Happy New Year! And Wisdom from the smartest investor for 2021

First of all, at the new year's eve, I wish all the friends a very happy and prosperous new year.

Hope all your wishes will come true!!

Given it's the last day of the year, let me just share with you some wisdom from one of the smartest

investors in the world, the 96 years old Charlie Munger. Below is the excerpt from his recent interview by

a professor at his alma mater (dating back to 1945!)!  I think you will agree with me he is still full of talent

and wisdom even nearly a century old.😇  

 

************************************************************************************************************************

(from C. Munger)

• What has happened in the investment field is that so many people have

gone into it and made a lot of money. When I was young there was
almost nobody in the field and nobody was smart. And now there is a
ton of people in it and almost everyone is smart, including good
Caltech graduates. There have been so many people sucked into finance,
by the money. So that's been a hugely important development that I
don't welcome at all. I don't think we want the whole world in
investing by trying to outsmart the rest of the world by buying
securities, but that's what happened.

• I think great investors to some extent are like great chess players –

they are almost born to be investors... Partly it's temperament,
partly it's deferred gratification. Good investing requires a weird
combination of patience and aggression – and not many people have it.
It also requires a big amount of self-awareness in how much you know
and how much you don't know. You have to know the edge of your own
competency. And a lot of brilliant people are no good about knowing
the edge of their own competency – they think they are way smarter
than they are. And, of course that's dangerous and it causes trouble.

• I've spent a lifetime trying to avoid my own mental biases. A) I rub

my own nose in my own mistakes. B) I try and keep it simple and
fundamental as much as I can. And I like the engineering concept of a
margin of safety. I am a very blocking-and-tackling type of thinker. I
just try and avoid being stupid and I have a way of handling a lot of
problems – I put them on what I call my "too hard pile" and I just
leave them there. I'm not trying to succeed in my "too hard" pile.

• [I think returns in the next 10 years will be less than the last 10]

because so many people are in it, and the frenzy is so great, and the
systems of management – the reward systems – are so foolish.

• "Remarkable" is not too strong a word [for how much money printing

there is] – astounding would be more like it. Well, it's unbelievably
extreme. Some European government borrowed money reasonably for some
tiny little percent of 1% for 100 years. Now, that is weird. What kind
of a lunatic would loan money to a European government for 100 years
at less than 1%?

• Nobody knows when bubbles are going to blow up, but just because it's

Nasdaq doesn't mean it will have another run like this one very
quickly again. This has been unbelievable. Again, there's never been
anything quite like it. If you stop and think about it, think what
Apple is worth compared to John D. Rockefeller's whole oil empire.
It's been the most dramatic thing that has ever happened in the entire
history of world finance.

• The other thing that's really remarkable, the last 30 years in China,

they have had real economic growth at a rate for 30 years that no big
country has ever had in the history of the world. And who did that? A
bunch of communist Chinese! Now, that is really remarkable. So, if
you're studying finance you have a lot of strange things to account
for.

• Academia is not very good at the multidisciplinary stuff. Academia

rewards the researcher who knows more and more about less and less.
And there are real difficulties with that approach... It's hard to be
that smart in the liberal arts. Partly because many liberal arts
professors are so leftist. It's hard to be pretty smart if you're
crazy leftist. You're gonna have the world a lot wrong.

The most important chart for 2021

First of all, let me share with you the panic index, SKEW, which usually precedes the market for its next big move. See the panic index in white below in the past 6 months with the yellow arrows to indicate its previous spikes before S&P tanks (in blue).  Right now, the SKEW Index shows traders are paying up for put options, increasing the probability of a large move in the next 30 days.

Of course, you can just ignore it as there is no certainty for anything in the market and just feel happy to further chase highs😏

Now let me share with you another chart, which may be the most important one for 2021. 

This chart shows the spread between the yield on the 10-year and 3-year Treasury note. That spread has been increasing over the past several months. And, it looks like it's ready to explode higher. So why it is important? See what happened in the past 2 decades of this ratio, more precisely in early 2001 and late 2007. See the eeril similarity of the pattern then vs now? I guess you don't need me to remind you what happened during 2001-2003 as well as 2008-2009 in the stock market, right? Yes, the market melted down following the explosive expansion of the yield curve. 

