I'm not worried about consumer inflation (outside of housing prices but I think that has an easy explanation in the forceslosure limitations & super low mortgage rates) but I am starting to lean towards Burry's side that the market is due for a pretty big correction sooner than later. I know he's called 9 of the last 2 recessions, but the amount of overleveraging we've seen in the last few years is insane, and while I think some people at the SEC & DTCC are starting to take action against it to reduce their exposure if nothing else the Archegos liquidation is only the first domino. That fund was leveraged up 5-6x & all the main stocks (Viacom, Discovery, Farfetch etc) show the same run-up to like 10x their price from April of last year to February of this one with no drastic change in the business models. The underlying economy doesn't support this many stocks being at ATH's when like half of society has been shut down for a year, it's largely a product of free money from central banks & banks leveraging up while that money printer keeps going brrrrrr.

The corporate bond market is probably the biggest underlying risk, and because they never learn (or they learn the lesson that they can make billions without being punished if it blows up) MM's & large banks have been throwing CLO's of corporate bonds together and then re-hypothecating them or using them as collateral for more bonds. It's insane, and it scares me a ton that the US Government has assigned Blackrock to start buying up treasury bills, BR/Goldman Sachs are borderline going #CashGang at this point, and Fidelity went so far as to completely shut down it's derivatives trading wing at Geode to reduce exposure in the near-medium term.

GME getting greedy with new stock offering. They almost had to do this but not sure how this will impact them in short term. Will this pop the bubble they are in?

It's not a new offering, though. It's the same one they've had on the books since December, they just upped the dollar parameter from 100m to 1bil to allow them to additionally capitalize on the squeeze.

You can tell who reads CNBC & MarketWatch ;) Now that Cramer's switched sides we'll see how long until other people are allowed to follow.

It's a shelf offering they've had authorized since Dec 8 (& haven't used) that they may or may not use - if they wanted to dump shares onto the market, they'd just do a direct stock offering not ask for a potential ATM one. No surprise the usual brigade used it to drop the price and release a dozen articles cued up, no surprise they ignored the Q1 YoY revenue growth contained in the release, no surprise the stock bounced back within 2 hours once normal trading opened. (Okay I was a little surprised - I thought we might hang around $170-$175 for a day). In terms of a squeeze even if they do use it all this isn't anything like AMC execs being greedy and it's less than 5% of the total shares, and about 10% of the shorts that need to be covered at the lowest end projections. (I don't buy the super high alleged short interests, but between Fidelity/BR/RC alone you can track 43m/55m non-Insider shares as of 2/28. Even just adding the other 13F/G filings from February from major players and tracking ETF/Index Funds and you're already at over 100m shares in play on a stock that should only have 70m).

If they do want the capitalization for the longer term pivot it's still good (and unsurprising) news for the long term health of the stock, but if you still think it's a bubble maybe you should look at the numbers closer... they had a shelf offering for 6m shares (and only up to $100m) they didn't exercise even though they could have sold like 500k shares to reach that $100m. So if they're changing the parameters of that open option why did they jump the revenue cap 10x (self-explanatory) but also drop the number of potential shares to 3.5m when they could have left the potential number of shares at 6m & had that equal almost exactly $1b as I'm typing this? They're pointing to a short-medium term price target of $283/share & saying they think it's realistic. But "Gamestop reports double digit Q1 revenue growth & reduces potential share offering from 6m to 3.5m" doesn't fit the narrative they're paid to write so instead you get titles like "Gamestop plunges" with an active ticker showing a 2% loss and tortured titles like "Meme stock fave reverses despite new offering as retail investor boom cools" as they try to update their headlines.

Good day.

Still a ways for ARKK and APPL (and Bumble) to get back to their highs but better than nothing.

Nasdaq futures is showing 2+% right now but not sure I trust it. But a guy can hope.

I've got a small position in GBTC.

Not sure exactly what will happen but if it reduces the 2% expenses, I'll be happy.

I kinda knew this intuitively but the 90% is higher than I would have guessed.

Americans think it’s better to invest in housing than the stock market — here’s why - MarketWatch

Knowing what I know of MarketWatch I'd love to see the actual wording/study. It wouldn't shock me if they asked people if they would prefer "owning their own residence" or "investing in the stock market" and then ran with an article off that. Because I get the lure of stability in an unfamiliar time, but it's not a binary choice...

