Looking Back to Gain a Better Look Forward

As a matter of housekeeping, every fall investors work to prudently minimize their tax liabilities by washing their current year realized gains by “harvesting” tax losses with the sale of assets that have declined in market value. Unfortunately, the stocks we see as having the most potential are often the best tax-loss sale candidates. To mitigate this conflict and stay fully invested, we need to identify issues that have a chance of producing similar upside as the issues we are selling.

A Time for Continued Patience when Impatience Steps to the Fore

On December 17th, the Fed delivered its third rate cut of 2025. Frustratingly, the 10Y Treasury yield remains stuck above 4%, so the long-awaited macroeconomic relief that real estate investors feel they need has yet to arrive. We’ve been so patient, too.

Watching Investment Bubbles Deflating

Over the last couple of years, the only thing that has exceeded the magnitude of Artificial Intelligence’s (AI) potential is the Fear of Missing out (FOMO) driven frenzy to invest in AI. Evidence that the mania might be peaking came with the 09/30/25 IPO of Fermi Inc. (FRMI), a REIT start-up that is “pioneering the development of next-generation electric grids that deliver highly redundant power at gigawatt scale, required to create next-generation artificial intelligence.”

Changes

Since 2018, Simon Bowler has produced the data-laden report, which we call The State of REITs, monthly (it’s published elsewhere but resides on the 2MC website for your easy access). Early in the process of gathering numbers for the October edition, he noted that the long-observed higher multiples in favor of large caps had broken, and that shares were now trading more independently of size. Looking closer, it got stranger still.