Comments by "" (@jmitterii2) on "PensionCraft" channel.

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  2. I keep warning people when I hear them say just dollar cost average into the stocks, it'll come back at some point always does. I show them Japan's NIKKE. Oh, that can't happen here. Over the last decade I show them the CAC and FTSE and some other exchanges. Oh, that can't happen here. I explain Japan is a decade and a half ahead of us in all aspects of what we've already done: 1) Deregulation of banking sector (removal of Glass Steagal, allowing easy company stock buy backs). 2) Retail trading frenzy 1.0 in the 90's and 2.0 now, etc. 3) Near 0% to 0% interest rates. 4) Borrowing frenzy fueling asset prices covering up lousy real wage increases if any even in nominal terms. Japan. They're the looking class into our immediate future. Particularly what it looks like in stocks and real-estate. Yet we have hardly the social safety net that Japan has: 1) we lack universal healthcare 2) we lack labor rules that ensure solidarity in employment wages and benefits. 3) We lack a housing authority and planning system that hasn't even coped with the last real-estate bubble in prices resulting in even more shortages of housing and even higher housing prices that were already un-affordable then and even more so now, and this time rents are well beyond affordable; many retirees and working people living in tents and RVs already; this only gets worse. 4) political instability fueled by political propaganda derision cultivating a lunatic fringe that has adopted beliefs that are completely factually wrong have become mainstream accepted as if fact. Essentially, you have potential for worse than a lost generation. You have collapsed super power similar to the scale of USSR, Russia in specific, even similar to dissolution of Yugoslavia. Either economic collapse or complete governmental collapses neither is good for us Americans. We're very much fucked in the pants unless we adapt some social policies, regulate the financial system, prop up our labor and industries, and hold to account would be robber barons trying to pull a fast one... the feigning argument that we can't regulate because the rich will always find a way out of such regulation is bogus... so we capitulate and aqueous? Do we do this for people who murder, rape, steal, endanger, kidnap, etc.? Anyway we have some serious inflection points, our nation either changes to address them, or it looks bleak for us all.
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  3. If you can't "time" markets you should never get into anything. Timing when to buy and when to sell are somewhat separate periods: A time I want to buy a car means I need that car. A time I want to sell a car means I need a new car or no longer need a car. Same with buying milk or bread only if I'm not retailing those things, I'm not selling them. A budget is a timing and quantitative analysis of consumer goods; monthly budget and yearly etc. So to say you can't Time something is dumb. Blindly buying. Or Blindly selling. The reason people listen to slow speaking turtles and get their asses handed to them on investments 95% lose money in the markets, is because they think oh goody I have more savings, and send it to investments DCA in the "good times" buying expensively. And wonder why their returns stink, or negative. Then when things turn negative, they sucked most if not all savings to investment and need cash for variety of reasons; largely bills leverage and no savings and no job. You have to time things ie have a budget on investments as you do with any purchase or selling of something. To say you can't time something is pure idiotic notion that people pick up wrongly... oh just keep buying... and only sell when I need it. When you need it is likely when everyone needs it. Bad time to sell. You're selling low. When you don't need it, likely everyone doesn't need it, you buy into that... you're buying high. And this is why various investment groups make killings on such fomo and fud markets. Make a budget.
