[Macros]

I got some spacegoat right at opening. Sitting on 4x at the moment, and this is before it's fully on the exchanges.

I'm not going to buy a lambo, but if I can pull a bill out of it, that pays for something at home

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Was joking before about Musk going to space to mine Dogecoin but... 'Starlink, the internet service powered by SpaceX's constellation of satellites, can be useful in the efforts to scale Dogecoin by improving network connectivity between miners, according to a lecturer at Imperial College London.

[...]

"Using Starlink as a network to propagate blockchain peer-to-peer data among miners would equally help speed up substantially the current blockchain throughput, without deteriorating its security."

[...] the researcher admitted that a "possible risk" was that a single for-profit company would effectively own the entire relay network'

https://www.benzinga...poses-researche

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 27 May 2021 - 11:34 PM

[Macros]

Fucking Elon Musk

[Malankazooie]

[Macros]

So

El Salvador now accepts bitcoin as a legal tender.
And rumours of Panama to follow next week and a several others making moves.

Is this the time to buy the dip?

This post has been edited by Macros: 10 June 2021 - 05:13 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Macros, on 10 June 2021 - 05:10 PM, said:

So

El Salvador now accepts bitcoin as a legal tender.
And rumours of Panama to follow next week and a several others making moves.

Is this the time to buy the dip?

El Salvador seems too small / poor to make a difference or be an adequate test case... and I'd guess it's being bankrolled by Bitcoin speculators. To stabilize the value of Bitcoin within the country to really make it a viable currency they'd probably need to veer too close to Communism for their foreign patrons' tastes. Though it's possible it will boost tourism or the expat community.

This is interesting: 'El Salvador's Going to Mine Bitcoin with Volcanic Energy

The crypto is lava'

https://www.tomshard...bitcoin-volcano

Wish there were an ETF focusing on geothermal energy. Though I'm still hoping for fusion before too too long....

Crypto, especially a choice of one specific cryptocurrency, even what's currently the most popular one, is still going to be highly speculative and volatile for the foreseeable future. You can probably make money if you manage to sell when it goes up again, but you could also lose a lot. If Bitcoin loses out to Ethereum or another more eco-friendly competitor it could permanently plummet.

A diversified crypto ETF (or index-replicating portfolio, if capital gains taxes from matching the index are less for you than the ETF's fees) or, better, a general blockchain ETF with crypto exposure (like BLOK in the US) would be significantly safer.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 10 June 2021 - 06:08 PM

[Macros]

Atossa Therapeutics has done 120% for me.
Still climbing and now it has caught the idiots eye on WSB, it's heavily shorted apparently.
Do I buy the hype and hold on for a short squeeze?

And my Europcar is heading for a double as well, I reckon my call of £1 a share by December should come home.

Anyone want to borrow my lucky dice?

[Malankazooie]

Pokémon GO to the bank. A billy a year.... cha-ching!

[Maark Abbott]

Rather annoyingly the FCA / whoever has 'banned' the wallet I use. Not sure how this impacts me but could be a shitter if I ever withdraw.

[Malankazooie]

https://twitter.com/...353984617914370

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

According to the Financial Times, the Chinese government has a vested interest in discouraging foreign investment. Yikes.

https://www.ft.com/c...98-d48dfdd76416

Regulatory demolition of the tutoring industry---for-profit tutoring companies must now become non-profits or cease to exist---followed by denunciation of gaming and esports as 'digital opium'. Tencent responded by declaring they'll do something to reduce gaming addiction among children. Probably a good thing for the Chinese economy in the long run, but bad for my beloved stonks.

OTOH droughts and climate change are likely to decrease the supply of certain agricultural products, benefiting agricultural innovation. And historically higher prices have tended to be good for agribusiness. So I'm going long into farming. Thankfully a new innovative agribusiness ETF (KROP) opened in July---still low AUM so at risk of closing (so if I want to avoid being shunted into a higher tax bracket, I need to allow for the shares being liquidated and adding to my capital gains...). Balanced with some VEGI (diversified agribusiness ETF). FTAG ETF looks interesting---it also owns farmland---but relatively high expense ratio, dangerously low AUM (especially for a fund that's existed for a while, though the expense ratio might help keep it going), too much investment in traditional fertilizers and pesticides (which could be displaced by genomics, or take major regulatory hits if they have sufficiently negative impacts on human health), and hydroponics / vertical farming or other technologies might reduce the value of farmland (beyond the benefits of climate change...). Though if a large percentage of the world's population dies, or population growth decreases drastically, it might hurt agribusiness stocks... alas!

