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Coronavirus Investing

Discussions about the economic and financial ramifications of PEAK OIL

Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby careinke » Wed 16 Dec 2020, 13:54:08

Nice rise in Bitcoin to an all time high, primarily due to institutional investing. Dang this crypto investing sure looks like a bad idea! /Sarc

My Crypto has risen:

13% in the past week
25% in the past month
200% in the past year

Not only are companies turning to Bitcoin, but so are countries. Venezuela and Iran both have government mining operations. When the fiat hyper inflation sets in, I expect a LOT of other countries to follow.

Fun facts: The Satoshi is the smallest unit of Bitcoin, and there are 100 Million Satoshi's in one Bitcoin, with a Maximum of 21 million Bitcoins ever.

Enjoy your day, I am.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Wed 16 Dec 2020, 16:28:33

careinke wrote:Nice rise in Bitcoin to an all time high, primarily due to institutional investing. Dang this crypto investing sure looks like a bad idea! /Sarc

My Crypto has risen:

13% in the past week
25% in the past month
200% in the past year


OTOH, better lucky than smart, just like the Tesla fanbois that use recent stock prices as a justification for everything, vs. logic.

The RISK ADJUSTED returns aren't in yet.

When the $300,000+ Bitcoin price re various chartists, etc. claims come true REAL SOON now, be sure and let us know. :roll:

If it works out well -- great, but it would be nice to have people admit the randomness here re trading via the "hope the other guy will pay more when it's hot" vs. the "I can win at Jeopardy vs. super smart people, justifying my taking a flyer in this" element (i.e blind luck).

For example, it's not like Bitcoins produce increasing annual earnings, which can be measured, with a product sold that can be tracked and improvements can be seen (like stocks in credible stock markets). And it's not like I've STILL seen a reasonable response why Bitcoin is better or safer than the various country based crypto currencies, which are increasingly being issued. (The IRS can already track it to enforce one to make tax payments on trades, for example). And it's not like I've seen a reasonable answer to the concept that there are an INFINITE number of cryptocurrencies (which are better than Bitcoin re security, transaction cost, transaction wait time, etc) than Bitcoin which can be issued, including by various governments. So the whole idea of "Bitcoin scarcity" seems a big bogus to me, unlike if Bitcoin were the only reasonable cryptocurrency to invest in (say, like Gold as an immutable PM), re a VALID idea of serious scarcity.

So it COULD work out great. OTOH, so could long odds bets at Vegas, or a series of roughly 50-50 bets, but it doesn't mean TAKING such bets is a sign of brilliance vs, say, having an opinion one is willing to bet on.

(Flawed as the stock market is, at least it has a LOT of data on proven solid returns, decade after decade after decade, and even century after century (though the records aren't as good before 1929).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Thu 17 Dec 2020, 04:17:37

I was speaking with a friend of mine when the topic of investing came up. He said he was going to sell everything and get into cash before Jan 1. He thinks the lack of a stimulus and the loss of eviction protections are really going to hit hard after the first of the year. He even said it could look like 1929. He is of the camp that doesn't believe the government can create money. Everything is down to taxpayers. He has allowed that perception to delegitimize anything that is attempted to fix things. I told him that if money is the problem, then rather than let everything fall to the ground, which would be the equivalent of what he was saying, we need to keep the balls in the air. Keeping the balls in the air is what policy always does. Sometimes policy pursues things other than what is best for everybody, but usually it works for all of us. Anyway, there is a cognitive disconnect between his sense of cause and effect and what history relates. But what he said, many have said.

Then he told me he is not an investor. He is more of a trader. He sells everything when it goes up 20%. I told him I was into this because I could see a story. There is going to be a huge infrastructure investment in batteries and the grid. Also, automation is coming. It will be to varying degrees as it rolls out, but it will come deeply into our lives. I told him that if the market collapses I would not be selling, but buying more. I can't see the world not doing some version of this. Even during a depression, the future will get sorted. This is the same as every huge opportunity that has come before, laden with fear.