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  5. Yeah, the positioning needs to be worked on. A) they need to admit they went a bit over board (necessary perhaps due to the pandemic, a world wide emergency) on debt binge go burr. B) What did this cause: massive inflation as well as massive speculative bubbles that were already a decade old thing from 2008 with QE even in the EU and and UK holding rates low for a very long time prior to the pandemic something they need to admit was a double mistake but many of these people in charge; applauded this reinflation of the assets that were already well beyond affordability and pumped up via leverage. C) How do we fix this? We must raise the rates of borrowing, that is how money is added to supply. As well as discontinue the QE nonsense that pushes assets above affordability so that bankers can lend out without as much risk to themselves to anyone with a pulse or a "use case" < I'm looking at crypto and the bozo the clown cherry on top NFT's. Not that either aren't bozo the clowns, both are speculative idiocies with no underlying value other than the greater moron thing. D) This should correct for affordability in all things including housing prices, rents, goods, and services. E) This often does cause unemployment to elevate. F) Only thing to mitigate the harmful effects of E, is to have your legislature local and national propose supply "of last resort" or rather extended resort to keep developers building homes... the supply of housing in many places never kept pace with the population thus demand despite the levered balloon bubble of everything speculative idiocy... in fact it could have kept supply lower as it catered not to affordable homes and apartments, but put lots of levered newly created money into more expensive luxury homes and apartments.... not the supply we need. As well as cheapen the few builders attempting to cater to the fewer and fewer people able to or willing to buy the then "affordable" non-luxury homes. So remaining middle/lower class housing developers just pooped out turds... and small quantities at that since fewer middle and lower classes could afford the rents or mortgages or homes outright. Housing in most cases has always required a central planning element to ensure healthy affordable and liveable conditions and the supply of them were met, or rather slightly exceeds demand. You want always more quantity supplied than quantity demanded for various reasons; population is not shrinking for one, the other is that older units are always being demolished or in need of rebuild; like a car that gets depreciates over time from use, so do buildings. So look to your governance. Markets are only as good as what the people of the nation desire to have. Look to places like Vienna Austria. And many other places with very good yet also very affordable and even abundant housing. Look at different time periods when this occurred. Or wallow in this bankster gangster economy as that shit of a Chief Economist shat out of his poor excuse of a mouth; more of an anus hole really. But that's the big problem we do have. These oligarchs have become brazen. Contempt for the worker, contempt for the vast majority of the population. The top 10% and rather the top 1% live in different realities than our own. They're far disconnected from what is real. Similar to nobility of not that long ago along with royalty and other oligarchs that continued to exist in many places around the world that eventually can no longer functionally do anything for the country to prosper as a whole, rather they seek to parasite off what is dwindling. And announce that as prosperity.
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  9. Not paying off a mortgage is using margin to invest... generally not a good idea unless you're time is spent researching and constantly managing your your equity positions. And even then its... a bit of a nightmare. Leverage trading increases your risk. So best stated: 1) Paying off your mortgage or rather focusing on that more than investing is less risky. 2) Focusing on investing, and not paying off your mortgage is more risky. What risk profile do you have? A) what is your net cash balance? Low? then low risk is better. High? This ticks to the more riskier. B) What is your net retirement net total value? (Low?) Then tick low risk. High? Then tick this to riskier. C) What is your income? low? Then tick to low risk. High? Then okay for more riskier. D) What is your age? Young under 50? Tick higher risk box. Older 50 or above ( tick lower risk. E) What are your goals in life: need cash withdrawals sooner or later? Sooner? Tick low risk. Later on 20 plus years, tick higher risk. F) What is your rate? Lower rate tick riskier invest instead. high rate? Then tick to less risk. Answering those can qualify a risk profile. More ticks in risk or low risk will give you an idea what you should do based on your risk profile. That's an objective way to personalize this question as the answer is nuanced and requires a complete specific analysis of your own financial position. Money market isn't really investing. That's saving. And one should first Save first. Pay off as much debt as possible, then focus completely saving. Then invest. 1) Save enough first and foremost for at least 90 day emergency fund. Adding slowly while paying debt off to 6 month savings. 2) Then focus on debt. Get that down as much as possible. Including mortgage. May invest, but keep it low; max out 401K matching contributions and put in about 5% of gross income. 3) Then debts paid off and at least 6 month to 12 months of savings accessible, then you may 100% ramp up investments. Up your 401K and IRA as much as possible to the max levels if possible. Cash investment accounts as much as possible.
