patrick.net

Buy stocks unless you have fewer than 10 years to live.
The losers will spend the 600 bucks as soon as they get it in their hot little hands.
I predict Apple will get a lot of the money.
keep it coming, I want my dividends.
I'm hoping Trump stays in and I might have an extra 500k by the end of 2021.

I do feel we're in the final stage of the bubble and will probably pop sometime this Spring. Many macroeconomist way smarter than me concur. When that happens investors will be looking where to put their money and commodities will sky rocket. Just look at Silver, Uranium, copper, lumber, oil they are still cheap and undervalued compared to stocks.

FCX up 300% - LL over 700%

While unachievable for most, the trick is to become an accredited investor, that opens up so many new investment vehicles. In a good market you can double the normal investment return.

As for selling, no one is a market timer, human nature is to be scared when it time to invest and enthusiastic when it's time to sell. Paralysis and FOMO are death to most undisciplined investors. Hence why you just always need to be in the market, through good and bad.

My 100 years comment was basically focusing on the general upward trend of the market, i.e. every dip has been buying opportunity.

We have no where to go but to inflate to pay for our pseudo socialistic society. We will never pay down the debt, oligarchs will only tolerate so much tax, the only way forward is to inflate until it all collapses. Until then, in theory productive assets should do fine. Unless we get heavy wealth taxes or increased capital gains taxes, then that would be negative for assets.

My base case is the slow Californiafication of the US, like a slow boiled frog in a soup of socialism. Assets should be ok for a while cause elites and banks still control everything and want to make money.

G36 says

Have you looked into Robinhood? No commissions on BTC/ETH trades but they don't allow you to get the best available price. But that seems like pennies on the dollar to me considering the return potential

My experience with Coinbase has put me off a little bit TBH. Now some random website (although highly rated in all my research) has all of my personal information and could use my identity (if I didn't have other safeguards in place).

Re: Robin Hood >> I'm looking for a platform that allows me to take possession of my bitcoin (hardware wallet) and I'm not sure Robinhood allows that? I know that's why I didn't go the Paypal route.

I'll probably stay out of it until Coinbase fixes their platform or until BullionVault (where I already have an account) gets into crypto.

mich says

I do feel we're in the final stage of the bubble and will probably pop sometime this Spring.

Quoted for posterity.

@stfu,
then Robinhood is not for you. They are like PayPal and currently dont enable you to move your crypto to your private bank (hardware wallet).

Re: Coinbase. Personally, I wouldnt call it a random website :) Coinbase is in business since 2012, recently filed for an IPO and has >35M (verified) users globally. They operate in over 100 countries and are headquartered in SF. Users get instant deposits and the fees on Coinbase Pro are fair IMO (0.5%). Coinbase works closey with regulators and they will submit your transaction history yearly to the IRS when it hits certain $ thresholds. Crypto trading - despite what some critics say - is regulated in the US. Crypto brokers that allow users to transact from FIAT to Crypto and vice versa have to comply with KYC regulations.

Dholliday126 says

As for selling, no one is a market timer, human nature is to be scared when it time to invest and enthusiastic when it's time to sell. Paralysis and FOMO are death to most undisciplined investors.
We have no where to go but to inflate to pay for our pseudo socialistic society. We will never pay down the debt, oligarchs will only tolerate so much tax, the only way forward is to inflate until it all collapses

@Dholliday126 great post.
Exactly, dont try to be the market timer. I would add, dont try to trade unless you know what your doing and can stomach the losses. I bought another house in 2020 and I cant tell you how many people told me the RE market is going to collapse and I will lose a ton of money. Everyone's an expert nowadays. Every year we hear from "experts" the stock market is going to crash. And for crypto (Bitcoin was declared "dead" at least 5,000 times. BTC just had its 12th birthday and is trading at all time highs). I continue to buy assets and dollar cost avg into the markets and maintain patience. I am doing just fine...cutting out the noise from "experts" is the only "issue" I run into.

Yep, the selloff started today. I'm holding, and if we get a 10% correction, I'm buying! My TSLA is holding up well though.

Dholliday126 says

Paralysis and FOMO

Oh god, do I know about paralysis. Back in March I had $100k equity line on my house ready to tap... a fresh $30k in cash ready to invest. And it sat in my brokerage account untouched. I of course let my 401k ride the wave and kept putting 10% of my paychecks every two weeks... but due to legitimate fear of losing my job at the time I couldn’t bring myself to risk cash or leverage my heloc. Kept waiting for the double dip that never came. Only consolation prize is I more than doubled my cash from $30k to $70k just by being extra frugal the last year.