Be clear, I'm not saying we are on the verge of a market crash anytime soon. As a matter of fact, we may still see some highs in 2021. We all know bonds move quite slowly in general and there is a significant time lag between this bearish indicator and the material impact on the market. But ignoring this flashing warning sign may be a fatal mistake if you blindly chase the market into euphoria. 😵😨

 

Top Stories Of 2020 Everyone should know

First of all, the biggest news of today: we now have got " President-elect Harris" per the  cognitively challenged 败灯，and this is what to come if he indeed is to be sent to the White House with the successful cheating of the vote by the radical Left! Just be aware!!

**********************************************************************************************************************************************

The Top Five Most Suppressed News Stories Of 2020 

 By Frank Miele

DECEMBER 30, 2020

Back in the day, when I was managing editor at the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., I enjoyed the end-of-year ritual of voting in the Associated Press's poll of the Top 10 news stories.

When I started participating in the year 2000, my list would include many of the same stories that made the final AP list, although often with differences in ranking. But by the time I retired in 2018, my view of the news had sharply diverged from the AP's consensus view. I'd become something of a gadfly by then, questioning what seemed to be an ever more transparent left-leaning bias in mainstream reporting.

That divergence was probably magnified by the 2016 candidacy of Donald Trump and the bright light he had shined on Fake News, but my disenchantment with my profession had been growing for years, as chronicled in my book "The Media Matrix: What If Everything You Know Is Fake?"

Still, there is no way that even as recently as four years ago I would have predicted just how abysmally irresponsible the media would become by 2020. Major newspapers are winning Pulitzer Prizes for blatantly false reporting on topics such as "Russian collusion." Meanwhile, Silicon Valley oligarchs have appointed themselves censors — warning the American people not to read or watch anything that hasn't been "fact-checked" by their hand-picked thought police.

The situation has gotten so bad that it's no longer worth ranking the top news stories of the year because so little that is covered is news and so much that is news is written off as a "conspiracy theory." That's why I'm introducing Heartland Diary USA's first annual presentation of "Last Chance to Wake Up and Smell the News They Tried to Kill."

So here are five of the biggest suppressed stories of 2020. Pardon me if I don't go into great detail on them, but the closer I get to the truth, the more likely that Google, Twitter, and Facebook will bury my story, too.

5) Mysterious Mutating Lockdowns

Has anyone ever figured out why it is OK for grocery store workers to remain on the job during an international pandemic while serving the needs of the entire population with no restrictions other than wearing a mask, but it is considered dangerous for gyms to open or, most ludicrously, for anyone other than spouses of governors to take their boat for a quick spin around the lake? It seems like the lockdown can turn into whatever is convenient for politicians.

The uneven effects of the lockdown on different states and different sectors have resulted in the shift of trillions of dollars of capital in ways that will reshape the economy for generations to come, yet we are not supposed to talk about it.

4) Hydroxychloroquine

If you know anything about this drug, it is probably just that some guy in Arizona died after drinking it, and that maybe President Trump was somehow responsible. Well, as they say, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The guy in Arizona didn't take hydroxychloroquine; he took a fish tank cleaner called chloroquine phosphate. And Trump never told anyone to take either the drug or the fish-tank cleaner. He just said hydroxychloroquine was a promising treatment against COVID-19.

Of course, as soon as he said it, the radical academic leftists who control medical journals and associations warned that hydroxychloroquine had no benefit as a treatment and was potentially dangerous even though it had been safely used against malaria and various immune deficiency syndromes for decades.

Fortunately, many doctors who were familiar with the drug continued to use it as a therapy in the early stages of COVID infections, and many patients around the world have been spared the most dire effects of the virus as a result. Just don't expect to read about it in the New York Times.

3) Trump's Vaccine Victory

While the president has been painted as anti-science, it was his administration's support that led to the fastest turnaround ever from viral discovery to viral vaccine — essentially less than a year. Even as House Democrats are poised to launch investigations into Trump's supposed crimes against humanity for being president during the COVID crisis, lives are being saved as a result of his policies.

Just don't expect to read about it in the mainstream media, which spent much of 2020 ridiculing Trump for his prescient predictions that a vaccine would be developed by the end of the year.

2) Hunter Biden's Laptop

The ability to bury the Hunter Biden story throughout the 2020 presidential campaign ranks as one of the greatest victories in the history of propaganda. Hunter is the son of former Vice President Joe Biden, and his acknowledged history as a drug addict is now considered his strong suit.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee found extensive evidence that Hunter has made hundreds of millions of dollars for the Biden family by selling access to his father, so when Hunter's laptop turned up with first-person incriminating evidence, it was pretty obvious that Joe Biden had a lot of answer for.

