Lord Ratner

A few things I've done and learned in the last couple years - I bonds. Google them. Best safe money possible right now. - if you have a large stash of cash that you use as a reserve for emergencies, consider keeping that in Treasury bills instead. Through the same website that you buy I bonds, you can buy treasury bills. If you set up a rotating schedule then you can have your 26 or 52 week t-bills reinvest automatically, let's say two months apart, and keep a much smaller emergency supply in a (low yield) savings account. Now if everything goes to shit, your emergency supply only needs to last you two months before the next batch of t-bills mature and deposit back in your bank account. You will get better rates in almost every possible situation by doing this. For example, my high yield savings account was at 2%, but using the above strategy, I'm getting about 3.5 right now. - similarly, if you are keeping large amounts of cash in your investment portfolios (usually in money market funds), consider investing in a short-term bond fund, such as SHY. The money market funds are giving garbage interest rates. The caveat here is that if the Fed raises rates dramatically higher than we are expecting, the fund itself can lose value. But it is much less volatile than the long-term bond fund TLT, since the short maturity date makes SHY harder to fluctuate. - if you are hoarding for the apocalypse and like gold and silver, now would be a good time to transition your gold and silver investments from ETFs or stocks into physical metal. The prices are pretty depressed. But realize that gold and silver are a defense against a declining dollar, not declining stocks. The dollar will be strong so long as one of two or both are true: the Fed is raising rates, or, the rest of the world is doing worse than us. I expect the former to stop sometime in the next 6 months, but the ladder may take much longer. Precious metals have been killing it in other currencies, but with everybody rushing to the dollar for protection, gold and silver might stay flat for quite some time. - at the end of the day, investing is going to be reduced down to a gamble on where you think the macro economy is going. Unlike picking individual stocks, which requires an understanding of accounting and market fundamentals, predicting the macroeconomic direction of the country or the world is much more a gut feeling. So you can trust someone else's gut or you can trust yours. If you trust yours, then find the analysts who have the same gut feeling as you do, and lean on them to do the technical analysis. If you are a market bear, the YouTube channel Wealthion is fantastic because he interviews a wide range of analysts and money managers. It's a good place to start if you're looking for someone to manage your money, but want them to share your general view of the direction of the world economy. I just found a uranium analyst through them who is spectacular, and I've been looking for someone to help me play my hunch on nuclear for a while. If you are a bull, I'm not sure I can be as much help, since the bulls have largely moved to technical analysis and a somewhat religious belief that the Fed will tackle. Inflation and all will be well. But Kathy woods and Jim Cramer are very bullish, so you could start by finding out where they are being interviewed and I'm sure a Wealthion-like channel is available for bulls. - if you have a habit of accurately forecasting world events, but never profit off of them, recalibrate your thinking such that when you have a prediction (let's say the invasion of Ukraine by Russia) you track down analysts some investors who share the same belief and find out what they're investing in. These people love to talk about their predictions, often for free, but most services are only a few hundred bucks a year. - forget everything you've learned over the last 20 years of investing. Obviously that's hyperbole, but the last 20 years of low inflation fed intervention is fueled a bull market that cannot function in the same way with high inflation. So look at the things that didn't exist before this easy money Fed market, and be skeptical. That means passive investing in index ETFs/funds, cryptocurrency, home flipping as a hobby, The metaverse, SPACs, etc. If they haven't been tested in an inflationary environment, their past performance cannot be used as a predictor of future performance. Doesn't mean they won't do well, but "it always goes up" is dead until further notice. - diversify. One of the money managers. I like a lot, said that he doesn't put more than 5% of his portfolio in any one asset, because he likes sleeping at night. Happening to one company or fund will only cost him 5%. If you really like a sector, that's okay, but diversify within that sector as well. As an example, I think nuclear is going to be an incredibly lucrative investment over the next decade, but I'm only going to put 20% or less of my portfolio into nuclear, and within that I will diversify into around 10 assets. Makes the chance of a moonshot lower, but the much more likely chance of being wrong less devastating.