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 04 August 2021 - 04:23 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Azath Vitr (D, on 04 August 2021 - 04:22 PM, said:

According to the Financial Times, the Chinese government has a vested interest in discouraging foreign investment. Yikes.

https://www.ft.com/c...98-d48dfdd76416

Regulatory demolition of the tutoring industry---for-profit tutoring companies must now become non-profits or cease to exist---followed by denunciation of gaming and esports as 'digital opium'. Tencent responded by declaring they'll do something to reduce gaming addiction among children. Probably a good thing for the Chinese economy in the long run, but bad for my beloved stonks.

OTOH droughts and climate change are likely to decrease the supply of certain agricultural products, benefiting agricultural innovation. And historically higher prices have tended to be good for agribusiness. So I'm going long into farming. Thankfully a new innovative agribusiness ETF (KROP) opened in July---still low AUM so at risk of closing (so if I want to avoid being shunted into a higher tax bracket, I need to allow for the shares being liquidated and adding to my capital gains...). Balanced with some VEGI (diversified agribusiness ETF). FTAG ETF looks interesting---it also owns farmland---but relatively high expense ratio, dangerously low AUM (especially for a fund that's existed for a while, though the expense ratio might help keep it going), too much investment in traditional fertilizers and pesticides (which could be displaced by genomics, or take major regulatory hits if they have sufficiently negative impacts on human health), and hydroponics / vertical farming or other technologies might reduce the value of farmland (beyond the benefits of climate change...). Though if a large percentage of the world's population dies, or population growth decreases drastically, it might hurt agribusiness stocks... alas!

Hololive: forces Coco to retire to appease China and reinstate Hololive CN branch

China: Gaming and esports are now naughty in our sight, and shall be bonked

Yagoo: *soft sobbing*

[Macros]

Apart from the fact that is fucking tanking my holdings in TAL

What I'm reading from that is China are actively discouraging education.

Where is our resident communist to comment on this?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Macros, on 05 August 2021 - 08:33 AM, said:

Apart from the fact that is fucking tanking my holdings in TAL

What I'm reading from that is China are actively discouraging education.

Where is our resident communist to comment on this?

But Chinese authorities also recently announced plans for an 'MIT of the South' (in southern China, near Hong Kong)....

They claim this measure is aimed at reducing inequality and encouraging people to have more children.

In theory, for a meritocracy to truly select those with the most potential and ability, quality of education should not drastically differ on the basis of social class or how much parents can afford to pay. Just as you trust non-profit doctors and hospitals to do their best and attract high-quality people despite not being for-profit, the same can apply to tutoring---at least provided tutors are still well-compensated. 'To each according to their needs, from each according to their abilities'---if some students need extra help, they should get extra tutoring; if some students show more potential, they should get extra tutoring of a different kind; but if some students' parents show extra money to try to get special treatment, they should get some tutoring in virtue.

Could even combine with the crackdown on gaming addiction among children---gaming could instead be redirected towards positive educational goals. Personally, I would rather take tests or practice quasi-gamified musical or perceptual skills (recognizing microexpressions for example) than play standard 'video games'---not that I don't find video/computer games addictive: that's one of the most potent reasons for strictly limiting exposure to them. They can be digital heroin.

But do the extra resources of being for-profit provide a major benefit for education? They benefit those trying to get the highest possible scores on standardized tests, which may not correspond with the types of learning that most benefit society (or the sciences). Arguably that would really be a flaw in the testing, or the use of a standardized as the primary evaluation. However, there's only so much testing can do, and less 'objective' or more varied measures can also bring problems and be gamed, especially by socioeconomically privileged elites.

OTOH: '"Discourse and ideology need to be controlled by the central government", and Beijing "aims to rectify education itself", industry insider says

[...]

When the representatives of several after-school tutoring giants were called in for a meeting with China's Ministry of Education in March, they were told that their teaching materials and content would be treated as publications – subject to advanced censorship.'
https://www.scmp.com...ed-us70-billion


'Many families and experts say Beijing's education overhaul will help the rich and make the system even more competitive for those who can barely afford it.

[...] In China, the competitive pursuit of education — and the better life it promises — is relentless. So are the financial pressures it adds to families[...]

The burden of this pursuit has caught the attention of officials who want couples to have more children. China's ruling Communist Party has tried to slow the education treadmill. It has banned homework, curbed livestreaming hours of online tutors and created more coveted slots at top universities.

Last week, it tried something bigger: barring private companies that offer after-school tutoring and targeting China's $100 billion for-profit test-prep industry. [...]

[...] experts are skeptical it will work. The wealthy, they point out, will simply hire expensive private tutors, making education even more competitive and ultimately widening China's yawning wealth gap.

