Spekulatius

BTC at $29.7K this AM. Looks like the line has been breached. This could be fun. Never a dull moment in crypto land.

In terms of quality of execution, I think Fidelity is on par or better than IBKR (based on the price improvements I am getting).

Tarex has been a terrible performer. 2* rated on Morningstar. I always liked their commentary but they really went into some areas that had strong headwinds (Japan, Hongkong).

Interesting chart regarding valuations and equity multiples:

A 50% decline in stocks is not a low probability event. It is more like a once in a decade event. We have sen those in 2002 and in 2008 and I think we will see one this decade too, but one can’t know for sure. High inflation typically hope so when their is political upheaval in combination with some economic stress factor (both are typically related to each other). I think a value like 10% is possible if the political stability of the US takes a severe hit and the financial markets lose confidence. It is a low probability scenario, but it is not impossible Imo. FWIW, the best inflation hedge is a 30 year fixed rate mortgage. To hedge yourself, you would want to have as much fixed rate 30 year mortgage debt as possible on your property. It also comes with a free call option to refinance (without penalty if you are in the US) if you are wrong.

I would be careful with NNN leases or NNN Reits. Most of these leases have annual escalators that are capped at some not so high value. If inflation really would go to even 5%, this would probably exceed the cap and then you own basically a long duration bond with an coupon below inflation, and some risk.

I agree. You are also paying through the nose for a business with an obsolence risk. What is the FCF yield - maybe 5%?

@wabuffo succinctly explained the case for gold, imo. Miners could be better, but traditionally, mining stocks / even gold mining stocks) also get whacked badly in a Stock market downturn, so as a hedging instrument, they may not work well at all. Holding cash in the 70‘s was not so bad, because savings accounts and short term bonds/ treasuries were actually yielding something. You still lost purchasing power as the yields didn’t keep up with rising inflation, but it wasn’t a catastrophic loss, I think

Reits are very sensitive to credit market conditions. That means that once there is some sort of a hiccup in the financial system, Reits are going south in a hurry. Crude is not a good inflation hedge because it’s is highly sensitive to marginal demand/ supply imbalances. The changes in crude prices in the past decade had very little to do with inflation.

I kind of like the yellow metal here and bought more today. I regard it as a better alternative to cash basically. Sure, it could go down, but there is also a chance that if inflation kicks in with negative interest rates, that it goes up a lot. Gold has been a store of value for more than 5000 years and I think it will be for a while in the future as well. my vehicle of choice is IAU since it had lower fees than GLD. I wasn’t aware of GLDM so maybe that’s a better alternative. Gold miners are tricky and it isn’t clear that it works well in and inflationary environment. When buying a miner, you are basically making a bet that the mining costs go up less than the price of Gold, which isn’t necessarily a given. In the depression in the 30’s gold miners did well, because the price of gold was fixed and their input costs (labor, materials ) were falling significant, so their margin improved. That’s unlikely to repeat itself however.

My experience with the Etrade is dated but their mobile and PC apps were solid, when I used them. I use mostly IBKR nowadays.I I think their mobile apps are solid and robust, but their GUI isn’t exactly user friendly. The biggest weakness is reporting, imo.

Just a bug in the algos. Easy fix.

Can you explain this to me, like I am a boomer (I am almost one). How can this this stablecoin drop from ~$60 to $0.000000035 in a short period of time. FWIW, Mark Cuban deserves the title for the dumbest self made billionaire.

yes I think that could well be correct. The narrative "the bond market is smart and is bullish" could well be wrong, because as @wabuffo neatly pointed out, the bond market is just supply and demand and right now, there is little supply, so prices wen up (and bond yields down) due to a transient factor.

Jamie would agree with you: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/14/jamie-dimon-jpmorgan-is-hoarding-cash-because-very-good-chance-inflation-here-to-stay.html He also understand the monetary pluming much better than said economist. Well if I had to chose one side argument, I think I would go along with the guy who bet's $500B on something (or at least the interest income from $500B).