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  10. Bingo. Natural gas and fertilizers are still okay... but one must give them breathers. Big ones. Natural gas being extremely volatile anyways. At this point, my longs (been really buying on dips and selling into rallies on VET and ICL and MOS and PBF etc.) All longs gone. Profits. Now, I'm just selling CS puts... way out of the money... not too far out expiration but enough to get some decent premium and purchasing some puts to hedge those even still while they're still relatively cheap. And slowly selling those on these dips. Surgical... this market is completely over valued... even energy which always spikes at the end of a bubble that's about to bust... and when energy dies... it doesn't give one a chance to dump without really taking it in the chin. Best move at present is to max out high yield non - trade-able bonds... in the US I-Series savings bonds now paying 9.6% annual return... max yearly purchase is $10K and lock up 12 months... redeem prior to 5 years is only a 3 month give up on interest accumulation... not much of a penalty... non-trade-able so always get your par plus accumulated and bi-annually compounded interest... minus 3 months if you redeem before 5 years of initial purchase. And just chilling in cash... selling some puts way out of the money surgically... and even hedging those. Otherwise cash is king right now. Energy is though the best bet for various bounces and swing trades. But I wouldn't dump all my money there... folks like us... and the big money is using that fomo to liquidate their positions as they too go into cash... and they need cash to repay lots of leverage.... lots and lots of leverage. As well as they know the music is stopping. Cash is king as the gigs up... so they can come in and buy at rock bottom prices... so there will be a market with any bid at all for those needing to dump their stuff for needed cash because they're out of savings, out of a job, and possibly out of a living place other than perhaps their car or tent.
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  12. Yeah, this entire run up was large institutions rebuying after taking a 30 day wash trade sell in December... buying back in January. This persistent buying pressure was an obvious trade long as these funds required by their prospectus to get back into the funds they're supposed to be in, so many call options along with traders both retail and larger retail and hedge funds front ran buying; causing lots of buying, retail now buying lots of options forced market makers to start covering portions of their call writes, causing gamma squeezes of market makers to cover their mostly naked call writes; gamma squeeze. Problem becomes nobody really is exercising these options typically. And market makers finally buy too many stocks; and if the call option frenzy buying ends and/or stock buying pressure ends (market makers no longer have to freak out and buy more stocks to cover naked call writes) becomes an unwinding of all that "delta" hedge of market makers, and just normal sell off longs taking profits, hedge funds taking profits, stop losses or trailing stops longs getting triggered, suddenly those same options market makers have to dump their now massive holdings of stock, especially as prices fall, regardless of call options volume. And you get a big dump after the gamma squeeze. Same can happen in the reverse, when lots of selling happens including short selling and lots of put options are purchased, same market makers require to raise cash so they are capable of buying the underlying stock if those puts they wrote get into the money... so they dump stock holdings they have to raise cash as their puts they sold get into the money. And down we go. Either gamma or reverse gamma squeezes typically last only a week or two... sometimes a month. Unless it's a crazy meme stock that continues to have lots of stampedes by both margin and regular traders or the new retail traders that keep buying several shares a day with some delusion of "getting them shorts to squeeze" really they're contributing to short burst gamma squeezes. Anyway, these things happen with a big strong run up. Then they dump just as quick if not faster.
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  16. Leverage. People went out and bought beyond what they saved thinking oh goody toe shoes, I can buy a house for a million or half a million because my payments will have low rate... what's that rate... $2K to $4K... ah oh.... didn't realize that low interest rate would become not so hotso. There is still lots of leverage in the system. It's working its way to insolvency as people who bought homes and other expensive things on the dip, in their jobs aren't even keeping up with inflation are realizing they burnt their savings, and not only that loaded the debt machine too high. And again back to those sorry mo fos who bought (and yes lots of cash purchases, but still 76% of all home purchases in 2021 and 2022 were done via financing aka debt binging) are now upside down. Some drastically. The funny phenomena last year was people abandoning homes they borrowed to the tits just a few weeks after doing so. Several in my area here in Idaho... and I'm in the Boise area where meme real-estate went stupid high. And even now after a slight lowering from homes in 2019 that were already bubblishesly priced at $250K to $280K suddenly became $550K. In a state with the median household income that varies from a pathetic $50K to $56K. Low wage state... individual income has been about $32K to $36K over a 10 year span. Very little to no practical social services.. basically you get assistance after you've had a financial catastrophe ie you're bankrupt and have kids and probably had to give them up to foster care while you live in a car or tent at a KAO campsite if you're lucky enough to get in one because they've been filled and not taking reservations since 2018. Our unresponsive so called representatives were suppose to create more camping locations as local farmers were willing to provide (with a profitable rent price) to allow RV's and such pile on portions of their immense land holdings... but such renting requires approval of county and/or city for licensing as a multi dwelling camp or apartment to ensure safety measures as fire hydrants and the like are available... and pieces of farm fields are somewhat devoid of fire hydrants that aren't miles away. As well as adequate waste water structures and drinking water. And really the locals living in homes nearby don't want to have yet another RV or tent district setup... such riff raff need a place to live, just make it impossible and hopefully they leave... which some do.. I mean it's Idaho. People try this place out for the fact it has low population, but then they realize why.
