The Left Is Trying to Cancel America

Waking From the Woke Nightmare...
The Left Is Trying to Cancel America
By Trish Regan

Cancel culture is real, everyone – I'm living proof of it. You can't claim that COVID is politicized or that dozens of gender pronouns are a tad much... If you do, mobs of social (in)justice Twitter trolls will chase you away into the furthest reaches of the Internet.

And this is just the beginning...

Look what happened to Parler, and now Dems are now leaning on the FCC to cancel Fox News, Newsmax, OAN... ostensibly any Right-leaning news outlets in existence. There's Congressional pressure on cable providers like AT&T and streaming platform Roku to inspect these outlets for disinformation.

Is it starting to sound like a dystopian horror movie yet?

And if you have any associations with Trump, forget it. They don't want to hear from you. Frankly, this move to censure and censor everyone on the opposing side is tyrannical. We're no longer looking like America, but rather a totalitarian state devolving into North Korea or Russia.

On the American Consequences podcast this week, Dan Gainor, Vice President of censorship watchdog company TechWatch, explains how congressmen are actively trying to leverage their position in Washington to violate the First Amendment.

Dan says,

"Progressives only advocate for tolerance if you agree with them."

They don't want to win on ideas – they want to win on the grounds of control and power – the languages where they're truly fluent. As for our freedom to speak and prosper, it seems they regard the Constitution as just another discarded Democratic relic getting in the way of their new woebegone, woke excuse for a country.

And the idea that Congress is now restricting free speech and the free press is beyond insidious. They blot out anything they deem misinformation, and joined in this chorus is Big Tech, evidenced by former Facebook Security Chief Alex Stamos calling for de-platforming en masse.

The Times, They Are A-Fadin'

Here's a Sunday crossword question for you... What's twelve letters across and used to be a real newspaper?

That's right, the once-venerable New York Times. Perhaps no media behemoth better represents the decay of objectivity at the hands of the Left than the Times. They appear to have given up on being journalists in favor of being Gen-Z-approved woke activists with social feeds, followers, and a too-transparent agenda.

The paper's responsible for a recent blitz of firings as they break their former principles to cater to progressive policing. Freelance editor Lauren Wolfe: canceled. Donald McNeil Jr., a 45-year newsroom veteran, and their lead pandemic reporter: canceled.

And of course, by canceled, I mean fired. Over a tweet... A sound bite... Over nothing at all. Context and reality don't matter to the Times anymore, apparently – just a sweaty hand on the cancel culture trigger, hunting for the next hollow offense and innocent casualty. And if you write an op-ed against liberal rioting over there, you must be a fascist.

The New York Times has also called for President Joe Biden to appoint a "reality czar" – yes, you read that, correctly – and its 1619 Project is attempting to rewrite America's history as we know it.

The Great Miseducation

The Left's influence on culture in the past half-century is incalculable – they've been shrewder than conservatives on how they've spent their money and where they've flexed their influence. They've had decades of infiltrating culture from Hollywood, tech, academia, and beyond.

Dan traces the Left's stranglehold on culture back to the 1960s – New Media then consisted of alternative antiwar city newspapers that challenged Nixon's authority. But these young Boomers grew up and became pillars of the traditional press (perhaps working over at the New York Times now).

The Left's narrative seems to be that America is evil. Despite the obvious liberal guilt fueling this framing, social media has accelerated this storyline so that now journalists are no longer neutral players.

But this agenda isn't just pushed in newsrooms – it's in our children's classrooms, too. The Minnesota public school system revisited its K-12 curriculum recently, deciding to overhaul its Social Studies program. This move meant ridding the World Wars, Holocaust, Civil War, and Revolutionary War from the pages of American history while refocusing on the genocide of indigenous people. It seems they want our American schoolchildren to be ashamed of this country.

Left Abandoned

So, where is all this Leftist propaganda heading? What's the end game?

Dan says that the Left foundationally doesn't believe in America, its founders, or our bedrock documents. They're so sensitive to cultural relativity for other countries now, but not when it concerns the likes of Washington or Jefferson. He claims that the Left re-envisions a Year Zero approach to America. In short, they want to start over on a blank slate – erasing our history, our collective past be damned.

Statues torn down, places of worship shuddered, persecuted dissidents? Sound familiar? It should. It's how the People's Republic of China washed away its past in the name of one voice from the state. And that's what's happening in America right now.

From Dan...

"The Left is all about diversity, except when it comes to ideas."

Listen, of course America's not perfect. But since its founding, it has steadily evolved for the better. But some people who hate this country push the levers from positions of power – government, tech, academia, media, et al.

We currently have a nation where too many people are living off the system. Instead, we need to enable people to help themselves and engage and participate in our economy. But Dan says that's the ultimate catch... The Left doesn't want to help people.