Except that the media never made him answer for anything. It preferred to rest on the bizarre assertion from 50 former U.S. intelligence officials that clear evidence of foreign collusion on Hunter's laptop had all the earmarks of a "Russian disinformation" campaign. This was errant nonsense. Reporters, read the emails!

1) Election Fraud

It turned out that everything that happened in 2020 before Nov. 3 was just prologue for the greatest deception in American history — namely the hijacking of a presidential election through means both legal and illegal. Most importantly, every state that changed its election procedures without the consent of its legislature violated the U.S. Constitution. That's why Republicans plan to challenge the Electoral College vote on Jan. 6.

Whether you like Donald Trump or not should be irrelevant. You either follow the Constitution or you don't. The fact that Trump increased his support in almost every demographic since 2016 and yet lost the election will apparently remain a mystery because the Democratic Party, with an assist from weak Republicans, is intent on continuing the charade that Joe Biden is a beloved elder statesman even more popular than Barack Obama.

I should add a disclaimer here. My list will not be your list. This is 2020, and there is plenty of suppression to go around. In the meantime, rounding out my Top 10, here are some of the other major stories suppressed in 2020:

The communist links to Antifa and Black Lives Matter; how the Russian hoax was exposed but left unpunished; how the policies of a certain governor in New York state led to thousands of COVID deaths in nursing homes; the successful campaign of billionaire George Soros to subvert American jurisprudence by electing pro-criminal district attorneys; and of course the suppression of news itself.

Big Tech, take a bow!

The No. 1 Secret to Wealthy Living

As part of helping friends make meaningful new year resolutions, here is another very insightful writeup about how to live a wealthy life without expensive costing.  Hope you enjoy it!

*****************************************************************************

Greetings from the Oregon coast, where I'm living my dream.

I'm living well. The great thing is, "living well" by my definition doesn't cost much money at all. That's because my definition of living well isn't about, well, "stuff." Let me explain...

Yesterday, I windsurfed perfect head-high waves alongside 2004 world champion Scott McKercher. The day before, I went surfing with champion paddle surfer Ekolu Kalama and his wife. No crowd, just us. For comparison, if you're a golfer, it's like hanging out with Tiger Woods for the day, just the two of you.

I feel fortunate to be here with these guys... and it reminds me of what's important in life:

It's about EXPERIENCE, not STUFF.

My wife and I try to live this idea – that "experience" is more important than "stuff."

For example, our kids (ages seven and five) are probably the only kids they know who don't have a PlayStation or an Xbox or a Nintendo Wii. They don't have a ton of stuff. But they've got tons of life experience...

Our kids have seen the world... They've been as far north as Iceland. And they've been as far south as New Zealand. Yet we don't have big flat-screen TVs in our living room or den. (Are we the last Americans to actually have regular TVs?)

The great thing is, life experiences don't have to cost much at all. Waves are free. Wind is free. Spending time with your friends and family is free.

Before I came out to Oregon, we spent time with my family in Orlando. Over the weekend, the kids shot water guns at their granddad in the pool, and my mom fixed unbeatable home-cooked breakfasts. Everyone had a great time. It was a great family experience. And it sure didn't cost much. It's not what it costs that makes it valuable.

It wasn't about buying "stuff." And this trip to the Oregon coast isn't about "stuff" either.

I define living well as 1) having time with friends and family, 2) pursuing my passions, and 3) well, not worrying about money. The nice thing is, you don't need a fortune to live well by that definition.

Living well to me isn't about monster flat-screen TVs, driving a BMW, or wearing diamond-encrusted watches. How about you?

You only have so much money... so what do you put a premium on?

It's so easy in America to be sucked into "stuff" – from the pressure to "keep up with the Joneses" to the constant barrage of advertising from every angle.

But you can't take stuff with you. I've heard investor Doug Casey say, "I've never seen a hearse with luggage racks." And if stuff is what you choose, just remember, you'll be busy working for the rest of your life to pay for your stuff.

If you follow my definition of living well, then the goal becomes living life to the fullest instead of buying stuff... and saving instead of buying, so you don't have to worry about money.

People want to invest successfully so they don't have to worry about money. If you change your definition of living well, then you can get to the point of not worrying about money a lot faster.

