Early Retirement Extreme Forums

@Bankai: you don't need liquidty (size and concentration are variations on the same theme) when using technical analysis, precisely because almost all technical analysis boils down to trend following aka momentum investing/trading. Without much liquidity, you can force a trend. Then you primarily ne...

@Bankai: Renaissance Technologies has a special fund that is NOT open to outsiders. That's the one which has dominated short-term trading for past 30 years. I have no idea what the open funds are about. They may not be similar to that closed fund. Also, every dog has its day. It's quite possible ano...

@LuckyC: Market Wizards was written long ago. As I wrote previously, what appear to random market fluctuations are probably not entirely random because of underlying human psychological biases. The underlying patterns are what Market Wizards guys were taking advantage of. Then along came Renaissance...

@Bankai: I don't know the details of that contest, but plenty of lottery winners do much better: +100,000,000% in a single week in some cases (buy one $1 ticket, win $1,000,000). Better hedge funds, like Renaissance, are consistent winners over decades. Are those investment contest winners also cons...

Government resources are vast, but they are not infinite. Government resources to fight depression are infinite. Period. Real world resources another story. No unlimited supply of humans to do labor or iron ore to make steel, for example. But infinite supply of money, yes. And that's all that matte...

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." - Professor Irving Fisher, 15 Oct 1929 He would have been correct if the consensus in the 1930's for what constitutes wise economic policy was what it is today. Prior to the 1950's, stocks were usually much cheaper tha...

Unlike shemp, I do not think this is ruled out by BTC's lack of state power. BTC may not be able to exercise physical force, but brute force cannot break modern encryption. Issue of state power is that states can force people to pay taxes in their currency, or they can confiscate real assets and gi...

To reiterate, if a person wants physical pleasure, masturbation plus drugs is the way to go. Only the crudest mental retards are at this level. Normal humans are socialized during adolescence to feel uncomfortable living in complete solitude and masturbating. Because women are so prone to "atte...

[...discusses various factors that advantage owner occupied real estate...] Another factor for the average person is that a mortgage is the only way to get access to the benefits/risks of leverage. And you aren't the first person to notice these factors, by any means, and therefore prices on real e...

As of start of last year, I was 30% cash, 70% non-USA stocks in the VXUS ETF. That ETF was up like 8% for 2020. The reason my portfolio as a whole was up about 25% (24.7% in my spreadsheet, but since I'm estimating taxes due, decimal precision is misleading, hence the rounding) is because invested m...

I gave a sophisticated discussion of the OP's case earlier, but as with white belt's rebuttals, OP perhaps incapable of understanding these arguments. Here's a simpler argument. Owning real estate has essentially the same set of risks as owning stocks. Therefore, in the very long run and averaging a...

If maximum drawdown is the criterion, then vaccines and hospital treatment are both off the table (and not just for covid), because there's always the chance you'll die or be left paralyzed from the neck down due to some one in a billion allergic reaction or hospital acquired infection. Driving also...

I pay the girl per meeting. Reason is to create a strong association in the girl's mind between sex and money. Good sex => she gets money. No sex or bad sex => possibility I'll replace her and she gets no more money. Paid girlfriends need to be constantly reminded that they can and will be replaced ...

I see no good alternative to REASONABLY PRICED stocks and real-estate. Since I anticipate violent dips in the stock market eventually, I might switch from current 2% cash, 98% stocks to maybe 30%/70%, to be prepared to buy back in during a dip. Then again, maybe not. I have the right personality for...

End of year update. Plan for 2020 was hiking in Spain in spring, city living in Kyiv, Ukraine in summer, hiking in Bulgaria in autumn, bicycle touring in southwest USA in winter. Plans were upset by hysterical worldwide overreaction to covid-19. (I expect hysterical overreaction to eventually provok...

It matters not one wit whether a company pays out cash on interest or operations, as long as the recipient of the interest turns around and spends the interest. Deflation occurs when money stops circulating. Hoarding money, in other words. (The old money equation MV=P has always been stupidity induc...

No, household and corporate debt does not necessarily have to be deflationary. There is no cause and effect relationship. There is correlation between debt levels and deflation, because of the reason I noted above. Namely, debt is typically concentrated in the hands of misers. Instead of spending in...

Creating more debt is ultimately deflationary. I don't where that slogan comes from, but it makes no sense. Do you really believe giving everyone $1 million of 10 year US government bonds paying 2% would be deflationary? Note that ordinary fiat money, whether $100 bills or electronic bank reserves ...

How will all of these businesses survive another lockdown period without another huge stimulus / PPP / fed liquidity injection? Some won't survive, but most will because allowing too many publicly traded corporations to fail would bring on a debt deflation. Central banks know this, so if elected go...

If you are already financially independent, and want to pursue medicine for its own sake, I'd advise both studying and working outside the USA. Medicine education is a combination of 3 things: theory, which is the same everywhere and can be learned independently; supervised practice, where personal ...