PPCC: Pisitófilos Creditófagos. Primavera 2025

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/8b8a6582-039d-4d56-b1cb-95e70badb4e5

Donald Trump says Fed chair Jay Powell’s ‘termination cannot come fast enough’

Attack follows pressure from US president for the central bank to cut interest rates


Federal Reserve chair Jay Powell had warned that the US president’s sweeping tariffs would lead to slower economic growth and higher inflation © Bloomberg

Donald Trump lashed out at Jay Powell on Thursday, saying the end of the Federal Reserve chair’s tenure “cannot come fast enough” as he accused him of failing to lower interest rates quickly enough.

The US president said in a post on his Truth Social platform that Powell was “always TOO LATE AND WRONG”. He added that the Fed chief “should have lowered Interest Rates, like the [European Central Bank], long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!”

It was not clear whether Trump was referring to the planned end of Powell’s term as chair, which is scheduled for May 2026, or an intention to remove him from his role sooner.

The ECB cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter-point to 2.25 per cent on Thursday amid concerns that Trump’s trade war will hit growth. The US president convulsed global markets when he announced steep “reciprocal” tariffs on dozens of US trading partners, before implementing a 90-day pause.

The Fed has so far kept rates on hold this year after lowering them three times in a row in 2024, including a large half-point move in September. Officials have signalled that they are unlikely to cut rates at their next meeting in May, as they await more clarity on the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

In a speech on Wednesday, the Fed chair, who was appointed by Trump in 2018, warned that the US president’s sweeping duties would lead to slower economic growth and higher inflation.

Powell said Trump’s tariffs had been “significantly larger than anticipated”, and could put US rate-setters in a “challenging scenario” in which their dual-mandate goals of price stability and maximum employment are in tension.

Trump has been a frequent critic of Powell, urging him to lower borrowing costs. Earlier this month, the US president wrote on Truth Social: “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!”

But in December, Trump told NBC News that he would not try to oust Powell from his position before his term ended. “No, I don’t think so. I don’t see it,” Trump said.

The Fed chair has said repeatedly that he intends to serve his full term and on Wednesday claimed the US central bank’s independence to set interest rates as it sees fit was “a matter of law”.

He added: “We’re never going to be influenced by any political pressure. People can say whatever they want . . . but we will do what we do strictly without consideration of political or any other extraneous factors.”

ECB president Christine Lagarde gave her support to Powell on Thursday, telling a press conference in Frankfurt that she had “a lot of respect for my esteemed colleague and friend”.

She declined to comment further on Trump’s criticism, but said that central bank independence was a “fundamental” principle within the Eurozone.

Global markets remained steady following Trump’s latest broadside, with the S&P 500 up 0.6 per cent in early trading. The yield on the 10-year US Treasury was up 0.02 percentage points at 4.30 per cent.

“Powell knows that Trump will always hate on him whatever he does, and there is no point trying to please him,” said Mark Dowding, chief investment officer for fixed income at RBC BlueBay Asset Management.

[Currobena]

A nivel local español, eso exige necesariamente la destrucción del pisito como activo de inversión y su vuelta a lo que es, un bien de consumo básico. No se pueden montar fábricas que sean rentables si el salario de los obreros va en su mayoría a los caseros zampalangostinos. Por mucho que voten a los partidos actuales estos son elegidos desde la sede imperial y tienen que obedecer sus órdenes en todos los asuntos importantes.

Que es a lo que Sánchez se dedica. Mejor o peor, cabrón o no, Sánchez sí ha entendido esto. Lo traía aprendido de casa antes de llegar a Moncloa.

Si Feijóo gana las próximas elecciones -ganando en el sentido de poder formar gobierno, no el cuento que lleva soltando desde las últimas-, no me cabe duda de que Von der Leyen, Lagarde, o quien sea, le llamarán al despacho dejando claro lo que hay.

Benzino, yo creo que la llamada ya la recibió hace mucho. Por eso está ahí el y no Ayuso.

A mí lo que me extraña es que esta financiarización extrema de la vivienda pasa en el Benelux de donde Von der Leyen es con incluso mayor intensidad que en Esoaña. De hecho en Alemania que era un remanso de paz en este sentido la cosa ha empeorado bastante durante la última década.

Si hay un plan UE para que la vivienda deje de ser un hactibo no parece que esté funcionando.

La Unión Europea es una sucursal virreinal de los Estados Unidos. Ahora mismo hay un conflicto interno entre las élites financieras e industrial en la sede imperial y por eso los mensajes son contradictorios. Sin embargo en algunos países como Alemania los precios de los alquileres ya se están estabilizando. Es cuestión de unos meses que empiecen a bajar.


https://es.tradingeconomics.com/germany/housing-index

[Currobena]

[...] China empezó el conflicto del 2015 con el embargo selectivo de exportaciones y ahora es el país más poderoso del mundo económicamente con diferencia.