Part of it is that the stock market is extremely irrational right now, and that the housing market is super heated.

Re: GME

Ryan Cohen being named chair on 6/9
Share recall with a potential date of 4/20 (https://twitter.com/rensole/status/1380122133536378880)

Nothing like handing a bunch of meme stock followers the numbers 69 and 420.

SI

Also, a home is an asset that you can enjoy while it appreciates.

If you buy a better house, then you have a higher mortgage and less money to invest in stocks. But, presumably, you are enjoying the benefits of that better house (size, location, whatever).

So if at the end of, say, 15 years, you can say that if you had bought a worse house and put the difference between the two mortgages in the stock market, then you would have more money, that's fine.

But you have to also, somehow, account for the fact that you got 15 years of consuming a better house than you would have otherwise.

Good thought but TBH this wasn't ever a consideration. I just wanted peace.of.mind.

Worried during the GR, we made a commitment to spend all excess to paying off the house (even though we had a 15 year at about 2.75% I think). We knew we would probably come out much further ahead in stock market vs house appreciation (e.g. average but not in a hot market).

It is knowing no one could kick us out and only payment was the annual property taxes.

A good week for the market.

Signs of life for the big Techs and Nasdaq.

:banana:

Hmmm, interesting article for those planning on 4% rule at retirement.

Don't know if it's been peered reviewed, first time I've read about it (kinda makes sense someone would research this for non-US), results are a little surprising, so take it FWIW.

Regardless, wife and I talked, we are staying with 4% rule in the first several years.

Opinion: Think you can rely on the 4% rule in retirement? Think again. - MarketWatch

Not sure if this belongs here or in the NBA thread but anyone follow Top Shot? They are dropping a pack today that costs $999. Crazy stuff.

On the crypto side, I’ve made some crazy gains lately. I took all of my shit coins I bought back during the last bull market and consolidated them all into XRP and XLM. Probably should have changed everything into Bitcoin but the gains I’ve had the past few days have to a large degree caught up to BTC.

After wallowing down to pretty much being worthless compared to my initial investment, it has turned around so I’ve doubled my money at this point.

That said, I’m putting most of my play money into tech ETFs right now. I was overbought on ARK stuff, so using the jbmagic method, I’m putting more in to them.

I'm down 20% on my portfolio, which is, like, a trapper keeper folder, really.

The good news is that the stock I'm bleeding the most from I expect to be much higher 12 months from now, and has been bouncing up and down, so I also expect to be back at break even sooner than later.

But the minor constellation of stocks around that main one just keep dropping and dropping and...it's a good thing I decided to only play with money I was willing to treat as 'tuition.' If I'd put real money into this and been down 20% already I'd have probably beaten up a tree by now.

And apparently Topps is getting into this for MLB. I read an article and was like "why would I want to own that"? Then again, maybe the current gens are like "why would I want to own a worthless piece of cardboard"?

SI

I probably need to find someone to manage my retirement accounts and get some general advice from. I turn 50 this year and haven't really planned out anything going forward. I have 401Ks now spread out at 3 different places (they're all roughly providing the same return, so I haven't felt the need to consolidate). I don't have any interest in investing money myself (got burned badly in the early 2000s so I'll let the professionals handle it). The 401Ks are mainly in "Target X Year Retirement" funds.

I feel like I'm in decent shape but have no idea what I should be shooting for if I want to retire at a particular age.

My guy is in Cinci and is awesome, let me know if you want his info.

No problem in spreading out your 401ks. I have large portions in Fidelity and Vanguard. Current company uses Alight so that means I have 3. I specifically wanted both Fidelity and Vanguard because, however unlikely something bad happens, I don't want to put all eggs in one basket.

Target X year retirement funds are pretty respectable but some are better than others. So at the very least google and make sure they aren't overly expensive and are actually following the strategy.

As far as retirement target, lots of materials are out there. But much does depend on when you want to retire. 52 is different than 62 and different than 67 (unless you have a nice pension). Basically have all your debt paid off, and plan on 4% of portfolio + SS, and factor in healthcare expenses.

When I did turbotax, it asked if I owned cryptos. I don't but wondered what type of hassle is it to report whatever is needed?

Bernie Madoff dead. Good riddance.