Regulators have slammed the industry for being "hijacked by capital." China's top leader, Xi Jinping, has attacked it as a "malady," and said parents faced a dilemma in balancing the health and happiness of their children with the demands of a competitive system, which is too focused on testing and scores.

The education overhaul is also part of the country's effort to encourage an overwhelmingly reluctant population to have bigger families and address a looming demographic crisis. In May, China changed its two-child policy to allow married couples to have three children. It promised to increase maternity leave and ease workplace pressures.

[...] Exam preparation courses begin in kindergarten. Young children are enrolled in "early M.B.A." courses. No expense is spared, whether the family is rich or poor.

"Everyone is pushed into this vicious cycle. You spend what you can on education," [...] For Chinese students hoping to get a spot at a prestigious university, everything hinges on the gaokao, a single exam that many children are primed for before they even learn how to write.

"If this criteria for selecting students doesn't change, it's hard to change specific practices," said Ms. Tu, whose research is focused on wealth and education in China.'

https://www.nytimes....ion-tutors.html

[Also: remember that universities like Harvard and MIT are nonprofit, Oxford and Cambridge are 'charities', etc.]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 05 August 2021 - 08:35 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

More context (if you didn't see this in the TLS already):


'Nowhere was each generation more rigorously quality-sifted than in the China of the Ming dynasty (and for centuries earlier and later). [...] endless examination halls that dotted the country: half palaces, half prisons, monuments to competition, containing thousands of cells for the examinees and surrounded by high walls to prevent them from communicating with the outside world, or with each other. Guards searched the candidates, professional scribes copied their scripts to prevent the examiners recognizing anyone’s handwriting, and the candidates were given numbers to disguise their identities. The system aroused abiding resentment. Classics of Chinese literature were devoted to satirizing its absurdities. Wooldridge tells us that the Taiping Rebellion (1850–64), which cost more than 20 million lives, was largely provoked by frustrations with the civil service exam and led by young men whose career hopes had been destroyed by failing it – just as the memoirs of modern French meritocrats are filled with tales of the horrors of the “Bac”. The system in China was abolished by imperial edict in 1905, only to surface again in modern China. These days, the extra precaution against cheating is that the authorities fly drones over the exam hall to check for signals from smartphones.

[...]

The trouble is that the cognitive elites soon begin feathering their own nests and marking their own homework. Each new meritocracy has a way of hardening into a new aristocracy. [...] England’s most famous schools were founded to give poor scholars a leg up – not just Eton, Harrow and Winchester but the great grammar schools of Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth. But having been colonized by the upper-middle classes and plutocrats, these schools are today the destination of choice for the new Asian elites. As I am writing this, in today’s Times I see Eton College advertising the fact that no less than half the King’s Scholarships this year have been awarded to Chinese boys educated at expensive English prep schools.

In the US today, elite colleges have more students from the top 1 per cent than from the whole of the bottom 60 per cent; at Harvard, the average parental income is[...] $450,000 per year. Nor are the new elites content to be only famous for being rich. In a parody of Plato’s Guardians, Davos Man now presents himself as a sage. [...]

These pretensions to high culture do not exclude corruption on a mind-boggling scale, not least in the enormous backhanders laid out to winkle your child into a top-flight school. This new inequality is reinforced and perpetuated by “assortative mating”, in which alpha males marry alpha females, as predicted by Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. The proportion of men with university degrees who married women with degrees nearly doubled in the US between 1960 and 2005. More cruel still, the alphas tend to stay married, while the miseries of divorce are mostly reserved for the underclass, if they get around to marrying at all. In the US, only 10 per cent of women with degrees are single mothers, as opposed to 60 per cent of women with high-school education only. Divorce among college-educated women is 30 per cent down on twenty years ago, while marriage break-ups continue to climb among women who dropped out of high school. [...] One wonders whether modern societies, in both the East and West, are currently in danger of experiencing the same social sclerosis as paralysed medieval Venice, where the social mobility that had made La Serenissima great gradually ground to a halt as the elites rigged the system in favour of their children, so that by 1315 the authorities published a book called Il Libro d’Oro, a social register intended to freeze the elite for ever – a moment hauntingly dubbed la serrata (“the closure”).'

https://www.the-tls....erdinand-mount/

[LinearPhilosopher]

https://canadiancouc...del-portfolios/

So a buddy sent me this and after looking it over ima be shifting some funds here.

Specifically, one of the ETF mixes has one thats pretty much all goverment bonds so given im looking at a 2-3 year horizon this seems like a solid choice, and the Bank of Canada wont likely raise interest rates any time soon.