Si P entonces... Q
Z
??

A ver, no. Tierras raras tiene todo el mundo. Lo que no tiene nadie es la obligación de explotarlas, no digamos de exportarlas. Hay efectos laterales indeseables. Y esa es la cuestión. (contaminación, cáncer...)

Por lo demás, la cuerde se rompe siempre por el punto más débil. (Que suele coincidir con el que más grita.)

No hablo de tierras raras. Hablo de piezas imprescindibles para fabricar robots, máquinas de industria pesada y vehículos militares especializados, por ejemplo.


Aunque hagas la mayoría de los componentes aquí, que no es el caso, basta que uno de las piezas esenciales se haga en China y no te las quieran vender para que no puedas fabricar la máquina entera.


Es lo que descubrió Estados Unidos hace algunos años y de ahí el cambio de política industrial y financiera, incluyendo los pisos.

Es lo mismo. Nadie tiene "obligación" de vender nada justo cuando le conviene a otro. De eso va precisamente todo el asunto de GME; el hodling, de que uno vende cuando quiere o le conviene, no cuando quiera el ogro de turno, hedgie... naranja o no.

Es que es precisamente por eso. Como bien dices nadie tiene obligación de vender a otro. El problema es que China fabrica un tercio de los componentes y maquinaria mundiales. aquí hacemos bien poquito. Si decide que no nos quiere vender unos cuantos estratégicos no vamos a poder ni siquiera tener aire acondicionado ni trenes de alta velocidad, por ejemplo.


Eso también aplica a maquinaria militar y ya son palabras mayores. Si China no nos quiere vender se para gran parte de la economía occidental, que ya está en decadencia y en una crisis económica de producción real desde hace unos años.


Y todo esto ocurre porque hemos abandonado los medios de producción reales que decía Marx porque nuestras élites se han dedicado a jugar con la especulación para extraer más recursos de la clase trabajadora. Esto incluye todos los activos que conocemos incluyendo pisos y bolsa.

[cujo]

Hasta a veamos el índice idealista o de fotocasa un 60% abajo no hemos acertado nada.
Y un 60% abajo es  casi el doble de caro q lo q se pagaba en 1998.
Nos lo pasamos bien en este foro , pero yo hace tiempo que he asumido q he perdido. Que la gente que no leía ni se informaba ni se llevaba las manos a la cabeza , tienen su casa pagada y muchos la segunda o la q compraron como himbersiohn .

Triste victoria.

[Derby]

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/some-imports-from-china-now-face-maximum-tariff-of-245-us-official-says/3540169#

Some imports from China now face maximum tariff of 245%, US official says

White House official says some goods subject to additional duties, known as Section 301 tariffs, that seek to address unfair trade practices


Increased Activity at U.S. Ports Before New Tariffs on China

Some imports from China now face a maximum tariff rate of up to 245%, a White House official confirmed Wednesday.

A fact sheet posted on the White House website Tuesday mentioned that Chinese imports face a maximum 245% tariff, far beyond the 145% upper threshold previously reported. That figure included a 125% reciprocal tariff imposed by President Donald Trump this month as well as additional 20% fentanyl-related tariffs.

The White House official said some goods are subject to additional duties, known as Section 301 tariffs, that seek to address unfair trade practices. The penalties range from roughly 7.5% to 100%, meaning some Chinese goods now face a total US tariff of 245%.

Electric vehicles and syringes both have Section 301 tariffs of 100% "so those products are hit with a total tariff of around 245% after you factor in the fentanyl tariffs and reciprocal tariff from which neither product is excluded," the official said.

Trump said Tuesday that he believes China, not the US, needs to step forward to open trade negotiations as the world's top two economies engage in a spiraling tariff war.

"The ball is in China's court. China needs to make a deal with us. We don't have to make a deal with them," Trump said in a statement read aloud to reporters by spokesperson Karoline Leavitt. "There's no difference between China and any other country, except they are much larger and China wants what we have.”

Trump said earlier Wednesday that a delegation from Japan is headed to the White House today to negotiate on tariffs, military support for Tokyo and what he called "trade fairness."

"I will attend the meeting, along with Treasury & Commerce Secretaries. Hopefully something can be worked out which is good (GREAT!) for Japan and the USA!" he wrote on social media.

[Derby]

https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/china-stocks-face-risk-of-800-billion-us-outflows-says-goldman-sachs-125041700257_1.html

China stocks face risk of $800 billion US outflows, says Goldman Sachs

Currently around 7 per cent of market capitalisation of Chinese companies' American Depositary Receipts, or ADRs, are held by US institutions


US investors could be forced to offload around $800 billion of Chinese equities “in an extreme scenario”. (Photo: Shutterstock)

US investors could be forced to offload around $800 billion of Chinese equities “in an extreme scenario” of financial decoupling between the world’s two largest economies, Goldman Sachs Group Inc. estimates. 
 