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  17.  @prateeksharma1703  We saw 40 years of easing of interest rates across the world. Leveraged money is how money supply in the current global banking system works... and when it does dump... it'll be like Japan 1989.... just for the entire world. All nations are now indebted into a debt trap... Money supply was growing parabolic, it will suffer a decline parabolic the same as money supply in a debt base monetary system decreases by: fewer lending and/borrowing, paying back borrowed loans, or the big one defaults. In a debt trap economic structure the default rates become a shock to the system and the entire financial domino of Peter to pay Paul ends the music. There are few nations left that aren't saddled by the debt trap. Turkey, now China are among the last. Brazil and Argentina, most European nations, US and Canada and even Australia already in that boat. There are few nations remaining as borrowers of last resort... all that can be done is to encourage lending, but borrowers may not show up to the table; and at some point, you can't encourage lenders to lend either. No matter how much "QE" you're doing. And that becomes a problem as inflation will eventually happen as you're just at that point transitioning from a debt base monetary system to just a money printer go burr economy and that ends abruptly too with worthless currency... a stagflation effect. Essentially, the last 40 years was similar game played after WWII and after WWI, and something that happened all through the 1800's, have the century of the 1800's in the US was in a recession, great depression, long depression, or panic. And we had private fake money scams or wild cat banking... similar to the goof ball crypto nonsense. This time it's mired int a massive fraud concerning so called stable coins. Euphoria gone insane. Each and every time this ended in civil war, war, riots and rebellion, a complete break down in society, rises of dictators and other gangsters and crazies. They did a great job, they being the plutocrats that repealed various banking rules like Glass Steagall Act, in recreating in short order the next robber baron phase... that always ends in misery for many. Rules finally come back on line. This time... we ought learn from this stupidity. Aristocracy cannot be trusted... an aristocracy is pathetic, mostly parasitical. A new system more democratic in enterprise not just in government should commence, or in 100 years we'll be facing the same untenable nonsense. Businesses should become more co-op like in nature whereby all parties workers and customers have a say as to all aspects to the operation of the business. Just as most governments became better providing democracy to self rule, the same is said to that of individual enterprises. You would not see many of the parasitical self destructive behaviors we observe time and time again with autocratic dictatorship enterprises where very few make out like bandits at the exploitation of the customers and workers. 1) Stock buy backs that add no value to anybody but provide a short term sugar rush in prices so that executives can cash out their stock options or bonus stocks while bankrupting the enterprise won't happen. 2) Sending production overseas to skirt environmental laws and seeking tyrannized essentially slave/serf labor won't happen. 3) Additionally, those enterprises remaining domestically won't attempt to save a few pennies via unnecessary polluting their own area. 4) The compensation won't just flow to a few at the top, rather a better mechanism that would allow technological advances in productivity gains would go largely to the workers first and foremost. 5) You would actually have better quality and efficiencies develop with better incentive workers as they are now co-owners of the operation and can make critical decisions with better understanding of how the operations works and what changes are necessary to provide better quality, efficiency, and quantities produced as apposed to the current few who are usually disconnected from reality of the world, and worse, by the operation of the detailed operations itself. Not to mention many of the higher ups in most businesses today are products of aristocracy who are to be blunt in their own world of make believe, often foolish ineffectual in all they do if they do anything at all... and when they do, do something, they generally do what's good for number one at the expense for everyone else... many times over though they don't even make competent decisions that would be good for number one, themselves, either of the long term. Similar disconnected stupidity that arose from the inbred nobility of old in feudal and mercantile areas of Asia and Europe of old.
