Sweet

As mentioned, co-sleeping is a mistake. Ferber crying out method worked for us. Every baby is different though.

Yes TA cannot save you from poor analysis, I’d say TA is worthless if applied randomly. It’s not if it provides you with entry signals and if it saves you from considerable drawdowns if you can position better / time entries better. There is actually a way to use TA which is complementary with value investing. You are coming at this from the perspective that TA predicts the future - I don’t believe it does or even can. In my opinion the biggest benefit of TA is letting you know how the trend is doing.

Not ‘always’. Some value investing opportunities go lower, sometimes much lower. Applying something like a moving average crossover to enter a position might save you from a significant drawdown in at least some instances. Not hard to find charts which show exactly that. Use your example Meta, it dropped 50% and then another 50%. When was the appropriate time to enter? $95 sure but how many entered much higher to have a significant drawdown? Few. Apply a 20 and 5 moving average on Meta to enter and you do well. Technical analysis isn’t necessarily predicting the future for many it’s about position entry and risk control.

Technicals and value investing do not always work at cross purpose. They can interact and complement each other if designed that way. For example, I have heard of some people who use value investing for picking companies and the technicals as exits and entries.

I’m fairly sure that the recent sightings are either sophisticated propaganda or US technologies. There is a telling contrast between the response of the US government to the Chinese spy balloon and these unknown vehicles routinely intercepted in US airspace and which on at least one occasion nearly collided with a US fighter jet. The US government don’t really seem to care that their airspace is violated by unknown objects on a regular basis. There doesn’t appear to have been a serious attempt to find out what the objects are, who owns them, or to get their hands on one. The Chinese spy balloon was shot down but there is no sign of any attempt to down these objects. So I think the answer is sort of obvious. The US government know exactly what the objects are because it’s their craft or their propaganda.

Of course what happened matter, intent is important. Most people on Jan 6th where there to voice their support for Trump. And anger. Trump was the sitting President, it was his administration, why the heck are supporters of Trump staging an insurrection or coup when their boy is still in power?

So why would anyone ever lend to anyone again in China?

I don’t agree with you. People get hurt in a riots and rioters themselves are criminals. Trump crossed a line, deserves punishment, isn’t fit for office… agree…. but separate from the rioters at the capitol that day. Also wrong was the three year of lies and bs about Russia collusion. I think Trump had reasonable grounds for calling it a witch-hunt. Why can’t both be wrong? Why can’t we dispassionately and accurately appraise events - in the long run nobody will take your views seriously if you can’t. To me you’re espousing the opposite view of those conspiracy and 4chan nuts who think Trump won the election. Blind adherence to your team - what’s the difference except the team? Your team tried to unseat a sitting President with lies - have you called it out? Your team want to make a riot into a coup - really? I was sitting in Newark airport watching CNN call it a ‘coup’, I remember thinking nobody in the airport gave a fuck. The media in America is garbage. It doesn’t report the news it creates narratives and pits people against each other. I swear it’s the root of so much polarisation.

Parsad, I’m not American, so take it for what you will. I don’t know anybody outside of the US who thinks the Jan 6th riot was anything more than a riot. ‘Insurrection or coup’ is a narrative dreamed up largely by US media. Real insurrections and coups are by actual soldiers and military, not by a rag tag motley crew of idiotic Trump supporters.

Growth because of the West’s embrace, let’s remember that. Despite that growth still significantly behind the rest of the world. You say America had more time to industrialise - really? China is one of the oldest countries in the planet. Come on, it’s an obvious soft spot. Xi is no Plato, and Plato didn’t know even half of what we know today.

Peter Lynch is great.

Growth for all, really? Inequality in China is large. In America the poorest are are probably wealthier than the average Chinese. You really do have a soft spot for the CCP. Why should anyone like Xi deserve power for as long he wants?

Probably, I’m not sure much of what Berkshire buys and sells is Warren or Charlie anymore. Hard to know what to make of the 13Fs now.

buying home builders

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-20-dividend-stocks-have-been-the-best-income-growers-in-the-s-p-500-fd6ccc26?mod=home-page

Possibly in big cities like others have said but I personally don’t see myself ever giving up a car. It’s just too handy. I also don’t trust those autopilot cars. I can see it being a thing in some areas though, I know several people who don’t own a car and see no interest in having one.