Currently around 7 per cent of market capitalisation of Chinese companies’ American Depositary Receipts, or ADRs, are held by US institutions that may not be able to trade in Hong Kong, Goldman analysts including Kinger Lau wrote in a note dated Wednesday. That means such investors may not be able to go to the Asian financial hub to purchase shares if companies like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. face an involuntary delisting from the US.

Goldman is joining a group of global banks that have started assessing the worst outcome for investors as the once-unthinkable prospect of a financial divorce between the US and China grows with an escalating trade war. Concerns about American stock exchanges kicking Chinese firms out, which became an issue during President Donald Trump’s first term, have resurfaced after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s recent comment that all options are “on the table” in trade talks with China.



“The extreme levels of uncertainty in the global trading system have led to extraordinary volatility in the global capital markets, and concerns about global recession and decoupling risks between the two largest economies globally in other strategic cohorts,” the analysts wrote. They estimate that in a forced delisting scenario, ADRs and the MSCI China Index could see 9 per cent and 4 per cent valuation drawdown from current prices, respectively.

Meanwhile, in the same extreme scenario, Chinese investors might need to unload their US financial assets, which could amount to US$1.7 trillion, they wrote, adding that around US$370 billion of which would be in equities and US$1.3 trillion in bonds.
 
US institutional investors currently own about $250 billion worth of Chinese ADRs, or 26 per cent of the total market value, according to Goldman. Their exposure to Hong Kong stocks amounts to $522 billion or 16 per cent of the market’s total. They own about 0.5 per cent of China’s onshore equities known as A shares.
 
It may take just one day for US investors to complete sales of their A shares, while it may require 119 and 97 days to exit Hong Kong stocks and ADRs, respectively, Goldman estimates.



Among US passive funds, the Kraneshares CSI China Internet Fund, the largest China-focused exchange-traded fund in the US, could be more impacted in the event of forced liquidation due to ADR delisting, Goldman said. The fund has the highest weighting of ADRs at 33 per cent, half of which do not carry Hong Kong listings, as well as a 72 per cent ownership by US investors, the bank’s analysts added.
 
Earlier, JPMorgan Chase & Co. estimated that ADR delistings could lead to removal from global indexes, resulting in aggregate passive outflows of around $11 billion.

[Benzino Napaloni]

Es la consecuencia de querer trasladarlo todo a una hoja de Excel.

Según un estudio de la Fundación BBVA y el Ivie, la tasa de actividad de los mayores se ve frenada por unas pensiones «relativamente generosas» respecto al salario, con una pensión mediana próxima al 80% del salario mediano de los mayores en España, frente a menos del 60% para la media europea, así como por el «todavía escaso recurso» al empleo parcial.

Hijoputismo. Sin paliativos. Los abuelos no curran porque teniendo su pensión, pa qué.

Por no hablar de que la pensión que queda en la media europea sigue dando para mucho más que en España.

[Derby]

https://www.ft.com/content/1326ad5e-f44f-40ca-aa07-3a619fe633c7

Blackstone president warns US risks recession without trade deals

Progress in ‘tariff diplomacy’ will determine level of danger for economy, says Jonathan Gray


Jonathan Gray: ‘The recession risk is directly tied to the length of the uncertainty’ © Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Blackstone president Jonathan Gray has warned that the US economy faces the risk of a recession unless Donald Trump can rapidly strike trade deals, becoming the latest Wall Street boss to ratchet up pressure on the administration.

The US president last week announced a 90-day suspension of the steep tariffs the White House had imposed on most of America’s trading partners, paving the way for negotiations with dozens of countries.

Gray, who oversees the day-to-day operations of the investment group, said: “I would expect an economic slowdown. How significant the economic slowdown is will be directly correlated to the length of the tariff diplomacy.”

He added: “The recession risk is directly tied to the length of the uncertainty”, saying that a speedy resolution to the trade talks would be “positive for the economy and markets”.

Blackstone chief executive Stephen Schwarzman said uncertainty about tariffs had “dramatically impacted investor sentiment” negatively. “We believe that fast resolution is critical to mitigate risks and keep the economy on the growth path,” he said on a call with analysts.

Trump’s climbdown came after the aggressive duties unleashed days of market turmoil. The US president, who has said that more than 70 countries are lining up to negotiate trade agreements, held talks with Japanese officials over a potential deal this week.

The comments from Gray and Schwarzman came after JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon said he hoped the White House would soon reach “agreements in principle” with the US’s trading partners.

Stock and bond markets have stabilised since the US tariff pause, but the White House has increased duties on China and also kept a baseline 10 per cent levy on imports from all countries.

Gray said the ructions in markets had created investment opportunities for Blackstone, which has $1.2tn in assets.

