2020 ends not with a bang....but not with a wimper.

[CordMcNally]

SPACs are just taking off, there will be as much or even more of them this year, mark my words. There's a lot of innovation happening right now in the private markets, both via SEC loosening regulations for accredited investor status, and internally from the VC people/entrepreneurs who are working around the traditional methods of going public. It's great IMO.

Also, do you think the run up last year was due to Robinhood traders who have a average balance of like 1k or something ridiculously small? Of course not, it was a combination of whales buying options (Softbank ring a bell?), Wall Street using those free trillions of dollars to invest, and negative real interest rates, forcing everyone to go to equities for some sort of return. I don't see that changing this year or the next. The party will continue for a while.

SPACs are nothing new but they're a lot more common. I don't think the run up is because of the Robinhood traders but the general sentiment around Robinhood traders is why I think we're probably in for some darker days ahead. The quote about George Soros saying that whenever he sees a bubble he rushes to buy I think really captures where we're at.

[xraygoggles]

Dogecoin: 139.85%

So, Elon recently tweeted about Dogecoin, and since the time you wrote your post, which was literally 1.5 days ago, the 1 year return is now 520%.

It's gone parabolic - to the moon. Wild west that is the crypto markets.

[Tangler]

So, Elon recently tweeted about Dogecoin, and since the time you wrote your post, which was literally 1.5 days ago, the 1 year return is now 520%.

It's gone parabolic - to the moon. Wild west that is the crypto markets.

what could possibly go wrong?

[TheQuietOne]

So, Elon recently tweeted about Dogecoin, and since the time you wrote your post, which was literally 1.5 days ago, the 1 year return is now 520%.

It's gone parabolic - to the moon. Wild west that is the crypto markets.

It’s crazy...a few weeks ago I had been musing out loud with the my wife about cryptocurrencies because frankly, I don’t really get what the deal is. I showed her Musk’s Twitter feed about it and she got excited about “doggie coins” cuz she loves dogs. She really wanted to buy some, so we agreed on a one time $40 purchase. Now they are worth about $90 and she is so stoked, she is now setting up $40 monthly deposits to play with cryptocurrencies.

[xraygoggles]

It’s crazy...a few weeks ago I had been musing out loud with the my wife about cryptocurrencies because frankly, I don’t really get what the deal is. I showed her Musk’s Twitter feed about it and she got excited about “doggie coins” cuz she loves dogs. She really wanted to buy some, so we agreed on a one time $40 purchase. Now they are worth about $90 and she is so stoked, she is now setting up $40 monthly deposits to play with cryptocurrencies.

Dogecoin is a derivative of Litecoin, and was created as a parody built around the Shiba Inu dog meme to ridicule the proliferation of altcoins. Now it has a market cap over 1 billion.

[Max Power]

Oh, great wise one, what are the 10 stocks that will significantly outperform the index this year?...
...Put your money where your mouth is.

Can I invest in a China index?

Since one of the better investment minds on here seems to have opted for a short hiatus from offering wisdom to the 1000's of "US indexes fo' liiiiife" peeps on here, I can give you one tip (last year's was FUN and SIX... run a search):

You can start by buying a lot of BABA right now at or near $225.

Amazon, Google, etc all struggled through these anti-trust govt and shakedowns (read: payoffs) also. Sure, the CIA didn't kidnap and probably kill Bezos, but hey, look past that... things work a bit different on the other side of the puddle.

China indexes or developing index are good too, but why not skip the ER and just take their big dog when it is dinged up? It's your money. Do what you want... let me guess: VTSAX again? There are many worse choices, but index buy-and-hold never outperforms... it just performs. Again, you could do worse, but I think the whole point of investing is to make money.

[xraygoggles]

Since one of the better investment minds on here seems to have opted for a short hiatus from offering wisdom to the 1000's of "US indexes fo' liiiiife" peeps on here, I can give you one tip (last year's was FUN and SIX... run a search):

You can start by buying a lot of BABA right now at or near $225.

Amazon, Google, etc all struggled through these anti-trust govt and shakedowns (read: payoffs) also. Sure, the CIA didn't kidnap and probably kill Bezos, but hey, look past that... things work a bit different on the other side of the puddle.