Again, my idea of living well is:

1) Having time with friends and family, 2) pursuing my passions (which I'm doing on the Oregon coast now), and 3) not having to worry about money.

What's your idea of living well? Is it about the experience, or the stuff?

All the best,

Steve

New Year Resolution: Help your kids to become millionaire comfortably

As we come into the last week of the year and the new year is just around the corner, many of us will make some new year's resolutions. From the family financial perspective, one resolution may need to be on the top of anything else for everyone who would like to see a successful and financially relaxing life for their kids. That's why I'd like to share this good paper with you that may assist you to help your kids to become millionaire stress-free, if you can help them to start as early as possible! For me, our son has already grown up with his own established career. My new year resolution is to help him to start up his own business in the investing field that may help him and his own family to accelerate the process to reach the goal of  financial freedom as early as possible. ✌😇   Here's How Much You Need to Save Every Day to Be a Millionaire Matthew Carr

To me, time is the most precious commodity there is. On a universal scale, it's infinite. But on an individual level - a human level - time is very finite. If we're lucky, we get maybe 90 years. And if we're very lucky, the last decade isn't one of suffering and rapid decline. That's why I don't believe in wasting time. I don't believe in wasting my life. I want to spend it doing things I love in the company of people I want to be with. In investing, time is more powerful than any strategy... any boom-and-bust cycle... or anything else you can imagine. Over time, mountains will erode to dust. But in the markets, time will transform the smallest start into a mountain of wealth. Let this sink in, and share it with your children and grandchildren... Starting at 20 years old, how much do you need to tuck away per day to become a millionaire by 65? Two dollars. Isn't that ridiculous? All it takes is $2 per day. Just $730 per year. Now, that needs to be invested and earn 12% a year. But my goal here is to show how little you need to start with... Two dollars. That's two items from McDonald's Dollar Menu set aside each day. That's a Powerball ticket per day, with far better odds of becoming a millionaire. I often hear the complaints, "Oh, I'll start saving when I make more money..." or "I plan to start soon..." But the longer you put it off, the worse it becomes. The median annual salary for Americans ages 15 to 24 is $43,531. To become a millionaire by 65, a person has to put away less than 2% of their annual salary when they start out... and that percentage shrinks over time as their salary increases. Let's compare that with the other end of the spectrum... If you started saving at age 55, you'd have to save and invest $156.12 per day to become a millionaire by 65. That's $56,984 per year! The median household income for Americans ages 55 to 64 is $68,951 per year. So if you started saving at 55, you'd have to set aside and invest 83% of your annual salary... every single year. Every time I hear someone say, "I'll start investing in a couple of years when I have more money," I tell them they're only hurting themselves. The longer you wait - the more time you waste - the more expensive it becomes. Here's how much you must save and invest, starting at various ages (in five-year increments), to become a millionaire by 65... Just think, to become a millionaire by 65, the amount you need to put away daily increases 78.5% if you begin saving at age 25 rather than age 20. The difference in daily savings between starting ages of 20 and 55 is 7,706%!

Finally even DEM cannot help but tell some truth....

Have you heard any truth from the radical Dems in the past few years! Hardly. All lies from one to another when concerning the great President Trump. But for one time right now, even the liars cannot help but tell some truth because what Trump has done is just too damn great and historical!! They know they cannot hold the truth from the wise American people anymore. Here it is!

Graham Allison (a Democrat and former head of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government) has credited Trump in this WSJ op ed:

Who Made the Vaccine Possible? Not WHO. Pharmaceutical companies and Trump's Operation Warp Speed deserve the vast bulk of the credit. Excerpt:

 

With the rollout of Covid-19 vaccines, a light has appeared in the darkness. A hard winter lies ahead, but this pandemic will soon be over.

 

How can this be happening only 10 months after the first Covid death in the U.S., rather than the 10 years it took to develop a vaccine for measles?

 

…There are clearly only two primary causes behind the Covid-19 vaccine. The first was the capitalist system, which facilitated competition between private, profit-seeking biotech and pharmaceutical companies to produce a lifesaving product.

 

Like charities, universities, government agencies and pretty much everyone else, these organizations want to do good. But companies like Germany-based BioNTech, its Boston-based competitor Moderna, and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer have also been racing for a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. There would be no Covid-19 vaccine today had there been no venture capitalists prepared to invest before a product or profit was visible, no corporate leadership willing to double down with the companies' own money in the spring to fund a crash effort to produce a vaccine by year-end, and no researchers pursuing a dream about mRNA as an unprecedented route for vaccines.

