Comments by "Samson Soturian" (@samsonsoturian6013) on "Ben Felix" channel.

  1. Warren Buffet once said that he doesn't invest in Russia because he's from a hostile country and that poses additional risks that stocks don't compensate for. He was right as if he had invested in Russia he would have likely been forced to sell at a loss.
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  2. Mr. Ramsey is notoriously optimistic. If he says it's reasonable, it's a best case scenario.
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  3. Also, Mr. Buffet was born into a high paying job and is a workaholic. His father's library was full of books on economics and Buffet grew up during the depression so reading was his hobby.
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  4. Except "home country" simply reflects where corporate offices are. I.E. Toyota is a "Japanese" company but most of their production is in north america. Virtually all American large cap companies are global companies and the S&P itself offers global diversification
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  5. General rule: If someone wants to sell you something, they are making money off your buying.
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  6. Yes, but their culture is all about putting on a face. In fact, to "put on a face" is a Chinese expression that Americans picked up. China is the world's largest consumer of luxury goods for this reason. And the world's largest producer and consumer of fake luxury items too. To include boxed wine put in wine bottles from vintage wine sellers in and sold full price.
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  7. Answer: You are not Warren Buffet.
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  8. That assumes one subscribes to the idea that these companieswill outperform. The other conflicting ESG thesis is you take inferior performance but feel better about it
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  9. That's paid with tax dollars
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  10. Come on. We all know you're buying S&P stocks one way or another
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  11. This is an infinite leverage glitch and all the dangers that implies.
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  12. Dude, stocks have a risk premium. If someone wants no risk, let them have it.
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  13. That is called SARK
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  14.  @harshitgarg1432  It shouldn't surprise the top dog has luck AND talent while normal people have neither
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  15.  @archvaldor  Except he's competing against Russian shareholders who simply do not have that risk and can bid up the price
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  16. Private investments don't overperform. They should, but they don't because there's enough private equity firms chasing that extra premium and also enough fund managers using illiquid investments to HIDE LOSSES that there's nothing extra.
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  17.  @Green__one  You really think anyone read that rant? Dude, there's definitely other factors determining a dollar's value too.
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  18. I'm a military historian. I'm better at picking defense contractor stocks and identifying geopolitical risks than most people. That's what they mean when they say invest in what you know.
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  19. He's out on a limb on a lot of things
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  20. There's another channel run by a guy who runs a luxury car rental place and he's full of stories about what happens when people drive luxury cars. Hint: It involves a lot of tire burnouts, a lot of scams, and a lot bad money decisions.
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  21. What I want to know is at what point does the risk premium evaporate. Safer investments compensate for risk, but the riskiest investments are where the investor pays for the opportunity to become rich like a lottery ticket. This implies a peak that offers the highest average return for any amount if risk taken.
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  22. One of the problems with "emerging markets" is the definition is extremely arbitrary and skewed to include countries with low costs of living regardless of their actual development.
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  23. There's other factors, like how often a given dollar changes hands, how much of it is invested, and how much is stuffed under a mattress.
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  24. Dear Ben: Have you ever considered doing a video on stock frauds? By definition a total market index will contain them, and the most recent case of IonQ they took advantage how no one understands quantum physics to claim to possess a magical device.
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  25. Is that a joke?
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  26. I saw one report that selling options on meme stocks may beat the market as attention based investors mostly buy options, driving their price up.
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  27. You say rich people are more likely to pick stocks, but at some point if you have enough money it makes sense to cut the middleman in ETF and just buy a fully diversified portfolio directly. Much of the stock picking might just be additional cost cutting.
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  28. Scam means lies are involved. Their marketing is technically accurate because the advertised dividends are there, but significant losses to the portfolio is pretty much inevitable.
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  29. Index investing is for the average investor. Warren Buffet is not the average investor.
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  30. I would slightly disagree with the opening statement. The majority of people (especially the young and poor) would be better off with real world investment. An 18 year old would be better served taking a loan to go to vocational school than investing minimum wages.
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  31. It depends on how you value the risk of jail time....
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  32. People been saying that since at least the Roman times.
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  33. Just sell shares.
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  34. Patrick Boyle said he found that vice stocks (guns, alcohol, tobacco, gambling) have beat the market overall because many people refuse to touch them. However, the counter-argument is those stocks see increased regulatory risk because they're vice stocks, hence the higher expected returns when all is well.
