Live Sanely and Simply in a Troubled World made Vermont ground zero for the “Back to the Earth” movement. Environmentalists and so-called communards began arriving in VW buses with Ken Kesey books and some grooving around money. Between 1965 and 1975, roughly one commune was launched for every 10,000 residents of Vermont. If that doesn’t sound like a lot, consider that the average American suburb has 16,000 residents. Consider what patchouli smells like.

Naturally, most of the communes didn’t last. But the communards did. Vermont, historically starved for residents – much less residents with degrees – strategically embraced not only the followers of the Grateful Dead, but the culture of the parking lot outside a Grateful Dead show. The whitest state in the union is 21st in per capita GDP, but defiantly progressive in a sort of Scandi mode. For better or worse, this pre-modern, agrarian ethos seems to appeal profoundly to podcast listeners because it establishes Vermont’s value proposition. Ezra Klein groupies show up in slacks, change into Carhartts, and go play slacker in the yard. People who don’t say hi to their neighbors on a Friday morning, wake up 24 hours later and greet the geese.^[3]

Not only does it feel good, it feels right in a way the suburbs never will.

But self-place continuity creates a paradox. Second home-owners say they’d move there full-time – of course, of course – if only the internet was a bit faster and the schools were a bit better. But – then again – that would change the place. Better – don’t you think – to leave it as is and to leave it entirely for April and May. Better come back in June when the thaw is over and the geese are back – when it’s really worth it.

→ This season of White Lotus is more ew than pad see ew. For a sharper take on farangs in Thailand, read Bangkok Days by Lawrence Osborne. The British novelist and travel writer is about to have a moment. The Netflix adaptation of his Ballad of a Small Player – about gambling in Macau – drops this year with Colin Farrell in the lead and Edward Berger (Conclave) behind the camera. 

→ Millennials may be pre-menopausal, but we’re post-cocktail. (READ MORE)

→ Every once in a while, Bloomberg runs a “How to Invest insert number” package with advice from industry pros. An interesting germ in the latest edition come from TwinFocus Managing Partner John Pantekidis: “The are parts of Greece, especially along the water in the southern part called the Athens Riviera, where asset prices are skyrocketing and it’s all foreigners buying. I think it’s the second or third inning of a nine-inning game that could go into overtime, particularly in a scenario where the dollar weakens.” READ MORE

→ Pedro Pascal and Jennifer Aniston have become buds. Pascal told Vanity Fair that if you get to high at a party “make eye contact with Jen Aniston and she’ll calm your central nervous system.” Tripsitting remains a valuable social skill. READ MORE

“Ask Mr. Market” is UPPER MIDDLE’s occasional financial advice column authored by Andrew Feinberg, a retired hedge fund manager who has beaten the S&P 500 for the last 30 years. He is the author/co-author of four books on personal finance.

Dear Mr. Market:

I signed up for an investment newsletter last year and bought seven of the ten stocks the guy recommended. They did so-so. The other three, which included Nvidia, did great. I’m suffering from extreme non-buyer’s remorse. Does this happen a lot?

Remorseful in Rochester

***

Dear Remorseful,

This happens all the time, which is why I advise people to buy all ten stocks to avoid investment reflux — or not subscribe to stock-picking newsletters in the first place.

In the service of answering your question and understanding the specific newsletter incentives at play, I subscribed to Porter Stansberry’s investing newsletter and poked around his archive, where I found an issue from late 2022 recommending 15 stocks. While predicting that the bear market had a long way to run—it didn’t—Stansberry recommended four stocks that actually declined as the S&P 500 rose 40.2%: Nike, Hershey, Starbucks, and Clorox (misspelled as “Chlorox,” not something that gives an investor chonfidence). Ten of the other stocks he picked didn’t do so fabulously either, so 14 of the 15 picks rose an average of 19.1%, underperforming the S&P 500. 

The fifteenth stock? You guessed it: Nvidia. That one stock’s 623.4% bonanza covered the underperformance elsewhere. On average, the stocks Stansberry picked rose 64.1%, handily beating the S&P. 

Can you trust a stock-picker bailed out by one pick? Maybe. A win is a win. But it’s important to remember that stock-pickers succeed and advertise their success in aggregate. This always begs the question of whether these guys are lucky or smart. It definitely depends on the picker, but it’s worth noting that Stansberry^[4] predicted the collapse of America in 2011 and, before that, had to fork over $1.5 million after losing a lawsuit to the SEC, which contended his newsletters were “nothing more than baseless speculation and outright lies.” 

At the time, The New York Times criticized the SEC’s case, saying that Stansberry had the right to be wrong. I’ll assert that same right in this space – while still promising to spell the names of stocks correctly – but I won’t do much picking. Why? I may have the right to be wrong, but I don’t have the stomach for it. Consider who does.

Cheers,
Mr. Market

→ The U.K. has been front-running America’s economic path toward isolationist self-harm and politic war on the professional class. This has led to a huge push among white-collar British workers to avoid taxes. According The Economist, roughly 10,000 more people earned between £99,000 and £99,999 than made statistical sense in 2022, suggesting that professional emailers are increasingly negotiating contracts specifically to stay under tax thresholds. That’s not a new idea, but it’s still uncommon in the states. Maybe not for long. READ MORE

→ Robinhood is trying to kneecap the wealth management business, offering services with a .25% management fee. No one should trust Robinhood execs further than they can be thrown (email me for suggestions on where to throw them), but this seems smart. As the early results of our Money Guy Survey suggest, a lot of people are dubious about managers. READ MORE

→ B-School applications are up. That’s bearish as a Tom of Finland portrait.

→ Here’s an old video of Gene Hackman making fun of Dustin Hoffman for thinking about money the way we all think about money. WATCH IT

[2] Credit where it’s due: The hotel brand idea was popularized by Chris Sanderson and Timothy de Rosen of The Future Laboratory.

[3] If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: We need to shoot and eat more geese. There’s too many of them, they’re mean, and they’re absolutely delicious. Thinly sliced? Hell yeah.

[4] Mr. Market is too nice to say it so I will: Stansberry is a prick.

[5] The most famous person I’ve ever accidentally texted is Andrew McCarthy, the Brat Pack guy. I expected to be doing so much better by now.