[HN Gopher] When buying the dip doesn't work: An analysis of the...
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       When buying the dip doesn't work: An analysis of the dot-com crash
        
       Author : makaimc
       Score  : 304 points
       Date   : 2022-05-06 17:03 UTC (2 days ago)
        
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       | flipbrad wrote:
       | I'd love to better understand how crashes start / propagate. A
       | lot of the discussion seems to talk in slightly binary terms -
       | "bear" vs "bull", "crash" as an on/off state, etc. But if we
       | think inflation and reduced stimulus are going to cause a
       | downturn in the stock market, I assume different sectors / types
       | of companies will get impacted at different times? I'd love to
       | see some theories/discussion of how that might play out. Timing
       | dips might be super hard, but predicting how they play out, once
       | they're underway, might be less difficult
        
         | greenyouse wrote:
         | I can't answer the part about what sets off a crash. AFAIK, it
         | seems to vary slightly for each crash. They all share similar
         | valuation problems though. If a company is worth $10 but it's
         | trading for $50 then there's a risk that it will drift back to
         | its intrinsic value in a bear market (aka mean reversion). When
         | the most heavily traded companies are all overvalued then you
         | see a situation where a large market can crash.
         | 
         | As investment firms realize that the investment isn't going
         | through normal volatility, they'll sell off the shares and
         | focus on other types of returns. The same goes for individuals
         | but most will probably move after larger firms. A heavy sell
         | off of a stock can cause the share price to drop. To some
         | extent it probably happens in waves as negative events keep
         | unfolding. That helps set the downward trajectory over the
         | long-term.
         | 
         | Unfolding macroeconomic conditions like raising the federal
         | interest rate will also have an effect like it does now in the
         | current crash. That raises the interest rate for bank loans so
         | consumer and commercial lending slows down. That typically
         | ripples out with knock-on effects for the broader economy.
         | There are other factors at play like inflation and supply chain
         | logistics that have their own knock-on effects too.
         | 
         | There are trends in how to invest during a crash and bear
         | market. Try looking for companies that are trading close to
         | their intrinsic value that also offer a dividend. It's helpful
         | to partition the companies by industry. Some industries are
         | going to be fairly safe like healthcare, utilities, and
         | defensive consumer products (e.g. toilet paper producers).
         | Those companies are going to have steady business whether the
         | market crashes or not.
         | 
         | On the other side of the coin, there are okay sectors and bad
         | sectors. You can check the general valuations across the sector
         | and what's going on across companies. For example, energy
         | companies are hot right now because of oil demand. That's okay
         | because it doesn't track the crash of the larger market. It's
         | heavily dependent on oil value though, good luck predicting
         | what happens to the price of oil over a year out.
         | 
         | A bad investment is something overvalued with bad future
         | prospects. If you know people will be capital constrained and
         | limiting big purchases, then cyclical industries like real
         | estate might not be as good to invest in.
         | 
         | It might be helpful to think about companies in terms of size
         | and market valuation too. A growth stock usually has higher
         | price to book because it's invested in R&D for future growth.
         | They may not be making that money right now but the price is
         | higher because they should at some point if everything works.
         | That hurts when mean regression happens and the market price
         | snaps back to book value. Value companies make money now and
         | have lower price to book. When they go through a bear market
         | they'll be largely unaffected by mean regression and have an
         | easier time getting consistent returns. They usually pay
         | dividends which helps over time too.
         | 
         | I'm not sure if there's any consistent trend with how market
         | cap size works in a crash or bear market. Check out some
         | quarterly or annual economic outlook reports from major
         | investment firms. They'll do the best at analyzing the current
         | risk based on market cap if there is a trend.
         | 
         | Those bear market investment strategies should be put behind
         | the caveat that long-term investing is a better way to go. The
         | market ups and downs smooth out over time so trading based on
         | fundamental analysis of a company usually works out much better
         | than speculating on the current trends. With a long-term
         | mindset you can be less stressed about news since you'll get
         | less caught up with the short-term market conditions. Stay the
         | course and all that.
        
       | lucidlive wrote:
       | It feels like the vast majority of the comments are negative
       | towards the stock market and essentially saying "we may not
       | recover this time". The thing is, we always think that. We always
       | think this time is different. We always think this might be the
       | end. When Covid struck? It was different because the world
       | economy was shut. When 2008 happened? It was different. 2000?
       | Different. 1987? Different. Markets will eventually recover. It
       | will not take you 4 decades to recover. Sure, it could take
       | years. But buy good companies, dollar cost average, and realize
       | your loss isn't realized until you sell. Also realize that the
       | best time to buy stocks is always, but especially when people are
       | flooding forums with negativity.
        
         | rossdavidh wrote:
         | I feel like this comment is well addressed in the article,
         | where it shows how long it would take to get back to even from
         | various dip-buying scenarios. Some of the timelines are far
         | longer than most people would be able to cope with.
        
       | pdevr wrote:
       | Index investing will work, if you live for a long time. The
       | problems are, we do not live infinitely, and the average person
       | does not have the stomach to see their investment going down for
       | years, unless that investment is small enough to tolerate (in
       | which case it is not enough to make a big difference, for most
       | people).
       | 
       | What I think will work - not claiming that it will actually work
       | - based on history:
       | 
       | Invest in companies that are generating a lot of cash and a lot
       | of profits, have a moat/USP/technology advantage, and are at the
       | forefront of where the world is headed in terms of trends, or at
       | least are following a sustainable trend. Yes, you need to
       | identify the company. Yes, you need to take decisions: INTC vs
       | AMD (1980s), YHOO vs GOOGL (2000s). But it gives you a much
       | better chance of seeing a profit in your lifetime than index
       | investing. You can still index invest, but only an amount you can
       | "set and forget". This gives you the best of both worlds.
       | 
       | Edit: (1) What I posted above is for long periods of no movement
       | of stocks except downwards, as I believe we are going to see. (2)
       | Index investing will work eventually and that is what I said
       | above as well. The point is, the time period required for that.
       | (3) I thought of posting this on my blog tomorrow, but it is past
       | midnight here, and I wanted to see what HNers think. It is
       | interesting to see the different opinions. Time may change some
       | of your opinions (not about "index investing will not work" -
       | that is not what I said above - but rather, about the protection
       | offered by diversification, and what diversification actually
       | means. Also, quoting this part again: "the average person does
       | not have the stomach to see their investment going down for
       | years, unless that investment is small enough to tolerate (in
       | which case it is not enough to make a big difference, for most
       | people)").
        
         | refurb wrote:
         | Your strategy sounds like "pick winning stocks"? A strategy
         | which has been show to produce (on average) worse returns than
         | index investing.
         | 
         | Index investing has produced a ~200% return in the past 15
         | years (from 2007 peak to now). Not sure what you mean by "a
         | chance of seeing a profit in your lifetime".
        
           | john_moscow wrote:
           | There's a third strategy of "index minus bullshit stocks"
           | where you would include both INTC and AMD stocks for risk
           | hedging, but would leave out things with questionable
           | sustainability like Uber and Netflix that otherwise made it
           | into the index due to the speculative value.
        
             | kkdaemas wrote:
             | This strategy would miss some huge and unexpected gains.
             | Tesla comes to mind (at least for the time being...)
        
               | Ekaros wrote:
               | On other hand it also avoids Tesla when it inevitably
               | crashes to same ballpark as other automotive companies...
               | No I really believe it is nothing special and will
               | eventually come down.
        
             | redisman wrote:
             | There are plenty of value or dividend funds if that's your
             | philosophy
        
             | baq wrote:
             | You can try SPLV or similar but you miss the bubble
             | inflating with these.
        
             | pdevr wrote:
             | More or less. Of course, I am advocating to leave out any
             | company where it does not fit this criteria: " are
             | generating a lot of cash and a lot of profits, have a
             | moat/USP/technology advantage, and are at the forefront of
             | where the world is headed in terms of trends, or at least
             | are following a sustainable trend".
        
           | alar44 wrote:
           | Parent has literally no idea what he's talking about.
           | Investing in indexes has always worked. Always. Over all time
           | periods. Since they existed.
        
             | h-w wrote:
             | Well indexes are a relatively new product (less than 100
             | years old).
        
             | cudgy wrote:
             | All 20-30 years? Believe it or not, the history of
             | investment spans more than the last 25 years. Also, there
             | are some questions regarding the liquidity of ETFs during a
             | major crash/selling session. It's possible there could be a
             | feedback loop of selling to deal with cashing out that
             | results in price of the ETF going below net asset value.
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | landemva wrote:
           | 200% in 15 years didn't keep pace with my house assessment
           | from county tax lady. And I got to use my house!
        
             | cudgy wrote:
             | Kind of the opposite of diversification though. Houses burn
             | down and neighborhoods change, sometimes for the worse. I
             | knew someone that bought a house in 1972 for $70,000 and
             | sold it in 2015 for about $70,000. Real estate is not all
             | roses and candy.
        
           | RaRic wrote:
           | No, it sounds like picking winning businesses. Big
           | difference. Warren Buffet has said that he's a business
           | picker, not a stock picker.
        
             | refurb wrote:
             | Warren Buffet buys a controlling position and changes how
             | companies operate. He himself said "Your average investor
             | should just invest in indexes".
        
             | redisman wrote:
             | So your advice is to be Warren Buffet?
        
             | pdevr wrote:
             | Yes, that is it essentially. You are looking at businesses
             | which have cash flow and the other criteria mentioned
             | above.
        
         | milofeynman wrote:
         | I have a million dollar bet to make you...
        
         | alar44 wrote:
         | I'm sorry, when did investing in indexes not work? No idea what
         | you're talking about.
        
           | anonporridge wrote:
           | Index investing has really only existed in common practice
           | since the 1970s. You can simulate back further and do
           | imaginary index investing, but we really only have 50 years
           | of actual history with it. It's a very young experiment.
           | 
           | One thing that a lot of people are worried about is if the
           | surge of people and money getting blindly pumped into broad
           | basket index funds as if it was a savings account (because
           | those have negative real yield) will itself distort the
           | market in weird and unpredictable ways. It's entirely
           | possible that it breaks the entire system and creates the
           | mother of all crashes.
        
             | pdevr wrote:
             | This, pretty much. Whenever a new trend comes up, be it
             | Bitcoin or index investing (both of which are poles apart
             | in terms of risk), passionate people will defend them
             | passionately. Good on you all. I posted it hoping to see
             | HNers' original or novel thoughts about this (along with
             | the expected defending of index investing).
        
               | icelancer wrote:
               | It's pretty tough to figure out if there's over-exposure
               | in index investments, and tougher still to untangle the
               | expected fallout of that problem, if it exists. Some
               | people have talked about it, and have been shouted down
               | of course.
               | 
               | I've done a decent amount of reading on the topic and
               | think I'm barely knowledgeable about the surface of it. I
               | guess that's how it always is, though.
               | 
               | People burying their heads in the sand and thinking that
               | index investing has no hidden black swans are the ones to
               | be most scared of, though.
        
         | icelancer wrote:
         | >> Index investing will work, if you live for a long time.
         | 
         | Maybe. Those who own the Nikkei index are still waiting.
        
           | pdevr wrote:
           | Ha ha. It did finally reach that old "peak" again, but I
           | guess it took some 30 years :) A little over 10% for 30 years
           | of patience.
        
           | galaxyLogic wrote:
           | Investing in stocks is risky you can lose most of your money.
           | And some people do lose most of their money. That is the
           | nature of probability.
        
       | andsoitis wrote:
       | diversify
        
       | chris123 wrote:
       | Sorry, the standard of living for the night class has been
       | declining for decades, and the rate of decline accelerating.
       | Anyway, buy the dip works in the bull market and doesn't end up
       | bear market, it's as simple as that.
        
       | dehrmann wrote:
       | Buying the dip doesn't mean you should try to catch a falling
       | knife.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | Bottom pickers have smelly fingers
        
       | lokar wrote:
       | Using QQQ here seems like cherry picking (vs SPDR).
        
         | franciscop wrote:
         | Exactly my thoughts, the author talks about S&P500 initially
         | (which recovered "fairly" quick after the dotcom bubble burst)
         | and then uses a different index to exemplify how the dotcom
         | bubble took long time to recover.
        
           | ryl00 wrote:
           | While the peak-to-trough drop wasn't as bad as QQQ's, the S&P
           | 500 still managed to fall something like 40% from its dot com
           | peak in 2000 over two years, and didn't fully recover until
           | 2007. (And of course 2008 sent it right back down again for
           | another five-ish years).
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | 01100011 wrote:
       | SNL skit from the dot-com era:
       | https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/152279877872567500...
       | 
       | Does anyone have a solid understanding of how QE affects the
       | economy? From what I've read, QE basically stays locked in the
       | financial system as interbank cash. I think this can affect short
       | term interest rates, and therefore affect lending(and money
       | creation by the big banks), but otherwise that money doesn't
       | really drive inflation, at least not directly.
       | 
       | Based on that assumption, the real driver of inflation is the
       | $5.4T in stimulus combined with supply-side shortages.
       | 
       | It's looking to me like inflation is here to stay. On-shoring,
       | demographics(aging boomers), the end of cheap energy and many
       | materials, and other factors seem to be putting the US on a
       | different course than we've been on for ~100 years.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | Why would $5.4T in stimulus that, as far as I know, came and
         | went a year ago be causing ongoing inflation?
        
           | ctennis1 wrote:
           | Did it come and "go", though? A lot of that money was
           | earmarked for local and state government programs, and at
           | least from what I'm seeing, a lot of those projects haven't
           | even taken place yet. Our local city hall, for example, is
           | still trying to spend some of the money, which they will be
           | reimbursed for after the projects are complete.
        
           | jokethrowaway wrote:
           | Because... you have more money in the market?
           | 
           | It did spike up inflation when it was introduced and once
           | inflation starts its effects tend to spiral.
           | 
           | Look, we're also coming from years of QE. We've been screwed
           | for years, it's just a matter of understanding when the
           | government won't be able to support this monster they created
           | and let th market correct itself. Instead of a series of
           | small economic crises we'll get a massive one.
           | 
           | Most of our economic crises are caused by governments
           | interfering with the market.
        
             | JKCalhoun wrote:
             | I assumed it was Wall Street's bundling of derivatives that
             | caused the last economic crisis.
        
         | VirusNewbie wrote:
         | >money creation by the big banks)
         | 
         | How could this not cause inflation?
        
           | tmnvix wrote:
           | If they were lending for productive purposes. Sadly, that
           | hasn't really been the case (e.g. mortgage lending).
        
       | jasfi wrote:
       | No technique always works. Buying the dip is just that, a
       | technique, not a promise. This is a single example at a specific
       | (long-term) time-frame with many other factors involved.
        
       | levinhugo82 wrote:
        
       | nathanvanfleet wrote:
       | Sad to think that investing in the stock market, which I have
       | only been able to financially over the last 5 years might have
       | been much riskier than I might have previously thought. What I
       | previously thought as "okay I just leave it in the stock market
       | for a bit of time to recoup" is something I am now realizing
       | would likely have to be 10+ years.
       | 
       | It's kind of funny because I was getting shaky about having money
       | in the stock market back in December, and I held onto investing
       | some of my money there. But I ultimately relented 4 months later
       | to lose 10% within about two weeks (and after just index funds).
       | Now it's much worse, and I guess I'll just leave it all there.
       | 
       | And in 15 years I'll be back to where I was when I originally
       | invested it.
        
         | jrumbut wrote:
         | > What I previously thought as "okay I just leave it in the
         | stock market for a bit of time to recoup" is something I am now
         | realizing would likely have to be 10+ years.
         | 
         | I am wondering where you previously got your information?
         | 
         | At one point ten years was considered about the minimum time
         | window for investing in stocks.
         | 
         | To give an example, an old rule of thumb was to have 100 minus
         | your age percent of your retirement savings in stocks and the
         | rest in less volatile investments such as bonds (so a 50 year
         | old would be half and half between stocks and bonds).
        