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  35. Depends how old you are.
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  36. That will likely become a dated remark
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  37. You can dismiss most exotic ETFs simply because the fees are north of 1-2%, twice that of an actively managed ETF.
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  38. You're losing more to fees than you think
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  39. There are cash equivalent investments. The returns rarely exceed inflation.
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  40. A good company is something that is priced as a safe investment.
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  41. The video says good stocks to mean well known and hyped up stocks. Buffet was referring to companies with good business models and fundamentals.
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  42. You assume a fully paid off house with no taxes or repairs
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  43. China was just a national ponzi scheme. Russia was always was a developed market
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  44. Trading fees can be higher for you than the ETF fee, depending on the fund, the stocks, and the size of your orders
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  45. Who goes to banks for stocks?
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  46.  @BraveSirRobin2001  don't throw around fraud allegations lightly
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  47. @macy1066  Napoleon said "Do not ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by incompetence." In Ramsey's case, you'll notice he crosses his arms when talking about passive investing so it's probably just a touch of ego and greed.
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  48. Ultimately you're looking at something halfway between shares and bonds and the returns will reflect that. Rich chumps like to invent new and exotic securities as if that will somehow make both parties richer.
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  49.  @25andinvested  If it does
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  50.  @25andinvested  It will likely take several years worth of good videos before you can consider being full time
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  51. There really should be few enough active investors that there are real alpha opportunities. Otherwise, the industry is just a waste of time and money.
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  52. Standard & Poor have no affiliation with the ETF managers. The committee simply selects 500 representative stocks to make a chart showing what the market is doing. This was originally for newspapers to print, but now it is for passive funds to copy.
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  53. ​ @BlindBison I didn't say the S&P was global enough, and yes I would object to that on the account foreign stocks have currency conversion and ADR costs
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  54.  @BobfromSydney  I think you underappreciate how wild stock picking gets.
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  55. It sounds like the men who write these papers have high risk tolerance and don't comprehend the real world
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  56. It's like all leveraged investments: Is there any real reason you need the money sooner?
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  57. How would you view real world investment? I.E. Spending to go to a trade school compared to buying stocks?
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  58.  @llljjj007  Yeah, depending on what you write them on. Using the most volatile stocks or meme stocks changes the risk-reward completely. Then if leverage is used all bets are off.
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  59.  @llljjj007  meme stocks are often mispriced. Volatile stocks give more option premiums because they are inheritantly more risky. E.G. SPY vs SPXL.
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  60. There's been a 3X for years, but all the hype is over chips and AI
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  61. Dear Mr. Felix I hear that in "risk-parity funds" they compose mostly in safe stocks and junk bonds because ultimately there really should be little distinction in the returns of both. Not that I recommend these funds, but it's that there's no particular reason to think only safe bonds are investible.
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  62. Don't make fraud allegations lightly
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  63. That is called a zero sum game.
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  64. The easiest advice is if you're worried about stocks going down just buy bonds.
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  65. Or spend more likely
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  66. I think you underestimate the extent an S&P fund is a global fund. It's not like Americans don't own half the planet.
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  67.  @BenFelixCSI  Or that Buffet doesn't play silly games with private company valuations and just focuses on getting profits and wages high
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  68. Risk-adjusted you're losing
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  69. Yeah. Me. I quickly figured out I was just staring at a chart guessing where it go and selling when I happened to be in profit.
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  70. All of the passive funds
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  71. This comment aged like wine. Very red wine.
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  72. The sample sizes are a bit big for that
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  73. He's a wealth manager, he literally does this for a living.
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  74. You know politicians don't know a friggin thing about investing when they think capital gains taxes targets rich people
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  75. But why would some investment banker think the same things you do? Also, that's called corporate raiding
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  76. Not quite. Poker is a zero sum game, while trading is a net positive game. A better way to put it is trading is a casino rigged for success instead of failure.
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  77. There's no reason to prevent active investors and market bubbles because the markets ultimately transfer money from the greedy to the frugal. Their losses are everyone else's gain.
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  78. It's why restaurants are good investments. Zero entry barriers and a steady supply of assholes that will pay you to do menial tasks for them.
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  79. Communist China's stock averages are negative unless you're an insider.
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  80.  @flammmenspeeryt9184  tell that the party.
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  81.  @flammmenspeeryt9184  Except parts on Chinese law are still the same as back in the Mao era, like how there is no privately owned land.
