Twinning-Looking Up to the Gentle Giant, Rob Gronkowski, with Pictures to Prove It

The Rosen Report discusses topics such as preventing hacking, high-end real estate offers, and the author's cooking skills. The author shares a story about meeting Rob Gronkowski and his son's admiration for the NFL player. The stock market indices have rebounded, bank earnings show concerns about a recession, and the CPI has dropped. The author believes the Fed will raise rates but may pause in 2023. There are also mentions of rising egg prices and high natural gas costs in California. This is Eric Rosen and you're listening to the Rosen Report. It is January 15th, 2023. My last note was entitled Prevent Hacking, also an exclusive high-end West Palm Beach Intracoastal real estate offer, and the opens were down a few percent from what they normally are. So I included it again in today's piece, and I think that the article really talks about how to better keep your documents and your computer and your phones safe from those pesky hackers which never seem to stop. And also, if you're in the market for high-end real estate, take a look at that offer, which is pretty cool and exclusive only that you can find on the Rosen Report. I am complaining a little bit about the temperatures here in South Florida. It was actually in the low 40s on Saturday, which is incredible. We've seen that twice this season, and I don't recall really seeing that more than one time in my previous five years here. And I was a little bit irritated by the chill until I saw that in Siberia it is negative 80 degrees, or approximately 125 degrees colder than where I am. So I'm no longer complaining about 45 and sunny. To pictures of the day, I talk a lot about my cooking skills, which I think are pretty darn good. I can cook and bake just about anything. I think I can open a very good restaurant, not Michelin star quality, but I think I can open a very good restaurant that I would call a good local New York City place that you would like to dine at, not kill to dine at, but like to dine at. I cook most nights during the month, and because going out to dinner in Boca is anticlimactic and expensive, it's just not good. I like to make a lot of food, and then I can reheat it so I don't have to keep cooking full dinners. So on Thursday, I used seven pounds of various meats, including Wagyu, to make meatballs, which included 380 ounces of tomatoes of various types, whole, diced, and crushed. I used 13 onions, 60 cloves of garlic, 4 cups of Parmesan cheese, 3 cups of whole milk, 4 cups of breadcrumbs, 3 of which were homemade and 1 cup was store-bought, 6 eggs, as well as various herbs, pesto, and balsamic vinegar to make 71 meatballs that came out quite tasty. No, I do not sear them or bake them first. I only cook them in the tomato sauce, and they came out very tasty. We ate quite a few that night, and we have leftovers, which is always great, so you can check out the pictures. My theme piece today is called Twinning, Looking Up to the Gentle Giant, Rob Gronkowski, with pictures to prove it. You know, kids can be quite funny. My son, back in the day, was convinced he was going to be the next Rob Gronkowski. For those who live under a rock, Gronk is a 6'6", 270 pound, former NFL All-Pro tight end who won four Super Bowls with Tom Brady. He is viewed as one of the top tight ends of all time. I believe he has 93 touchdowns in the regular season and 15 touchdowns in the playoffs, and has over 10,000 yards receiving between his regular career and playoffs, which is pretty impressive. He is clearly a Hall of Famer. Jack lent most years as Gronk for Halloween because that was his idol. Jack played flag football at Asphalt Greens in New York City. For all of you New York City folks with kids, you'll know Friday Night Lights program, which is a lot of fun for kids. Jack played on the team and was actually a shockingly good receiver. He would tell anyone who would listen that he was coming for Gronk, and he was going to be the next great thing in the NFL where tight ends were concerned. So Jack, my son, was well on his way to being an all-star tight end in the NFL, and I'm not sure much could derail that from taking place. I have some great pictures of Jack in costume. I heard that Gronk was going to be on the Today Show, and one of my dear friends is a producer and an avid reader of the Rosanry Report. I called her up and I said, hey, can we get backstage to see Gronk when he comes in? So we pulled the kids out of school in the morning and went to see greatness. I thought my son Jack was going to have a heart attack and pass out, and my daughter Julia was so scared of the giant, she is hiding behind me because she thinks Rob Gronkowski may eat her because he is so big. If you look at the picture, really, Gronk and I look almost identical. Yes, he is 6'6 or 6'7, 270 pounds, and yes, I'm 5'9, 165 pounds. Yes, his hands are bigger than my entire head, but other than that, we look eerily similar, not unlike Danny DeVito and Arnold Schwarzenegger in the great movie Twins, which I really, really enjoyed. It was very funny that when Rob shook my hand and introduced himself, I felt like I was shaking the hand of a bunch of bananas. His hand was like nine times the size of my hand, which I guess makes sense when you're that large, but Guy is big. He could not have been nicer. He autographed a few things for us, given that Jack was his biggest fan, and I thought maybe the in-person meeting between my son and Jack would dissuade Jack from believing he could follow in Gronk's size 16 shoes. Now, Gronk continued his dominance in the NFL, I think we met in 2015, and then eventually Jack came to the conclusion