Thanks for sharing, it sounds interesting!
Have you heard of Recursion (RxRx)?
They use robotics to systematically experiment with biology and they plan to sell this data library to big AI models to forage through. The goals is to accelerate pharma research by being able to predict more interactions in software. 2B market cap 500 employees.
China is starting a massive military exercise around Taiwan called Joint Sword-2024B. 2024"A" was last May and lasted for two days. Could this be the start of an actual invasion? It's too soon to tell but if I put on my conspiracy hat a lot of elements are lined up.
- October and April are the best two months to attack because of the weather.
- Current US president is mentally impaired from old age.
- US weapons are spread thin around the world with Russia + Middle East fronts
- Weeks before a tight election where Americans are already at each others throat and ready to claim election interference. What if China has a plan to sow enough mistrust about the results that neither side recognizes the other's right to govern?
- They just propped up their stock market 25% on little more than announcements, it could have been to bait western money in while telling party friends at the top to unload their shares.
- Demography shows time is not anymore on the Chinese side.
- AI difference between the two is actually supposed to widen in the next few years according to Ex Google CEO Eric Schmidt giving the US an advantage, so better attack quickly now?
Hopefully I'm just scaring myself
50% All world stocks ETF
30% family real estate
14% US corporate bonds ETF
3.6% Alphabet
2.4% AirBnB
no cash no debt
about 1/3rd of the way to financial independence
Wish there was more to do but nothing feels obvious at the moment and I sleep well with my indexing in the meantime
Meanwhile their GDP was multiplied by 24. I'm still unsure how such a discrepancy is even possible. But yeah if you take a long term view it's pretty clear foreigner's money has only ever been welcomed in and never out. Must be nice to have people invest in you so much with nothing in return. Maybe we got our money back in cheaper goods? But then de-industrializing wrecks social cohesion at home and makes us dependent on their stuff.
Re:wallets experiment I wish they had tested Japan I bet it would have made number one in the list. Safest and most honest country I've ever visited.
I bought Airbnb on Friday for 2.2% of the portfolio. I've been wanting to own this for over a decade but it stayed private forever and then the IPO was way too expensive. Now seems like a good opportunity to own a wonderful business at a reasonable price.
I've started a reverse "what are you buying today" thread a year ago and got some great initial answers but the momentum didn't sustain.
I'm not shorting anything at the moment. Now that we can get yields from bonds I find that if I'm nervous I can just reduce my stocks exposure and increase my fixed income and lower the portfolio volatility that way instead of attempting to be long/short.
Are you short anything?
China does everything they can to be hated by every single one of their many neighbors. This is the most puzzling part of their global strategy to me. Do they really need a tiny bit more land here and there and what is the diplomatic cost of being such a dick to everyone else in the region? This isn't medieval times anymore.
I was equally scratching my head when they decided it was a good idea to send "wolf" diplomats to Europe to straight up insult and threaten us. They gained nothing and only deeply damaged their own image. I imagine they might have internal reasons that justify all this external non sense. Appeasing the hard liners nationalists in the party by giving them a bone to chew or something? Maybe some general needs to justify increasing the army budget?
Those settlements cancel the soft power and good will Belt and Road was supposed to bring and push away countries that should be natural allies such as Vietnam.
Gotcha! Makes sense
Here is my boring portfolio by the way (whole net worth)
3.9% Alphabet (because AI)
47.2% VT (World Stocks ETF)
16.5% VTC (US Bonds ETF)
32.4% Condo in Paris (in the process of being sold)
I watched this interview of Murati and it felt so odd so I looked her up. She's CTO yet has an education in mechanical engineering and has never coded. Meanwhile Ilya Sutkever who built the damn thing is apparently being sidelined and silenced since the failed putsch.