Once you have been in the financial publishing industry long enough, you realize that people write a lot of what passes for content and analysis that have no idea how markets and economics work.
They know little to nothing about behavioral economics or balance sheet analysis.
They have never worked on a desk, been in a pit, dealt with a margin call, or taken panicked phone calls from investors after a market crash.
They have degrees in English, Communication, and, worst of all, Marketing.
They write about what everyone else writes about.
They care about clicks and not profits.
They can write an elegantly structured paragraph summarizing a recent PR puff piece, which is about as valuable as government peanut butter and cheese.
It fills space but does not have much value.
This becomes glaringly obvious when you read the nonsense that gets written about institutional buying and selling activities.
I regularly see articles that breathlessly announce that Vanguard has bought or sold a major portion of a company.
We also see announcements involving activity by BlackRock and Fidelity, and the articles imply that these purchases have some meaning.
They do not.
Vanguard and BlackRock are the largest purveyors of index funds. Their buying and selling may tell a story about fund flows, but the individual security activity is meaningless.
Fidelity is so big that if they look at a company, they accidentally cross the 5% ownership threshold that triggers an SEC filing.
Tracking institutional activity is valuable if you know which transactions matter and which ones do not.
Vanguard buying shares of Robinhood HOOD and selling some Nikola (Ticker: NKLA does not mean anything to stock investors looking for potential bargains.
Several institutions with specialized information and vital track records buying into a beaten-up sector potentially has enormous value.
One of the most beaten-up sectors is real estate.
As all the Instant Experts on the Internet will inform you, real estate is the single worst asset class in the history of assets.
There is an excellent chance that no one will ever go into an office again.
We have so many apartments that the suburbs look like scenes from a post-apocalyptic Western, with tumbleweeds blowing through mile after mile of empty apartment buildings.
No one goes to shopping centers anymore.
Everything is delivered.
All those cars are just using the free parking spaces.
The banking system is so choked with bad real estate loans that it will collapse any day and be replaced by the newest top-secret penny crypto, which has the potential to make you a billionaire in a week starting next Tuesday.
I have heard these types of stories swirling around real estate before and during my career.
Texas real estate was a disaster in the 1980s, and you could barely give it away.
In the aftermath of the S&L crisis in the 1980s and early 1990s, real estate attracted all sorts of negative attention.
It was even worse in the aftermath of the internet bubble bursting.
The Great Financial Crisis was the gold standard for toxic real estate conversations.
Each time the smart money piled in and made a fortune.
According to recent SEC filings, they are doing it again this time.
The Macquarie Group is a division of the Macquarie Bank in Sydney, Australia. The group handles the bank’s business and investing outside of Australia and has had quite a reputation over the years as a very shrewd and profitable dealmaker.
In the second half of 2024, Macquarie Group has been moving into US real estate.
The firm just filed forms with the SEC revealing it now owns over 5% of Lexington Realty Trust, an owner of single-tenant warehouse and industrial properties in Ohio, Indiana, South Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona.
The firm is clearly very bullish on the single-tenant industrial markets as it has also been buying shares of Plymouth Industrial REIT PLYM this year.
The firm is also a large owner and frequent buyer of VICI Properties VICI, an owner of casinos with a strong presence in the Las Vegas market and an outstanding history of growing both cash flows and dividend payouts.
Robert Robotti is one of those under-the-radar value investors most people do not know exist, but since opening his doors over 40 years ago, he has crushed the markets.
Robotti recently filed paperwork with the SEC revealing that he now owns 9.7% of Five Points Holdings FPH, a master-planned community developer that combines residential, commercial, retail, educational, and recreational elements.
The Irvine, California, company does business in Orange County, Los Angeles County, and San Francisco County and has not been a favorite of the markets since its IPO in 2017.
Sam Levinson, the Chief Investment Officer at Glick Family Investments and member of the Five Points Board, has also been making large purchases of the stock recently.
The stock is ridiculously undervalued, with shares trading at 4.4 times free cash flow and 41% of tangible book value.
If Five Points just survives, you have a strong chance of at least doubling your money.
Robotti also accumulated shares of Legacy Homes LEGH, a builder of manufactured and tiny homes, earlier this year.
Smart money is moving into real estate at current prices.
For what it is worth, fund flows are even forcing indexers like Vanguard and BlackRock to buy real estate-related companies.
The Instant Experts of the Internet hate what the smart money is buying. That is an excellent buy signal in our book.
© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
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