China indexes or developing index are good too, but why not skip the ER and just take their big dog when it is dinged up? It's your money. Do what you want... let me guess: VTSAX again? There are many worse choices, but index buy-and-hold never outperforms... it just performs. Again, you could do worse, but I think the whole point of investing is to make money.

Agree about BABA, although the fact that Jack Ma has been AWOL for a few weeks now is sorta disconcerting - perhaps he went sent to a re-education camp.... But the company of course will survive with or without him. Waiting for a consolidation before I get some leaps.

[CordMcNally]

China indexes or developing index are good too, but why not skip the ER and just take their big dog when it is dinged up? It's your money. Do what you want... let me guess: VTSAX again? There are many worse choices, but index buy-and-hold never outperforms... it just performs. Again, you could do worse, but I think the whole point of investing is to make money.

VTSAX and other funds are basically the benchmarks used by active investors to beat. I mean, it's the benchmark so what is it trying to outperform? Nothing. Everyone else is trying to outperform it and 90%+ of those trying don't do it.

[TheQuietOne]

Not all companies fail when they lose their founder/CEO, but not all succeed either. You can google and find many, many cases of successful businessmen disappearing in China. Below are two such companies with clear drops after they lose their founder. Maybe Alibaba and Ant Group will survive and do well, maybe they won’t. Depends on your risk tolerance I guess.

[Max Power]

Agree about BABA, although the fact that Jack Ma has been AWOL for a few weeks now is sorta disconcerting - perhaps he went sent to a re-education camp.... But the company of course will survive with or without him. Waiting for a consolidation before I get some leaps.

He gave a speech about Chinese monetary and financial reform, got severe sanctions from the govt, and increasingly disappeared starting a week later. The guy is not coming back, lol.

You can't wait for "the bottom" on crashes and large dips like this. If you do, it's too late. Look at the TGT credit card breach 2013, WMT labor disputes and union concerns 2015-18, L Brands flirting with bankrupt 2019-20, entire Corona crash of nearly every S&P stock early this year, etc. Bad things happen to good stocks. You aren't buying one guy's system... I'm sure a few other ppl know how the systems works by now. The company has 100k+ employees. Also, at this point, you're basically buying the brand name... as you would be with WMT or AMZN.

If you wait for "the bottom," "consolidation," "restructuring," and "stability," the shares have rapidly shot back up on that insider news before you even know it it happened. In this case it will soon be clear that there were 5 good folks chomping at the bit to run Alibaba, the new CEO will make closed-door agreements and payoffs with their corrupt govt, and the show will go on just like Apple without Jobs or Facebook without Parker or Berkshire without Warren (trust me, he might as well be gone already... and yet the steamroller moves along). With opportunity like this, all you can do is make a good stab when a high quality pony has a great price (fine strategy), or you can nibble all the way down (even better yet, but takes guts). Regardless of what my or your avg buy price is, we will both be liking it a lot this time next year. Best of luck.

[Jack_Sparrow]

Agree about BABA, although the fact that Jack Ma has been AWOL for a few weeks now is sorta disconcerting - perhaps he went sent to a re-education camp.... But the company of course will survive with or without him. Waiting for a consolidation before I get some leaps.

Baba is definitely a buy. China won’t destroy their best company. I bought @ 213 a share back on Christmas Eve. Jack Ma will return. He’s a CCP guy. He did come out and say CCP could have any part of the Ant company they wanted though. Im 90% sure CCP uses all the Baba data mining to track everyone though. So they can’t let their pipeline fall into the wrong hands. Baba is a good 6 months play but not 5 years IMO

[Max Power]

...You can start by buying a lot of BABA right now at or near $225...

Guessing that ship has now sailed.

I'm just surprised (and damm glad) the opportunity lasted as long as it did. Hmmm.

[CordMcNally]

Guessing that ship has now sailed.

I'm just surprised (and damm glad) the opportunity lasted as long as it did. Hmmm.

You think it'll only go up from here? You were looking a lot better at the end of January/beginning of February.

[xraygoggles]

I don't know how it will perform this year, but I consider BABA as sorta like a linchpin for the Chinese market.

I haven't actually looked it up, but it would be interesting to see how well it correlates (or not correlate) with the overall Chinese market.

[Max Power]

You think it'll only go up from here? You were looking a lot better at the end of January/beginning of February.

A company with a P/E that is one third Amazon and owns a bigger market share of online commerce? Yeah, might go up.