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10/22/08

The Essential REIT: October 22, 2008

06:09:59 pm, Categories: US REITs, Global REITs, The Economy

“How Bad the Toll Will Be is Something We’re Still Assessing.”
—Citigroup Economist Steven Wieting

Mark Twain once famously stated, “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” Indeed. That has been a problem with “The Essential REIT” almost since its birth many years ago. But necessity is the mother of invention and, because I seem to be busier than ever, I will seek to defy Mr. Twain’s dictum by shortening the length of this, and future, newsletters. My objective will be to cut fat but to preserve whatever meat is occasionally contained herein. But only you can be the judge of that.

Since the date of the last issue (September 24), REIT stocks have fallen faster than an overweight Mafia don tossed into the East River wearing cement overshoes. From that date through the close on Tuesday, the shares have fallen 30.5% (based upon the MSCI REIT index). Year to date, the loss was 34.2%, not much different from the S&P500, which has been trashed 35.0%. What’s going on? Are today’s prices rational, or do they reflect panic among investors who don’t want to own anything that comes with even a modicum or risk? This issue of the newsletter will grope for an answer to that key question.…

Click here to read the entire October 22, 2008 issue of The Essential REIT

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09/24/08

The Essential REIT: September 24, 2008

03:04:38 pm, Categories: Global REITs

Verse: For Better – or Worse.

Like all of you, I have been attempting to figure out whether these obscenely volatile stock and credit markets are telling us that we are approaching the end of the world as we know it. Certainly these are scary times, as many of the giant financial companies that we have known (if not loved) take their turns in the barrel, and a number of them won’t be coming out.

But rather than bore you with my thoughts on the current bomb-cratered landscape, I thought I’d bore you, instead, with a bit of what might pass, in some benighted quarters, for poetry. In what follows, I’ll hazard a guess as to what might be in store, both for the US economy in general and our REIT stocks in particular. I assure you, however, that I have no pretensions of following in the steps of Wordsworth…

Click here to read the entire September 24, 2008 issue of The Essential REIT

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