Right now is a lot like when railroads invested in stretching across the country. It's like when the telephone first came out. It's like when Microsoft was the proverbial dollar a share. All you have to do is believe! Following that, pick some sensible stocks that represent what is happening.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby careinke » Thu 17 Dec 2020, 06:33:59

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
careinke wrote:Nice rise in Bitcoin to an all time high, primarily due to institutional investing. Dang this crypto investing sure looks like a bad idea! /Sarc

My Crypto has risen:

13% in the past week
25% in the past month
200% in the past year


OTOH, better lucky than smart, just like the Tesla fanbois that use recent stock prices as a justification for everything, vs. logic.

The RISK ADJUSTED returns aren't in yet.

When the $300,000+ Bitcoin price re various chartists, etc. claims come true REAL SOON now, be sure and let us know. :roll:

If it works out well -- great, but it would be nice to have people admit the randomness here re trading via the "hope the other guy will pay more when it's hot" vs. the "I can win at Jeopardy vs. super smart people, justifying my taking a flyer in this" element (i.e blind luck).

For example, it's not like Bitcoins produce increasing annual earnings, which can be measured, with a product sold that can be tracked and improvements can be seen (like stocks in credible stock markets). And it's not like I've STILL seen a reasonable response why Bitcoin is better or safer than the various country based crypto currencies, which are increasingly being issued. (The IRS can already track it to enforce one to make tax payments on trades, for example). And it's not like I've seen a reasonable answer to the concept that there are an INFINITE number of cryptocurrencies (which are better than Bitcoin re security, transaction cost, transaction wait time, etc) than Bitcoin which can be issued, including by various governments. So the whole idea of "Bitcoin scarcity" seems a big bogus to me, unlike if Bitcoin were the only reasonable cryptocurrency to invest in (say, like Gold as an immutable PM), re a VALID idea of serious scarcity.

So it COULD work out great. OTOH, so could long odds bets at Vegas, or a series of roughly 50-50 bets, but it doesn't mean TAKING such bets is a sign of brilliance vs, say, having an opinion one is willing to bet on.

(Flawed as the stock market is, at least it has a LOT of data on proven solid returns, decade after decade after decade, and even century after century (though the records aren't as good before 1929).


Paul Tudor Jones
- Stanley Druckenmiller
- Cathie Wood
- Chamath Palihapitiya
- Mike Novogratz
- Abigail Johnson
- Jack Dorsey

All Bitcoiners. What could you possibly know that the worlds best investors don’t know?

Bitcoin has made record gains 10 of the past 12 years beating ALL other financial instruments.

BTW, I made twice as much on my Crypto Currency in the last 24 hours than my total investment in it. :razz:

Crypto, especially Bitcoin, is currently the best asymmetric strategy out there, bar none. Everybodies portfolio should hold some cryptocurrency positions.

I suggest you do a little deeper research, put a couple hundred in, and play with it. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down, and quite profitable. It's here and impossible to make go away, especially since there are sovereign countries very friendly to Crypto. As for government cryptocurrencies, why would I want the government to control my money? Be your own bank.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Thu 17 Dec 2020, 09:52:42

I have yet to figure out just exactly what a bitcoin is or why it has any value. So to me it is a dangerous as Dutch tulips. I take enough risks investing in things I think I understand so taking a wild quess on something I can't compute a future value with any accuracy is a leap too far is a leap too far..
Congratulations on your success with bitcoin to date and best of luck going forward but I won't be competing with you for any of the supply.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Fri 18 Dec 2020, 04:11:52

Adopting crypto means getting away from how the money supply expands and contracts in reaction to people's borrowing. It's like a gold standard. It's also for those who fear what long term debt means.

I don't fear long term debt. Many do. Many who post here do, as well. I think we need those people who regard those sorts of boundaries, but they ought not to dominate the conversation the way they do. Their desire to assign a cost to every gain is a problem. For they don't accept the word that those who are in debt have given to repay what they have borrowed. That's really the difference. They don't believe in the foundation of fiat currency. They don't care that it has a devastating affect upon the future to do so. They are relying upon a pay back brought about by the their own sweat and tears. They think that their own work has wrought their reward. Damn all of the others.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Fri 25 Dec 2020, 18:01:06

Just reading that, I hope I am understood to have said it in a rhetorical manner. The approach that the science of economics necessarily has to take, demands it. If a large enough group of people begins to doubt another's veracity concerning repayment of debt, then there will be problems. We can use our own imaginations to conceive of what sorts of things that means, when we consider the larger picture.

