President-Elect Trump trades

[Vish_ram]

8 hours ago, Buckeye said:

Ok Vish...welcome back!  So in your example above Bitcoin which has been around for 15 years is just like Gold which has been around for 5000 years (except for the difference of 4985 years).  And you didn't mention that Gold does have some utility, but we won't go down that path, beacuse I am sure once James finds another link we will learn that Bitcoin can now be used to fill cavities.

 

Or, are you comparing the Bitcoin and Gold to say that in 4985 years from now everyone will realize Bitcoin's true, and they will still talk about poorest man who ever lived...Old Buckeye from 2024. 

 

I look forward to hearing your reply.  Thank you. 

 

Thanks for the reply. 

 

Decades ago I had some interest in anthropology. Sometimes it took early mankind 300-400 years to make small improvements in stone tools. That was the pace of technological revolution. We live in an internet age. Newton said I can see farther because I stand on the shoulders of giants. Similarly Bitcoin stands on the shoulder of internet, connected devices, network etc.

 

If Gold took few 100 years to be embraced by a kingdom, BTC took hardly a decade or two. Very astute observation about BTC used to fill cavities. Yes , we can send a few satoshis to the dentist to fill the cavity in a hyperbitcoinzation world. 

 

[John Hjorth]

It's OK, @Buckeye,

 

Short term sentiment driven content here on CoBF. [So much for Germany here, with their automakers and all related to that, I'll give you that.]

 

Now you please try to think about an universal future, without the goods and services of : ABB, Siemens and [French] Schneider? [All listed, no talk, really, about them here on CoBF, except @dealraker some time ago mentioning buying Siemens, according to my personal observations here on CoBF.]

Edited Wednesday at 02:27 AM by John Hjorth

[Vish_ram]

Almost everyone is against bitcoin before they are for it. I came to know about it 10 years ago when it was around $240. In my MBA class there was a guy from an exchange who explained it for an hour. I was incredulous. First I thought Govt will shut it down as it threatens dollar. I didn’t bother to spend time as I had such a negative reaction having been trained in value investing. I also thought that there will be others competing with it and it’ll be a passing fad. 

 

When Blackrock got involved I got in seriously. I read a few books, spent hours listening to podcasts etc. I still think all alt-coins are shit. Right now BTC has gained so much traction that it has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. 

 

I love to see skeptics. It shows that we are early. 

 

I live in Atlanta and visited Coca Cola museum few times. when it was introduced, there were many copy cats. Hundreds of them. Eventually they were beaten and driven out. I see the parallel in BTC too. 

Edited Wednesday at 02:32 AM by Vish_ram

[Xerxes]

1 hour ago, Vish_ram said:

 

I still remember the Stone Age of bitcoin, like it was yesterday. 
 

It was circa 2013 I think, the topic was bank run in Cyprus, oligarch money and a spike on Bitcoin. 

Edited Wednesday at 03:54 AM by Xerxes

[benchmark]

3 minutes ago, Vish_ram said:

Almost everyone is against bitcoin before they are for it. I came to know about it 10 years ago when it was around $240. In my MBA class there was a guy from an exchange who explained it for an hour. I was incredulous. First I thought Govt will shut it down as it threatens dollar. I didn’t bother to spend time as I had such a negative reaction having been trained in value investing. I also thought that there will be others competing with it and it’ll be a passing fad. 

 

When Blackrock got involved I got in seriously. I read a few books, spent hours listening to podcasts etc. I still think all alt-coins are shit. Right now BTC has gained so much traction that it has become a self-fulfilling prophesy. 

 

I love to see skeptics. It shows that we are early. 

@Vish_ram In your Mar's example, given that limited supply of Mar's coin, how does its economy grow? how is it measured then? the current capitalist system works with the underline assumption that one can 'create/print' money, afaik.

[hasilp89]

14 minutes ago, Xerxes said:

From few years ago … hope he kept it for his sake. 
 

not that any of it makes sense. 

 

lol. Lot of funny money being made these days.

i know most ppl think its a joke but Vivek ran on cutting the bureaucracy (recent lex Friedman interview goes through his thought process). While most of gvt budget is ss, Medicare/medicaid I imagine there is plenty to cut. Musk/vivek not necessarily beholden to any special interest.

[Vish_ram]

12 minutes ago, benchmark said:

@Vish_ram In your Mar's example, given that limited supply of Mar's coin, how does its economy grow? how is it measured then? the current capitalist system works with the underline assumption that one can 'create/print' money, afaik.