That being said, theres another one thats based off US bonds... should look into how often and by how much the US raises their interest rates.

This post has been edited by LinearPhilosopher: 06 August 2021 - 01:48 PM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Btw this sequence of headlines made me lol:


'BABA: Alibaba: Buy When There Is Blood In The Streets'

'Why Do Investors Love Alibaba? It's A Chronic Underperformer'

'BABA: Alibaba: The More It Drops, The More I Buy'

Waited for Chinese stocks to rebound a little from the initial panic, then dumped all my (non-ETF-held) shares of BABA and JD, and some CXSE (China without government-affiliated businesses---seemed like an advantage when the primary threat was US regulation... now it might be a liability), and transferred some of the funds to actively managed China ETFs (RAYC, KEJI). Historically, ex-US (excluding the United States) is the one area where actively managed funds (provided fees are low) have on average outperformed passively managed funds (though mid and small cap actively managed US funds have outperformed passively managed on average over the last of 3 to 5 years). It's predicted that sectors (and perhaps companies?) favored by the (Chinese) government will do well, whereas sectors and (perhaps especially) companies disfavored by the government are at extreme risk. CHNA is also actively managed but being single sector is risky---however I don't have too much in it, so I just held for now. Unfortunately KEJI and CHNA have low AUM (even though CHNA---Chinese biotech---was the top performing China ETF last year) so they could close and force me to take unexpected capital gains, potentially booting me into a higher tax bracket (no not taxes!)... CHNA was on the ETF death watch for a while (in 2019 iirc).


Financial Times article I mentioned did specify: 'Until it substantially cleans up and transforms its financial system, in other words, China’s regulators should be more worried by too much foreign buying of its stocks and bonds than by too little.'


However, China's financial tech, at least, seems to be transforming their financial system at a relatively rapid pace... not sure whether the e-yuan will help the issues described in the FT.


https://www.ft.com/c...98-d48dfdd76416

Might finally buy some crypto, since Paypal is offering to reimburse me for it. Not sure it's worth the bother though. Maybe if there's an enticing dip soon....

'The big news this week in crypto was the insertion of harsh regulatory language in the infrastructure bill. Some interpreted it as nothing less than a potential kill switch for much of the cryptocurrency industry in the U.S., and the first step towards a de facto ban of Bitcoin (BTC-USD).

Former Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) Chief Technology Officer [...] "Make no mistake, this is a backdoor Bitcoin ban ... Compliance is impossible. Their intent is to criminalize full nodes, lightning nodes, and most Bitcoin wallets."

[...]

"Step 1: Ban PoS under the guise of 'tax compliance' ... Step 2: Ban PoW under the guise of 'environmental compliance' ... Clever, likely effective. Back to wartime unfortunately. These people make me sick. I’m going to bed."

Bitcoin this morning is modestly higher at $40.7K. Ether (ETH-USD) is up a bit as well at $2,767.'

https://seekingalpha...-to-have-failed

COIN (Coinbase) has been a big loser for me (glad I didn't buy much---got some on the first big dip), and I'm skeptical about the likelihood of their proposed new services (consulting, etc.) compensating for their lack of a moat, but given crypto's historical volatility, I'll wait and see if it goes back up before putting it in my 'sell the loser to avoid paying more in taxes' bin... sure, negative and positive don't mean much if you're far from zero, but if you only ever sell the losers you never actually gain money (unless you borrow against your stocks to avoid paying capital gains, as many very rich people are doing now), and the winner-take-all trend of the last 10 years might not continue, especially if anti-trust succeeds in the US....

[Macros]

Europcar and Airbnb are the only greens in my portfolio.

Bould TAL on the dip hoping it would come back if Chinese government backed down on their indoctrination program
Silly Macros

[Malankazooie]

Has there been a disruption in the supply chain for simple commodities? Asking because on a few occasions now, when I've stopped in to get coffee, they were out of regular sugar. On another occasion they were out of napkins. Another time, stopping in at a convenience store, they didn't have the small plastic bags to place your items into. Not sure if it is anything to raise interest really, but it's something I've experienced over the past couple of weeks.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Obviously the big question about climate change is which stocks will benefit. I'm particularly looking into REITs for long-term buy and hold for at least 3 to 10 years. (Inflation-adjusted US treasury rates are so low REITs are being recommended as an alternative to bonds....)

Obvious candidates 1. are least likely to suffer from extreme weather catastrophes ('nowhere is safe' was a recent headline, but some places are safer), 2. are places displaced people will want to move to, 3. will benefit from being slightly warmer (within about 5 to 10 years at least).

