rkbabang

And don't forget any electric car manufacturer can take advantage of the $7500 per car subsidy, yet there was nothing like the Tesla Roadster and Model S before Tesla, nothing since Tesla, and nothing I've heard about coming down the pike from any other auto manufacturer. Companies who have been making cars for 10's or even 100+ years seem to be unable to produce a comparable product, both now and in the foreseeable future. And they all could take advantage of the $7500/vehicle subsidy.

I think the impact will be more on your future consumption rather than the deficits that has accumulated in the past. As an example, look at the impact of the plunging rouble on Russia consumers. The prices of imported products have risen significantly while incomes have not. I mean, like its micro-participants but on a macro level, a country can't continue to consume beyond its own productive capacity without sacrificing some consumption in the future. Sure, companies and people trade, but that doesn't change anything. As an example, A sells widgets to B and demands payment in fiat currency. If A doesn't believe that A can redeem fiat currency for anything, A may demand payment in gold from B. While B has an infinite supply of fiat currency, B will have a limited amount of gold. How will B continue to consume widgets as before? Got you. Well, maybe B should be buying gold now while he can?

By the same token. The so-called trade deficit isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. and in the long term it may end up that the other side got the short end of the stick. And the market will not care that you held the opposite opinion. Humility is indeed important. There are multiple ways to look at this, but in general trade always benefits both sides, that is true even if money always flows in one direction and goods in the other. The trade deficit isn't necessary a "problem". My trade deficit with my local grocery store is huge, they never buy anything from me, but I don't consider this a problem at all. I think a better analogy would to think as if you're buying from your grocery store with money that you've borrowed from the grocery store. If the grocery store believes that you could return the money with interest in the future, then it's not a problem at all. It becomes a problem when the grocery store stops believing in your ability to return the money.. But to further the analogy I also have the ability to inflate the debt away. I think what you mean is that you have the ability to print your own money to return to the grocery store. In that case, you will always have the ability to return the money that the grocery store has lent you. However, as you continue to borrow and print your money to return to the grocery store, will the grocery store continue to believe that the money that you've printed for them has value? If not, will the grocery store continue to sell to you? But who is "you", this analogy is getting a bit stretched too thin. Remember the trade deficit isn't trade between the government of the U.S. with some other government, but the aggregate of all trade between non-government entities which just happen to be located in two different countries. No one talks about a trade deficit between New York and California? Why? Because both sides benefit from the trade regardless of which direction the money/goods flow. Countries don't trade, people and companies do. It doesn't really matter if the parties are located in different cities, different states, or different countries the economics are the same. Also if the dollar collapses the purchaser still has the merchandise and the other side has worthless debt that will never be collected. A new medium of exchange will be used for trade between private parties in the U.S. and parties in other countries in the future (maybe a private currency, maybe another government currency, maybe a crypto-currency like bitcoin) and things will be bumpy for a while but life will go on. When you file bankruptcy it is your creditors who get screwed the most, likewise when a currency collapses it is the creditors who get screwed the most, not the debtors.

I agree, I called it "creativity" and "vision" above, but it is hard to describe. I you gave me a Billion dollars on the condition that I use it to change the world, I wouldn't even know where to start. (Maybe I'd give it to Musk). Whatever it is, Musk has it and most people don't.

By the same token. The so-called trade deficit isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. and in the long term it may end up that the other side got the short end of the stick. And the market will not care that you held the opposite opinion. Humility is indeed important. There are multiple ways to look at this, but in general trade always benefits both sides, that is true even if money always flows in one direction and goods in the other. The trade deficit isn't necessary a "problem". My trade deficit with my local grocery store is huge, they never buy anything from me, but I don't consider this a problem at all. I think a better analogy would to think as if you're buying from your grocery store with money that you've borrowed from the grocery store. If the grocery store believes that you could return the money with interest in the future, then it's not a problem at all. It becomes a problem when the grocery store stops believing in your ability to return the money.. But to further the analogy I also have the ability to inflate the debt away.

