The Rokslide Stock Traders Thread

2531usmc

WKR
Joined
Apr 5, 2021
Messages
485
Yeah my retirement account contributions have continued all along, just making decisions on my mid-life money. I always remember Warren Buffet's Rule #1 above all else though: "Never lose money." I've read that what he meant when he said that was don't take risks you're not prepared to see play out in the worst way.

Agreed, that's what I want to get back to after all this chaos -- INVESTING. I've still been making my monthly contributions to my Roth and my TSP, but they're just going into government securities/MM funds until the dust settles.
Same boat here. Much depends on how the banking & inflation crisis settles out.

if the banks blow up and the market tanks, it might be time to start putting money in the market again

leaving it in cash is just allowing it to shrink with inflation. Basically, an exponential loss is baked in
 
Joined
Jan 18, 2022
Messages
432
Same boat here. Much depends on how the banking & inflation crisis settles out.

if the banks blow up and the market tanks, it might be time to start putting money in the market again

leaving it in cash is just allowing it to shrink with inflation. Basically, an exponential loss is baked in
MM funds are a good middle ground right now. I’m getting 4.5% on my cash (minus .34% expense ratio) and it’s liquid, within a day anyway.
 

eddielasvegas

WKR & Chairman of the Rokslide Welcoming Committee
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Scottsdale, AZ
MM funds are a good middle ground right now. I’m getting 4.5% on my cash (minus .34% expense ratio) and it’s liquid, within a day anyway.
Which MM fund is that?

I have been in Treasuries (secondary market) recently and locking up my cash for 4-6 weeks, but you MM fund pays about the same so I need to look into this.

Thanks,

Eddie
 
Joined
Jan 18, 2022
Messages
432
Which MM fund is that?

I have been in Treasuries (secondary market) recently and locking up my cash for 4-6 weeks, but you MM fund pays about the same so I need to look into this.

Thanks,

Eddie
Schwab, SWVXX. I‘ll be watching the yield in the next week as the T bond rates fell so dramatically in the last week, holding my breath. Vanguard has a good one too, but you need a Vanguard account for those.
 
Last edited:
Joined
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Schwab, SWVXX. I‘ll be watching the yield in the next week as the T bond rates fell so dramatically in the last week, holding my breath. Vanguard has a good one too, but you need a Vanguard account for those.
Which Vanguard fund is that? Thanks!
 
Joined
Jan 15, 2022
Messages
306
Stick with the Dow, that's where big money goes.

When the shtf in Europe, that capital will, and has actually started, come here.

The dollar is the best looking of the ugly sisters, and will be the last to go.

Bitcoin is a trading vehicle. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole. If anyone actually thinks it will replace anything, currency wise, especially competing against the central banks, they are fools. It's going to be vaporware.

Hard assets are the only thing that will survive what is coming, and that includes companies stocks that have assets, not just paper.....ie. the Dow.

Good luck fellas, we're going to need it.
 

MattB

WKR
Joined
Sep 29, 2012
Messages
5,743
Question: at age 60 and still working at a higher tax bracket, if I want take money out of the market to invest in another business, Is it better to sell stocks out of an account I’d need to pay long term capital gains on or sell my Roth IRA and pay no taxes?

I’ll be making a much better return on this money and I’m not really planning on living on SS, stock and or dividends in the future.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Consider borrowing against your taxable accout if you really believe in the return.
 

2531usmc

WKR
Joined
Apr 5, 2021
Messages
485
Stick with the Dow, that's where big money goes.

When the shtf in Europe, that capital will, and has actually started, come here.

The dollar is the best looking of the ugly sisters, and will be the last to go.

Bitcoin is a trading vehicle. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole. If anyone actually thinks it will replace anything, currency wise, especially competing against the central banks, they are fools. It's going to be vaporware.

Hard assets are the only thing that will survive what is coming, and that includes companies stocks that have assets, not just paper.....ie. the Dow.

Good luck fellas, we're going to need it.
At the end of the day, when you buy bitcoin all you’re buying is a software algorithm and space on a server
 
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ThorM465

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Feb 8, 2023
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424
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Madison, AL
...

Bitcoin is a trading vehicle. Personally, I wouldn't touch it with a 10ft pole. If anyone actually thinks it will replace anything, currency wise, especially competing against the central banks, they are fools. It's going to be vaporware.

...

To call bitcoin a trading vehicle is to call is to call the internet digital mail. Blockchain technology is here to stay and we're simply in its infancy. We're maybe just barely in the dial up internet phase of blockchain.

History is clear that the more the powerful try to crack down on the individuals, the more people will flock towards freedom. The harder the central banks fight against BTC the more people will move towards it. This is precisely why they haven't moved against with more force to this point. It's uncontrollable and if they go to far, it will spread like wildfire. They make war against the mining machines, but that's about it.