 

Second is Operation Warp Speed. Had Mr. Trump not created the initiative, appointed as its leader a man who knows the vaccine development world, and given him license to spend $10 billion outside normal contracting procedures, Covid-19 vaccines would still be only works in progress. Even after they were finally approved, the vaccines' distribution could have been long delayed. Imagine a world in which Mr. Trump had not appointed as deputy head of the operation a general who knows logistics and had the authority to write contracts with FedEx and UPS to book space on their airplanes and in their network of distribution centers.

Market Alchemy: How to Turn Gamblers To Traders

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Will we see a Santa Claus Rally this year, typically occurring between Dec 24 through Dec 31? I bet we will. Apart from the seasonal bullishness for the last week of the year, there is another strong catalyst for it: Desperate final push by hedge fund managers! 

Here is what I have learnt: "Most of these people have had a truly terrible year this year. Few if any of them accurately timed the COVID-19 meltdown from February into March. And even fewer of them bought at the lows in late March or April for that matter. According to Aurum's Hedge Fund Data Engine, the average year-to-date performance for hedge funds at the end of November was 5.6%. The S&P 500 is up nearly THREE TIMES that at roughly 14%. All of the folks managing these funds will be desperate to push stocks higher so they can finish the year with the best possible returns. And with trading volume being relatively light this week due to the Christmas holiday, there is the potential for an explosive move into year-end."

I think this is a pretty convincing argument for a strong SCR! We will see if it indeed materializes.😏

Having said that, even if we see new all time highs from the SCR in the next week or two, don't be fooled to believe that this will be a long lasting rally from here. I strongly believe it will be another rather big bull trap waiting for fools to be trapped in. In addition to many other indicators suggesting a gigantic euphoric top in the formation, below is a rather interesting writeup how the market has exercised its magic alchemy to turn gamblers to traders. This is of course typically seen at a top of the market, not at a bottom😵

***********************************************************************************

by Lance Roberts:

Flush with Government "stimulus," individuals shifted their bets from sports to stocks.

The Rise Of The Robinhood Trader

Such was a point we made in: Is it 1999 or 2007? Retail Investors Flood The Market:

"Free trading app Robinhood has added more than three million retail accounts in 2020, and now has over 13 million. The median age of its retail customer is 31. The Covid-19 lockdowns and the plunge in markets in March persuaded millions of new investors to open accounts. Some of the action appears to be from people who would otherwise be gambling or betting on sports—both of which were shut down." – Barron's

As we noted in that article, Robinhood, which provided "free trades" to retail investors, wasn't doing it for free. To wit:

"The irony is that Robinhood really isn't 'stealing from the rich.' In reality, they are 'getting rich by stealing from the poor.' As is always the case, there is no 'free lunch,' as Robinhood bundles orders and then 'sells' the flows to major hedge funds for profit.

Those hedge funds then 'front run' the 'Robinhooders' taking advantage of their trading. (If this wasn't massively profitable for hedge funds they wouldn't pay millions for the data.)"

Not surprisingly, Robinhood recently settled with the SEC for $65 Million for precisely that reason.

It is not just sentiment, but also the speculative positioning of investors. Currently, options traders are exceedingly confident the market will not crash.

That confidence shows up in many indicators showing investor positioning into equity "risk" at a rather alarming rate. The 4-panel chart below shows investors have piled into equity funds, have a high level of confidence about the future, and complete evaporation of "short-interest" in the market. (Charts courtesy of The DailyShot)

Such has led to the highest concentration into stocks by investors on record.

With some of the most extreme deviations from long-term means, investors are likely once again setting themselves up for disappointment.

No need to hedge when stocks only go up

Here is another indicator to suggest how frothy the market is becoming now. It is kind of challenging gravity right now that no one cares any risk at the moment. As long as the market keeps going up, who cares when it will come down, right? This is exactly the time we need to be really fearful of no fears. I posted a blog Fear of no fear before, which speaks about the current situation. Be very careful, guys! 

****************************************************************************************************

Per SentimenTrader:

In recent weeks, we've had occasion to yet again focus on the behavior of options traders. Depending on the metric, we're currently seeing a record or near-record level of speculation, with very little hedging.

Nothing much has changed. Among all strategies and all traders, the focus on strategies that only pay out if stocks rise continues to hover near record highs, with our Option Speculation Index showing that bullish volume is significantly higher than bearish volume. 