He claims that sophomoric ideas like UBI bandied about by Andrew Yang are fundamentally against this country's DNA, opposed to our intrinsic American hustle. Listen, we developed a COVID vaccine in less than a year. We just put a helicopter on Mars. This is still America, and we're still capable of achieving historic feats together.

But that can't keep happening if the Left continues to splinter us into a paranoid citizenry, waiting to be sacrificed at the altar of wokeness.

Canceling America

But with the reality of cancel culture further eclipsing the landscape – moving from banning individuals to platforms to whole news entities – what's the answer?

Most people in this country want to wake up from this nightmare of mass censorship and have reasonable adults in the room making logical choices for free speech. The path forward involves conservatives needing to be more strategic about their platforms and messaging, and citizens should let their voices be heard, especially in the forum of local politics.

We need to stand up for ourselves, our values, and our country. We need to push forward with what makes sense – enough with the handouts and taxation. What we need is to open up the economy and give us a chance to prosper.

And we shouldn't forget the centuries of struggle that it took this country to arrive here – will we fall like the Roman Empire, or will we persist as a republic? Because without our history, America is condemned not to have a future – and China's waiting in the wings.

GME craze continues.....

First let's look at how the GME craze evolves, in which those chasing and FOMO are always the ones being slaughtered. 

While the chart is the current GME price movements in the past few weeks, it can be generalized to all the bubbles with the same chasing and slaughtered process intertwined. What is amazing is that it seems those being slaughtered will never learn the lesson. They will simply lick their wounds and then repeat the whole chasing and slaughtered cycle again after their blood is dried! Simply unbelievable!!😵  

As I wrote yesterday, we are witnessing another round of chasing right now and it appears likely the top of this round of hounding may have already been reached. Are we seeing the start of the current round of butchering? I believe it is very likely😭

Due to the extreme volatility associated with GME price movements, its option premium is astonishingly rich, which is a great music to savvy traders. For example, I placed two types of option trading yesterday: One was to short GME via its out of the money calls in a couple of weeks. It is already working in my favour today. I also placed a put selling overnight trade, taking advantage of the extreme rich put premium. I couldn't believe what I saw yesterday. When GEM was trading around $150, its next day (today) $55 put premium was over $15! Based on its charting trend, I was convinced that GME would not crash down to below $55 overnight. So it was an overnight income trade too good to pass. Sure enough, it was easy money to be made by selling its puts. One can easily make a few thousands or tens of thousands overnight!🤑 

I wish this kind of cycle would continue with those high volatility junk stocks like GME. Of course, I hope you are not one of those FOMO that tend to buy high and sell low😢

How to Not Look Back With Regret

How to Not Look Back With Regret: A Meaningful Lesson From the Dearly Departed                                                                by Nathan Hurd