 

 

money supply × velocity of money = price level × real GDP

 

Assume in mars I can have increasing velocity that is frictionless as supply is fixed (mars token coin can have matoshi, 1 MTC = 100Million matoshi)

 

As economy grows, the velocity goes up. (Even on Earth you can see it now, velocity is going up as supply reduces). https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

 

when you’ve GDP growth, basically value of money goes up. 

—————————————-

in the current capitalistic system, under ideal circumstances you should have increasing value of money as productivity goes up. It gets usurped by money printing (inflation)

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:50 AM by Vish_ram

[Vish_ram]

In a society that has a fixed money supply (coin divisible to nth degree), if you have a growing population, GDP, productivity then value of money keeps going up. Savers need to own just that money and it keeps appreciating in value (in terms of what can be bought). the increasing innovation, productivity will make money valuable. 

There’s no sinister Govt/Fed complex to usurp it.

 

How do we make current system perfect. Imagine living in BTC world. 

1) Owners of BTC capital lend it out for interest in BTC and use collateral (that can be converted to BTC)

2) the biz creates products/services sells them in BTC/satoshi and then pays back debt

3) if defaulted, then collateral is confiscated

4) Govt earns BTC from taxation and lives within the means. If it wants to borrow then it uses land/assets as collateral

[dealraker]

53 minutes ago, John Hjorth said:

It's OK, @Buckeye,

 

Short term sentiment driven content here on CoBF. [So much for Germany here, with their automakers and all related to that, I'll give you that.]

 

Now you please try to think about an universal future, without the goods and services of : ABB, Siemens and [French] Schneider? [All listed, no talk, really, about them here on CoBF, except @dealraker some time ago mentioning buying Siemens, according to my personal observations here on CoBF.]

Bought Siemens on 7/7/22 ar $49 and something, some type of bad news plummet on the stock.  They just bought a large tract from our industrial land company to build passenger train cars in Lexington NC.  Already well under construction.

[Buckeye]

1 hour ago, Vish_ram said:

 

Thanks for the reply. 

 

Decades ago I had some interest in anthropology. Sometimes it took early mankind 300-400 years to make small improvements in stone tools. That was the pace of technological revolution. We live in an internet age. Newton said I can see farther because I stand on the shoulders of giants. Similarly Bitcoin stands on the shoulder of internet, connected devices, network etc.

 

If Gold took few 100 years to be embraced by a kingdom, BTC took hardly a decade or two. Very astute observation about BTC used to fill cavities. Yes , we can send a few satoshis to the dentist to fill the cavity in a hyperbitcoinzation world. 

 

Thanks for your reply Vish. I now better understand your point from earlier. Not sure I completely agree with it (yet) but that’s on me. 

Also, you’ve reminded me that I need to go to the dentist, and I haven’t been for a while

Edited Wednesday at 03:35 AM by Buckeye

[TwoCitiesCapital]

2 hours ago, hasilp89 said:

Vivek and Elon to lead Doge.

“The Manhattan project of our time.”
$6.5 trillion budget.

how much can they cut

 

Is it not ironic that the office leading the charge for government inefficiency redundantly has two leaders? Not a great start LOL!

 

1 hour ago, Vish_ram said:

Almost everyone is against bitcoin before they are for it.

 

100%. Was skeptical of it from 2011 to 2019 and then something clicked and realized I was wrong the whole time. At at that point, at $12-14k a coin, I felt like I had missed the boat entirely. Over time, my understanding of it has evolved, as has my methods for estimating its value, and it turns out that 2019 was still very early. 2024 is too. 

Edited Wednesday at 04:16 AM by TwoCitiesCapital

[Blake Hampton]

2023 U.S. government financials

 

Total net cost: $7.9 trillion

 

- Department of Health and Human Services: $1.7 trillion, 26% of total

- Department of Veterans Affairs: $1.5 trillion, 19% of total

- Social Security Administration: $1.4 trillion, 18% of total

- Department of Defense: $1 trillion, 13% of total

- Interest on Treasury Securities held by the public: $0.7 trillion, 9%

 

These top 5: $6.3 trillion, 83% of total


Let's cut more taxes!!!
Best of luck to Elon and his DOGE!!!

Edited Wednesday at 05:21 AM by Blake Hampton

[Kizion]

4 hours ago, John Hjorth said:

It's OK, @Buckeye,

 

Short term sentiment driven content here on CoBF. [So much for Germany here, with their automakers and all related to that, I'll give you that.]

 

Now you please try to think about an universal future, without the goods and services of : ABB, Siemens and [French] Schneider? [All listed, no talk, really, about them here on CoBF, except @dealraker some time ago mentioning buying Siemens, according to my personal observations here on CoBF.]

