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Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#411

Post by austenallred »

Huhty wrote: post #377
austenallred wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it failed because even with 500k users/month it couldn't make money

Grasswire? I used to go there sometimes (found it through your blog posts), and being in a similar space I'd agree that the news/article traffic is extremely tough to monetize. We've since slightly pivoted and are confident we're on the right track now. I'm also glad you found your thing! Can you answer me a quick question? I notice you use the Twitter widget/embed on Grasswire. How do you like it? I've always felt i…

Yes, Grasswire.

Honestly Grasswire is now entirely open sourced/crowdsourced and I haven't touched it in the past ~year or so, so I haven't really been involved in that decision making process and don't have a strong opinion.

I don't really run Grasswire, it's kind of an open collective community, so you can convince people to participate but we can't really "partner" with anyone easily.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#412

Post by 100pctremote »

gottebp wrote: post #366
shostack wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the legality of that?

Hmm, it's my own custom design and not a copy of Breville's. The blade geometry is especially different. Is that the angle you were thinking of?

lol

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#413

Post by csomar »

durkie wrote: post #319
icebraining wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its basically risk-free since the brokerage bears the counter-party risk. Well, unless the brokerage itself goes under, no?

Yes, but I would think that's always a risk.

That's part of what you are getting paid for. You are getting paid for providing TSLA liquidity and risk of default on loans.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#414

Post by csomar »

karolisram wrote: post #304
[deleted] wrote: post #62

[deleted]

Would you consider your trades luck that won't last? Also I am curious what's your background that made you so successful in trading? I personally had 10x gains on crypto market but it was a 1 year investment, (no speculations) done with some research but I'd say I mostly just got lucky.

I'd say paying a very expensive tuition to learn trading and patience. But on the holding department (buy and hold), you are delusional if you don't think that luck doesn't play the major part of it.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#415

Post by durkie »

durkie wrote: post #408
shostack wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would be a good starting place to learn more about doing this? Also, is it possible to do with a small amount of shares in individual companies if the bulk of my investments are in indexes?

If you were set on doing it, you could compare this list of heavily shorted companies ( http://online.wsj.com/mdc/public/page/2_3062-nasdaqshort-hig... ) with the rates paid by your broker. if you're using Interactive Brokers, this is listed under "SLB (Stock Loan/Borrow) Rates". If you own index ETFs then you can loan out those shares. QQQ is on that list and it's a NASDAQ index ETF. If you primarily own indexes tho…

also, as a side anecdote about short squeezes: people were really expecting one these past few months with Tesla regarding its SolarCity merger. The thought was that since there was a potential merger coming up, shareholders were going to need to vote on it one way or the other. That meant that Tesla's institutional shareholders were going to have to recall their loaned shares from short sellers because if the stock were loaned out at the vote record date then the institution technically didn't own it and wouldn't be able to vote on the merger. Since Tesla has such a large percentage of institutional ownership this would trigger a short squeeze.

For whatever reason this never materialized but I don't know why. There's a possibility it may have been against SEC rules or that institutions gradually recalled their shares so as not to disturb things too much.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#416

Post by module0000 »

jrheard wrote: post #13

Young hackers who have a surplus of income and have funds to spare that aren't being channeled toward debt / family / donations, heed me: save as much of your salary as you can, and put it in boring investments (index funds / etc), probably through vanguard.com (no affiliation, I just use them and have heard nothing but good things from people I trust). You can pretty easily set up your job's direct-deposit system so…

For what it's worth, my best passive income was from investing as much of my income as I can part with paycheck to paycheck. No boring investments though, always the exact same two funds: UWTI and DWTI, both of which are gone, they delisted on Dec 8th.

That said...there are many funds like them, those in particular are 3x leveraged crude oil ETF's. That means if the price of oil rises 1%, UWTI rises 3%. If it falls 1%, DWTI rises 3%. Crude oil as a market has "predictable volatility", that (simply) means that within a given day, the price will rise/fall repeatedly within a sane range(given no extraordinary circumstances). Identify this range, and buy and sell on both sides(short and long) to take advantage of the range. Follow the big money(banks), and you'll be just fine. Never go against the flow, you will (virtually) always lose.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#417

Post by vladdanilov »

brettz wrote: post #379
Infinitesimus wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair porn sites do need all the video/image optimization they can get due to the sheer amount of data they hold

Yes, Pornhub uses a mix of JPEGmini and our own image optimization.

Ahem… are you fully satisfied with your current solution?

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#418

Post by module0000 »

hackerboos wrote: post #241
yonibot wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This book taught me the fundamentals of passive investing ( https://www.amazon.com/Random-Walk-Down-Wall-Street/dp/03933... ) and this website is THE online community for Bogle-style, passive investors ( https://www.bogleheads.org/ ), once you understand the basics.

I read that book this year. The entire book can be summarised as. Don't attempt to beat the market. The market cannot be beat (many examples in the book). Invest in index funds long term which is the right mix of risk/reward for most people. It does have a chart in the back which tracks your age and situation. For example as you approach retirement you should start to liquidate your funds and buy government bonds so…

This is good advice, attempting to beat the market is something that everyone tries at least once, and repeats until they learn that it is futile. There are bigger interests than the "richest investor you know", and those interests will always win. Every single damn time. Instead, just follow them, and ride the wave.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#419

Post by closeparen »

breckenedge wrote: post #361
shostack wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was on the "max out retirement accounts" train when I was younger. When I got older and home prices got massively inflated, I wished I kept more of that in non retirement accounts to be made more easily liquid for a home without steep penalties. Saving tax while something grows is great, unless you need that cash sooner. Then it is not too helpful. I wish there were a tax advantaged vehicle to use for setting aside…

You can avoid the 10% tax penalty for early withdrawal for your first home if it's in a Roth IRA, up to $10k. It's not very tax advantaged though. [1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b/ch02.html

$10k is well within the variance of fees and fluctuating interest rates on a home purchase. On the scale of real estate (in and around the cities that have significant tech employment) it's pocket change.

Re: Ask HN: What was your best passive income in 2016?

#420

Post by Rodfarva »

module0000 wrote: post #416
jrheard wrote: post #13

Young hackers who have a surplus of income and have funds to spare that aren't being channeled toward debt / family / donations, heed me: save as much of your salary as you can, and put it in boring investments (index funds / etc), probably through vanguard.com (no affiliation, I just use them and have heard nothing but good things from people I trust). You can pretty easily set up your job's direct-deposit system so…

For what it's worth, my best passive income was from investing as much of my income as I can part with paycheck to paycheck. No boring investments though, always the exact same two funds: UWTI and DWTI, both of which are gone, they delisted on Dec 8th. That said...there are many funds like them, those in particular are 3x leveraged crude oil ETF's. That means if the price of oil rises 1%, UWTI rises 3%. If it falls 1…

This is very bad advice. 3x funds are not meant for long term buy an hold. They experience contango and even if they index end up flat you can still lose money from the gyrations of the market. Nobody should b investing in in leveraged etf longer than a few days.
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