After college, I lived in Hoboken from 2004 through 2006.
Right on the corner of 5th and Grand. 500 Grand.
That was my address. And those were two and a half of the best years of my life.
But Hoboken wasn’t always Hoboken.
For most of the 20th century, it was an industrial town buried on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River in between the Holland and Lincoln tunnels.
Shipyards. Factories. Warehouses. Docks. Working-class neighborhoods.
During the 1960s, ’70s, and into the early ’80s, a lot of people viewed Hoboken as rough around the edges.
The shipping industry declined. Industry left. Population fell. Investment disappeared.
People weren’t exactly lining up to move there. If you wanted excitement, you went across the river.
You went to Manhattan.
But sometime during the ’80s and especially throughout the ’90s, something changed.
Young professionals started figuring out that Hoboken had something unique.
You could be one train stop from Manhattan without paying Manhattan prices.
The waterfront improved. Restaurants opened. Bars opened. The streets got cleaned up. People invested in the community.
And by the time I got there in 2004, the transformation was already obvious.
The place was booming. Every bar was packed. The restaurants were great. Everybody knew everybody. You could walk everywhere.
The city had energy. It had personality. It had character. And every time I go back, I still feel it.
The funny thing is that Hoboken never tried to become Manhattan.
It didn’t have to.
It wasn’t competing with New York City. It was building something different, something smaller, more manageable.
Something that fit the people who chose to live there.
Some of my friends never left. Twenty years later, they’re still there.
They work in Manhattan. They could live somewhere else. They choose not to.
Because they figured something out that many investors never do.
You don’t have to be the biggest. You don’t have to be the best.
You don’t have to be the greatest trader who ever lived. You don’t have to manage billions.
You don’t have to swing for the fences on every pitch. You don’t have to be New York City.
You can build a life that works for you. You can build a portfolio that works for you.
You can have concentrated portfolios where you’re really going for it. You can have retirement accounts.
You can own businesses. You can own real estate.
You can save for your kids.
You can pursue multiple return streams with different objectives and different time horizons.
You can build an entire financial ecosystem that serves your life instead of consuming it.
It’s OK to be Hoboken.
In fact, for most of us, that’s probably the better deal.
This Week in Everybody’s Wrong
On Monday, we talked about why we expect to see more “short squeezes” in the current environment.
A lot of investors don’t believe in this bull market, so they’re selling stocks using leverage.
They’re what we like to call “guaranteed future buyers,” and the more of them the better.
On Tuesday, we learned why “who wins AI?” is not the right question.
The “agentic economy” sounds great, but it’s going to take a lot of infrastructure to get there from here.
It’s like a whole new interstate highway system… only way bigger.
On Wednesday, we took a first look at the SpaceX IPO a couple of days before it hit the market.
It’s the biggest initial public offering in history.
But we need to look beyond SPCX to understand the real opportunity here.
On Thursday, we took a look around to see if there’s any weakness out there.
It’s an important question: Are any major areas of the market breaking down?
Right now, the evidence simply isn’t there.
On Friday, we took another look at SpaceX (SPCX).
Mrs. Parets asked the best question: “OK. What does it mean for us?”
Here’s how to trade the granddaddy of all IPOs.
On Saturday, Jason Perz brought it all back home.
Achieving the final frontier is a big deal.
And it’s going to take a lot of stuff on Earth to make it happen.
Have a great Sunday.
We’ll see you Monday morning…
Stay sharp,
JC Parets, CMT
Founder, TrendLabs