BoomAndBustCycle says

Dholliday126 says

Paralysis and FOMO

Oh god, do I know about paralysis. Back in March I had $100k equity line on my house ready to tap... a fresh $30k in cash ready to invest. And it sat in my brokerage account untouched. I of course let my 401k ride the wave and kept putting 10% of my paychecks every two weeks... but due to legitimate fear of losing my job at the time I couldn’t bring myself to risk cash or leverage my heloc. Kept waiting for the double dip that never came. Only consolation prize is I more than doubled my cash from $30k to $70k just by being extra frugal the last year.

Dude I took a bath on 2007/8 in the market and sat in cash for a decade, then got back in and doubled my money in a few years. Probably would have quadrupled my money if I never left. It's hard as shit to stay the course.

You should never sell stocks while 1. interest rates are low 2. inflation and taxes are reasonable rates.

Like Alec Baldwin said in Glengarry Glenn Ross: “The money is just sitting out there waiting for you to take it. Are you man enough to take it?”

Just as the bullshit fake news goes on all day, so does the financial bullshit on CNBC and elsewhere.

Every day worldwide rich guys have new cash to invest; they own businesses and the untold masses of wage slaves spend all they made that week. The rich guys have a decision; do they buy bonds or stocks?

Today the answer is simple, stocks are better than bonds.
I read a rumor that Apple will raise their dividend in February.
I’m a bit amazed that I get paid more in Apple dividends than I made working a job after college.
Hold cash? No fuckin way.

Sikhs have this concept of "Chardi Kala"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charhdi_Kala

I am very positive about rejuvenation of American real economy.
The CCP sponsored twitter/facebook etc. may go down, But the manufacturing and in technology real software/hardware is expected to do well.

I dunno, most recent figures I have are from back in November. That was when margin debt increased 9.5% month over month. Went from about $660 billion in October to about $722 billion in November. That's for those trading geniuses with retail brokerage accounts. So in addition to all the money that was "saved" and put into stocks an extra $62 billion was borrowed and put into stocks in one month. Since the market cap of Ford is about $33 billion, these geniuses borrowed about twice the value of Ford and "invested" these billions willy-nilly into their favorite can't miss stocks. Looks like they did about the same in December.

What could possibly go wrong?

Dholliday126 says

Dude I took a bath on 2007/8 in the market and sat in cash for a decade

If I could time the market, I would have retired in Caligulan splendor long ago.

Dholliday126 says

Back in March I had $100k equity line on my house ready to tap... a fresh $30k in cash ready to invest. And it sat in my brokerage account untouched. I of course let my 401k ride the wave and kept putting 10% of my paychecks every two weeks... but due to legitimate fear of losing my job at the time I couldn’t bring myself to risk cash or leverage my heloc.

A legitimate reason to not invest at the moment.

Misc says

That was when margin debt increased 9.5% month over month.

Concerning for sure, but it's not always reinvested into stocks and securities. With interest rates so low, you can borrow say $100k against your stocks for ridiculously low amount monthly. It's how we bought our current house, so we had leverage with the bank because it was a foreclosure. Cash is king in real estate. We then refi'd a couple months later. I think our monthly interest only carry cost was about $220/mo.

So while it was a margin loan, it wasn't inflating the stock market. Others could be opening a business or funding it to stay afloat like restaurants and salons during the pandemic.

My guess though based on the retarded crypto values and the month over month increase in margin debt, much of that increase went into BTC and other top level Crypto coins. People will double down on stupid I guess and FOMO. If I'm correct on this, some individuals are going to take a bath here soon. This is exactly what happened Dec. 2017. Not logical pumps and then the bottom falls out. Took almost 3 years to get back here. Whales and institutional finally got traction to suck little guys back in with their cash or margin to steal it from them.

WookieMan says

crypto values and the month over month increase in margin debt, much of that increase went into BTC and other top level Crypto coins.

@WookieMan
We have seen nothing yet in Crypto. The bull market has just started. JPM just came out with a price prediction of 146k for Bitcoin.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-05/jpmorgan-sees-146-000-plus-bitcoin-price-as-long-term-target

Today the U.S. regulator (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) released guidance for banks. Banks are entering the crypto market now.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/crypto-prices-jump-after-u-s-regulator-says-banks-can-use-stablecoin-connect-to-blockchains-11609811050

Looks like the Bitcoin bull has fallen behind trend. The total reserve of gold held by the United States is only 8133.50 tonnes. At today's price that put the value of the gold reserve at $509 billion roughly.

The market value of Bitcoin is in excess of that figure based on today's dollar price.

Who am I to say diamonds are over priced?

Of course, Bitcoin can go up another 8 times its value from here.

If JP Morgan says buy, what could possibly go wrong?

Misc says

Of course, Bitcoin can go up another 8 times its value from here.

