Leo Gura

Economic Situation Thread

89 posts in this topic

 

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, I trade because the situation is just too crazy for simplistic long-term buy and hold. I'm not losing half my money to Trump's epic stupidity.

Once the stupidity shakes out, then I will do long-term buy and hold. But you don't buy and hold at the top of an obvious bubble unless you're a masochist.

Long-term I like Bitcoin, gold, and various tech stocks. But not at crazy inflated prices.

The thing is this holding is all I'm really prepared for. I'm doing OK. My stocks are all old school blue chip which is a reasonable store of wealth. Energy companies, real estate companies, pharmaceuticals, aerospace, tried and true. Stuff that's "too big to fail" so my stocks will go down but it will also likely return as well and likely not lose some massive amount of value. Selling everything and pulling out has some major risks as well. I don't think bitcoin is safe or wise for long term. It fluctuates so much, it's more like gambling. I don't see my portfolio just crashing and staying depressed for the next 10 years. At the same time my portfolio isn't the type to grow crazy like tech stocks, but also it won't crash as hard. 

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Posted (edited)

5 hours ago, WikiRando said:

@Leo Gura

My approach is to hold some cash but stay in the market.

I do not believe in timing the market as my core strategy because the biggest gains happen over such incredibly short timeframes. If you miss those, you miss the gains. 

I have sat out bear markets before and I have no problem sitting out this one. The sun will rise again once more, and if it doesn't, there are probably much bigger problems. 

I think Bitcoin is great as well. I've studied it a lot and it's just a solid system. :)



 

I agree, I realized the number one thing which will fuck anyone up is panic. Fear and panic during times like this is the worst. I need to up my income, live within my means, get a bit tighter and be more tight and just sit it out, especially with what I own. My biggest issue is my income is low and I need to improve that. That's a bigger threat to me than stocks sitting, which I believe my portfolio will recover (Exxon, Souther company, energy, pharmaceuticals, dupont, johnson & johnson, spread across many sectors). Industrial and energy bluechip is almost always safe and recession proof. It's volatility, not necessarily long term loss. My problem is I need some of them for short term things so my runway is getting cut shorter... Not pleasent, but a sign that it's time to really up my income and work more. 

Edited by Lyubov

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Posted (edited)

I’m starting to think they’re trying to purposefully crash the economy so all the billionaires can buy everything and solidify control of the world economy. 

It makes sense when you follow the recent events.

-> wealthy freaking out over occupy Wall Street, Bernie sanders popularity among youth, polls showing young people becoming pro socialism 

-> wealthy dramatically increasing their wealth post 2008 and Covid 

-> billionaires buying land and bunkers 

-> All of them suddenly aligning with trump after previously pushing wokeness

Basically I think they fear a working class revolt and initially the tactic was to distract the public with culture war issues, while it worked for a bit it’s failing, they are probably also afraid of what happens when climate change and biodiversity issues start hurting the supply chain and the US national security establishment starts ramping up efforts against China. So they were probably setting up backup plans before and are now going for a Hail Mary to consolidate their power.

Edited by Raze

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What China should do is go to countries that trade with the US but trade more with them and threaten to put tariffs on them unless they join them in increasing tariffs on the US. This would ramp up pressure on the US while giving them less of an excuse to tariff China, and it’ll look worse to Americans when trump tariffs countries they aren’t negative towards such as China.

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Managed to grab some BRK.B at the bottom. It has ranged between $460 and $505 today, which is absolutely crazy for such a stable stock. I am not sure if it has ever happened before.

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Posted (edited)

13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Bitcoin crashed hard. Monday will be a bloodbath.

:/

It was volatile but ended up not being too bad for US markets today.

Both S&P and DJ down under 1%. Even Bitcoin is up right now.

Of course Trump is doubling down on everything, so this is definitely not over.

Edited by aurum

"Finding your reason can be so deceiving, a subliminal place. 

I will not break, 'cause I've been riding the curves of these infinity words and so I'll be on my way. I will not stay.

 And it goes On and On, On and On"

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Posted (edited)

If the Trump devil breaks something, our lord Jerome Powell and the Fed will ease financial conditions. This is not the big bust, we can kick the can down the road a few more years. 

When interest rates are near zero, and there is a recession, with much higher inflation, is when I'd be actually concerned that the levers are broken.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/no-fed-put-when-its-unclear-which-way-economy-may-pivot-2025-04-07/

Edited by WikiRando

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34 minutes ago, WikiRando said:

If the Trump devil breaks something, our lord Jerome Powell and the Fed will ease financial conditions. This is not the big bust, we can kick the can down the road a few more years. 

When interest rates are near zero, and there is a recession, with much higher inflation, is when I'd be actually concerned that the levers are broken.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/no-fed-put-when-its-unclear-which-way-economy-may-pivot-2025-04-07/

I love the Powell guy, he's been a hero during the last 2 trump presidencies and the pandemic

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13 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Yes, I trade because the situation is just too crazy for simplistic long-term buy and hold. I'm not losing half my money to Trump's epic stupidity.

Once the stupidity shakes out, then I will do long-term buy and hold. But you don't buy and hold at the top of an obvious bubble unless you're a masochist.

This may be the case for you, who's probably got houndreds of thousands of dollars to invest, in that case sure you can lose a lot of money if you time your investment wrong. But for regular people like me and most people on this forum, long term strategy is the safest and the best

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Posted (edited)

10 minutes ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

This may be the case for you, who's probably got houndreds of thousands of dollars to invest, in that case sure you can lose a lot of money if you time your investment wrong. But for regular people like me and most people on this forum, long term strategy is the safest and the best

That seems backwards.

