It has been an interesting year for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin just topped its all-time high this week at almost $20,000 – up 1.6x from last year at this time. The private, all-digital currency still has its skeptics, but it is getting broader acceptance among financial services companies and institutional investors. The pandemic may be remembered as Bitcoin’s coming of age. I wondered back in April if … Continue reading Bitcoin’s Coming Of Age?
Is there anyone more interesting & successful in the business world right now than Elon Musk? Really – I am in awe of this guy and all he is accomplishing. The sad thing, is that I bet ‘against’ him three years ago and can’t believe how wrong I was. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, Musk is flipping 4 entire industries on … Continue reading The Worst Stock Bet I Ever Made
The old saying goes “put your money where your mouth is” and I have a friend who has been betting his political analysis/opinions on the interesting website ‘PredictIt’ this week. As you can imagine, he’s had a wild week! While I made a few friendly wagers (a bottle of wine or 6-pack of beer) with some buddies on the outcome, my friend put major $$$ … Continue reading Betting The Presidency
With the Presidential election this week, I thought I would do a quick portfolio check to see where our retirement portfolio is sitting before the markets react. It seems a big enough change-point, that I would keep track of where we are at – at this moment in time. The good news is that despite the pandemic sell-off in March, we’ve weathered the 2020 storm(s) … Continue reading Election 2020 – Where Are We At?
Our house is our single biggest investment and one that needs lots of care and maintenance. We’ve lived in our house for 11 years now and it feels like there is always something that needs work. I analyzed it a couple years ago, and the ‘experts’ say that homes require somewhere in the range of 1%-3% of the value of a home in ongoing annual … Continue reading Bless This House – Ongoing Repairs
I recently listened to an interesting podcast with investor Peter Schiff of Euro-Pacific Capital. He’s the guy that earned the title ‘Dr. Doom’ when he correctly forecast the housing bubble that led to the Great Recession. He wrote a book about it two years before it happened. Schiff – a self-described libertarian capitalist – did a 3 hour interview with Joe Rogan recently. He raised … Continue reading Bubble Economy?
People make investments out of many things that they enjoy as hobbies – classic cars, antique watches, sports memorabilia, and other collectibles. I have a lot of collections of things, but I’ve never viewed any of them that way. One of the biggest collections we have is LEGO models & sets. I have many sets from when I was a kid and we’ve bought & … Continue reading Colorful, Collectible Bricks
During the Democratic National Convention two weeks ago, news slipped out that Joe Biden was developing a new tax plan that would rollback benefits for 401K plans. He even had his Economic Advisor speak to it at a panel event at the convention. Like many ‘progressive’ initiatives, this one involves reducing or eliminating 401K tax benefits from higher income households and transferring that benefit to … Continue reading Keeping Up With Election Proposals – Taxing 401Ks
After seeing the details of Biden’s big tax increase proposal and reading that there is a legitimate chance that Democrats will win the White House and both houses of Congress this November, I figured it would be a good time to accelerate some MegaCorp stock option sales that I could otherwise stretch out to July 2022. I made my big stock move of the decade … Continue reading Cashing In Before The Election
There it is … the S&P 500 is just 6 points short of record territory, despite the CV-19 pandemic. I was chatting about the amazing rebound in the market yesterday with an old MegaCorp colleague and we were both astounded that it could jump back so quickly. He asked what I thought about the stock market right now and what I would do in his … Continue reading Amazing Rebound