“[You] have to anticipate that we are in a period of heightened volatility and uncertainty, but in some cases, we are seeing prices start to reflect that and it can create opportunities for us to invest,” he said.

Blackstone on Thursday reported first-quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations, with its distributable earnings — a metric favoured by analysts as a proxy for cash flow — rising 11 per cent to $1.4bn.

The company raised $62bn from investors in the quarter, its biggest haul in almost three years, with its credit and insurance business attracting $30bn.

Blackstone also raised $11bn for its funds from wealthy individual investors. About a quarter of the group’s total assets are now managed on behalf of individual investors, up from almost nothing a decade ago.

This month Blackstone announced a plan with Vanguard and Wellington Management to create funds that will invest in public and private assets and cater to affluent investors. Blackstone is betting this business cohort will help drive growth.

Both Gray and Schwarzman said that Blackstone was likely to hold back from selling businesses in tougher financial markets, something that would slow its performance fee earnings.

“More volatile markets do mean we are less likely to sell in the near term,” Schwarzman said on the call.

[Marv]

Lo siento pero estoy con los compañeros que advierten del triunfalismo excesivo.

Es que ya hemos rebasado el 2025, y ya no vale con resultados intermedios o parciales.

No sólo tiene que bajar 60% inmediatamente, sino que hay que demostrar que no se trata de sólo otra corrección valorativa, sino LA última corrección valorativa donde muere la Pisitofilia, y el cepo queda puesto para que no se repita jamás.

A la pisitofilia me da igual si la matan, o ella sola se muere; pero su muerte tiene que implicar necesariamente  que toda propiedad inmobiliaria residencial para simple cobijo deje de tener sobreprecio por encima del coste de construcción, y que de hecho las viviendas de segunda mano se devalúen con los años, sin importar dónde estén.

O sea, a mí me queda por ver aún
- Bajada extrema diferencial con el resto de bienes y servicios
- Cepo que impida volver a las andadas
- Muerte y entierro de la Pisitofilia (en las cabezas de las personas)

Mucho tiene que dar de sí este año.

[Currobena]

Lo siento pero estoy con los compañeros que advierten del triunfalismo excesivo.

Es que ya hemos rebasado el 2025, y ya no vale con resultados intermedios o parciales.

No sólo tiene que bajar 60% inmediatamente, sino que hay que demostrar que no se trata de sólo otra corrección valorativa, sino LA última corrección valorativa donde muere la Pisitofilia, y el cepo queda puesto para que no se repita jamás.

A la pisitofilia me da igual si la matan, o ella sola se muere; pero su muerte tiene que implicar necesariamente  que toda propiedad inmobiliaria residencial para simple cobijo deje de tener sobreprecio por encima del coste de construcción, y que de hecho las viviendas de segunda mano se devalúen con los años, sin importar dónde estén.

O sea, a mí me queda por ver aún
- Bajada extrema diferencial con el resto de bienes y servicios
- Cepo que impida volver a las andadas
- Muerte y entierro de la Pisitofilia (en las cabezas de las personas)

Mucho tiene que dar de sí este año.

Creo que podremos empezar a verlo entre julio y octubre. Todo este juego geopolítico de los aranceles se empezará a notar en la economía local dentro de tres a seis meses, lo que tarda todo el proceso desde que se hace un pedido a China hasta que llega el producto.


Es posible que veamos tiendas vacías por falta de productos a finales de año, cuando se acaben los inventarios que puedan tener en sus almacenes y no lleguen las cantidades pedidas..

[tomasjos]

Lo siento pero estoy con los compañeros que advierten del triunfalismo excesivo.

Es que ya hemos rebasado el 2025, y ya no vale con resultados intermedios o parciales.

No sólo tiene que bajar 60% inmediatamente, sino que hay que demostrar que no se trata de sólo otra corrección valorativa, sino LA última corrección valorativa donde muere la Pisitofilia, y el cepo queda puesto para que no se repita jamás.

A la pisitofilia me da igual si la matan, o ella sola se muere; pero su muerte tiene que implicar necesariamente  que toda propiedad inmobiliaria residencial para simple cobijo deje de tener sobreprecio por encima del coste de construcción, y que de hecho las viviendas de segunda mano se devalúen con los años, sin importar dónde estén.

O sea, a mí me queda por ver aún
- Bajada extrema diferencial con el resto de bienes y servicios
- Cepo que impida volver a las andadas
- Muerte y entierro de la Pisitofilia (en las cabezas de las personas)

Mucho tiene que dar de sí este año.

Estoy de acuerdo, ahora es todo o nada y ya. Si no hay bajada del 60 por ciento de aquí a diciembre la predicción principal ha sido fallida y de paso colapsaremos.

[Derby]

https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/2emmz8bx014qqy0t64f7k/corner-office/reits-are-in-a-rut

REITs Are in a Rut

Bigger players are hoping consolidation will restore vigor to the vaunted real estate investment trusts.


Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61

In their more than six decades, real estate investment trusts have reached far beyond traditional deals and come up with innovative angles on such unlikely businesses as roulette tables and marijuana.

In the mid-2010s, Las Vegas casinos like MGM Resorts International sold their real estate to REITs while retaining operation of the casinos themselves. That allowed them to focus on gambling as the REITs enjoyed stable rental income.

About the same time, marijuana REITs like Innovative Industrial Properties began to offer investors steady yields from properties leased to state-licensed growers and dispensers of medical and recreational cannabis.


But more recently, innovation is taking a back seat to balance-sheet fundamentals. The past three years have been the toughest since the great financial crisis of 2008 for real estate investment trusts. With much of the property market at low tide, a number of publicly listed and privately held REITs are floundering. Many are straining to retain investors by raising dividends even as their earnings and valuations continue to shrink.

There is some optimism that the REIT industry and commercial real estate are recovering from high interest rates, heavy debt loads, and overexpansion, especially in office properties, that kept them out of the stock market boom. But those hopes are being whiplashed by fears of recession and rising costs linked to President Trump’s tariff and labor policies.

These challenges are leading to calls from the stronger REITs for a consolidation of the industry.

“There are just too many small REITs that have too little liquidity and not very good performance,” says Hamid Moghadam, chairman and CEO of Prologis, the largest publicly listed REIT by market capitalization and the leader in industrial warehouses.

This view is echoed by Shankh Mitra, CEO of Welltower, the dominant REIT in senior housing. It has been on a record buying spree of assets held by smaller, troubled rivals. “While the outlook for commercial real estate remains foggy, in some cases gloomy . . . it’s a clear and bright morning at Welltower,” Mitra told analysts in February.

Despite the setbacks of recent years, REITs continue to be viewed by other major players in the real estate industry as a powerful vehicle for growth. Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative-assets manager, has led private equity firms in acquiring stakes in REITs for a hefty portion of its property deals. Through its own nontraded REIT, called BREIT, Blackstone has also pioneered efforts to convince individual investors to turn over their capital for indefinite periods and accept limitations on liquidity.

REITs were expected to benefit from the so-called silver tsunami of retiring baby boomers seeking a steady source of dividend income. But those predictions continue to fall short as both pension funds and independent financial advisers show little enthusiasm for investing in REITs on behalf of their clients.

Spokespersons for several large pension funds say they consider REITs better suited for individual retirement accounts or 401(k) plans than for pension entities with hundreds of billions of dollars to invest. But for financial advisers, the drubbing that REIT valuations have suffered in the post-pandemic years makes them a difficult sell to clients nowadays.

“Nobody will return your phone call if you want to talk about a REIT,” says Lawrence Glazer, co-founder and managing partner of Boston-based Mayflower Advisors, which caters mostly to clients with less than $5 million in liquid assets. At this point, he tells clients who don’t hang up that REITs should be considered “a contrarian play.”

REITs were established by law in 1960 to democratize real estate investments by allowing Main Street investors access to income-producing opportunities that were previously available only to institutions and ultrawealthy individuals. By attracting a broader base of investment capital, REITs also encouraged the growth of commercial real estate development and operations.

Equally important, the legislation did not circumscribe real estate uses. So over the ensuing decades, REITs were able to attract capital for office buildings, residential projects, shopping centers, warehouses, health care–related facilities, and, more recently, data centers.

Today there are 196 publicly listed REITs — down from 220 a decade ago — with a total market capitalization of $1.5 trillion and investments in more than 20 different property sectors. They all adhere to the 65-year-old formula that requires them to distribute at least 90 percent of taxable earnings as dividends to shareholders. For this reason, REITs are meant to appeal to income-oriented investors, especially retirees.

REITs invest in real estate primarily to earn rental income and gains from property appreciation. Because they distribute most of this income, they typically retain only a small portion of earnings for reinvestment. This can limit their ability to expand through internal funding, so they must also rely on external financing methods such as issuing new shares or debt to fund further property acquisitions and developments.

For Prologis, the REIT structure provides far more advantages than constraints. Co-founded in 1983 by Moghadam, it began as an investment management firm that sponsored private equity funds in real estate. But the funds had eight- to ten-year terms, “and at the end we would have to liquidate them and start all over again,” Moghadam explains. So in 1988, Prologis opted to transform itself into an operating company as a publicly listed REIT.

Prologis achieved its massive size by narrowing its business. Three decades ago, it sold off its office buildings and shopping centers and focused solely on warehouses. It moved those warehouses as close as possible to major consumption centers rather than setting them near factories and ports.

The strategy paid off handsomely with the advent of e-commerce, which Moghadam recognized in the 1990s would be a transformative force. E-commerce requires three times more logistics real estate as traditional retail commerce, which warehouses within its stores. But those ever-larger Prologis buildings weren’t just about storage. They built multiple doors to get goods in and out quickly to fulfill the famed last-mile delivery of products ordered online.