If you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars, you shouldn't be seriously investing in the first place. And if you are, then I would be extra cautious about holding during a crash, since it will tank everything you have.

The people who can do a long hold and weather a crash are the ones with more money. They can afford to ride out the bump.

Edited by aurum

"Finding your reason can be so deceiving, a subliminal place. 

I will not break, 'cause I've been riding the curves of these infinity words and so I'll be on my way. I will not stay.

 And it goes On and On, On and On"

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5 hours ago, aurum said:

That seems backwards.

If you don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars, you shouldn't be seriously investing in the first place. And if you are, then I would be extra cautious about holding during a crash, since it will tank everything you have.

The people who can do a long hold and weather a crash are the ones with more money. They can afford to ride out the bump.

Well, I will always be able to afford to "ride out the bump" as long as I'm holding on the long enough time frame. Which is what I'm doing. It doesn't matter how much the economy will crash because I know everything will rise back up again, even after foolish mismanagments of people like Trump. I'm not looking to protect my invested assets because the time frame I'm operating in is measured in decades, not years

I could write more but this is common sense at this point

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27 minutes ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Well, I will always be able to afford to "ride out the bump" as long as I'm holding on the long enough time frame.

Only if you don't need that money. The whole point is that if you're already struggling financially, you might need it.

What happens if you get an unexpected bill? 

Maybe you personally will make it work, but I wouldn't consider that generally good advice for lower income people.

Lower income people need to be protecting the money they have and working on growing their income, not investing in stocks. Otherwise you are putting the cart way before the horse.

A 401k might also be relevant, depending on your goals.


"Finding your reason can be so deceiving, a subliminal place. 

I will not break, 'cause I've been riding the curves of these infinity words and so I'll be on my way. I will not stay.

 And it goes On and On, On and On"

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Young people used to invest in themselves and start businesses. Nowadays, they just gamble on crypto and meme stocks thinking they will become rich without lifting a finger. A recipe for disaster.

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Dollar cost average into the S&P500 or Nasdaq100 all the way down.

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3 hours ago, FourCrossedWands said:

Young people used to invest in themselves and start businesses. Nowadays, they just gamble on crypto and meme stocks thinking they will become rich without lifting a finger. A recipe for disaster.

Hard to compete with Amazon but yeah I agree with you

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7 hours ago, aurum said:

Only if you don't need that money. The whole point is that if you're already struggling financially, you might need it.

What happens if you get an unexpected bill? 

Maybe you personally will make it work, but I wouldn't consider that generally good advice for lower income people.

Lower income people need to be protecting the money they have and working on growing their income, not investing in stocks. Otherwise you are putting the cart way before the horse.

Well the whole point of investing is to set aside money that you won't use for a very long time. Ideally these money should be retirement money. Just keep investing regurarly ammounts of money you can afford to invest and you'll be fine

Most people will never be making high incomes and we all kinda know it deep down. Investing into ever growing economies and industries is therefore the only way for lower income people to save enough money for retirement to survive, or even live a nice life. There's honestly no point in investing unless it's for your retirement. If it's not for retirement, it's automatically trading in my opinion - just a long term trading and speculation, that's all

Leo has already made retirement money long time ago, so for him it's all about trading and multiplying or even protecting his assets. Which skews his perspective on what regular people shouldn't do.

The best way to solve unexpected bills is to not have them in the first place. Being smart, strategic and staying out of trouble. The second best way is to of course make more money, like you said. Easier said than done tho

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Posted (edited)

Here are 2 helpful frameworks to approach it.

1. Income Stategy vs Balance Sheet Strategy

 - The income strategy is your business, job, earning money etc.

- The balance sheet strategy is how you allocate, invest, take on debt, make portfolio decisions.

This gives you clear precise framework of what exactly you're doing in your financial situation.

 

2. Money IQ vs Money EQ

 - Money IQ is the stuff like understanding economics, numbers, charts, market updates, financial literacy, financial skills.

-Money EQ is your relationship to money. Investigating your beliefs and assumptions around money. Do you fear money? Judge it?  If money is about psychology, then your fears and limiting beliefs about money will utterly define your financial success.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by WikiRando

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1 hour ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

Well the whole point of investing is to set aside money that you won't use for a very long time. Ideally these money should be retirement money. Just keep investing regurarly ammounts of money you can afford to invest and you'll be fine

Most people will never be making high incomes and we all kinda know it deep down. Investing into ever growing economies and industries is therefore the only way for lower income people to save enough money for retirement to survive, or even live a nice life. There's honestly no point in investing unless it's for your retirement. If it's not for retirement, it's automatically trading in my opinion - just a long term trading and speculation, that's all

You can do a 401k. That is investing and will get you matches from your employer, which can add up a lot. I think that's a realistic compromise for the majority people.

It also encourages you to stabilize your income.

Some jobs still offer pensions.

If you're in the US you'll also collect Social Security, assuming it's not dismantled by Trump.

Is it really more realistic to expect people to be savvy investors than to grow their income?

1 hour ago, NewKidOnTheBlock said:

The best way to solve unexpected bills is to not have them in the first place. Being smart, strategic and staying out of trouble. The second best way is to of course make more money, like you said. Easier said than done tho

An unexpected bill is what happens when all that inevitably fails.

Here in the US we have millions of people with medical debt. You're almost as likely to end up with medical debt than not.

Then there's also credit card debt, student loans, etc.

What you're describing is not a serious strategy. 


"Finding your reason can be so deceiving, a subliminal place. 

I will not break, 'cause I've been riding the curves of these infinity words and so I'll be on my way. I will not stay.

 And it goes On and On, On and On"

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