For 1 there's at least one service that scores REITs on that basis (Four Twenty Seven).

For 2: '"Climate migration is ongoing now. This isn't just a future theory," explains Tulane University professor Jesse Keenan, one of the world's leading experts on the topic. "We're already seeing this in Arizona. There's a lot of people leaving Southern Arizona and crowding housing markets in Northern Arizona, where it's much cooler in the mountains. People can't stand the extreme heat."

Shifts in population like what's beginning to unfold in Arizona — or in Louisiana and Florida — will eventually create what Keenan refers to as "climate gentrification." Those forces drive up home prices, rents for apartments, and can price out residents who've lived in an area for years, forcing some onto the streets. Climate migration and subsequent gentrification will accelerate as the United States faces an accelerating sea-level rise, more intense heatwaves, wildfires, and even mega hurricanes, all worsened by a warming planet. Those trends and events will leave more and more of America uninhabitable. "These places already exist, particularly many places in coastal America," [...] "We will not be able to live in these places. We have built to the edge of abyss in many places in this country." The exodus could be particularly extreme from regions like South Florida and coastal Louisiana. A number of recent studies and research-based predictions hold striking similarities. If they prove accurate, cities like Atlanta, Dallas, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle could quickly become cities of climate refuge.'
https://www.lx.com/e...g-crisis/35570/
'Want to Escape Global Warming? These Cities Promise Cool Relief
Climate projections suggest that, because of geographic factors, the region around Duluth, the Great Lakes area, will be one of the few places in America where the effects of climate change may be more easily managed.
[...] "At the end of the day, it's really about fresh water," Dr. Keenan said. "It's that simple. You've got to have fresh water." [Got to remember the droughts....]

Ultimately, if Duluth decides to invest in attracting climate migrants, whether voluntary or displaced, the city may face competition.
At least one other Great Lakes city, Buffalo, 700 miles away on the eastern tip of Lake Erie, also has winter cold, and the same geographic blessings as Duluth. Buffalo is predicted to have fresh water even as the climate warms, and its summers will remain relatively cool.' https://www.nytimes....ion-duluth.html Duluth also gets a point for sounding vaguely Lovecraftian (despite not being in New England...). Buffalo gets half a point for Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo. 'There's no definitive ranking of climate-resilient cities, but here is a sampling of cities [...] poised to be adaptable to the highly uncertain era of the climate emergency.

Burlington, Vermont
Rochester, New York
Buffalo, New York
Pittsburgh
Knoxville, Tennessee
Asheville, North Carolina
Toledo, Ohio
Detroit, Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Madison, Wisconsin
Milwaukee
Minneapolis
Duluth, Minnesota'

https://www.cnn.com/...tter/index.html

Globally, the big winner is still predicted to be New Zealand. Much of Canada will probably remain too cold for a long time, and restrictive immigration policies will make mass migration from the US unlikely if not rescinded. Not sure about Russia. Eventually, as global warming keeps going, Canada and Russia will benefit... maybe even Antarctica?)

OTOH this is so obvious that the 5 to 10 (or at least the 3) year horizon may already be fully 'priced in'... especially since it's been so salient as a consequence of recent climate disasters:

'REITs Increasing Focus on Risks Due to Climate Crisis

[...] In his 2021 annual letter to CEOs, BlackRock CEO [...] noted that "no issue ranks higher than climate change on our clients' lists of priorities. They ask us about it nearly every day." [...] the message is resonating across the REIT industry.

REITs are leveraging forward-looking physical climate risk data to understand their portfolios' baseline and changing exposure to climate hazards, identify risk hotspots and portfolio trends, screen investments during due diligence processes, and benchmark against their peers[...]

[...] the focus on climate-related risks is rapidly accelerating. "Five years ago, there wasn't much conversation on the impacts of climate risk. Fast forward to now and there is a tremendous amount of dialogue," [...] A rapidly increasing number of REITs are reporting around climate change risks and opportunities following Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures (TCFD) on assessing physical and transitional risk, as well as mapping and scoring climate risk within portfolios for reporting purposes such as in GRESB's real estate assessment resiliency module. "If you're looking at climate change and climate risk, the number of events is increasing every year and the damages are massive,"'

https://www.reit.com...-climate-crisis

Slightly less obvious possibility might be COLD, cold storage REIT. Wonder if it might also benefit from the need for a lot of different mRNA boosters?...

[Edit: OTOH cold storage REIT could be hurt by global warming---higher energy costs have to be balanced against the obvious increase in demand for ice cream... yes that's it I should invest in ice cream! That should solve it....]

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 13 August 2021 - 11:21 PM