The News Thread

[Krow]

Here’s some horror movie beginning shit for you guys.

a pastor self immolated at a gas station I was driving past to get an oil change Friday morning.

 

[CiG]

 

[HamburgerBoy]

You took that photo? I can't find anything about it googling, self-immolation usually causes a story.

Unrelated, but two days into office Biden now admits "there’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months", lmao. Additionally, California has the worst vaccine rollout in the country yet all the media that bitched endlessly about Florida's second wave remains silent (not to mention California's worst third wave).

 

[Krow]

https://www.wvnews.com/news/wvnews/...9yCY6R_jdFaTr0eYQ8IyJ2mV1WrCePYLXq4rT13Yk2zNI

 

[CiG]

 

[rms]

Fuck wall street eh?

 

[Bloopy]

I'm enjoying that Dogecoin's price soared up when it got caught up in the Wall Street/Reddit hype. Dogecoin isn't a great thing to sit on in the long run though. I had a little from mining a few years ago and should've exchanged some of it for Bitcoin back then. I eventually did 10 months ago and it's crazy how much Bitcoin has gone up even since then. Seems like a safer bet than the mad world of stocks.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I'm enjoying that Dogecoin's price soared up when it got caught up in the Wall Street/Reddit hype. Dogecoin isn't a great thing to sit on in the long run though. I had a little from mining a few years ago and should've exchanged some of it for Bitcoin back then. I eventually did 10 months ago and it's crazy how much Bitcoin has gone up even since then. Seems like a safer bet than the mad world of stocks.

All cryptos are lottery tickets, including Bitcoin. If you think they're safer than stocks, you have no idea how businesses work.

 

[Bloopy]

Businesses fail all the time, especially startups (edit: also, I was talking in the context of Game Stop here where everyone has bought into hype to make a point, but ultimately just handed a lottery win to the wallstreetbets inner circle). Other cryptos are lotteries, sure, but I can only see Bitcoin crashing if another crypto becomes more widely adopted and succeeds in replacing it. The more people who adopt them, the more demand there'll be for ways to use them, so they become more of an accepted thing and continue to hold at least some of their value.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Businesses fail all the time, especially startups

Here's 150 years of "businesses failing all the time" for you:



The reason the stock market works is because businesses generate income, and the value of their stocks can be measured against the income they generate. Cryptos don't produce shit. Their "value" is purely psychological.

(edit: also, I was talking in the context of Game Stop here where everyone has bought into hype to make a point, but ultimately just handed a lottery win to the wallstreetbets inner circle).

Yeah, and you extrapolated on a bubble in one stock to conclude that the entire stock market is equally dangerous. If you invest in market index funds, that problem goes away.

Other cryptos are lotteries, sure, but I can only see Bitcoin crashing if another crypto becomes more widely adopted and succeeds in replacing it. The more people who adopt them, the more demand there'll be for ways to use them, so they become more of an accepted thing and continue to hold at least some of their value.

Or governments regulate it out of existence, either because it facilitates tons of crime or because the amount of energy used to process Bitcoin transactions is that of a small country. It's a hilariously inefficient network, and I would put high odds on it being replaced within the next 30 years. Technologies are constantly becoming obsolete, and Bitcoin isn't some magical exception to the rule.

 

[Bloopy]

By mad world and bet I was trying to refer to gambling on the bubbles to make some serious money, not the entire stock market as a whole. I've rarely felt articulate enough to get into the debates in this thread in the past, so my posts aren't showing any signs of improvement I guess.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Stocks are about as much of a bubble as crypto right now. You can pretty much look at the exact day that Robintrade began zero-commissions trading, causing others to follow their lead spurring a wave of zoomer investors, and see the corresponding pump in the market. The only question is how long until Japanese-style QE-stagnation takes root in our increasingly non-productive country.

Obviously index funds are the safest and most reliable choice on the time scale for which they've existed (which isn't *that* long; about one-third the time that their respective indicies existed), but in terms of winning a market lottery on a single (non-shit) business stock vs a single (non-shit) cryptocurrency, crypto is clearly the safer option. Literally the only true and unique value of crypto comes from its transparency and immutability, which means (in the case of bitcoin for example) that one knows exactly how much bitcoin exists, the general percentage of which exists in the hands of the founders, the defined inflation rate, etc. The S&P 500 looks impressive but it doesn't tell you anything about the 1000+ companies that were once listed and later removed. Like, no one actually believes TWTR or TSLA or NFLX are valued as they are due purely to income and other fundamentals, do they?

 

[zabu of nΩd]

Stocks are about as much of a bubble as crypto right now. You can pretty much look at the exact day that Robintrade began zero-commissions trading, causing others to follow their lead spurring a wave of zoomer investors, and see the corresponding pump in the market. The only question is how long until Japanese-style QE-stagnation takes root in our increasingly non-productive country.

Obviously index funds are the safest and most reliable choice on the time scale for which they've existed (which isn't *that* long; about one-third the time that their respective indicies existed), but in terms of winning a market lottery on a single (non-shit) business stock vs a single (non-shit) cryptocurrency, crypto is clearly the safer option. Literally the only true and unique value of crypto comes from its transparency and immutability, which means (in the case of bitcoin for example) that one knows exactly how much bitcoin exists, the general percentage of which exists in the hands of the founders, the defined inflation rate, etc. The S&P 500 looks impressive but it doesn't tell you anything about the 1000+ companies that were once listed and later removed. Like, no one actually believes TWTR or TSLA or NFLX are valued as they are due purely to income and other fundamentals, do they?

