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How Covid brought the future back

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21–30 of 78 posts

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#22
post #17

> a striking rise in investor interest in electric vehicles, autonomous cars, AI, and software companies ranging from consumer-facing companies like Facebook and Google to complex enterprise products like Snowflake ... Or, a striking rise in investing in whatever the mob thinks will make money, even when it is not, from tesla to bitcoin. If they were investing in the future they 'd be investing in ModeRNA / Biontech

Why is everything a large group of people do collectively called a 'mob' these days, for everything? Is no one allowed to do things together anymore without being chastised?

because mobs act impulsively and blindly follow the leaders

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#23

> a striking rise in investor interest in electric vehicles, autonomous cars, AI, and software companies ranging from consumer-facing companies like Facebook and Google to complex enterprise products like Snowflake ... Or, a striking rise in investing in whatever the mob thinks will make money, even when it is not, from tesla to bitcoin. If they were investing in the future they 'd be investing in ModeRNA / Biontech

In fairness, electric cars are the future and everyone knows it. Sure, the company Tesla may not be the exact one to steer the ship in 20 years, but it’s not like we’re backing zeppelins here.

Electrification of cars does not justify trillion dollar investment. It's already a solved problem, it needs incremental investment to scale horizontally. Making the cars and the charger network is the kind of thing that is easily commodified and outsourced. The more challenging problem will be to provide adequate electricity for the cars.

Self-driving is a pipe-dream and a marketing vehicle, not gonna happen anytime soon.

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#24

> a striking rise in investor interest in electric vehicles, autonomous cars, AI, and software companies ranging from consumer-facing companies like Facebook and Google to complex enterprise products like Snowflake ... Or, a striking rise in investing in whatever the mob thinks will make money, even when it is not, from tesla to bitcoin. If they were investing in the future they 'd be investing in ModeRNA / Biontech

I agree, that is such a bad take. And the reason we have a renewed asset bubble in the midst of a unprecedented economic contraction is purely because of stimulus and QE.

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#25

> a striking rise in investor interest in electric vehicles, autonomous cars, AI, and software companies ranging from consumer-facing companies like Facebook and Google to complex enterprise products like Snowflake ... Or, a striking rise in investing in whatever the mob thinks will make money, even when it is not, from tesla to bitcoin. If they were investing in the future they 'd be investing in ModeRNA / Biontech

Well, they did that too...

Saving the world economy from a pandemic and creating the equivalent of a vaccine printer = 2x their stock price. If anything i d say investors are being pessimistic

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#26
post #19
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But those stocks' rises pale in comparison to the rises of some of the aforementioned securities - particularly Tesla. BioNTech/Moderna are poised to income streams of billions of $ through guaranteed sales, with the very real possibility of more to come if either revaccination is necessary or there are more applications for the mRNA technology. With that in mind, they are quite conservatively valued by the market ri…

Moderna has not been distributing its vaccines fast enough internationally. There is a timer to these things you know, because the virus can mutate more. For that reason I'd rather put my investment in 3D printing or something.

OTOH the mRNA vaxs can mutate as fast as the virus.

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#28
post #17

> a striking rise in investor interest in electric vehicles, autonomous cars, AI, and software companies ranging from consumer-facing companies like Facebook and Google to complex enterprise products like Snowflake ... Or, a striking rise in investing in whatever the mob thinks will make money, even when it is not, from tesla to bitcoin. If they were investing in the future they 'd be investing in ModeRNA / Biontech

Why is everything a large group of people do collectively called a 'mob' these days, for everything? Is no one allowed to do things together anymore without being chastised?

>Why is everything a large group of people do collectively called a 'mob' these days?

These days? It's always been thus.

The Roman Poet Juvenal who said:

"It is all too easy to fall from power – like Sejanus. The mob follows Fortuna and cares for nothing but bread and circuses." (Circuses can also be games, or in modern times TV, Games, Netflix, Reddit, etc...).

You ever see Gladiator?

Lucilla: "The gods have spared you. Today I saw a slave become more powerful than the Emperor of Rome."

Maximus: "The gods have spared me? I am at their mercy, with the power only to amuse a mob!"

Lucilla: "That is power. The mob is Rome. And while Commodus controls them he controls everything."

We have a literal cult controlling at least 40% of the minds of the USA (QAnon). A literal mob almost led a successful insurrection. (If they were more organized, they would've had a higher body count).

A literal mob, possibly manipulated by finance majors orchestrated a pump-and-dump under the guise of "stick it to the man", just disrupted wallstreet in a pretty spectacular way. Sure, they did stick it to the man, for a bit - but I'm sure a lot of people also lost their ass on this.

In a mob there's a bunch of people who basically just are following a fluid current in history, most are unaware as to why and the best answer is probably: "I wasn't doing anything else, so why not?", or "So and so told me, and I trust them" and often that trust is mis-placed, like believing a highschool dropout's opinion on climate change instead of the consensus by 90%+ of the leading scientists across the globe.

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#29
post #5
post #4

In fact, some economists continued to argue after 2000 that “bubble” is a meaningless category. Uh oh. "Stocks have reached a permanently high plateau" - Irving Fisher, economist, early October 1929.

There is something different this time. People en masse have started using the S&P 500 and other index funds as a long term store of value. Large amounts of money buy these stocks every pay period with zero regard to performance or current market conditions. As far as I'm aware, this has never happened before. We don't know how this experiment will change the market long term or whether it will eventually collapse.

As far as I'm aware, this has never happened before

No worries. We can fix that.

I first heard the argument you made used to explain why the market would continue to go up indefinitely in the late 90’s.

But that’s only because I was old enough to pay attention then. I don’t doubt in the least that it was used in the 80’s as well.

Re: How Covid brought the future back

#30
post #5
post #4

In fact, some economists continued to argue after 2000 that “bubble” is a meaningless category. Uh oh. "Stocks have reached a permanently high plateau" - Irving Fisher, economist, early October 1929.

There is something different this time. People en masse have started using the S&P 500 and other index funds as a long term store of value. Large amounts of money buy these stocks every pay period with zero regard to performance or current market conditions. As far as I'm aware, this has never happened before. We don't know how this experiment will change the market long term or whether it will eventually collapse.

It’s different every time, isn’t it? World War II was different, the oil crisis in the 70s was different, debt in the 80s, doctom bubble in the 90s, the financial crisis was really different, and now this pandemic and the sheer volumes of money. It’s different every time, but economic growth has been a constant and tied to this are ultimately the prices of securities. That’s not gonna be different. So it’s a very sane choice to invest in a broad ETF eg based on the S&P.
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