You, a smart person: So listen up, there’s this company called turdsandwich, they sell two pieces of old cardboard with a turd in between as food. The company seems to be doing well, revenue grew by 50% last year. But my analysis reveals that it was actually the CEO of turdsandwich who was responsible, who bought two Turdsandwiches from his own company in 2022 and in 2023 got his mom to buy one too! And most importantly: They didn’t even eat the sandwiches themselves, they gave them to homeless guys and rapidly ran away! And finally: I think it’s not allowed to sell people turds with cardboard as if it were food! The government has started a serious investigation! I think the walls may be closing in on the CEO! He will go to jail now, any day now! I have decided to open a short on the Turdsandwich company.
The dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known: Wait what did you say? The revenue grew by 50%? This is a growth company! What happened to the earnings?
You, a smart person: Well the CEO pays himself 1 dollar in salary, they charge a dollar for a sandwich and the production costs are zero, so earnings doubled.
The dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known: EARNINGS DOUBLED? Holy shit! I have to get in on this! What if they keep doubling from here on forever?
You, a smart person: Please don’t. If the price doubles, I will receive a margin call and be forced to buy shares too.
The dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known: HOLY SHIT, A SHORT SQUEEZE?!? NOW I DEFINITELY HAVE TO PUT MY LIFE SAVINGS INTO THE TURDSANDWICH COMPANY! AND I NEED TO TELL EVERY OTHER LOW IQ LOW STATUS WHITE MALE TO DO THE SAME!
You, a smart person: I lost all my money. I will have to wear a nametag and talk to the customers for the rest of my life.
The dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known: I will never have to pick up the phone and talk to the customers again, I am now a high status white male, I will spend every day putting my penis in the holes of sexy goth chicks all around the world.
A few moments later…
A financial advisor: Don’t try to beat the market. Time in the market beats timing the market. Just buy an index fund.
A normie: That makes sense. I don’t understand finance, so I’m just going to allocate my money to everything. Well, let’s see… the entire global economy except for the turd sandwich company is worth 50 trillion. The turd sandwich company is now worth 50 trillion too. I have two dollars to invest for my retirement. This means I should invest one dollar in the turd sandwich company and one dollar in the rest of the global economy, right?
A financial advisor: Congratulations, you now understand what passive investing means. This is a very healthy development for society and our future. This could never go wrong and cause a misallocation of resources.
A normie: Hey one more question, why do I have to pay 5000 dollars every month to sleep on a mattress in a bathroom in Vancouver?
A financial advisor: I don’t know that’s not my expertise, but it probably has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that construction companies are trading at 10% of their revenue, while tech companies are trading at a few hundred times that.
A normie: Explain this to me again please.
A financial advisor: Would you rather start a company in an industry where selling 10 million dollar worth of your product in a year makes you a millionaire, or would you rather start a company in an industry where it makes you a BILLIONAIRE?
A normie: Thanks, now I understand it! I will go off to sleep in my cardboard box now!
Somewhere behind closed doors in a smoke filled room
A senator: I don’t understand why we have to give five quadrillion dollars to people who snort coke and do nothing useful.
An economist: Look we’re not giving it to them, we’re loaning it to them. They will pay it back, with interest!
A senator: Oh yeah that’s different. They kept betting on red and doubling their bet when it failed, it constantly fell on black, but we loan them the money that we make from thin air and if it then does fall on red we saved the day.
An economist: That’s too cynical. Think about what would happen to the pension funds!
A senator: Well let’s see, it looks like the pension funds bought shares in a “turdsandwich company”, from someone named “the dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known”, at a price that values the company as equivalent to the rest of the global economy.
An economist: Yes that’s exactly what I mean! If we don’t prop things up, the damage would be unimaginable! This is worse than 2008, because now there are no limits to the depths these investments could sink to!
Two days later, on an obscure right wing forum, discord channel or blog somewhere:
LSWM #1: Any day now the whole global economy could collapse! I have bought silver and gold and I’m sitting in my basement with my stored food and my king james bible and a shotgun aimed at my door to shoot at any brown people who try to steal my food!
