rkbabang

Looks like Fidelity is going to allow you to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum soon with very limited functionality at least at first: no crypto deposits or withdrawals. https://www.fidelity.com/crypto/trading

From the video interview above: “Is Bitcoin for real? Do you still own Bitcoin?” “I don’t own Bitcoin.” “Crypto?” “It’s tough for me to own anything like that with central banks tightening. But yeah, I still think, if the Bank of England, what they did, is followed by stuff like that by other central banks in the next 2 or 3 years. If things get really bad. I could see cryptocurrency having a big role in a renaissance because people just aren’t going to trust the central banks. But right now I like everything I’m hearing out of the Fed and I hope they finish the job. They made a big mistake. They seem to have owned it, but it’s easy to own it when employment is strong. We’ll see what happens if we get a hard landing. I just hope they stick to their guns, because this stuff was terrible in the 70s. You have to slay the dragon and the chair is right, you’re probably going to have some pain.”

"many of those trying van life have grown disillusioned with it, sometimes after spending a significant portion of their savings on converting or renovating a vehicle. One 33-year-old described it as “glorified homelessness” and griped about gas prices. Another said more bluntly, “Van life influencer culture is full of sh––,” complaining, among other things, of endless repairs and having to pay for hotel rooms when it’s too hot to sleep in a van."

Exactly. I love my job and plan to do it until I retire. But if I had $100M it would be silly to continue to work for hundreds of thousands. I would do something else, but I have no idea what. I'll probably never have to decide that so I don't spend much time thinking about it.

I am in a similar place as you. I just turned 50 and I am an ASIC designer. Unlike you I never wanted to manage anyone and have been doing only design my entire career. I work at a fairly large company and know people who are still designing into their 60s and even 70s on a purely technical career track. I have no plans to do anything else. Good advice above about health and fitness. I don't think cognitive decline in your 60s is a forgone conclusion, at least I hope it isn't. As for your 2nd question, I've had great years investing in every decade of my life since my 20s and bad years as well. My best year ever was 2021 at age 49. I don't understand your comment about it being easier to compound money in your 30s? I have 2 children (in their 20s now) who took a lot of my time (and money) when I was in my 30s, so if anything I have more time to dedicate to reading/investing now than I ever have in the past and more money to invest than I ever had in the past.

There is a large difference between short term and long term predictions. Some (most?) things are much easier to predict long term than short. I'd bet a lot that markets will be higher than now in 25 years and even higher than that in 50 years. I have no clue if they will be higher than now next week, next month, or next year. For very short term predictions I think it is very close to true that "when most people agree, it probably won't happen."

I've stepped up accumulating once again. I try to make a buy at least once per week. I'm hoping it drifts lower on low volume as the retail investors disappear and the HODLers mostly HODL. As long as I can buy cheap that is a good thing. The retail investors will be back in a few years when they read about new all time highs LOL.

Exactly. The first generation never really assimilates. My grandparents never learned English. You bring them in, they have kids and the kids are Americans.

I love when I talk to someone who takes great pains to say he's only against "illegal" immigration not legal immigration. I then say well we need a whole lot more immigrants so we should let in a hell of a lot more in legally, only to see a look of horror on the face of the person who really just doesn't want more brown people in "his" country. Every time.

Yes, it's the best I've seen. Glad to help.

I assume many here majored in finance

A lot easier to do when you are exempt from your country's 40% inheritance theft tax.