that the tight end size may prove elusive for someone with a last name Rosen, who has a father who's 5'9", 165 pounds, so Jack ended up quitting football to play golf. Had he not quit, I'm pretty sure he would have been a perennial all-star in the NFL and a first ballot Hall of Famer for tight end. So Jack and the rest of the football fans are hopeful Gronk comes out of retirement. I am too. I love that guy. He is only 33 years old and can clearly help any NFL team. If Gronk does not come back, any NFL team can actually draft my son, Jack Rosen. He is now 6 feet tall and 133 pounds soaking wet, so he's working out quite a bit, and in no time he too might be 270 pounds of solid steel, and maybe his golf skills will transfer to the gridiron. Crazier things have happened. So if not Jack, you can draft me. Yes, I'm 52 years old. Yes, I'm injured constantly. Right now I have a bruised calf. No, I cannot take a hit, but I might look good prior to being killed by a linebacker. After all, Gronk and I are effectively twins, just as the picture shows. On to quick bites. All of the major indices fought their way back into the green after beginning the day on Friday Deep in the Red, so that was kind of an interesting move on bank earnings, which we're going to talk about a little bit more. So year-to-date the Dow is now up 3.5%, S&P 4.2%, and NASDAQ up almost 6%, so it's kind of a reversal of last year where the Dow outperformed and the NASDAQ underperformed. The CPI came in as expected. We're going to talk about that in better detail. On the week, the 10-year Treasury yield fell 22 basis points to 3.5% as inflation expectations continue to fall. The 2's-10's Treasury curve, which I write about an awful lot, is now negative 73 basis points, close to the recent lows of negative 84 basis points one month ago. Remember, a negative 2's-10's curve has perfectly been correlated to recessions since the 1970s, and I have a chart to show it. Oil was up 8% on the week, largely given to China reopening and the continued dollar weakness, and the dollar continues to fall against the major currencies. Bitcoin rallied 15% on the week and is almost $20,000, and interesting, the VIX, the measure of S&P volatility, is down to 18.4. It was 36.5 in March and 35 in May. So big moves there. On to bank earnings, we saw that most of the bank earnings were fine for the most part, but they all talked about recession, they all talked about increasing loan loss reserves across the board. Sir J.P. Morgan topped estimates, but now said a mild recession is their central case, and took $2.3 billion of reserves for credit losses, a 49% increase from the prior quarter. Wells Fargo earnings were cut in half due to the recent settlement and lower mortgage banking fees due to fewer originations, and almost $1 billion for credit losses. Citigroup saw a fourth quarter profit fall 21% and set aside almost $2 billion for credit losses, slightly higher than anticipated. All stocks were down sharply, but rebounded dramatically as the broader market rebounded. Also of note, Brian Moynihan, the CEO of Bank of America, said the company expects a mild recession and is preparing for worse, so some interesting charts there. To the CPI, it fell 0.1% in December, meeting expectations for the biggest drop since April 2020. Excluding food and energy, the CPI rose 0.3%, also in line with estimates. On an annual basis, headline CPI rose 6.5% while core increased 5.7%. The biggest reason for easing inflation came from a sharp drop in gasoline prices, which are now actually lower on a year-over-year basis. The last chart that I show, and I have a few, shows the monthly CPI data, and what's interesting is if you add up the prior six months of CPI data, you get 0.9%. So if you look at what's happening over the prior six months, inflation has really crashed. So we're really going in the right direction, and I think the Fed needs to consider this when making decisions. So I agree that the Fed will probably raise some more, but I contend again that they're nearing the end of hikes, and I believe they will indeed be forced to pause and pivot in 2023. Interestingly, egg prices are up 60% a year, and I have an attached article to explain what's driving it. Natural gas prices have dropped around the world, but in California, the cost of heating and power generation for fuel remains aloft, and so this is threatening households and businesses with respect to bills to heat and cool your homes. So when you look at where spot natural gas is in Southern California, we're talking about almost $20 per million British thermal units. This is roughly five times U.S. benchmark, and it was even worse the prior month. So California bills are doubling with an estimate of incremental $120 a month for January. Also of note, California has the highest average gas prices at $4.4 a gallon or $1.1 a gallon more than the average in the U.S. Every day, there's yet another reason not to live in California. There's natural disasters. They're having horrific flooding, then it's droughts, it's earthquakes, it's massive homeless issues, it's taxes, high cost of living, crime, bad policies, and traffic. So I wonder why the migration to Texas, Nevada, and Florida continues with all those great things being said about Southern California. On to other headlines. The U.S. will hit its debt limit this Thursday, and Yellen is very concerned about a default. The conservatives in Congress have really been pushing for harder, firmer policies around the debt limit, and we could see some noise this week on that, and I have a chart about approaching the debt limit. The University of Michigan Confidence rose in January, which is a good thing. Nelson