A lot will depend on whether the next 10 years continue to be as good as the last few. Barring some sort of catastrophic (un)employment situation, I intend to have the house paid off in the next 8-10 years, max. I have one left to put through college, so hopefully in about 5 years I can seriously ramp up savings. I'm already maxing out 401K, including the catch-up as I turn 50 this year (I think that's an extra $6K). I also have the option of some sort of separate executive retirement fund I can put money into through my job that I don't know a ton about yet because I'm not at the point where I can throw that much of my salary into savings.

I guess I'm targeting 65 for retirement but I don't really know if I'm truly on the path to retire by 60 or 75 based on my financial situation. That's where I think a professional can help.

Depends how you do it. You can load your Coinbase transactions into TurboTax. If you don't use Coinbase there are apps out there that can be used. Every time you trade one crypto for another, it's potentially a taxable event.

My early crypto days I didn't track much. I know how much I have invested total, basically. I'm not doing any trading these days, just buy and hold. Most of my trades back when I started were panic trades when I was in the hole, so I think I'm in the clear there.

FWIW, I think if you can retire before 65, you should do it.

Life is too short unless you are one of the fortunate few that really, really love your job. I'm good at my job, but I don't love it.

So comes down to when you can reasonably retire. 2 big factors (1) how much you have saved and probably more important (2) how much you will spend.

Rough formula

1) Total Savings
2) x 4% (using rule of 4% as "safe withdrawal rate")
3) - healthcare expenses
4) - est. Fed taxes (maybe 10%)
5) - est. State taxes (maybe 4%)
6) = what you have to live on

#3 healthcare expenses is the bigee. I think on Obamacare, it could range from $800 to $1,400 a month.

In theory, we can retire now. In reality, we want to work 1-2-3 more years to add to buffer and wait till kids are out of school and on their own.

Check out financial independence / early retirement. Lots of good info there.

Thanks!

I really wasn't tempted by the Coinbase IPO. They may have the early adopter/market leader advantage but just can't see how they will maintain.

Now, if they diversify and become a conglomerate, maybe. But crypto market software just doesn't seem to have much staying power with all the competition out there.

This does make me wonder if we are near another dot-com bust with crazy valuations.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

If the current group of people who work at my company (well, the parent company - I'm technically part of a start-up) are any indication, this is a place people work at forever (we have several people who have been here for 50-60+ years at a company of about 50 employees). They take great care of their employees, and the workload is moderate at worst, so it's easy to keep showing up and collecting a paycheck (or hard to not keep showing up, I guess). The general counsel of this company is in his mid-80s, for instance, but his workload is light, so why not?

So, if things go well over the next decade, I could easily decide to retire but it might be hard to walk away from relatively easy money.

These are all things we need to be thinking about. I don't know why, but as I hit 50 it became a bit more real that the end is at least somewhat in sight and I better start thinking about how/when it's going to end.

Seems like a great gig you have going. But there's that phenomena of "just 1 more year".

I'm dealing with that right now. The past 2 years (with Trump) has been pretty good overall for my "net wealth". Surprising as heck with last years pandemic.

I guess if you have work life balance and somewhat enjoy your work, why not. On one hand, I'm cognizant that "it's never enough", why not work 1 more year which (in a normal market of min 8% return) will go that further in ensuring I have a better retirement.

On the other hand, I'm thinking life is short and if I can live a somewhat comfortable retirement, why not. At 50 or 52, you are still relatively young to do things you want. At 50+8 years, not so much anymore.

Ultimately, your decision. I'd suggest you have a real discussion with the SO and do go to a financial planner who will help you think through options. Let us know how it goes!

Definitely a Not Rest in Peace

dfv is indeed a madlad: https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetb..._final_update/

What a silly time to be alive.

SI

Half way through April and it's been the best Biden market month so far. Tech stuff are still lagging vs value stocks but they are making a recovery. Still down about 12+% on Bumble though (where are those single women damnit).

Hope this trajectory continues so I can retire early!

Any idea what his net worth is? Is he already wealthy and this is just 5% that he is gambling with or is it 70%?

Regardless, it's interesting how YOLO has been taken over by stock market gamblers. Back then, before it was an acronym, it meant go live your life, experience and do things, take some risks before you "settle down".

Now it's like bet on some stocks and roll the dice.

YOLO stands for You Only Live Once. It's always been about doing something risky. The WSB YOLO's are just a monetary extension of that; risking large sums of money on options. Pretty sure people were YOLO-ing in casino's long before it became a thing on WSB.

