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livinincali
Participant[quote=deadzone]Look at a chart of the two most recent market crashes, in 2000 and 2008-9.
When the market crashes, it’s going WAY DOWN. A few hundred point drop on the Dow any given day is a drop in the bucket in the big picture.[/quote]
The problem is those crashes started from a a couple 2% down days that were no big deal. That’s the problem with trying to time the top of a market. At the onset it looks like a bunch of no big deal corrections. Next thing you know you’re down 20% and don’t want to sell until things go back up. So you hold everything all the way down and sooth yourself with the tried and true you can’t time the market, it will always come back, and nobody could have seen this coming.
We’ll see what happens this time, but I expect most people to get caught in the next crash the same way they got caught in the previous two. Fear of missing out of the upside overwhelms their ability to take profits and wait for better opportunities.
ParticipantThe problem is that most companies stock prices don’t do so well as they transition from a growth company to a value company. So while you aren’t probably looking at a bunch of downside buying apple here I don’t know that you are looking at a bunch of upside either at least in the short term. Look at an old chart of KO, MSFT, CSCO, GE. Seems like once these companies make a top in growth they decline/stay flat for quite some time until the value investors take over the stock.
Participant[quote=XBoxBoy][quote=flu]
So if I were to play, my numbers would be 1,2,3,4,5,6[/quote]As unintuitive as it may seem, those numbers are just as likely (or unlikely) to hit as any other numbers. It might be worth thinking about whether other people would be likely to pick those numbers though, since you share the pot. Ideally you want a set of numbers that is less likely to be picked by someone else.[/quote]
If you pick numbers that are mostly above the number of days in a month you might have a slightly better chance on being a single winner. You eliminate the birthday pickers.
ParticipantWhen everybody tells you not to buy and they’ve all gotten out.
Participant[quote=barnaby33]
Unless somebody gets a fusion reactor working we are going to keep living with declining EROEI. Symptoms may include temporary gluts of oil as economies collapse and temporary shortages as we all fight over the scraps at the table. Your mileage may vary.
[/quote]A fission reactor specifically Thorium nuclear is probably the only realistic short term solution. You can always work on that for now until you possibly figure out a workable fission design. Every unit of GDP has a unit of energy behind it and if you don’t figure out something to handle base load power generation that isn’t fossil fuel we will likely have a a declining standard of living. I suppose it’s theoretically possible to cover a vast majority of the Mohave dessert with solar thermal plants and giant molten salt reservoirs to continue producing power in hours where there’s no sun. We could even get by with new traditional nuclear BWR and PWR’s uranium reactors but we ain’t going to replace and grow what we need with efficiency/conservation, wind, and solar panels. Unfortunately those that advocate for that don’t really have the scientific background to understand what they are saying.
Participant[quote=Escoguy]Two years ago we bought a Nissan Leaf and a Plug in Hybrid, cut our gasoline use by 80%, added solar. [/quote]
When do you plug those cars in during the day when the sun is shinning or at night when you get home from work. If it’s at night where do you think the power is coming from.
[quote=Escoguy]
Just added a second system so our electric bill is minimal. Now adding solar on four rental properties here to get the cash flow of about 12%/year on average. I think there are thousands of others who are in some stage of doing the same. The total economic impact between additional revenue +$500 month and savings of $400 /month is about 33% of our mortgage plus our tenants get some savings too.I think the transition to renewables will be faster than many expect.
[/quote]The financial part only works because of net metering, without it you’d be lucky to get 1/5th the retail price for selling power to the power company. If you’re going to install solar to get the benefit you better do it soon and pray that they don’t somehow retroactively change the rules. SDGE and other power companies are going to cut net metering off at some point, but they may grandfather it in. They need somebody to pay for the capital intensive project of providing power when solar isn’t actually generating it. Whether that’s solar storage technologies or some other generating technology. Peak power in the most urban areas is about 5-9 PM and solar output from 5 to 9 PM is relatively low. You need to solve the problem of power demand times versus renewable supply times and it won’t be cheap or easy.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]
But that said, utility companies are starting to panic over rooftop solar (and companies like WalMart) cutting into their revenue.[/quote]Well yeah because power companies have to build expensive natural gas turbine peaker plants to provide electricity when the sun isn’t shining. Or are you ok with rolling blackouts and brown outs during the evening hours and when the sun isn’t shining.
