Down goes the Dow

seattle prattle wrote:

agip wrote:

I just bought $20 in bitcoin via paypal. That's how I roll.

0.00116427 BTC

And what's more, I made 1/10th of a percent already.

If anyone wants some bitcoin trading advice, I'm here for you, bros.

But seriously, is this safe? I suspect paypal is going to get hit by some enormous BTC heist.

Congrats.

Way to go. WIll probably buy a token amount if it drops to low 16000s again.

Safety, i wouldn't worry about. Paypal is the boss. They have way too much at stake to let some side gig like this screw their rep.

I used to play around with bitcoin on Coinbase Pro a couple of years ago and would make swing trades for a couple of dollar (literally) profit at a time. Mostly i would do okay but when i stopped doing okay, i quit.

Before that i actually lost real money. And i'm not the only one.

Paypal looks like the way to go. Actually holding the stuff in your own "wallet" is a major headache and takes time to set up, makes you subject to theft, and if you forget a password, you lose access to the currency forever (no one can retrieve a lost password for you).

You know, though, the way the market is with things like electrical vehicle stocks, Tesla, etc., are there better speculative plays available with less risk and more safeguards? I suspect there are, but i get the attraction to trade bitcoin as a game as long as you're not stuck with steep trading fees.

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

seattle prattle wrote:

Congrats.

Way to go. WIll probably buy a token amount if it drops to low 16000s again.

Safety, i wouldn't worry about. Paypal is the boss. They have way too much at stake to let some side gig like this screw their rep.

I used to play around with bitcoin on Coinbase Pro a couple of years ago and would make swing trades for a couple of dollar (literally) profit at a time. Mostly i would do okay but when i stopped doing okay, i quit.

Before that i actually lost real money. And i'm not the only one.

Paypal looks like the way to go. Actually holding the stuff in your own "wallet" is a major headache and takes time to set up, makes you subject to theft, and if you forget a password, you lose access to the currency forever (no one can retrieve a lost password for you).

You know, though, the way the market is with things like electrical vehicle stocks, Tesla, etc., are there better speculative plays available with less risk and more safeguards? I suspect there are, but i get the attraction to trade bitcoin as a game as long as you're not stuck with steep trading fees.

Personally, i think you guys are we too conservative. You need to shows some guts and buy at least $10k of Litecoin. ?

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

The FED liabilities belong to you and me. I don’t find it strange that the Fed tried to reduce the balance sheet one time, and the market promptly dropped 20%. It is equally clear that the Fed is in a box, where they have to continue to manipulate policy in rising amounts, and ever twisted gyrations (Operation Twist, Junk bond ETF buying, or threat thereof) to generate a unit of GDP growth.

In regards to AAPL they have fractional revenue growth since 2015, and EPS growth driven by stock buybacks (thanks to the Fed). MSFT has a good cloud business, but has honed its financialization game under Nardella. Both are excellent at hyping a narrative. XOM biggest sin was paying too much for oil and gas assets that had to be written down with the fall in oil prices, those asset values moved the other direction the last few weeks.

It cannot be denied that if the Fed stopped buying bonds the stock market would collapse. Equally so, an end would come to all the stock buyback program that survive only on cheap money. If a market price is applied to mortgage interest home prices contract. The same link exists to rising price of stocks and bonds. Of course it all works if one can continue peddle assets off to someone else at ever rising prices, which only works hand in hand with continued faith in Fed manipulation. That is the key, faith, the confidence in Fed control.

la gente esta muy loca wrote:

Ghost of Igloi wrote:

The FED liabilities belong to you and me. I don’t find it strange that the Fed tried to reduce the balance sheet one time, and the market promptly dropped 20%. It is equally clear that the Fed is in a box, where they have to continue to manipulate policy in rising amounts, and ever twisted gyrations (Operation Twist, Junk bond ETF buying, or threat thereof) to generate a unit of GDP growth.

In regards to AAPL they have fractional revenue growth since 2015, and EPS growth driven by stock buybacks (thanks to the Fed). MSFT has a good cloud business, but has honed its financialization game under Nardella. Both are excellent at hyping a narrative. XOM biggest sin was paying too much for oil and gas assets that had to be written down with the fall in oil prices, those asset values moved the other direction the last few weeks.

It cannot be denied that if the Fed stopped buying bonds the stock market would collapse. Equally so, an end would come to all the stock buyback program that survive only on cheap money. If a market price is applied to mortgage interest home prices contract. The same link exists to rising price of stocks and bonds. Of course it all works if one can continue peddle assets off to someone else at ever rising prices, which only works hand in hand with continued faith in Fed manipulation. That is the key, faith, the confidence in Fed control.

Some of the Feds liabilities are our assets, the Federal Reserve Notes in our wallets or under your mattress perhaps.

https://www.exchangewire.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cash1-300x181.png

Starting at about 58% of Fed liabilities in 1945, currency in circulation would reach well over 90% by 2000. It is now less than 30%. Reserves were about a third of Fed liabilities in 1945, dropped to less than 5% in the 90s as the Fed ruled that sweep accounts (money market deposit accounts) were " Under the Federal Reserve's Regulation D, MMDA accounts are personal saving deposits and, hence, have a zero statutory reserve requirement." With the Fed undertaking large scale asset purchases (LSAP) vis-a-vis permanent open market operations (POMO) as a response to the Financial Crisis, reserves would rise up to over 60% of the Fed's liabilities. ($12B on 9/3/2008 to $2.8T on 7/30/2014).

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=y9lF

Dark lines are quarterly data, lighter lines are weekly data. Here is a better view of the weekly data.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=y9nq

Besides the rise of reserves as a liability, there was a rise in the Treasury General Account (TGA), almost as high as currency. Also reverse repo rose esp after 2014 as the Fed used RRP to drain reserves to keep short term rates from DROPPING BELOW THEIR TARGET RANGE. Repo, adding reserves and RRP removing reserves; temporary open market operations (TOMO, were the Fed's main policy tools before the GFC to maintain Feds Funds target(RRP, TGA and Currency remove reserves; Repo and Fed POMO of Tresuries, Agency debt, and TBA GSE Pass-throughs increase reserves. Ceteris paribus). So yeah, about 30% of the Fed's liabilities are our asset.

"I don’t find it strange that the Fed tried to reduce the balance sheet one time, and the market promptly dropped 20%" I take it you are referring to the end of 2018.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=y9r4

Except that didn't happen.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=y9r5

Fed assets peaked in Jan 2015, gradually declining until the beginning of 2018. The FED then accelerated the runoff until the Repo problem in Sept 2019, dropping 17%. Reserve balances with the Fed dropped over 50%. Even with the market sell off the Fed continued to reduce assets and reserves; raised the Fed Funds twice. Yet the market rebounded.

I'll deal with stock buybacks later. For the record, XOM has yet to declare any asset impairment, but on the last earnings call announced there could be $25-30B in the future. Also under US GAAP rules reversal of a loss is prohibited for all the assets to be held and used.