Meanwhile, my stocks are on fire! I wanted to build better positions before this happened. I'm not going to quit buying as they go up. I look back and I could reasonably only have done better if I had been more certain about rather important outcomes which were not obvious. That is to say that the whole time I have been thinking this way I have been putting some money into these stocks. But I never had that much to contribute. Bingo, though. Along came no fee trading. Now I can buy as few shares of a thing as I can afford. And, even as my earning power has gone up, I find myself only able to hoover up the same number of shares per average period. Damn.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 25 Dec 2020, 21:35:48

As Christmas presents I received a couple of books on investing that I had not seen before. The first is "The little book of common sense investing" By John C. Bogle. He is the founder of the Vanguard index funds and as far as I have gotten into the book today his main point is a index fund that buys all of the S&P 500 and does not churn the stocks will out perform any individual investors or money managers yields as all good choices are always eventually balanced by bad choices and the buying and selling generate fees and taxes that reduce your total return below what you can get if your index fund just lets everything ride and plows back all dividends into the stocks they come from.
The advent of no commission trading does weaken his argument but there are still capital gains taxes that would not be generated if the stocks were not churned.
Watching a Grand daughter play with her toys has kept me only a few pages into the book so I'll get back to you when I finish it and digest his points.
The other book is a classic investor bible titled "The intelligent investor" By Benjamin Graham. first published before 1950 and now on it's forth revised edition. I have not more then glanced at this 587 pager but I note that the first book has referenced this book and Graham a couple of times in what little of it I have read today.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sat 26 Dec 2020, 11:16:48

careinke wrote:
Outcast_Searcher wrote:
careinke wrote:Nice rise in Bitcoin to an all time high, primarily due to institutional investing. Dang this crypto investing sure looks like a bad idea! /Sarc

My Crypto has risen:

13% in the past week
25% in the past month
200% in the past year


OTOH, better lucky than smart, just like the Tesla fanbois that use recent stock prices as a justification for everything, vs. logic.

The RISK ADJUSTED returns aren't in yet.

When the $300,000+ Bitcoin price re various chartists, etc. claims come true REAL SOON now, be sure and let us know. :roll:

If it works out well -- great, but it would be nice to have people admit the randomness here re trading via the "hope the other guy will pay more when it's hot" vs. the "I can win at Jeopardy vs. super smart people, justifying my taking a flyer in this" element (i.e blind luck).

For example, it's not like Bitcoins produce increasing annual earnings, which can be measured, with a product sold that can be tracked and improvements can be seen (like stocks in credible stock markets). And it's not like I've STILL seen a reasonable response why Bitcoin is better or safer than the various country based crypto currencies, which are increasingly being issued. (The IRS can already track it to enforce one to make tax payments on trades, for example). And it's not like I've seen a reasonable answer to the concept that there are an INFINITE number of cryptocurrencies (which are better than Bitcoin re security, transaction cost, transaction wait time, etc) than Bitcoin which can be issued, including by various governments. So the whole idea of "Bitcoin scarcity" seems a big bogus to me, unlike if Bitcoin were the only reasonable cryptocurrency to invest in (say, like Gold as an immutable PM), re a VALID idea of serious scarcity.

So it COULD work out great. OTOH, so could long odds bets at Vegas, or a series of roughly 50-50 bets, but it doesn't mean TAKING such bets is a sign of brilliance vs, say, having an opinion one is willing to bet on.

(Flawed as the stock market is, at least it has a LOT of data on proven solid returns, decade after decade after decade, and even century after century (though the records aren't as good before 1929).


Paul Tudor Jones
- Stanley Druckenmiller
- Cathie Wood
- Chamath Palihapitiya
- Mike Novogratz
- Abigail Johnson
- Jack Dorsey

All Bitcoiners. What could you possibly know that the worlds best investors don’t know?

Bitcoin has made record gains 10 of the past 12 years beating ALL other financial instruments.