By the same token. The so-called trade deficit isn't necessarily a bad thing for the U.S. and in the long term it may end up that the other side got the short end of the stick. And the market will not care that you held the opposite opinion. Humility is indeed important. There are multiple ways to look at this, but in general trade always benefits both sides, that is true even if money always flows in one direction and goods in the other. The trade deficit isn't necessary a "problem". My trade deficit with my local grocery store is huge, they never buy anything from me, but I don't consider this a problem at all.

The way I look at the trade deficit is that people in the U.S. have figured out a way to give people overseas our fiat paper currency and get valuable goods in return. Sounds like we are on the winning side of a scam.

What happens to nubits in the situation where the U.S. dollar goes into decline? Think about a hyper-inflation scenario? Would nubits remain tied to the dollar? If not would would happen? Why would you create a currency that is tied to one of the old currencies that you are trying to replace? If you are going to do that wouldn't it be easier to just design an online payment system that uses dollars directly? There is already PayPal.

That's why I pointed out that Musk was working on hard problems that can make a big difference, and that few others even dare to work on. There's a great quote by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey on this: "It has always appalled me that really bright scientists almost all work in the most competitive fields, the ones in which they are making the least difference. In other words, if they were hit by a truck, the same discovery would be made by somebody else about 10 minutes later." This applies to more than science. So many smart engineers are building Candy Crush apps or working on ways to get people to click on more ads (google, facebook, etc). So many of the most brilliant mathematical minds of our era are working on creating complex derivatives and HFT algorithms on Wall Street. Sure they go where the money is, but I'd say that Musk did pretty well too and he's making a much bigger difference (making a dent in the universe, as Steve Jobs would say). The explanation for that is risk tolerance. If you have a brilliant mathematical mind you are almost certain to do well as a quant on Wall Street, but starting your own rocket company is not exactly going to be a sure thing. In fact if you are that mathematically capable you are more likely than the average person to know the difference in the odds between the two. Like I said Musk has a shit load of guts. He isn't just shooting for the Moon, he's shooting for Mars.

MIDD. I've owned this (sometimes a large position, sometimes a small one like now) since about 2004. The CEO Selim Bassoul knows how to grow a company through acquisitions and actually do it right. Reducing costs, incorporating new technologies, and adding value each time. My only regret is that I should never have sold a single share.

Man, complaining on a ski lift... Yes, and yet there is a much greater percentage of the population today that is wealthy enough to get on a ski lift to complain than there was in 1970.

It isn't surprising that the richest people on Earth are richer than a large percentage of the population, when even the poorest human being on earth is richer than the bottom 37%. Yes the poorest individual human being on Earth has a higher net worth than the bottom 37% of the people on Earth. Why? Because the bottom 37% of the people on Earth have a negative net worth which is much further negative than the poorest individual's net-worth. The Wealth inequality numbers that are thrown around are very misleading. The poorest people on the planet are not in Africa, rather they are in the U.S., because that is where you find the people with the largest negative net worth. Living in a stone age culture in Papua New Guinea and having a net worth around zero, puts you pretty high up the scale, even though the "poorest" people are living in the U.S. sitting in their heated housing, on their comfortable couch, playing xbox on their flatscreen TVs, munching on pizza and drinking beer. Yes 80 billionaires have wealth of bottom 48% but even the poorest person has the wealth of the bottom 37%

