bigato's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
2Birds1Stone
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

Stop, just stop.

You are way too gung ho on making all or nothing moves.

I would just stop, and chill for a few months while you reevaluate your long term plan/strategy. Everything you are suggesting now is short sighted and based on emotion and current events.

rube
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by rube »

You try to predict and time the market. A dangerous game, needless to tell you. But I do, it is dangerous if it concerns such a large percentage of your NW.
True, I have most in real estate, but even if the value declines it is producing cash flow which would soften even serious declines drastically, unlike gold which is not a producing asset.
Don't get me wrong, I do like gold. But only as an hedge, insurance, like in the PP or Golden butterfly and therefore I still have a small percentage in gold myself.
But I would recommend you to not bet (and count on future money) on gold for such a large percentage of your NW. It is against all logic of the permanent portfolio etc. If you want to bet/play, do it with a small percentage of your NW.

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Bankai
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by Bankai »

Seems like a situation in which you want to pause and reflect before doing anything!

You might be right and gold could go up big time relative to stocks over next couple of years, but... there was a recent topic where someone (bsog?) wrote that there are always good arguments for both/all 3 ways the situation could unfold. And you make this decision based on...
after reading the news the last days
People are talking
I'm worried
seems like a good bet
Sorry for cherry-picking these, but these are in contrast to your usual rational approach. I might be wrong but are you not trying to 'avenge' your previous decision to sell gold which you consider to be a mistake (and which might not necessarily look so in few weeks/months)? If yes, this is probably the worst motivation to tinker with investments, on par with fear as it usually leads to compounding previous mistakes.

At least give yourself a few days before doing anything. Accumulating stash is just first step, keeping it for decades to come could be at least as difficult. Even if you are 'proved' to be right and make money on gold, that's not actually good considering your reasons for going all-in and it could backfire if based on this experience you make similar decisions at some later point.

rube
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by rube »

Bigato, you might be right. I am not arguing with you about your reasoning. But there are thousands of persons right at this moment who claim to know for sure that btc will go up. Or down. Or stock XYZ will go up/down. Or gold go up. Or DOWN. Etc. Only a few of them will be right.
What make you so sure you belong to that small group?
Again, you might be, but I simply don't know/dare to predict and would myself not make a bet on it, even when I would as sure as you seem to be. My advise therefore is simply to not put in too much. Even if you can afford to loose (some) because you now might get/make more, I would try to remember rule # 1 of investing: don't loose money (you can't afford/don't really want to loose).

Gold doesn't produce anything. It holds value and the value can increase or decrease. You can sell it again for money, but 1 oz does not become 1.1 oz.
My real estate is producing enough free cash flow to live from, I don't need to sell it to get money. Same for people that hold stocks paying dividend.

classical_Liberal
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

I think you should think about your personal risks, as opposed to the macroeconomic risks. Your short term personal risks are much more predictable. If you plan to RE in early 2021, I think you should begin building your preferred asset allocation for that specific time in your life, ie early portion of early retirement.

Will you have any cashflow? What are your biggest personal risks during this period? Probably not inflation in the short term (although I'm not an expert in your home countries currency), more likely some form of sequence of return risk in the first few years of ER that eats away too much capital to recover from. This means having your assets over-weighted in any particular asset class is a huge risk if you guess wrong about the short term macroeconomic situation. I think, in your case, sequence of return risk amplifies if you do not have cashflow from your unemployment for the first three years(am I understanding this correctly?). Once cash flow is turned back on and covering a portion of your expenses, then is the time to take more risks.

IMO this is a mistake many people make. They fall in love with a plan for assets due to economic thoughts, but fail to take into account their personal risk factors at any given point in time.

freedom86
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by freedom86 »

bigato wrote:
Sat Aug 24, 2019 5:05 pm
I started using pomodoro technique coupled with headphones to be able to be productive at work. Also started talking to colleagues about the talking affects concentration, and inquiring what we could do to convince the boss to let us work from home at least once a week. Kind of testing the waters to start a mutiny. The most senior colleague is very much on my side on this. Boss also hates the talking, but then he hates imposing himself as a boss. And is against remote work, but we'll get to that eventually. Good news is that the company is talking about substituting desktop computers for laptops and implementing coworking spaces, making remote work more normal, etc.
Hey bigato,

you should find out about the primary decider's desires & then suggest a test phase.