BTW, I made twice as much on my Crypto Currency in the last 24 hours than my total investment in it. :razz:

Crypto, especially Bitcoin, is currently the best asymmetric strategy out there, bar none. Everybodies portfolio should hold some cryptocurrency positions.

I suggest you do a little deeper research, put a couple hundred in, and play with it. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down, and quite profitable. It's here and impossible to make go away, especially since there are sovereign countries very friendly to Crypto. As for government cryptocurrencies, why would I want the government to control my money? Be your own bank.

I stated some of the risks. If you want to be in denial about them, or consider them less important than the chance to make a killing, go for it. Certainly lots of investors in high tech including Tesla fanbois are DEEP into that rabbit hole -- but it will be years before we know how that goes. Again, it's all RISK ADJUSTED returns in the end that end up in your wallet, or not.

Time will tell whether the likes of Cathie Wood are "great" investors, or took high annual fees for running high risk funds making certain assumptions about tech -- which might work out great or be a disaster for those who bet on those funds.

And if you're going to IGNORE the fact that the IRS can track and will track your Bitcoin trades and tax you on them (and I'd call that government control of your money in Bitcoin), feel free. Just remember that like investing, tax evasion has consequences if things don't go your way.

Meanwhile, I still think it's FAR more likely that in time, government issued cryptos will have things like some sort of insurance against loss, against the "pain" of being a law abiding citizen, paying your taxes, etc. Given that I'm a law abiding citizen anyway, I'll go that route if I go crypto, just like I take advantage of the FDIC for bank accounts, the SIPC for stocks, etc.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby careinke » Sat 26 Dec 2020, 20:18:49

Outcast_Searcher wrote:
careinke wrote: Paul Tudor Jones
- Stanley Druckenmiller
- Cathie Wood
- Chamath Palihapitiya
- Mike Novogratz
- Abigail Johnson
- Jack Dorsey

All Bitcoiners. What could you possibly know that the worlds best investors don’t know?

Bitcoin has made record gains 10 of the past 12 years beating ALL other financial instruments.

BTW, I made twice as much on my Crypto Currency in the last 24 hours than my total investment in it. :razz:

Crypto, especially Bitcoin, is currently the best asymmetric strategy out there, bar none. Everybodies portfolio should hold some cryptocurrency positions.

I suggest you do a little deeper research, put a couple hundred in, and play with it. It's a fun rabbit hole to go down, and quite profitable. It's here and impossible to make go away, especially since there are sovereign countries very friendly to Crypto. As for government cryptocurrencies, why would I want the government to control my money? Be your own bank.

I stated some of the risks. If you want to be in denial about them, or consider them less important than the chance to make a killing, go for it. Certainly lots of investors in high tech including Tesla fanbois are DEEP into that rabbit hole -- but it will be years before we know how that goes. Again, it's all RISK ADJUSTED returns in the end that end up in your wallet, or not.

Time will tell whether the likes of Cathie Wood are "great" investors, or took high annual fees for running high risk funds making certain assumptions about tech -- which might work out great or be a disaster for those who bet on those funds.

And if you're going to IGNORE the fact that the IRS can track and will track your Bitcoin trades and tax you on them (and I'd call that government control of your money in Bitcoin), feel free. Just remember that like investing, tax evasion has consequences if things don't go your way.

Meanwhile, I still think it's FAR more likely that in time, government issued cryptos will have things like some sort of insurance against loss, against the "pain" of being a law abiding citizen, paying your taxes, etc. Given that I'm a law abiding citizen anyway, I'll go that route if I go crypto, just like I take advantage of the FDIC for bank accounts, the SIPC for stocks, etc.


It seems like everytime you post, I make more money. :-D Thanks! and keep it up! Obviously you have not looked into it yet (or maybe just lately), deliberate willful ignorance remains your choice.

BTC gave a nice christmas surprise, going from $24,500 to over $26.500 in less than 24 hrs.

JP Morgan who last year claimed much the same as you are now, (that there was no real value in Bitcoin), just this past week has raised it's prediction to $650,000.00 by the end of 2021.

Bitcoin passed VISA in market cap today, which if Bitcoin was a company, would make it the 13th largest company in the world.