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  20.  @TheRustyLM  They'll go up in prices paid... but profit margins will get squeezed... and squeezed some more... they may have larger revenues, but their profits will go down and down... and at some point even with larger revenues, their input costs become bigger and bigger and their demand becomes smaller and they're literally producing less because demand becomes less and less yet prices go higher... and many in all sectors can start producing losses despite growing revenues. And despite demand going down, and despite responding to this by producing less. Welcome to staglfation. The most vicious economic phenomena than even deflation. Albeit, at some point, deflation is what happens at some point, but that's when either interest rates are raised beyond the rate of inflation or the national currency becomes defunct and a new issuance is made at a different supply.... and usually under a different central banking set of rules in the hopes the monetary policy will be held by more responsible actors. And the type inf deflation we're talking about isn't that suddenly the currency retraces to the value it had 20 years ago... rather it just stops inflating. The reset after a defunct currency does make the new currency value tend to be that of the pricing of 20 to 30 or eve 40 years ago. But economy itself in such situations is generally in a complete shambles anyways. Example would be a loaf of bread at some point becomes $1,000.00 on average... and new issuance of currency it's back to being roughly $2.50 for a loaf of bread. But under the new currency your pay is less than the median income of that period when bread lost cost roughly $2.50 a loaf. So it's not really noticed. In fact, many usually scoff at it as just playing numbers games.
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  22. Means don't buy the top. Or you'll be upside down. Rally is just another bear market rally that will dip again... either making higher lows, or equal lows, or even another leg down lower lows. Basically, if you're dollar cost averaging into the market on a weekly or daily or monthly basis... right now is probably a bad time to buy anything. You'll be fomoing in at the top. Like a moron. Allow the market to show us more. And dip. Even if this is a start of something better... it's bad risk to reward... this likely bear market rally or just rally was just mostly up and away. It should digest and pull back either way. And conditions don't intigate this is any rally to buy. But to sell what you did buy on the dip perhaps... at least don't buy more now. This rally was a combination of shorts covering, as well as new shorts having bad opening locations having to cover in a panic; which is always a transitory as those buyers leave quickly and are done buying. But also reallocation from all the tax harvest sell offs of the losers from 2022 thru December... was a dip largely in December as lots of big funds and smaller holders sold losers to lock in losses for tax write off purposes. That leaves lots of cash to go back into the market into January. Lots of it apparently went right back in to shite... that it had oozed out of originally. While meme stocks still have some memeing they too forced some shorts to cover... lots of meme stocks are literally penny stocks now... so shorts really have no business remaining short on those names; and many of them in the pennies have bounces into the single digit dollars... as retail and some contarion large funds came knocking... more short covering than in 2021. So there's why the vomit stocks, or stocks worse than shite... like the meme stocks started to meme up again. The other garbage stocks, just large funds going back into riskier junk as per their prospectus after tax loss harvesting; wash trading requires to sell the underlying similar thing and not touch it buy/short sell again the same for at least 30 days in order to claim the loss on deductions for taxes. Lots buying back in all at once, short covering more than in 2021, will produce a rally of sorts. And that's what January was all about to present. Likely just a bear market rally that will go back down... probably faster than it went up. Banks are puckering. Fed Reserve no longer buying their loans the banks issued, so banks have to sit on whatever loans they made and hope the borrower repays. Defaults are fairly low still, but ticking up, and so are delinquencies. And lots of individuals and other companies have variable rate loans. So as interest rates go up, the ability for these folks to repay become more difficult.