That’s the problem with solar it’s expensive to store in batteries and it’s expensive to build a power plant that is only used part of the time. The cost of the natural gas to fuel that reactor is cheap in the grand scheme of things. Building a 200MW reactor for a couple hundred million dollars to be turned on in an instant when the sun isn’t shining isn’t cheap. It means the cost of power is close to doubled. You had to buy all the solar panels and you had to buy the natural gas fired power plant to be a backup.
ParticipantProblem with silver is the last time it went into a bubble it sat around $5/oz for a couple of decades after the bubble burst. Silver might have a solid floor at 10 or something this time but I don’t know that it has a bunch of upside either.
Participant[quote=The-Shoveler]Well I think just about every nation in the world that matters has just declared they are going fossil fuel free.
(well that’s the goal anyway).So not sure where Oil fits into that future.[/quote]
Ummm yeah, good luck with that. You better start building an awful lot of nuclear power plants to power that plan. You ain’t going to accomplish it with wind and solar.
ParticipantIn general a Roth has only 1 advantage over just saving the money outside of a retirement account. That one advantage is that capital gains are tax free. There are a plethora of drawbacks to that one advantage and they include. The money usually can’t be withdrawn without penalty. The investment options tend to be somewhat limited (For example it isn’t easy to invest Roth funds in a rental property). There’s no guarantee that your investment will grow with significant capital gains. There’s no guarantee that the government own’t change rules about tax rates in the future. So in effect they’ve sold you on this dream that you’re going to take $100K, grow it into $500K that’s all going to be tax free but the odds or you doing that and the money staying tax free might not be that great. Unfortunately nobody knows the answers to those questions.
Participant[quote=kev374]what I am saying is based on the complexity I face on a day to day basis on designing and architecting systems (and yes, just because my designation is Sr. Software Engineer does not mean I am not expected to design, re-design, re-factor, deconstruct and re-configure and re-architect crappy existing systems) I should be making MINIMUM of $200,000…
people are crying about increasing minimum wage, what about the rest of us? Every year the wages are going down but workload and complexity is going up, constantly need to learn new stuff… it’s crazy.
Some of these systems are so complex it makes my head hurt… right now dealing with inhouse designed OO javascript framework, this thing has like probably 500,000 lines of code all over the place, designed over a 8-10 year period by various people but i’m expected to walk in and wave my magic wand and fix, design stuff against it? I’ve head to break my head for this and what am I getting paid? $135k? F it, need at least $200k for this crap!
Plumbers are making $135k these days and all they have to do is turn a wrench in the clockwise direction…[/quote]
Sounds like you need to start looking for a new job. Even it’s doing java for the same level of pay at another company. It’s probably better than what you are doing now. It’s always way easier to find a new job when you still have one than when you don’t
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]In hindsight, it only seems self-evident that deleveraging would lead to lower demand. Some economists were actually quite right at predicting very little, if any inflation following the 2008 financial crisis.[/quote]
I honestly don’t think there’s anything the fed or government entities can do to prevent the deleveraging. They can probably impact how it unfolds but the thing of value in a debt scenario isn’t the 1’s or 0’s it’s the future productivity that is promised. So if you reduce those future promises via raising the minimum wage to $50/hr and helicopter drop money or by refusing to honor those future promises the net result is the same for the creditors. You aren’t getting what was promised.
Historically major deleveraging events have resulted in roaring economies once the deleveraging event is over. Ever hear about the 1920-1921 depression and the roaring 20’s. It’s the attempt to prevent that deleveraging from happening that results in stagnant economies with low growth. We’re in this phase where we’re desperate to get companies and people to borrow more to fuel consumption but the demographics are against us, the interest rates are against us, etc.
This current fed sponsored bubble with low rates isn’t doing much for the real economy because nobody is using those low interest to actually invest in the real economy. It’s all stock buybacks and financial engineering. The one place where there’s some real economy impact is sub prime loans in the auto industry but how long does that last before it blows up.
ParticipantBernanke will be hailed as a hero until the next bubble pops. Then he’ll be the biggest idiot in the world because he’ll have failed to raise rates so they can respond to the next crisis. Greenspan was a pretty big hero until 2008 came along.
Participant[quote=deadzone]Great, now can target shorting STZ. Even prior to this they had a very bubblish chart.[/quote]
Probably not a bad plan. They are buying growth by taking on huge debt loads. A little bit like how Valeant Pharmaceuticals (VRX) was growing. You don’t know when that debt load is going to matter and pop the stock but it should happen in the not too distance future.
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