Here is how my crypto has been fairing, as of this morning:

Up 10% for the week
Up 47% for the month
Up 272% for the year
To date my crypto money is 17 times more than I have put in including an addition I made yesterday. So I think I can handle the risk and volatility. I also have a personal rule, that I never add to my crypto with anything I'm not willing to loose. Seems to be working.

As far as taxes, I'm offended you think my goal is to cheat on them. I am very aware of what the government can see or not see. Actually, everytime I move my crypto from one wallet to another, I report the gains to the Feds on my tax return, using FIFO. The FED has way bigger guns than me, and using tax fraud to target individuals who don't think like them,is their favorite tactic.

I don't actively trade, I'm mostly a buy and "HODL" type of guy. that could change if anyone gets a decent tax program for crypto.

Anyway, thanks for your critiques, I find them valuable, I wish you a merry Christmas, and hope you have a prosperous next year.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Sun 17 Jan 2021, 11:12:51

As I've stated, I am all about investing for the electric car and artificial intelligence future. Along those lines, Quantumscape, the solid state lithium battery company, took a huge crapper on the exchange the other day. Nobody could produce a reason.

Over the weekend previous, I had been searching for new investments. A site that I go to for tech information, the register, had an article about the future of batteries. They said that solid state was a pipe dream. They expected a future of incremental improvement in something more like what we are doing now. I think their article is what shat in the stew.

Anyway, although I place a great deal of trust in the register, I wasn't going to let a deal like Quantumscape at $50 get past me. The next day, it went up enough to pad me some. The padding still isn't too thick, but it looks good from a distance.

If solid state eventually works, this company could be one of those stocks where a person doesn't actually need to own that much of it to begin with. They just have to have some stake because as it rolls out there will be so many stock splits, and the share value itself will rise so much, that a small original stake will become something quite large. Either that, or it is a pipe dream. Diversification demands not putting too much into potential pipe dreams.

About a week before I bought QS, I bought some Polaroid too. They are about to make batteries for Tesla. I figure that's a good way to get in on the incremental game. I didn't need the register to tell me that. I was really looking for something more stable, in an investing climate where there is a lot of volatility.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Sun 17 Jan 2021, 11:50:32

evilgenius wrote:As I've stated, I am all about investing for the electric car and artificial intelligence future. Along those lines, Quantumscape, the solid state lithium battery company, took a huge crapper on the exchange the other day. Nobody could produce a reason.

Over the weekend previous, I had been searching for new investments. A site that I go to for tech information, the register, had an article about the future of batteries. They said that solid state was a pipe dream. They expected a future of incremental improvement in something more like what we are doing now. I think their article is what shat in the stew.

Anyway, although I place a great deal of trust in the register, I wasn't going to let a deal like Quantumscape at $50 get past me. The next day, it went up enough to pad me some. The padding still isn't too thick, but it looks good from a distance.

If solid state eventually works, this company could be one of those stocks where a person doesn't actually need to own that much of it to begin with. They just have to have some stake because as it rolls out there will be so many stock splits, and the share value itself will rise so much, that a small original stake will become something quite large. Either that, or it is a pipe dream. Diversification demands not putting too much into potential pipe dreams.

About a week before I bought QS, I bought some Polaroid too. They are about to make batteries for Tesla. I figure that's a good way to get in on the incremental game. I didn't need the register to tell me that. I was really looking for something more stable, in an investing climate where there is a lot of volatility.

The whole technology arena is a high risk / potentially high payoff game, especially with high valuations through much of the space because of market enthusiasm in recent years.

There was quite a bit of news in December about Toyota, their solid state battery progress, their claim that their first BEV would be out in mass production by mid-decade, utilizing their solid state battery tech. (implying they are very close to commercial success there), etc.

And unlike Tesla and Musk time, when Toyota makes a claim like that, it tends to be fairly credible. So for me, Toyota might be a more safe way to play in the battery space than Tesla or QS, but of course, the gains would be paltry in comparison for Toyota stock, since if wildly sucessful with BEV's, Toyota would mostly be replacing their ICE fleet over time.

OTOH, their success comes at the expense of QS and Tesla, which already have HUGE valuations by comparison re expectations, so there's that.

