Paarslaars

I agree the middle class will see it's buying power reduced but that's just humbling, not really that painful. (here in Belgium the middle class will get stronger as wages will increase equally with inflation while everyone has 25y fixed mortgages at 1-2%). The problem that follows is the reduced spending from the middle class, which will reduce in term reduce companies revenue and cost jobs, that will hurt the lower class most. Not immediately financially as you mentioned the transfer payments are indexed, but unemployment creates a series of other issues (like addictions) due to the lack of productivity and fulfillment...

He would be right if he said "anyone with my potential/capabilities could do this". People often underestimate the difference IQ can make, we're not supposed to talk about it because it's not 'nice' but it's huge. Now your comment is true. To go even further, IQ is partially genetic and those we never earned a substantial amount of money, never taught how to manage money to their children either... And these people eventually make up the lower class, never learned how to have money work for them and not smart enough to figure it out themselves. My wife comes from a low income family where they had to watch how much they spend every month. She makes the worst decisions when it comes to money because she believes it to be 'safe'. She doesn't graps the concept that 'safe' = saving is the exact opposite of safe in an inflationary period.

Indeed, though you really are just screwed if you score low on all 3 at the same time (which is not a third of the population). I score embarrassingly low on conscientiousness but I'm doing fine having the other two compensate. I know quite a few people who would score low on the intelligence curve but they are just conscientious enough to function at a well paid laboring job (shift work) and just industrious enough to buy a second property and rent it out, these people will do very well in this environment.

Interesting. I've been talking to a few friends who are now all looking into real estate cause they think it's a good time. The reasoning is the interest rates on loans are still relatively low (2.5% @ 25y) and their salary will increase a lot due to inflation (Belgium has something called indexation, where salaries are increased with the inflation number on a yearly basis). People are taking pretty big loans based on the assumption that upcoming years of inflation will minimize their mortgage payments in a few years... If he's right about deflation, this could drop the housing market here. Only wondering what the FED will do during deflation, drop interest rates or just resort back to QE?

Switched some BRK.B from my personal account to my family account. Doubled my PCYO position at 10.45.

No cash here either, I tend to treat my BRK position similar to a cash position, if I really need money for something interesting, I reduce that position: 50% BRK 34% O&G (IPCO, GXE, OXY, OBE & PPR) 7% crypto ETF 3% BABA leaps 3% MNDY 3% PCYO Should've just stuck with the top two, crypto, baba and monday.com are all down 20-30%. Nevertheless, I'm up 18% YTD while the market is down, can't complain I guess. I believe there is a cycle to ride here on O&G, which I'm going to do, after that we'll see.

Not sure it's really OXY related, all my O&G positions were up 3-6% on Friday and down 3-6% yesterday.

Been thinking more on this one. Yesterday I had my regular indoor football match. Usually the conversations after the game are about women, sports, kids, cars, houses, etc... Yesterday everyone only had one topic: investing. Mainly discussing ETF's.. While I think it's good they are finally putting their capital to good use with ETF's, it also gives me a feeling that there is still plenty of "dumb money" around to prop up the market. They all started by investing 10-20% of their savings, so there is more room. And yes I call them "dumb money" because they all started investing based on a popular dutch podcast from a guy who "has been doing great since he started investing mid 2020".

Added to PPR.TO

How did u play it?

I paid 600€/year for those courses though.

With two small kids, my hobbies are rather limited: indoor football and padel. I do plan on gradually building a 'sustainable' vegetable garden. The dream is to never have to buy vegetables ever again and grow much better quality myself! Additionally, maybe add poultry for eggs/meat etc... perhaps even with a pond to breed fish. Bee keeping is actually something that looks quite attractive as well but I heard it can be quite a challenge to keep the hive alive. My grandma lived like that after she retired, sounds like a dream to me. Hope to have time for it at one point...

https://9gag.com/gag/a91ygLL Funny for the times.

I'm not taking that risk again, got burned too badly with Eurobank

I just use BRK as cash... they are sitting on a ton of it anyway.

Same people pulling the strings behind both parties though.

BABA, MNDY

Gear is up 46%, OBE 62%.

How will you be ready for that day? Try to guess when he'll die and free up cash right before? Now that's even worse than market timing. I know when that day comes my portfolio will take a big hit...

I'm curious what the political influence will be here when Russia invades Ukraine.. typically something like this impacts markets everywhere.

Yes a much needed wake up call. Honestly I still consider my situation to be rather fortunate. I started investing right after buying a house, so the majority of my wealth was in real estate which has only gone up since. Therefor my portfolio was small early on, my biggest loss in a year was about 3 months of salary. Not fun but better I learn from it now than make these mistakes when my portfolio is much bigger.

2013 8% 2014 25% 2015 -20% 2016 40% 2017 -26% 2018 -17% 2019 20% 2020 -5% 2021 47% Overall 5% CAGR. Well at least I'm not losing money? In 2019 I changed up my portfolio to be +/- 50% BRK and stopped taking risks, especially with less time for due diligence. I do keep my eyes open for some 'obvious' bargains like fairfax this year. Unfortunately due to construction on the house, had little extra cash available to take advantage of the bargains in 2020. 2021 went well for me, couple of 60% stocks (FFH, ING) with good solid performance of BRK and an additional tailwind from currency (USD vs EUR). Also the (surviving) oil stocks that resulted in the horrible performance of 2017/2018 rallied this year... which is nice, even if they were only small positions in the end.

Job title/description: R&D manager Industry you work in: Semiconductor City and Country: Antwerp Area (Belgium, live 20 miles from work). Anything expected or unexpected from being forced to work from home: I see great benifit to it, there have been tasks that I've been doing for years in excel which I finally could take the time to automate in python. ;D I'm also much more productive this way, on a normal day I get interrupted by someone every 15 minutes. Our policy is to do the 8h/day, irregardless of when you do them, which offers quite a bit of flexibility. So I can go grocery shopping, mow the lawn, go on a bike ride... when it suits me and then work later in the evening. The downside is the contact with people, especially if things are going wrong in production and you need to be there to coach people, quite difficult from home. Also meetings are not as efficient. Since quite a bit of my work requires proper change management, it is simply better to be present in the room to get a feeling where people are stuck. And finallly: my wife & kid being home is quite a big distraction, but this should not be the case under 'normal working from home' circumstances. All in all I normally never work from home but after the COVID-19 crisis I will be requesting one day per week.

It's a shame countries aren't learning from each other... the U.S. was well behind the EU with the infection but since it does not take the same precautions earlier, it is now rapidly catching up...

Anheuser-Busch InBev :)