Gregmal

I think the gist of what he is trying to communicate is accurate. I posted in another thread something similar regarding trading, and how its viewed by some. Supply and demand is probably the single most important variable in an otherwise large equation. Thats why some shareholders throw temper tantrums with respect to dilution. There's so many "value" investors who are downright stupid or willfully ignorant when it comes to this. They "dont believe" in trading, and think trading is a "losers game" in the long run. Theyre idiots though. If I dump 3% of a companies shares inside of a day, no duh! it will create a short term imbalance. Now play with this example over different time periods. Its the magic sauce to why something like Dillards is repeatedly such an easy trade to make money on. This can occur on every level of the market from a single stock trade over a 10 second span to multi year(even decade) spans. Of course the fundamentals of the business matter as does your ability to get your money back. They too have a big place in the equation. But its more of a backstop and place of support that will eventually create a supply/demand imbalance. Its why buybacks are a huge beneficiary to long term shareholders. The fundamental idea of a buyback is that at a certain price, the company can exhaust the shares outstanding before it exhausts its assets/runs out of cash.

Also shorted some RICK $17.5 puts with May expiration.

Started some MRG.UN, also added a few LHSIF. Trimmed about 10% of my VIX call position as well.

The book 'Stumbling on Happiness' by Gilbert was a huge influence on my life when I read it. It was long ago, but the main points have always stuck with me. Recommended. I haven’t read the book, but this seems great advice. One thing is sure they happiness doesn’t scale with the money spent. Yup. One of the biggest traps is when ones lifestyle scales up with their earnings. People, even of modest means would be retiring 10-20 years sooner if they just stuck with what they needed and maybe a few toys and were content. The biggest ceiling facing middle America, IMO, is needing to recycle into a new $600 a month car payment every 3 years. That $7200 a year over 25 years, even if you suck at investing and only did 5%, is nearly $400k...Same thing to a degree, albeit with other nuances, with housing.

Up to $17M. Keep it going. Cant understate the importance of small businesses and keeping them alive, they provide jobs and a livelihood to many vs just some stupid stimulus check to individuals that likely gets wasted on discretionary crap and iPhones/sneakers.

I share this same view with you - at 38 , I am at where I thought where I would need to be at 50 and so this has changed my view about what to do next - keep working or buy a nice big house so as to keep me motivated to keep working (i.e., pay off a new big mortgage). I know this is like a real first world problem in a COVID year, so I am just thankful to have this problem instead of other kinds... Gary One of the best moves Ive made in my life(I like to think Ive made a bunch!) by far, was simply buying a reasonable sized house that I could see myself raising my kids in and living in for 30 years, at the age of 25. Its only 3,000 sq ft so every now and again I ponder what it would be like to have a gargantuan waterfront home or something like that...but at the end of the day, having a manageable housing cost is a tremendous advantage. Same with cars. Ive had nice cars but after a month its just another thing that gets you from A to B. After 6 months you dont care about it and $100+ oil changes and $200 a piece tires drive you insane, the same as your homes property tax bill-which never declines and always seems to outstrip inflation. The lower your recurring/fixed home+auto costs the more freedom you will have in life, or so Ive found.

On the institutional/product side, there's a lot of whats called a feedback loop. With early stage items, it can be very powerful. Recall how once the first couple institutions or funds finally disclosed being long Tesla, then fast forward a year from then, and everyone was doing it no problem. Imagine now having been one of the first movers in BTC this past fall, and having a +50% mark to market already? Or how about sitting on 20% ytd gains before the markets have even been open for one trading day? I continue to reduce 1-2% of the position after every 10-15% bump or so, but things should really start to get interesting.

Really? One year saving of travel and entertainment can change one's budget on a new home? That's hard to believe. Not at all. In the US the poor man(or hand to mouth fella) needs 3% plus closing costs to get into a home. If you save $20k by not dining out and vacationing, thats a down payment for some, or another half mil+ of home they can buy. I also think there should be entry taxes for states/jurisdictions. Its a big problem here in the US where you have people living in, and supporting the policies and fiscal irresponsibility of one state, and then not liking the bed they've made for themselves, and then collectively moving to, and starting to ruin new states by moving there and bringing their same philosophical issues and problems.