           | nly wrote:
           | It's been easy to promote bonds when we've been in 40 year
           | bond bull run
        
         | refurb wrote:
         | My grandfather had $3M invested in the market in 2007. Lost $1M
         | at the bottom in 2008, but didn't do anything other than
         | rebalance. Now worth $8M.
         | 
         | Either you fret over every price move and likely buy/sell at
         | the worst times, or you invest with a long-term vision and stop
         | tracking the price moves everyday.
        
           | landemva wrote:
           | >>> Now worth $8M.
           | 
           | That is the price. Worth and value are different than price.
           | 
           | If that $8M now buys about the same amount of blueberries or
           | house as $3M in 2007, then it kept pace. Except for paying
           | the capital gains on $5M.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | ramblerman wrote:
             | Are you suggesting in 15 years, the $ devalued by more than
             | 250%?
        
               | antisthenes wrote:
               | Something can't devalue by over 100% of itself.
               | 
               | If you're asking about inflation, it is usually measured
               | as an increase in prices.
        
           | galaxyLogic wrote:
           | Problem with "long term investing" as I see it is that to
           | realize the gains you must get out of the market at
           | approximately the correct time. That is difficult
           | psychologically because if you have been able to increase
           | your worth by doing what you have been doing so far you are
           | likely to keep on doing it. Then one day the next crash
           | comes. All of a sudden having been a long term investor does
           | not help so much any more.
           | 
           | You need to be a long-term investor for a limited term. But
           | hard to know when that term is over.
           | 
           | So I think when markets go up you should seriously consider
           | taking some money out and using it for leisure and travel and
           | education investing in yourself. But taking money out and
           | spending it is not usually considered prudent investing.
           | Especially because taking money out means you must pay taxes
           | on it. So you stay in the market and soon most of your long-
           | term gains are wiped out, and you have to be a "long term
           | investor" all over again.
        
             | refurb wrote:
             | You should clearly have a purpose for your investing goals
             | and adjust your investing style based on risk.
             | 
             | So if your goal is retirement and you're 30, you can
             | tolerate higher risk because if the market crashes, you've
             | got 30 years to wait for it to recover. If you're 60 and
             | retiring in a few years, your risk tolerance is low. And
             | you can slowly adjust your portfolio in between.
        
               | srean wrote:
               | This a very popular idea but I don't fully accept it.
               | Goals and desires are not static. They are path dependent
               | and adaptive. I want a funding scheme that's able to fund
               | that.
        
               | refurb wrote:
               | So you want high returns with little to no risk?
               | 
               | Doesn't exist. Sorry bud.
        
               | srean wrote:
               | You think you are entitled to returns just because you
               | took a risk ? Sorry bud, sad to break it to you but it
               | does not work that way.
               | 
               | That's the idea that I am criticizing. Risk might be
               | necessary, but never sufficient.
               | 
               | BTW I don't think, you think that way, but neither should
               | you. Gratuitous condescension poisons the well.
        
               | refurb wrote:
               | I never said I "think [I am] entitled to returns just
               | because [I] took a risk". There is no _entitled_ , it's
               | simply a trade-off.
               | 
               | It's a basic precept of investing. In a very simplified
               | way - higher returns require higher risk of invested
               | capital - why else would you invest in something higher
               | risk unless the return justifies it? And likewise, people
               | will accept lower returns if they know the risk is low.
               | 
               | Nobody is doing payday loans at prime because the risk
               | isn't justified by the return.
               | 
               | When you start looking at portfolio allocation across
               | multiple investments, it gets more complicated because
               | you can actually achieve the _same return_ at _lower
               | risk_ through diversification across classes of assets.
               | 
               | But to answer your original question - the only way to
               | guarantee short-term and long-term positive returns (as
               | you put it "if my goals change, I don't want to lose
               | money") is to invest in low risk investments. Low risk
               | investments mean low returns.
        
               | srean wrote:
               | > I never said I "think [I am] entitled to returns just
               | because
               | 
               | Exactly! Why did you think I said anything about not
               | taking risks. I didn't say that either. I was
               | misinterpreting on purpose to show yours.
               | 
               | > "if my goals change, I don't want to lose money"
               | 
               | I did not say that either. I vehemently agree with
               | everything else that you said.
        
               | refurb wrote:
               | Ok, then I misunderstood and am very confused.
               | 
               | You said "This a very popular idea but I don't fully
               | accept it. Goals and desires are not static. They are
               | path dependent and adaptive. I want a funding scheme
               | that's able to fund that."
               | 
               | Which I interpret as "I reject the idea of setting some
               | financial goal decades into the future. I want a scheme
               | that is flexible and can accommodate changes to how I
               | want to use my money."
               | 
               | How is that different than "If my goals change, I don't
               | want to lose money."?
        
               | srean wrote:
               | The best sort of discussions are those where each is
               | happy with the other's rewording of their position. I
               | certainly do not reject setting financial goals decades
               | into the future. I do not like ('like' and 'reject'
               | aren't synonyms) investment discipline that are strictly
               | fixated on some goal I had in the past. I would rather
               | have an adaptive trade off of risk to return depending on
               | where I am right now financially. Some goal I had ten
               | years ago may not be as relevant in my current state. I
               | wouldn't want to let go of a favorable opportunity by
               | pulling out the money, just because a goal that I had set
               | in the past has been met.
               | 
               | > How is that different than "If my goals change, I don't
               | want to lose money."?
               | 
               | ... and I don't see at all how they are equivalent. I
               | might be willing accept the possibility of losing some
               | money if there is a notable increase in the possibility
               | of meeting my updated goal.
               | 
               | I doubt that we have any fundamental disagreement. You
               | have a good day.
        
             | throwaway898989 wrote:
             | if you have a large enough sum of money (i.e., $50m USD )
             | you can stay invested all the time and withdraw a small sum
             | of money each year like $300k
             | 
             | With $50m if your portfolio averages 4% a year you would be
             | clearing $2m then pulling out $300k for 1.7 gain. You only
             | pay tax on the income withdrawn
        
               | matwood wrote:
               | The real baller move for someone worth 50M+ with rates as
               | low as they have been, is take out loans against the 50M
               | to live off of. Pay back the loans with rates less than
               | the annualized market returns. Also limits/pushes out cap
               | gain taxes.
        
           | danielmarkbruce wrote:
           | Unfortunately for every one of these folks, there are a
           | handful of folks who panic sold and still haven't made it
           | back...
        
           | bagacrap wrote:
           | yes but in that case the Fed rode to the rescue and delivered
           | the greatest bull market in US history. There's absolutely no
           | way the next decade looks like the last so this is a poor
           | comparison.
           | 
           | As far as rebalancing --- you may have noticed stocks and
           | bonds falling in unison this year, so rebalancing is not much
           | help.
        
             | bushbaba wrote:
             | Why not l? If the market returns don't keep up at 6-7%
             | annualized government pensions will run out of cash.
             | 
             | If rates go up drastically, government debt payments go up.
             | 
             | The game must go on! *until the us empire collapses, taking
             | down with it the western world
        
               | landemva wrote:
               | Yes, pensions and Illinois are cooked.
               | 
               | But EU has had negative interest rates for years, and
               | will collapse (break up the eu monetary union) before USA
               | goes under. Dollar strength confirms capital is moving
               | into USA.
        
             | refurb wrote:
             | Take a gander at the PE ratio for the S&P500 over time. A
             | substantial amount of those gains are backed by increased
             | profitability.
             | 
             | https://www.multpl.com/s-p-500-pe-ratio/table/by-year
             | 
             | And not sure what your comment on rebalancing not being
             | much "help" is. Rebalancing is not about "help" it's about
             | sticking to an investing approach.
             | 
             | And I can recall back in the early 2000's when people said
             | "Equity growth will never be like it was the 90's".
             | 
             | Glad I never listened to them.
        
         | ProjectArcturis wrote:
         | What are you buying that you've lost "much worse" than 10%?
         | There's no guarantee each individual stock will go up over
         | time.
        
         | jokethrowaway wrote:
         | I was pissed because I didn't invest in my portfolio to buy a
         | house during the pandemic and missed out on pandemic gains -
         | but checking how much money my portfolio lost, I made more
         | money to keep those in cash.
        
           | SturgeonsLaw wrote:
           | It was hard to predict that real estate would see pandemic
           | gains. It's an asset that people need to leave their homes to
           | inspect, and comes with face-to-face time with multiple
           | parties. In a locked down society, there were plausible
           | reasons to assume that the real estate market would be
           | dampened.
        
             | matwood wrote:
             | Predictions are always hard. I bought my house during the
             | last housing 'crash'. It was my first house so I didn't
             | have one to sell, so it was easier. But, I was being told
             | by friends and online that things could drop more, wait,
             | etc... At the end of the day, I needed a place to live, I
             | could afford it, and my job was reasonably secure.
             | 
             | Now people ask how I timed it perfectly and the fact is I
             | didn't. I simply made personal financial decisions based on
             | my situation at the time.
        
         | anonporridge wrote:
         | Are you ignoring dividend reinvestment creating compounding
         | growth?
         | 
         | Even god couldn't beat dollar cost averaging,
         | https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...
        
           | DantesKite wrote:
           | Damn thanks for the great read. This is just what I was
           | looking for.
        
           | qznc wrote:
           | There is an inverse question: If you have a cash windfall you
           | want to invest, all-at-once or split it up?
           | 
           | I have seen a similar analysis (but can't find it right now).
           | Even if you invest at the all time highs, so the market drops
           | right after you buy, you still win with the all-at-once
           | strategy.
           | 
           | The general lesson: Get your money into the market as soon as
           | possible. Maybe more memorable: Time in the market beats
           | timing the market.
        
             | layer8 wrote:
             | Investing in the stock market has the general assumption
             | that, a priori, stocks are more likely to rise than to fall
             | at any given point in time. Under that assumption, the all-
             | at-once strategy has the better expected outcome. Of
             | course, you can be unlucky and end up buying the all-time-
             | high just before a crash. You can avoid that risk by
             | splitting up the investment, at the cost of lowering the
             | overall expected value. So it's more about how you feel
             | about that risk, and whether you feel avoiding it is worth
             | having a somewhat lower expected return.
        
               | doopy1 wrote:
               | Peter Lynch had a pretty interesting talk where he said
               | that on average the stock market has a sizable dip every
               | few 2-3 years, meaning it's lower at the end of that year
               | than it was at the beginning. Generally though, it goes
               | up over time.
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | Right, up to now the maximum interval where the market
               | _didn't_ go up to a new all-time-high is about 15 years,
               | but so far it always ended up reaching a new all-time-
               | high in the end.
        
           | mberning wrote:
           | Buy all the time. Only reliable way to win.
        
             | slaw wrote:
             | Past performance is not indicative of future results. Japan
             | stock market JP225 didn't recover yet from 1990 crash.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Do Japanese people have to buy Japanese stocks just
               | because it's the same country?
        
               | SapporoChris wrote:
               | No, Japanese can invest in other markets using
               | international brokers. I don't know details on the fees
               | and currency conversions. Investing in a foreign exchange
               | is always at a slight disadvantage because of currency
               | conversions and fees.
               | 
               | For a US centric view: https://www.investopedia.com/artic
               | les/investing/032615/how-t...
        
               | id wrote:
               | US stocks are traded on foreign exchanges. Even if you
               | insist on buying on a US exchange, the currency
               | conversion is not very expensive. If you're a buy and
               | hold investor, it won't matter at all.
        
               | tasuki wrote:
               | And yet you often see US people recommending to buy US
               | stocks. There are risks and benefits to buying both
               | domestic and international stocks.
        
               | rubidium wrote:
               | Yea so buy land if you're so paranoid about becoming
               | Japan. It's an island nation with a very unique history.
               | Not a great counterpoint to current US and global
               | economics.
        
               | scrivna wrote:
               | The UK is at more or less the same price as it was in
               | 2000. France same as 2008. Meanwhile SPY is up 2.75x in
               | that period. The US seems to be the anomaly. Value
               | doesn't always go higher. Maybe the USA is special, maybe
               | not.
        
               | digitalnatives wrote:
        
               | lordnacho wrote:
               | Is that with dividends? Watch out because the German DAX
               | actually does have reinvestment in it iirc. Most of the
               | others don't.
        
               | qznc wrote:
               | An index never includes dividends. An index fond might
               | (accumulating) or might not (distributing).
        
               | lordnacho wrote:
               | https://personal-financial.com/2020/11/27/the-dax-and-
               | its-di...
        
               | qznc wrote:
               | Thanks. Learned something today.
        
               | weberer wrote:
               | I'd wager most of that difference is due to the USA's
               | tech industry growth.
        
               | nly wrote:
               | The UK FTSE all share total return index, which accounts
               | for reinvested dividends, is at 8430 today and was at
               | 2870 in May 2000. That's an annualized return of exactly
               | 5%/year
        
               | rwmj wrote:
               | Buying land in Japan isn't a great idea (except to live
               | on it). You have to pay a hefty annual tax on it. Land
               | even with property on it is so often abandoned they have
               | a word for it and many marketplaces where you can buy
               | abandoned land from the tax office.
        
               | argomo wrote:
               | As the saying goes, there are four types of economies:
               | developed, undeveloped, Argentina, and Japan.
        
               | hanniabu wrote:
               | Why Argentina?
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | Argentina's economy is a series of endless crises from
               | the government choosing the worst possible ways to
               | intervene in it at every opportunity. Like a reverse
               | South Korea.
        
               | christophilus wrote:
               | If you invested only in the Nikkei on the way up and on
               | the way down, you still came out fine. The only person
               | who didn't is the person who put all of their savings in
               | at the very top and never bought again.
        
         | newshorts wrote:
         | Don't worry friend, it's about the savings rate, not the
         | savings return.
         | 
         | Just keep putting a little in here and there. Don't put in
         | anything you can't afford to lose and it'll turn out alright
        
           | qeternity wrote:
           | > Don't worry friend, it's about the savings rate, not the
           | savings return.
           | 
           | Yikes, please reconsider your advocacy of this.
           | 
           | As Einstein said: "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of
           | the world."
        
           | nly wrote:
           | If person A invests monthly and achieves a 7%/yr return, how
           | much more does person B have to invest every month to get the
           | same pot after 30 years?
           | 
           | 50% more
        
         | chii wrote:
         | you have to take risk to earn returns. Sometimes that risk
         | actually eventuates, and you have to either keep going, or take
         | the loss.
         | 
         | That's why you must know the time horizon for your investments
         | - if you know you need the money "soon", you cannot actually
         | invest in the stock market.
        
           | bequanna wrote:
           | You have to take _calculated_ risks to earn returns. FOMO at
           | your own risk.
           | 
           | If you are 30 and don't need the money you put in SPY until
           | 70, don't sweat it. You'll be fine.
           | 
           | But let's not pretend blindly taking risk is OK because some
           | return is expected. Time horizon and some relative valuation
           | context is important.
           | 
           | Buying into the stock or housing market at extreme historic
           | levels of valuations like those in late 2021 and now GREATLY
           | reduces your expected return over 5/10 years.
           | 
           | If you don't have the (extremely) long view, expect to lose
           | some sleep watching your net worth over the next couple
           | years.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | srean wrote:
             | > But let's not pretend blindly taking risk is OK because
             | some return is expected.
             | 
             | Exactly. I have seen this idea float around that just
             | because they have taken a risky position they will be able
             | get better rewards. Risk may be necessary for above market
             | rate returns, but it is not sufficient. A proportionate
             | amount of those taking the risk will be cleaned off the
             | amount that was risked. Why do you think its not going to
             | be you ! Of course when you use time effectively or use
             | other hedges one can reduce the exposure.
        
         | thathndude wrote:
         | This is a large part of why I'm feeling so negative about this
         | draw down. In the last 5ish years I paid off my student loans
         | and started banking real cash. I put it in the market and now
         | am down tremendously. Crap timing.
        
