Like, how the hell could something send oil up higher from this point?
Hahaha this is turning into a hilarious exchange. No, I’m a poker pro. 
My advice on tax advantaged accounts for the self-employed should be solid, because it applies to me and I’ve done the research on what’s available, but still double check and a few others here definitely know more than me about the ones available to someone with a normal job. But most people with a full time job are going to have a 401k, healthcare that is too good to qualify for an HSA, and the option to open a Roth IRA and/or Traditional IRA. Maybe others I don’t know about.
Self-employed people don’t have an employer 401k, and are more likely to have (by choice or financial circumstance) an HSA-eligible plan.
I also don’t have kids and know nothing about the available accounts to save for college for them.
As for general investing advice, stock tips, and economic analysis, I have no real formal training. A couple econ classes in college 15 years ago, five to 10 books I’ve read, and a lot of research online. But I’m not a professional and wouldn’t advise anyone to risk too much on my ideas alone.
But as a lot of folks here will tell you, you don’t want an investment advisor anyway. The vast majority can’t beat the S&P, so they’re not worth their fees. If you want to do the smartest thing for 95% of people 95% of the time, decide how much to invest each year and how often to contribute (all at once, monthly, quarterly, etc), and put it into a mixture of exchange traded funds and bonds based on your age. Then rebalance every so often.
Vanguard funds usually have the lowest fees.
The ETFs I’d recommend for low fees are:
VOO = S&P 500
VTI = Total US Market Index (so this will include smaller companies than the S&P)
QQQ = NASDAQ 100 excluding financial companies
SPEM = Emerging Markets
QQQ has more tech exposure. SPEM is a lot riskier than the others and you want that to be a small percentage of your portfolio if you use it at all. Between VOO, VTI, or a Dow Jones ETF or Russell 2000 etf, the returns will be highly correlated so how you allocate won’t make too big of a difference to your long run expectation.
I went straight emerging markets for foreign exposure, so someone else might be able to help you with a different foreign ETF for more developed countries. For bonds I recommend I Bonds for your first $10K a year right now, which I learned from someone else here. I forget who so apologies for not giving them credit. The current rate is 7.56% but a max of $10K annually and you lose your returns if you pull out in under a year or so. The rate updates every six months based on inflation.
If you want to gamble a bit on individual picks (imo having 0-5% of your portfolio in individual stocks is fun and obviously you’ve limited your risk), I absolutely love MRNA, BNTX, and KT right now, and I’d be happy to give a very detailed breakdown of why if anyone is interested.
All that said I’m not following my own advice right now because I believe that this is that extremely rare 5% of the time the market can be beaten. So while I’d be 70 to 80% in stocks at my age and risk tolerance if these were normal times, I’m under 50%. I’m sitting on cash expecting a massive crash. But there’s a chance that what happens instead is that inflation makes dollars less valuable and stock prices don’t come down, and I get smoked with this strategy. I’m strategizing ways of hedging off that risk. One big one was staying well above 0% invested. There’s also a chance that I’m wrong and the Fed and our government are capable is and intend to never let the market crash super hard again via loose fiscal policy, spending on stimulus, and thus higher valuations than are historically possible are actually here to stay.
If I’m right I plan to start working money in during the crash and not try to time the bottom exactly, and I plan to go to 100% stocks if it crashes far enough. I’d work back over to 80/20 or 70/30 over time after it recovered.
So we’ll see. Part of the reason I’m willing to take a big risk like this is that I’m only 35 and given my line of work, if I’m wrong and the market somehow keeps booming forever, my earnings will continue to be high enough to make up for this loss of returns. If I’m right, my earnings may drop a lot but at least my retirement portfolio will be in amazing shape in 10 years. So in a way, that’s a hedge for me too.
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No. We could be in another housing bubble too. My personal opinion is that we are but that it’s less severe than the 2008 won or the current stock one. I also think there’s a chance institutional investors provide a lot of support to it. However if we see the kind of stock market crash I expect, it could definitely cascade into housing.
That said even if I’m right, in the long run I’d be shocked if houses aren’t worth more in say 20 years than that are now.
One common mistake I think people make is assuming things that haven’t happened in the last ~100 years in America can’t happen. It’s just too small of a sample size to draw conclusions like that. That goes for investing, politics, and all kinds of other stuff.
russia has a lot of oil
it getting blown up could moon it hard from here even
definitely so in europe anyway
This is me too but with MRNA and BNTX, although they’re basically value stocks at this point IMO. That said, I’m fine with my decision because I believe they were still undervalued at their peak. My attitude towards the bears on those companies is, “I’ll see you at the next 4, 8, or 12 quarterly earnings reports, and I’m extremely confident I’ll be right, so I don’t care what the numbers on the screen say right now.”