They are Keynesians at best, modern monetary theorists at worst. Literally, they think the solution is more government spending. Never underestimate just how long stupid, prideful people will ignore the evidence of their failure. When in doubt, double down.

Agreed. My implication is that this won't be a "simple" matter of banging a 17 year old who flashed a fake ID.

Valid. Let's call it "the impending recognition of the worsening recession"

It's going to get a lot worse than the SPR. Just wait until the (neglected and pathetic) retirement accounts of the largest voting block start to implode under the weight of an impending recession. There is no limit to what politicians will spend to preserve their positions. And if you think that largest voting block, which leans conservative, is going to vote to cut their SS checks or their Medicare benefits, you are delusional. They will howl for the Fed to dump rates and fire up the printing press, because their government checks are inflation protected and their retirement accounts will capture the money printing.

Age of consent in Nevada is 16... Might be different in UCMJ, but if the local cops are prosecuting I think the civilian law applies.

Sometimes you say dumb things, but this is particularly dumb. Coming from someone who agreed with you on 95% of your COVID commentary, you sound like a hyperventilating Karen.

Not sure why you got down voted here.

Asking to see the radio operator license is little dick energy

Yeah the lack of self awareness or shame is pretty impressive

Good example. Corporate debt is not fixed. People often assume that corporate debt works similar to an auto loan or a car loan, but in reality it has a term, and usually a shorter term like 3 to 5 years. The corporation doesn't make payments on the principal, they only pay the interest, then at the end of the loan the entire loan is paid off. Where it gets problematic is companies like American pay off the debt by taking out a new loan, and basically just roll the debt forward without paying it down. So the real question isn't can you afford the amount of money you have loaned out, but can you afford the payment at the new interest rates? With a fixed rate mortgage. You know what your payments will be for the next 30 years, but that's not the case with corporate debt. You also need to remember that effectively no one thought inflation was possible. Other than a few pundits, Michael Burry types, and Perma bears, the entire corporate, political, and investment class assumed inflation was dead. Most importantly, the Fed has spent the last decade quite literally attempting to increase inflation and failed to the point they believed that unlimited quantitative easing and interest rate repression would have no negative impacts, and certainly not inflation. I think at this point it is obvious that they were wrong. So why does that matter? Because a company like American Airlines (and 25% of the Russell 2000) are "zombie" companies, meaning that they had no realistic path to paying down their debt. That was all well and good when their debt could simply be rolled forward into a new low interest loan. But interest rates are rising, and the corporate bond market, especially the junk bond market, is teetering on the edge of some pretty severe rate increases. Companies are going to fall like dominos when that happens. But the good news is that AA is too big to fail. Usually means chapter 11 bankruptcy, some concessions to the contracts, some furloughs, but otherwise a remarkably stable career compared to what regular folks went through during the great financial crisis.

Exactly. Invest in nuclear before everyone else realizes there was only ever one answer.

That's because it's not a homeless problem, it's a drug problem. There is a ton of money being spent on it, but it will do nothing because no one wants to admit that we need forcibly imprison the homeless and subject them to compulsory rehab, and reestablish the insane asylums for those who are too far gone to treat. We can work on that problem and support Ukraine at the same time.

Nonsense. What we are spending in Ukraine is budget dust compared to the domestic expenses that have put us well beyond the point of recovery. The money sent to Ukraine probably has the highest rate of achieving its intended purpose of all government spending in the last 30 years.

Hang on buddy, you're not acting as a good fiduciary. Timeshares can be an excellent purchase during a recession, since if you're patient, you'll probably find someone to pay you to take it 🤣😂

Yup. We've reached a pretty amazing point where the biggest threat to black people are the mostly-white people who claim to be their champions. I've had some amazing conversations over the past few years with black friends and co-workers. All of them can be boiled down to this paraphrased statement: Well, no, none of that has actually happened to me, but I'm sure it's happening to all the other black people.

🤣😂 Never trust a woman who is that interested in your job.

Pretty sure the trans-inclusion movement has already reached the government

Jesus fucking Christ, top gun Maverick may have been one of the best movies I've ever seen, and I did not like the first one. Whatever ancient movie writing formula they pulled out of the closet to make Maverick, I hope they don't lose it again. No message, no franchise, just a hero, a challenge, and a victory. Awesome.