I love how you completely ignore the points I make above, and proceed to talk out your ass as if you actually understand what I was talking about. The S&P "doesn't tell you anything about the 1000+ companies that were once listed and later removed"? Wow, what an earth-shaking conspiracy you've uncovered bro! Never mind the actual returns of the index, which is what people actually invest in. Or hey, go check out the returns of a total US market index that invalidates your point even by your own irrelevant logic: https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/vti/performance

 

[no country for old wainds]

breaking news, UM is no longer down

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I love how you completely ignore the points I make above, and proceed to talk out your ass as if you actually understand what I was talking about. The S&P "doesn't tell you anything about the 1000+ companies that were once listed and later removed"? Wow, what an earth-shaking conspiracy you've uncovered bro! Never mind the actual returns of the index, which is what people actually invest in. Or hey, go check out the returns of a total US market index that invalidates your point even by your own irrelevant logic: https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/vti/performance

I literally said that "index funds are the safest and most reliable choice on the time scale for which they've existed" so I don't understand your sperging. From the context of Bloopy's post and the relevant news, I assumed he was talking about specific company's stocks which show radical increases in valuation (e.g. GME). Which is my point; many stocks right now are volatile and driven by heavy speculation/mania, hardly any different than crypto.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

breaking news, UM is no longer down

Yeah that was like 4 whole hours or something, can barely remember this place ever having an outage.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I literally said that "index funds are the safest and most reliable choice on the time scale for which they've existed" so I don't understand your sperging. From the context of Bloopy's post and the relevant news, I assumed he was talking about specific company's stocks which show radical increases in valuation (e.g. GME). Which is my point; many stocks right now are volatile and driven by heavy speculation/mania, hardly any different than crypto.

The fact that you could even put stocks and cryptos in the same risk category, let alone call cryptos "clearly the safer option", shows the same fundamental ignorance about stocks I was addressing in my post. On average, an investment in stocks pays for itself over time, either through the income they produce or by growth in that income. As I said, cryptos don't produce shit, and their prices are based on nothing but speculation. The only way a crypto investor gets paid anything is by finding a bigger sucker to sell his shares to.

Bitcoin will be obsolete one day, and when that happens its true value ($0) will become apparent. Historically speaking, by the time the average large publicly traded company has gone out of business, it has paid its long-term shareholders far more in dividends than the initial cost of investment, making the final stock price relatively immaterial. The irrelevance of a stock's final price is even clearer when you look at the performance of the market index over time, which shows that money going out of old businesses gets recycled into new ones enough to more than compensate index investors for any losses. The average stock price would have to be insanely higher than it is today to be anywhere near as speculative as cryptos.

 

[no country for old wainds]

Yeah that was like 4 whole hours or something, can barely remember this place ever having an outage.

down for even longer today, very upsetting

 

[Einherjar86]

The reason the stock market works is because businesses generate income, and the value of their stocks can be measured against the income they generate. Cryptos don't produce shit. Their "value" is purely psychological.

I’m out of my element here, but how do you explain a company like Theranos, whose stock value at one point vastly outpaced its revenue?

I’ve always seen the stock market as reflecting people’s perspectives on a company’s value more than its actual revenue. For example, Theranos’s stock value rose because they projected future earnings and people believed them. Their stock represented people’s perceptions of value. Of course, eventually this has to catch up with a company like Theranos; but for a while, it looks to me like the stock market is NOT working.

 

[zabu of nΩd]

I’m out of my element here, but how do you explain a company like Theranos, whose stock value at one point vastly outpaced its revenue?

I’ve always seen the stock market as reflecting people’s perspectives on a company’s value more than its actual revenue. For example, Theranos’s stock value rose because they projected future earnings and people believed them. Their stock represented people’s perceptions of value. Of course, eventually this has to catch up with a company like Theranos; but for a while, it looks to me like the stock market is NOT working.

Yeah, there are plenty of frauds out there, along with just poorly managed, money-losing businesses. Generally, investing in single stocks isn't worth the risk. I'm only speaking up for the market as a whole, and for index investing. In aggregate, the performance of the winners more than makes up for the losers.

And yes, projected earnings typically account for a large majority of a stock's price. Even in the heyday of old-school Buffett-style value investing, 15 times a company's last-year earnings was often considered a reasonable price to pay. The average large company will probably (1) be around for plenty of years, (2) find ways to grow their earnings, and (3) not be easily put out of business, so that usually justifies the forward-looking nature of stock prices.

There's always room to debate what price (as a multiple of earnings, or whatever else) is too much to pay for a stock. That's especially true today, since stock prices are much higher than the historical average. Earnings multiples are kinda useless today since earnings are still recovering from covid, but even right before covid the S&P 500 was trading around 26x trailing earnings, versus the historical 15x. Is 26x expensive? Well, relative to what? Bonds don't pay shit anymore, cash is guaranteed to lose value to inflation, and all other asset classes are kind of a crapshoot. From that perspective, stock prices seem pretty reasonable.