Blake Hampton

My best idea for 2025 was giving Value Line another shot, their new digital booklets are incredible.

I'm currently 22, joined the board when I was 20. My first stock was Alibaba.

I will say that I for one like Mohnish. If not as an investor, then as a teacher. I’ve never looked too in-depth at his specific investments or returns over the years, but I did read his book and I thought it was pretty good. Funny thing is, I’m pretty sure his book ultimately led me to this forum.

I’m not trying to be rude when I ask this, but what honestly is the use for Bitcoin?

I would start with a use-case. The price of oil is inherently speculative, but at its base, oil is one of the most important items powering the global economy.

I hope you’re not trying to draw parallels. Something like this could never happen in the United States!

"China's real estate crunch has vaporized trillions of dollars of household wealth tied up in property, equivalent to around $60,000 per household." ^ Now that is crazy. I remember reading about the ideology of Chinese investors once, and they touched on how investors there didn't favor stocks, they mostly preferred real estate. This seems like a lot of pain, and I think their country is facing some deep systemic issues.

The WSJ published a really good article that includes some interesting charts and data. China’s Economy Is Burdened by Years of Excess. Here’s How Bad It Really Is. I really believe China is in a bad spot.

I personally think fossil fuels are here for the long-term. In just looking at advanced economies, the current technology and infrastructure is nowhere near what's needed for the large transition to renewables. And like I said, this is simply looking at only the advanced economies. There's billions of people around the world that will slowly but surely start demanding more energy. Also I'll add that I do believe in climate change, and I think it's an existential threat that we need to be focusing on. But I really struggle to understand the positions of places, such as California, where they vilify energy companies to such an absurd degree. Maybe we should conduct an experiment where we cut off all their oil and natty supply, and then see what happens.

I wonder just how far someone could go in trying to value an asset such as oil itself. There’s certainly geopolitical factors to understand, but I’ve never heard anyone I deem legit say they could tell where future oil prices would be. I’m assuming the same applies for the other listed assets as well.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/images/consumption-by-source-and-sector.pdf

I'm curious how you all go about determining your returns. Do you go into your brokerage statements and calculate the nitty-gritty gains from the investments themselves, or do you simply look at the growth from your overall wealth, say what your equity would be on a balance sheet? One seems a lot simpler than the other, but it also accounts for outside influences such as savings, etc.

Back in the spring of 1720, Sir Isaac Newton owned shares in the South Sea Company, the hottest stock in England. Sensing that the market was getting out of hand, Newton dumped his South Sea shares, pocketing a 100% profit totaling £7,000. But just months later, swept up in the wild enthusiasm of the market, Newton jumped back in at a much higher price — and lost £20,000 (or more than $6 million in [2023–2024’s] money. For the rest of his life, he forbade anyone to speak the words ‘South Sea’ in his presence. Shit ain't new.

Thanks

I thought when a company bought back stock, that the shares bought were instantly deducted from the total amount of common stock outstanding. Apparently a company can continue to hold onto these shares as treasury stock, for some reason I didn't know that. I wanted to make sure by asking, does it make sense to deduct treasury shares from common stock outstanding, so that I can then calculate a more representative market cap? What are the primary purposes for a company to do this, and I was also wondering if any of you have additional insights on the topic?

What do you think about BRY? Also I would agree that this is a problem. But oil isn't the worst asset, it's just when the companies over-do it to the point where they're in a financially precarious state. Then some shock comes and just wipes em all out.

I’m genuinely curious as to why you hate energy. I’ve heard you make jabs at the value of the dollar in past posts, and oil is historically one of the best inflation hedges. These two factors alone would make me think you’d at least be interested.

“To achieve satisfactory investment results, the intelligent investor must concentrate—all-in on Bitcoin, using as much debt as possible.” - Benjamin Graham, probably

I'm sure it's not as good as yours.

You’re probably right

This guy

What’s everyone else’s take on this?

I saw nearly half of all the outstanding government debt is set to mature by 2026. Combine this with legislators who will keep widening the deficit, and possibly infringe on FED independence, and you have a situation that seems like it could get bad quick. I think almost everyones gonna be caught off guard when the problems in bond markets spill over into everything else, it seems almost inevitable at this point.

I believe this sums it up