       | tracyholmes355 wrote:
        
       | lvl102 wrote:
       | Random thoughts:
       | 
       | (1) People were deeply and extremely risk-averse coming out of
       | the 2008 crisis. And now we are _starting_ to see the other end
       | of that spectrum. However, we are still far from the
       | heights/throes of the dot-com boom. Those were some insane times
       | when nothing even mattered.
       | 
       | (2) But keep in mind, the main driver of global economy is still
       | increasing standard of living and middle class. And that's far
       | from over. We are still roughly 50% into land grab.
       | 
       | (3) If current pace of inflation persists, then you want to be in
       | equities chasing cash flow in enterprises with pricing power.
       | What you don't want is to stay in cash. It appears
       | counterintuitive because of all the things we experienced in 2000
       | and 2008. A vast majority of investors still base investment
       | decisions with those two crises in mind. It's a significant
       | handicap.
        
         | ProjectArcturis wrote:
         | I think the NFT bubble and other crypto stuff is at least as
         | crazy as anything from the dot-com bubble.
        
           | unicornmama wrote:
           | Crazy. But so far has remained isolated from the stock and
           | bond markets.
        
           | TheBigSalad wrote:
           | Sure but if it's all crashes it will have little effect on
           | the economy. In fact, people expect it to crash and will sit
           | through virtually any dump based on the volatile history.
        
         | VHRanger wrote:
         | Yes, extremely risk averse when you see behaviors like
         | GME/crypto maniacs, tech stocks at price to earnings of 50-250
        
         | martincmartin wrote:
         | _If current pace of inflation persists, then you want to be in
         | equities chasing cash flow in enterprises with pricing power.
         | What you don't want is to stay in cash._
         | 
         | And if inflation ebbs, you want the opposite.
         | 
         | Both outcomes are possible. So it's best to hold a well
         | diversified portfolio and not try to time the market. Just
         | rebalance once a year.
        
       | MomoXenosaga wrote:
       | The story of my country has been one of decadence and degeneracy
       | since the 1960s but the 90s were peak Sodom and Gomorrah. I'm
       | glad I experienced it.
        
       | tunesmith wrote:
       | Another thing to look at is the CAPE ratio. Even now, it's still
       | above 30. We've gone from around a 37 to a 32. Mean/median is in
       | the 16-17 range. DotCom crash in 1999 topped out at around 44.
       | 
       | Still a lot of room to fall.
        
         | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
         | The historic average for interest rates is considerably higher
         | than it is right now.
         | 
         | Considering the amount of public debt outstanding - it's
         | extremely unlikely we're returning to those levels of interest
         | rates long-term (short-term I suppose anything can happen).
         | 
         | Interest rates have a huge effect on P/E. I wouldn't expect
         | CAPE to match historic trends if interest rates don't.
        
           | dannyw wrote:
           | 1. Nominal interest rates are pretty normal right now. 3.3%
           | on a 10y, that's not bad in history.
           | 
           | 2. The government's debt is fixed. Only new deficit is on
           | higher rates.
           | 
           | 3. Completely agree, my thesis is that interest rates are
           | going to continue to go up (IMHO 4%, 4.5%)
        
             | runeks wrote:
             | > 2. The government's debt is fixed. Only new deficit is on
             | higher rates.
             | 
             | This is not that relevant because the government is
             | completely dependent on borrowing new money to pay of old
             | debt.
        
             | baq wrote:
             | US government can't afford 4%. Rates will rise until
             | something breaks, but 4% will be transitory if it gets
             | there at all. My bet is things break sooner than that.
        
         | anonporridge wrote:
         | Also known as the Shiller PE ratio,
         | https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe
        
       | known wrote:
        
       | a_c wrote:
       | Can some of you share what are the ways to hedge against tumbling
       | NASDAQ? The article is assuming we swing only a single bat. To me
       | it seems spreading your investment into fixed dollar amount over
       | a period of time is a sensible strategy.
        
         | baq wrote:
         | In this environment? Nothing, just get out. Gold, short term
         | bonds and dollars (UUP).
        
       | vitus wrote:
       | > Buying the dip isn't some secret strategy. Time is the secret
       | strategy.
       | 
       | Ah yes, the good ol' "time in market beats timing the market".
       | 
       | Of course, that assumes that markets trend upwards in the (very)
       | long term. Which... if past performance is any indicator of
       | future performance [0], the past 100 years provide a fairly
       | compelling narrative.
       | 
       | [0] Another mantra: it's not.
        
         | chii wrote:
         | > [0] Another mantra: it's not.
         | 
         | it's the best indicator so far.
        
           | GolfPopper wrote:
           | It's also the same reasoning used by a Thanksgiving Turkey.
           | 
           | The farmer has _always_ come in and given the turkey food, so
           | logically he will continue to do so. And it is true. Until it
           | isn 't. But the cost of that one day when it isn't is very
           | high for the turkey.
        
             | jrumbut wrote:
             | What's the turkey supposed to do? It can either starve
             | itself now or die with a full stomach later.
        
               | epicureanideal wrote:
               | There are some limitations to the metaphor but I think it
               | illustrates the point.
        
               | chii wrote:
               | it doesnt illustrate anything, because the turkey
               | situation assumes that there's a higher power controlling
               | the stock market.
        
               | epicureanideal wrote:
               | I don't think that interpretation of the metaphor is
               | intended. Just that something good can happen many times
               | and be followed unexpectedly and suddenly by something
               | bad.
        
           | tsimionescu wrote:
           | Given that global warming will cause the global economy to
           | contract one way or another within the next 100 years (either
           | we willingly contract to soften the blow, or keep going and
           | producing more greenhouse gases until a massive crash), I
           | really don't think this is the right time to think in these
           | terms.
        
             | chii wrote:
             | Why can't technological advancement stave off climate
             | change damage? Why cant renewables replace fossil fuels,
             | and continue human expansion? Why can't space exploration
             | and settlement be where the future growth occurs?
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | > Why can't technological advancement stave off climate
               | change damage?
               | 
               | What technology in particular could stop the oceans from
               | rising and swallowing much of today's southern
               | coastlines, and what technology in particular could
               | reduce wet-bulb temperatures across most of the world's
               | south below 50C, the point where healthy adult humans
               | with access to infinite water will die of heat stroke?
               | 
               | > Why cant renewables replace fossil fuels, and continue
               | human expansion?
               | 
               | Because renewables are not reliable, rely on rare metals,
               | and can't replace the huge amount of energy produced by
               | oil. Someone was making a calculation the other day that
               | replacing the entire fleet of vehicles in the USA with
               | electrical cars would require doubling the electricity
               | production of the states. Do you really think that's
               | possible in 50 years, while also replacing all gas and
               | coal plants with renewables?
               | 
               | Also, there are huge areas of industry that use oil or
               | natural gas for many reasons other than energy -
               | plastics, synthesizing NH3 for fertilizer and other uses.
               | 
               | > Why can't space exploration and settlement be where the
               | future growth occurs?
               | 
               | Because we are nowhere near having the technological
               | advancement needed for space settlement that would do
               | anything other than cost resources. Perhaps there is some
               | small chance of having a research base on Mars or the
               | Moon within the next 50 years, akin to the ISS, but ideas
               | of "colonizing Mars" are beyond sci-fi at this point. We
               | couldn't even colonize Antarctica with current
               | technology.
               | 
               | Besides, there's nothing on Mars that we don't have much
               | more easily accessible on Earth - no rare metals, no crop
               | fields, no spices, no native workers we could import as
               | slaves, no cotton or anything that could even conceivably
               | resemble the existing reasons for colonization. And lest
               | you think anything else, there is nothing we can
               | conceivably do to the Earth that would make it anywhere
               | near as inhospitable as Mars. Even the worse possible
               | consequences of a Nuclear War would not leave Earth as
               | radioactive, poisonous, cold, or otherwise inhospitable
               | as Mars is today.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | No technology can work around limits given by
               | thermodynamics.
        
               | chii wrote:
               | We are far from the limits of thermodynamics. You'd have
               | to wait till nearer to the heat death of the universe for
               | that to have an effect on the economy.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Define far. Gasoline engines eg are within 2x of Carnot
               | limit. Not much room for improvement.
        
               | chii wrote:
               | > Not much room for improvement.
               | 
               | Only for gasoline engines. And the efficiency limit isn't
               | the limit of possible sources of energy for work. Future
               | engines could be electric, and the power source could be
               | fusion.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | fusion takes is to a straight line to exceeding capacity
               | of the planet to radiate waste heat fast enough to keep
               | it habitable. free energy is self destruction. still
               | better than fossil fuels, though.
               | 
               | electric engines require batteries and batteries are
               | super duper enviromentally expensive to make at scales
               | needed right now, let alone the 10y forward predictions.
        
               | milkytron wrote:
               | Maybe those things can happen. But it's a race against
               | time and we don't seem to be making progress on those
               | fronts as much as we may need to.
        
               | chii wrote:
               | 10 years ago, no one would predict that the cost of solar
               | would drop by 80%-90%. There's still a lot of untapped
               | potential in other forms of renewables too. The current
               | bottleneck of batteries might be solved, i'm sure, in the
               | near future.
               | 
               | There's a lot of pessimism among the media. I, for one,
               | am hopeful.
        
               | auggierose wrote:
               | Because there are still too many people using Windows.
        
             | bushbaba wrote:
             | Wouldn't global warming increase asset price in many areas.
             | 
             | Food will be more expensive. Housing more expensive.
             | 
             | Green Energy is more expensive. Just look at Germany and
             | California electrical rates.
             | 
             | I don't see how it'll reduce prices
        
               | qznc wrote:
               | Green energy itself is cheap. What makes energy expensive
               | in Germany is that we need to fall back on natural gas
               | energy so often.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | Global warming is extremely likely to lead to large areas
               | that are well populated today becoming uninhabitable in
               | the next 100 years - either through oceans rising or
               | through extreme heat. This will likely lead to huge
               | migrant crises - not hundreds of thousands, but tens of
               | millions leaving places like Bangladesh. This in turn is
               | very likely to lead to wars and other forms of extreme
               | events. A world at war is very likely to stop growing
               | economically, and we may not be able to require from a
               | nuclear war the way we did after WW2.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Another way to look at it is that fossil fuels don't have
               | externalities priced in correctly. Nuclear is a safety
               | and regulatory mess.
        
             | PeterisP wrote:
             | I believe the latest IPCC report on climate change expected
             | outcome even for the worst scenario had a noticeable
             | _decrease in the rate of growth_ of the global economy -
             | not a contraction, just slower growth. We do not seem to be
             | on track for a global contraction of economy, not even in
             | the face of climate change.
             | 
             | And economic growth is already (though not that recently)
             | somewhat decoupled from growth in greenhouse gas emission,
             | so any actions taken to reduce climate consequences do not
             | have to be at the cost of stopping global growth, much less
             | intentionally contracting global economy; and in fact the
             | only actions likely to be taken in practice are those which
             | don't stop economic growth - the general population,
             | especially those in poorer countries (even those directly
             | harmed by climate change) will not accept that cost.
        
               | tsimionescu wrote:
               | > I believe the latest IPCC report on climate change
               | expected outcome even for the worst scenario had a
               | noticeable decrease in the rate of growth of the global
               | economy - not a contraction, just slower growth. We do
               | not seem to be on track for a global contraction of
               | economy, not even in the face of climate change.
               | 
               | The reports do talk about economic contraction after the
               | year 2050 if we don't reach the 2 C temperature goals.
               | They also don't model the likely resource wars that will
               | happen if large parts of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan,
               | Mexico etc will become uninhabitable by the end of the
               | century, due to rising temperatures and water levels.
               | 
               | > And economic growth is already (though not that
               | recently) somewhat decoupled from growth in greenhouse
               | gas emission, so any actions taken to reduce climate
               | consequences do not have to be at the cost of stopping
               | global growth, much less intentionally contracting global
               | economy
               | 
               | The IPCC reports says that GHG emissions increase is
               | mostly proportional to GDP increase throughout all
               | regions, with a significant, though smaller, contribution
               | from population increase. It's also notable that GHG
               | emissions continue to increase - we are not anywhere near
               | a plan for net 0, and nothing suggests so far that we are
               | even likely to start reducing GHG emissions, globally or
               | even in any particular region.
        
         | chewz wrote:
         | > Ah yes, the good ol' "time in market beats timing the market"
         | 
         | > Of course, that assumes that markets trend upwards
         | 
         | Market will trend upward only with positive demographics...
         | Next 100 years might be rather disapointing for passive
         | investing and "time in the market" types.
        
         | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
         | > the past 100 years provide a fairly compelling narrative.
         | 
         | In the US. The Nikkei is down over 25% from its peak _32 years
         | ago_.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | ivanche wrote:
           | And before the peak it was the greatest asset bubble of all
           | time! "A $100,000 investment in Japanese large cap stocks in
           | 1970 would have turned into $5.7 million by 1989." [0]
           | 
           | [0] https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2016/09/the-greatest-
           | bubble...
        
             | Gatsky wrote:
             | Key point. Of course it is possible to pay too much for
             | something and never make any money.
        
           | FredPret wrote:
           | Japan and the US got into a trade war; it's a special
           | situation for them. Absent getting a bloody nose from an
           | economic giant, they would have done well
        
             | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
             | > Absent getting a bloody nose from an economic giant, they
             | would have done well
             | 
             | I don't know any economic historian with expertise in Japan
             | who believes that.
             | 
             | Their bubble basically puts all other bubbles to shame. The
             | land under the Imperial Palace _really was_ worth more than
             | all the real estate in California at the peak. Japan was
             | destined to have an epic crash of equal proportions to the
             | size of their bubble, any US actions notwithstanding.
        
           | icelancer wrote:
           | Yep. No one in the 1970s and early 1980s would believe that
           | Japan would be in the position they're in now.
           | 
           | Sounds a lot like people examining only post-WW2 markets in
           | the United States during a period of historic national
           | expansion and growth and thinking they'll continue on
           | average.
           | 
           | The next few decades have very different social and economic
           | considerations of the past few decades, so...
        
             | manquer wrote:
             | Why though ? Their 70-80s boom was always going to be short
             | lived, geographically they are resource poor as well.
             | 
             | The demographics of Japan weren't a sudden change or
             | surprise their population is always been heading in this
             | direction , coupled with their strong anti immigration
             | culture and barriers to entry. It was bound to happen
             | sooner or later .
             | 
             | It is extremely unlikely any one company /market can keep
             | ahead of every single tech /product evolution cycle and
             | always be the best .
             | 
             | While it is hard to guess correctly when that will happen
             | as it did in 90s , but it will always inevitable sooner or
             | later .
             | 
             | ----
             | 
             | The growth of U.S. economy post ww2 and importantly post
             | Bretton woods have been phenomenal is very true, however
             | were already a powerhouse , the preceding 300 hundred years
             | have also been explosive growth catching one wave after
             | after .
             | 
             | Largely thanks to immigration of some form or other .
             | 
             | Modern America has always been built on the backs and hard-
             | work of immigration. First European settlers fleeing
             | stagnant economies, actual slavery for a while, economic
             | slavery? of poor driven by famine or lack of opportunity
             | later like the Irish wave or Chinese etc, then those
             | affected by various wars, and most recently top talent from
             | most countries in the world .
             | 
             | It has always been exploitative even now it is , most
             | immigrants legal or illegal are paid less than their peers
             | for example
             | 
             | Illegal immigration is more well known on how they are paid
             | less, even In legal work visas like say H1B changing
             | companies is hard because out of work even for a week you
             | to leave the country immediately, changing employers also
             | affects the Permanent residency qualifications, so people
             | on those visas move jobs less, on average get 10-20% less
             | and have lesser negotiating power, companies know this and
             | use those visas as cost saving technique.
             | 
             | Despite all the problems around immigration, U.S. still
             | remains the country most open to immigration , few
             | countries come close to the volume of immigration legal and
             | illegal U.S. supports, and path to citizenship .
             | 
             | Japan is other end of the spectrum in terms of immigration,
             | which for the economy is a big problem because of such
             | aging population.
        