I’m basically that confident that I know more about COVID and mRNA vaccines than Wall Street. The consensus on Wall Street is that the pandemic is over, and once COVID is endemic vaccines are not a thing anymore. They project ~zero future booster sales, so they believe these are once again companies with no products at market. They also believe that the fact that the current formulations don’t do as well vs. Omicron is bad news for those companies and the prospect of future booster sales. That’s completely backwards in my opinion. I think the likelihood is extremely high that both MRNA and BNTX have newly formulated vaccines in 2022 that are more than 90, perhaps more than 95% effective vs. Omicron.
I think that for at least a few years and maybe forever, they’ll be updating those vaccines every 6-18 months for new variants.
I think generally paying financial planners regularly is considered a poor use of funds by most of us, and paying investment managers is considered -EV as well. But what you suggested sounds very reasonable. Paying a flat rate to learn about some of the stuff I just replied about a few posts up vis a vis tax advantaged accounts, on top of lifelong earning expectations vs allocations, from someone who is certified and 100% sure they’re right is probably +EV even if it just means lifelong peace of mind.
That’s a far cry from paying someone a fee to run your money.
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Redacted for privacy.
only issue I have with your moderna thesis is novavax may be approved soon and I’d bet the army vax and a few others probably end up better than moderna too but that’s too far off right now. Think someone was doing omicron only. There’s some competition in the space.
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Better scientifically in terms of efficacy or distribution? Or better in a commercial sense because conspiracy theorists don’t think it’s going to change their DNA?
MRNA and BNTX are both doing Omicron boosters that should be in testing no later than March. I don’t think anyone is on a faster track, but I could be wrong. I think the overwhelming likelihood is that they hit 90-95% efficacy.
The Army vaccine is definitely a competitive threat in terms of business and something I worry about as a MRNA/BNTX shareholder. There’s also similar research being done at UC Berkeley. That said, I think the likelihood that the all-coronavirus vaccines those two are researching are able to provide higher efficacy against any specific variant than the annual or bi-annual shot from MRNA and BNTX is probably not high.
They’d be way quicker to be distributed in the event of a novel pandemic or a bad new variant, since they could be sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting, and there would definitely be a big chunk of the population that would take them and never think about covid vaccines again, but I think there’s a good chance that the 25% of the population I’m counting on is not in that group and would want the higher efficacy. Moderna has a $64B market cap right now. To justify $100B at a 20x multiple, they need $5B a year in profit. Once it’s endemic and/or once they add the flu shot, $50/shot is very reasonable and each shot costs them about $4 and the rest is profit. $5B divided by $46 is about 109M shots, or about 7% of the western/developed/wealthy world.
Obviously there’s a lot of ballparking and best-guessing in there, but I think it illustrates the idea that they don’t have to end up with the absolute best vaccine in every way when the dust settles, they just have to hold onto a bit of the market share.
As for getting beat on efficacy, anybody with any type of vaccine hitting 95% against any variant was considered a World Series Game 7 upper deck walk off grand slam two years ago. The army vaccine can be better in a variety of ways while still leaving MRNA/BNTX market share, because covering all coronaviruses well AND having 95% against a specific one is even harder.
Also MRNA is working on a covid/flu/rsv all-in-one annual shot, which should be ready in 2023. They expect to beat the current best flu shot efficacy, but their first trial only tied it. They have good reasons to still be optimistic they will beat it (mainly they might tie it most years, but beat it when the old shots mismatch badly and they don’t), but we’ll see.
But the other huge thing that I’m not sure most of Wall Street even knows is that both companies have trials under way for mRNA based cancer treatments that are showing a lot of promise. Moderna also believes they will eventually be able to use an mRNA injection to treat any chronic inflammatory condition.
Now, that could be 25 years away, and they could be blowing smoke about their confidence, but the diversity of their current research and the early success seem quite encouraging.
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This is true but in the context of payroll deductions you usually don’t have the option for a one time lump sum. One of the behavioral benefits of 401(k) plans where you elect a percentage of earnings is that you are basically getting the money in as fast as you can and it’s independent of the market price so you won’t make a panicky whoopsie but not buying into a scary market.
Have you considered their earnings after President DeSantis classifies vaccinations as an illegal drug in 2025?
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stonks
Theranos, although they got the consolation prize of sending Liz to federal prison.
Thanks for the advice but I’ve got a real short attention span and struggle with long articles. Never read a book since I dropped out of college. I think just want to put say $400k into something safish and have a little gamble with another $150k. That leaves me plenty in reserve if I decide not to work for a while after my next trip or if I don’t get paid (happens sometimes). I don’t really spend much or care about money either.
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I see we are not stonking again this morning. What time does the rip start today?
OK, how old are you (affects how much should go to bonds) and what’s the $400K for and what’s the $150K for? (Like retirement, housing down payment, general savings that are part of your net worth you don’t anticipate needing to touch for a long time, etc)
Talk to your bank and see if they can set you up with a financial advisor for a sit-down. If you’ve got $400,000 with them, they’ll probably be happy to oblige.
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I’ll say around 2pm.
Which way it rips, I don’t know.
NOT STONKS
Buy 400,000$ worth of onchain monkey
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But what about the part he’s willing to gamble with?
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