Adding to the concern is that hedging activity, in the options market or elsewhere, has become scarce. The Equity Hedging Index (EHI) is now in the lowest 6% of all readings since 1986.

The EHI looks at the most common ways an investor would hedge their portfolio. The more each indicator shows hedging activity, the higher the Equity Hedging Index will be; the lower the EHI, the less hedging is happening.

Since 1986, when the EHI is below 21, the S&P 500's annualized return has been -2.4% versus +49.8% when the EHI is above 85, suggesting a higher probability of lower returns now given the current reading of the indicator.

History made: Virgin Hyperloop completes first test with actual passengers

First of all, here was a note I sent to my group early this week:    

We may see a Santa Clause rally till next week but that may be a bull trap for the next brutal leg down later till early next year. Probably we may see a repeat of the last Mar, sort of speaking. As always, not many people will be willing to believe so, just as what they did early this year till the time it's too late. Last year around this time I started my wolf crying for weeks and was laughed at by some as indeed I couldn't call the exact timing of the drastic selloff. I still cannot tell you when the next sharp selloff will be but I'm increasingly convinced that it's coming. Be prepared and don't blindly FOMO!! That's the best I can do at the moment!

Whether or not we will see a history repeated is anyone's guess as of now. Only time can tell. But I'm more and more convinced that at least a sizable correction for a 10% or more decline is highly likely in the next few weeks. For that, I'm adding more short positions as part of my overall protection. Since I'm making a lot of money by swing trading these days, the short positions are more like my insurance that I'm willing to pay even if I'm totally wrong.    

Now back to today's topic. As I said in my previous blog, I have invested in Virgin Hyperloop, the startup company that may likely have a bright future. Here is the recent report about its historical achievement, a major milestone materialized.

维珍集团旗下的维珍超迴路列车（Virgin Hyperloop，又称超级高铁），在美国内华达州拉斯维加斯进行史上首次电磁悬浮真空管路列车载人测试，为这套时速动辄上千公里的高铁系统迈出第一步。 

维珍超级高铁预估之后会以时速600英里（约966公里）或更快的速度运行，在真空管内使用电磁悬浮展开几乎没有噪音的旅行，如此一来纽约到华盛顿只需要30分钟，速度比商用喷射飞机快2倍，更是一般高铁的4倍。

在载人测试之前，维珍超级高铁已在内华达州进行400多次无人试验，目前规划于2025年完成安全认证、2030年实现商业营运。

Here is the excerpt from another report: 

The company was founded in 2014 as Hyperloop Technologies, which was based on one of Elon Musk's eccentric ideas.

Musk published a paper back in 2013 about an obscure technology that used aerodynamic aluminum capsules and magnetic levitation to transport passengers through a near-vacuum tube. They would be able to potentially travel at speeds as fast as airplanes with a fraction of the energy use.

He envisioned that this new method of transport would be in tubes raised off the ground or possibly in subterranean tunnels.

Of course, this sounded like just another one of Musk's crazy ideas at the time.

But Virgin Hyperloop – then named Hyperloop Technologies – set out to make this crazy idea a reality. The company was renamed Virgin Hyperloop in 2017 when Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson made a major investment in the company.

And Virgin Hyperloop recently hit a major milestone. It just completed its first test with human passengers.

The test run took place at Virgin Hyperloop's test facility outside Las Vegas. During the test, two people were transported in a capsule through a tube 500 meters long. The capsule hit top speeds at just over 100 miles per hour (mph). And then it came to safe a stop at the end of the tube.

Virgin Hyperloop Capsule

Source: Virgin Hyperloop

Not so crazy anymore.

And Virgin Hyperloop confirmed that the capsule could have gone much faster on a longer track. The only reason it kept it to 100 mph is that faster acceleration and deceleration on the 500 meter track would have been uncomfortable for the human passengers.

Of course, higher speeds wouldn't be a problem in a hyperloop stretching hundreds of miles. In fact, this technology could achieve speeds of 600 mph or more.

That's enough to make trips from Los Angeles to San Francisco (nearly 382 miles) in just half an hour or so.

What's exciting to me is that this is now real. The technology works. Now it is only a matter of engineering to scale this up for longer runs. I can't wait to see which cities have the foresight and discipline to start employing this new technology.

The world's ground-based transportation systems, with the exception of Japan, are long overdue for a major upgrade.

     

Go private!