Trading has been brutal, though still rewarding for those willing to be aggressive in their trades. In terms of total compensation (pay + 401k + per diem) I've made just over $100k this summer (June/July/August). That's 508 hours of pay, however 94 hours came from just two trips (4 day and 2 day) in July from the much publicized 300% meltdown. Dallas based 737 first officer.

Even if we assume the first part of your sentence is accurate, when have declarations of war been made by Democratic election? We are a representative republic.

I have those already.

I diversify 🤣😂

I don't think that at all. I think you're a very intelligent, self-driven idealist. And I've noticed that there's a huge and growing divide between the professional class and the plebes. The ability to isolate amongst similarly-situated and like minded families, both online and in communities, is abnormally high in the modern era. Look no further than people like yourself who regularly talk about how great everything is in the modern world while completely failing to see a huge part of the country who have lives that are materially worse than their parents' lives were. You might call it Trump country, but based on your commentary you have little experience with the people in that demographic. The gap between the haves and the have nots is growing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, the only people who are focused on this issue, probably you, but definitely the hyper progressive activists/politicians in the Democratic party, have a twofold problem. - They hate half of the people in the have-not group. The Trumpers, if you will. - Their prescriptions to help the half they like are violative of human nature and are doomed to failure. You can't see past the teams. That's not on you, the political class figured out how to polarize the electorate almost identically to how sports teams polarize their fans. It's generally harmless in football, but politically it's tearing the country apart. The real game isn't democrat vs Republican, it's the new aristocracy vs everyone else. Just look at the percentage of wealth of the 1% and look at how it changed during the pandemic. The least vulnerable people increased their share of the pie by a huge amount, and they did it with monetary and political trick-fuckery. No, the problem at hand is the continued erosion of faith, shared equally by Democrats and Republicans, in the institutions and elections of our country. In 2016 most Democrats thought the election was rigged. Same for Republicans in 2020. Some boxes of secrets in Trump's basement or emails in Hillary's bathroom are irrelevant. The differing treatment of these offenses by the law enforcement institutions is everything. That is what you fail to grasp.

I don't think I could ask for a better proxy for the generalized problem with liberal/democratic thinking. For that I am grateful. In fact, they are inherently good. But they are also very susceptible to the corrupting influence of power, which our political class have retained in greater quantities since the founding. It has wildly distorted the system as it was designed, wherein the founders recognized this corrupting power and used elections and checks and balances to fight it. But obviously they weren't able to foresee the technological and demographic changes that have made politics a much different beast 200 years later. This is not borne out in the polling data. In fact, Americans on both sides are increasingly likely to believe the people who disagree with their politics are in fact bad people. https://www.npr.org/2022/08/13/1117232857/americans-have-increasingly-negative-views-of-those-in-the-other-political-party https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2019/10/10/partisan-antipathy-more-intense-more-personal/ And now we are back to the generalized failings of liberal thinking. You believe you are qualified to determine what bad reasoning or logical fallacies are. That you would not afford the same freedom to the proletariat, who you are completely out of touch with. And of course, I'm not making the argument that their decision making will result in better outcomes than yours. In fact, I would bet on you if we could create an isolated system. But we can't, and what we know for sure is that while bad decision making will result in bad outcomes when compared to good decision making, taking away that decision making authority will result in far more catastrophic outcomes. That, at its core, is the foundational error in progressive thought. Individual entities working in massive systems without centralized control always outperform hierarchical control structures. We see this both in the success of individualist-based governments versus socialist governments, and free market economies versus communist economies. We also see this in all manner of policy issues, the greatest of which may be abortion, but gun control, transgender children and their medical care, the gay wedding cake debacle, and the Democratic push to regulate what news stories are suitable for public consumption. Everything the liberals have done to advance these issues in their favor have exploded spectacularly in their face. That is not because of skilled Republican political maneuvering, it's because when you piss on the leg of human nature, human nature turns around and punches you right in the face.