Reasons to Open a Chinese Bank Account

Post by jhamburger » Fri, Jan 14, 2011, 10:00 PM UTC

jhamburger wrote: post #95

grandalf wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just look at the top stocks 30 years ago and see which ones are still in business today, and of those which have beaten the market average. No stock will outperform the market over the long term. Nor will any mutual fund! For medium time horizons it's not impossible but exceedingly unlikely. For short time horizons it's still not remotely easy for firms to accomplish, and many do not.

> No stock will outperform the market over the long term. So all stocks are below average...Sort of a reverse Lake Wobegon effect?

Post by StavrosK » Fri, Jan 14, 2011, 10:43 PM UTC

CamperBob wrote: post #102

StavrosK wrote: post #74

In a rather-unrelated matter, does anyone have a Swiss bank account? I'm looking for a bank to open one in but apparently most have a 500k minimum, I just want a personal account...

What'd be the point? The days when the Swiss wouldn't rat you out to your own government are long gone.

Post by vorg » Fri, Jan 14, 2011, 11:35 PM UTC

chailatte wrote: post #18

garply wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there much inflation in the US right now? It's really high in the mainland at the moment, particularly with relation to food. My business partner just sold an apartment in Beijing. I tried to convince her to buy up some land back in the US, but she chose to buy another apartment here instead. Part of her concern was that the US housing market was going to be relatively flat for the next couple of years, which is h…

US Rent prices rose 12% last year http://www.marketwatch.com/story/rent-prices-rose-12-last-ye... Sugar Prices Hit 30-Year Highs http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870350690457559... Gasoline Tops $3 a Gallon for First Time at Christmas http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/3-dollar-gas/19775116/ Unless you believe the official US CPI, which excludes food/oil

Post by ericd » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 12:12 AM UTC

sad_hacker wrote: post #27

Vivtek wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and given the results of the past decade I'm inclined to trust the Communists... Not that they're actually communists; they're just a really big national corporation, imho.

Indeed, more like a well-runned corporation with 1.3 billion workers.

Post by pyre » Sat, Jan 15, 2011, 2:48 AM UTC

MoreMoschops wrote: post #89

quanticle wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that sort of thinking is that it relies on you being able to time when when market will go from being irrational in one direction to being irrational in another. Lets take the dot-com boom as an example. There were people saying that dot-com companies were overvalued in 1997, when the Asian currency crisis hit. Those people were, in retrospect, probably right. However, the next two years made them lo…

Your argument is a non-sequitur. The original argument was that there was no point in investing, because if you'd invested 10-15 years ago, you'd have made a lot of money. That argument is wrong for obvious reasons, which I will spell out anyway; just because something did well in the past is no reason to think you'll lose money on it in the future. Your argument is that if you invest in something and it goes down in…

  1. Explosive growth is over, you can't make money anymore.
  2. That's not true, you *can* still make money.
  3. But attempting to make money at this stage is riskier.