 

I'm also in favour of such type of investments, but in my opinion none of them seems really cheap at the moment. Looked at ABB a while ago (in the dip) but decided to pass on them (probably wrongly). 

[UK]

11 hours ago, gfp said:

It's not a good idea to be 100% sure of anything.  It helps to think in probabilities and keep an open mind.

 

+1

Edited Wednesday at 07:54 AM by UK

[Dinar]

11 hours ago, Blake Hampton said:

2023 U.S. government financials

 

Total net cost: $7.9 trillion

 

- Department of Health and Human Services: $1.7 trillion, 26% of total

- Department of Veterans Affairs: $1.5 trillion, 19% of total

- Social Security Administration: $1.4 trillion, 18% of total

- Department of Defense: $1 trillion, 13% of total

- Interest on Treasury Securities held by the public: $0.7 trillion, 9%

 

These top 5: $6.3 trillion, 83% of total


Let's cut more taxes!!!
Best of luck to Elon and his DOGE!!!

How much is wasted?  How much is spent on student loans?  Pell Grants?  Other subsidies to universities?  What does DOE spend money on?  Why should taxpayers subsidize inefficiencies in NYC?  How much is illegal immigration crisis costing us?  Medicaid & food stamps?  (25% of people in NYC are on Medicaid and food stamps! May be get a job?)  Section 8 housing spending?  Disability spending - a lot of it is fraud (look at discrepancy by state and religious groups - very low in Utah)?  Is NASA or DOD or VA run efficiently?  

[hasilp89]

27 minutes ago, Dinar said:

How much is wasted?  How much is spent on student loans?  Pell Grants?  Other subsidies to universities?  What does DOE spend money on?  Why should taxpayers subsidize inefficiencies in NYC?  How much is illegal immigration crisis costing us?  Medicaid & food stamps?  (25% of people in NYC are on Medicaid and food stamps! May be get a job?)  Section 8 housing spending?  Disability spending - a lot of it is fraud (look at discrepancy by state and religious groups - very low in Utah)?  Is NASA or DOD or VA run efficiently?  

this is what i was getting at. I've seen many people comment that SS is so big that whatever you do won't make a difference or that you just can't move the needle with the gvt. That just seems like a horrible mindset though. 

 

If you owned a business (or as an investor) you would naturally care about your costs, you wouldn't want each departments budgets going up each year just because. Even if they wouldn't move the needle I imagine you would care because it's your money and you'd want people focusing on the mission of the business, not off doing other things. - i get the opportunity cost argument and that you can't fight for every last dollar but i think it is more than that - if you don't have the mindset of being efficient with your companies capital you will end up with mediocrity and getting beat. How is that different with the government? 

[Dinar]

10 minutes ago, hasilp89 said:

this is what i was getting at. I've seen many people comment that SS is so big that whatever you do won't make a difference or that you just can't move the needle with the gvt. That just seems like a horrible mindset though. 

 

If you owned a business (or as an investor) you would naturally care about your costs, you wouldn't want each departments budgets going up each year just because. Even if they wouldn't move the needle I imagine you would care because it's your money and you'd want people focusing on the mission of the business, not off doing other things. - i get the opportunity cost argument and that you can't fight for every last dollar but i think it is more than that - if you don't have the mindset of being efficient with your companies capital you will end up with mediocrity and getting beat. How is that different with the government? 

I know.  Look at FEMA - spent $3bn+ on Maui to help survivors or $300K per man/woman/child.  Signed $12K per month 2 year leases!  Seriously?  $300K per per person?  Paying $150K per annum to rent houses for people to live in Paradise!

[Red Lion]

2 hours ago, Dinar said:

How much is wasted?  How much is spent on student loans?  Pell Grants?  Other subsidies to universities?  What does DOE spend money on?  Why should taxpayers subsidize inefficiencies in NYC?  How much is illegal immigration crisis costing us?  Medicaid & food stamps?  (25% of people in NYC are on Medicaid and food stamps! May be get a job?)  Section 8 housing spending?  Disability spending - a lot of it is fraud (look at discrepancy by state and religious groups - very low in Utah)?  Is NASA or DOD or VA run efficiently?  

 

This may seem like a stupid question, but would DJT have any authority to cut spending on e.g. Pell Grants without congressional action? Even if he closed the DOE? 

 

I agree with your sentiments 100%. I also think this profligate government spending is causing obvious inflation in the exact areas that you reference. 

 

Healthcare, construction, education, and groceries would probably all cost a hell of a lot less money if the federal government wasn't constantly throwing fuel on the fire. 