           | trashtester wrote:
           | Yet, when including dividends (reinvested), the annualized
           | return from 1990 to 2021 was 1.765%, (in Yen, adjusted for
           | Japanese CPI).
           | 
           | https://dqydj.com/nikkei-return-calculator/
        
         | anonporridge wrote:
         | If the measuring stick you use is getting shorter every year by
         | design (monetary expansion/inflation) then you can be quite
         | certain that the market will trend upwards for as long as you
         | use that unit of measure.
        
           | vitus wrote:
           | S&P 500 growth has historically outpaced inflation by 6-7%
           | annualized over the ~65 years of its existence. That cannot
           | be explained solely due to central bank policy and/or
           | inflation. Naive extrapolation would posit that keeping your
           | money in this index would continue to stay far ahead of
           | inflation given sufficiently long horizons [0].
           | 
           | If your goal is simply to keep up with inflation, then buy I
           | bonds.
           | 
           | [0] The aphorism that comes to mind here is that "the markets
           | can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent".
        
             | depingus wrote:
             | I bonds are great right now. But you can only purchase
             | $10,000 per year ($15,000 if you finagle your taxes right).
             | I wish my IRA had an I bonds-like product I could invest
             | in.
        
         | Kon-Peki wrote:
         | > Ah yes, the good ol' "time in market beats timing the
         | market".
         | 
         | In the context of this article, buying the dip is a form of
         | timing the market.
         | 
         | Consider instead the effect of time in market via the standard
         | 401k model: You buy $250 of QQQ at the opening price on the 5th
         | trading day of _every single month_ , and you start in April of
         | 2000 - the first month after that QQQ high mentioned in the
         | article.
         | 
         | By January of 2004, you have a positive total return (which
         | sucks). Your total return stays at less than ~20% all the way
         | until 2006 (which sucks). You would get hit hard again in 2008,
         | but by mid-2009 you are back to being positive. You hit a 100%
         | return in 2013 (that took a really long time!). The next
         | doubling is 2017 and the next is in 2020. In November 2021,you
         | are sitting at very close to a 600% total return, but as of
         | right now it is back down to ~450%.
         | 
         | Your $250 per month totals ~$66k and has a present value of
         | ~$360k. That really isn't so bad for being the worst case
         | scenario the author could find ;)
         | 
         | PS - this does not consider dividend reinvestment, but QQQ
         | doesn't pay much in the way of dividends.
        
         | kzrdude wrote:
         | Past 100 years also tell us that there will be world wars,
         | empires will go bust and some nations/people will be uprooted
         | and have to migrate. That's a lot of uncertainty to bear, of
         | course, and history does not predict what happens in the
         | future. It just tells us something will hit us and we probably
         | won't see it coming (paraphrasing Dan Carlin).
        
       | StanislavPetrov wrote:
       | > Buying the dip isn't some secret strategy. Time is the secret
       | strategy.
       | 
       | There is a Dutch guy out there with some rotted tulips who begs
       | to differ.
        
         | chii wrote:
         | when they say buy the dip, they refer to buying the stock
         | market index (like S&P), not individual stocks like a tulip.
        
           | xeromal wrote:
           | I think their analogy is that your investment in the
           | Prussian/Holy Roman Empire/Carthage stock market can still
           | end up ruined regardless of time.
        
             | chii wrote:
             | And yes, that's true. Geographic concentration is a real
             | risk.
             | 
             | if you purchased a world wide index, you will not suffer
             | from such risk.
        
               | xeromal wrote:
               | Yeah, that definitely is the best way barring the
               | existence of aliens. :)
        
               | grey-area wrote:
               | World indexes are 50% American stocks, they are not as
               | diversified as you think. They're also vulnerable to mass
               | panic during a crash.
        
               | pertymcpert wrote:
               | 50% American sounds good to me though? And of course a
               | global financial crisis is expected to hit global stocks.
               | That's completely fine.
        
               | barefeg wrote:
               | Dinosaurs beg to differ
        
       | adam_arthur wrote:
       | If interest rates continue to increase, the market is in for a
       | very rough time.
       | 
       | COST is about 40 PE right now which implies 2.5% trailing yield.
       | You can get 3.1% on a 10y treasury risk free right now.
       | 
       | Of course equities have growth potential, but also risk,
       | typically the spread between risk free rate and equity yields is
       | much higher.
       | 
       | Plenty of 30-40 PE companies at index level with close to 0
       | growth. Companies like NET still at 30x sales.
       | 
       | If inflation persists and the 10y runs to even 3.5-4%, could be
       | looking at close to 50% downside. However there are signs that
       | the consumer is likely to collapse within the next 6 months,
       | which should lead to disinflation, but also likely an earnings
       | recession
        
         | mercy_dude wrote:
         | > You can get 3.1% on a 10y treasury risk free right now
         | 
         | I am a noob of how yields work and the math behind the 2.5% . I
         | don't buy treasury directly but through VUSTX and VUTY. I am
         | actually DOWN, not up. At least that's what my Schwab portal
         | shows. I have COST on the other hand, bought prepandemic. I am
         | up at least 20%.
        
           | dannyw wrote:
           | The yield is for new buyers. Your bonds, bought when yield
           | are lower, is worth less.
        
             | mercy_dude wrote:
             | OK, so it could happen if I buy now it would be worth even
             | less due to yields go higher which seems to be the trend.
        
               | adam_arthur wrote:
               | The market value of a bond will decrease, but the yield
               | at purchase is locked in. But bond funds are different
               | because they are constantly rolling money into new bonds,
               | rather than just buying and holding a given set of bonds.
        
               | srean wrote:
               | That depends on whether you want to sell your bonds or
               | hold on to them and enjoy the coupon payments. If its the
               | latter the falling price of the bond is not relevant to
               | you. You can still get hurt by inflation, default,
               | changes in tax laws etc. If you have the spare cash, you
               | could buy the older bond issues on the dips induced by
               | rising interest rates. That's a pretty decent strategy
               | because these old bonds are those that are going to
               | mature sooner, lower the time left, less sensitive are
               | their resale value to further interest rate hikes. This
               | leaves you with the option of selling them without much
               | financial harm in case you are in a situation that you
               | have to.
        
           | throwaway2037 wrote:
           | Tip: Don't buy bond funds (mutual and ETFs). Buy the bonds
           | directly, then hold to maturity. This will give you the
           | yield-to-maturity that you are seeking.
        
           | adam_arthur wrote:
           | The math is a 100 PE implies a 1% yield. The company could
           | distribute 1% of its value each year to the shareholders in
           | perpetuity. Many started using FCF and PS ratios in recent
           | years, but often this hides the actual profitability of the
           | business. For example, FCF measures typically do not add back
           | equity compensation.. which is obviously highly misleading
           | for tech companies that issue a lot of stock
           | 
           | If a 100 PE company doubles earnings, they will yield 1%,
           | then 2% etc. Of course if they don't pay dividends then this
           | yield is "theoretical", but its the fundamental basis of how
           | to price equities.
           | 
           | Coke (KO) which is a fairly stagnant company is at a 30 PE,
           | while GOOG is at 20. It seems to me that most fund managers
           | these days haven't lived in a time where valuation matters...
           | everything is vastly mispriced for the most part. There are
           | pockets of fair value though, but buying a broad index is a
           | pretty bad idea right now, IMO.
           | 
           | In terms of bonds, they have a market value, but the yield is
           | guaranteed (assuming the issuer doesn't default). If you buy
           | a 1yr bond yielding 3%, and the issuer doesn't default, you
           | will get a 3% return by the end of the next year. It doesn't
           | work the same for bond funds, but this is how it works for
           | individual bonds
        
             | MuffinFlavored wrote:
             | you wouldn't buy an S&P509 ETF until at least how much of a
             | pullback, 30%?
        
         | nly wrote:
         | Companies like COST can increase the prices of their goods and
         | services to maintain margin during inflationary periods (where
         | their own costs go up).
         | 
         | With your government bond you're at the mercy of the Fed
        
           | adam_arthur wrote:
           | They can also lose earnings if the consumer weakens, which
           | looks pretty likely to me, given consumer credit data.
           | 
           | https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CCLACBW027SBOG
        
         | icelancer wrote:
         | >> Plenty of 30-40 PE companies at index level with close to 0
         | growth. Companies like NET still at 30x sales.
         | 
         | This is the scariest thing to me that very few are discussing.
         | Corporate debt is either toxic or nearing it based on the
         | implications of your statement (which I believe to be
         | accurate).
        
       | 300bps wrote:
       | The Federal Reserve has taken on $9 trillion onto their balance
       | sheet to flood the economy with money.
       | 
       | https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...
       | 
       | They've lowered short-term interest rates to effectively 0 and
       | kept them there for quite a number of years.
       | 
       | Federal and State governments have flooded the economy with
       | stimulus.
       | 
       | There is so much money that has been injected into the economy
       | that it is no wonder that every asset has gone up so much. It is
       | no wonder we have such high inflation. The trick now will be to
       | stop it before we have a wage-price spiral where employees demand
       | higher wages to compensate for higher prices which leads to even
       | higher prices.
       | 
       | Expect the Fed now to be raising interest rates, taking $47.5
       | billion out of the economy per month starting in June and then
       | $95 billion per month starting in September.
       | 
       | https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pressreleases/mone...
       | 
       | I think what's coming is going to look at lot more like the
       | dotcom bust than it will 2008. So I think the article's caution
       | on buying dips this time around is warranted.
        
         | kmonsen wrote:
         | I honestly think that's not the main reason we have inflation
         | now. Since every country in the world is seeing similar
         | inflation I would think it's supply side and not something any
         | central bank can fight.
         | 
         | I've always been Keynesian, but it faces the same problem as
         | everything else, you need to be able to predict the future to
         | do it well.
        
           | Tiktaalik wrote:
           | Every other country did what the Fed did for the same reason:
           | We've experienced (and are still experiencing) a once a
           | century global pandemic. The measures to limit pandemic
           | deaths would have completely destroyed the economy had the
           | governments and their associated banks not taken the measures
           | they took to support people during this difficult time.
           | 
           | It's not the Feds fault, it's the pandemic.
        
             | benjaminwootton wrote:
             | There is still considerable debate if those measures were
             | actually effective. Did closing down entire industries,
             | closing borders, making 20 year olds WFH etc really move
             | the needle on Covid deaths in retrospect?
             | 
             | And even if it did, was it ethical, fair and is it a
             | reasonable price to damage the economy and life prospects
             | of hundreds of millions of young people who weren't at
             | statistical risk?
             | 
             | Its important because it means the current and future mess
             | is down to bad science and politics and not an act of god.
        
               | icelancer wrote:
               | > There is still considerable debate if those measures
               | were actually effective.
               | 
               | Not really. I agree with the thrust of your post but
               | there is definitely no considerable debate being had on
               | this topic, because Near-Zero COVID is the only
               | acceptable policy, and saving lives at any cost along
               | with it.
        
               | jokethrowaway wrote:
               | If you're the Chinese Communist party, that's it.
               | 
               | I'm not willing to ruin my life on the chance some 90
               | years old may catch the flu and die. If they're worried
               | about COVID they can isolate.
        
               | icelancer wrote:
               | I happen to agree with you. Unfortunately, that debate
               | isn't allowed to happen in the US. Or most modern
               | countries.
        
               | kmonsen wrote:
               | Not sure what you mean here. In the U.S. there has been
               | considerable debate, vaccines are free, safe and
               | available same day. Finally we have given up on almost
               | all safety measures as long as the healthcare system can
               | handle the load.
               | 
               | Can you be specific in the change you want or which
               | debate isn't allowed?
        
               | Tiktaalik wrote:
               | The measures were certainly very effective under the
               | metric of limiting deaths.
               | 
               | British Columbia and New Zealand have about the same
               | population, both are rich jurisdictions. BC was
               | relatively open (compared to other Canadian provinces)
               | while NZ was more locked down. BC has dramatically more
               | deaths than NZ.
               | 
               | And then if you compare BC, which was more locked down
               | than various US states, BC had less deaths than them.
               | 
               | It seems pretty clear to me that the "lock downs" worked.
               | 
               | (putting "lockdowns" in scare quotes here because really
               | the only thing BCians were prevented from doing was going
               | to restaurants and bars. You could still go to the
               | grocery store and home depot etc with a mask on)
               | 
               | If you have some other metric well I dunno, but I don't
               | think there's any better metric than deaths avoided.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | jokethrowaway wrote:
             | Thanks to you authoritarians deciding for us, we will never
             | know for sure. Comparing countries with similar densities
             | (like Sweden and Finland) and different COVID policies
             | seems to point out to a resounding no. Most likely we would
             | have had a few more mostly elderly deaths, we won't have
             | ruined the mental health of a generation and we won't have
             | enriched big pharma even more.
             | 
             | Even with the pandemic going on it would have been better
             | to suffer during the pandemic than cause a recession. The
             | same people who were hit by lockdowns would be hit 10 times
             | worse by a recession.
        
               | Tiktaalik wrote:
               | What recession?
               | 
               | Employment numbers in my jurisdiction are back to normal
               | and thanks to the sort of government intervention we're
               | talking about very few companies went out of business.
               | Where I live everything is pretty much "back to normal."
               | 
               | The government successfully shut down big parts of the
               | economy, kept people alive, and avoided companies going
               | out of business. They did it.
               | 
               | If there is any recession, and it remains to be seen if
               | there will be, it won't be because of local factors, but
               | rather because goings on in China and supply issues
               | stemming from our over-reliance on their manufacturing.
        
           | 300bps wrote:
           | Fed balance sheet is about $9 trillion.
           | 
           | This article gives details on $5 trillion in government
           | stimulus.
           | 
           | https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/03/11/us/how-
           | covid-...
           | 
           | To put those numbers in perspective, the market cap of the
           | entire S&P 500 is about $40 trillion.
           | 
           | I hear what you're saying about supply-side inflation but you
           | don't think flooding the economy with so much unearned money
           | might be driving up demand a bit?
           | 
           | A beach town near me, I paid $4,000 for a week to stay there
           | two years ago. This year, an equivalent house is $15,000 per
           | week. So now I'm driving six hours away to get a house for
           | $10,000 per week.
           | 
           | When people make $20,000 per month in stock
           | market/cryptocurrency gains, it starts driving up demand for
           | everything dramatically.
        
             | kmonsen wrote:
             | Oh I'm not saying the feed is not causing inflation at all.
             | I think the primary driver is supply side, but clearly
             | there is more going on.
             | 
             | And that I'm not so sure anymore if federal banks are net
             | positive.
        
             | leehuffman wrote:
             | Love your relatively simple (that's a compliment - I'm sure
             | you can go deeper) yet 100% accurate (IMO) take on this
             | topic.
             | 
             | Just want to mention that we shouldn't forget that the
             | fed's balance sheet ballooning started with the 2008
             | crisis. If I recall correctly, they had _just_ started to
             | lightly unload all the things they gobbled up like fiends
             | during that period before COVID smacked. Of course they
             | hard turned 180 degrees and got on the throttle again,
             | going in to stabilize the usual markets along with new
             | additions people never would have anticipated they'd touch,
             | ever.
             | 
             | I guess my point is this has been very very long running
             | and is another data point that says (to me) it's not just a
             | supply side issue that's driving what we're seeing.
        
             | refurb wrote:
             | They blamed inflation in the 1970's on supply side issues
             | as well. Sure, the oil embargo contributed to price
             | increases, but looking back, it was pretty clear it was fed
             | monetary policy that drove most of it. And monetary policy
             | by Volker that fixed it.
             | 
             | No different today. Massively expand the money supply and
             | you (eventually) get inflation. Add in a few supply issues
             | and you amplify the problem. But I agree with you that
             | without the massive monetary expansion, the supply issues
             | would be minor blips.
        
