What happened in Beirut was absolutely horrific. As the graphic above shows, it is considered to be the most powerful non-nuclear explosion in history. To put the power of the blast in context, the Oklahoma City bombers used two tons of ammonium nitrate while Beirut’s ignited approximately 2,750 tons!
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Yet again we have witnessed something unprecedented. As the following two charts show, we have never had negative oil prices until last week. Oil has never been cheaper on an inflation-adjusted basis than it is today.
Source: Marketwatch
And while under “normal” circumstances this would be great for the consumer,
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Gary Carmell Posted in Economy, Housing, Stock Market, Trends, Uncategorized, Wealth No Comments ↓ 
I’m admittedly obsessed by pandemics. I’ve been listening to the course on the Black Death via the Great Courses, I was in China at the tail end of SARS in 2003 and was intensely focused on what life was like during that time there, and of course,
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Gary Carmell Posted in Economy, News, Personal, Travel, Trends, Uncategorized, Wealth 3 Comments ↓ 
This is one of those weeks where I don’t have anything pressing I feel I need to convey or work through to gain clarity so I thought I would share some random thoughts related to the coronavirus, surveying data, economic reports, and a health tip.
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I want to start off by expressing my deepest condolences to the families of the nine victims of the devastating helicopter crash that took the lives of Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna.
I imagine that the death of Kobe will be one of those events in life that we will always remember where we were when we heard the news.
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With the 2010s having come to an end and the roaring 20s starting I thought I would look back over the past decade to convey key trends that impacted the economy and apartment investors.
I would summarize it as a decade of continued aggressive Federal Reserve involvement in the economy through continued low-interest rates and expansion of its balance sheet.
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Gary Carmell Posted in Economy, Interest Rates, News, Trends, Uncategorized, Wealth No Comments ↓ 
Last week were engaged in our annual planning process. As part of this, we come up with key assumptions regarding the operating environment for the next three years or so. Interest rates, of course, are a huge variable in our business and dominated much of the discussion.
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The impassioned plea that took place recently from teen climate activist Greta Thunberg at the U.N. understandably caught the attention of much of the developed world. At the risk of being controversial/politically incorrect I decided to do a couple of searches on www.newspaperarchive.com on “Climate Change” and “Global Warming” and restrict the years to between 1919 and 1965 to see if these were topics covered by newspapers back then and,
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Gary Carmell Posted in Economy, Investing, News, Stock History, Stock Market, Trends No Comments ↓ 
It’s been a brutal couple of weeks for Treasuries as the following headline from Bloomberg attests to on September 13th.
10-year yields bottomed on a closing basis on September 3rd at 1.47% and have shot back up to 1.90% as of September 13th.
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And all the roads we have to walk are winding
And all the lights that lead us there are blinding
-Wonderwall by Noel Gallagher (for Oasis)
I saw a double bill of Noel Gallagher (formerly of Oasis) and Smashing Pumpkins last week.
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