I did it his way:

"Hey [decider],

I think, that I could contribute far more to your [decider's primary desires].
Currently the work environment is holding me back,
because it's [noisy/ugly/whatever your problem is].

I think I can do much better, therefore I have the idea of starting a test phase, where I work one day per week from home.
I wouldn't need to commute, what would give me more energy & time to contribute to [decider's primary desires]
and I wouldn't have to spend energy to cope with [problems from above].

It's only a test phase, no risk for you & we can talk about which days I'll work from home."

At the test days, you have to show your peak performance.

suomalainen
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by suomalainen »

Meh. People invest how they want to invest based on what appears to be their very deeply-set biases, and I've found there's not much point discussing it. Sell everything and go into gold! Sure, why not. I suspect many others are in the same boat where they are reading, but there's just no point in arguing investment theses over the interwebs. Everyone's an investing genius in their own minds.

BookLoverL
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by BookLoverL »

Sounds like an interesting person to meet, then.

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Ego
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by Ego »

Wow. That sounds like the kind of person who could open lots if interesting doors. Are you interested in what he teaches?

classical_Liberal
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by classical_Liberal »

Ahh, the advantages of social skills :lol: . I couldn't help myself.
bigato wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 1:53 pm
This Sunday I watched the six-parts bbc documentary called "The Ascent of Money", about economic history.
Would your recommend? did it change the way you view investing?

Edit: I just read this too
bigato wrote:
Mon Sep 09, 2019 12:31 pm
After the one hour or so of talk, he wanted to pay my tab, so I ended eating free vegan food in exchange for sharing info I'm excited about :)
WTF Bigato? for a self proclaimed on spectrum autistic, you seem to be rocking the social scene!

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Ego
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by Ego »

I was wondering where you've been. That sounds like a great adventure taking a 24 hour bus ride across the country.

halfmoon
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by halfmoon »

bigato wrote:
Tue Oct 22, 2019 7:01 pm
On the other side, having the stream of money from the job can make that much faster. I may try to push for telecommuting after I finish the project I'm in, so that I have the option to move there sooner and possibly keeping the job for longer, at least as long as necessary to do all the restorations I want and maybe more if I keep liking my job.
I know nothing about Brazil, but many rural areas in the US have challenged internet speeds that aren't conducive to telecommuting. Aside from that: improving real estate is very often a great investment!

Hazel-is-ok
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by Hazel-is-ok »

Fermenting things is a lot of fun! I started a ginger bug, and made lemonade for a while, till I decided to cut back my sugar consumption. I still make kombucha, and am experimenting with flavouring it with ginger.

The other week DH and I made sauerkraut. It's really good! I now have some kimchi on the go, and some beet kvass. It'll be interesting to see if we like them.

horsewoman
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by horsewoman »

Sorry to hear about your investment losses but since it is an experiment it was to be expected, I suppose! I hope you get some valuable knowledge out of it.

Regarding wearing your head phones at work, I thought of you on Saturday. There was open day at my daughters school, 1000 chatting people, music, strange food, too much sugar, excited kids... pretty stressful! When we go home my daughter went to her room immediately. After I while I went looking for her, but she was nowhere to be found. My husband found her later, nestled into in a small compartment of her wardrobe with headphones on, listening to an audio book. One of my first thoughts was - bigato would understand this :) DH and me both found it a reasonable way to deal with the stress of such a day. I handed her a bottle of water and closed the wardrobe door again.

rube
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by rube »

@Bigato, as I am writing this I sit at a very noisy airport with my (active noise canceling) headphones on after a long day of interacting with a group of people. I like it, kind of, but only for a limited time and not too often. It is good I can work partly from home to offset those busy/noisy days.