               | kmonsen wrote:
               | That's the problem, in bad times you pour money into the
               | market either directly or with interest rates. Then I'm
               | good times the opposite is supposed to happen. But this
               | time the good times never arrived and now we are trying
               | to fix it in the middle of a war, pandemic and massive
               | supply shock, including for energy. It's too easy to get
               | it wrong and make the problem bigger.
        
               | refurb wrote:
               | The situation we're in now is pretty close to what some
               | people were warning about back in 2008 when the feds
               | decided on their massive monetary expansion.
               | 
               | By the time inflation starts to heat up (it doesn't
               | happen right away), there will be immense pressure to
               | delay any monetary contraction for fear of dampening
               | economic growth. Then Covid hit and the economy was
               | goosed with another massive injection while everyone
               | worried about a recession.
               | 
               | Then once inflation starts it's too damn late to put the
               | genie back in the bottle so you just spend the next 5-10
               | years trying to get it under control while not entirely
               | tanking the economy.
        
               | icelancer wrote:
               | >> Then I'm good times the opposite is supposed to
               | happen. But this time the good times never arrived and
               | now we are trying to fix it in the middle of a war,
               | pandemic and massive supply shock, including for energy.
               | It's too easy to get it wrong and make the problem
               | bigger.
               | 
               | Good times happened recently, and they've happened in the
               | past. But no POTUS ever wants rates to go up and money to
               | be tightened under their watch, no matter what the
               | situation is.
               | 
               | We're doomed to a bust/boom cycle, because it's all we
               | can tolerate. We can't tolerate minor pain or minor
               | corrections if they're preventative. We can only tolerate
               | unavoidable catastrophe.
        
               | landemva wrote:
               | >>> the good times never arrived
               | 
               | First two years of Trump were economically pretty good.
               | Low unemployment - particularly for minorities. The Fed
               | was raising rates!
        
               | kmonsen wrote:
               | Mostly we spent it on tax cuts for the rich instead. You
               | don't cut taxes in good times, that more than offset the
               | minor rate hikes.
        
               | landemva wrote:
               | Spent what? I don't see economic growth as a reason to
               | expand government spending, though many disagree.
               | 
               | The economy was good, unemployment was low, rates were
               | rising.
               | 
               | USA was still spending it's treasure protecting
               | Afghanistan poppy fields.
        
               | kmonsen wrote:
               | Right, so the theory is that in good times you put on the
               | brakes so there is something in the tank you can spend
               | during bad times. Spending can take many forms, but the
               | traditional ones are lower interest rates and tax cuts.
               | 
               | The issue is that we lowered taxes significantly in the
               | middle of good times. It's like feeding ice cream to kids
               | already on a sugar high.
               | 
               | There is no room to lower taxes anymore as we are already
               | running a significant deficit, and there is a recession
               | coming where we are going to need to juice the economy.
        
               | kortilla wrote:
               | This is simplistic thinking in line with the "what if the
               | government budget was a household budget" memes that
               | float around.
               | 
               | > theory is that in good times you put on the brakes so
               | there is something in the tank you can spend during bad
               | times
               | 
               | The government is not a squirrel with acorns. It can
               | spend during both good and bad times, as the past 30+
               | years have shown. The only backpressure is inflation.
               | Nobody seems to actually care about debt, despite the
               | hand wringing.
               | 
               | > There is no room to lower taxes anymore as we are
               | already running a significant deficit, and there is a
               | recession coming where we are going to need to juice the
               | economy.
               | 
               | Yes there is, they just adjust the tax rates down
               | further. There is no floor other than zero.
        
               | kmonsen wrote:
               | I'm not talking about rubbing the country like a
               | household, still there are considerable reasons to do
               | some accounting.
               | 
               | 1. Even the most spend willing economists agree there is
               | some limit to debt that is sustainable. It's just way
               | higher than what most are comfortable with.
               | 
               | 2. There is also political/popular will. If this is not
               | there it doesn't matter what makes economical sense. In
               | the U.S. we are firmly against that.
               | 
               | 3. About that inflation ...
        
               | landemva wrote:
               | Biden raised taxes.
               | 
               | Decades of deficit spending demonstrate the feds can
               | print adequate amounts of fiat currency, and issue debt,
               | to continue to bail out the banksters, bail out foreign
               | cruise line owners, and attempt to police the world and
               | police outer space. USA could drop the federal personal
               | income tax and continue on with the charade.
        
               | galaxyLogic wrote:
               | Tax-cuts to the rich meant they had more money to invest
               | in stock-market. And the tax-cuts to the corporations
               | meant they made more profits which made them a more
               | attractive target for stock-investors. Both effects meant
               | the stock-market went higher and higher. And so here we
               | are stock market doesn't seem to be going up because
               | there are no new tax-cuts to the rich.
               | 
               | There is inflation which is bad for the poor people. But
               | people have work and are getting paid. That increases
               | demand which causes inflation. Would it be better if
               | people did not have money to buy anything, which would
               | cause prices to go down?
               | 
               | If supply-side could flex then inflation would not
               | happen, but it can not because of pandemic which is still
               | closing up China and Russia whose oil is out of the
               | market for many would be buyers, and Ukraine whose wheat
               | is not reaching world markets.
               | 
               | Trying to blame Biden and Fed for the inflation is
               | Monday-morning-quarter-backing. For anybody who blames
               | them I would like to say: Are you seriously asking us to
               | believe that if you had been elected president of USA, or
               | of Fed, things would be so much better now?
        
           | vmception wrote:
           | The US fed is the biggest whale in the whole market
           | 
           | And every major economic union is duplicating what the fed
           | does
           | 
           | Even if the second part wasn't true, the first part would
           | cause inflation in those economic unions
           | 
           | It buys bonds from ANY bondholder indiscriminantly. It didn't
           | matter where they are, they get new dollars, and dilute the
           | value of their area.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | john_moscow wrote:
         | This is a good point, but there is a counter-argument as well.
         | America is currently divided into the rank-and-file class vs.
         | the stockholder class. The governments' actions so far have
         | been heavily benefitting the latter. Workers get a $1000
         | cheque, stockholders get a 20% net worth increase. Mom'n'pop
         | shop closes due to lockdowns, Walmart eats up their niche due
         | to being exempt.
         | 
         | Taking too much money out of the economy at this point would
         | harm the interests of the stockholder class, so they would try
         | to do as little of it as possible. Of course, that would only
         | deepen the divide and push Gen Z into accepting more socialist
         | demagoguery, but the short-term stock market dip might be
         | somewhat less than in the dotcom times.
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | Workers (well, unemployed ones) got $2400 a month. "We just
           | got a $2000 check" is a meme from people who weren't
           | unemployed and are looking for more free money.
        
             | phendrenad2 wrote:
             | What percentage of the population is unemployed?
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | That's not the question, the question is what the
               | percentage was in 2020.
               | 
               | People who were still working got 1. PPP loans 2. support
               | from their customers still being able to buy things.
        
       | daenz wrote:
       | >Why has this strategy been so profitable and painless? Well,
       | because stocks have been in a bull market for thirteen years.
       | 
       | If "buy the dip" works for a bull market, does "short the peak"
       | work for a bear market?
        
         | PragmaticPulp wrote:
         | Shorting the peak always works, just as buying the dip always
         | works.
         | 
         | The challenge is identifying the peaks and dips. They're only
         | obvious in retrospect.
         | 
         | Buying perceived dips is easier than shorting perceived peaks
         | because the stock market tends to go up over time.
        
         | __john wrote:
         | The technical expression is "buy the dip, short the rip".
        
         | daniel-cussen wrote:
         | I would say so.
         | 
         | I predicted this bull-to-bear market transition to the day (it
         | started on Sep 27 when the Fed announced rate hikes) and yeah,
         | everything's the opposite.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | kmonsen wrote:
         | The problem is of course we don't know how long bull or bear
         | market will last.
         | 
         | If I was a betting man I would short everything I guess, but
         | I'm not. I'm also sure there are others with way more knowledge
         | on when it's going to turn around.
        
           | hammock wrote:
           | > If I was a betting man I would short everything
           | 
           | On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone
           | drops to zero
        
             | kmonsen wrote:
             | But then surely it doesn't matter. To short everything you
             | have to hope it gets worse, but not nuclear war worse. Like
             | just so bad that you can earn a ton of money, but not so
             | bad that the money is useless. Or so bad that the fed
             | decides to intervene as well.
        
       | mwattsun wrote:
       | I lived through the dot-com crash and got out safely after
       | hearing something so ludicrous that I had to ask myself "How
       | insane does this industry have to be for someone to think they
       | can build a high growth internet company out of home cement
       | delivery?" My memory may be playing tricks, but it was something
       | like that.
       | 
       | After 2008 I became interested with crashes throughout history.
       | There are so many fascinating little details that added up to one
       | giant mess.
        
         | sharkweek wrote:
         | Have you seen the movie Margin Call?
         | 
         | There's a great scene where the CEO of a Goldman-style bank is
         | recapping the last 100+ years of global financial collapses and
         | he mentions, "we just can't help ourselves."
         | 
         | https://youtu.be/LtFyP0qy9XU
         | 
         | One of the best banking movies I've ever seen. Jeremy Irons
         | absolutely nails his role.
        
           | mwattsun wrote:
           | I watched on your recommendation and it's a damn fine movie.
           | Thanks.
        
           | na85 wrote:
           | I just watched that a few weeks ago. Great movie, but to be
           | honest I thought Jeremy Irons was unconvincing and played the
           | role poorly/was poorly cast.
        
             | michannne wrote:
             | Felt the opposite, he really exuded that cold-and-carefree-
             | but-wise archetype I'd expect from a mid-2000s cocky hedge
             | fund manager who got themselves into that position in the
             | first place.
        
               | headmelted wrote:
               | The character was based on Dick Fuld, which if you look
               | at any interviews with him from that time you can kind of
               | see where the inspiration came from.
        
               | sharkweek wrote:
               | The scene in the boardroom where the analyst says, "well,
               | that's where it becomes more of a projection" then looks
               | sheepishly over at the two VPs.
               | 
               | I love the way Irons' character catches the glance and
               | says, "you're speaking to me Mr. Sullivan."
        
           | throwaway_1928 wrote:
           | Will Emerson: Jesus, Seth. Listen, if you really wanna do
           | this with your life you have to believe you're necessary and
           | you are. People wanna live like this in their cars and big
           | f-in' houses they can't even pay for, then you're necessary.
           | The only reason that they all get to continue living like
           | kings is cause we got our fingers on the scales in their
           | favor. I take my hand off and then the whole world gets
           | really f-in' fair really f-in' quickly and nobody actually
           | wants that. They say they do but they don't. They want what
           | we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play
           | innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from.
           | Well, thats more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow, so f
           | em. F normal people. You know, the funny thing is, tomorrow
           | if all of this goes t-s up they're gonna crucify us for being
           | too reckless but if we're wrong, and everything gets back on
           | track? Well then, the same people are gonna laugh till they
           | p-ss their pants cause we're gonna all look like the biggest
           | p-ssies God ever let through the door.
           | 
           | Seth Bregman: Do you think we're gonna be wrong?
           | 
           | Will Emerson: [long pause] No, they're all f-d.
           | 
           | (edited for language)
        
             | iplist wrote:
             | Welcome to this shiny new thing, called the internet, where
             | you're allowed to say fuck!
        
             | candiodari wrote:
             | Which illustrates the real point: "what we have to give
             | them" is debt. Can we grow debt from this point forward?
             | 
             | In the short term: I don't see what the problem is with
             | growing debt at this point.
             | 
             | Oh and, btw, the FED will never repay its balance sheet.
             | It's just not going to happen, ever, under any
             | circumstances.
             | 
             | Which gets me to my, seemingly rather unique, position:
             | this is not a financial crisis (at least not yet). There's
             | problems yes, but there's also a lot of money to solve
             | them. Which means they will get solved, quickly. And just
             | because we're recovering from the mother of all supply
             | crunches and the numbers are going down to readjust, we see
             | a lot of models crying "recession". There is no real
             | recession. There's a recession in money paid for things.
             | There's no recession in physical goods being distributed,
             | quite the opposite. People aren't suddenly vastly more
             | indebted (like in 2008) than they can be.
             | 
             | There was such a big problem with supply and demand that
             | when we all collectively decided to take away to artificial
             | roadblocks, which turned out to be the point some idiot
             | Russian decides to use to ... and supply and demand had
             | such a big and such a wide ranging adjustment to make that
             | it took the the law of supply and demand ~12-18 months to
             | adjust prices, of which some 6-8 months are still in the
             | future. Now supplier prices are adjusting down, not for
             | housing, not for finance, but for everything else, and
             | everybody cries recession. Wrong. Supply just shot through
             | the roof and demand is actually rising. The same refrain is
             | seen everywhere. Prices for X ROCKETED up, and are coming
             | back down rather quickly. Take your pick cars, flights,
             | food, chips, ... There are confusing factors, such as with
             | housing: people have been using SUBSIDISED money for
             | housing and this is being wound down, people are getting
             | kicked out of the housing they're in. So ... lots of
             | complaints. But this is actually an indication, of course,
             | of too much demand, not too little. Too much demand, too
             | much people yelling here's money, now give me ... This
             | shouldn't lead to a recession!
             | 
             | Of course my problem is ... I'm "fighting the FED". The FED
             | disagrees with me. Of course. I'm fighting JUST the Fed at
             | this point. I'm still on the side of the ECB, BOJ and PBOC
             | ...
        
           | WA wrote:
           | Isn't that the movie in which every dialog is basically "but
           | look at the numbers" without ever going into any kind of
           | detail? I didn't like it.
        
             | DoughnutHole wrote:
             | Well it's not really about the numbers - the details of the
             | collapse don't really matter. In the context of the last
             | crash we know the global economy is brought down by
             | financialised insanity and fraud. It's a morality play
             | showing what's happening inside the first firm to realise
             | the house of cards is about to collapse, and who are about
             | to bring it down themselves by being the first out the
             | door. The details aren't really the point.
        
           | vishnugupta wrote:
           | It's a terrific movie that perfectly complements The Big
           | Short.
        
             | headmelted wrote:
             | Big Short was a movie that other people loved but I just
             | didn't really like all that much. I don't even know why. I
             | think maybe the cameo scenes made it feel a little dumbed
             | down?
             | 
             | I'd also watched Inside Job not long prior and really
             | enjoyed it, but others found it too dry. Different strokes
             | I guess.
        
           | jstx1 wrote:
           | I kind of enjoyed watching it and at the same time I don't
           | think it's a good movie. It's so overly dramatic, the
           | conflict between the characters is super vague, and the most
           | annoying thing is the language they use - a lot of the time
           | the characters talk to each other with metaphors and generic
           | cliches to the point where they aren't saying anything. But
           | the thing is that everyone in the room works in finance, they
           | have no reason to be super generic and non-technical (apart
           | from making the movie more accessible).
           | 
           | I imagine that people who work in finance would like it even
           | less than I did.
        
         | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
         | > After 2008 I became interested with crashes throughout
         | history. There are so many fascinating little details that
         | added up to one giant mess.
         | 
         | I would recommend looking into Jeremy Grantham. Not saying he's
         | right about everything, but he really views himself as a
         | "bubble historian" and he's got some great commentary on
         | bubbles and crashes.
         | 
         | Interestingly, his experience during the dot com bubble and
         | crash is pretty fascinating. He saw the bubble pretty clearly,
         | but he got out early which caused his investors to withdraw
         | something like half of his assets under management. He was
         | eventually proven right of course, and his strategies did very
         | well during the crash.
         | 
         | Which also points out why diversifying can be emotionally
         | difficult. If you're well diversified you should expect to do
         | _worse_ than the market when it 's booming, and _better_ than
         | the market when it 's crashing (i.e less volatility). The
         | problem with that for money managers is that it's very easy for
         | clients to feel "Hey, the market is exploding, and I'm paying
         | this person who is underperforming the market!", and then, when
         | the market falls, even if the manager overperforms the market
         | (but still has negative returns) "I'm paying this person but
         | he's doing worse than if I just kept my assets in cash!"
        