Australian author Bronnie Ware wrote a memoir based on her life and work called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing. It's a book I've read before, and I recently went back to revisit it. Bronnie's book and work reveal the harsh reality that many people fail to realize until the end of their lives. But it contains compelling life lessons, worth learning now, before it's too late. These lessons can help connect you with the very rich life available to you - starting today. As a palliative care worker for many years, Bronnie cared for people during their final days. She saw her patients at their most vulnerable and observed the changes they underwent as they faced their own mortality. Bronnie has a gentle demeanor and a caring heart. She formed a strong connection with each of her patients and became a calming presence for them at the end. But even though she was hired to care for them physically, much of her care turned out to be emotional. She witnessed her patients experience a variety of emotional states, including anger, fear, denial and acceptance. You might recognize these as among the five stages of grief as well. Despite these tumultuous emotions, she says that each patient found their peace before the end. Part of her work as a caretaker involved having long conversations with her patients, listening as they recounted their fondest memories and regrets. And hearing them describe their regrets in those final months and days, she discovered they were surprisingly similar. Her memoir recounts the top five... I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. I wish I hadn't worked so hard (this one was especially common for men). I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. And the most common... I wish that I had let myself be happier. Powerful stuff, huh? What struck me most was the contrast between her findings and what many people spend the bulk of their lives worrying about. So what is it that stresses us out most? If you study the data, one stressor has remained near the top for many years, regardless of the economic climate... You guessed it... Money. That's not good, especially since financial stress is linked to everything from depression and anxiety to migraines, ulcers, digestive problems, high blood pressure, heart attacks and disrupted sleep. And ironically, what is one of the other widespread worries in America? Healthcare. See a connection? It's a vicious cycle that feeds on itself. Note that Bronnie, in all the years she cared for these individuals, didn't hear many patients tell her, "I wish I'd made more money." Not even close. And yet money continues to be the dominant source of stress for many Americans. It's worth noting an important distinction between what we worry about and what we end up regretting. We can learn lessons from the people who know far better than we do... Bronnie's patients, who have truly faced the end... Don't Let Worry Equal Regret It's been said that worrying is like sitting in a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you anywhere. Spending our lives worried about money not only is an unpleasant way to live but also directly feeds the sorts of regrets Bronnie witnessed firsthand. Think about it... You can worry away the days, months and years to no avail. Worry in and of itself doesn't help improve anything. It's just another form of fear. And fear, especially around money, can spell disaster, particularly if you're an investor... Plus, do you really think you'll look back and wish you'd spent more time worried about money, of all things? Yeah, I don't think I will either. The biggest regret of the dying from Bronnie's memoir is this: "I wish that I had let myself be happier." To laugh and smile more... Many of her patients didn't realize until the end that happiness is a choice. We can't force ourselves to be in a good mood all the time, nor should we. But accepting that we are upset as a natural part of life and being able to let go of it is always possible. After all, we have only so much time and energy. The more of it we spend worrying, particularly about money, the less we spend enjoying our lives. So now you might be asking... Is financial wealth worth striving for? After everything you just read, you may be surprised to hear me say... absolutely. But there's a caveat. Worth the Fight There's a reason money is so closely tied to stress. It's also tied to freedom... to liberty. Having money creates choices, reduces stress and provides opportunity. And in our culture, there are symbols of financial wealth all around us, examples that tempt and call to us. We're not wrong to value wealth. But there is one caveat that makes all the difference. And it's not in the victory. It's in the pursuit. It's having a purpose behind wealth creation that's bigger than you are. This might sound crazy. After all, most of the actual worry we have around money is centered on ourselves. Even if you feel worried about not being able to provide for someone else, the actual worry - the core fear - is that you will feel like a failure. All worry, especially about money, happens when we focus on ourselves. This is exactly the point... and the solution. The key to breaking free from worry, and rebelling against future regret, is to cultivate a purpose bigger than yourself. And then focus on it, especially when you feel worried. Yes, you deserve nice things and great experiences. Absolutely. But what else is possible beyond that? How else could your financial well-being have a positive impact on your relationships, community or the world? Ask yourself... Who (or what) would benefit from your continued financial success? Write down three different people, places, institutions or causes that you'd love to make a financial difference for if you could. A little research can be very empowering. In the last few years, my wife and I discovered an organization that helps construct water pumping stations in rural villages in South America and Africa. Dirty and scarce water is the root cause of much of the world's diseases. There is often clean water 30 to 40 feet beneath the ground in these areas, but the villagers don't have the drilling equipment to access it. So they walk for hours a day to fill jugs with water filled with parasites, dirt and bacteria. Helping them access clean water is one cause that now serves as an inspiration to our family. In addition, I recommend you write down how you'd show up differently without money worries. How much more of your time and energy could you give to others if you had plentiful finances? Discovering and focusing on a sense of mission that's about something bigger than you can reduce or completely eliminate worry. And it's the best way to ensure you don't feed the beast of regret. So heed the warnings Bronnie learned from her patients. Don't spend any more of your days worried about money. Embrace the influence money has in our world and overcome any worry with a greater sense of purpose. You can start today. You'll work harder, work smarter and feel happier along the way. Be relentless, Nathan

Will Raddit kids repeat it again?

I have heard numerous sad stories that Raddit kids lost their shirt by going frenze in chasing GME a few weeks ago. We all know by now what has happened following the crazy moonshot of GME, a crash down equally fast just within a couple of weeks.

About two weeks ago when GME lost about 90% of its value within a week or so, I told my chat group that I think purly TA wise, I think GME was ready for a dead cat bounce and it had a much higher chance to go up to 70 than 50. Well, I was wrong, at least timing wise as GME continued to go down to low 40s following my prediction. But I still liked its bullish charting and I was adding more put selling trades for it. Well, it has paid off pretty well by now as all the sudden, GME has revived and shot up 3 times just within one day basically. For today, it shot up to $185 from about $50 yesterday but closed back down to $110. I cannot find anything that may materially support this bullish move. So I guess the Raddit kinds are repeating again what they are doing: chasing it to the moon again! I of course don't know how high this round of chasing will bring it to but I very much doubt it will challenge its all time highs near $500. Let me repeat what I said before, I sincerely hope no one will get physically hurt by this frenze. And good luck, Raddit Kids!

For me, after comfortably pocketing the put selling gains, I'm gearing up for shorting GME again (via options of course). Let's see how it will go in a couple of weeks. I think the chance is very high that we will see another epic crash in the same speed and scale as the recent one. Just incredible how short FOMO people's memory is!!😨

Buy high sell low

How to make money in the market?

