Share Forum - Discuss JSE shares and join the Investor Challenge

It's also interesting how many started trying to say that crypto markets were a great inverse correlation to equities etc. That they would perform just as well as gold due to their rarity value, which is what Satoshi originally tried to design into BTC. However, everyone knows that fear and greed (and when joined together, FOMO) have been largely responsible for crypto price moves.

So that supposedly inverse correlation is busy breaking down fast i.e. when all markets crash, investors tend to get margin calls. This results in often selling other positions to cover the calls. However, no-one sells their physical gold to cover a margin call. Rather sell this stupid thing called a Bitcoin, which doesn't seem to have any utility value anyway. If you try to buy a pizza with it, the transaction fees would probably be worth more than the pizza anyway.    (Yes, I know you can't buy a pizza with gold either, although you probably could, but that's not what gold is there for. It's there to keep just ahead of inflation.)

I've just managed to sell a property after it being a long time on the market and in light of the comments above where would you invest a large lump sum today as I have no intention of buying another property?

Bizarrely, productive agricultural land with water on site is an excellent investment longer term. Ask Dr. Michael Burry...
https://www.savingthegrace.com/blog/2018/7/25/why-michael-burry-of-the-big-short-is-investing-in-water-put-your-money-where-the-water-is

Unfortunately many risk-off markets have run already e.g. crypto-currencies, precious metals etc. Stock markets are very top-heavy. Bonds are in favour but only because everything else sucks. Private equity can probably offer decent returns. You might want to look at investing via Uprise.Africa or lending on RainFin. They are a little more risky but offering decent returns.

Collectibles are also offering decent returns. Classic cars, rare gold coins e.g. St. Gauden.... Read Simon's article on Sovereign Man...
https://www.sovereignman.com/international-diversification-strategies/the-most-interesting-way-to-buy-gold-today-23490/

...
Seems like a flat market has become the new normal over the years and no reversal is even expected in the near future.

I think flat would be nice. The concern is that we see a major correction. The Shiller CAPE ratio has only ever been higher two times before, once before the 1930's crash and the other during the irrational exuberance just before the dot.com crash. See https://www.multpl.com/shiller-pe - did anyone say Netflix, UBER etc.... Definitely heard that language before i.e. we operate on negative margins but we make up for it with eyeballs / volumes.... yeah right....

Some are talking 1930's depression again. I realise I've held a contrarian bearish "anti-investor" approach for some time, preferring to trade the swings and re-invest my profits. This means I often get to ride the same price moves up and down, two or three times. I'm completely price agnostic at all times.

My view is that governments and banks got bailed out in 2007/2008. Then more money than the world has ever known got printed. Where did it go? To the super wealthy of course, initially via the FED and the bond market, taking US debt to over $22-trn now. Note how the Chinese, Japanese and other traditionally large US treasury buyers have stopped buying and are turning to gold instead.... But for central banks their gold holdings are simply a nice way to earn annuity returns i.e. playing gold loans vs. interest rate swaps.

The super wealthy, clever money has also definitely been leaving the market of late, along with those baby-boomer pension funds, now all retiring. But you can't see them. Why? Because all those bucketloads of money have ultimately also found their way to companies, and those companies cannot find any value in the market, just like Warren Buffet sitting on oodles of cash reserves. So what do they do to appease their stockholders? They've been buying their own stocks back, keeping prices afloat. Of course the largely uninformed middle classes have also been buying stocks like there's no tomorrow. Because of course stocks always keep going up.... right? So whilst banks and governments got taken out in 2007/2008 we now need to see ordinary stockholders and companies get taken out, to restore the balance a little and help wipe out that massive excess of printed money.

I doubt the US will default as they will simply go after people's pensions first i.e. take away social security (it goes bust circa 2030 anyway) and replace it with a basic income grant instead. Either way, we are heading for interesting times. The top 1% will of course do just fine. Warren Buffett also has his put options and others have largely diversified into gold, properties, farms with water, rare collectibles etc.

Having said all that, the Dow has had a nice retracement on May's drop and looks like it could run further still to 27,000. Then however things should get very interesting. Will there be enough steam and momentum to push it higher or will we start to see the cracks? We haven't had a decent market correction for over 10 years now. This next one could be dramatic because I don't see anyone prepared to step in and save markets this time...

ZAR is crosscurrent i.e. short term strength against medium term weakening. Expect choppy, sideways action (wind blowing against current in ocean) until we revert to concurrent weakening again (to ride big swells), probably later in week. Fundamentally, emerging markets to weaken against bleak global risk-off sentiment.

BTC on the Investor Challenge is also quoted in ZAR and the Runt looks like it's in weakening mode again. Expect 15 or even higher to USD fairly soon now. So weaker Runt and lower BTC means best to hold in the investor comp i.e. avoid paying taxes on profits.

ETH definitely the better choice from a utility perspective. Ripple even better if you believe that financial insto's are going to support any of them. But then again, if they do, they would rather build their own. So I don't think we've seen the killer app in blockchain emerge yet. Meanwhile, BTC will be what the crowd (read "dumb money") follows and buys into. It has the lowest utility but highest FOMO and Fear and Greed factors, so expect it to also have the highest vol going forward. The days of puberty and HODL are past now, and crypto has become a trader's dream. Most of the black boxes are clearly MACD / momentum driven in their algo designs so it's easy to sell high and buy low on momentum, not price. Wish there was someone bold enough to offer long dated options but most of the CFD providers (IG etc) are too scared because vol levels are so high.

Hey Musa, I didn't realise there were herbs on the moon. Just goes to show you, you learn something new every day.    Seriously though, does anyone really fall for this crap?