M&A has played a major role in the REIT’s expansion. Between 2020 and 2023, Prologis spent more than $46 billion on just four large acquisitions.

It made some mistakes along the way. A joint venture to introduce cold-storage warehousing was a failure. And Moghadam still kicks himself for turning down an investment in Amazon when it was just shipping books in the 1990s. On the other hand, he points out, Prologis has become the largest provider of warehouse space to Amazon.

Today, Prologis owns 1.3 billion square feet — an area equivalent to all of San Francisco. Every year, it renews leases, at higher rents, on a fifth of this property, covering more acreage than Miami Beach. According to Moghadam, the main driver of his firm’s growth this year will be the raising of rents up for renewal by about 35 percent to match current market prices.

Prologis is also ramping up its investments in data centers, linked to skyrocketing artificial intelligence and cloud-computing demands. Moghadam insists this isn’t a departure from the firm’s narrow focus on warehouses. “We should be thought of as the leading provider of physical and digital infrastructure in the world,” he says.

Many Prologis warehouses can be adapted for use as data centers, using a team of experts already hired for these conversions.

The firm offers as a showcase its projects in northern Virginia, one of the leading data center locations in the world. But the biggest hurdle is the enormous electricity needs of data centers, which will require massive increases in both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources. And Prologis will have to get in line because Dominion Energy, the main power provider in northern Virginia, has a two-to-three-year backlog.

“You can own a piece of land and have a customer who wants a data center on it, but if you don’t have the power, you’re stuck,” notes Steve Sakwa, head of real estate research at Evercore ISI.

Health care–related REITs are supposed to address two major baby boomer concerns: the expansion of the facilities crucial for an aging population and a steady source of returns on those investments.

Welltower is one of the few health care REITs able to deliver on both promises while generating impressive profits for its shareholders. It is the largest owner of senior housing in the U.S., with some 103,000 units. Its business model — aimed at affluent, private payers — is unapologetically high-end.

In the years before Covid-19, when money was virtually interest-free, many publicly listed REITs and privately held real estate firms piled into senior housing and overbuilt the market. Then, in the wake of the pandemic, with interest rates shooting upward and debt mounting, many developers became desperate to sell off their assets.

They found a ready buyer in Welltower. With a strong balance sheet and a large scale, it enjoys access to both publicly listed REIT investors and cheaper debt in the unsecured markets. Last year, it spent $8.4 billion to acquire dozens of senior housing communities from other REITs and private real estate investors, in most cases paying less than it would cost to build them.

To locate acquisitions, Welltower uses a data analytics platform that focuses down to the neighborhood level, rather than the more usual state or city levels.

“We don’t target some regions over others, but rather the high-end neighborhoods, whether in St. Louis or Los Angeles or elsewhere,” says John Olympitis, Welltower’s head of corporate development. And most acquisitions are in neighborhoods where the company is already doing business.

This year, Welltower will be in a sweet spot, with rising demand for its senior housing from those who can afford to pay out of their own pockets as well as rent increases from those properties.

Senior housing for those who depend on insurance or social security to help cover costs will continue to lag. According to Green Street Advisors, a real estate analysis firm, about half of seniors fall into this category. And only about a third of the additional senior housing units needed to meet demand by 2030 will get built.

But is Welltower attractive to seniors looking for income? At first glance, its current dividend yield of 1.8 percent looks paltry compared with the many REITs offering 6 to 8 percent. But higher yields are often linked to declines in firms’ valuations and efforts to dissuade investors from selling shares. Some shaky REITs are actually borrowing money to pay higher dividends.

By contrast, Welltower has outperformed the broader REIT index by more than four times over the past five years. That’s reflected in its total returns — with part coming from dividends and part from capital appreciation.

Blackstone, the largest asset manager in real estate, has also led alts in the use of REITs. The strategy fits well with the firm’s capital-light model of not drawing on its balance sheet and instead investing third-party capital raised mainly from its private real estate funds.

Often those investments are used to privatize publicly listed companies, leveraging Blackstone’s scale and expertise to generate alpha. “We’ve done over 50 public company transactions in our history, and the vast majority of those privatizations have involved REITs,” says Nadeem Meghji, global co-head of real estate.

Other alternative-asset managers are also pursuing this strategy. One of the most successful was QTS Data Centers, a company originally structured as a publicly listed REIT. Blackstone identified QTS early on as a firm poised for rapid growth in the new era of artificial intelligence.

But as a REIT, it was required to distribute the vast majority of its earnings as shareholder dividends. And that made it impossible to raise the enormous capital needed to increase the power generation demanded by cloud-computing and AI operations. So in 2021, Blackstone took QTS private, for $10 billion.