The current value in BTC is its ability to store value, it's the modern digital gold. I really don't understanding holding Gold. If you think everything will continue as normal, than it holds no value beyond and other rare earth metal as a commodity.

It has great value as a vehicle for exchange of value. Specifically for exchanging large stores of value. There exists no better way of exchanging more than $100k between individuals. We're talking about days or weeks compared to minutes, Paperwork vs no paperwork. And BTC is more secure. This is true of digitally or in person. I can easily and freely travel with millions of dollars worth of BTC, try to travel with more than $10k in cash. The state can seize that cash indefinitely just because you failed to explain how you made that money legally. BTC has failsafe mechanisms that prevent this even if they get their grubby paws on my wallet.

The future of the block chain technology is beyond what we can imagine today. The most immediate and impactful will be smart contracts. For example, I will no longer need the state to hold and sign off on my deed to my property. NFT technology is legitimate, how it was being used was not. An NFT doesn't give something value and that's what we saw going on during the covid craze. It simply provides a digital proof of ownership, aka digital deed on the blockchain.

It absolutely has problems or cons.
1: it's still in its infancy and as such is speculative. Time will correct this.
2: Corruption in the exchanges. The free money by the feds allowed corrupt individuals to manipulate the market through fraud. It allowed them to speculate with money that didn't actually have. I think the reason we see it beginning to rise again is that this recession has shined the light on these actors and removed them from the market. Fiat also has these problem, too. Soros made his billions because of these vulnerabilities.
3: It's slow, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
4: Every transaction is 100% trackable. This is great and horrible. However, it's not horrible, if another asset can fill that void.
5: Relies on power and an open internet
I'm sure I'm missing others.

I think we'll agree that the idea that BTC will replace cash is nonsense. I do think that some form of state currencies will always exist to fulfill the need for a hard and liquid asset. At least until the central banks try and force us to a cashless society. That's the beginning of the end for the central banks as we know them. As long as we remain free to innovate, the potential is there for someone to create a cash version of crypto. There's already been some experimenting with that. When the state forces us to a cashless society a black market will emerge that will make the prohibition error look like child's play.

My investment is not predicated on BTC replacing the US Dollar. The fall of the US Dollar will be a collapse of the world as know it. I'd venture to say that no or very few investments will be safe.
 

ThorM465

WKR
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Madison, AL
At the end of the day, when you buy bitcoin all you’re buying is a software algorithm and space on a server
Not true. You're buying a digital ledger simultaneously stored on millions of decentralized servers. This distinction makes all the difference in the world.
 

2531usmc

WKR
Joined
Apr 5, 2021
Messages
485
To call bitcoin a trading vehicle is to call is to call the internet digital mail. Blockchain technology is here to stay and we're simply in its infancy. We're maybe just barely in the dial up internet phase of blockchain.

History is clear that the more the powerful try to crack down on the individuals, the more people will flock towards freedom. The harder the central banks fight against BTC the more people will move towards it. This is precisely why they haven't moved against with more force to this point. It's uncontrollable and if they go to far, it will spread like wildfire. They make war against the mining machines, but that's about it.

The current value in BTC is its ability to store value, it's the modern digital gold. I really don't understanding holding Gold. If you think everything will continue as normal, than it holds no value beyond and other rare earth metal as a commodity.

It has great value as a vehicle for exchange of value. Specifically for exchanging large stores of value. There exists no better way of exchanging more than $100k between individuals. We're talking about days or weeks compared to minutes, Paperwork vs no paperwork. And BTC is more secure. This is true of digitally or in person. I can easily and freely travel with millions of dollars worth of BTC, try to travel with more than $10k in cash. The state can seize that cash indefinitely just because you failed to explain how you made that money legally. BTC has failsafe mechanisms that prevent this even if they get their grubby paws on my wallet.

The future of the block chain technology is beyond what we can imagine today. The most immediate and impactful will be smart contracts. For example, I will no longer need the state to hold and sign off on my deed to my property. NFT technology is legitimate, how it was being used was not. An NFT doesn't give something value and that's what we saw going on during the covid craze. It simply provides a digital proof of ownership, aka digital deed on the blockchain.

It absolutely has problems or cons.
1: it's still in its infancy and as such is speculative. Time will correct this.
2: Corruption in the exchanges. The free money by the feds allowed corrupt individuals to manipulate the market through fraud. It allowed them to speculate with money that didn't actually have. I think the reason we see it beginning to rise again is that this recession has shined the light on these actors and removed them from the market. Fiat also has these problem, too. Soros made his billions because of these vulnerabilities.
3: It's slow, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
4: Every transaction is 100% trackable. This is great and horrible. However, it's not horrible, if another asset can fill that void.
5: Relies on power and an open internet
I'm sure I'm missing others.