Might be a catalyst behind the China weakness - Western companies moving operations elsewhere? A lot of these economic and housing woos can be masked by a booming economy, but when the economy slows its a double or triple whammy as these weak areas roll over.

I would like that too, but there is a huge passive investment industry just indexing the SP-500. This isn’t a this is different this time argument, I don’t know, just that I know the likes of Ackman have complained this is skewing the market.

maybe, but there are obvious exceptions, most notably the likes of Google, Microsoft, Amazon.

Hope it works out for you. Looked at it, agree it’s interesting, but think there are too many headwinds.

I recently read that the SP-500 had an average growth rate of 4%, I think that explains a lot of the performance differential between small-mid caps and the large caps. The current crop of large cap stocks are incredible performers and growth engines.

You're assuming, without evidence, that you intuitively know the probability of life forming on a planet. Is that not arrogant too? 40 sextillion habitual planets (assuming one per star) is a big number, it's 40e+21, but if the probability of life forming on a habitual planet is 1e-100 then it is more likely we are alone. That's just how the maths works. Since nobody knows the probability of life form, nobody knows if there is any life out there, never mind intelligent life. So why can't we just say, 'I don't know'? We could be unbelievably special, is it not arrogant also to rule that possibility out? We might not special but why do we need to make an emotional appeal and insist that if a person disagrees with you its arrogance? That's not a fact based argument.

It could be something like, it might have to be something like that, but we don’t know either. The odds of life self generating in lab conditions will be much higher than outside a lab where you have a range of factors working against the formation of life. I bring up the immense odds of life occurring as a counterpoint to the view that it’s obvious that the universe is full of life. I tried calculating (4^500000)x(20^40000) and it won’t compute - just gives infinity. The process probably needs a non-random element, i.e. something innate in physics, chemistry, that causes these molecules to form in a way that it removes a lot of randomness. Even then the odds are going to be big.

The whole thing is mind blowing. My brain isn’t capable of understanding the vastness of space of the understanding the sheer scale of some of these probabilities. Bringing it back down to earth. Biologist Craig Venter who worked to sequence the human genome has also been working of trying to understand the minimal number of genes for life. Right now, for a living cell to exist under controlled, aka ‘perfect’ environmental conditions, they believe a cell needs 473 genes coded for on just over 500,000 DNA base pairs. For those genes to work the DNA base pairs have to be in the right order to produce functioning proteins, because if even one protein doesn't function correctly the cell dies, or cannot reproduce and dies from old age. Randomly having those DNA base pairs of the 473 genes in the correct order to function has probability of 4 ^ 500,000. On top of that you need a core set of proteins to coexist simultaneously to the DNA to metabolise food for energy. Let’s assume 200 of the 473 genes produce proteins which must be present from time point zero, and the average protein is 200 amino acids which also need to be in the right order. The probability of that also being present randomly is 20 ^ 40,000. The probability of the DNA and protein machinery required for life to randomly orientate correctly = (4 ^ 500,000) x (20 ^ 40,000). Sure there is probably some flex in the coding and arrangements so move the decimal place to the left a bunch. It’s still astronomical randomness for DNA and protein to just be in the right order. That’s assuming the DNA base pairs and amino acids are present in the environment, that these genes and proteins coexist in the same area, and they are randomly gets engulfed in a lipid layer to form a cell. It also assumes no competing forces are working to destroy them like high heat, or acids etc. Life really is amazing.

I posted a video further up. Not sure if anyone watched it - guess not given replies so far. Even if there many trillions of habitable planets, if the chances of life of any kind forming is 10^-100 then it’s more likely there isn’t life in the universe. That’s not even the probability of intelligent life forming. Since nobody knows what the chances of life forming are, then nobody can truly say one way or another. All of this explained in the video posted. To call it arrogant to believe we might be alone is a view I don’t understand. It’s equally arrogant to think you know what the chances of life are of forming and infer from that intelligent life must exist elsewhere. I certainly hope there is intelligent life out there, would be one lonely universe if there wasn’t. If was forced to guess I would guess that there is life too but it’s a total guess.