Easy, Buy Low and Sell High!

I guess you don't need to be a rocket scientist to understand this. But in reality, history tells us, we are just doing the opposite: For general investors, they tend to buy high and sell low. Don't believe me? See below for yourself.

The chart covers over 30 years of the market data. Clearly people are holding most of their stocks at the peak of the market with the lowest level of cash holding. Conversely, they dump stocks en mass when the market crashes with the cash holding reaching to the peak at the market bottom. This cycle repeats iteself again and again.  Logic means nothing for herd investors. They simply low to chase both ways, FOMO to highs with euphoria😇 and also to the lows with panic😨

Right now, we are at the upper end. While a near term severe correction is highly probable, I don't think we have reached the climax yet for the euphoria. After the near term panic is over, we will see another round of chasing highs on a massive scale, which will probably brings us the ultimate top before the next secular bear market attacks.

So enjoy the bubly bull market as much as you can, but also be well prepared for the inevitable prolonged market downturn that may last 5-10 years if history can teach us anything.  In the past 100 years, we have only experienced 2 real bear markets each lasting for 15 years or longer. The first one was the most famous Great Depression, which caused the stock market into depression as well for 20 years from 1929 to 1949. Then the next long lasting bear market started in 1966 till 1982 for 16 years. 

I bet, the next bear market will last at least 15 years if not longer!😰

PS:
I have registered as 深山老林 at SafeChat (SC) (You need to download the SafeChat app first) and have set up a new SC chat group. I'm gradually shifting our major social media interactions to SC instead of WC. If you'd like to join my group, sign up a free SC account easily and search for me and connect me as friends.  For friends sharing  similar conservatism views, let's come together to form a better chatting group that won't be constantly disturbed and harassed by the insane radical censorship! 

Who Is Responsible for America's COVID Disaster?

Who Is Responsible for America's COVID Disaster?
By Buck Sexton

Hitting 500,000 COVID-19 worldwide deaths is a grim milestone...

We are now one year into this pandemic, and it's difficult to look at hospitalizations and deaths month after month without feeling like there had to have been a better way to deal with this.

If this is what it looks like when lockdowns and mask mandates are "working," one has to wonder what a more focused protection approach would have yielded.

Earlier this week, Dr. Anthony Fauci, America's favorite lab-coat authoritarian, inscribed his epitaph for our fight against COVID-19 by telling ABC's George Stephanopoulos, "I believe that if you look back historically, we've done worse than most any other country, and we're a highly developed, rich country."

Fauci added, "It's so tough to just try to go back and do a metaphorical autopsy on how things went. It was just bad."

As anyone who has been a close observer of this man for the past year knows, this statement is classic Fauci... sanctimonious and deceptive.

Let's start with the most irritating part of his claim: "We've done worse than most any other country." According to John Hopkins University of Medicine's mortality analysis, America has a COVID-19 mortality rate of around 152 per 100,000 of population.

That's high, no doubt... But so are the numbers from the United Kingdom (181), Italy (158), and Belgium (191). Spain is right behind the U.S. at 144, despite enormously costly and intrusive lockdowns, Mexico is at 143, and France is at 126.

So it's simply not fair to say, "according to the data" (which Fauci seems to rely on more as a crutch phrase than anything else) that the U.S. had a markedly worse response to this than any advanced western country of similar size. We are right in line with major European countries, several of which had extreme lockdowns in effect for months.

But who was in charge of all of this? Who was leading America's response to the pandemic? One of the biggest continuing falsehoods of the COVID-19 narrative in America is that Trump refused to "listen to the experts." That's a politicized rewriting of history...

In the crucial beginning of the virus spread, former-President Trump overwhelmingly handed over control of our COVID-19 response to "the experts," and that was Dr. Fauci more than any other person in the country.

As written in the Washington Post last year, when Trump told the American people in late February 2020 that the virus was well under control in the U.S., "he was not lying or playing down more dire information he was being told privately. He was repeating exactly what experts such as Fauci, [Robert] Redfield, and [Nancy] Messonnier were telling him."

Never forget that it was Dr. Fauci who, on March 8, 2020 on CBS News, told the American people at the very beginning of the pandemic explosion:

There's no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you're in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet, but it's not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences - people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.

Fast-forward a year later, and now Dr. Fauci is telling everyone how much more effective two masks are than one. And you might be wondering, what control group in what scientific study brought about such a revelation? They strapped masks on mannequins in a lab and made some calculations. Here's the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention link to some of the recent studies on this if you want to read it for yourself.