FWIW, this is more what I remember/interpret back when. Same elements but current day, seems more "risk", especially in context of WSB.

https://medium.com/@iantang/the-real...o-41bb03e8324f

He had $50K to throw at Gamestop in the first place as a trader so he wasn't poor to begin with.

400 Bad Request
Just a gut feeling: I've always got the impression he was upper middle class to upper class, depending on where you draw the line: lower to middle rung financial guy making like $200K~$500K per year up in Boston (high cost of living). He feels like he had successful-ish boomer parents, went to a private college, and got into that second gen upper middle class path.

He made a big bet with his investment "play money": If you have $50K+ of investment/play money sitting around that you can afford to lose, you're not poor or merely middle class. But I never got the impression he had >$1M sitting around. And I'm pretty sure the majority of his wealth is tied up in 200K shares of Gamestop stock now. His final posting shows he still has $3.5M in cash and $30M in Gamestop stock.

That said, this is all gut feeling - there might be more info out there that's more conclusive.

SI

It's like 90% of his paper wealth in Gamestop & close to 100% of his paper wealth in that YOLO screenshot. He's said one of the happiest moments of his life was being able to tell his family he was a millionaire at Thanksgiving, and now he has 3.3m cash & his 32m in 200k GME shares. Grew up in Brockton which is lower middle class suburb, at least as of January was renting a home in Wilmington another lower middle class suburb. Went to Stonehill which is private but certainly not bougie by NE standards (and was actually a D2 All-American runner until injuries happened.)

All things considered with the Reddit/WSB crowd and the narrative people want to paint he's probably the most wholesome person and best representative for retail trades and the "mania". And posting that as a final update gives him the out to sell part (or all) when he wants, but he always had the spreadsheets and did real analysis to show it was undervalued, talked in November/December about a potential squeeze up to $50, and if he just doubled down with $8.3 million he believes the stock/company still has value at that price, and seeing what we've seen so far it'll probably create a new floor and bounce from $151 just like it did when he doubled down at $38 during the congressional hearings.

PS if you want the conspiracy angles, any thoughts on why every big bank is selling unprecedented amounts of bonds when we're finally transitioning from LIBOR to SOFR? #CashGang

There's no way he hasn't been selling covered calls since January. He's too smart to not look at his GME position and go full theta.

As long as we're assuming the screenshots are real & not doctored (which I do), then unless he's selling them far enough OTM they haven't hit you wouldn't we have seen a change in shares (or his cost basis/cash total if he bought back in to hit the round 50/100k share numbers)?

He was sitting on $11m in cash since January, even if it now dips back to $40 (which I think even bearish people who actually look at the finances & RC team can agree is a fair price for the turnaround potential), he's now got $11m between $3m cash & 200k shares. I don't know him past his Youtube videos, but I get the sense he was very caught off guard (like everyone) when it spiked this much, and I don't know if he's trying to squeeze small %'s out of there or just figuring out bigger issues when he's now worth 8 figures & has had to deal with Massachusetts regulators & Congressional investigations, as well as still choosing to heavily engage with the Reddit-ish following. The conspiracy theories on what exactly some tweets imply was sometimes hilarious with how far people tried to find connections and how you can 6 degrees anything (my favorite was when he had the John Locke hatch tweet and someone realized that they only opened the hatch by blowing it up with dynamite from a ship called the Black Rock), but even if it was just building up to this options exercise/double down he clearly put a lot of effort into it considering how many were edited or had allusions to earlier posts of his.

There's a small part of me that is legit worried about the greater stock market at a whole. Not because of GME but just because of all the fuckery that's clearly going on (and, yes, I get that it has been going on for a long time). But I think we all pretty much agree that very little was fixed after 2008. That makes me worry we're just going to have this frothy mess of bubbles with panics every few years just like there were from the late 1800s until Glass-Steagall in 1933.

A couple of cute shares of GME aren't going to protect me from hyperinflation or a 2008-style crash to my 401k.

SI

Crashes come and go, used to it with what I've experienced since the dot-com crash. But totally unknown to me is inflation, am more worried about 70-80's style inflation (is hyperinflation like Venezuela even a possibility?).