I think many people just can't accept that some people are just more able than others. They have to find ways to chip away at that. It also boils down to your definition of "better". I think there's a widespread adolescent tendency of focusing tunnel-vision-like on what can be measured (the best guitarist is the one who does the fastest solos, the best programmer is the one who's code routines runs fastest or have the fewest number of bugs or whatever). I used to care about that kind of stuff when I was younger too, but now I don't so much. I'll take a coder who comes up with the idea for the Google algorithm (PageRank) or the hyperlink over the coder who can do fancier math, more complex code and optimizations, and knows more languages but will never do much original or important work in a lifetime. Some people's output is just thousands of times more valuable than others, if not millions, even if pedants will call them "worse" at the mundane parts of whatever field they're in... I'm sure lots of physicists and mathematicians were better at all kinds of math than Albert Einstein or Richard Feynman were, but that's missing the point. +1 I couldn't agree more. For whatever the reason is, Musk is doing more for humanity than all of the engineers in the world who are enviously bitching that Musk isn't very smart combined. There is a creative aspect to doing important, beneficial, and successful things as well. Musk not only has sufficient intelligence to be as successful as he's been, but he also has vision, creativity, relentlessness, business acumen, and a shit load of guts. In my 19 years as an engineer, I've known absolutely brilliant people who have none of those other qualities which Musk has. I've had many arguments with fellow engineers, who are much smarter than I am, who always want to do things the hard way simply because they can, who want to add unnecessary features that no customer will ever need or use and will add to the cost, time, and complexity of the product, simply because it's possible to do, etc. There are so many brilliant people in one narrow area of knowledge who have not a lick of common sense what-so-ever and who do ridiculous things. I have very little respect for anyone who would belittle the intelligence of someone like Musk. Why would you make such a fool of yourself? Envy really is an ugly thing.

If Bitcoin becomes the dominant technology for transferring money, why would holding the instrument make you fantastically wealthy? It's like what Buffett said comparing Bitcoin to checks. Checks were a great way to transfer money as well. Does that mean you should buy checks in the hope they will appreciate in value? If bitcoin is only used as a western union to transfer between other currencies* then you are correct. And maybe that is the mid-way case that I have forgotten, where bitcoin has some value, but not very much more than today. But if people move away from government money and start using bitcoin as a currency, i.e. they get paid in it, save it, stocks are traded in it, oil is traded in it, all other commodities are traded in it, etc ... the value of a single bitcoin will have to be many orders of magnitude what it is today. Why? Because bitcoin can not be deluded or inflated. There will only ever be about 21 million bitcoins. If this is the main currency used on planet Earth 25 years from now, what will the world's GDP be at that time? Maybe 1 micro-bitcoin will be about equal to what $1 is today, or maybe it will be some number of nano-bitcoins. I'm talking about a world where government issued money has failed and no longer exists, because people lost trust in governments to issue currency and have migrated to bitcoin exclusively. Even if bitcoin shares the entire world's economy with 2 or 3 other competing crypto-currencies it will still be worth many times what it is today. *edit to add this link: Bitcoin Will Fix Remittances With Or Without The Western Unions Of The World

Google Nears Major Investment in SpaceX to Bolster Satellites "one person familiar with them said Google has agreed to value SpaceX north of $10 billion and that the size of the total round, which includes other investors, is very large."

Here's another possible scenario: A different cryptocurrency catches on (because of a better design, because of some event with Bitcoin, etc). That fits into the $0 scenario of my theory. If some other cryptocurrency catches on, bitcoin will be worthless.

I purchased some bitcoin for the first time last week. I bought 2 BTC at about $185 each. Speculation, of course. I'm just going to sit on them and see what happens. Maybe buy a few more if the price drops significantly from here. I used coinbase.com. My theory is that in 25 years 1 bitcoin is going to either be worth the equivalent of $1M 2015 USD with people using nanobitcoins for most transactions (people will get paid in bitcoin, buy everything in bitcoin, oil and stocks will be traded in BTC, etc)... Or it is going to be worth $0 and be long forgotten. It is either going to catch on in a huge way or die out completely. I don't see any other mid-way scenario being possible.

