LC

Not sure I follow...I'm saying Amazon can make headway into the auto parts business because they can probably match the selection and delivery of auto parts stores. Maybe 1 day excess lag time but that may be worth it depending on the price difference.

Interesting theory, but let me add that sometimes being overly obsessed is not a good thing to achieve the best outcome. Missing the forest for the trees kind of thing.

I think Amazon could do a great job with auto parts. A piece of my car fender broke a few months back. Step 1 was to find the part # from the manufacturer's website, Step 2 was to go on Amazon and see what prices looked like. Much cheaper to get the part from Amazon and have a body shop (or yourself) install it. I remember my father used to do this, he would bring the car to the body shop, get the part # he needed from the mechanic, and went to the auto parts distributor to buy the part and bring back to the mechanic. Saved the giant markup from the body shop (who were just ordering the part and adding a markup). Online manuals/Amazon (or Ebay) make this a lot easier.

What is the market like for this business? Why don't other medical groups offer this? If I'm a hospital or medical group why wouldn't I just set this up for myself...It could be used to reduce the volatility of work, especially during slow hours. Perhaps the real business is selling the software/setup to hospitals/clinics/medical groups and whatnot?

In the risk space the women I work with are very good. I would say better on average than the men I work with (myself probably included!) In terms of investing, I have yet to see how gender matters. Anyone who can read Ben Graham has a shot, IMHO.

I haven't seen any comparative tests, and really I'm not sure how you would even do it. I could see comparing the materials, but in terms of which one "feels" better? That seems very subjective. I would second themattressunderground.com for all things mattress related. Also, apparently this company makes the mattresses for the royal family: https://www.hypnosbeds.com/international I can't comment on price or value, though.

Do you have name, model etc? Please do tell if it's available. Thanks in advance. That's what I've been consistently hearing that the confusion between $200, and $1000 and $4,000 mattress is so great that it makes buying one a pain in the butt. Sure, I bought 2 of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GTCL3SQ/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

i bought a cheap $200 queen-size mattress from amazon. i really can't tell the difference between a $4000 mattress, $1000 mattress, and $200 mattress. plus its much easier to replace (knowing it was so cheap) if for whatever reason i need to do that.

Happy Canada day folks!

Agreed. Same situation - mortgage, car payment, refi'd student loans, and any other loan i can get below 4%. We have the entire world to invest in, and the hurdle is 4%. Well, you won't go broke doing this, but when we actually hit a serious downturn, I can say from experience that it really feels shitty to be in the situation with your equity decimated and all these loans hanging over your head. It does work out in the long term (assuming you haven't done something really catastrophic on your investments) but it doesn't feel good at all. Fair point!

Agreed. Same situation - mortgage, car payment, refi'd student loans, and any other loan i can get below 4%. We have the entire world to invest in, and the hurdle is 4%.

Bought Compass Minerals and a weee bit of Ethereum

LOL savage...do you still work in the models space? That's where I am.

Compare the cost of the mortgage with the cost of (IB loan + put to protect from margin call).

my favorite was the piece on whether to hold cash or not.

One criticism is the paper takes a "worst-case" perspective: we will live longer lives with lower expected returns. In that world, wouldn't inflation also be lower? Technology will continue to advance, making it cheaper to simply live. Better medical care. Take a look at retirees now vs. 40 years ago, when rates were higher. Who has the better standard of living?

Most sketchy story/product/person/deal you worked with? :D

Yeah, but how valuable can that real estate be if it's next to a latex factory? You guys are forgetting the hidden cash cow - bottle collection and transport to Michigan for that 10cent recycling windfall. $$$

Ok thanks - just read thru this thread....very interesting stuff....more for me to read... :D

So (correct me if am wrong) the technology is a distributed ledger? To simplify, it's pretty much bittorrent for transactions (or even more generally, any records in general)? The value is that, if party A makes a transaction with party B, and then both party A and B sends a signed receipt to everyone else in the world...well nobody can come by later and say "well no, party A still has not transacted with party B". I can see how this adds another level of security, for sure. So my thoughts are, the technology and the coin aspect are two distinct things. The technology is just a record keeping platform, which is stronger the more people use it. You can't generate profit from it, correct? The coin aspect is only as valuable as people make it. So, the more people who transfer their wealth into bitcoins, the more valuable bitcoins are. Until of course, the last marginal person converts their dollars into bitcoin. So to value the coin aspect, you have to have an understanding on how and why people will move their wealth into bitcoins. What drives this behavior? Is it security (i.e. people fearing the bank holding their money)? Is it ease-of-use (i.e. a completely digital society where everything is bought/paid for digitally?). Some other reason? Curious to your two cents on these thoughts, particularly the last one...

That's fair...I presume you say that because bitcoin is a better technology overall. I still don't quite get what real world applications these things have. All I see are digital currency (is it that hard to send money via Venmo?) and "smart-contracts". Not sure how much $ there is in smart contracts. Or what a smart contract even is. I'm getting old I guess.

I wouldn't say I invested in Ethereum, so I am not the person to answer that question. But my reason for throwing money at it are as follows: My buddy turned 10K into 300K with bitcoin over the last 4 years or so. I have no clue about the technology, the winners/losers, the this, the that...this is purely speculative and either I'll lose it all or it will balloon to something. Tiny % of my portfolio, it's like gambling to me: figure out how much money I am OK with setting on fire, and go from there.

I bought a tiny bit of etherium today

Withdraw some capital & buy a house mortgage free ;) The portfolio will have some margin, you have incentive to use your CF to wipe it out asap, and you get paid while you're waiting (no interest on the margin you've paid off). The 'Itch' now becomes an asset. SD Did that last year...very good point on paying it off early. Reduction of interest/mtg insurance + appreciation can be thought of as a nice dividend. Cheers :)

The trouble for me right now is this: I bought a basket of (what I think are) blue chip companies with decent relative dividends (they're in my signature if you care). Prices on most of them (except Nike) have gone up quite a bit (15-20+%) At the same time, I constantly have money coming into my brokerage accounts (ramping up savings). So here I am thinking three things: -What the hell do I purchase? It's tough to keep adding to these companies when the prices have gone up relative to where I purchased them (anchoring bias) -Instead of adding to these companies, should I be selling instead? Again the anchoring bias. -For the one company that would be seemingly easy to buy more of (Nike - since it has decreased), instead, I am thinking "well the market must know something I don't since the price has gone down"