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  32. At this point its cheaper to build a house as lumber and other prices of fixtures have come way down. While existing homes are still pretending commodities of lumber haven't cratered. The dirt on real-estate in many areas have also dropped... undeveloped lots and other land without any structures, particularly no utility hook ups, which generally so long as a street that runs near with utilities isn't that expensive to hook up. Water about $3K, sewer about $3K, power $1K. If it's down another road these costs can vary. And if no sewer available, septic system for about $5K to $10K. These lots are fairly affordable, not cheap as they "should" be in some areas, but some come with sweetners if utilities are nearby they'll throw that in to the sale to either discount the ask or even install before the sell. Land prices are still higher than usual. But land prices are coming down as developers have cut back, getting backlogged on the housing they've started and haven't started quite yet. Developers have been very cautious in buying up undeveloped land for the last decade being burnt buying land at a premium leading up to 2008 crash. And seeing land prices spike again around 2015 to 2019 then the blow off pandemic top starting 2020 to 2021. What I've noticed when it's cheaper to build a new house from scratch, typically marks a period that leads into a general housing slump in prices; and the only big crash we saw in 2008 in housing. As supply is typically expanded as existing homes start to fall to equilibrium with the cheapness of new home building. I also suspect many who bozo the clowned into borrowing to the extreme during 2020 to 2021, heavily upside down, and paying, despite possibly locking in historic interest rates, still have huge payments they're unlikely able to continue. Even without a major job loss. Add any major job loss, or required to relocate, a common thing in the US; might see short sells, walk aways with bankruptcies. Here in the Boise area some weird stuff as usual concerning real-estate, people mortgage into a home, but leave only a week later. For sale sign back up. It would be odd that financing fell through because the steps are very painful with closing and everything else. But some new laws exist that allow the purchaser a time to reflect and escape a badly chosen mortgage; similar to automobile purchase, a buyers remorse law that allows a person to return the vehicle for a full refund. It's to protect borrowers from being pushed into getting a raw deal and something they really couldn't afford. Either way, it's odd that people would move in, introduce themselves, and before the end of the week, they're already moved out. And not just happening once, but already 3 times in my local area. Couple things I suspect is happening is that the ability of work at home is being dropped by most employers, and those who persiste are just being let go. But could be, they realize their books don't balance. And it's impossible to refinance in the future while being so far in the red on equity to all the mortgages taken. Over 70% were mortgaged financed, despite many cash buyers during 2020 to 2021. That over 70% financing often came with bad financing, banks realizing the bubble ask prices, limiting the home price loan 80% requiring yet again the same bad practice of people taking out an ARM (and this time multiple ARM) loans representing a downpayment. Good luck for these individuals with the expectation to refinance, as they're already upside down in most areas around the country, particularly the most pandemic blow off top regions. The irony is the bond market is trading like we're about to have a recession that dwarfs the 1929 great depression. Yet as Ramin shows, at least in Canada, bullish sentiment on a chart. Very contradictory stuff going on here in all markets... equities while breadth is very bad, the over all indices are up... albeit due to 3 to 4 stocks being elevated: AAPL, MSFT, GOOGL, META, and NVDA. Personal opinion, we're looking at another 2008 catastrophe in the making. This time, we can't allow QE to "rescue" us, as it has proven ineffective. And only causing inflation. Screwing everyone. We'll need to just nationalize the failed banks, and mark to market all loans to allow price resetting from this hyper inflated asset bubble triggered by the banks bad leveraging to the tits on everything monetizing their bad debts debacle. And prohibiting and such CDO markets from existing withing deposit banking ever again. Deposit bank writes a loan, it's theirs until it is repaid. They'll be less flippend on approving and appraising higher valuations of homes or cars or other collateral loans they grant.
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  34. I'm starting to think that average 4% to 6% interest rates mean is a decent healthy rate to lend at. Too far below causes massive inflation and/or speculative bubbles. That then requires that 4-6% mean to be elevated to suck up all that extra money in the system that causes inflation to go away. That then causes a oscillation that then tricks the fools to "stimulate" the economy to lower rates below that mean. Only to cause inflation and speculative stupidity to come back causing yet another bubble and another requirement to jump rates above the mean. I think a steady 4% to 6% rates is the best rate for smooth and healthy lending. If you want to stimulate the economy, that should come from legislation democratically elected on what is valued: we value health therefore that produces healthy people able to stay productive, great you get the envy of the world, and benefits that us Americans can't even believe exists, the NHS. Or you value oligarchs pretending their scams are real, and they'll trickle all over everyone one else, not with urine, but money like some pinata, you get our sorry excuse for a eugenics program for elderly care with no rooms available for elderly care, regional hospitals going bust both private and the very few state or county hospitals closing up, and prices that are as ridiculous as a meme stock or the tulip mania of crypto going to the moon, and medical insurance that's not really even insurance in any international standard terms; rather insurance that's not really insurance, but some phony scammy pretend discount buy in program with the hustle, you pay huge amount to buy into the program, but the discount doesn't even come close to ever