rkbabang

I've been looking at TSMC (it is getting cheap and I don't think China is going to do anything anytime soon), but also ASML. While TSMC is ASML's largest customer, if TSMC was no longer around ASML would be the obvious supplier to other companies building fabs to take up the slack. Although if China ever did attack Taiwan ASML would likely tank and that would be the time to buy it, so I'm not sure buying it now is a hedge against that type of event.

Don't underestimate the vast number of chips in use in our modern economy still being manufactured, and still being designed, on those older processes. Many people think the semiconductor industry is all about huge ARM chips on cutting edge processes, but look at any circuit board there are tens (and sometimes hundreds) of other chip around those big ARM chips and they are all necessary for the product. Global Foundries doesn't have anywhere near the capacity to handle all of the chips on those old processes in a world without TSMC, and it isn't even close.

Yes, Samsung, Intel, or Global Foundries. The problem is that 1 those companies wouldn't be able to handle the volume for many years. 2) You can't just switch foundries. Every single product would need to be re-designed to target the new foundry's process. This would be such an enormous process it would set the industry back decades. My company has tens of thousands of parts, some of which still selling well designed decades ago. We simply couldn't transfer all of them to a new manufacturer in any reasonable time frame. I'm sure most semiconductor companies are in the same boat. There would just be hundreds of thousands of chips in millions of end-products which simply wouldn't be available and may never be available. Talk about "supply chain issues" this would be the mother of supply chain issues.

Someone should create a crypto stable coin backed by Arizona iced Tea.

I know. I work in the industry myself and we talk about this from time to time. How could this happen? Our whole industry depends in a large part on manufacturing in one small island nation that is in this precarious situation between it and China. It just isn't good. The problem is that TSMC is just such a great company. We keep trying to diversify, but it is hard to do when TSMC's competitors just aren't as good in so many ways: cost, quality, dependability, capacity, technology, etc.....

Not just those companies, but the entire semiconductor industry would be completely devastated, losing Taiwan is just unthinkable. If you bring down the semiconductor industry almost all of the modern economy comes down with it. I don't think it is much of an exaggeration to say that this is the Achilles heel of our entire modern way of life.

I agree with everything he is saying. There is so much opportunity and work out there it is insane. The other day my wife and I went grocery shopping. In our town Whole Foods and Trader Joes are right near each other. We usually park half way in between and go to both. There was this guy playing a fiddle in the middle of the parking lot between the two with a sign saying that he has kids and needs help. My wife turns to me and says "F#cking artists! Both of these places are hiring at $18 per hour and he's out here playing with his instrument."

Maybe 6 months ago a bunch of Thomas Sowell books were free on Audible. I don't know if that's still the case. I downloaded all of them and listened to a few so far. The free ones were all books I hadn't read yet so it worked out good. I can't tell if they are free or not right now they just say that they are in my Library.

I expect I'll be buying a lot of JOE today. At the beginning of the month I wrote 5 put contracts expiring today at $50 strike. With the money I received for them my effective price is $47.98/share. It's trading at $47.92 right now as I type this, so I guess I didn't get a steal. I'll be keeping the shares though.

Funny how we can live in violent societies where governments are powerless to stop it, see wars and genocides where hundreds of millions are killed, and still think gee maybe it is the government that stops my neighbor from attacking me. No society involving humans will ever be a utopia. The only ones who ever call a libertarian society a "utopia" are non-libertarians. Violence between people will always happen, but for large scale Hitler or Stalin type violence you need a government. Your government utopia is the only way to slaughter hundreds of millions of people. I'm far more worried about Russia and NATO coming to nuclear blows than I am about my neighbor attacking me. I have enough firepower to handle that on my own.

I've changed my mind on this over the years. Looking back I've owned 4 homes that I've lived in (not counting 2nd homes). My first house I lived in 6 years, 2nd house 8 years, 3rd house 4 years, current house 7 years so far, but I paid off the mortgage after 6 years. In every case I went with 30yr fixed mortgages, but would have been better off with 10/1 ARM.

An interesting way to look at the reduction of Bitcoin volatility in each 4 year halving cycle as Bitcoin becomes more widely held. This cycle should have already saw highs above $125K before dropping below $20K. Maybe the next cycle will stay in an even tighter range. https://www.blockchaincenter.net/en/bitcoin-rainbow-chart/

You are correct. The "all-in" people are nuts. I'm confident enough to keep crypto around 20% of my net worth. I recommend having a significant position in BTC, but I'd never recommend putting in any amount that would really hurt you if the thesis ends up being very wrong.

Of course I’m still buying and hoping for more tears so I can buy more.

Added to AIV 2024 $7.5 & $5 calls, BTC, CLPR, & JOE

Worth the read. It is also very short and quick to read, so definitely worth it. $0.99 for Kindle version, for another $1.95 they will through in the audiobook version (I'm not sure if you have to have an audible membership or not to see that). https://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Smedley-Butler-ebook/dp/B0046W7MEA Also I think you can download the pdf for free if you search around for it.

Wrote some $65 MSGE Jun 17th puts for $3.30/contract. Hopefully I'll be put to. I love being paid to place limit orders.

Exactly. That will be considered proof that they were correct, not an opportunity of a lifetime for them to buy. I will be buying when BTC is 90% off its highs this time (if it comes to that), just as I did in 2018 (although I don't think it quite hit 90% down in 2018 more like 80% IIRC). I suspect many here will not.

I suspect there is a dotcom-like bubble in crypto, but remember that there are the Versign types which took decades to come back, the toys.com types who were destroyed, and then there were the Amazon.com types which came back much quicker and rose like rockets to the tops of their industries far above their dotcom bubbly highs in 2000.

Some combination of walking, biking, driving, boating and/or swimming?

+1 Government is a delusion. It is the most dangerous of the worlds religions. +1 War is a racket, everywhere and every time. And the first casualty is always the truth. If you have governments, I mean if you allow them to exist at all, you will have lies, death and destruction. You will have many human casualties. When civilization wises up to that fact of life things may someday change, until then, since power corrupts war and mass death will be a fact of life.

I'd imagine each category is slightly more responsive to market forces than the previous. I wouldn't sell my main home unless I was buying another one because I wanted to relocate regardless of what the market is doing. If you sell your home for market reasons where do you live? Rent? I can't see selling a vacation home purely for market reasons either. Selling a vacation home if you are sick of vacationing there and you want to buy a vacation home somewhere else, or for personal financial reasons such as you can no longer afford it or want to put the money into something else. Investment property is probably the most responsive to market ups and downs. I don't own any pure investment real estate as my vacation home doubles as a short term rental. I wouldn't sell it, because I want it as a vacation home and could afford to keep it even if I stopped renting it.

Opened small positions in COIN and SQ. Added to MSTR and PYCO.

Agreed. I always thought of him as the enemy, probably because I always think of government agents that way, but he was at least human in previous seasons.

Just finished "Super Pumped" the Uber story and I've also been watching the WeWork show "WeCrashed" as well. They are fun to watch as TV shows, but I question how accurately they portray the CEOs and other main characters. They made them out to be absolutely nuts. Especially Travis Kalanick, he was like a comicbook super villain with few redeeming qualities. And on WeCrashed Adam Neuman was portrayed as kind of an idiot used-car-salesman/conman with zero business sense and his wife Rebekah Neumann is one of the most annoying, dumb, idiotic characters you will ever see on a TV show. Both shows left me thinking these people can't really be this bad in real life, can they?