I think we'll agree that the idea that BTC will replace cash is nonsense. I do think that some form of state currencies will always exist to fulfill the need for a hard and liquid asset. At least until the central banks try and force us to a cashless society. That's the beginning of the end for the central banks as we know them. As long as we remain free to innovate, the potential is there for someone to create a cash version of crypto. There's already been some experimenting with that. When the state forces us to a cashless society a black market will emerge that will make the prohibition error look like child's play.

My investment is not predicated on BTC replacing the US Dollar. The fall of the US Dollar will be a collapse of the world as know it. I'd venture to say that no or very few investments will be safe.
I wish this was true. I really wish that an alternative, digital, currency was coming into existence that would replace decayed fiat currencies.

I agree that Massive government corruption and spending will destroy our democracy.

But still At the end of the day, when you buy bitcoin all you’re buying is a software algorithm and space on a server.
 

Actual_Cryptid

Lil-Rokslider
Joined
Sep 16, 2021
Messages
200
Bitcoin prices have been unstable since it started, with giant peaks and crashes even before 2020. It does this because people see it as a trading commodity. The most recent round of price crashes was not due to the Fed, but instead due to several countries banning crypto mining (China chief among them) and yet another major exchange going up in smoke. You would think after Mt. Gox, Bitfinex, Celcius, Voyager, Three Arrows, and Blockifi FTX would not be a surprise and yet here we are.

Crypto is trying to balance 3 demands: security, deregulation, and decentralization. Decentralization is what makes it difficult to actually scale into something transactable. The processing power and need to replicate across the blockchain means that even the fastest implementations lag behind MC or ACH or even wires. It's also at odds with what people want in a medium of exhcnage. While "hey he took my money and scammed me" is easier to resolve when everyone is within punching range, it's incredibly difficult to resolve disputes between anonymous parties without a central mechanism for dispute resolution. Unlike Visa/MC or even ACH you have no recourse if a crypto transaction goes wrong, unless the exchange you use has some way to identify the transactions and reverse them at which point you are no longer decentralizing. Deregulation is tough for adoption because the entire history of cryptocurrency has been replicating every banking crisis in the last 300 years. Liquidity crunches, robberies, scams, rug-pulls, shills (especially in the NFT days), and now folks are starting to really click with the "oh it's a bad thing for me to be transacting with North Korea. Each new disruption spurs the governments of the world closer to regulating cryptocurrencies for what they are: tradeable goods on an exchange, like commodities. Proponents are terrified because the regulation that would entail would also make it highly illegal to say shill coins you have a stake in or pump and dump. Lastly the security is the toughest piece because if the transactions are anonymous (as discussed above) you have no resolution. Its also contrary to what most government want since it makes financial crimes or receiving payments for crimes (ransom, for one) tougher to prevent. it also makes it tougher to enforce sanctions on say Russia or North Korea.

I am tired of blockchain. Every week I have to hear how blockchain is gonna change everything any minute now. Only problem is blockchain has the same problems. I hear how it's gonna revolutionize voting, only nobody can explain how in a way that makes sense. there are some applications in logistics, but for most businesses they do not make sense. "But you can trace every place the fruit went" is sometimes pitched for food transparency, but that requires me to still trust that Dole or whoever is being entirely honest. I hear it's gonna revolutionize banking but when you get past the wowie zowie sales pitch it only works if all these banks sign on to use the same system, and it's still slower than SWIFT or FedWire. Then there was the NFT bubble where everybody was pitching unique serialized video game rewards and I have never been so mystified as to how that made it to press release! Every single time I look at the whizbang pitches for blockchain changing my whole world it's either adding cost, removing consumer protections, or taking everything that exists and squishing blockchain into it.

But most telling is that the blockchain evangelists are rarely talking about a specific product they use or are developing. The evangelists are usually just telling us how Any Day Now It Will Happen and I've learned to take that for the sign that it is.
 

Paradox

FNG
Joined
Oct 30, 2021
Messages
68
So is there any chance FRC will survive this meltdown. Looks like a heck of a discount, currently trading at .3 price to book.
Or am I just tossing money down the toilet?
ps thanks for getting back on track…..
 
Joined
Jan 18, 2022
Messages
432
So is there any chance FRC will survive this meltdown. Looks like a heck of a discount, currently trading at .3 price to book.
Or am I just tossing money down the toilet?
ps thanks for getting back on track…..
Is there a chance? Sure. But be prepared and be willing to lose whatever you put on that bet. It’s not an investment, it’s a gamble. But gamblers win sometimes.

 
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