repaying that buy in premium... medical insurance deductibles... even Germans say WTF on that scam. But back to stimulating the economy. If you want to stimulate the economy, you put the house priority and values in order. Value health of the mass of people to be productive... you put money into things like hospitals, clinics, elderly care facilities, and medical R&D like UK, Germany, France, Japan, Australia, and even Canada is doing. You value oligarchs and despite labor and want labor to be cheap to stimulate the economy on the backs of labor as we do in many other countries including the USA... you make it hard for self employment by ensuring the low income self employed person's risk is higher cost burden, provide a scam aka so called medical insurance, and hope that the Catholic church and other non profit organizations keep building money losing hospitals and clinics so we have some facilities available for the mass of people, and encourage people to take lower wage jobs just to have the false assurance of the scam of employer medical insurance, even though most medical bankruptcies in the USA are people who have employer sponsored insurance or medicare/medicaid or both. At least we have medicaid and medicare I suppose. Even they're for severely handicapped and/or terminally ill, or elderly; and is insufficient. Other priorities can be to grow infrastructure like power grids, power plants hydro thermal or other power station types, rail, roads, and sea/air ports. etc. Provide sale subsidies for units sold or cost produced for certain goods that have precarious foreign sourcing.... the chips deal was just done in the USA not because there was a long term shortage of semi conductors, but because much of the semi conductor supply comes from Taiwan, and the concern has been China invasion of Taiwan. And the rich can't be burdened by a chip shortage should that happen; they need their luxury tech palaces to be full operational. And of course this would put a burden on all types of manufacturing as everything uses some sort of semi conductor from the lowly resisters and capacitors to smally integrated chips and CPU's. And there is always good or bad ways to stimulate the economy. But doing it via monetary policy, the past several hundred years, we can observe, it doesn't work. It just causes boom bust cycles, and the vast majority of people aren't better off. When programs like compulsory education, universal healthcare, land grants, homestead acts, farm/food subsidies, great transportation and utility construction from water works including water distribution and provisions and sewage, etc. and R&D on various engineering projects and concepts... we get big technological advances that DO increase prosperity across all spectra of society. Monetary jiggering... should be relegated to keeping both deflation and inflation flat. Keeping prices as stable as possible. Nothing more.
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  38. I thought he was making a huge mistake buying those ADR's (not really stocks) from China. Very dumb. But even someone like him can make bad bets. It's knowing when to take a stop loss and get the heck out of dodge when your bet turns sour. Otherwise you hold massive bags... and you might learn from ding bats trading fake money for real money aka the crypto scam... those folks lucked out completely as they were caught up in a scam pump and dump and were holding early... unfortunately it trained them to be morons and many did not sell for real money and never locked in those profits as crypto falls apart... Taking a stop loss ensures your bet doesn't turn into eventuality of forced selling (I need the money because I have huge bills and/or I lost my job and have no other income... or even worse... the value of the holding is literally untrade-able... it's bust chapter 7 liquidation goodbye... it's worthless). And so many not understanding swing or day trading... the only reason a few actually do okay or even make money on it routinely is due to lots of study of charts... and risk management.... $2 dollars in wins for every $1 in losses. 10 trades... such ratio of 50% wins to 50% losses on those trades... you get get 5 wins for $2 each or $10 bucks... and the other 5 trades losing only $1 is $5 bucks lost... net gain of $5 profit. And that's with a 50/50 win loss ratio. You're still making a profit. BUT that means you take your lumps immediately limiting your loss to only $1 for potential gain of $2... AND it also means you have to know a trade potential that will provide a $2 gain for every $1 you're risking. Some take the losses, but haven't studied enough to know the target profit area to ensure they get $2 gain for every potential $1 loss. As soon as it's green... $1 up for their $1 risk... they cash out immediately. Or the really risky moron who goes past the $2 gain... and allow it to run to $3 or $5... hodling... never cashing out... and it suddenly reverses quickly to a loss or only less than the $2 gain they should have locked in. Basically, trading takes time... it's a job. Lots of research and understanding how to read fundamentals of the underlying, market internals, macro economics, micro economics, and technical indications. China in particularly has some bad things happening... they have the mother of all debt trap... essentially all their developers are bankrupt. China, Brazil, and Turkey were loading up on the debt binge while all other nations' had their debt problems in 2008. Now it's them and the rest of the world that never really got out of the debt trap. There is no other nation to take that slack of being borrower of last resort like China, Turkey, and Brazil did. It's sort of a game over period on that front. More over, the idiocy of the world's monetary system, the US Fed Reserve, as unleashed so much debt lending to actually cause stagflation, that is inflation despite the prospects of recession/depression of lowering demand... that the only thing known to end such inflation is to raise interest rates and end easy debt binge policies to stop demand from going out of wack... so that supply can catch up to demand and grow higher than demand to cool rate of prices or even reduce the rate of prices ie. end inflation. So China would be like investing in Brazil in 2015... very dumb. Or investing in Turkey just recently last few years... and be a massive bag holder of probably mostly worthless stuff in the long run... and nearly worthless stuff already.