I would say easily 8 times from todays value is doable in the next 12 month for Bitcoin.
Many Altcoins will outperform Bitcoin. However there is more risk involved. Ethereum will easily outperform Bitcoin percentage wise.

Some coins are being used to build government infrastructure to digitalize national money. See Stellar Lumens (XLM) and Ukraine:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ukraine-government-picks-stellar-help-140028973.html

WookieMan says

Misc says

That was when margin debt increased 9.5% month over month.

Concerning for sure, but it's not always reinvested into stocks and securities. With interest rates so low, you can borrow say $100k against your stocks for ridiculously low amount monthly. It's how we bought our current house, so we had leverage with the bank because it was a foreclosure. Cash is king in real estate. We then refi'd a couple months later. I think our monthly interest only carry cost was about $220/mo.

So while it was a margin loan, it wasn't inflating the stock market. Others could be opening a business or funding it to stay afloat like restaurants and salons during the pandemic.

My guess though based on the retarded crypto values and the month over month increase in margin debt, much of that increase went into BTC and other top level Crypto coins. People will double down on stupid I guess ...

While it is possible for margin loans to be used for purposes outside of buying securities, it is more likely that other loans have been initiated by these trading geniuses to purchase securities. I just don't even want to know how many cash-out re-fi's have been done with some of that cash going into trendy stocks or alt-coins. Tap a HELOC to buy Bitcoin or TSLA? --- What could go wrong? Why not put it on a credit card? Interest rates there are low compared to the increase in value offered by these investments.

Misc says

I just don't even want to know how many cash-out re-fi's have been done with some of that cash going into trendy stocks or alt-coins. Tap a HELOC to buy Bitcoin or TSLA? --- What could go wrong?

@Misc
The crypto bull market is driven by institutional investors. They dont take out heloc's or use their credit card. (paypal, michael saylor, square invested hundreds of millions of USD into Bitcoin). You might want to do a little bit of research....

Retail investors have just slowly started to enter the crypto market again (see google search term of Bitcoin "trends").

"Across the U.S. and Europe, 36% of the survey’s 774 respondents said they own cryptocurrencies or derivatives. In the U.S., 27% of institutions — including pension funds, family offices, investment advisers and digital and traditional hedge funds — said they own digital assets, up from 22% about a year ago, when Fidelity surveyed 441 institutions just in the U.S. In Europe, 45% of respondents are invested in digital assets.

https://www.investmentnews.com/third-institutional-investors-hold-crypto-assets-fidelity-193833

Bitcoin does have a much larger advertising budget than the government of Thailand, and a much more naive audience.

If a survey was done on the number of people holding Thai Bahts as a store of wealth in the US or Europe, the number would be negligible.

... and that's a real currency

Misc says

Bitcoin does have a much larger advertising budget than the government of Thailand.

Bitcoin is a decentralized cryptocurrency. There is no CEO, no marketing department and no advertising budget. No number to call. No Headquarter.

Built into its code, Bitcoin has true scarcity (only 21M Bitcoin can be created) and the the block reward for mining new bitcoin is halved, meaning that bitcoin miners will receive 50% less bitcoin for every transaction they verify. BTC halving occurs every 210,000 blocks, which equates to a halving occurring approximately every 4 years.

Again @Misc do your research. Or are you just trolling?

Coinbase has over 35 million users. --- Those are not institutional investors. Those are your Holder geniuses.

Misc says

Coinbase has over 35 million users. --- Those are not institutional investors. Those are your Holder geniuses.

@Misc
Oh man, please do at least some research....Why in the world would you think the 35M users are ONLY retail? Some here have not even done basic research on what's going on with Crypto.....Which is fine....but then don't comment on the topic with such an obvious lack of knowledge.

There is
Coinbase (for new users)
Coinbase Pro (for advanced users / traders)
Coinbase Prime (for Institutional investors)
Coinbase OTC (Over The Counter, big money investors)

https://news.bitcoin.com/coinbase-20-billion-cryptocurrency-custody-institutional-investors/

"Tejpaul has 25 years of experience in sales and trading, with almost 17 years at Barclays, and nine years at JPMorgan. He explained that he joined Coinbase six months ago, and is now “responsible for growing the institutional adoption of cryptocurrency, across sales, trading, custody, and Prime.” Prime is Coinbase’s services for institutional clients, including asset managers, hedge funds, and VCs.
“It’s a phenomenal time for crypto … Sometimes timing is everything,” Tejpaul opined. “We have had an explosion of activity,” he added, elaborating:
I joined in April this year, at that time our assets, institutional assets under custody were $6 billion, today we stand at over $20 billion, so more than a three time increase."

@Misc

i'll give you that....retail investors are quickly jumping into the market....judging by the enormous amount of interest / google trends and media coverage.

Also....Dogecoin was trending on Twitter the other day....lol