LSWM #2: They really screwed up this time I will not eat the bugs or live in a pod Klaus Schwab I’m coming to kill you in minecraft
LSWM #3: Buy my fake online neckbeardmoney LSWMcoin it will make every LSWM rich and women, brown people, HSWMs and ZIONISTS will have no other option than to buy our LSWMcoins this will solve everything
The dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known: I HAVE LINED UP ALL THE SEXY GOTH CHICKS ON MY BOAT, BENT THEM OVER AND NOW MY TONGUE IS GOING OVER THEIR ASSHOLES LIKE FINGERS ON A PIANO
The cause of all the problems that you outline in this article can be summarised in three words:
Low interest rates.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Price-Time-Real-Story-Interest-ebook/dp/B09GXR448Z/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=9UFQT5B0A39E&keywords=the+price+of+time+edward+chancellor&qid=1707680742&sprefix=the+price%2Caps%2C207&sr=8-1
Just something to lighten up the mood in here…
A rare video of “the dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known” being spotted in the wild, in his natural habitat, eating his natural diet (hot dogs and beer):
https://twitter.com/NUCLRGOLF/status/1756470189552480613?t=xrkfNX0shVhNB8dsQDUQEQ&s=19
And just as a silverback gorilla beats his chest as a way of signalling his dominance, the dumbest LSWM you’ve ever known likes having his titties slapped by other LSWMs as a way of signalling that he is the alpha LSWM. Bow down to his superiority, all you lesser LSWMs!!!
You just found a great new genre!!!
PS I just ate a whole can of refried beans so I can enjoy the beautiful smell of my farts
Have you considered investing in Australian real estate?
“Despite record-high home prices, a painful cost-of-living crisis, the potential for further interest rate hikes and uncertainty about the domestic and global economies, experts have delivered a surprising outlook for Australia’s property markets in the year ahead.
Data researchers and economists at the big four (Australian) banks have offered up their forecasts for real estate price movements in 2024; all tipping continued growth in defiance of a range of negative factors.”
Chuckle.
It just goes up and up and up. . .
If you thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the price, you’d be right, but it just goes up and up and up. . .
Steve Keen, an Australian economist, made a solid case that Australian property should collapse many years ago, but it didn’t.
Instead, it’s gone up and up and up!
Chuckle
I see that Steve has recently started talking about the economy being ‘energy blind’, and yet, the global economy is still going up and up and up!
At some point it must end, but if you listen to Steve, you’ll never shed your nametag before that happens. And afterwards, you won’t have a job. Or food. So, there’s not really another bet to make.
So, grab yer balls, and stuff your life savings into Tesla, Aussie real estate, or whatever else, and enjoy the explosion of growth fueled by a one-time pulse of fossil fuels.
Maybe there’s a simple economic principle at work here? How about this: a bet against denial is a losing bet.
I have an Aussie friend down under and he is living the dream. He works fly in fly out welding in mining in Aussie WA – and he lives in Bali – lives like a freaking king – has a driver, house staff, private plane to get to and from work, little Balinese kids with private school at home, a wife at home and numerous married girlfriends at the mines.
Yeah, there’s big money in mining.
And if you can trade off the differential between juristictions, well, the world’s your oyster.
I am a mere numpty doomer LSWM though, who has missed every single boom!
There’s an awful lot of blasting going on out there.
Terraforming level stuff really.
It’s okay, so long as they don’t tell anyone about the exotic cave dwelling fish that get sent sky high. . .
But what else the kids going to do?
Get your monster truck, and jet ski, while the gettin’s good!
The investment case for Nvidia is as follows: the entire world will soon be at war. In this upcoming war, the most important would be AI-powered kamikaze drones, each loaded with 5 lbs of NVDA AI chips. They will be programmed to seek people and vehicles and kill them automatically. Tens of thousands of AI drones will be dispensed daily during war operations in multiple theatres. So NVDA’s sales will go through the roof as they will sell AI chips to all parties to all conflicts.