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  39. XLP and XLU recently dropped in the June sell off... this one they're dropping yet again and didn't really go up much in the bear market July rally. I'm watching the last shoe to drop is XLE and XLV... XLE took a dip in June which has made me think okay... so watch XLV... that is the very last one... healthcare sector. And sure enough XLV is dropping. XLE is also dropping again. It's the interest rates going up that causes ALL equities to drop. He's kind of misleading to say equities do better in inflation... they don't. Equities tend to do horrible because interest rates continue to go up which destroys equity... I Series savings bonds should be maxed out in the states... you can only buy up to $10K of those... currently paying 9.6% and easy to liquidate after a 1 year lock up period... they're non-trade-able so they don't lose par value you don't sell them on the market, you just redeem your money back and interest from the US Treasury... before 5 years of holding you lose the last 3 months of interest payment that would have been awarded. Compounds semi annually and pays interest quarterly. Sort of a no brainer during inflationary periods... but you can only put in $10K per calendar year... the rest of your money... good luck. Bonds can be okay short term or long term to make some interest. Cash is good as you can DCA back into equities as they fall apart. If you're keen on trading shares and doing various trading activities cash is nice to trade the market. If not... just wait for a dumpster fire crash and you can trickle that money back into equities little by little.
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  47. All those bonds you spoke about sound confusing as all get out. USA the Inflation Series Savings bonds is easy.... you buy them directly from the US Treasury website. Lock up is 1 year, after which you can redeem them. They're not trade-able. Accrue interest every quarter and compound interest semi-annually. If you redeem before 5 years of purchase calendar, you give up the last 3 months of interest accrued as a penalty. After 5 years, you get full interest, no give up of last 3 months of interest accrued. And they quit paying out after 30 years. Also they're state income tax exempt. Only taxable Federal income tax. Which is nice for me, as my state Idaho has a little over 6.3% income tax. And you can redeem them piecemeal. You can buy an actual printed savings bonds, but the calendar year limit becomes much lower. I think printed savings bonds becomes $5K instead of $10K for electronic purchased. And it's sort of pointless to have the paper printed I-Series Bond because they're not transferable. You can sell them. They're attached to the original buyer of the bond, and redeemed upon demand (after a year lock up from purchase date) for principle and interest owed... minus the last quarter interest if redeemed before 5 years of purchase date. And you can buy thru the year toward the $10K limit... so whatever amount $25 increments or higher every week, month, or random purchases until calendar year reach of $10K. Redeeming comes from the website as if you're logging on to any broker website, in this case treasury direct website... and select the bonds you bought and how much of it you'd like to redeem. Redemptions can be piecemeal too... only need to pull out $500 or $2K or whatever... then that's okay. Even if you bought in different times and allotments. Interest will calculate based on first in first out basis. And it's similar in that you don't know what rate you'll get every May and November as it's based on CPI data. The fixed portion pays the going interest rate at the time, and stays fixed for the life of the bond 30 years. Fixed portion never changes... so some lucky folks who bought some of these things and held them back in 1990's or early 2000's had a big combined rate... about 1% to 2% fixed and when it was 9.68% inflation rate portion were making 10% to 11% returns for 6 months. The ones I bought in 2022 fixed rate was 0%. So they suck for long term holdings if and when inflation goes down.
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