Jurgis

rkbabang, once you start claiming that US is "murderous bullies", there's nothing to discuss. Although I believe that US should not have been involved in some of ME conflicts because the outcome was rather predictably bad and because civilian population has suffered, IMO the motives have been always been noble. And therefore I won't condemn US for pretty much any recent military action. And if you don't understand US obligations to NATO, then again there's nothing to discuss. Have a good one.

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Right. Some people have 401ks that are like brokerage accounts.

That's addressed in http://thefinancebuff.com/roth-401k-for-people-who-contribute-max.html

I think he's Canadian. That he does.

I have some friends on the real left. And yeah, they don't like Hillary Clinton. And maybe they will vote for Jill Stein, especially in non-battleground states. That's their choice. I disagree with them in some cases and I think some of the real left policies are naive or unworkable. I don't think I would vote for Jill Stein - although I only saw John Oliver's critique on her, so I know very little. And - like pretty much everyone said on this thread - Hillary Clinton is not a saint and some of her policies and plans are not great. And I would not be surprised if she doesn't like the real left either. So ... what else is new?

Like racemize says, it depends on the tax rates going in and out. It also depends on how good are you in growing your 401k. If you grow 10-20% year, you're likely end up with huge portfolio and very high marginal tax rate even on minimal required withdrawals (oh tough problem to have ;) ) if you go traditional. There's something nagging in my mind about Roth 401k, but I can't remember what it was. Maybe it's nothing... Edit: maybe I was concerned on how well Fidelity (our 401k/Roth 401k provider) manages the separation of 401k/Roth 401k money. I.e. if I contribute to Roth 401k, will it go into separate account/bucket or will it be mixed and I'd have to keep numbers myself. Anyone with experience in that? Currently I only have traditional 401k monies. I'll paste couple links that raise some questions - though some of these were mentioned here already: https://thefinancebuff.com/case-against-roth-401k.html http://whitecoatinvestor.com/some-more-thoughts-on-roth-401k-contributions/

We all hope you're right. :) But "case in point": Russia invades Baltics (unrealistic? IMO not so much after Ukraine). What does the NATO do? ;) As I said, most likely nothing, because they also don't want WW3 and nuclear. But then NATO is kaput... what's next? Anyway, I think your point is fine: right now the probability of nuclear WW3 is still pretty low. But if before Putin it was maybe 0.004%, now it's possibly 0.06%. But, no I can't substantiate the numbers. ;)

Talking about empathy. I am biased. But if Russia decides to invade Lithuania, I'd rather NATO retaliated. And I'd rather NATO kept retaliation options strong (which in your mind is new nuclear Cold War). Yeah, my most emphatic choice would be that Russia woke up from living under nationalist dictator, became a modern democracy with less corruption and all Russians and the rest of the world lived in peace. But that's not an option right now and it's unlikely to be an option the things are going for quite a while. So my second best option is something that might lead to WW3. OTOH, assume we disarm NATO and do nothing when Russia invades Lithuania. Don't you think that would lead to the same or even larger scale conflict later? I don't know. Maybe appeasing aggressors and hoping they will come to their minds at some point is the solution... especially if you're USA and don't care much that parts of Europe get trampled. Tough to say. I think we are closer regarding Middle East: the issue there is that there are pretty much no good actors involved and IMO there are no solutions at this point. So probably no action is better than involvement. Even though it breaks my heart when people die there. And I'm sure some of the fighters/rebels/etc. feel that they are doing the right thing for better future of their families, citizens, countries. Edit: BTW, most Lithuanians believe that NATO will do nothing if Russia invades. So looking from that side appeasement and no-WW3 is probably more likely no matter who gets elected in USA. Which may or may not comfort you.

Some friends from SciFi club/writing group talked about scenario where you get transported to human-uninhabited Earth (pick your own scenario why there are plants/animals, but no people: maybe it's prehistoric, maybe there was apocalypse, etc.). It's spring, you have clothes, maybe a knife (maybe not - depending on scenario). What would you do? I'd just die. Well, maybe with knife I wouldn't. For couple days.

