In addition to what I wrote above, keep an eye on interest payments. This is the answer. When you purchase the bill/bond/note, you pay the "price" plus any unpaid accrued interest - which rightly belongs to the seller. Would this apply to a bond purchased at auction? Also, Dualstow: inter...

Hi all, I recently bought some LTT at auction. Vanguard reports that I purchased: Quantity: 9,000 Price: 99.34 Amount: -8995.81 However, these numbers don't add up for me: 9 x 99.34 = 8940.60 It's as if Vanguard charged fees or commissions of $55.21 for this purchase even though the transaction says...

Version 4 is scarily smart. I don’t have access. I’m just going by the Cinderella example on the front page. wow. 🤯 Yeah I thought the test scores were interesting: 710/800 on SAT reading+ writing 700/800 SAT Math https://openai.com/research/gpt-4 4/5 and 5/5 on the AP exams. I believe there is a w...

Xan wrote: ↑Wed Mar 15, 2023 8:59 am So... Is it stupid to have money in any bank that isn't one of these?

I opened an account at JP Morgan yesterday!

While the FDIC was stepping in to make all depositors whole at SVB, the Fed was setting up the lifeline for all depository institutions called the Bank Term Funding Program. Pretty cool, they will make term loans to institutions on assets AT PAR. So if a bank holds a bond or MBS portfolio that has ...

So, does this mean that FDIC is now set at infinity? Some clarity needed. I can't imagine what it was like for hundreds, maybe thousands of entrepreneurs and management who went through maybe the worst 24-48 hours of their careers through no fault of their own. Let's see what this week brings. Alth...

glennds wrote: ↑Sun Mar 12, 2023 1:09 pm

Mark Leavy wrote: ↑Fri Mar 10, 2023 11:48 pm

And then the unimaginable happened. Rising interest rates. Kaboom.

A lot of regional banks are in the same position.

If the Feds raise rates, more banks go under.
If they don't raise rates, inflation stays high.

Jerome Powell not feeling irie this weekend

This violent upward move in Bitcoin over just the past day or two was enough to hit a rebalancing band for me. Dang. Talk about volatile. As Operation Choke Point 2.0 is underway (1.0 was an Obama-era program) w/ the goal of unbanking the crypto sector, you can expect more volatility. I believe thi...

Jack Jones wrote: ↑Tue Jan 31, 2023 12:22 pm Losers:
CIGI (-19%)
FRC (-17%)
AAPL (-16%)
TAC (-15%)
FDX(-14%)

FRC: First Republic Bank of California is taking me for a ride. HODLing because PP and it's not time to rebalance.

That's my question, though, is whether it fits in with the HBPP mentality. He seems to be saying to pick stocks with high risk/reward for better rebalancing opportunities. Would HB say to put all your stock allocation into SCV rather than splitting half and half between SCV and LCG? Or is there som...

Here in the UK we're starting to see 'investigations' down to even relatively small amounts. Banks are obligated to flag 'suspicious' activities where that isn't clearly defined, but where if banks are identified as having partaken of moving 'illegal' money they could land in hot water, so as ever ...

Over 20 years ago I was (good) brainwashed by William Bernstein's books that in the long run one will be better off by using index funds rather than to select individual stocks that are in the index fund's sector of investing. One is far better off accepting the market average than trying to beat t...

I dumped a bunch of VTSAX today and substituted for it about 20 individual stocks picked to roughly mirror what's going on in PRPFX and the Permanent Portfolio Aggressive Growth Fund. It's one of the few moves I've felt really good about lately. And I'm loving having individual companies to root fo...

Here is what HB has to say on the topic. . . For the Permanent Portfolio, a stock-market investment should have these attributes: The Permanent Portfolio's stock-market investments, as a group, should reflect a broad spectrum of American enterprise; they shouldn't be tied to a signle industry or na...

Here is what HB has to say on the topic. All HB quotes from Why The Best Laid Investment Plans...: For the Permanent Portfolio, a stock-market investment should have these attributes: Market relationship: The investment should have a strong tendency to move in the same direction as the general stock...

What are y'all growing? I just got a Smith fig tree that I am itching to plant. Just a few more days... I've been growing tomatoes, strawberries, cannabis, kale, and bush beans. I have a few apple and peach trees going too; they are more of a long term project. For the past two years, we only harve...

blackomen wrote: ↑Sat Feb 04, 2023 10:42 pm https://imgur.com/a/NrsM4o1

Very creative definition of tithe O0 Seems appropriate: A portion of one's annual income contributed voluntarily or due as a tax, especially a contribution of one tenth of one's income for the support of the clergy or church. Unrelated. I was wondering why the feds are so concerned about cryptocurr...

My thoughts on this have evolved a bit. There are different roles to play in the Bitcoin space. They include miners, speculators, true-believers, capitalists. These roles are not mutually exclusive; you can play multiple at the same time. I am a capitalist and true-believer: I have wealth to allocat...

Just an update on this, I went through with it, and it's been fun. Unexpected joys like proxy voting and buying products from companies that I own. It's been interesting to see the winners and losers of companies I selected from across the economy. I tried to focus on high-beta companies (HB) that a...

boglerdude wrote: ↑Mon Dec 05, 2022 12:23 am > favorable to conservatives and libertarians

Oh no!

Where I'm from, the locals are terrified of libertarians. Democrats, Republicans, they can understand. Libertarians are a huge boogeyman for some reason.

However, for purposes of this discussion I have what is called the Walmart test (or pick any large commercial entity that doesn't buy/sell trade precious metals). If they don't accept it, then it isn't "money." Nor is the USD money in Australia only the AUD is. US Gold Eagles pass your Wa...

https://brettscott.substack.com/p/casin ... ss-society

My takeaway is that I'll continue to cash out some of my chips into gold and Bitcoin.

I hope it works. The electricity usage is a problem. The electricity usage is what makes it fair and scarce. How else do you fairly distribute the money over time? Anyone can get paid to do the work to secure the network. It's similar to how gold has been fairly distributed over the centuries, peop...

There are so many things working against crypto that it almost has to fail, at least in this early phase. That's been my approach to it. If it ever becomes relatively stable and useful, then I'm interested. I have never felt the FOMO need to make money on it on the way up. I'm of the opinion that B...