Why is it that Dr. Fauci manages to escape all blame? Throughout history and up to the present, if a general in a theater of war presides over a catastrophe, it's understood that he will be held accountable for that, either through firing or resignation. This is the way accountability with any large bureaucracy has to work, even though everyone is fully aware that no one man is responsible for everything that happens in a war.

Dr. Anthony Fauci defies this norm... His predictions throughout the pandemic have been appallingly wrong. His guidance constantly shifts based on the needs not of health, but politics. His pathetic effort to dance to the teachers unions' required tune on school re-openings is a case in point.

The data is overwhelming, and has been since last summer, that children are at very low risk from COVID-19 and also much less likely than adults to spread it. Nobody disputes this. On top of that, many private and parochial schools across the country have been open, and they're doing just fine.

And millions of "essential workers," like grocery store clerks, mail carriers, and truckers, have been doing their jobs from day one of the pandemic. Why are teachers so special?

It's obvious what's going on here... Fauci won't come out clearly in favor of schools opening right now because the Democrats (and yes, Fauci is one) cannot cross the teachers unions. They need their political muscle and their donations. That children are suffering terribly from school lockdowns doesn't matter enough to the Biden administration to do anything about it.

None of what we've seen from Fauci is surprising... He's the ultimate bureaucrat. But given the amount of power he's been handed over the entire country, maybe we should also demand he be held responsible for the policies that have been, by his own admission, a disaster.

Accountability means Fauci must be fired... But the chances of Biden ousting the Left's favorite totalitarian grandpa are zero.

A rare event only happened once in the Dot.com bubble

Just saw this posting forwarded by my friend. So thought to share with you. 

Yesterday (Feb 22) was an unusual day – it's very rare that the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index finishes down more than 2%.

A friend shared this chart showing the only times this has happened in the past 35 years:

Note that nearly every occurrence was during the bursting of the Internet bubble from 2000 to 2001, when the Nasdaq crashed by nearly 80%.

Could something similar happen today?  I personally think this is one of the clear signs for the making of the market Melt-down that will likely follow the footstep of this ongoing Melt-up. I don't think this is an imminent threat yet but may be in the next 6-12 months, we will see the ultimate climax of this manic preceding the next epic market crash, i.e. the MELT-DOWN!

How to turn $100 into $150,000

Bitcoin has topped $56,000 at the time of this writing. How high can it go? Only God knows. The next target is obviously $100,000, which can come as early as July if the following projection model continues to work as it has been since last Apr with quite accurate predictions in terms of timing and price:



I wish this will come true although I very much doubt it will be a straight line up without volatility. I think some significant drawdowns may very likely come suddenly when on one believes so. 

I first bought my bitcoin back in 2015 and it was around $300 when truly not many people would even seriously look at it. If any, it was more like a laugh or ridicule. That was a great time to buy. Similarly when I first bought my Ether, it was just $9. So my returns from these two very initial crypto investments are 100+ times and 200+ times. Not bad, right? Don't congratulate me too fast and wait to see what is coming: stupid me missed an opportunity of turning  each $100 into as much as $153,000 just within months. I'm not talking about something in theory or by looking back randomly but a real story that I didn't act fast to buy NEO when I was first introduced to it and it was just a few cents. It quickly shot up to over $200 at its peak, a 1500 bagger that I missed!!😢

Of course, the crypto field is full of mines that can easily explode. Nowadays, there are over 5000 cryptos. Except a few well established ones like Bitcoin, Ethrume, and Litcoin etc, most of the others are rubbish and doomed to shatter. See the following example.  

Once upon a time, a coin called Verge soared around 3,100% over 13 days. Its market cap shot from around $80 million to almost $4 billion. But it turned out to be just a piece of raffle and it collapsed nearly as quickly as they'd risen. Take a look...

So be very careful about getting into the crypto world and try to avoid the mine field as much as you can!

Now back to Bitcoin. While it seems a $100K target is easily reachable now, we are now seeing more sky high price targets for it, from $500K to $1 M or even $5 M. I'm certainly not clever enough to know how high it can go but I won't be surprised to see a very high level for it. As I said, we will see a sky high hyperinflationary era that will come for sure due to all the fake money that has been printed in the past two decades. Bitcoin, similar to gold, will be a great store of value against hyperinflation. But I won't buy new bitcoins now at this high price. My current holding will greatly benefit from moonshot prices of bitcoin if it indeeds tops a million or more. So for now I'm just sitting tight to watch the crypto saga playing out with amusement. I'm waiting for another panic selling moment to come before considering new money to buy. It is not if but just when the abysmal sentiment will inevitably come again!   

