Thriving with Interest!

It's a pretty crazy time out there. I just got back from a little weekend trip to Park City, Utah and the airport was jammed (both in LA and in Salt Lake). My conversations were similar with friends over there, and the newsflow continues to back up the notion that inflation is here, despite what the official statistics say. Check this out: Lots of cash out there (thanks Uncle Sam) and this: Help wanted ads at virtually every store and this: Airports are packed this weekend and this: Stock market at all time highs (although we're bobbling here)  coupled with this: and this: fastest housing price rises in over a decade (we all know what happened next) coupled with this: and no houses for sale Bottom line is this. The real rate of inflation is high, and higher than is officially reported, and will continue to remain high for a while longer. So what should one do: buy equities (notably European ones): https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/05/where-to-invest-now-europe-of-c...

 From here... pre Champion's League Final flight... GO CHELSEA to here... a little jaunt in Park City... OLYMPIC VILLAGE Living in California, a state which has undoubtedly taken as many precautions as any other state in the union when it comes to dealing with Covid, we are used to certain things. Wearing a mask indoors is one of them. Reading/hearing/seeing images of how Florida and other states have taken many more liberties in dealing with the pandemic in a much more flippant way is another. After a year+ of this, one of the truths that I believed in was that it would take a long while to return back to a pre March 2020 world. All that has changed this weekend... After a short trip to Utah I have seen how the other world lives. Masks are optional. People from other states poopoo the idea that wearing a mask is a necessary "evil" in order to help the world (or at least our little world) contain this pandemic. And I have come to the conclusion that in the US (at least), ...

As we prepared to bid adieu to the 2020-21 school year, the last few days got quite heated on campus. The main culprit? Discussions relating to school uniforms. It has not been surprising to see that 99% of students  (not necessarily scientifically calculated, but a solid guesstimate)  were against it. What did surprise me however, was how many of the teachers didn't see it as an appropriate policy to implement. I chalk this up primarily to the fact that it is hard to make a drastic change like this, much like it might be difficult to begin a new exercise regime after a long layoff. I would assume that if teachers were working at a school that already had a uniform policy, this would not be much of an issue. A little sidebar here.... Having lived, and raised school aged children, in Europe and Asia, where school uniforms are much more prevalent than in the US, I have seen first hand the impact of such a policy on students and their parents. Overall it seems to me that it works...

  All because of emails like these. Very little in the world of finance can come close: For those who missed it, here is the link/transcript of a blog post from earlier this month, describing the journey of our finance program at Milken Community School:

Both of my lovely young ones will be starting jobs this summer (well one already has - see lovely hard hat photo below) so now is a good time to pass along a bit of advice to them and any other recent graduate doing the same...

After 12 months + of remote learning I think that most of us, meaning teachers, students, parents, administrators got pretty good at it making it work. Of course it's not ideal, of course it didn't the best situation for everyone, and of course we would rather be in person. But overall it was working quite well... Then in the Spring, as Covid cases began to drop, and as a certain degree of fatigue set in/pressure mounted, schools reopened. That should have been a joyous moment. And for a brief period in time it was. We basically had our "back to school" joy and renewal of friendships that normally occurs in late Summer happening in 6 months later instead. But soon enough the reality of the situation set in. We were not getting the full benefit of in person instruction as many students opted to stay home (most for valid personal reasons) and we had dismantled the procedures and protocols that had been set in place over the course of the school year. As the school year ...

I often get asked what are the best places to learn about the financial markets. As driving with traffic is a competitive sport here in LA, listening to podcasts is a great way to kill two birds with one stone. You get to pass some time and learn a thing or two along the way. As such over the past few years I have built up a nice little portfolio of daily and weekly downloads which I listen to on a regular basis. The topics they cover are varied and allow me to listen to different types of stories depending on my mood. In this post I will focus on the business related ones, as that is one of the most frequent questions I get asked by students, parents and friends. Without further ado, here goes: 1. Motley Fool Money ( https://www.fool.com/podcasts/motley-fool-money/ ) This podcast comes out after the market close every Friday and incorporates a market recap, the top stories of the week, interviews and stock picks. It is a bite-sized 35-40 weekly episode, easily digestible, and giving y...

What an amazing sporting weekend. Just to think that a year ago virtually all sporting events, leagues, and competitions had been shut down, cancelled with little to no visibility as to when they would be back on. Fast forward to today and we have had the oldest major golf champion ever, a 17 year old tennis champ, the first playoff appearance by the NY Knicks since 2013 (special mention to the Phoenix Suns who played in the post-season after a 10 year draught), and championship Sunday for the EPL with Liverpool and Chelsea locking up the final 2 champion's league spots (special mention to the French Ligue 1 crowning a new champ in Lille as PSG fell to number 2). This is great. You know what else is great, being able to attend a wonderful LAFC match (possibly the best sporting experience in all of LA): Time to look ahead. Here are 21 fearless predictions and surprises for the sporting events due to take place in the months ahead (in no particular order with most coming from my hear...