Peltz laid out his case for Disney in his proxy fight, and he slammed the Fox acquisition. It was also pretty critical of streaming and business practices in streaming. Tesla has slashed the price of its Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV between 6 and 20 percent as they're seeing significant demand tapering. The stock fell over 6 percent on the news before rebounding to down 1 percent. Guggenheim downgraded Tesla to sell and suggested fourth quarter estimates are way too optimistic. So it's going to be interesting what happens to the used car market, because that was so hot for Tesla, we're really starting to see that correct, which then cannibalizes new car prices. J.P. Morgan shutters a website it paid $175 million for and accused the founder of inventing millions of accounts. Diamond called it a huge mistake. No excuses. This is sloppy. Thankfully for a bank with an equity market cap of $400 billion, it's irrelevant but embarrassing. Diamond is a fantastic CEO and not afraid to make mistakes and learn from it. Now Jamie, please run for president. I'll do whatever job you need me to do within your administration. Stripes has cut its internal valuation down to $63 billion. That's down 40 percent from the highs. So let's think about the implications for all the funds who are long illiquid private companies who have not really taken marks down 40, 50, 60 percent as they should. Wall Street's lucrative leveraged debt machine is breaking down according to this great article which was in Bloomberg and it talks about banks' unwillingness to make large loans in light of poor market conditions and being stuck with billions of dollars in loans resulting in losses which is also going to hurt M&A because companies cannot borrow the way they could. And so I think this is a big story and it talks about how much debt is hung at the big banks. Twitter, $12.5 billion. Tenneco over $5 billion. Citrix $5 billion and it goes over them and so this will hurt the economy as bank lending has pulled. I was with a mortgage banker and we saw that Wells Fargo pulled from pulling back dramatically in the mortgage space after being the largest mortgage originator in the country and my friend has said it's leading to a lot of business at his small firm that he's finding other firms to buy his mortgages because Wells is not buying as aggressively as they were. So now on to global debt racing to 366 percent of output as the next crisis according to S&P and I have been critical of this. There's a great chart showing how much interest that we will be paying on our debt and it is growing exponentially. We paid about $400 billion in 2022 and almost $600 billion in 2023 according to the article and it will be over a trillion dollars in no time. So this is really going to hit our budget and remember the Republican Congress does not want to increase the budget and so as debt increases, we're going to have to cut other things to keep the budget steady. Two professors who say they caught students cheating on essays with ChatGPT explain why it is hard to prove. So I thought it was interesting. I am spending a lot of time on ChatGPT. I love it. There are a lot of very exciting developments in this and I ask everyone to spend a few minutes learning about ChatGPT. I think the ramifications are pretty remarkable. I was shocked at this title. 96% of workers are looking for a new job in 2023, a poll says and the numbers just astounded me. 40% said they need more money due to inflation and others were looking for a better work-life balance but 96% seems high. I'm going to take the under on that even though the survey says otherwise. A woman is ordered to pay $2,500 after her employer used software to track her time. It basically says that her employer was tracking her and realized she was not as productive as she should have been and fired her and now they are asking for $2,500 back because she wasn't working the way she said she was. So be careful with that. The White House admits that classified docs were found in Biden's garage and then even more were found in his library. So I now believe it is up to three places in the Penn place that Biden had an office in his garage and in his private library and again, I'm not going to make a huge deal of this. The only thing I would say is articles suggest that Hunter Biden was living there in 2018. Now if you recall, Hunter Biden was a crack addict who admittedly smoked Parmesan cheese in 2018 because he was so high looking to get even higher. He hoped that Parmesan cheese was crack. So could you imagine if he uncovered these and found these documents or maybe he did? He had ties to China and Ukraine. Could he, given the situation he was in and the dire strait he was in, strung out on crack, he was living with confidential documents. I don't know. That seems crazy. But by the way, Garland did appoint special counsel to investigate this matter. And then Jim Jordan from Congress launched his first investigation as judiciary chair into the Biden classified doc scandal. I would like to see other things investigated in Biden. The withdrawal from Afghanistan and the resulting deaths and 7 billion left. The Hunter Biden laptop, what he knew and when he knew it, the big guy scandal and countless other things. This to me is not on the top of the list, but that's news today. Trump organization was sentenced to a maximum fine following tax fraud conviction, 1.6 million fine and 14 days to pay it. All woes continue for George Santos as another watchdog files an FEC, Federal Election Commission complaint. This guy needs to resign, but he is defiant. There is nothing. His work ethic, his jobs are all lies, his education is