Not a single source of pessimism

The euphoria overall is of nosebleed high at the moment, which is consistent with the messages I have seen lately in various chat groups. Why bother for the downside risk when the market can make daily new highs, right? I'm happy to ride the mood swings on a daily basis regardless which direction it goes. I guess I should not complain too much about constantly cashing in a few thousands overnight by either short or long depending on the daily herd mood gyrations, right?😏 Ultimately, we will see the theater fire calling that will trigger the panicky rushing towards the narrow exit at the same time, a moment of trampling. Believe me, it will come sooner or later and I hope you are not one of them being trampled!😢 

 

Per SentimenTrader: 

Options speculation is spiking yet again, volume in the most leveraged parts of the market has never been greater, and signs of euphoria are everywhere.

With so many indicators showing optimism, there are usually a couple of odd exceptions that suggest pessimism. It's rare for everything to agree at the same time. This is one of those rare times, though, with more than 50% of our core indicators showing an optimistic extreme and exactly 0% showing a pessimistic one.

This kind of lopsided skew among indicators has preceded some tough markets.

The Risk/Reward Table, which shows the biggest losses and largest gains at any point across the various time frames, shows limited upside relative to the downside, with 2017 really being the lone exception.

Modern Nomad

Following my initial post "Escape America", I'm going to write more details about what we are going to do. Today let me share with you one part of our overarching plan: to become Modern Nomad. The idea is that we don't want to be part of daily nonsense largely engineered by the radical left. We want to stay far away from it and enjoy our own life. We plan to liquidate most of our properties here in the US and travel around the world as part of our retirement life. In essence, we will live like a nomad without a fixed long term residence when we can still move around physically, which may include travel by air, car, or long term cruise. By doing so, instead of continuing to work hard to make a lot of money but to pay ever increasing taxes to fund the fraudulent government to support illegal immigrants and incentivize lazy people for not working, let's enjoy more of our own life. More to come on this topic from the tax and financial perspective. For today, here is what we have planned as our first step. We will start with some easy plans by staying at some good resorts/hotels in the areas of our interest. We just booked the following 3 resorts in Costa Rica for late this year. Due to the ongoing COVID pandemic, I doubt we can do anything for travel before the end of the year. So we try this late of the year to see if we are lucky enough to be able to travel by then. The nice thing right now is that we have the free cancellation policy in effect that it won't cost us anything to cancel two weeks before the check-in date if the pandemic is still not yet fully controlled. We have done some extensive virtual traveling in the past few months by watching all kinds of videos and we love Panama and Costa Rica. We will spend more time in Panama next year but for this year, we want to try Costa Rica first. Here are some pictures for the 3 resorts and you can check out much more photos of them via the link. By staying there, we can explore a lot of fun activities like canyoning (aka canyoneering – rappelling, climbing, and scrambling and even swimming or floating down a canyon), rafting, jogging, horse riding and zip-lining etc. You may check here to see a bit more information about what fun things to do in this area ( The Arenal Volcano). If you happen to be like-minded and also would like to explore the world the way as we do, we may meet each other there. In addition to all the fun out there, we can enjoy something more: my wife loves painting, dancing and yoga and I may share some investing ideas as well. Ultimately this is my financial plan: investing while traveling so that our cash flow will never end.😇

The Springs Resort and Spa at Arenal

Rio Thermal River Hotel

Amor Arenal

 

Don't predict but be prepared!

First of all, let me share what I wrote a year ago (Feb 28, 2020) when the market started to fall apart, following weeks of roaring bull run: 

I must confess with some sort of guilty feeling that it is quite a fun to see the mood swing from one end to the other. I know for those who are stuck in the sudden and drastic sentiment change either way (up or down), it is no fun to them at all. And it can be quite painful I know. On the other hand, have I warned repeatedly about the coming risk that can be severe and sudden?! I have seen some feedback to such kind of friendly early warning that without the exact timing, such warning is meaningless. Really? As I said many times before, trying to squeeze into each inch of highs by FOMOs without caring the downside risk is a sure way to lose and those are the ones who may deserve to be punished. I may sound brutal but it is always better to be bluntly honest about the potential risk when it is incrementally elevated during a euphoric phase. One thing I have learnt to judge the severity of a euphoria is that when I have to actively defend my warning for a risk, it usually means the turning point is near if not yet in. That's because when people are so high in mood, it is really annoying for them to hear anything different from the current trend. I call it "dreaming syndrome". You see, when people have a good dream and if the dream is interrupted in the middle, it can indeed be very annoying! But I'm sorry, it may also be a good thing to stop such kind of dreaming, especially if that good dream may lead to some dangerous behavior like dream walk. So do pay attention to my warning from time to time, even if a bit annoying!!😋

I have the feeling that the market is setting us up again that may eerily follow the exact same script to fool people in first and then strike with a seemingly out of blue event leading to a bloodbath panic! The feedback I have got these days to my constant bearish talking is quite similar to what I got a year ago. If I turn out to be correct, it will be another powerful proof to the statement: History may not repeat but often rhymes! 