Your credit union is unlikely to offer a competitive rewards program. I also do my banking at a small credit union and its cards are not worth having. True, I looked at the perks and they're not really peaks. Another question, say I bank with a credit union and decide to get a Citi CC. Do I have to open a bank account with Citi? How would I go about paying my balance every month? Thanks. You really are new at this. You certainly do not need to open an account with them. You get a bill every month. You'll have the option of having it delivered by paper mail, or email, and if your bank supports it, it can even be delivered electronically right to your banks bill pay system. Once you get your bill, in whatever form, you either write them a check and mail it in (do people still do this? I don't know, I'm sure some people still write checks.), or what most people do is pay with your credit unions online bill payment. The Fidelity cards require a Fidelity account to get your rewards in cash, but all of the other cards mentioned here allow you to either apply it to your credit card account or they will mail you a check when your rewards balance reaches a certain level ($50 or $100).

Your credit union is unlikely to offer a competitive rewards program. I also do my banking at a small credit union and its cards are not worth having.

If you use Fidelity a good two card solution with no annual fees would be to get both the Fidelity AmEx with 2% unlimited cash back on everything, and the Fidelity Visa which is 1.5% cash back on everything (for those places that don't except AmEx). The Visa is actually 1.5% for the first $15K spent every year and 2% back there after, but if you use your AmEx whenever you can you would be unlikely to reach the $15K limit, unless you spend a lot at places that do not accept AmEx. This is an especially good setup if you use Fidelity as your broker, as they will just automatically deposit the cash back into your Fidelity account. How have you lived the last 25 years without a credit card, that is unimaginable to me. I have a few cards and besides a few things I can't put on them (my mortgage, electric bill, and car insurance) I have just those bills to pay every month and I get a 2% discount on everything I buy. You can always try out a card for a few months and cancel it if you are not happy. I've applied for cards in the past just to make one big ticket purchase, pay it off, then cancel the card. I did this for example to put a $10K purchase on a card that had 0% interest for 18 months, so I could pay it off over time without interest. Payed it off then canceled the card. If you are smart and responsible you can really use these things to your advantage.

I don't have that problem. I've owned foreign companies which I could trade in the US, either ADR or pinksheets, but I've never made a trade on a foreign exchange.

I wish I could say that I have some magic formula (because that would mean that those over-sized returns are going to continue), but they are mostly from a handful of really good ideas that I had which all happened to work out. So I guess a some good ideas and a good dose of luck too. I was shadowing Biglari for a while. I put a large amount into Friendly's and made out great when it got taken private. I invested a huge amount into SNS around its low point. I owned WEST for years as well. I also made out well with the MIDD / OVEN buy-out. The market was pricing OVEN as if the deal was going to fall apart and I was confident that it wouldn't. It went through as agreed upon and I made out very well. I posted that idea to the old MSN board and I know a few people thanked me for it. That happened during the financial crises and I also happened to have a large Fairfax position at the time, so I didn't do too badly at a time when everyone else was losing their shirts. Then the last few years it was my large leveraged BAC position that made 2013 a huge year. I tend to stay 100% invested, using BRK and FFH as a place to park my money when I have no other ideas. Unfortunately after BAC plays itself out fully, I have no idea what is next. I'll just put it in BRK, FFH, and maybe PRDGF until the next big idea comes along. I've been extremely lucky that everything I've gone big into has worked out so far <knocking on wood>. I've had a lot of smaller positions that haven't over the years.

Nicely done. Do you find Fido to be accurate in computing the returns? I think it is fairly accurate. I figured it out myself a few years ago and got reasonably close to the Fidelity number. I take out money rarely, if ever, and only add a few times per year. My accounts are all for separate things (IRA, taxable brokerage, ROTH IRA, my wife's ROTH IRA, the kids UTMA accounts, etc, so I never move money back and forth between them, just deposit money from the outside into the appropriate account. I think the calculation is pretty straight forward.

HumbleBrag! 35% compounded over 5 years is quite nice! Yes I am very happy with my 5 and 10 year performance (actually about 9 3/4 years), but I was talking about the sub-par 2014 return.

Fidelity finally updated the performance page with the Dec 31, 2014 numbers. I posted this last year when I had an exceptional year, so I'll post it again this year when I under-performed the market by quite a bit.