Blackstone retained the management team and used QTS, backed by funds raised by Blackstone, as a platform for further expansion in the data center sector. Over the past four years, QTS has increased its installed capacity by a whopping 900 percent.

As alternative assets reached portfolio limits for institutional investors and the ultrawealthy, Blackstone became the leader in the use of REITs to court individuals with $1 million to $5 million in financial assets.

Blackstone’s main vehicle to attract them is BREIT. In fact, BREIT participated in the buyout of QTS along with funds that Blackstone raised from institutional investors and other limited partners.

BREIT is supposed to address a variety of problems posed by the mass affluent. Meetings with large institutional investors like pension and sovereign wealth fund managers are carried out face-to-face. But BREIT has to reach out to the many thousands of individual investors — and the financial advisers who serve as their gatekeepers — through webinars and other virtual gatherings.

BREIT was intended to resolve the issue of volatility that afflicts publicly traded REITs. Any change in investor sentiment — such as worries about interest rates, panicked reactions to an event like Covid-19, or tariffs — will lead to capital outflows.

As a nontraded entity, BREIT is designed for individual investors seeking exposure to income-generating real estate and willing to leave their investments in place as perpetual capital. As a safety valve, BREIT allows for monthly redemptions of up to 2 percent of net asset value and 5 percent quarterly.

From its inception in 2017 until 2022, BREIT grew to a net asset value of $68 billion — becoming by far the largest such retail investor vehicle in the private equity world. But in late 2022, it began facing significant redemption requests from investors. This led Blackstone to restrict withdrawals when demands exceeded the stipulated monthly and quarterly limits.

From February 2024, BREIT has fulfilled all redemption requests and has delivered a 9.5 percent annualized return since inception.

“BREIT’s semiliquid structure has worked as intended — offering investors the potential for higher net returns in exchange for a measure of liquidity,” Meghji insists.

But to help meet redemption requests, BREIT raised capital by selling more than $10 billion in assets, reducing its net asset value to $58 billion. Fortunately for BREIT and its mainly mass affluent investors, the QTS investment continues to be among its most lucrative.

Because of its dominant position among nontraded REITs, BREIT’s liquidity issues have affected the whole sector. “It’s been on pause the last couple of years,” concedes Stacy Chitty, co-founder of Blue Vault Partners, a research and consulting firm that focuses on nontraded REITs.

Alternative-asset managers have also reached out to ultrawealthy and mass affluent investors with publicly listed mortgage REITs. But these mREITs have recently suffered setbacks as well.

They were created to take advantage of the private credit boom by providing institutional and individual investors access to high-yield real estate credit through mortgages. But mREITs have become some of the weakest-performing REITs in terms of both dividends and market valuation. Since the pandemic, commercial properties, especially office buildings and shopping malls, have faced increased vacancy rates. With nonperforming debt on the rise, many REITs have opted to sell loans at a loss to clear risk from their balance sheets.

The valuations and dividend payments of even those mREITs linked to the strongest alternative-asset managers have tumbled.

Last year, Blackstone Mortgage Trust reduced its dividend by 24 percent, and Apollo Commercial Real Estate Finance cut its payouts by 29 percent. Worse still was Ares Commercial Real Estate, which dropped its dividend after first-quarter 2024 by a massive 55 percent. Its market valuation is down by 67 percent over the past three years.

REIT managers have attempted — with little success — to convince pension funds to increase their exposure to REITs. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, a $200 billion pension fund representing more than two million public educators, illustrates this tepid view of REITs.

Real estate assets account for 14 percent — or $28 billion — of total TRS holdings, with all but 1 percent of this capital in privately held real estate. TRS has preferred to partner with investment firms for exposure to private real estate, targeting specific assets or portfolios. In recent years, it has also beefed up an in-house staff of real estate experts to carry out due diligence on deals and co-investing opportunities, thus saving hundreds of millions of dollars in fees.

But the pandemic, which made it difficult to sell most property, hit valuations for private real estate harder than for REITs. So TRS decided to capitalize on this divergence and tiptoe into the sector. In 2023, the pension fund invested $400 million in a passive, market-weighted index of U.S. REITs.

At the end of that year, TRS sold these assets, scoring a 17.1 percent internal rate of return and a $47 million profit. If TRS had invested the same amount in private real estate, using the Open End Diversified Core Equity benchmark that assesses the performance of private real estate investments in the U.S., it would have suffered a $35 million loss.

Still, the pension fund is not planning any major investment in publicly listed REITs and is waiting for the property market to rebound to increase its exposure through private real estate investments.

Historically, REITs have mirrored the broader stock market’s valuations. But the REIT index has been trading at recession-level valuations compared with the S&P 500, which itself hasn’t done well under the Trump administration’s unsettling economic policies.

Evan Serton, senior vice president at Cohen & Steers, an active REIT management firm, cites several factors as evidence for a possible turnaround. Interest rates have dropped somewhat, demand for several key property sectors is rising, and, with little new supply, some commercial real estate is again becoming profitable.