But my real purpose for today's blog is somewhat different in angle: I think most folks out there are asking the wrong question regarding the market risk. For them, their only interest seems to be: what the exact timing that the market will correct and if so to what extent. If you cannot give them the right timing, then you are just a stupid crying wolf. Here is the typical feedback I often see: 如果你不断预测市场会跌，你总有一天会猜对的。Sound like very "wisdomful", right? In addition, a general assumption is that, if you are bearish overall for the market, you won't invest or trade for the upside and therefore you must have missed the great return from the bull run before it ends. Sounds also clever, right? Wrong! Actually if you are those keeping asking this kind of questions or making such assumptions, you are really naïve and gullible to say the least!!   Here is why.

For the smart money, those who are really experienced in the market, the critical question they care most is not how much money they can make but rather how much money they may lose if they are wrong. So the right question for smart money is not when the market may fall or crash but if anything devastating happens suddenly, am I well prepared and to what extent? With this kind of mindset in place, you can imagine how much they will stay away from the hotly chased stocks but become more conservative in trading and investing as a whole. While I'm not really smart, I do have a lot of direct or indirect connections to very smart people in the Street; some of them are gurus of gurus with a great track record of decades long successful investing career. So here let me share a few quick tips what smart people are doing when the market is going roaring highs with substantially increased risks. Just be aware, below I will share a few examples of my personal trading or investing just for the purpose of explanation but none of them are good for buying anymore due to great risks already piled up for them.

•   Accumulating cash

This is typically what smart money are doing during the euphoric and bubbly market condition. This is also the safest way to ensure any black swan event, when hitting, won't cause too much damage to the overall asset. They can accumulate cash via newly earned money as well as by selling red hot positions that they are holding, partially or fully. There is the Wall Street cliché: you will never get broke by taking profits!

• Looking for low risk opportunities

Yes, even in a nosebleed bubble market, there are still some sectors that are greatly lagging behind and showing great values for trading or investing. Smart money are generally more interested in such deals with a much greater safety margin than chasing highs to red hot stocks. Below are some of my examples that I bought (often via options) when they were quite depressing and their current gains since I bought them. Again, just for information purpose and by no means for recommendation.

These include income generating stocks, uranium, cannabis, EV, biotech and bitcoin etc. Sure none of them are cheap now by all means but when I bought them, all of them were deeply down into the water and hardly anyone was interested in them! I'm pretty sure a lot of smart money is making killing by just doing conservative investing without high risk chasing. I'm also selling part of these positions for accumulating cash nowadays or using selling options to hedge the paper gains. 

   

• Buying insurance

When the market is boiling, the VIX tends to be depressing. As such put options tend to be cheap. So buying some cheap put options is a great way for smart money to hedge their portfolio for protection. I often play with VXX call options when there is a clear sign it is ready to pop. Using VIX put/call ratio, it often gives a nearly crystal ball signal for the near term volatility trend (either up or down).

• Lastly, speculatively shorting fervent stocks

This is of course not for most people but for smart money, they often do so to make some quick money. One great example is the recent crazy GME short squeeze saga that drove a few famous hedge funds out of their shorting businesses but I'm pretty sure a lot of naïve FOMOs were chasing GME all the way to its epic high nearly $500, expecting it would continue to do moonshot to $1000! I was speechless to watch all the sage playing out and could not help but short it. If you follow me closely, you certainly know my nearly perfect call timing wise: Long squeeze, almost to hours. Below are some gains from my short that I have closed just within a week or two:

Per the information from some friends, some kids got so crazy that they even used their wedding money or line of credit to chase GME. Unfortunately most of them got killed terribly by losing tons of money from the epic up and down gyrations. 
By the way, after losing over 90% within days from its all time high, GEM is struggling around the level of $50ish at the moment. I think there is a good chance it will try to mount another rally attempt that may bring it up towards $70 or even higher. Right now, I'm trying to go long for GME for the potential rebound, followed by another short if indeed it follows the script!

I hope this blog can help you to truly understand what is the most important question for investors if you want to be consistently successful in the market. Understanding the market risk does not mean you cannot trade or invest. It only means you need to be prepared appropriately when the inevitable market bombshell that will come eventually. You don't need to know the exact timing but by doing so, you will feel safer when most of naïve market players are often caught off guard and then immediately turn from extreme euphoria to panic! Remember this:  The market has a habit to punish the most people the most!    

