Of Dollars and Data

However, unlike Halley’s comet, whose future path is known, we have no idea when another market rally of this magnitude will occur. The majority voted for a recovery time of greater than two years: As we all know now, they were wrong. Yes, there are many things wrong with the world, but the arc of history continues to bend toward progress and a better future for humanity. In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts; the Depression; a dozen or so recessions and financial panics; oil shocks; a flu epidemic; and the resignation of a disgraced president.

I know I’m a few months late, but I recently read Jeremy Grantham’s Waiting for the Last Dance where he claims that U. S. stocks are in a “fully-fledged epic bubble. For example, in November 2010 he stressed the importance of holding cash when he said: It buys you the right to buy the U. S. market if the S&P drops from 1,220 today to 900, which is what we think is fair value. There are people who spend lots of time trying to call a bubble when they would be far better off investing according to one simple idea—stocks go up. It’s like this IQ meme on repeat: Believing that stocks go up (and investing accordingly) is probably better than constantly trying to predict the fair value of the entire stock market.

For example, you can buy digital art, digital videos, and even tweets as NFTs. I first heard about NFTs through Michael Batnick’s discussion of NBA TopShot, an online community where people can buy and sell NBA highlight videos. Therefore, fans that like a particular artist/niche (i.e. NBA highlights) can now support that artist/niche through the use of digital ownership. Of course we cannot preserve physical items in this way, but we now can do this with digital items thanks to NFTs.

For example, I taught my Godfather about Bitcoin (on the same day I sold half of my position for $52,000) and the very next day he sent me this text as Bitcoin surged: This dichotomy between what people are discussing and what actually matters to a typical investor reminds me of how the media overly focuses on things that are unlikely to affect you personally. For example, though the media frequently reports on homicides and deaths caused by terrorism, the reality is that you are far more likely to die from diseases related to age/health. We typically tweet about the meme stock that tripled in a week or the 100 trillion pixel image that sold for $17,000 instead of what actually impacts our financial lives.