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  82. The category is based on simple dollar values, not actual development. It doesn't matter that cost of living is dirt cheap in Russia and really expensive in Greece, the dollars per capita is higher in Greece. This is why the index returns seem random.
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  83. The definition of good company here is safe investment. Low chance of major fraud, long chance of management doing something stupid, and low chance of a random event breaking them.
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  84. Really depends on how old you are. If you're retired, you don't need risk in your life. If you are young, you must build your kingdom. In any case, any passively managed bond fund should be good. The fees eat up much of the return of bond funds
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  85. Unless you got a supercomputer and a mathematician.
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  86. Stock options are a zero sum game.
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  87. @Sleepless  it literally isn't. The thing about options is that assuming an efficient market the prices of all options reflects the probability of stuff happening. While the price of a share reflects the Federal interest rate plus a premium equal to risk taken.
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  88.  @sleepless2541  active management is not the stock market
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  89. @Cesar Gaming and Vlogs  Yes, the Federal interest rate is baked in, but unlike an actual loan the actual volatility of what you're buying is also priced in. The only potential exception are expirations way out in the future and that are really deep in the money, but those assets behave more like shares anyway.
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  90. @Sleepless  just because they buy individual shares at discretion does not make it active management. Think of it this way: If you have tens of millions to invest it's cheaper to buy all the stocks in an index yourself than it is to buy a passive index.
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  91.  @cesaresp101  it's the Greeks. Vega, gamma, rho, delta, and so forth. There's a math formula for giving fair value
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  92. That's an exaggeration.
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  93. Stock forecasts are like buttholes. Everyone's got them and they all stink.
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  94. How much did you lose?
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  95. The membership overlaps and they're all part of the same economy. Ben Felix was speaking of recent decades when a large portion of returns were driven by a limited number of overleveraged blitzscalers while average returns are much more modest. Also, there's statistical arbitrage. All the stocks in the same economy should ultimately move in conjunction with that economy no matter what the individual company is doing. Certain hedge funds have computers that have thousands of positions in correlated stocks using long short methods and math to make risk free profit. This is why when good or bad news comes out, all stocks seem to move as one.
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  96. If you really are in before the hype, why would there be an ETF for it?
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  97. Happiness is a warm gun.......
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  98. Yeah.
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  99. This idiot thinks the year is 1927
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  100. It would have been impossible for a German investor to have stayed invested through WWII on account the Nazis nationalized all business and most stock markets closed except for a few that handled party members trading state-run companies.
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  101. Another reason for Buffet's overperformance is his reinsurance business where he sells insurance to insurance companies and megacorps and unlike most derivatives these have an edge for the same reason selling car insurance does (people NEED it, they don't WANT it). There is no way for small investors to replicate this success, because selling insurance favors the man with the biggest pile of money to use as collateral.
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  102. If you really are getting in before the hype, I guarantee there is no ETF and probably no pure-play stock to buy.
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  103. Thematic funds aren't considered low-cost funds.
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  104. @royjonzejr  Many track different indexes, some are total market and just buy whatever is available at the moment.
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  105. @alvadagansta  I call it "Sin a Little Economics." Things like 1% a day is obvious fraud but 13% a year is realistic enough to be believed by smart people driven by the same greed as day trading idiots
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  106. @macy1066  a touch of greed can make people exaggerate what is a reasonable wage/return. Small sins can produce more drama than big ones, because I guarantee you people like Ramsey buy into and pump bubbles
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  107. @macy1066  good question. Hence I say this is "sin a little economics"
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  108. No withdrawal rate rule is possible
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  109. Found the T-1000......
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  110. Vhut?
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  111. keep the stock picks to yourself
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  112. I was a retail options trader for a time. I matched the performance of the S&P even though I knew I was overleveraged so I quit
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  113. ​ @BenFelixCSI I got flooded with suicide requests when I told GME buyers to sell immediately when the liquidity crisis was on. I can honestly say I was never a gambler
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  114. You know certain industries are retarded when there should be good money in it, but there isn't
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  115. Last I checked the gold still just sat there.
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  116. How much did you lose?
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  117. Only worthwhile if you have a large amount of money to invest. Like over a million bucks. With smaller accounts, trading fees and fractional shares will likely be equal to the cost of a good ETF.
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  118. Factor investing got priced into the market after it went mainstream.
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  119. He wouldn't have a problem with you doing real world investments or buying straight T-bills.
