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I give myself one good hard slap to the face every morning, because I bought AMD in the ~$5/share range, and then sold when it managed to get to ~$7/share becau

I give myself one good hard slap to the face every morning, because I bought AMD in the ~$5/share range, and then sold when it managed to get to ~$7/share because I didn’t think it was going anywhere. And then I go stand at the window and gaze longingly at my imaginary WRX parked outside. Sigh. If I only had known exactly how badly Intel would do…I bought the stock because I figured they’d get a little bump because of console sales, and then got impatient.

camjohnson26 6y ago
It’s all gambling. People need to stop expecting to strike it rich and just build wealth incrementally. Central banks have made that hard to do though with historically low interest rates and rising risks of inflation.
- perardi 6y ago
  Mind you, the vast majority of my retirement money is in index funds and other boring investment vehicles. The AMD trade was (reasonable) fun money.
- JoeAltmaier 6y ago
  Sounds like advice for a previous generation. Then, it contradicts itself by say why it won't work (correctly). Maybe its time to rethink those half-century-old memes like 'build wealth incrementally'.
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    “This time it’s different” Nothing has changed except central bank policy encouraging rampant speculation. The bull market won’t last forever and every generation thinks the fundamentals don’t matter anymore, until suddenly they do. To be fair it is extremely hard to build wealth incrementally these days because of central bank policy, but it’s way better than yoloing life savings.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Is it possible the bull market reflects the realities of big businesses, and tech businesses especially, reaping the rewards of automation and scalability and near zero marginal costs?
      - camjohnson26 6y ago
        Anything is possible. That's probably true for Apple and Amazon but those are the exception. That's definitely not true for Uber, who lost 8.5 Billion (!) from operations in 2019: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/f272e038-1c89-456c-acf8-cea0cffe544d.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/f272e03... Not true for WeWork either: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519220499/d781982ds1.htm#toc781982_10 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519... Maybe those are exceptions too but seems like the most hyped companies have not brought marginal costs near zero.
        lotsofpulp 6y ago
        What does "most hyped" mean? Why does WeWork matter at all in this discussion? They got destroyed for having weak prospects when they tried to come near the public markets. I'm looking at this list of the S&P 500 companies, and they mostly have very solid earnings and fundamentals: https://fknol.com/list/market-cap-sp-500-index-companies.php https://fknol.com/list/market-cap-sp-500-index-companies.php I went through the top 100 companies, and the only one that is a "bet" is Tesla, except they have many, many cars on the road and have been delivering product that people want to buy. If anything, I'm even more bullish for all these huge companies, as absent any government action (which I doubt), who is going to take them on? They will continue to go vertical and eat each other's business, maybe. But that doesn't really affect you if you're holding the whole index fund ETF.
        camjohnson26 6y ago
        Well the S&P is an index of the largest companies so they're going to be more solid than the rest of the market. WeWork was attempting an IPO and had a ton of hype, if that hype was because of improvements on marginal costs you would have seen it there. The S&P 500 PE ratio is objectively high right now. Whether it's high because of strong fundamentals or bubble effects is the million dollar question. https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-earnings-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-ea...

camjohnson26 6y ago

It’s all gambling. People need to stop expecting to strike it rich and just build wealth incrementally. Central banks have made that hard to do though with historically low interest rates and rising risks of inflation.

perardi 6y ago
Mind you, the vast majority of my retirement money is in index funds and other boring investment vehicles. The AMD trade was (reasonable) fun money.
JoeAltmaier 6y ago
Sounds like advice for a previous generation. Then, it contradicts itself by say why it won't work (correctly). Maybe its time to rethink those half-century-old memes like 'build wealth incrementally'.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  “This time it’s different” Nothing has changed except central bank policy encouraging rampant speculation. The bull market won’t last forever and every generation thinks the fundamentals don’t matter anymore, until suddenly they do. To be fair it is extremely hard to build wealth incrementally these days because of central bank policy, but it’s way better than yoloing life savings.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Is it possible the bull market reflects the realities of big businesses, and tech businesses especially, reaping the rewards of automation and scalability and near zero marginal costs?
    - camjohnson26 6y ago
      Anything is possible. That's probably true for Apple and Amazon but those are the exception. That's definitely not true for Uber, who lost 8.5 Billion (!) from operations in 2019: https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/f272e038-1c89-456c-acf8-cea0cffe544d.pdf https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001543151/f272e03... Not true for WeWork either: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519220499/d781982ds1.htm#toc781982_10 https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1533523/000119312519... Maybe those are exceptions too but seems like the most hyped companies have not brought marginal costs near zero.
      - lotsofpulp 6y ago
        What does "most hyped" mean? Why does WeWork matter at all in this discussion? They got destroyed for having weak prospects when they tried to come near the public markets. I'm looking at this list of the S&P 500 companies, and they mostly have very solid earnings and fundamentals: https://fknol.com/list/market-cap-sp-500-index-companies.php https://fknol.com/list/market-cap-sp-500-index-companies.php I went through the top 100 companies, and the only one that is a "bet" is Tesla, except they have many, many cars on the road and have been delivering product that people want to buy. If anything, I'm even more bullish for all these huge companies, as absent any government action (which I doubt), who is going to take them on? They will continue to go vertical and eat each other's business, maybe. But that doesn't really affect you if you're holding the whole index fund ETF.
        camjohnson26 6y ago
        Well the S&P is an index of the largest companies so they're going to be more solid than the rest of the market. WeWork was attempting an IPO and had a ton of hype, if that hype was because of improvements on marginal costs you would have seen it there. The S&P 500 PE ratio is objectively high right now. Whether it's high because of strong fundamentals or bubble effects is the million dollar question. https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-earnings-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2577/sp-500-pe-ratio-price-to-ea...