I am actually thinking of buying puts on NVDA
Also the AI drones will be killing each other, multiplying daily losses manyfold, but bringing profits to NVDA.
I can see the business case for war robots.
And it’s not as if machines aren’t already being made that can do the job – automatic cannons/machine guns etc. There are rules about keeping a human in the loop, but it’s not so hard to imagine a work around, like jamming a match, or a beer coaster, to permanently depress the button marked ‘go’ like compulsive gamblers do with pokie machines.
Or how about a ‘Trojan Horse’ container ship, loaded with ‘crop dusting’ drones, laying anchor just off the coast. . .
A growth industry for electronics/robotics engineers.
Surprisingly, there’s probably not a lot of money in it for the actual engineering grunts though.
Or at least not as much cash as being an engineer in oil and gas.
Different scale of destruction, I guess.
Do you have a bothersome capitalist over-production crisis, but you’re having trouble selling the business of flattening whole countries to your constituents?
Then invest in the bloodless AI technology solution of today, where everyone’s surplus production destroys itself!
War robots are gay and exist to be destroyed by Space Marines.
Hang on, isn’t a space marine a sort of meat robot?
😛
Nah, they’re still human inside. 😀
But not as human as the cheeky gremlin that drives an Orc Dreadnought!
Mushrooms are people?! Hmmmm, makes sense actually….
Yes, the apex predator. . .
And as everyone’s favourite anarchist said:
“The urge for destruction is also a creative urge!”
And looking around, what gets more human than that? 😛
I think it was Thomas McKenna who hypothesized that the humble mushroom was the perfect interplanetary species.
It generally occupies a karmically neutral niche – converting dead matter into something useful for other organisms.
Provides inspiration, and nutrition for its consumers.
Has tough spores that may be able to withstand the rigours of interstellar travel – perhaps even capable of travelling independently on interstellar winds.
And creates complex mycelium networks, perhaps complex enough for consciousness, when it gets drawn back down into a gravity well.
I might have to travel up to the Brindabella Ranges, gather some shrooms, and engage the spore drive 🙂
Raaaah!
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/–J18qCUN514/WfOurBoyvtI/AAAAAAAAHJQ/sW7MrfMqdfYVVy1IPu2sqaKTXLhBcul7gCLcBGAs/s1600/SmartSelectImage_2017-10-27-16-11-21.png
The apex predator, I kneel.
Chuckle!
You see, your 135 is totally enough to model the pattern. Good job!
Genetically enhanced warriors will be the only new meta; wearing powered armor that scrambles the imaging software of drones, and wielding fully automatic shotguns for drone swarms, and hand-held rail-guns for dealing with vehicles and other gene warriors. The new warrior will have eyesight keener than an eagles, as they duel each-other from miles away and shoot aircraft out of from the sky with their coilguns. A new dawn arises as man once again proves that meat is superior the machine.
Actually we’re all going to starve to death.
Fashion tips for activists: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/p9j10r/anti_facial_recognition_makeup/
Dazzling:
https://mascontext.com/issues/surveillance/abbott-h-thayers-vanishing-ducks-surveillance-art-and-camouflage
I have a comment awaiting moderation re disruptive camouflage.
Given the obscene cost of housing around here, I’ve contemplated creating a line of swags for the modern Diogenes with these patterns.
The best swags are just a canvas roll.
No zips, or fly mesh, or whatever to get crushed, damaged, or fail.
Just a roll of canvas.
Yeah same here.
Might buy puts with a distant expiration date.
Yeah, good luck! I made good money on Moderna puts a year ago.
Also, be wary that the implied vol on Nvidia is so massive that all options are very expensive, and the price is somewhat self-defeating. I will be buying far out of money, short expiration puts in hopes for an unlikely rapid meltdown
the “conventional wisdom” among savvy traders is to short volatility (e.g. sell straddles at the money) in the run-up to earnings and then buy to cover afterwards, because the dumb money places directional bets that drives IV up around earnings.