PS:

I have registered as 深山老林 at SafeChat (SC) (You need to download the SafeChat app first) and have set up a new SC chat group. I'm gradually shifting our major social media interactions to SC instead of WC. If you'd like to join my group, sign up a free SC account easily and search for me and connect me as friends.  For friends sharing  similar conservatism views, let's come together to form a better chatting group that won't be constantly disturbed and harassed by the insane radical censorship! 

It is the inflation concern, idiot!

Let me continue the topic about bitcoin as it is so hot so far, we cannot pass a day without some excitement about it nowadays!😄 It is truly fun to write about it.

Today, let me talk about the negativism about bitcoin as this has been associated with it since its birth just about 10 years ago. Actually about 3 years ago, I posted a blog  Bitcoin has been pronounced dead hundreds of times. Now with so much euphoria established for it, you may think there should not be much negativism on it anymore, right? Wrong! We are still seeing and hearing a lot from naysayers why bitcoin is pure speculation and is doomed to die sooner or later. There are two types of naysayers broadly speaking. One is those who are genuinely ignorant about this new tech revolution and cannot really understand it. Buffett is typically one of such guys, who called bitcoin "rat poison". I can only laugh about his ignorance about bitcoin, just like his ignorance about the value of gold. But the other type of bitcoin naysayers have a lot more deceptivity. Given their expertise in the relevant areas, they should be very well knowledgeable about bitcoin about its utility as a great store of value but they  still openly criticize or even vilify it! These kinds of people have a lot more cheating power due to their authority. I can give you two examples: one is the JP CEO, Jamie Dimon who called bitcoin a fraud. We later found out that actually his daughter was a big fan and bitcoin hodler. The other example is the current Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, who was the previous Fed chair. Here is what she recently said: 

 

Cryptocurrencies are "a particular concern" when it comes to terrorist financing, potential Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Tuesday.

Speaking at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on her anticipated nomination after President-elect Joe Biden takes office tomorrow, Yellen said the U.S. should be aware of emerging tools for terrorist financing.

"The technologies to accomplish this change over time and we need to make sure that our methods for dealing with these matters, with tech terrorist financing, change along with changing technology, cryptocurrencies are a particular concern," she said in response to a question by Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), who called crypto use in terrorist financing a "growing concern."

..."I think many [cryptocurrencies] are used, at least in transactions sense, mainly for illicit financing and I think we really need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that anti-money laundering doesn't occur through those channels," Yellen said Tuesday.

Her comment shows a stunning misleading effort about cryptos. The bitcoin network sees 400,000 transactions per day. It is ludicrous to imagine the majority of those are for illegal activities. For law enforcement, actually they can only hope terrorists are stupid enough to use the bitcoin network to fund their operations. Why so? Because bitcoin uses a public blockchain, meaning every transaction is public and can be traced from one crypto wallet to another. The whole world can see how you spend and move your money. Using bitcoin to commit crimes is just about the dumbest thing a criminal could do. 

If you still don't believe it, then let's look at the facts.  Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics firm, estimates 1% of bitcoin transactions are used for illicit purposes. That amounts to about $10 billion. Sounds like a lot, right? But let's compare it to cash. According to a report from Deloitte, as much as 5% of all cash transactions involve money laundering. That's as much as $2 trillion per year. That means illicit transactions in bitcoin are just 0.5% of the $2 trillion. So it begs the question: Why is Janet Yellen focusing on 0.5% of the money laundering problem and ignoring the other 99.5%? Don't tell me Yellen did not know these facts!  Let me tell you why… It's because her banking buddies in the traditional financial system are the ones allowing all of that money laundering to take place. She wants to protect them. But more fundamentally it is because bitcoin can't be controlled and printed willingly by the government bureaucrats. It represents a way out of a dollar-denominated system, and that really scares her.

So in my opinion, Yellen is intentionally misleading the public by defaming bitcoin! Sure, as the country's top financial officer, it will be laughably naive to expect her talking nicely for something that may dethrone the US fiat money. Just like you should not expect to hear a nice word about the newly emerging email back in early 1990s from the head of US postals, how can we expect to hear a nice word from Yellen and her gang now for bitcoin? But I won't be surprised if some day we learn that Yellen and/or her family has accumulated a lot of bitcoins privately while publicly she is strongly denouncing it!! This is the typical hypocrisy for politicians including Yellen!! 

Here is my word to Yellen why bitcoin has such a strong vitality: It is the inflation concern, idiot!

PS:
I have registered as 深山老林 at SafeChat (SC) (You need to download the SafeChat app first) and have set up a new SC chat group. I'm gradually shifting our major social media interactions to SC instead of WC. If you'd like to join my group, sign up a free SC account easily and search for me and connect me as friends.  For friends sharing  similar conservatism views, let's come together to form a better chatting group that won't be constantly disturbed and harassed by the insane radical censorship!