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  120. Except India's stock market is a scam, so there's likely no hedging activity whatsoever
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  121. Yes, most self described tech companies aren't tech companies. EA claims to be a tech company and gets angry when people say "they only act like a tech company."
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  122. Accepting efficient markets also means accepting you don't need riches, anyway.
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  123. ​​ @vincentli1064 I didn't say it was global enough to go 100% S&P
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  124. He doesn't short. Shorting is more trouble than it's worth
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  125. To be fair, thematic ETFs is a much less crazy version of stock picking, as it allows people to closet index whilst speculating to their heart's content.
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  126. Is the company profitable?
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  127. Dumb money tends to turn companies with the best science into the worst stocks.
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  128. Cramer's picks turns a profit, even if they probably don't outperform an index
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  129. It's as scarce as we want it to be.
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  130. He can afford to hire a limo and he owns a jet, it's not like he needs to show off how rich he is with a sports car.
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  131.  @perolito83  he doesn't need all that, again he has employees that can simply hire a limo when he flies in, and you only need one yacht. Bezos spent his money on a trip to space.
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  132.  @perolito83  Yeah, I assumed you just pulled that out your butt like a lot of people do. Do you know for a fact he collects classic/rare cars or do you simply suppose that to be true?
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  133.  @perolito83  true, but I'm lazy. And yeah, googling that does show he has a taste for cars. But don't stereotype that kind of behavior on all rich people, especially the ones in businesses where you need to have money in order to make money.
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  134.  @MillerMedeiros  double? Do the math
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  135. This comment aged poorly.
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  136. @Sergio Miranda  we literally aren't in the middle of a recession. ARKK got decimated by rising interest rates because they hold exclusively startups that depended on equity loans. The volatility and return of ARK products is suspiciously similar to a leveraged S&P fund.
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  137. The two are not related, and Canada gets immigrants too
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  138. Since you stopped watching fake guru videos
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  139. Who would have thought. Renting a house is a fair trade.
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  140. He just got a little tongue in cheek with him
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  141. Vhut?
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  142. Company employees and owners like cash bonuses.
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  143. [Mexicah intensifies]
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  144. I have to be honest. You have to do stock picking for international investment to avoid buying into shitholes that are all risk and no return.
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  145. @finkrer  extremists don't exist. Those are simply states you're feuding with at the moment
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  146.  @finkrer  Which makes you a garden variety wannabe gangster.
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  147. Roaring Kitty intensifies.....
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  148. I don't see a problem with this cycle since it subsidizes science at the expense of greedy bastards.
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  149. Active investing works best during hard times when no one else is doing it
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  150. Ha
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  151. They're better off staying away from stocks as their home countries are net receivers of investments and they're often undeveloped for a reason (namely crime). They're better off with real-world investment (getting common job skills for instance).
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  152. People like lying about public trust
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  153. No, it's that politics have nothing to do with the economy. You ever notice the Fed is an independent entity for the exact reason so idiots who got elected CAN'T mess with it?
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  154. Yes, SOMEONE did. That someone is indeally a computer or insider with better access to information and the superior returns are usually only enough to give the market maker a fair sallary for hours put in. But that's a perfect world, in the real world greed drives speculation and thus a lot of the people doing this are effectively donating money to the market, meaning while these guys SHOULD get a small superior return, most of them do not.
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  155. Since the stock market got democratized, obviously a new market had to be created exclusively for rich chumps.
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  156. BRICS is already defunct
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  157. There's a lot of "bad" large caps. For instance, Boeing saw major mismanagement and faced huge fines, but a lot of investors not only refuse to look at Boeing but any ETF containing Boeing. But you must member, someone must have bought Boeing for under 80 bucks a share in 2020 when it had been north of 300 a year before, and made a tidy profit when all the hate and covid died down.
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  158. How much did you lose?
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  159. I know of one counterexample where it is better to buy stocks rather than ETFs: If you have tens of millions to invest, you can save money on fees buying all the stocks in an ETF yourself.
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  160.  @BenFelixCSI  I hadn't thought of that, but I was bringing up that example to point out most people don't fit into any exceptions that exist
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  161.  @wisnoskij  Let's take the most extreme examples of Berkshire-Hathaway, Microsoft, and JP Morgan where the investor has so much money the ETFs don't have the liquidity to take it all. I was just looking for an exception that proves the rule, because YOU reading this are not Warren Buffet.