Thanks so much for recommending this! I finally got around to reading it. I just finished it last night and wrote a review of it on goodreads today: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4855744711 As I said in my review his analysis of the current situation is excellent with a lot to think about on every page, indeed in every paragraph. I read the html version on my iPad and spent time clicking and reading most of the hyperlinks throughout the text as well. I'm not so sure about Network States themselves though and I don't think things will play out exactly as he envisions. I tend to think it will be more decentralized and less formal structured organizations like states, and I don't see nation states every formally recognizing network states. But however it happens I do agree with him that somehow the 3rd leviathan will make the 2nd obsolete in the same way that the 2nd made the 1st obsolete after the enlightenment. Just before reading this I read "The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization" by Peter Zeihan and found it fascinating as well. He looks at things completely as a static person of the state, ignoring the network entirely. He even explicitly dismisses Bitcoin as an example of bubble foolishness. But his analysis of demographics is what I found interesting. It is something that The Network State doesn't take into account and it will have a large impact on the coming decades. It is worth the read for that reason alone. The next 20-60 years are going to be interesting times.

I just bought more JOE, using the proceeds from selling a little over my cost basis in UI (I was up over 215%).

While I'm recommending shows based on comics there is a show I watched a month or so ago that was pretty good too. "Pennyworth" on HBO. It's about Alfred Pennyworth (Batman's butler) as a young man in London. There's 2 seasons, so I was obviously late discovering it. It's entertaining and I enjoyed it, but it was a little weird. For one it's impossible to place the show in time. The cars are from the 30s & 40s, people dress like the 70s, there is music from all over the place in time, there is technology from all over the 20th century, Aleister Crowley is alive and young, the CIA exists already, so it has to be after WWII, and yet fascism is a popular thing with wide public support in the UK. None of that really makes sense being all at the same time, but the story is good.

I'm glad your enjoying it. I've found quite a few good shows because of this topic here.

The other thing to realize is that the character was gay in comic books which were written in the 1980s. It wasn't like they tried to add it in to make it woke. The Sandman was very true to the original material which is a rarity and another reason why it was an exceptional production.

There is nothing wrong with gay people or with gay characters. It's just weird when a show aimed at kids has sexual themes of any type, or a show has like 90% gay characters when in reality the % of gay people in the population is like 10% or less. I don't like watching and/or reading fiction that is trying to push an agenda on me to the detriment of the story. Imagine watching a show supposedly set in sub-Saharan Africa and 80% of the cast had snow-white skin and red hair. It would distract you from the story. The Sandman didn't do that at all.

I don't really care if there are a few gay characters. It didn't take away from the show in this case. It isn't a Disney film, the gay guy was a serial killer nightmare that took out people's eyes and ate them.

Just finished watching The Sandman this weekend. Really good show, which according to Neil Gaiman Netflix may or may not renew for a second season unfortunately. I guess they spent something like $15M per episode on season 1, so it will have to do extraordinarily well for them to commit to a season 2. So if you were planning on watching it, doing so sooner rather than later might help Netflix decide to renew it. https://comicbook.com/tv-shows/news/neil-gaiman-why-netflix-has-not-renewed-the-sandman-season-2-yet/

Yep, I always use the name of the company or a part of the name and that usually works much better than the symbol. For example search for the word Pershing and you will find both PSTH and PSH.L threads in your first few results

Yep, drivers as well. You have to drive your own car unless you are very very rich in the US.

Has gotten too political? The "S" in ESG stands for social, it has always been entirely political.

I'm a fan of The Gray Man books and finally got to see the movie this past weekend. Having read the books really ruins the movie. I hate that they made it all about the US Government. In the books he's a private hitman not a current CIA agent, and the people out to get him are also not US Government agents. Since it takes place in Europe the books have very little to do with the US in any way. Hollywood wants to make everything about US Government all of the time. Also in the book he's a badass lone operator, where in the movie they gave him a female sidekick. As a standalone story I guess the movie wasn't bad, but my expectations where very high and the movie disappointed me tremendously.

I do. I'm an engineer, so I've worked with quite a few people from India over the years. One guy I worked with for about 10 years before he moved back to India. He had talked about it for some time, but after his kids spent a couple of years in school, he moved back. He said he didn't like how his children were being "Americanized". That was about 7-8 years ago, I still talk to him from time to time and he says he's happy he made the move back. I also worked with a guy from Pakistan who moved back to Pakistan because he didn't like living in America. I don't understand it, but everyone is different.