tede02

I think it depends on the type of angle you're looking for. I used to love Fortune magazine. They'd go deep on companies. It was just a great magazine that talked about business. I've always kept an article that I read in 2010 or 2011 that predicted a massive housing short-fall (that we're now in the midst of). I enjoyed The Economist too for it's more global and macro analysis. Never was a huge fan of Businessweek. Forbes was OK. However everything seemed to change over the last decade as everything went digital. This is my totally subjective opinion but it seemed like the content of most business magazines began to wane and I let my subscriptions go except for the WSJ.

To answer your first question, yes. In-fact, I also noticed the relatively attractive looking yield on the two-year this week and put some idle cash to work. My accounts are at Fidelity and it is very easy to buy individual Treasurys. Treasurys are the most liquid market in the world so very little risk. Small duration risk but with the individual securities you can alway hold to maturity. Outside of I Bonds, the 2-year treasury looks like the best deal out there for cash presently.

That is really cool. Several cold winters ago I was scrolling through Youtube and watched a few segments on the Hubble Deep Field. That totally blew my mind and got me generally more interested in things beyond earth. The vastness of space completely mesmorizes me.

I'm wondering if we're going to see a repeat of Q4 2018 at some point in the rate hike cycle. Although, a lot of stuff has already been washing out. Separately, I personally expect a significant economic slowdown between the combination of inflation eating away at disposable income, rising interest rates and waning demand on big-ticket items that were pulled forward during the first 18 months of the pandemic. Basically all the forces that have propelled asset prices and the economy are turning the opposite way. It just looks liked a difficult set-up for the economy and market.

One of my personal heroes is George Washington. I visited Mt. Vernon most recently. At the end of Washington's life, he built a distillery and some estimates suggest he was making more whiskey than anyone in the United States. Relatively recently the distillery was rebuilt in the same location as the original and they began making whiskey using 18th century methods. They even found Washington's recipe among preserved records and that's what is used today. I bought a bottle while I was at Mt. Vernon. Very expensive but pretty good! https://whiskey.mountvernon.org/

Opened a small position in FB. Have been following the company increasingly over the last 18 months. Owning some always makes me dig deeper.

My nuclear family took our turn with this thing over Thanksgiving weekend. We probably had the delta variant but who knows. It's been a brutal 6-7 weeks not because anyone was seriously ill, but after COVID, my kids came down with hand, foot and mouth virus (from daycare) around Xmas and in just the last two days now they have cold symptoms again. Talk about a slog. With respect to our experience with COVID, fortunately it was very mild. My wife is a healthcare professional so she got a booster shot back in September. Tested positive the day after Thanksgiving as did my two kids (5 & 2). My wife was mildly sick for about two days (fatigue and aches). My 5 year old, who had the first round of Pfizer about 3 or 4 weeks prior to testing positive had no symptoms. My two year old had cold symptoms. I somehow escaped (I tested twice) despite being in a household with three people that tested positive. I got my booster shot about a week before this whole thing went down so maybe the timing was just lucky. Lots of mysteries to this virus.

I always think about this in terms of simple compounding math. For example, how much will profits grow over 10-years if a company compounds at 15%, 20% or 30%? The numbers are pretty amazing: 1. At 15%, earnings are up 3.5X 2. At 20%, earnings are up over 5X 3. At 30%, earnings are up over 10X To me, this illustrates why rapidly growing companies are worth very high multiples. If you paid 30X earnings for a business growing at 30% annually for a decade, by year 10 you'd be earning 33% on your original investment. Even if the growth rate really slowed in the second decade, you'd still come out very good. This math, as basic as it is, really has helped me evolve after being indoctrinated with value investing principles very early on (and as a consequence, missing a lot of great businesses because the multiple looked rich).

Keep the poison of politics sequestered from the rest of the forums as it is.

My understanding is the $10k limit is per person, so husband and wife could buy total of $20k. Anyone done this out of curiosity? Edit: sleepydragon seems to have answered my question above. Thanks.

Just grabbed my $10k.

So the correct answer is D. If we extrapolate, that would put the DJIA at around 158,000 in ten years and the Nasdaq at 113,440 for context.

We're on a pretty epic bull run. I checked trailing 10-years returns out of curiosity this morning which notably don't include the depths of the financial crisis. I wasn't shocked but the figures are pretty intriguing. Intuitively, what would you guess through the end of October 2021? And what do you think these figures portend for the next 10-years?