[backtothebeach]

 

[hasilp89]

27 minutes ago, Red Lion said:

This may seem like a stupid question, but would DJT have any authority to cut spending on e.g. Pell Grants without congressional action? Even if he closed the DOE? 

Not a stupid question at all. Here is my understanding based on some research. (please correct me where I'm wrong!)

- Executive branch submits a budget proposal to congress each year that is run through the OMB. It is non-binding but serves as a starting point for congress. (Feb each year)

-Congress reviews - each committee goes into detail on their departments and submits for congressional approval (senate/house vote and appropriate as neccesary)

- President has to sign.

 

 

Ultimately Congress has the power of the purse. My assumption is both they and the judiciary branch could push for and enforce that the executive branch is properly enacting, enforcing and funding and laws that are written (checks and balances). Congress could also come back and deny the executive branch's proposals and require that more money is spent on department X or Y.

 

In some cases i think it will be pretty clear cut - say there is a law that says people under the poverty line get $5/day for groceries - the executive branch couldn't just remove that and stop paying it without the law being overturned by congress or ruled unconstitutional by the judiciary. On the other hand if that $5 a day payment is administered ineffectively through a costly people intensive program then I'd assume DOGE could find a way to save money. Again this is a hypothetical and i could be way off base. Just trying to think through it logically based on the checks and balances of the US government.

 

[Spekulatius]

Very astute observation:

 

https://x.com/qcapital2020/status/1856722078658924756?s=61&t=E8YgOMPn5yLNAJ40xrQKFQ

Edited Thursday at 12:22 PM by Spekulatius

[Spekulatius]

17 hours ago, backtothebeach said:

 

Well, if that’s what is expected, better sell all your stocks because they are going to be cut in half too.

[dealraker]

28 minutes ago, Spekulatius said:

Well, if that’s what is expected, better sell all your stocks because they are going to be cut in half too.

So I took a nap yesterday and woke slowly sometime mid afternoon and turned on CNBC.  There was Yardini forecasting animal spirits and a 10,000 S and P.  A couple days before Ives said Tesla's AI alone is one trillion of value.  And we all know from our all-in-unison COBF super-stars that Bitcoin is going straight to one million.  And those banks we just sold?  Remember the days...whoops I meant decades....of endless one foot forward two steps back?  No regulation means nothing but management brilliance to come yet again!

 

Value investors need to wake-the-hell up by damn.  Like the new world we've awoken to, we all need to get rid of those old prejudices and judgments, fall in line and believe.  

 

 

 

Edited Thursday at 12:54 PM by dealraker

[Milu]

15 minutes ago, dealraker said:

So I took a nap yesterday and woke slowly sometime mid afternoon and turned on CNBC.  There was Yardini forecasting animal spirits and a 10,000 S and P.  A couple days before Ives said Tesla's AI alone is one trillion of value.  And we all know from our all-in-unison COBF super-stars that Bitcoin is going straight to one million.  And those banks we just sold?  Remember the days...whoops I meant decades....of endless one foot forward two steps back?  No regulation means nothing but management brilliance to come yet again!

 

Value investors need to wake-the-hell up by damn.  Like the new world we've awoken to, we all need to get rid of those old prejudices and judgments, fall in line and believe.  

 

 

 

As with most things in life it isn't black or white. The current stereotypes on this forum is into two groups of people, you are either a boring old-school value investor focused on cheap cigar butts, or a YOLO Bitcoin Bro going all in on Crypto. Neither of which I suspect are fully accurate.

 

In reality the majority of the forum are in some middle ground. It's also ok to hold two different viewpoints at once, for example I hold some bitcoin as a means of protecting some of my purchasing power and because I believe its demand will continue to grow, while also believing that the stock market is ridiculously overvalued. I also have a rather large cash pile that I would love to be able to deploy in the next bear market, whenever that is.

Edited Thursday at 01:08 PM by Milu

[dealraker]

46 minutes ago, Milu said:

As with most things in life it isn't black or white. The current stereotypes on this forum is into two groups of people, you are either a boring old-school value investor focused on cheap cigar butts, or a YOLO Bitcoin Bro going all in on Crypto. Neither of which I suspect are fully accurate.

 

In reality the majority of the forum are in some middle ground. It's also ok to hold two different viewpoints at once, for example I hold some bitcoin as a means of protecting some of my purchasing power and because I believe its demand will continue to grow, while also believing that the stock market is ridiculously overvalued. I also have a rather large cash pile that I would love to be able to deploy in the next bear market, whenever that is.

Ahh...Bitcoin!