           | Ekaros wrote:
           | I kinda loved some near ending scene of Big Short. The
           | investor is talking with the fun manager and saying "Market
           | is at all times low and you are buying". Kinda hammering home
           | that they don't really know and are just following the
           | general sentiment...
        
         | rfreiberger wrote:
         | One of the big wake up calls I had during that time was a
         | friend telling me about Webvan. At the time I was younger and
         | not investing so the conservation was mostly around how great
         | the food was, cheaper than up scale stores and they delivered.
         | The echo that reflected much of the dot com era was as he
         | mentioned "how do they make money doing this". The wild part is
         | the wages they paid was higher than other delivery drivers, I
         | worked in a warehouse at the time and frequently heard of
         | seasoned UPS and FedEx drivers leaving to drive for the
         | company.
        
           | tedunangst wrote:
           | Funny that webvan is always cited as an example of a startup
           | that could never work, but really just an early example of do
           | something that doesn't scale and just keep doing it until you
           | somehow make money. But VCs weren't yet ready for the unicorn
           | burn.
        
             | eastbound wrote:
             | Juicero was the mirror product, then: An overpriced orange
             | juice machine, with little packets that you can only buy on
             | subscription, but can't suspend while on holidays, with a
             | QR code to prevent you from consuming after your holidays.
             | It is also down if it can't reach the Wifi. It showed that
             | you can overcharge and make everything become a cloud
             | subscription, because money was unlimited on the consumer
             | side this time.
             | 
             | Surprisingly, it didn't work outside of the Bay area. Some
             | entrepreneurs have difficulty seeing the world's situation
             | beyond their local horizon.
        
               | jokethrowaway wrote:
               | While I can see luxury food delivery kind-of working
               | (wealthy workers in the office ordering lunch, wealthy
               | home workers ordering lunch, fitness nuts who want
               | calories and good food without cooking), Juicero was just
               | plain ridiculous.
               | 
               | Competition from local supermarket is too strong. I can
               | get freshly squeezed juice from the store machine anytime
               | I want for cheap.
        
               | eastbound wrote:
               | > Competition from local supermarket is too strong.
               | 
               | Honest question: Do startup millionaires still go
               | shopping themselves? I imagine when you are between the
               | area where you have a gardner for time-to-time tasks and
               | don't have "un majordome" yet to serve you at any time,
               | there's an entire higher-class-market-but-not-elites who
               | would be interested in Juicero?
        
               | fossuser wrote:
               | Plus juice is kind of a crappy high sugar project that's
               | bad for you?
               | 
               | Relatedly, I have no idea how "Joe and The Juice" stores
               | remain in business. They're in super valuable real estate
               | in cities across the country and as far as I can tell
               | never have anyone in them.
        
               | lordnacho wrote:
               | Isn't it like a Starbucks? Overpay for some juice and sit
               | in the cafe and use their internet for a bit?
               | 
               | Reasonable deal for a lot of people, given that you're
               | only overpaying on a thing that costs a tenner.
        
               | Ekaros wrote:
               | Do they? How long have the same ones been around 5 or 10
               | years yet?
               | 
               | On other their products likely have such margin it might
               | be possible with enough sales. The components aren't too
               | expensive, there isn't massive number of labour and
               | equipment isn't that big of investment either likely...
        
               | mejutoco wrote:
               | I keep hearing this, but I don't really think fresh
               | orange juice, for instance, is as bad as sth like sunny
               | delight or soda. I do not have a source though.
        
               | serenitylater wrote:
        
               | farmerstan wrote:
               | You, and everyone that responded to you, have no idea
               | what Juicero was. It wasn't orange juice at all, or any
               | type of fruit juice. It was green juice. The founder made
               | millions selling his chain of green juice stores on the
               | east coast so he short had a history of success.
               | 
               | I have a friend that worked there so I even tried the
               | product. I thought the idea was vastly overpriced, but it
               | definitely had the chance of working. Lots of people are
               | into green juice vs fruit juice and they were trying to
               | create a new market.
        
               | jallen_dot_dev wrote:
               | > It wasn't orange juice at all, or any type of fruit
               | juice. It was green juice.
               | 
               | This is a distinction without a difference. It doesn't
               | matter what the juice is called. It doesn't change the
               | fact that it's idiotic to pay hundreds of dollars for a
               | machine that just squeezes bags of fruits and vegetables,
               | and needs an Internet connection to ensure you're locked
               | in to only squeezing the company's pricy bags.
        
               | farmerstan wrote:
               | What it shows is people who criticize the company don't
               | actually know anything about it. If you're going to
               | criticize actually take the time to understand instead of
               | throwing rocks thinking you're so smart because you read
               | a headline.
        
               | sva_ wrote:
               | Their advertising video felt like something straight out
               | of the TV show "Silicon Valley":
               | 
               | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=X1oHp-VvhDE
        
             | CPLX wrote:
             | The problem wasn't the real world part it was the internet.
             | I was there at the time, it was clear there was _some_
             | value in all the delivery services and so on the issue was
             | that it was so painful and tedious to dial in with a modem
             | and wait for photos to download and navigate the catalog on
             | a 56k (or 128c or whatever) connection, often losing your
             | cart and having to start over.
             | 
             | And that was for those of us that were literary in digital
             | stuff and comfortable with the internet. A lot of people
             | just hadn't gotten around to using it much yet.
             | 
             | It just wasn't time yet. And there wasn't any massive
             | network effect or lock-in to capture like there was with
             | something like a social network.
             | 
             | Being too early is the same thing as being wrong.
        
       | TedShiller wrote:
       | NO strategy always works. Buying the dip is no different.
        
       | bfm wrote:
       | I recommend reading the book " Panic: The Story of Modern
       | Financial Insanity" by Michael Lewis. It's a series of articles
       | and expert opinions before and after modern market crashes that
       | helps gaining perspective of expert opinions during the ups and
       | downs of the market.
        
       | yowlingcat wrote:
       | Buy the dip is always trumped by "don't try to catch a falling
       | knife." If you can't tell the difference (I am not professionally
       | trained to) then it may not be worth the effort.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | I assume catching a falling knife is at least preferable to
         | buying the peak. :-)
        
       | _uy6i wrote:
       | While I appreciate many of the arguments being made - and there
       | are countless similar situations (nifty 50 anyone) - that nasdaq
       | is not the stock market it's like 1/3rd of it... pop over to
       | yahoo finance and look at the chart of the Russell 3000 Vs the
       | nasdaq, this is why people recommend diversification...
        
       | throw0101a wrote:
       | Nick Maggiulli:
       | 
       | > _Logically, it seems like Buy the Dip can't lose. If you know
       | when you are at a bottom, you can always buy at the cheapest
       | price relative to the all-time highs in that period. However, if
       | you actually run this strategy you will see that Buy the Dip
       | underperforms DCA over 70% of the time._
       | 
       | > _This is true despite the fact that you know exactly when the
       | market will hit a bottom._ Even God couldn't beat dollar-cost
       | averaging.
       | 
       | > _Why is this true? Because buying the dip only works when you
       | know that a severe decline is coming and you can time it
       | perfectly. Since dips, especially big ones, haven't happened too
       | often in U.S. market history (i.e. 1930s, 1970s, 2000s), this
       | strategy rarely beats DCA. And the times where it does beat DCA
       | require impeccable timing. Missing the bottom by just 2 months
       | lowers the chance of outperforming DCA from 30% to 3%._
       | 
       | * https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...
       | 
       | The thing about trying to miss the worst days (get out before the
       | dip, get in after), is that the 'best' (recovery) days are often
       | not long after, and if you miss just a few of those your returns
       | get hosed:
       | 
       | > _If you missed just the 25 strongest days in the stock market
       | since 1990, you might as well have been in five year treasury
       | notes._
       | 
       | * https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2019/02/08/miss-the-worst-...
       | 
       | > _This is actually a pattern, it turns out. The market's worst
       | days tend to be followed by its best days, according to research
       | from J.P. Morgan Asset Management._
       | 
       | > _If you sell when the markets hit the skids, you'll likely miss
       | the upside._
       | 
       | [...]
       | 
       | > _According to J.P. Morgan's analysis, the 10 best days over the
       | past 20 years occurred after big declines amid the 2008 financial
       | crisis or the 2020 pullback during the onset of the Covid-19
       | pandemic._
       | 
       | * https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/09/you-may-miss-the-markets-bes...
        
         | GlennS wrote:
         | > This is true despite the fact that you know exactly when the
         | market will hit a bottom. Even God couldn't beat dollar-cost
         | averaging.
         | 
         | I'm a bit unconvinced by the studies that say this, because I
         | don't think the "buy the dip" strategy they're talking about is
         | the same one that people are running.
         | 
         | The studies describe waiting for a low point in a given year
         | (or even across multiple years!) then lumping in all your money
         | then.
         | 
         | Whereas I think what people actually mean when they talk about
         | buying the dip is shifting their dollar cost averaging buy-in
         | by days, weeks, or at most a few months, while they wait for
         | the market to get spooked.
         | 
         | I don't do this at the moment. I had a "wait for the US
         | president to say something stupid" strategy which seemed to
         | work for a while, but of course I don't really have enough
         | evidence to back that up.
        
           | hunter2_ wrote:
           | But even if you're just modifying a DCA schedule slightly
           | (buying a little early/more when things feel particularly
           | cheap, or buying a little later/less when things feel
           | expensive) -- doesn't the same problem exist: that those
           | adjustments typically cause a worse outcome than if you
           | didn't apply them?
           | 
           | Maybe some people have a better crystal ball than others, but
           | if we just look at the average case where studies favor
           | vanilla DCA, I have to imagine that the reasons (why DCA
           | wins) will prevail regardless of the extent that they're
           | applied. But if your skill is enough above average that it's
           | helpful to deviate, go for it...
        
           | mbrubeck wrote:
           | Even an investor who just waited for 5% or 10% dips would
           | have underperformed an investor who bought on a fixed
           | schedule each month, historically:
           | 
           | https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=6196749#p61.
           | ..
        
       | fny wrote:
       | Look at a chart of the S&P 500 from 1920 to 2008 and you'll
       | notice something rather curious: the stock market has gone
       | parabolic ever since the financial crisis. What made this period
       | so unique? Tremendously low interest rates coupled with
       | quantitative easing dissuaded capital from financing the real
       | economy and instead encouraged herding and levering up in the
       | financial economy for returns.
       | 
       | At ever dip, it was an open secret the Fed would cut rates and
       | ease again.
       | 
       | At least for now, that game is over. We've had moments in the
       | past when the markets had a similar panic (see 2018), but this
       | period is unique due to the inflationary backdrop. Since 2008
       | we've never seemed to be able to create significant economic
       | growth or inflation greater. The COVID fiscal canon blew growth
       | and inflation skyward. The fed can't just turn on the printers
       | again or cut rates until we hit proper a proper recession.
       | 
       | That's when you buy the dip.
       | 
       | [0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/2324/sp-500-historical-chart-
       | dat...
        
         | chii wrote:
         | > dissuaded capital from financing the real economy and instead
         | encouraged herding and levering up in the financial economy for
         | returns.
         | 
         | i don't really agree with this - the money used to purchase
         | financial products don't disappear, because for every product
         | bought, there was a seller. This seller now has cash, which
         | would be invested elsewhere.
         | 
         | The only concern is low interest rates, which makes the hurdle
         | for any investment lower thus making it easy for malinvestments
         | to occur; In hindsight is easy to make judgements on what is a
         | malinvestment, but not so easy at the time.
        
           | jseban wrote:
           | > i don't really agree with this - the money used to purchase
           | financial products don't disappear, because for every product
           | bought, there was a seller. This seller now has cash, which
           | would be invested elsewhere.
           | 
           | And buying stocks is financing real projects, and you only
           | get those returns if they manage to do something actually
           | useful, this is helping to finance and promote economic
           | activity, how is that taking money away from the "real"
           | economy?
        
             | PretzelPirate wrote:
             | If someone buys stocks from a third party in the open
             | market, are they financing real projects? It really feels
             | like it's all speculation since the value of my shares
             | doesn't actually entitle me to that portion of the
             | company's profits, unless I can sell back directly to the
             | company.
        
               | jseban wrote:
               | It's speculation on the future development of the
               | company's performance, you aren't entitled to a share in
               | the profit, but you often get one anyway in the form of
               | dividends.
               | 
               | If you buy a stock on the open market you don't actually
               | fund _starting_ a real project, but you fund the
               | continuing development and improvement of that project,
               | it 's driven by the fact that they have shareholders to
               | answer to, and you are entitled to voting rights.
               | 
               | It has to have some amount of speculation, that's the
               | driving force behind it, otherwise the whole thing would
               | just stagnate and you have no incentive to improve a
               | company and it will just get looted by its employees. In
               | the big picture it just help collectively push for more
               | efficient ways of working, and stop inefficient work.
               | 
               | It's not pure speculation in the sense that you are not
               | betting on a random event like tomorrows weather in a
               | zero sum game.
        
               | qgin wrote:
               | The value of stocks is pinned to two events that you
               | often don't directly participate in but are absolutely
               | connected to in a real way.
               | 
               | 1. The IPO. While it's true that only the people who buy
               | at the IPO directly finance the company, if there wasn't
               | the promise of someone else in the future to sell the
               | shares to, nobody would buy at the IPO. The existence of
               | future second-hand buyers makes the direct funding at the
               | IPO possible.
               | 
               | 2. Dividends and buybacks. All stocks get their value
               | from either the current existence or future promise of
               | dividends and buybacks. While from time to time people
               | get lost in "greater fool" trading, the reason a stock
               | doesn't go to zero is because there is either currently a
               | dividend/buyback or people believe that eventually when
               | the company matures, they will offer a dividend/buyback
               | to shareholders and a future buyer will want to buy this
               | shares for the cash returned by the company. (As a
               | tangent, this is something most crypto investors don't
               | understand... cryto is almost exclusively "greater fool"
               | trading with no basis in the promise of future real cash
               | return)
        
               | MisterMower wrote:
               | Point 2 is false: shares of stock derive their value from
               | the fact that they represent ownership in a company.
               | 
               | If the company is profitable or owns valuable assets
               | beyond their liabilities, then the shares themselves are
               | valuable.
               | 
               | Their value does not depend on current or future
               | dividends, but on the company's current assets and the
               | market's estimation of the value of the company's future
               | cash flows.
               | 
               | Your point about crypto still stands: there are no future
               | cash flows to consider with crypto, only the current
               | value of the asset, although the comparison is really
               | apples to oranges.
        
               | qgin wrote:
               | But if there is no mechanism for giving cash to the
               | shareholder, ownership is essentially worthless (from a
               | money perspective) except for the possibility of amassing
               | enough ownership to take a controlling stake in the
               | company. But even a controlling stake is just a hobby
               | unless somehow that stake returns cash to you at some
               | point.
               | 
               | I agree about assets though. Book value of assets does
               | need to be added to the value of shares, though usually
               | that's the smallest part of a share's valuation.
        
               | MisterMower wrote:
               | You can sell stock to another person. The sale price will
               | be higher, ceteris paribus, because the company is more
               | valuable. This is how you make money investing in
               | companies that don't pay dividends. Google retained
               | earnings for a more in depth explanation.
               | 
               | Buying shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay a
               | dividend isn't investing, it's the textbook definition of
               | speculation. You are buying something that you hope to
               | sell at a higher price. Investing is when you put money
               | into something, and it gives you more money back over a
               | period of time. Buying and selling crypto is speculation.
        
