Being Slow to Criticise

I've been playing with it on the work laptop (32GB, 16 core i9) and yeah, it's an unpleasant experience even there. But here's hoping they'll get to tweaking because it's pretty much the only way I can create embroidery files easily (via InkStitch)

Hacking mostly in the evening, and at latitudes where the sun doesn't shine for much of the year, I was recently momentarily mad at Libreoffice Calc for having lackluster dark-mode support. But the vast majority of people who use spreadsheets I assume do so at day in well-lit offices so I was inserting myself in a context which basically didn't concern me.

There are a lot of things which triggers us to self-insert, not all of it unwarranted or negative. Maybe one situation which causes problems is when people do it without an invitation...

When I'm trying to think about the subject and whether I should invest myself, I'm trying to figure out what are the actual consequences of coronavirus long term and what in general are investor's motivations.

Here are few assumptions I make:

1. Stock price is determined by an umbrella of possible consequences and chances for each consequence. These are just examples, but for example there might be 30% chance that we can manage coronavirus while reopening the economy, +50% chances that we will have a vaccine in 1 year period that we can mass-produce etc. For each of those consequences we can think of an appropriate SP500 price (I'm taking SP500 here as an example, but it could be any other index as well). If economy goes back to normal, the SP500 price could go to 3400 again. Investors will try to predict what are the odds and in total stock price should reflect what investors on average think the odds of something to happen are.

2. The way investors react to these possible consequences comes from that specific investor's expectations and long term strategy. It's important to know what is average investors expectations and risk tolerance. If SP500 is 2200 (which it was when people were expecting it to go to 1700) and you expect 90% of chances of SP500 going back to 3400 within 3 years you can determine that you have 90% chances of making 54% returns within 3 years which is crazy good. So at this point it makes sense for most investors to buy in, because even if it goes lower, you will still be making very good returns. Now that SP is at 2800-2900 I think it's still better to buy in than not, but you can't obviously expect as fantastic returns. I bought in and even with a little bit margin, but I have enough margin left to buy in more if stock should fall. I'm investing and looking at least 5-10 years ahead. So it makes sense for investors to buy in now that they are not crippled by fears of what coronavirus might do - it's already quite clear it's not the end of the world even if it might shake up economy further throughout this year.

3. There are possibly some positive long term effects of coronavirus. Increased productivity, tech and automation from having been forced to experiment with WFH etc. I think all of these might increase productivity. I'm speaking of those not to just sound optimistic, but these are something a lot of people don't mention.

These are just rough thoughts I have right now, but in conclusion I have decided to buy in since I have determined that in 3-7 years there are very high chances of making very decent returns. I doubt corona can affect us for that long timeframe.

Of course it's more risky than usual to buy in right now so if you have low risk tolerance it's up to you. If you possibly need that cash within 1-3 years, then maybe not buy in, but whether you should buy in right now should be determined with when you want to use that money and how much you are willing to risk. Usually more risk means more reward since only people who can handle that risk will be buying (so stocks will be more underpriced when there's more risk and uncertainty). And since I don't want to use that money before 5 years anyway, for me it definitely makes sense to take that risk. Also even if stocks fall just after you bought in you must be able to handle that and not think you did the wrong thing and sell. You likely wouldn't be able to sell in time anyway.

Many people are fearful right now which means a lot of people are holding cash or shorting. Once fear subsides, stock will start to climb faster again so you should want to be in before general fear subsides..

My comment that you reference was an attempt to find the merit in the idea that I couldn't see, but I assumed would be there because I was assuming the proposer thought it was a good one. I was starting from a position of "Well, this person thinks it's a good idea, but I can't see why, so let's see if we can find how it would work, and what problems it solves. Then we can address any potential drawbacks."

It was intended to be an invitation to get some discussion about how it would work, what it would do, what problems it would solve, and where the value lay. I was surprised and disappointed that no reply was forthcoming, and the thread died.

I guess I just wasn't clear enough, and for that I am saddened.

What's interesting is that "markets are irrational" cannot be a failure of the market but a failure of the rational theory being used to interpret markets. That is, current economic theory is squalid by its attempts to explain market phenomenon; and that is to the extent the market is irrational, the degree it disagrees with the theory. It was for this reason Von Neumann readily decided to eschew economic theory.

Quite contrary to common belief, "rationality" has nothing to do with knowledge nor degree of skill in achieving some objective measure. For instance, one with perfect pitch has an ability which is irrational but one could hardly call it invalid.

Rationality is merely the quality of propounding some intellectual framework of which others can subscribe to in sharing of that understanding based on the framework of symbols and their operations embedded in our global culture.

A thing is said to be rational when it can be interpreted completely into one of these pre-existing frameworks which claim to circumscribe the phenomenal sphere of that thing.