Author: smartistone

Item 1: It looks like I was wrong about Bitcoin, with the price having surged to $34,000…or am i? It’s just a deadcat bounce, and I remain short. I am down on my latest short at $28.5k, but not a problem. Temporary losses are an inevitable part of trading. According to this excellent article, the… Continue reading The daily view: 10/27/2023: No Bitcoin ETF, Low-trust Societies, Meta/tech Earnings

From Richard Hanania’s post Against Idealism, this passage stood out: No one in the 1960s ever said “You know, I just read Marcuse and, given his influence in intellectual circles, I can predict that in future decades we’ll have a country where you can’t have standardized tests in hiring and corporations will praise dead black… Continue reading Cognitive Screening is Legal, the last holdout of wokeness

Speculation that GLP-1 weight loss drugs will hurt food companies’ sales is way premature. I discuss this in an earlier blog post, but to expound: These drugs are expensive, can have bad side effects, and success is highly variable. Some people lose a lot of weight (like going from 270lbs to 170lbs), and others much… Continue reading Food companies have little to fear from new weight loss drugs, and why I am NOT investing in Eli Lilly

I think my Feb 2023 article America’s Threats are Always on the Horizon, Hypothetical aged well. In early to mid 2023 everyone assumed that the next crisis would involve at least one of the following: -Nuclear war or a world war involving Ukraine, Russia, and or neighboring countries -AI-apocalypse due to unstoppable GPU clusters -Trade… Continue reading Looking for crisis in the wrong place

From Reuters, Elon Musk’s X is a black hole of value: Put it all together, and X isn’t just worth less than Musk paid for it, but likely less than its debt. Assume that the company’s revenue last year was $4.7 billion, based on results before it was taken private. If advertising has dropped by… Continue reading The situation at Twitter isn’t as bad as the media hype would suggest

Item #1: Bitcoin surged to $28,500 on Monday on hopes an ETF will be approved. Here we go again. If history is any guide, all Bitcoin ETFs will be rejected still. The SEC has until January 10, 2024 to decide on the Ark Bitcoin ETF, which it almost certainly will reject. Three months is an… Continue reading The Daily View: 10/18/2023: Meta, Bitcoin, and more

I saw this going viral. The war on ad-blockers is in full-swing: Puts on Google? This makes me want to buy calls. AI is important, but as I said, the future is more advertising and increasingly pervasive advertising, not AI, VR, or blockchain. Most of FAANG-tech’s resources or priorities are about: -thwarting ad-blocking (detecting when… Continue reading Ads are everything, not AI

One would assume that the unfolding crisis in Gaza would engender more division in the US. But historically, crisis in the Middle East has tended to have a unifying effect, if presidential approval ratings are used as a proxy for unity. A higher approval rating generally means a more united nation. However this is only… Continue reading Middle East conflicts are good for unity

In a series of tweets over the past week, until the crisis in Gaza abruptly shifted priorities, Richard Hanania claims he could produce work of the same quality as Shakespeare, generating predicable rebuke from his followers. The appeal to authority fallacy is invoked: This seems like an appeal to authority. It’s superior based on it… Continue reading The appeal to authority: when it works and doesn’t

Bitcoin keeps falling like I said it would, having dropped below $27k, on its way to $20k and lower: This proves yet again that Bitcoin is useless as a hedge against crisis, this time crisis in the Middle East. In September the SEC put all Bitcoin ETF approvals on hold until 2024, again like I… Continue reading The daily view 10/10/2023: Bitcoin Falls, and Crisis in the Middle East