A possible broader rebound of the commercial real estate market later this year or next has rekindled the long-standing debate over passive versus active management.

Of all sectors of the stock market, real estate has the highest level of passive ownership. Predictably, most investors who believe a turnaround is on the horizon will choose exposure to REITs through passive indexes, such as real estate exchange-traded funds owned and managed by the likes of Vanguard, BlackRock, and Schwab. Their fees are cheap and risks are low — but so are dividends and total returns.

“A passive management approach means owning everything across all property types,” says Serton. “We have the ability to discern where the supply and demand are most attractive.”

That involves visiting REIT assets for different property types across the country to understand at a local level where supply and demand may be changing. And of course, that leads to higher management fees.

The stronger REITs have good reason to prefer an active management approach. Passive ownership lumps all REITs together, regardless of their differences in financial fundamentals. When passive investor funds flow in, all REIT stocks in a property sector go up; when funds flow out, all those stocks go down. And because REITs are largely treated as bond proxies, the whole sector is pulled up or down based on the movement of interest rates.

Whether passively or actively managed, the REIT industry has not been able to avoid sharp slowdowns every decade or so. In the present downturn, publicly traded REITs can be acquired at a substantial discount to their net asset value. That means it has actually become cheaper to buy real estate through a REIT than to purchase the properties directly.

Looking beyond the current bear market, it seems certain that the REIT industry will resume its innovative trajectory, expand into more property sectors, and increase its total market cap, though the number of REITs may continue to shrink.

Among the likely dropouts are those REITs that took on too much debt when commercial real estate roared ahead and got into trouble when the cycle spun downward.

“Ultimately, a lot of those companies are going to get consolidated,” Prologis chief executive Moghadam predicts.

[senslev]

Lo siento pero estoy con los compañeros que advierten del triunfalismo excesivo.

Es que ya hemos rebasado el 2025, y ya no vale con resultados intermedios o parciales.

No sólo tiene que bajar 60% inmediatamente, sino que hay que demostrar que no se trata de sólo otra corrección valorativa, sino LA última corrección valorativa donde muere la Pisitofilia, y el cepo queda puesto para que no se repita jamás.

A la pisitofilia me da igual si la matan, o ella sola se muere; pero su muerte tiene que implicar necesariamente  que toda propiedad inmobiliaria residencial para simple cobijo deje de tener sobreprecio por encima del coste de construcción, y que de hecho las viviendas de segunda mano se devalúen con los años, sin importar dónde estén.

O sea, a mí me queda por ver aún
- Bajada extrema diferencial con el resto de bienes y servicios
- Cepo que impida volver a las andadas
- Muerte y entierro de la Pisitofilia (en las cabezas de las personas)

Mucho tiene que dar de sí este año.

Estoy de acuerdo, ahora es todo o nada y ya. Si no hay bajada del 60 por ciento de aquí a diciembre la predicción principal ha sido fallida y de paso colapsaremos.

¿Cómo va a haber una bajada del 60% de aquí a diciembre excepto apocalipsis zombie, que entonces sería un bajada del 99,99%?

Debería ser entre 2026 y 2030, si es, y aceptamos segundo semestre de 2025 como animal de compañía, pero sin saber cómo va a ser. Por pedir, sí, que sea ya, y por pedir, que sea un -66,6%.

Y estoy con los compañeros, ya hemos perdido, se perdió en 2009 cuando se decidió tomar el camino que se tomó y se requeteperdió en la pandemia. Pero nuestra derrota, no quiere decir que no sea la victoria de los que vengan detrás.

Pero nunca se sabe, desde que hay algo que dejan cotizar que se llama Fartcoin me espero cualquier cosa, incluso que vivamos en una simulación o que seamos un experimento de otro tipo de entidad, no muy inteligente, porque el experimento les ha salido como el puto culo.

[asustadísimos]

[El BCE ha bajado los tipos de interés con una retórica parecida a la que usará la Fed en mayo: temor a la ralentización económica.

La Fed bajará también los tipos de interés. Dirá que la inflación ya no es tanto problema. Y que lo preocupa ahora es el crecimiento, la actividad y el empleo. En consecuencia, estará dando oficialmente la recesión en sentido amplio: mengua de la actividad económica, empobrecimiento de la producción, decaimiento de la demanda, subutilización de la capacidad instalada, subempleo y expectativas desfalleciendo.

Será interesante escuchar el posicionamiento de la Fed en relación con el bluf fiscal del Gobierno de deudores.

Muchos inversores cerrarán posiciones largas —la bajada de tipos de interés será insuficiente para decidirse por refinanciar—, abrirán posiciones cortas, moderadas al principio, y empezará a haber sangre en la banca en la sombra, donde ya se huele.]

[Cadavre Exquis]

https://x.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1912828575369019478

Saludos.