a lie, his charities are a lie. He says he's a Jew. He's not. And I believe he raised money under the guise that he was working with Kevin McCarthy. So nothing the guy has said is true. He needs to go. It is a joke and looks bad for America. Now, on that same front, Americans rank congressmen lower than journalists and car salesmen for honesty and ethical standards. So I wonder why with with people like George Santos, there's a there's a scientist who says old mice grow young again in study. Can people do the same now, given I'm always injured? I would love that to be true. But it's an interesting article about mice and aging U.S. birth rates reach record lows, though number of kids most people say they want remain steady. Now, maybe Elon Musk and Nick Cannon have it right. We each need to have 10 kids. No, thank you. I'll pass. UNC Art Club excludes white students. In this article, there's a few schools mentioned about exclusionary policies with against whites. I just I don't know. I just if you what happens if we said we're excluding women or blacks, what would would that be OK? So I have a problem with it. But welcome to the world of academia. People with diabetes are struggling to find ozempic as its source of popularity as a waste loss drug. And I've talked to multiple doctors who say it's very, very hard to get ozempic. There are new UFO reports showing hundreds of more incidents than previously thought, which I love to see. I'm only going to talk about a few crime headlines. An M.C.A. conductor was sprayed with an unknown liquid in a New York City attack. A Park Slope deli owner is shaming shoplifters with thieves of the week video played at his deli. I love this. And I have pictures of these of the week. We know that the D.A. and the governor refused to do anything about crime. So this guy's taking it in his own hands. And I love it. In Chicago, an anti-violence worker was found in a home naked with a gun and narcotics and fifty thousand cash. Remember, this is an anti-violence worker with drugs, guns, cash, naked. OK, welcome to the beautiful city of Chicago. My sister arrived on Saturday from Chicago, having lived there for 63 years and moved to Florida. She could not take the crime and felt unsafe. I wonder why. Real estate. Joe Sitt, the CEO of Thor Equities, talked about the office market and red states having much more robust office markets than the blue states. He calls out San Francisco, New York and Chicago, Chicago, while Florida and Texas are very busy. He also discussed high end residential markets. It's an interesting four minute video where a gentleman and his wife bought a mansion for forty eight point four million. It's a discount to the seventy five million dollar asking price in Manalapan, Florida at fourteen hundred South Ocean. The sellers bought the home for twenty five million in 2016 from the builder. It's a one point acre property with two hundred feet of ocean frontage. So doubling in five years is not bad. That welcome to South Florida. Mark Pruner of Greenwich Street sent me his twenty twenty two year in review for Greenwich and there's about twenty great charts in it. So I won't steal his thunder, but take a look at that link. There are some really good charts and data. Anyone who's interested in the Greenwich market. A few other headlines. Sweden is facing its day of reckoning. Our economists are calling for up to a 20 percent drop in twenty twenty three for real estate in Sweden. San Francisco's largest landlord defaulted on a loan. So Veritas Investments defaulted on nearly four hundred fifty million loans secured by sixty two of its San Francisco rent controlled apartment properties. So interesting article. What are the ramifications? We know how bad commercial offices and retail is in San Francisco, but this is suggesting that some apartments are under pressure as well. Under construction penthouse to become the priciest home in Brooklyn's Dumbo neighborhood. It's under contract for full seventeen point five million asking price. Forty two hundred seventy feet with five hundred square foot terrace. Call me crazy, but for seventeen million dollars, I ain't living in Brooklyn. I'm living in Florida. A Belgian diamond mogul's Miami Beach home listed for forty five million with some great pictures, really nice looking house. It would be the most expensive house on the Venetian Islands if it sold for the ask under the virus and vaccine. The data is deteriorating. I don't know how much is noise from the holidays, but deaths are up sharply. They were up about 80 percent over the prior two weeks, which is concerning. And then there's a great article from the WAPO of all places, which is very left leaning. It's an opinion piece from a doctor who is suggesting that the deaths related to covid are about 30 percent of what they suggest they are because of being misreporting, i.e. somebody died of a heart attack, but died with covid, not of covid. So she's getting called out pretty dramatically. But I thought it was interesting that indeed WAPO has that in their opinion section. And lastly, on that front, I am seeing CNN actually become a little bit more balanced. I watched a video of Don Lemon, who is quite left, really go after Chuck Schumer on the Biden documents situation. So maybe the new CEO of CNN is pushing them to be a little bit more balanced. I love it. I love balanced reporting. I like calling out both sides. If you're a Republican and goes after Republicans like Tulsi Gabbard did over Santos on Fox, I like it. So CNN, keep it up. I like the slight change and slightly less biased reporting. Thank you for listening. 22 Minutes and Change. Have a great day. Hope you enjoyed the Rosen report.