Looking at a chart of the previous month's trading, QS got hit hard Dec. 28th through Jan. 4th. So if that is the "big dump" you're referring to, that could have been some tax related gyrations and then the momentum follow-through, with the Toyota news providing the marginal inducement for QS longs to get out in enough numbers to move the stock. (Trying to figure these things out can be really hard -- I'm just taking a guess based on experience and intuition from 3 plus decades of trading on and off in various volatile tech.)

For perspective, my Yahoo chart shows it below $12 in early November, over $132 at the high, and at $54ish now, close to the recent lows over the past month (at that price scale). So how big a "deal" $50ish is, is a matter of perspective and timeframe.

And no, I never have ANY idea what a stock will do in the short run. I just try to look at where they've been, the overall news for the industry and related factors, and not lose my head getting too big to fast in any one stock. Different approaches work for different folks.

Like bitcoin, if enthusiasm wanes greatly and they get relatively cheap compared to prices over the past year or so, I'll take a much more serious look, and at more recent news.
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Tue 19 Jan 2021, 05:22:39

As part of my approach, I thought I would look for a data company. I've been looking at Cloudera, but there are a lot of detractors who have said they won't make it. They, apparently, didn't go big enough at the right time, or they were too Hadoop specific, whatever. Snowflake or Workday appear to be better options. They've got a better handle on siloing accounting and HR for small businesses that don't want to do those themselves.

Then, I started to think about value in another way. Security has value. It isn't just something that shows up when something bad happens. There is growth in how it can be done at scale. There are a ton of smaller cap security companies that also move some data around. I may buy ATEN. That's the one that currently stands out of the group I am looking at.

Also, I realized I referenced Polaroid in a post above, when I meant Panasonic.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Tue 19 Jan 2021, 09:23:19

My plans have evolved to placing the bulk of my investment dollars into whole market index funds following the advice of Buffet and Bogel (Vanguard). The fraction I will put into speculation stocks will be small enough that I can take a full loss of it without having a stroke. Perhaps some LAZR after the initial buying spree slacks off.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Thu 21 Jan 2021, 06:32:06

I heard that Toyota was supposed to demo their solid state battery last year. I don't know if it wasn't ready, or something else happened. Solid state appears to be the preferred way. It will charge more quickly. Current batteries could be charged quickly, but they would have shorter life times. Charging more quickly will be important. In the electric vs. gasoline debate, gasoline only takes about five minutes to fill up. Plus, a whole industry, the convenience store industry, has risen up in the wake of driving culture. There is a vested interest in maintaining out-of-home auto filling.

The article I was referring to in the Register, asserted that batteries were likely to only improve incrementally. One reason given was the investment already sunk into current battery technology. Factories need to do the same thing over and over again to operate profitably. New tech means too many changes. That's not all bad, when you are looking for progress. It's tempting to look at the slow progress of improvement and feel disappointment. But when progress is happening all of the time, in many different groups, and people share it, before you know it a lot of distance has been covered.

If solid state doesn't work, I think batteries will still be the future. I don't know if that would mean a slower adoption rate for electric vehicles. Not having solid state is certainly not, however, pushing back adoption of handheld and portable devices that use batteries. Hand tools have gone that way, and larger tools are not far behind. Their adoption probably has something to do with factory efficiency as well.

QS might not even be the solid state battery company that survives. I took a chance on them when I saw they had gotten really cheap, and I couldn't see a reason for their fall. Investors may have just gotten scared. When you see that type of action in a stock, it still takes some bravery to buy. Too much bravery might, however, get one into trouble. I tried to hedge what I was doing by only buying a few shares. I needed a position that said to me every time I looked at it that I was 'in'. I didn't need one that broke me, if it kept going down or indicated a poor future for QS. I also wanted it to reflect my attempts at balancing my approach, between not only batteries, but solar, artificial intelligence and automation. I'd like to get into wind too, but don't feel as good about it for some reason.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Thu 21 Jan 2021, 09:04:32

