Blake Hampton

I would vote for a pile of literal dogshit before I'd ever vote for Trump.

It's the mirror again.

I would like to know how often people in this forum put half of their total assets in one position. That's conviction. I've come to the conclusion that investors who are serious about outperforming normally have about five positions max. That's a WAY different game than buying stocks off a whim. And putting 50% in a position is almost nothing when you have say only $10,000. The time needed to make up such a measly sum is almost nothing. I guess the value attached to a certain amount of money is relative to how rich you already are. Of course $100,000 is nothing when your net worth is already $100 million. But it does seem like there's a certain point where sums start getting pretty serious. Maybe it has to do with how much it would mean to the average person. When you start getting to those numbers, deciding to put 50% of TA in one position is stuff that requires big nuts.

That's the investing part. My model for building wealth is earning, then saving, and finally investing. It's a flow. The first two steps of that model are quite important right now since I'm young. My fiance and I both make pretty good money, work quite a bit, and we save a TON.

Long-term, I see a future that's extremely inflationary. In the shorter term, however, I believe we could face financial events where cash could become a very valuable asset. I think we may see a crisis more severe than anything in living memory: - Upstream oil and gas I'm super bullish on quality oil and gas producers. The world is slowly running out of cheap energy reserves, and there isn't yet a meaningful plan set in place for a large transition to new forms of energy. Demand will continue to grow while supply becomes increasingly more scarce. The long-tern risk I see here is almost entirely political. For that reason, I think it's incredibly important to be cognizant of where your production is located. - Highly leveraged real estate Leveraged real estate is effectively a short on the dollar. I can buy an asset, with a long-term, fixed-rate loan, that has tended to nominally track inflation over time. As the cost of materials and labor goes up, so too will the value of my home. Credit markets scare me here, but I do know that if I can offset a large amount of that loan with liquidity, I should turn out okay. - Treasury bills The cash part of my thinking is a constant push and pull; A lot of the times I find myself questioning what the ideal amount is to have. I know that it's a terrible position long-term, but I also know that cash is the only thing that can be depended on in a truly serious crisis. I'll also use it to manage the risk a bit from that home loan. Simply put, I have quite a bit more cash relative to total assets than you do.

Human psychology is a hell of a thing.

A lot of the world's greatest mistakes often only require simple solutions. So why do we still make them?

I'm sure that our nation's infighting will lead to a more prosperous future. Trump the Great Uniter. While China is creating 5, 10, 20-year plans, we're busy fighting and bickering amongst ourselves while the foundation of country slowly rots away. And it seems we've been stuck in this mode for a while now. But who cares? Market's up. Unemployment and inflation are both low. Life is generally pretty good. In other news, it seems the Democrats now want to cut taxes.

"There is an old two-part rule that often works wonders in business, science, and elsewhere: 1. Take a simple, basic idea and 2. Take it very seriously." - Charlie Munger It amazes me just how often people do make simple mistakes. Just because someone is educated, or intelligent, or in a powerful position, or anything, doesn't mean they're exempt from making them. It is simply part of being human.

But I do believe our democracy gives us the leadership that we deserve. And we deserve Trump.

This has become nearly the entirety of our congress. Democrats and Republicans, all ready to line up behind their moronic leaders in order to further sell the U.S. down the river. "The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men" - Plato Where does the fault for this situation truly lie? Does it lie with these elected incompetent sycophants? Or is it our fault, the electorate's fault, for letting these people get to leadership positions in the first place. So many of the people I experience in my daily life are so unbelievably misinformed and ignorant to the reality that they currently live in. TikTok has certainly done a number on the mind of the average American. Regardless of who's to blame, it's a disgrace. I honestly don't know how a lot of these politicians can sleep at night. They're supposed to be our Representatives. Tom Cole, my local district Representative, hasn't hosted a Town Hall in nearly seven years. And the last one he did host was virtual!

Lol:

America looks like a circus, run by an orange-faced clown.

In the 1990s, didn't Ukraine trade its nuclear arsenal for U.S. "security assurances?" Look at how that turned out:

Oil is the most important and valuable globally traded commodity on Earth. It is a derivative to the cost of essentially everything. Because of this, governments generally have an enormous incentive towards keeping the price of oil low; it is simply too important not to. When the price of gold jumps to more than $5,000 an ounce, a few people make some money, a few others see it as a bad omen, and the vast majority go on uncaring. When the price of oil jumps above $100 a barrel however, the entire world starts to panic. Oil is of immense fundamental value to society. For an investor, this is both its greatest strength as well as its primary weakness.

I hope a U.S. fiscal crisis is a hundred decades off. But with how Trump is currently acting, I'm starting to feel like I won't have to wait that long.

Buffett indicator is at 230%. Dot-Com peak was 190%.

It's interesting because if you have an entire decade of unsustainably high ROE, even the Shiller Ratio can end up fooling you. I have no clue when all of this will end, no one does. But I do know the players are dancing in a room without clocks on the wall. That isn’t investing, it’s speculation.

This is a different conversation, I'm talking about market averages. Return on equity has increased from the historical 12% average to 18% due to low interest expenses and reduced corporate taxes. Higher returns on equity end up fooling people because they simply look at P/E ratios and then call it a day. Here's the Dot-Com bubble:

It seems to me that a lot of Trump's support is built on hatred, more specifically by people who are upset with the system and feel victimized by it. It feels to me more like people trying to burn down the house they're currently living in, with no possibility of getting out once it catches fire. Anyways... Watching him attack Ivies was a guilty pleasure of mine.

There is no scenario in my mind where the United States continues on its current path without experiencing some form of fiscal crisis within the next decade or two. This would have an enormous impact on the valuations of essentially every single asset class. Stocks are simply pieces of paper that entitle you to the discounted future earnings of a company. Stocks are NOT priced appropriately if their valuations aren't taking into account the future. Future earnings are literally the underpinning of what makes them valuable. It would be foolish to think that the coming future will look like the past. It will not.

The Stock Market The average investor is paying $5.40 for every $1 of equity that has made about 12¢ annually going back basically forever: Fortune: How Inflation Swindles the Equity Investor A lot of what has fueled recent high returns on equity will end with the advent of inflation: The Real Estate Market Real estate has softened a bit over the last couple of years, but my mind is living in a world of higher long-term rates than the ones we currently have. Since the 10-year Treasury yield is the base rate for mortgage lending, this would be devastating to housing affordability.

This is well worth the watch. Robert Shiller is a great teacher:

This is a man who graduated from Wharton with an economics degree by the way. It certainly doesn't give me faith in our leading universities.