               | jseban wrote:
               | > Buying shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay a
               | dividend isn't investing, it's the textbook definition of
               | speculation.
               | 
               | Yeah but this reflects the fact that starting and growing
               | a company in itself is a type of speculative activity.
               | Any optimism about the future is a type of speculation.
               | 
               | If you have a proven profitable business model, that you
               | see no way to scale, there's no reason to list the
               | company in the first place.
               | 
               | The main reason to even list a company is to take it
               | through a growth phase, and companies get taken off the
               | stock exchange all the time when they don't see any
               | forthcoming growth, because then it's only annoying for
               | them to compromise with the power/ownership for no
               | reason.
               | 
               | The stock market is an accelerator for companies, not a
               | central bank that makes absolute valuations.
        
           | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
           | > i don't really agree with this - the money used to purchase
           | financial products don't disappear, because for every product
           | bought, there was a seller. This seller now has cash, which
           | would be invested elsewhere.
           | 
           | But just look at housing, which has exploded well beyond the
           | rate of inflation since the Great Recession bottomed out, and
           | especially in the past couple years.
           | 
           | Yes, if money is plowed into housing, the homeowner has more
           | cash when they sell. But presumably they have to live
           | _somewhere_ , and with housing skyrocketing in basically any
           | halfway desirable place, it means they're just going to spend
           | that cash on another expensive house.
        
             | chii wrote:
             | > if money is plowed into housing, the homeowner has more
             | cash when they sell.
             | 
             | but it's not expensive _everywhere_. It's expensive in some
             | of the most desirable places. And housing has some issues
             | unrelated to the market - such as NIMBYs stopping new
             | constructions.
        
               | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
               | > but it's not expensive _everywhere_. It's expensive in
               | some of the most desirable places.
               | 
               | I disagree with this. I think this _was_ true for the mid
               | 00s property bubble, but now prices are exploding not
               | just in the usual suspects like SF, LA and NYC. Pretty
               | much every place that 's not a total shithole is
               | experiencing huge home price appreciation.
               | 
               | I made a post on a different thread making this point,
               | and I used Flint, Michigan as my example of "sure, prices
               | in Flint are still low..." only to get a response from
               | another commenter along the lines of "You'd be surprised
               | - while bad areas of Flint are still depressed, many of
               | the nearby areas have also seen huge runups in real
               | estate values."
        
               | mach1ne wrote:
               | >but it's not expensive _everywhere_. It's expensive in
               | some of the most desirable places.
               | 
               | The fact that the median and average house prices have
               | exploded signifies that the housing market is in a
               | bubble. It's not relevant that house prices have not
               | increased equally everywhere. Ultimately, after the
               | bubble eventually bursts, it will leave a lot of people
               | indebted to banks with their real ownings not matching
               | the debt. This translates to a decrease in consumer
               | consumption, meaning slower economic growth. Resources of
               | the society will be more directed towards customers who
               | have more wealth, meaning those who weren't part of the
               | housing crash. Likely customers from abroad.
               | 
               | Obviously we're talking about percentages, but that's how
               | economy works and that translates to very real changes in
               | a many people's lives.
        
               | lottin wrote:
               | Since the mid-2000s house prices have risen _less_ , on
               | average, than disposable income in the US.
               | 
               | https://twitter.com/MPelletierCIO/status/1522704947556483
               | 073...
        
               | Retric wrote:
               | Notice you said disposable income rather than income,
               | there is a huge difference.
               | 
               | But I think people recognize the housing bubble that
               | popped in 2008 as a bubble. Saying we haven't reached the
               | peak of the last bubble doesn't mean we aren't in a
               | bubble.
        
               | pastaguy1 wrote:
               | There were structural/regulatory reasons that helped the
               | bubble grow last time, are there any indications of this
               | now?
               | 
               | If they are there we probably won't know until it's too
               | late, but this housing bubble feels a little more like an
               | everything bubble
        
               | redisman wrote:
               | Artificially low interest rates for a decade could have a
               | similar effect
        
               | adventured wrote:
               | > The fact that the median and average house prices have
               | exploded signifies that the housing market is in a
               | bubble.
               | 
               | It doesn't signify that. The US has long since switched
               | over to a permanently low interest rate environment due
               | to the extreme national debt that the Fed has to manage.
               | Housing is going to stay artificially expensive on a
               | longer-term basis accordingly. Housing only deflates on a
               | sustained basis if interest rates go up a lot on a
               | sustained basis, and that's not going to happen (we're
               | coming up on 14 years into the forever low rates era).
               | 
               | We've been enjoying very high rates of consumer inflation
               | and what has the Fed done? Zilch. Mostly all they've done
               | is jabber, which is most of what they can do now:
               | endlessly talk about how they plan to raise rates. Why?
               | Because they can't do anything of consequence and they
               | know it. It's a humiliating failure of their supposed
               | mandate.
               | 
               | One of the many consequences of forever low rates is
               | forever artificially inflated asset prices.
               | 
               | Real-estate values broadly are not a bubble, it's dollar
               | debasement, which is why gold is going to become normal
               | up toward $2,000 and oil is going to be normal at
               | $65-$75+.
               | 
               | Mediocre economic growth will (presently is) ultimately
               | take care of the elevated rates of inflation, rather than
               | the Fed hiking rates by a lot. Later in the decade the
               | Fed will be back to talking about how they'd like to
               | spark higher rates of inflation, as typical annual real
               | GDP growth sinks below 2%.
        
           | bagacrap wrote:
           | I've had this same thought, but everyone seems to be sitting
           | in cash? No one wants to invest unless everyone else invests.
           | Seems the emperor is suddenly naked.
        
             | gabereiser wrote:
             | You should see the volume of the last 24 hours. No one is
             | sitting on cash unless they are hobbyists.
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | That's ironic.
               | 
               | If you'd sold your S&P500 on Monday and bought back on
               | Friday, you'd have gained 2.7 shares per 100 sold.
               | 
               | If you'd sold your S&P500 a month prior and bought back
               | on Friday, you'd have gained a 8 shares per 100 sold.
               | 
               | If you'd sold your S&P500 six months prior and bought
               | back on Friday, you'd have gained 14 shares per 100 sold.
        
               | gabereiser wrote:
               | You just described a hobbyist. Institutions don't sit on
               | cash for that long, nor do they buy S&P in any
               | significance.
               | 
               | [0] Berkshire Hathaway -
               | https://www.dataroma.com/m/holdings.php?m=BRK
        
               | zmgsabst wrote:
               | Yes -- I called it ironic because a hobbyist sitting on
               | cash out performed the market over the past six months.
               | 
               | Institutions "making moves" aren't magic -- and often
               | fail to beat indexes, which in turn failed to beat cash
               | over the past six months.
               | 
               | Sometimes the hobbyist mindset wins.
        
               | gabereiser wrote:
               | >sometimes the hobbyist mindset wins.
               | 
               | In this case, you're absolutely right. Had they just sat
               | on it they wouldn't have the losses they do today,
               | furthering the panic selling.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | carnitine wrote:
               | Interesting that you cite BRK, who famously have been
               | sitting on ~150bn in cash recently. Professional
               | investors absolutely sit on cash all the time.
        
               | gabereiser wrote:
               | Yeah, they did, and within a month or two it was
               | reinvested elsewhere. Whether it was pulling out of
               | American Airlines in favor of more shares of Chevron, or
               | doubling down on tech stocks. BRK doesn't just sit on
               | 150bn in cash for longer than they have to. Not saying
               | they don't sit on cash but they definitely don't sit on
               | it for a year or more.
        
               | gabereiser wrote:
               | Show me a hedge fund that sat on more than 1% of their
               | holdings for more than a year. I'll wait.
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | > _everyone seems to be sitting in cash?_
             | 
             | What is this based on? Every indicator suggests we're still
             | in a risk-on mode as an economy. It's why we have
             | inflation.
        
               | EGreg wrote:
               | Yield curve inverted and interest rates have begun to go
               | up. Risk on?
        
               | JumpCrisscross wrote:
               | > _curve inverted and interest rates have begun to go up.
               | Risk on?_
               | 
               | Yes, we're still seeing billions of dollars being
               | deployed into start-ups [1], crypto and the like. We are
               | less risk on than we were. But within America, there is
               | no flight to safety. (Internationally, it's more
               | complicated.)
               | 
               | [1] https://fortune.com/2022/04/08/venture-
               | capitals-2022-slowdow...
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Don't know which indicators you're looking at, but the
               | bond market disagrees.
        
           | arrosenberg wrote:
           | Couldn't there be an issue if the buyer is paying with margin
           | that's backed by an overvalued asset? Maybe not for the
           | seller, but eventually someone will be left holding the bag.
        
           | adg001 wrote:
           | > i don't really agree with this - the money used to purchase
           | financial products don't disappear, because for every product
           | bought, there was a seller. This seller now has cash, which
           | would be invested elsewhere.
           | 
           | Make no confusion, please. Quantitative easing was intended
           | to give credit institutions greater ability to lend money to
           | entrepreneurs, so as to boost real economy. When capitals are
           | invested in financial products the entities closing their
           | positions (e.g., selling stocks) and, in turn, getting the
           | cash are not necessarily credit institutions (i.e., they are
           | typically fund managers and private investors) - which is to
           | say they pocket the money.
        
         | stewbrew wrote:
         | Did you select logarithmic scale on the y axis? To me the post-
         | WWII looks rather linear with some dips: energy crisis, dot
         | com, financial crisis.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | trashtester wrote:
         | I think you reference only considers the index adjusted for
         | inflation, but without taking the dividends into account.
         | 
         | Optimists tend to consider the dividends too small to matter
         | when buying stocks, but it turns out that over time, the
         | dividends tend to be a large part of the inflation adjusted
         | returns:
         | 
         | According to this article [0], the profit of investing just
         | before the .com bust would be only 12.9% by mid 2017, which is
         | about 0.7%pa, if adjusting for inflation but not dividends.
         | 
         | When taking dividends into account, that grows to 54.5%, or
         | 2.54%, more than 3x more.
         | 
         | And this is more or less the worst case based on recent
         | history.
         | 
         | [0]: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inflation-adjusted-returns-
         | si...
        
           | maire wrote:
           | People (and tool developers) forget that the purpose of a
           | stock is to ultimately produce dividends. It is like buying a
           | house for rental income and forgetting to include the rent.
           | 
           | When I retired I had to switch from a growth-stock mindset to
           | an income-stock mindset. I have made the switch but none of
           | the free tools makes that easy. The closest I came was TOS
           | will do this calculation for stocks but not ETFs. Oh well. I
           | now have all the calculations in google sheets.
           | 
           | I also now have a backtest that goes the the beginning of the
           | Clinton administration to the end of the Trump
           | administration. I added dividends to the backtest. I only
           | went to the Clinton administration so that I could use ETFs
           | to simplify the calculations. The backtest includes dividends
           | - which I had to add manually.
        
             | temp_praneshp wrote:
             | Out of curiosity: How do you test your sheets? I feel like
             | I can arrive at such a sheet over a few days of reading,
             | but unsure how I'd test I'm doing the right things (since
             | there isn't a tool or a combination of tools that can act
             | as oracle)
        
               | maire wrote:
               | I used ETFs (and not stocks) to simplify the test. I was
               | mostly looking for correlations of different investments
               | across different scenarios. I then looked at severe
               | market downturns to see how the correlations changed.
               | 
               | As you can imagine - when there is a severe market drop,
               | most investments are highly correlated to the S&P. The
               | most negative correlation I could get was medium term
               | bond ETFs. Short term bonds were still highly correlated
               | and I am not sure why.
               | 
               | The dot com bust was particularly interesting because
               | each segment dropped at different times. Telecom dropped
               | first, then tech. It took about a year for the drop to
               | hit mid cap. In comparison - the 2008 crash hit
               | everything quickly.
               | 
               | Also - lately I have been using the backtesting tools in
               | TOS. As I said earlier, this only works for stocks and
               | not ETFs.
        
               | temp_praneshp wrote:
               | gotcha, thanks for answering!
        
               | maire wrote:
               | If you are using google sheets you can use ycharts to
               | pull in the dividend data. Here is my calculation to get
               | 1 year of dividends.
               | 
               | =query(importhtml(concatenate("https://ycharts.com/compan
               | ies/",$A4,"/dividend"),"table",0),...)
               | 
               | where $J$2 is ="select Col6 where Col1 > date
               | '"&TEXT(I2,"yyyy-mm-dd")&"' LIMIT 12"
        
         | tyre wrote:
         | > The COVID fiscal canon blew growth and inflation skyward.
         | 
         | This is not true and has wrongly given credit to people who
         | have said, since 2020, that COVID relief would cause inflation.
         | 
         | Our current inflation is driven by supply chain issues
         | (unrelated to COVID relief) and rising oil (unrelated to COVID
         | relief.)
        
           | astrange wrote:
           | > Our current inflation is driven by supply chain issues
           | (unrelated to COVID relief)
           | 
           | Well, specifically it's because everyone went home and
           | switched from purchasing services to goods. So there are
           | serious composition effects comparing 2019 to 2020 and you
           | don't have to assume you're making less money because an
           | inflation number said you are.
        
           | _uy6i wrote:
           | This may be the case for many goods (e.g. cars, furniture,
           | dishwashers, beef) - but definitely not assets (e.g. homes,
           | bonds, stocks, art)
        
             | astrange wrote:
             | Asset and good inflation aren't the same kind of thing
             | because you won't die if you can't buy a stock, and you can
             | buy any fraction of a stock not just one share these days.
             | (Although the second one is a reason they've gotten more
             | expensive.)
             | 
             | Homes are a special case, but it's entirely possible for
             | the purchase price of homes to go up while rent doesn't.
        
             | Nevermark wrote:
             | Supply chain issues have pushed up construction costs and
             | times.
             | 
             | So buildings increase in value due to supply disruption
             | too.
        
           | candiddevmike wrote:
           | From what I've read, our current inflation is due to combo of
           | inflated asset prices causing mortgages and rents to
           | skyrocket along with corporate greed raising prices "because
           | of inflation".
        
             | darkerside wrote:
             | You should probably widen the pool of what you read. You're
             | not wrong (well, corporate greed tends to be a bit of a
             | bogeyman), but it's certainly reductive.
        
           | SamReidHughes wrote:
           | Working class wages have increased, and that is clearly
           | because of Covid relief. Or other Covid-related policies like
           | halting immigration.
           | 
           | (I should be clear, this is still supply-side, but related to
           | Covid relief. "Stimulus" money spent unproductively by the
           | government is also supply-side.)
        
             | bushbaba wrote:
             | Covid relief prevented deflation. Thus when things went
             | back to normal we saw large inflation.
             | 
             | You also had PPP loans which went to businesses that saw
             | growth! And those business owners got huge payouts used to
             | buy houses and assets
        
           | bagacrap wrote:
           | I don't know why you're so confident. All of these things can
           | contribute to inflation.
        
             | freyr wrote:
             | Probably an adherent of modern monetary theory.
        
               | RealityVoid wrote:
               | MMT does not say that liberal issue of currency does not
               | cause inflation.
        
           | ouEight12 wrote:
           | > rising oil
           | 
           | Monthly inflation numbers have been > 5% since May 2021. Oil
           | didn't exceed 2018 $s until will into October 2021.
        
         | throwaway2037 wrote:
         | There is an saying: The stock market is not the economy. The US
         | economy is still growing faster enough for corporations to
         | fight off the effects of inflation. (People / workers are a
         | different social and economic issue.) The Fed will continue to
         | raise rates and wind down its balance sheet in an orderly
         | manner. Eventually, after enough rate rises, inflation will
         | slow, and the economy will reach a new equilibrium between
         | growth, rates, and inflation. This is all a normal part of an
         | economic cycle.
        