Wow, the market for initial public offerings ("IPOs") is white-hot...

The latest one is Airbnb's (ABNB) astonishing debut on Dec 10, in which the stock soared 113%. Here's a recent article about it on the front page of Wall Street Journal, with a chart showing that Airbnb's market cap exceeds four major hotel chains combined: Airbnb's Stock Price More Than Doubles in Market Debut. Excerpt:

Airbnb's first-day performance is likely to continue to fuel excitement over the IPO market, where investors have been clamoring for shares of hot newly public companies.

"People are just compelled to be invested," said Jim Cooney, head of Americas equity-capital markets at Bank of America. "Even if you don't like the valuation of some of these tech companies, you know they're likely to keep going up, at least in the short term."

In addition to Airbnb, shares of DoorDash and C3.ai also surged on their first day of trading, jumping 86% and 120% respectively on Wednesday. DoorDash's stock slipped 1.9% Thursday, while C3.ai continued to rise, gaining 40.6%.

By both volume and stock price performance, these companies are trading into one of the hottest IPO markets in history. So far in 2020, more than $155 billion has been raised on U.S. exchanges, far exceeding the previous full-year record set at the height of the dot-com boom in 1999, according to Dealogic data that date to 1995.

This marks the 19th IPO that has more than doubled on its first day of trading this year – far more than any other year in the past decade, as CNBC's Leslie Picker points out in this tweet:

I'm really happy for the great debut of Airbnb as I have a skin in it. While I didn't get the chance to invest at its early rounds of funding when it started, I did put some money in it in a private fund investing in ABNB via one of my connections a couple of years ago. While the IPO market is a bit frothy at the moment, ABNB is one of a few IPOs which are actually already making money. So I'm feeling great for it moving forward although understandably it may need to be cooling down a bit after a quick double on the first day of trading. 

Since the overall market is quite extended with quite a few extremes associated with it like historically high valuation and sentiment etc, we may see a good dose of correction in the near future. I'm even thinking we may see a repeating history mimicking the drastic selloff of last March if the current euphoria continues unchecked! With this in mind, putting some money in private equity (i.e. buying pre-IPO stocks or funds) may not be a bad idea. On the contrary, it may be a safe haven sort of speaking as they won't fluctuate like publicly traded stocks. Over the past few years, I have accumulated quite a lot of startup company stocks in various sectors at various stages. E.g. I have also invested in a private fund for SpaceX and Virgin Hyperloop ( 又称超级高铁; also based on Musk's initial idea). Nowadays, it has become increasingly easier to invest in pre-IPOs although it is a tough job to differentiate good vs bad ones. I'm kind of lucky to have a wide network/connections, from which I often get some ideas and insights from time to time. As such I also share some ideas within my DW Family, some of which are already showing sizable growth. As a matter of fact, we are now in an era where we can invest in early startups a lot easier and via a few different alternatives. Some of them can be as easy as buying a listed stock, sort of backdoor way to invest in early startups. As such, we don't need to limit our investment solely in one format, but in variety as part of diversification. Going private is definitely one of the great options!  

Be Ready!!

Here is my prediction: Biden is already on his way out. If God forbid Biden indeed successfully steals the votes and becomes the next president, his tenure may be counted in days or at most in weeks! Mark my words!!

After all, Biden is a pure puppet for the radical Leftists. His only utility is that he is a traditional politician for decades without doing anything beneficial to the country. Ironically such kind of non-performing politicians are generally having less opponents or rivals and are more acceptable for people in the middle. That's the only reason why he was selected by Dem for this election. As soon as the election is done and he can steal the votes to become the president, he has exhausted his utility and can be dropped. The real ultimate goal for the radical Leftists is to use Biden to pave the way for the flippant extreme leftist Harris to take over the presidency....And AS SOON AS POSSIBLE!!

The problem with this plot is that this is a massive fraud in the 2020 U.S. election, which is not just a way to stop Donald J. Trump's re-election as president but more importantly is a major attack on the "electoral system" at the heart of American democracy. This is no larger than an issue of electoral politics, but a nakedly large-scale criminal act.

And for Trump as the US President his highest duty is to defend the Constitution!!✊💪

President Trump has the power to exercise his constitutional authority to take decisive and effective emergency action to prevent such large-scale attacks. It is the responsibility of the President of the United States, of every government official, and of every American citizen, whether such a destructive attack comes from home or abroad, to protect the Constitution of the United States and to protect the principles of Democratic Nations in the United States.