Found a Jun 2020 article on how to invest with high inflation. Some of his rationale for inflation is what I'm reading today.
Inflation Will Come: Here Are Five Ways To Combat It

Some context. We've been enjoying really low inflation Historical Inflation Rates: 1914-2021 | US Inflation Calculator


From what I've been reading, this is the question ... what does $2-3-4T do to the economy. Question for the more knowledgeable here, does the Fed really have to print more money or can we rely on China and others?

I assume his recommendation is stocks for like consumer staples, something people will continue to buy even in hard times and not fancy tech gadgets.

I'm really not a gold guy. I do wonder if bitcoin and cryptos can be a hedge against inflation.

TIPS is probably where I would move more of my portfolio into if I see inflation starting to creep up and more MSM inflation worry fears.

This I can definitely see moving a major portion of portfolio into if worried about inflation. Been thinking about "O" or Realty Income Corporation for dependable dividends in retirement anyway.

Yeah, I think I probably used the wrong phrase (hyperinflation) - not 100% or 1000% inflation but like 10-30% seems so foreign when most of us have spent our entire adult lives with it at like 2%. Millennials and Gen Z will have spent so long with low wages, barely saving enough to get a house, only to see any saving eaten away by insane (by today's standards) interest rates. It was one thing when wages were like they were in the 60s or 70s adjusted for inflation and the whole "one household income could buy a house, cheap college, reasonable health care, etc". It's another with the overinflated prices of those things today.

I guess I'm doing what I can to help stay ahead of inflation. I keep throwing my money into my 401k and I just get to accept that there's no really secure way to save money (like, say, dropping money in a savings account) - I just have to accept that every few years, these assholes are going to crash the market (someone's going to make a boatload of cash doing it and it's not me) and I'm going to lose a bunch of my worth with it and hope it keeps bouncing back. I can have a nicely diversified portfolio (stocks, bonds, real estate) and it doesn't really matter that much.

Even with that, it's pretty clear that slow moving retirement money is being skimmed all the time so I'm not nearly getting the returns I should. Every month when my new shares are bought, quants pay for he order flow and front run institutional trades so my cost is more than it should have been. Of course my broker passes that money they make from selling the order flow onto me so it costs less for broker's fees, right? Hah! Most of the funds I have access to have a 0.5% or higher fee on them and they perform... not much different than index funds. Sure, there are outliers sometimes, but, by and large - I have to pay them 0.5% or more for them to just go "hur, dur - let's more money in FAANG" and basically ride the market. So, frankly, I've just shifted a lot of my money into index funds. Sure, I'm now going up and down exclusively with the market but at least I'm not paying the "privilege" of 0.5-1% to do so. And this doesn't even get into the myriad of fuckery around individual stocks where companies are targeted to be shorted out of business, hostile takeovers that leave them weak and eventually out of business, pump and dumps where fast moving money takes the worth out of the stock so the companies can't pay dividends, debt shenanigans, fraud, and everything else that comes with business.

But, in the end, it's just not a confidence inspiring situation at all. I know the markets are rigged against individual investors but it's a bit of a hostage situation as the system is set up for people to put their money there to be able to retire reasonably. Otherwise, you have to risk it all on something like crypto, start your own business and/or invest in real estate and all the extra time that entails, or just put in a bank and make no interest so you lose it to inflation.

SI

The volume on weekly 800c was well over 40,000 back when the price was 200 and over a month ago. That's over 4 million shares worth of contracts being written per week, there's no way he wasn't one of them.

And if his way OTM contracts ever get exercised the SEC can't do anything about it.

There’s a single New Jersey deli doing $35,000 in sales valued at $100 million in the stock market

77% of shares are owned by investors in Macau and Hong Kong.

Is there a non-criminal explanation for this?

Start early, think long term, disciplined and consistent investing ala dollar cost averaging in good stocks/MF/ETF's and you're home free when you get to 67. With some luck, maybe in your 50s.

I don't know if schools do this, but my kids had basic personal finance and some investing. And it should be taught as a gen ed class in college also. In college, we were still looking at the stock tables in newspapers!

The problem I have with that line of thinking is that I think that's based on the flawed assumption that the stock market will work the way it always has for the middle class with "always" really only being like 60 years - basically the Boomer lifetime. And we've seen so many other of their bubbles go pop.

SI

invest in reserved list magic cards, it's beaten the SP500 in terms of growth the last two decades lol

That is a fundamental belief I've held for the past 15+ years. If it is flawed and not necessarily applicable to the next 15+ years, I better figure out a better way to create and preserve wealth.