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  162. Yes, be we also want money
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  163. Cards are king these days
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  164. Is that a joke?
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  165. @simo91554  if it isn't it's fraud
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  166. You would still be better off in short term bonds
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  167.  @dietbajablast5790  Or you become a known liar
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  168. The misconception comes from territorial men who want a sovereign kingdom to rule
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  169. If that ETF exists, it's got fraud in the name
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  170. Except Europe doesn't have a growing population like most new developed nations.
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  171. That's not significantly different enough from SPY to make any argument.
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  172. In hindsight, it appears that Chinese stocks reflect economics more than their GDP numbers.
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  173. If bonds do not interest you, then real world investments are good. I.E. Renovate your oversized garage into an apartment to rent out. @RabianskiT 
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  174.  @pastramiking  But that would require you to know ahead of time that Berkshire would outperform when not even Warren knows that
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  175. What?
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  176. ​@mere_cat and yet, bonds offer better returns for the same amount of risk.
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  177. Th S&P is so big it's argued to be globally diversified and it's the benchmark active managers can't beat
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  178. Except it doesn't matter what assets can be arbitraged. I.E. If the Feds buy their own bonds driving down the price, computers owned by banks will bid up the price of all other bonds because they can borrow at the new lower rate instantly and buy those bonds. Stocks and bonds are similarly connected since a risky bond and a safe stock have the same return so if they deviate a computer will short one and buy the other. Even individual stocks are like this, because if for some reason the Feds bought all the stocks of one company, a computer will simply short that stock and buy up everything else as hedge. This is why everything simply went up at once during quant easing
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  179. Caveat: These are individual losses in zero sum games. All that money lost is money earned by passive market makers.
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  180. It is.
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  181. Very ponzi.
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  182. You hold it to prove how rich you are.
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  183. You don't need a lot of active managers and the fewer of them there are the more profitable it becomes. But since that industry can make men rich quick, it's full of enough amateurs and ponzi schemes that there is no money in it at all.
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  184. It literally isn't
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  185. Real estate is the best asset class in a booming population, but it will turn into just a safe investment when construction booms abruptly end.
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  186. They basically all have always done it, people only noticed when Robinhood started doing it.
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  187. The illiquidity of real estate hides the risk because you can't realize a loss until sale or default, while with margin you see exactly how far things must fall to lose. It's a slow burn high-risk versus immediate risk
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  188. Is that your way of saying you have no idea how that works?
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  189. Same rules apply.
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  190. Gold is the delusional inflation hedge because we left the gold standard during a period of high inflation. Idiots deluded themselves into thinking gold represented real value while the Fed wouldn't even try keeping the dollar stable.
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  191.  @kimappreciateslife  why would we give a frick what he thinks?
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  192. That's not what most people call cash equivalents.
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  193. I meant like high yield savings accounts and similar assets @robertwright8844 
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  194. Get drafted.
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  195. I think Mr. Zuckerberg just got bored managing Facebook.
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  196. TIPS have expected inflation priced in
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  197. The time to own that was BEFORE war starts, not after.
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  198. You're collect t-bill like interest with bank like risk. Do you really need that liquidity?
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  199.  @theadvocate4698  you lose
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  200.  @reginwill  T-bills have better returns
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  201. Or they actually spend very little of the money because they own everything they need outright and still work a little to stay active. A lot of old people pay more to the doctor than anyone else
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  202. Share price doesn't equal company success
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  203. Come on, we let people buy single stocks. I think what you mean is we should limit how much fund managers charge
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  204. Hedge funds are allowed to load up on a lot more risk. University admins like to at least pretend their investments are safe.
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  205. The price of gold can go either way by 100% within a decade, the dollars you used to buy the phone you're holding don't.
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  206. Bond bubble? That never happened.
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  207. Too much leverage means the portfolio will inevitably hit zero at some point. Also, the average return over any given time period would be the same (BEFORE FEES). The general rule is you shouldn't borrow to buy things you don't need. You don't need stocks.
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  208. There's one allegedly serious dividend investor here on YouTube that claims dividend yield is not a measure of risk.
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  209. It would vary between countries. Canadians, for instance, should invest in US stocks because of minimal added risks, which skews the numbers. Russians should exhibit extreme home-country bias, because most of their "foreign" friends use the Moscow stock exchange anyway.
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  210. That's silly. Taking less risk cannot be recommended against.
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  211. Depends on region
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