Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I guess white belt hasn't heard of the Mongolian empire, the opium wars, or the fact that China has constantly alternated between a single country and many fragmented smaller countries. Its collapse in power is common. The dictatorship has millions of people in concentration camps, is starving milli...

@Ego I appreciate all your well cited posts. They stand out amidst the noise and tangential disagreements. I'm impressed by your stamina to keep going, really. To support your point, I'll share my perspective. While the virus itself likely isn't a scam, you're correct that a lot of people see this a...

Once lock down finishes, this year. It already started but I haven't progressed much with the lock down.

The plan will likely consume a year or 2.

I see lots of love for Latin America here so I'm looking for any recommendations for the continent. What to see, how to go cheaply, where to stay.


Do you have any ideas to share?

Any good recommendations for a laptop that isn't Chinese made?

8-16gb ram, 128-256gb ssd, dual boot, 11-14" screen.

My direct, equal weight investment is beating the S&P by a percentage point or so. It is definitely more volatile.

Top performers are not the tech giants but they are doing well.

@Viktor I think it's because of the timing of when you left, I recall reading in your journal that you had to be quiet on some topics until leaving. At this point, foreigners are banned from entering any establishment whereas Chinese aren't. I've seen them locked out of paid apartments after even a ...

This makes a lot of sense to me in the current climate. If we're going to print money, what better use than to give it to the people? Light years beyond giving it to multinational businesses like in 2008. Couple this with repatriating (if not domestically, at least within the hemisphere) essential g...

jacob wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 21, 2020 8:19 am

The stock market has recovered to where it was mid January 2020.

Where are you seeing this?

VTI (Vanguard US Stock Market Index) is down 17.02% from the top.

15 January: 166.91
Today: 138.64
-17.02%

S&P 500 Index is down to 2781 from 3289, so 15.4% down.

Do you mean 2019?

@BostonImproper https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-wuhan-wuh There's direct flights from Wuhan to Europe, America, Australia, and obviously, all of Asia. March was when travel bans started getting more serious. Even in March, I was able to catch an economy flight from Asia across the wor...

@iDave I assumed it was common knowledge that the infection already reached a significant fraction of the population. For some reason, lots of deniers thinking this is the end of the world. This started way back in November. It spread for most of the flu season undisturbed. It is about as deadly as ...

I read the thread but Brent oil is still at 26 even under all the same pressure. Storage costs, low demand. Brent oil tends to be from the ocean and have a higher sulfur content. That seems to lead towards even higher transportation costs than WTI which comes from land, in the middle of US, thus hav...

This feels like a scam. What explains the huge, negative, divergence between Brent and WTI oil?

It'll be fascinating to see if the measures caused seasonal flu deaths to plummet or not.

So far, WTI ( west texas intermediate crude oil) is trading at -50 or so a barrel, at least its contracts are. This is due to a collapse in demand from the ccp virus as well as some lingering affects of the Saudis flooding the market with oil. So now, nobody is buying oil and people are having to pa...

The maximum safe withdrawal rate exceeds 10% for a 60 year retirement if you start at 1842 as the US transitioned from an agrarian to an industrial society. This chart showing withdrawal rates cross various retirement time frames is fascinating*. The lowest 60 year swr is about 3% historically and t...

Go read IRS Publication 54. It covers this exact scenario.

They lied to the world for a significant period of time that there was no human to human transmission among many other things. They cause more harm than anything. They waste more money on premium travel than actually helping. They're more useless than the League of Nations. They have blood on their ...

Well said iDave. I began his presidency vehemently opposed to him. While I loathe many of the actions taken by the administration, the response to Covid of actually giving a decent check to people and small businesses with very few hoops is applaudable. The strong stance for ip rights and being chea...

I don't get what everybody says by out of toilet paper. I've seen huge amounts of it on sale in both countries I've been in in different continents since this started. Only thing I haven't been able to find is Cocoa powder. Nutritional yeast isn't normally available in any of the stores I've been to...