           | baq wrote:
           | Inflation will already slow (oil stopped going up), GDP
           | prints are coming in negative, rates are only now
           | accelerating while economy is slowing down. How this doesn't
           | end in a recession is beyond me. Mortgage workers have been
           | laid off already due to that. Real economy is next on a lag
           | due to demand destruction.
        
             | bushbaba wrote:
             | Recession needs just two quarters of negative gdp. Q1 had
             | negative growth. So will q2. We are already in a recession
        
               | baq wrote:
               | jury is still out on q2, I expect sub-1% growth, so
               | technically not a recession, but it hardly matters. it's
               | going to be interesting for the next 4 quarters anyway.
        
         | tedunangst wrote:
         | Every even modestly exponential curve has the same shape.
         | 
         | https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=y+%3D+1.05%5Ex+from+1+t...
        
           | shawnz wrote:
           | This time is different, every time
           | 
           | See for example this nice video from Ben Felix:
           | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jh9Gn58r9Fw
        
             | AlchemistCamp wrote:
             | What do you like about it?
        
               | shawnz wrote:
               | I generally enjoy his evidence-based approach to
               | investing and this video is particularly good at
               | addressing common FUD about today's situation being
               | unique compared to the past.
        
           | grey-area wrote:
           | Exponential curves in real assets are not sustainable.
        
             | pl-94 wrote:
             | The GDP is itself exponential. A growth of +2% a year is an
             | example of an exponential curve. Sure there are "limits to
             | growth" (see Meadows et al.) but it's not clear whether
             | those limits are reached yet.
        
               | ArnoVW wrote:
               | Unless we find a way to 'produce' (the P in GDP) without
               | increasing entropy by digging up stuff (oil, metals,
               | whatever) and then releasing them into our ecosystem once
               | we're done with them, those limits seem to be pretty
               | close though.
               | 
               | That's not just me thinking that. That's the Club of
               | Rome, in the 70's.
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth
               | 
               | Their conclusion at the time:
               | 
               | "the most probable result will be a rather sudden and
               | uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial
               | capacity"
        
               | afpx wrote:
               | A lot of the production and growth in production is in
               | services. The global economy adds 50M+ new middle class
               | incomes each year.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | And the most sobering thing - we're still on track for
               | the base case...
        
               | pfortuny wrote:
               | As long as the Sun shines on (and this is essenty "for
               | ever"), there is an increasing accumulation of energy in
               | the planet: that is where the possibility of exponential
               | "growth" comes.
        
               | grey-area wrote:
               | GDP rising exponentially is also clearly unsustainable.
               | 
               | We have IMO reached a paradigm shift in central bank
               | policy after decades of low rates and low inflation. The
               | recent past is not a good guide to the near future in
               | markets.
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | The entirety of human history since prehistoric times to
               | the present gives evidence contrary to your claim. Human
               | societies have experienced exponential growth since
               | forever, with only occasional brief temporary setbacks.
               | Even the Black Death is a blip on the exponential curve
               | of economic progress.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | Past performance is not a predictor of future results. If
               | we continue to grow GDP (~energy consumption) at about
               | 1%/y, we'll boil oceans in 400 years. That's what
               | exponential growth means.
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | Most of that GDP growth will not be on Earth in 400
               | years.
        
               | StireFarter wrote:
               | Hand-wavy predictions like this scare me - it suggests
               | people don't understand space travel or the distances
               | involved at all.
               | 
               | Sure, if you think of the Earth as a game of SimCity plus
               | Kerbal Space Program, these discussions about exponential
               | growth are interesting. However, they miss the part where
               | the intervening 30-100 years become literal hell on Earth
               | while space travel ramps up.
        
               | adastra22 wrote:
               | I started my career at NASA. I'm working on an asteroid
               | mining startup. I'm well aware of the vastness of space
               | :)
               | 
               | The GP said 400 years. That's the time since the age of
               | exploration until now. That's a vast era of time, and
               | exponential technology development goes both ways.
        
               | geeB wrote:
               | With a long enough time horizon, the GP consideration
               | ("If we continue to grow GDP (~energy consumption) at
               | about 1%/y, we'll boil oceans in 400 years.") will still
               | come true even if expanding in space. A sphere expanding
               | around earth at the speed of light grows quadratically in
               | the outer boundary and cubically in volume, and will be
               | overcome eventually by any exponent > 1.
               | 
               | I'm pretty convinced that increasing human activity so
               | much to increase the background radiation to 373K is
               | never going to happen, the point is more that any
               | exponential energy growth eventually can't continue.
               | 
               | In a way though it's already happening, the GDP ~ energy
               | consumption equivalence from the GP assumption does not
               | hold
               | (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.GDP.PUSE.KO.PP).
               | We'll just keep inventing ways for the GDP number to keep
               | growing exponentially in questionable ways for the system
               | to keep going, until we can't anymore.
        
               | baq wrote:
               | the dataset is interesting, thanks for linking to it. the
               | relationship is for now linear, which I believe doesn't
               | invalidate the point that you and I both make that
               | exponential is not sustainable. the GDP-energy
               | consumption decoupling must also become exponential,
               | which I lack vision for how to achieve.
        
               | andrepd wrote:
               | Exponential growth, indeed economic growth at all,
               | started with the industrial revolution. For instance,
               | many places in Eurasia had the same GDP in 500 that they
               | had in 1400.
        
               | krigath wrote:
               | In terms of population? Yes In terms of economic
               | productivity per capita? No, not if you look at periods
               | prior to the industrial revolution[1]
               | 
               | [1] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=
               | https:/...
        
               | wcoenen wrote:
               | > _The entirety of human history since prehistoric times_
               | 
               | Extrapolating from the past doesn't always work. There
               | are real limits.
               | 
               | Take the rate of energy consumption of human civilization
               | for example, which is currently about 17 terawatt[1].
               | Thermodynamics tells us that after doing useful work,
               | practically all of that energy ends up as waste heat. (A
               | small fraction is stored, e.g. aluminium stores some
               | energy. I assume this is negligible.)
               | 
               | The power received by the Earth from the sun is about
               | 170,000 terawatt[2], a factor 10,000 more. So plenty of
               | room for growth, right?
               | 
               | But now take a modest 2% yearly growth. This is a factor
               | 1.02 each year. So 500 years of 2% growth would be a
               | factor 1.02^500 = about 20,000.
               | 
               | Maybe we could actually do that with fusion power. But
               | then we'd have two suns(!) worth of extra waste heat to
               | deal with. This cannot work. Current concerns about
               | global warming pale in comparison. Even if we found a way
               | to radiate all that heat into space as infrared, e.g. by
               | concentrating the heat into country sized radiator
               | panels, 35 years of 2% growth would double the waste heat
               | again.
               | 
               | A similar calculation can be done for the growth of
               | anything physical. And even if you continue growth off
               | Earth, you'll soon hit the limits of the solar system.
               | Even the volume of an expanding sphere at light speed
               | cannot keep up with an exponential function.
               | 
               | [1] https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/current_world_
               | energy_...
               | 
               | [2] https://news.mit.edu/2011/energy-scale-part3-1026
        
               | mkr-hn wrote:
               | People always talk about compound interest. Not enough
               | people talk about compound waste heat.
        
           | darawk wrote:
           | That's exactly why the plot is in log scale. The point is
           | that this period looks unusual _despite_ being rendered in
           | log scale.
        
         | MichaelMoser123 wrote:
         | > The COVID fiscal canon blew growth and inflation skyward.
         | 
         | COVID is going on for two years now. What really changed is the
         | Russia-Ukraine war, this goes with higher energy and higher
         | food prices (most of the wheat and fertilizers come from that
         | part of the world) that all that stuff trickles down, as they
         | don't know how to fix the metrics now (i guess no one was
         | prepared for such a turn of events...)
         | 
         | Most of the metrics for inflation are based on some
         | technicalities (you can fix that, that's why we hadn't much of
         | an inflation), but it can't cope with fundamentals like food
         | and energy.
        
           | chewz wrote:
           | > What really changed is the Russia-Ukraine war, this goes
           | with higher energy and higher food prices
           | 
           | Green transformation is the real cause of high energy and
           | food prices. EU's Fit for 55 gave Putin green light to invade
           | Ukraine...
        
             | andrepd wrote:
             | Lol, very much in the contrary. Had the EU invested heavily
             | in a proper Green New Deal (in ~2010-11 for example, around
             | the time recovery was needed, instead of implementing
             | austerity), we would have robust economic growth instead of
             | a decade of stagnation, and near complete independence of
             | Russian oil and gas, so much so that we could turn the taps
             | off on 24/Feb and suffer only mild consequences.
        
               | chewz wrote:
               | > Had the EU invested heavily in a proper Green New Deal
               | (in ~2010-11 for example
               | 
               | Meantime in the real world in 2021 EU made strategic
               | decisions that guaranteed high food and energy prices for
               | next couple of years and made Putin think that he has a
               | window of when Eu is completely at his mercy. (Putin made
               | a mistake short term. Long term he surely forced EU's
               | hand to go for alternative sources of energy).
        
           | redisman wrote:
           | As we transition out of the emergency mode of Covid the bill
           | will be coming due at some point. Governments spent a whole
           | lot of money to not generate any real work in the economy for
           | two years
        
         | nabla9 wrote:
         | >Tremendously low interest rates coupled with quantitative
         | easing dissuaded capital from financing the real economy and
         | instead encouraged herding and levering up in the financial
         | economy for returns.
         | 
         | This is the standard response that people repeat year after
         | year. They are not the full or even major factor. They are more
         | like a result of changes in economy.
         | 
         | >instead encouraged herding and levering up in the financial
         | economy for returns.
         | 
         | Real reason:
         | 
         | Capital intensity has deceased dramatically. Capital intensity
         | is the amount of fixed or real capital present in relation to
         | other factors of production (especially labour).
        
         | ars wrote:
         | > Look at a chart of the S&P 500 from 1920 to 2008 and you'll
         | notice something rather curious: the stock market has gone
         | parabolic
         | 
         | That's because you are using a linear graph instead of a
         | logarithmic graph.
         | 
         | If you have $100 and it double you have $200, if you have
         | $10,000 and it doubles you have $20,000. Both of those are the
         | same chance, but if you use a linear graph it looks parabolic.
         | 
         | Do yourself a favor and NEVER use a linear graph of the
         | stockmarket.
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | > That's because you are using a linear graph instead of a
           | logarithmic graph.
           | 
           | The macrotrends.net graph linked by fny is logarithmic (by
           | default, though there's a "Log Scale" checkbox to turn it
           | off). It's also inflation-adjusted by default, which I think
           | is a little unfair.
        
         | mouzogu wrote:
         | I hope this is true but I also feel like we no longer follow
         | any kind of logic after 2008, we totally detached from reality.
        
           | Melting_Harps wrote:
           | > I hope this is true but I also feel like we no longer
           | follow any kind of logic after 2008, we totally detached from
           | reality.
           | 
           | You're not the only one, consider that the financial crisis
           | was the per-cursur and the necessary backdrop for why Bitcoin
           | was created; this system went from being an arcane, but
           | seemingly reliable way to grow the economy up until 2008 when
           | the house cards fell down and we realized most business
           | models were all based on the 'greater fool theory.'
           | 
           | Monetizing everything and squeezing people for every nickle
           | and dime for essentials became the norm: education, medicine,
           | food, energy etc...
           | 
           | Honestly, this system only benefits a small fraction of the
           | Human Population, but it ultimately relies on their continued
           | exploitation. The great resignation has been a somewhat
           | limited counter-banace but it's still not addressing the
           | underlying fact that this system is so utterly broken and it
           | cannot sustain itself without perpetual intervention from the
           | Central Banks.
           | 
           | Their is nothing Capitalist about this system, it's feudalism
           | with a very obvious plutocratic bend with it's aim to
           | maintain itself via nepotism and corruption.
           | 
           | This isn't a criticism of Capitalism, though I have come to
           | the conclusion that it is ultimately a flawed system that
           | relies on perpetual and infinite growth models, and does an
           | even poorer job at pricing-in externalities that have had and
           | will continue to have even worse devastation: be it
           | economical or environmental.
           | 
           | As an Anarcho-capitalist I agree it is the best of all the
           | other worse system: I just think we have seen the limitations
           | that even the freest markets can avail so long as the
           | parallel system can destroy with impunity, but justify itself
           | as the only thing that keeps the World from succumbing to
           | utter chaos.
           | 
           | When in reality, we live in that chaos and have been in chaos
           | for most of my entire existence (middle millennial) with only
           | the thin veneer of order, what's remarkable is we haven't
           | completely obliterated ourselves in that time--Russia is
           | doing what most Nation-States have done since the advent of
           | it's existance, and what the US did that made it the ire of
           | Humanity in the last decade in the Middle East. They seek to
           | consuldate and extract for thier own vested interests, often
           | to the detriment of it's own populace as it really only seeks
           | to maintain it's own order and enrich an already obscenely
           | wealthy political class which curries favour from the
           | business class.
           | 
           | Before, I used to watch Black Mirror or an Adam Curtis
           | documentary solely for it's entertainment value, now I'm
           | starting to see how prophetic much of what they focused on
           | not just came into reality, but started to have more dire
           | implications than was even portrayed.
           | 
           | In short, while those of us in the BTC community haven't the
           | grounds to declare we have made a utopia by any stretch of
           | the imagination, I'm just glad we have learned our lessons
           | and realized the inevitable demise of the financial system is
           | starting to become clearer to more and more.
           | 
           | Where this leads can be a horrible path, and we have had
           | glimpses of it: the Russian invasion of Ukraine is over
           | hubris and distorted views of the Soviet Union.
           | 
           | Just imagine what it will look like if we are fighting over
           | water or food as we have for most of our Specie's existence?
           | 
           | People here benefited, or stand to benefit the most from this
           | corrupt system: vesting is the only real way to make any real
           | gains as it provides the bulk of most TC. Their inflated
           | salaries at FAANG mean less when they hear the typical story
           | about stocks getting IPO'd and even their first janitor team
           | can afford to live in a mansion in Palo Alto and send his
           | kids to Stanford.
           | 
           | But the truth is this model is utterly broken, just look at
           | the environment and woke culture that the valley has become:
           | homelessness, social inequality and worsening substance and
           | mental health issues etc...
           | 
           | You'll just never get the HN crowds to go along with it
           | because most are still just trying to 'get theirs' or have
           | already 'gotten theirs' and are now too comfortable but keep
           | telling themselves that rent-seeing is ok so long as it's
           | them and they regard themselves as a 'disruptor.'
           | 
           | It's pathetic and a shame to see, to be honest. To see so
           | many talented people waste their collective skills at a time
           | when climate change, and shortages of everything are starting
           | to be the norm: you'd think if they had any capacity to act
           | in anything but their own self-interest and had a modicom of
           | self-perseverance they'd try to sepnd at least some time
           | trying to address these problems.
           | 
           | What good is money if this is this the World we live has
           | always been my core moral compass that doesn't seem to be
           | shared or well received when I work in tech. There is just a
           | lots of lip-service but almost no deeds to back this up, it's
           | a really just a bad platitude. One of many, unfortunately.
           | 
           | As a person studying AI and ML: you'd think that for a class
           | of people who go on about 'meritocracy' being the end-all to
           | explain why they are exceptional and are where they are and
           | where most are they it's just hiding behind the limited
           | window they have where the tech oligarchs allow them to be
           | well compensated: but be under no illusion, they will quickly
           | dispel with them when it's AI solution is as palatable is it
           | can be, even if it means delivering a more mediocre solution
           | and experience.
        
           | tasuki wrote:
           | _> I [...] feel like we no longer follow any kind of logic
           | after 2008, we totally detached from reality._
           | 
           | What does it mean we have detached from reality? That
           | valuations are not what they should be? What exactly should
           | they be then? Who should be deciding these things?
           | 
           | And a bonus question: Why do you think the current valuations
           | are what they are?
        
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