As such, I won't be surprised to see President Trump to take some drastic actions as the last resort to defend the Constitution. I think all he needs is the moral support of the lawful American people and their will  to protect the Constitution.   

For this reason, I will highly advocate and recommend everyone who believes law and order and is proud of the US Constitution to exercise your right to write to the 6 swing State Legislators to let them know your will of protecting the Constitution by stopping the steal. 

Every voice counts! 

You don't need to be a resident of the state but anyone from the US can exercise their legal influence. The overwhelming voice from the grassroot Americans will greatly help President Trump to take the necessary actions to stop the steal.

Here is the link where you can find the emails of the relevant legislators of the 6 states and sample simple emails that you can send to them. Your few minutes will make a major difference to safeguard the traditional America intact and to ensure the United States won't be raped by the Radical Leftists!!

Exercise your constitutional right💪

https://whenhappened.com/index.php

Something big is in the horizon.....

This is not my words but a message I got from my friend, which I happen to also believe. I guess you can also guess that based on what I have been talking about for quite some time recently. 

Here is the analysis my friend forward to me, in which even a specific date is given to closely watch for: Dec 23. We will soon see if there is any merit for this dire prediction. 

**************************************************

by Greg Diamond, CMT  

..............................

So, the big question becomes – are we already in another bull market in stocks?

Over the past decade, investors have expected the Federal Reserve to step in any time volatility rises. While 2020 has been no different, the fact that nearly 58 million people in the U.S. have filed for unemployment since March is a serious dent to the economy.

The stock market and the economy are in two very different positions.

In June, I told Ten Stock Trader readers...

While a major low is likely in place, a new bull market is not yet in the cards. I expect the round-trip market will roll on.

However, this doesn't mean we won't see more double-digit gains in stocks this year. In fact, lately I've been quite bullish... And I am expecting new highs in most of the major U.S. indexes this year.

And so far, that's exactly what's happened...

Since 2018, stocks have been in a near perfect round-trip market. This includes false breakouts in which everyone thinks the bull market will continue... followed by big declines where everyone thinks the bear market will take over.

In short – equity markets are in a long-term range.

This is not the first market environment where a long-term range was the dominant force. Equity markets saw this from 1999 to 2003...

Big bull traps led to big bear traps for three consecutive years before finally bottoming in early 2003.

The same thing happened in the '60s and '70s, when the range lasted for 10 years...

We saw huge declines followed by huge rallies, with no sustained breakout or breakdown.

These range-bound markets were a result of economic stagnation after a long bull market. In technical terms, the range-bound markets worked off the overbought conditions of the previous long bull market.

Right now, with more than 57 million people out of a job, and states shutting down again as coronavirus cases spike, economic stagnation is back. Again, the disparity between the stock market and the economy is wide – we could soon see double-digit gains in stocks, but a major long-term bull market is not yet on the table.

And despite unprecedented monetary policy, central banks do NOT create wealth, do NOT create growth, and do NOT create jobs... The free market does.

What happens when you combine economic stagnation with excess liquidity from monetary policy? It's outlined above – explosive moves higher and lower over a long period of time. This environment could last until 2023 (following the 1999 to 2003 script) or even longer like the 1960s and 1970s.

Based on history, I have no reason to expect anything different.

That's why, just last Friday, I released an urgent message warning that something bigger is on the way. It will be a lot bigger than the massive drop we saw back in March, which was only the first phase of what's to come...

Now, don't get me wrong... I'm not predicting a financial disaster. At least, not the kind most people might be worried about.

What I am predicting is another crisis, beginning with a huge move on December 23. And it's going to be unlike anything we've seen since the 1970s.

If you don't see it coming, it could wipe you out, sooner than you think. But if you get scared out of the market and sit around in cash, you'll miss out on one of the greatest moneymaking opportunities of your lifetime.

**************************************************

The above analysis is also supported by the BMI trend, where the big money is aggressively buying lately and is moving well into the overbought territory. This does not mean a crash is imminent per this BMI indicator. As you can also see the previous two times of the overbought condition this year, it can last for a while and then a collapse will ensue. My best guess is that the market will be volatile for a while with an upward trending in the remaining weeks of the year to satisfy the Santa Rally and make FOMOs happy. Then the reality weight will come and hit, probably hard sometime in Jan of the new year. 

Holding a lot of cash is definitely wise for now!!