This is kind of besides the point, but I believe that quote you always see from CNBC about "you gotta be in the market because the 10 best days account for all of the return in any given year". It's such a cherry-picked fact. When did those trading days occur? Probably during periods of heightened volatility where the market was swinging up and down wildly. So in order to get the best trading days you had to stomach the worst trading days too. I've never actually looked at this before, but it confirms my suspicion about the "best trading days" garbage CNBC feeds retail investors. The attachment shows the 2020 trading days ranked in order (by absolute value of returns) and shows you that the best and worst days were clustered around March and April with a few exceptions outside that time. If you state how much of the market return occurs in a few best days, you also need to state how much of a decline you could have avoided being out of the market for the few worst days to make this assessment more symmetrical., yea Im not totally sure and while I find it interesting, I dont totally think its something to read too much into. Just something perhaps to consider. I am almost always 100% or more long and I am almost always positioning my available cash/liquidity to capitalize(market timing I suppose some will call it) on short term opportunity. Can do both I guess. Being out of the market is stupid, as this year showed. In fact, every market downturn has ended up showing this. But its also showed that you need to have liquidity available to really T-up a fat pitch.

+1 of the curveball with kids and WFH. I literally was doing 9:30-4s from my car w/ WiFi for good chunks of the year. Always adapting lol.

^ Yea I slept in this morning a bit...when I did my usual account checks, saw BTC move, shrugged shoulders, and said "Happy New Year"...good times.

What if after picking door 3 they show you door 1 is empty? Will you change your guess?

I think this is a very strong takeaway that cant be stated enough. Over the years Ive become more and more grateful for flipping my "value investor" position on the concept of "trading". For a long time I subscribed to the notion sold by people like Buffett that "short term trading is a fools game". There is a huge contingency of "value investor" who are almost willfully proud about being stupid and dismissive of the idea of trading. They're kind of like anti vaxxers or Earth is flat folks. But the truth is that managing investments with a trading angle is a massively beneficial tool in terms of managing risk and being opportunistic. Ive read in a few places that like 85% of the markets returns occur during something like 10% of its trading days. Even with respect to this year, I had many reminders of this. Selling DDS puts and buying calls a few days before the short squeeze thesis played out after Teds 13G netted over 800% and buying $100 MSGE calls while the stock languished between $65-75 just seemed too good to be true...and paid off between 170-1600%. Being flexible in philopshy and dynamic in application was a lesson that 2020 cemented in me. Trading in a sense, is really just monetizing volatility. @John Hjorth. Sorry for your loss. It is easy to look at things in the simple good/bad context. Ive had a number of events in my life that most been would describe as "not good" or probably even much worse. At the time they are unpleasant. Painful even. But as you get through them I find them just as valuable and even more so than "good" events or memories. I dont think Id describe any of them, in hindsite, as "bad" experiences though. Same with 2020. Everything one experiences in life molds that person and their pool of wisdom/understanding. Like a video game, as you advance, having conquered past levels, you inevitably carry with you those lessons. Hopefully you and your family are well in the new year and may your brother rest in peace.

Agree that BABA is positioned nicely. Not too keen on the current market setup. But otherwise, I think you can throw darts at Sun Belt related real estate and housing stuff and make 10-15%+. Similar to last year, I'd say if you're being conservative, Berkshire Hathaway has a lot of unique things collectively converging and I am expecting it to break out in a major way. If you're willing to take a little more risk, Hamilton Thorne.

Happy New Year to everyone. 2020 wasnt a bad year, it was just a life experience. What doesnt kill you, makes you stronger and wiser. Hopefully 2021 is the start of the Roaring 20s. Cheers

Oh what a year!

Added some ARKG April puts.

Agree on giving it first to indigenous. People really dont seem to understand how far removed from the general population and societal norms most are. I remember awhile back an issue with a Bible thumper getting murdered by the Sentinelese and how they didnt even want to bother retrieving the body because of the risk of exposing these people(I think 2-3 dozen remain) to normal disease/bacteria.

Personally, after Joe won, I felt that I could trust the science again and therefor get the vaccine. Whew!

Why wouldn't we apply the same scrutiny we do to others, to the government officials who held this up for so long? Its like they're still, with some of these, dicking around and wasting time because "despite 95% efficiency, oh, 1/50,000 might get temporary Bells Palsy or have an allergic reaction", meanwhile, they continue to tell us how dangerous the world is with covid, bc 300k(1/1,000) folks have actually died. The bigger picture of all of this is utterly insane and disgraceful.

I think we can take comfort in the fact that all those people who spent 6 months politicking and spreading fear about the vaccine, cough certain politicians, made it a point to jump the line and get vaccinated....that its probably a good idea for the rest of us.

That's wild. Where did you get that information? https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/360574

What is interesting is that supposedly the Moderna vaccine was developed within 48 hours of getting the sequence, back in JANUARY! This aligns with the idea that China and others also had a vaccine quite early. So it really is true when people foot the blame on government and regulation/bureaucrats. We had the answer before a single person died of this...yet nothing was done.

Joking aside I do think the $600-$2000 of money going to poor people will actually have a more material/actionable effect on BTC than any etf index.

Just donated. Thanks for bringing this up. A truly worthwhile cause.