I bought some Toyota a while back as a balance to my Tesla. By some, I mean $500 of each as that is what I'm putting into the market each month from regular income.
I chose Toyota on their brand strength and the fact my wife and one daughter each drive one. Also the announcement of the new Rave 4-E seems like the perfect replacement for the wife's current Rave 4 when the time comes as her daily commute is less then twenty miles round trip and could do almost all of her routine driving in electric only mode. So far the Toyota stock has just sat there while the Tesla is up 40 percent.
Meanwhile the whole market index fund was up 1.4 percent yesterday alone.
Also out of the Blue the wife asked if we should consider installing solar panels.
I thought that would be a tough sell so that surprised me. We will wait and see what the Harris administration 8) does in the way of incentives before we jump into that.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby Outcast_Searcher » Thu 21 Jan 2021, 16:08:04

evilgenius wrote:QS might not even be the solid state battery company that survives. I took a chance on them when I saw they had gotten really cheap, and I couldn't see a reason for their fall. Investors may have just gotten scared. When you see that type of action in a stock, it still takes some bravery to buy. Too much bravery might, however, get one into trouble. I tried to hedge what I was doing by only buying a few shares. I needed a position that said to me every time I looked at it that I was 'in'. I didn't need one that broke me, if it kept going down or indicated a poor future for QS. I also wanted it to reflect my attempts at balancing my approach, between not only batteries, but solar, artificial intelligence and automation. I'd like to get into wind too, but don't feel as good about it for some reason.

IMO, after half a lifetime of experience, starting SMALL when in lots of doubt is a great approach. You don't get killed if you're wrong. (And trust me, with volatile investments, you'll be wrong a LOT -- nature of the game. It's amazing I don't have WRONG spelled on my face in blazing scar tissue by now. :lol: ) Then you can re-evaluate and get in at better prices (perhaps MUCH better prices) IF you believe the situation warrants at the later time, after reviewing more current data.

This is exactly what I'm doing with Bitcoin (using GBTC as a proxy). I'm buying a LITTLE on meaningful dips, and rooting for it to crash or at least seriously go down, so I can buy a meaningful position for MUCH less.

I think the biggest mistake most investors make (until they gain experience) is underestimating the RISK side of the risk/reward equation, and being far too impatient, assuming they are right.

This has occurred for centuries, and documented for many decades, but in the modern internet era, it's MUCH easier to fall into that trap with a bazillion monthly Youtube videos and articles from various "experts" screaming that your position (WHATEVER it may be) is RIGHT, and will IMMINENTLY MAKE YOU RICH!

(Blue font mine, for emphasis).
Given the track record of the perma-doomer blogs, I wouldn't bet a fast crash doomer's money on their predictions.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Fri 22 Jan 2021, 05:21:42

Consider that ever trade has a winner and a LOSER. If after the sale the stock goes up the buyer is the winner and the guy that sold to you the loser and if it goes down you trade places. It is nice to think you will pick wisely and get more winners then losers but for the whole market it is exactly equal over time and you have a 50/50 chance of being in the losing half. :oops:
Then consider the billions of fees and transaction cost the brokers and advisors bleed off your accounts as all of their money was your money before they charged you for their very dubious services and advise.
It is an interesting game and has better odds then scratch tickets but it ain't easy.
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby evilgenius » Fri 22 Jan 2021, 06:36:52

When the market went down at the beginning of the virus outbreak, I brought too much too early. I'm up on those positions, but would be up a lot more if I had bought less to begin with and then more as things developed. Over the years, I have seen some short lived drops. I bought right away because of that. I should have remembered the longer ones too.

With QS, I didn't want to repeat that mistake. It had dropped big, but I wasn't going to allow the knowledge it had been higher to allow me to buy too much. It could have bounced back right away, but the fear it might shouldn't overrule where it was headed.

Now, I have to evaluate whether I think QS will succeed. They can make their battery, but not at scale. They are looking for a way to mass produce it. It might cost too much. If I take too much time investors might finish ruminating and the stock might go back up. It could easily leave whatever price is best for me behind. Still, I am not going to depart from my regular investment schedule. I invest as I get paid. I'm not going to jump the gun, thinking I need to move before I have capital. If I lose out, I lose out.

All the same, I used that reasoning when I was staring at NIO at about $2. My intuition was screaming at me to buy. I decided not to borrow money from savings. Well...
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Re: Coronavirus Investing

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 22 Jan 2021, 19:52:50

Something of interest.

https://www.liquidpiston.com/
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