I agree with @Libs Nd of course @wabuffohere. It looks like yields are artificially compressed for treasuries because there are not enough treasuries issued right now because the federal reserve account bonds is slowly run down. This sets up an interesting dynamic where despite inflation numbers being high and the economy running hot, the yields go lower. It is interesting from a trading perspective because many seem to draw the conclusion that the bond market “knows” that the inflation is a head fake and what we are seeing is just a result of a temporary supply Imbalance caused by monetary plumbing issues. If this is correct there money to be made betting on higher interest rates (once the Fed account balance is run down). and probably betting on growth stock/ high multiple stocks going down as well, because if discount rates moving up again. We have already seen in March 2021 how this can work against growth equities. It is an interesting thesis, but now one has to estimate the infliction Point which is when the Fed account balance reaches about $100B. Currently, we are at $633B which is probably worth about 1-2 month from now- I am guessing end of July when interest rate should start to move up again, if this hypothesis is correct. It seems that TLT puts with an out of money strike and a year end expiration date would be a good way to play this. Either it works, or it doesn’t but it is an alternative hypothesis that I like because I think it is underpriced. Any smarter way to play this? Puts on some growth stock index? ARKK?

It is not just politicians, it is homeowners as well. I have yet to see a homeowner who welcome when single family homes are replaced by multi family homes or a commercial development. There simply is self interest at work. Perhaps sharing economics in a smart way with the city and neighbors might help, but I doubt even that. The more expensive homes gets, the harder rezoning/ repurposing get’s ironically.

Bought this one for $10 at the NH liquor store a week or so ago. It is really hard to go wrong with Cabernet , Merlot or Zinfandel from Sonoma county. $10-$20/ bottle gets you good quality. Napa county is great too, but usually more expensive. Some vineyards from Mendocino county are Ok as well. For whites, I prefer Finger Lake Riesling or other white grapes or perhaps an unoaked Chardonnay from CA ( same location than above)

I use OneNote and it works well enough. the main benefit that it synchs between the various mobile devices I use (iphone, ipad) so i don't lose important thoughts or links.

Sold my MITK in my tax deferred account. I am not too fond of the convertible debt issue a while ago.

This is more bullish than El Salvador allowing bitcoin as legal tender, imo. It is probably not too bullish for Coinbase and other crypto exchanges. Bullish for both BTC and IBKR...

I have no idea if BTC is going up or down. My comment of the 18k resistance zone is based on my reading of the BTC chart. BTC could as well bounce back and go up. I can understand why trades like BTC, it’s volatile and there are a lot of amateurs in the game who can be fleeced. I think some institution like Renaissance Tech who can skim the social media and determine trends ought to be in a position to make huge bank here, as is someone like Druckenmiller. Since there are no real fundamentals other than news that can be interpreted either way ( like some of the cryptic Elon Musk tweets) it is probably the greatest playground for traders there ever was.

I am not sure if the headline reasoning is correct, but it seems funny that BTC is down almost 10% because it now turns out it is less useful for frauders than thought. El Salvador is a bad example, because they cant even support their own currency. They work with the USD standard, so they have nothing to lose by allowing bitcoin or whatever else. It remains to be seen what other countries do. Looking at the chart, if the ~31k Maginot line doesn't hold, I think BTC could easily fall to ~18k rather quick (which was consolidation zone on the way up). Regardless of the merit of BTC, i find the interplay of the crowds psychology and the prices quite fascinating. It's great asset to study, because there are no real fundamentals to speak of, just supply and demand based on mass psychology. Edit: other explanation for the bitcoin decline could be that the WSB meme crowd moved back from crypto into stocks. I think there is some interplay here between the two as I suspect quite a few players move between those asset classes towards whatever has momentum currently.

It should be noted. that El Salvador is one of the few countries, who doesn’t have it‘s own currency any more, they dollarized their economy 20 years ago. I don’t recall why, I think their own currency was so trashed, that it became unviable.

@cubsfan and @Castanza This is actually very valuable information. I never thought of SPLK software category having an extremely wide moat. That changes the thesis for the better, despite the somewhat ugly looking financials.