The answer is, net net not too bad and probably better than the alternative/status quo. If you want to find out more, please read on. In this post  ( https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/05/testing-patience-crypto-correction-is.html )  I highlighted the key reasons I felt caused the Bitcoin correction of the past 2 weeks. The Tesla about turn and environmental concerns over Bitcoin's energy consumption were amongst them. These are obviously tied at the hip, and to be honest have been a cause for concern for quite a while now. As a result, I thought it might be a good time to revisit those concerns and examine a bit more the question of "how bad is Bitcoin for the environment?" It has widely been reported that Bitcoin mining uses as much energy as Argentina: While this is probably true and certainly headline grabbing, it also only shows 1 side of a multifaceted situation. Although Bitcoin touts itself as providing anonymity, this part of it is very transparent fo...

We are still in the midst of a market that is gyrating quite a bit and not really creating any significant momentum one way or the other. The best investment strategy my be to sit it out for a while. That being said, although we have been retracing it's been a rather tame correction overall. I concede that some may point to the crypto space as one that has corrected more, but let's remember these are 80-100%+ vol instruments which means we would expect large moves on a daily basis. Therefore a 40% correction in a couple of weeks time is in keeping with their historical trends.  Not to mention they are up tremendously in the last 6-12 months.   Although I believe that we are still not going to reach new highs anytime soon (see previous post:  https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/05/inflation-is-here-and-sell-in-may-its.html ), there will be a point when one should look to deploy some cash. Where should an investor look? My thought is... EUROPEAN EQUITIES What are...

Here is another cool math trick that could help you impress some people and be the life of the next party you attend (there are more and more of these recently as the country reopens). How do you square any 2 digit number in your head really quickly in 4 easy steps.  In these steps we will use 2 examples: 43 squared and 78 squared. First find the distance to the nearest multiple of 10 (either below or above our number).  In the case of 43 that would be 3 because 43 - 40 = 3. In the case of 78 that would be 2, because 80 - 78 = 2.

"At the end of the day we can endure much more than we think we can"  Frida Kahlo Well here we are folks, the long awaited correction in BTC and the cryto space. For those of us that have been involved in this asset class for longer than you can say "Boo", this is not something new. In the last 5 years there have now been 3 major corrections:  the 2018 70% meltdown, and the early 2020 50% fall. So the current 40% or so retracement, while not a particularly happy experience for Bitcoin investors, is certainly something we have come to expect.  $34,000 is first resistance level What has caused the correction? I see 5 key reasons (in no particular order): Technical factors (see chart above and May 16 link below); Linked to point 1 are the leveraged positions put on by numerous investors/traders over the past few months that now need to be unwound as losses mount; Elon Musk tweets/comments about Tesla not accepting Bitcoin for payment; Environmental concerns (highlighte...

THE DOOMSDAYS: I have taught classes from Pre-Algebra up to AP Stats and most in between. Although solving equations, calculating derivatives, and performing regression analysis are all fine and dandy, the thing students tend to be impressed with is learning the Doomsday trick, which is how to guess what day of the week someone was born. I will attempt to teach it to you, in 5 easy steps. The most difficult math involved is dividing by 2, adding 11, and knowing some multiples of 7. Not too bad! First, the Doomsday Rule has it's own Wikipedia page for those of you interested in learning more:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule Second, you can actually guess any day for centuries back and forward, but we will focus on the 1900s and 2000s for ease. Third, the steps are simple, but it takes a bit of time to practice. Arthur Benjamin is the best at it:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4vqr3_ROIk In the steps below we will try to figure out what day of the week Dec 1...

Dear Misha, This day only happens once in a father's life, when your only son turns 18 and is now considered a fully fledged adult! After shedding a few tears and celebrating with some of his friends (and some adult ones) now was the time to celebrate as a little family unit. Now is a good time to impart 18 lessons (in no particular order) that I hope that you keep in your back pocket as you sets out on your own. Here they are (in no particular order): Use the worlds, "Please", "Thank You", "You're Welcome" early and often; Making mistakes is fine. Learn from them and move on (as a wise man said, "Excuses are the nails, used to build a house of failure"; Make eye contact when talking with others; Offer to lend a helping hand before being asked to do so; Take a public speaking class (or two) in college and practice doing so; Stay physically active, especially when you start feeling a bit down; If a problem arises, deal with it sooner rathe...

