Billionaires see fortunes rise by 27% during the pandemic.

Well would ya look at that.

While the world's been hiding, going broke, losing their homes and businesses, being corralled and penned like little sheep, the

A thread on an interesting report by Goldman Sachs' Peter Oppenheimer, the bank's chief global equity strategist. He points out that Goldman's "Bear Market Risk Indicator" is looking ominous.

There are three factors that suggest that the recent stability could evaporate and that equities are "about to enter a sustained bear market", Oppenheimer says.

First is the fact that growth, inflation and interest rate outlook is unfriendly for equities.

Second is that greater volatility, such as multiple corrections and new peaks (which we've seen in 2018) tend to presage a full bear market.

Here is Goldman's data showing how falls and bounces tend to come ahead of "the dramatic final fall".

1/x The market continues to try & shake out weak hands from overextended positioning by both HF & Retail...After a strong Vanna run up overnight, as expected, retail exuberance exploded on the open in the form of retail call buying, this fragility, paired w/a)Mean reverting flows

2/x from pinned Index Vol b) well documented, risk parity rebalancing flows & c) selling flows tied to bank EOY liquidity constraints. In combination, these flows have together have amounted to substantive selling pressures, strong enough to counteract the positive vanna/ charm

3/x flows, & point to continued likely index RVol an IVol pinning...Historically, the week of quarterly OpEx markets are notoriously volatile intraday, but also mean reverting like we saw today. I think it is fair to expect continued IVol compression & more of the same underlying

4/x chop. Vanna/Charm flows will lose their oomph after Wed 12/16 vixperation morning. There’s a window of weakness which I’ve spoken to for a month that falls 12/16-12/23. That could open a brief window that could lead to revaluation of the real risk & short interest,post 1/6...

5/x but the overwhelming 10k 🦍 of index Vol compression should still hold any correction in time & price in check in the shortterm and it’ll be hard to have anything blow up too bad in SPX land given how cheap & abundant Xmas Vol is 12/23-12/24. NTM, a stim deal & potential Fed

1/ How to raise a real estate fund (and, ideally, avoid getting sued)

Have warned everyone it’s better to raise capital deal-by-deal, bc it’s easier to raise & bc it's better for the sponsor. Still, there’s interest in learning how to do a fund… so, here goes.

2/ Don’t think of doing this unless you have a record of successful deals, ideally mostly/all in the same asset class / strategy.

Remember: You will be asking LPs to invest in YOU; they need to feel like you know what you’re doing.

3/ Really helps to have a list of prospective LPs BEFORE you start your raise. The more high-quality leads you have, the more likely you are to succeed. (I built my list via my blog initially; now twitter leads predominate - see my bio.)

4/ Find an experienced attorney. Doesn’t need to be a huge, expensive firm, but you want someone who has done a lot of private offerings before. Don’t agree to a big fee yet… at first, you just want a few hrs of her time for advice.

5/ Find an experienced CPA. Ideally, your existing CPA has worked on a lot of private deals before. If not, get a new one. Prospective LPs need confidence that someone good is overseeing the bookkeeping and doing the tax prep.

Today’s GDP release, and in particular how the economy has adapted, a thread.👇

After 6 months of growth, the economy started shrinking again in November as tighter restrictions were in place. (Though there were variations across Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.) (1/n)

The economy shrank by 2.6% in November. In normal times this would be a significant downturn, but it is much smaller than the falls seen with the first restrictions in the spring: April GDP fell by around 20%. In that sense it is good news. But why the smaller fall? (2/n)

Firstly, some industries remain very depressed. Airlines (air transport in the chart) for example, were operating at very low levels in October so there wasn’t much further for their output to fall. This is different from the picture in Mar/Apr. (3/n)

The same is true, though perhaps less pronounced, for bars/restaurants and other parts of the service sector. (4/n)