Nvidia’s earnings will be released on the 21st so maybe that’s artificially inflating IV right now.
however, weekly options weren’t a thing in the dot-com blow up, so i imagine the backtests underlying this strategy probably won’t be valid for the world of pain that’s headed our way.
That strategy works great and leads to nice bonuses – most of the time.
Of course, once in a great while, something unexpected happens!
You do not play in a rigged game.
Any fool knows this.
All of life is a rigged game.
Rigged by whom Radagast?
God?
Satan?
Karma?
Anything else?
If we know who rigged it, we can go after them.
Why even bother to think and strategize investment? Just copy Nancy Pelosi’s trades.
She has never made a loosing trade 😉
That sounds like a solid tip.
A bit like backing Winx, the greatest horse of all time, before she retired.
Of her 43 races she won 37, with her last 33 races all being won in succession.
I missed that boom too.
https://www.capitoltrades.com/politicians/P000197
This is actually a really good primer on why I invest in indexes and US treasuries. LSWM sit in their basement with their money doing fuckall, while I know how absurdly rigged the game is in favor of line going up forever. The US government would literally fight a world war before defaulting on treasuries. The governments of the entire world conspire to prop up the s&p500 companies. Even if everything went tits up somehow, it’s extremely likely that the best move from there would be to bet heavily on the up and coming equivalent of the s&p 500 and US treasury bond. It’s played out through the fall of argentina and venezuela both; in both cases the smartest move would’ve been as I said, even after adjusting for inflation.
I try over and over again to explain this to my LSWM friends, but to no avail.
Yeah, I wouldn’t want to bet against the real estate Ponzi around here going up forever either, because it’s also totally rigged.
TPTB would throw everything at it rather than let it collapse taking our economy with it. And if it collapses, well, everyone loses their shirts. And in the interim, those who didn’t buy in earlier are now locked out, as are their children, and their children’s children, barring an inheritance or some other massive windfall.
Everyone needs somewhere to live too, so what else are you gonna do? Pay rent to keep some real estate Ponzi Lord in clover forever? Not much of a choice.
As crazy as it is, people seem to be driven as much (or more) by narratives as underlying reality, so I wouldn’t want to bet against the price of some tech company defying gravity either if TPTB seemed keen on maintaining the crazy world of abstractions keeping it rising.
Nevertheless, I just can’t bring myself to be an investor/speculator, apart from incidentally by meeting my physical requirements for shelter and by paying the mandatory stuff for retirement.
Except that artic algae contributes to cloud formation. Less Algae, less clouds, more warming.
If I’m understanding you right, then yes, I agree, reality can trump any narrative.
However, it seems like that doesn’t always have to be the case within the confines of human affairs wherein whose fictitious story trumps whose may have nothing to do with reality at all.
As a true LSWM i can only say
I’m not in the game and don’t care what games you play with your money.
My 99 year old father-in law has a system that involves seeking out stock bargains and never selling; yes, he still does his own investing. In the seven years he has lived with us he has nearly quadrupled his net worth, which had been greatly depleted due to his paying for twelve years of dementia care for my mother-in-law (which is why he moved in with us). I guess I should find out from him how he does this before he goes off to the great beyond.
The puts and shorts and straddle stuff must be a male thing. I am not sure I could keep that all in my head even if I tried. I have a neighbor who was convinced that she had a “sense for patterns” and she was obsessed with Fibonacci sequences and she became a day trader and lost lots of the household money and had to become a church secretary to earn it back; I would like to avoid that.
Reading about the stock market makes it feels like a slightly more advanced version of lottery tickets, only for the smarter types of LSWM. I don’t get what advantage there is in holding a dead-end currency, or in having a great position in an economic system that is about to go right off the cliff. Print all the dollars you want, it’s not going to create decent jobs, revive zombie corporations, or lead to a higher standard of living. What’s the point?
One day Rintah you will learn how to use the right hemisphere of your brain.