After a pretty magical 6 months (or longer depending on your investment horizon) BTC is at a crossroads. The title of this post, a quote from the 1970s movie classic Dirty Harry, summarizes the situation quite well. The way I see it is that we are at a similar situation to sitting at a blackjack table and deciding whether to bet on red or black. a 50/50 proposition. If BTC can hold this $44,000-45,000 level, then we have a nice 35-40% upside back to around $60,000. If not, we should first see BTC flirt with the $40,000 price point. A break below that would mean a very possible 40% retracement to the $24,000 level. As the old adage goes, a picture tells a thousand words. Here you go: Not surprisingly, although Ethereum has continued to outperform, the ETC/BTC cross rate is also at a very interesting point. Also a 50/50 price proposition on the ratio. We're up 15% or so from the last update back on May 3 ( https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/05/ethereum-vs-bitcoin-forget-b...

As a teacher I often shake my head when students in middle or high school tell me that they received a B for the first time ever in their educational careers. How can that be? I know that many students are brilliant, study hard, and take their testing very seriously. All of that is great. But really? You've never gotten below a 90% ever? That's a bit crazy. The student probably isn't lying and therefore it's probably true. It probably happens more frequently than we would like to believe. But in the real world, when was the last time anyone of us ever received a 90% on anything? Getting 60-70% of things correct would probably place most of us in the top of our respective careers, wouldn't it? As a father of two children who chose gymnastics as their sport of choice, I have had a first row seat to something remarkable. Gymnastics by its very nature has an arbitrary component. Of course those at the top of the game are physical freaks who can do things with their bodi...

Of the 5 closest and dearest friends I have, 2 hail from the great country of India, including the godparent to my beautiful daughter (yes, that you Lalit and Vishal). Many of the smartest, most capable, and hardest working individuals I have ever met or come across, are Indian. This should not come as a surprise as just under 20% of the world's population is Indian, but still... Being a large population doesn't always guarantee success. For example, India does underperform on the global sporting stage. In the history of the Olympics, India has won a grand total of 9 gold medals and only 28 medals in all - the same total as Michael Phelps has won in his illustrious career. I digress however. Back to the point of this post, helping India in the face of this Covid crisis. For the major part of 2020, the US was a global laughing stock with regards to its handling of the Covid pandemic. We led the world in cases with the famous statistic with only 4% of the world's population w...

In my finance class today I had the pleasure of having my wonderful estate agent Gabby zoom in and give a first hand account of the property market. Over the past 2 weeks we had been covering this topic and seeing how crazy the market has become. It was interesting hearing first hand accounts from someone who does this for a living. This dovetailed nicely with headlines such as this one: And that headline is about California, a state that just saw its first population decrease ever. What about the housing market in hotspots such as Texas, Florida or Idaho that are seeing 50% YoY rises in some cases. In case you have not been following the real estate market that closely, here is what's common these days: waiving appraisals and/or contingencies; deals closing 10-20% above asking price; all cash transactions, or at a larger than usual down-payments; and/or construction costs that are much higher than in the past (in case you missed it, check out lumber prices). That is just a partial...

Here is the latest headline that is causing a bit of a dip in the price of crypto.  We shouldn't be shocked that Elon Musk did a 180 on whether or not Tesla should accept Bitcoin as a form of payment. He tends to flip flop quite frequently, and has earned the right to do so. Unfortunately that also has very important effects on the price of assets.  Nothing has changed in the last couple of weeks regarding Bitcoin's energy usage. So why make an announcement a month or so ago to accept it, and now reverse course? My guess is that he would like to put some pressure on politicians and on the crypto giants to improve their carbon footprint. I can't be certain whether or not Bill Maher had any effect on this decision, but that being said, here were his arguments a few weeks ago on why he thought Bitcoin was BS. Enjoy: https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/05/cryptos-are-bs-bill-mahers-arguments.html

On April 27 I wrote about how the markets might be taking a pause for a while ( https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/04/sell-in-may-go-away.html ) and just yesterday I wrote about inflation being here despite the government telling us otherwise ( https://thrivingwithinterest.blogspot.com/2021/05/inflation-is-here-many-graphics-to.html ). Low and behold, today was quite a day for headlines that match that. Here is the front screen of the wsj.com: I promise, I didn't write that for the WSJ! Rather than rehash those arguments, here are the two posts for reading pleasure (see you tomorrow with a piece on real estate): Sell in May, go away... April 27, 2021 Making stock market predictions is always fraught with danger. The best strategies tend to be buy and hold (and buy on dips). That being said, on balance I am of the belief that the next few months will be a difficult one for the US stock market and one's energy would be best served focused elsewhere. This is a moderate...