Way OT. If you go to Grand Canyon Caverns, they show you the food/water stored there for expected 2000 people bomb shelter from Cold War time. Not sure if the food/water is still any good - I think stories vary. You can also book a room there for a night - in case you expect the big one to hit on certain day... Or just to sleep in complete darkness and silence. 8) http://gccaverns.com/rooms-packages/the-grand-canyon-caverns-cavern-motel-room/

Hate? Nah, I love Trump. Just not in that way. 8)

But will you feel any accountability for spreading doom and gloom if it doesn't happen? I don't exactly have a large enough following to move the needle. Considering what is going on with this election (the press spreading Trump=Hitler fears, the hate a lot of people other than me have for Hillary, etc), me spreading doom and gloom is like a drop of water in an ocean. Also, I do hope I'm wrong. OK. I hope you are wrong too. :) Thanks.

Not really. Like some people predict, he will likely start TV station/show/whatever for the following that he has. It's likely generate tons of money too, since people love this crap.

But will you feel any accountability for spreading doom and gloom if it doesn't happen?

No, that was my fault. I should have said: Let's present these odds rather than saying that anyone who puts in time and thought can outperform. I am going to edit my post to make this change.

Update on Morningstar basic screener: I give up. 8) I set it for 5-year SP500 outperform, 10-year SP500 outperform and I get funds like this: http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/GXXAX.LW/quote.html WTH? Am I misunderstanding the results? Isn't this fund underperforming SP500 for pretty much every time period? If someone knows free fund screener that does 5-10-15 y comparison vs SP500 and works, let me know. I'd be interested to dig through results.

I think this is irresponsible claim. As we can see from polls I ran on CoBF, even picking from best of the best (which we probably agree are on this board :) ) even after survivorship and self-selection bias less than half outperform an index. Let's present these odds rather than saying that anyone who puts in time and thought will edit: can outperform.

Good for you. Care to name your fund? Or the 10B fund you know? I'm fine with private message if you don't want to make the names public. Honestly, I've been looking for active funds into which I'd comfortably invest and I have found zero that have long term outperformance and consistent management/strategy/etc. Well, apart of Sequoia, which blew up. I think the comments to the article are possibly more interesting than the article. In particular, I really question their results. If there are 35%+ mutual funds outperforming SP500 over 10-15 year basis, can you tell me where they are hiding? Somehow when you read Barron's or look at Morningstar, you don't see them. Edit: I ran the Morningstar screener and there are good news and bad news: the good news apparently there's a bunch of funds beating SP500 over 10 years. Bad news: Morningstar basic screener seems to be broken. Some of the restrictions I put in are ignored (e.g. I asked that the fund would beat SP500 over 5 and 10 years, but results show funds that lag SP500 over 5 years). I'll try to play around and get back to the thread if I get a real result.

I think this expresses my attitude as well. Thanks for writing it.

There was an article showing that Trump supporters are generally rather well to do with above average incomes. Don't have a ref, sorry, so feel free to ignore (or find a ref :) ).

No, we haven't. We have not gone through "a kind of thing" where AI does everything better than humans. You can argue that it won't happen (anytime soon). I think it will happen within 50 years or so. You are welcome to disagree. But you can't say that we have gone through it before.

Yeah, like AAPL, for example. 8) So according to your arguments it should be trivial to outperform market cap based index. Just buy the cheap stuff and don't buy expensive stuff. Can you explain then why pretty much nobody outperforms market cap based indexes for 5-10-15-20 years? Are you going to be the one who outperforms?

Oh really? Let's have an example: Company A: P/E 1, market cap 1B Company B: P/E 100, market cap 1M Market cap weighted index of A and B has "most expensive most and of the least expensive the least"? Seriously? I'm rather amazed on the number of false claims in this thread. Just not worth getting involved...

So how do you reconcile 1) with 2)? That's one of my big issues for the future. Of course, getting to 1) is even bigger issue perhaps. But, yeah, I agree with 1). Getting to 1) is gonna be bloody difficult (yeah, pun intended). Then - what do all these unemployed people on guaranteed income do for their lives? Eat/drink/inhale + watch movies/play video games? Is that a workable society? I don't know. Optimists will say culture/arts. But will we really have 90%+ doing culture/arts? What if computers do culture/arts better?