I'd be surprised in the US. Seems like an issue ripe for hyper politicization. Would probably really stoke the conspiracy/anti-establishment/don't tread-on-me fervor.

Gundlach is an interesting guy to listen to...I'd even say entertaining. He's got a lot of insight (which probably explains why Howard Marks backed Doubleline when it launched). The story of Gundlach's path into the asset management industry is legendary.

Is anyone else worried that the central banks (the Fed in-particular) have backed themselves into a corner they can't get out? They know as soon as they start to raise rates and slow bond purchases, it's highly likely asset prices go south. If severe enough, it could impact the real economy. Additionally, some suggest there isn't enough demand in the market for treasurys without Fed purchases so they can't stop QE even if they want to without rates going up significantly. Obviously if the 10-year jumps to 5% for example, that is going to create some real problems. So does the Fed just keep right at it because they can't stop? Basically it just seems like we're screwed. LOL.

One of my clients got me into Jameson whiskey. I can see why he likes it. Goes good with lemonade and hot weather.

That's a great line. LMAO over here!

The point around the birth rate slipping to 1 child per couple is well taken. It illustrates how quickly a shift could occur. Even if the birth rate slides to 1.5 children per couple, that causes a 25% reduction in global population. What's kind of crazy is over half of all countries already have a birth rate below 2 according tothe CIA world factbook. https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/total-fertility-rate/country-comparison

The inflation topic is interesting. It is weird that as a consumer, one sees inflation everywhere, and yet the CPI figures are still hanging around 2%. It seems like the bigger question is whether the inflation is here to stay. Is most of the inflation due to demand build up and supply constraints related to the pandemic? Does all this get resolved over 12-24 months? Or are we setting up for an extended period of growth and higher prices globally? There's smart people on both sides of this debate.

I appreciate the comments. Was thinking about this further in the context of more immediate implications. In the US, there's a growing fear of China's ascent. In terms of population growth, China is expected to top out by the middle of this decade. It will be quite interesting to see how this impacts growth as the population ages and starts to decline over the coming 20 years. Will the Chinese face the same challenges with growth as basically all the other advanced economies with similar demographic issues (Japan, many European countries, etc.), and therefore all this fear in the west turns out to be over-blown? They still have a much lower GDP per capita so perhaps they can continue ramping that up for decades, but I simply wonder how big of a headwind these demographics will be.

Curious if anyone else is as fascinated with the subject of global population as me. There are different aspects of this subject that are intriguing. As a sportsman, I always wonder what it would have been like to travel North America pre-European settlement. Just to see the mostly virgin land and amount of wild game must have been amazing. As an investor, I always think about what happens when the global population starts to decline. Basically all estimates conclude the world population will peak by the end of this century. Some developed world countries are already shrinking. This BBC article was striking in highlighting a number of countries that could see their populations halved by 2100 (Japan, Italy and Spain in particular). https://www.bbc.com/news/health-53409521 It seems obvious this will lead to massive economic problems. The world economy is based on growth in every respect. What happens when there are empty buildings and houses everywhere because there literally is no one to occupy them? There won't be enough taxpayers to support infrastructure, entitlements, etc. The list just goes on. I don't expect any good answers but it's just a mind-blowing idea to me that we're presently living on the J-curve of the good times but the end of this economic goldilocks period may not be too far off. I think my kids and future grandkids likely won't have to deal with these issues. But my great and great, great grandkids likely will. Side-note - I've also been thinking a lot about the Fermi Paradox. Perhaps the answer is advanced civilizations all eventually implode because they quit reproducing!

I appreciate the comment. The internet analogy resonates with me. I really struggle to see where this is going beyond what looks like wild speculation. But I'm sure many people felt the same in the mid to late nineties regarding the internet. I've spent a fair amount of time reading about crypto to keep an open mind and understand it better. The more I learn the more questions I have. Digital central bank currencies and good old fashion regulation appear to pose some real hurdles. But the blockchain technology itself is interesting and seems to have utility even outside of finance.

Question - Aren't exchanges, like Coinbase, in conflict with the concept of peer to peer/decentralized finance? Aren't these exchanges very much centralized and just more big financial intermediaries that crypto was supposed to displace?

Visa and Mastercard have got to be pretty nervous.