I like your solution also, just go outside and lay down :lol:

jacob
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by jacob »

Standard rule of thumb for a trader-in-training is that it takes 1 year (so ~2000 hours of focus) to stop losing money (that's your tuition money) and about 2 years (so ~4000 hours) to become consistently profitable(*) ... and about 1 in 10 has the required X-factor, which is pretty much impossible to select for in advance.

(*) Making money on 4 days out of every 5 days is a good benchmark for a professional trader.

Zanka
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by Zanka »

I am def not a daytrader myself but as a professional pokerplayer I know there are a lot of similarities between trading and poker.

First of all, If you have not looked at a probability calculator you absolutely should do that to get a grasp of how much swings in results you are likely to experience. (Think of it like throwing a dice, you want to roll evens, What are the likelyhood that you have rolled 50% evens after 10 throws? 100? 1000?). Most pokerplayers are suprised that you actually can be a great player but still lose over a period of 3-400 000 hands (yes). This is probably the same in daytrading to some extent.

Second of all, when poker was booming ”everyone” could claim to be a good coach since there we’re so much easy money to be made from clueless people, this could equate to the stockmarket performing well over a 5-10y period where it is very likely that tons of daytraders have earned a couple of % to high of an ROI and thus seems to be Good.

And lastly, it Will be a full time job for at least a couple if years if you want to get good enough to earn something doing this.

Just my 2c, and im not saying it cant be done of course:)

jacob
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by jacob »

+1 on the connection between trading and poker. (Cf. value investing and bridge). People who are interested/good at one in any given pair tend to have an edge in the other.

I recommend: https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Bets-Ma ... 735216371/

One way to calculate the "tide effect" is to use: Absolute profit = Sum ( Position * Diff(Price) )

Price is a time-sequence (list) of prices say e.g. tick by tick, minute by minute, hour by hour, or day by day .. or whatever you have.
Diff(price) is the difference between one price and the price at the previous timestamp (a lot of times this will be zero)
Position will be the number of shares. E.g. +100 if you're long 100sh, 0 if you're flat, and -50 if you're short 50 shares.

When you're trading, the position variable will change ... Now, you compare this to a situation where you're simply long all your capital all day long (the position is a constant positive number). Comparing the absolute profits of the two calculations should show whether you're actually adding any informational value to the market-process.

Trading costs, etc. should be pretty easy to calculate, e.g. if you pay a flat rate, it's simply Rate*Sum(Min(1,Abs(Diff(Position)))) or something close to that (I'm too lazy to think it through :) ).

Note that "volatility" is also an important concern... there are different ways to calculate that. The standard academic way is the L2 norm, but there are more realistic and practical ways. I suggest using maximum daily loss or something like that. It should reflect your pain tolerance rather than be a way to make the math easier.

These equations are flexible enough to modify to incorporate leverage (or beta concerns) as well.

7Wannabe5
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

Sounds like you are having fun with your endeavors. I like foraging and trading too. One thing you might notice is that foraging for personal consumption (household market) and day trading on the stock market are at near opposite ends of the "capital required" spectrum, although the level of skill applied could greatly vary in either realm. Obviously, your salaried work is found at other point on (Skill, Market, Capital, Time, Vigor.) It has been my experience that Market is an interesting variable to play with or consider.

Anyways, I can't day trade, because although my outlook is more trader than investor, and I am pretty good at poker, I can't stay focused for very long in a fast-paced environment, so I tend towards something more like Season Trader :lol:

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Bankai
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Re: bigato's journal

Post by Bankai »

I wonder if you read any of the books below, and if yes, what are your thoughts? (Douglas, Elder and classic Livermore are more relevant to what you are doing while Mivervini and O'Neil just offer generally good advice (imo)). Personally, I prefer these kinds of books written by practitioners, over academic theorists.

Douglas Mark - Trading in the Zone
Douglas Mark - The Disciplined Trader, Developing Winning Attitudes
Dr.A.Elder - Come into my trading room
Dr.A.Elder - Sell and Sell Short
Jesse Livermore - Reminiscences Of A Stock Operator
Mark Minervini - Think & Trade Like a Champion
Mark Minervini - Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard
O'Neil - How to make money in stocks

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