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by kragen 242 days ago
A diplomatic passport from a third-world country? ;-)

Seriously, if the stock market is going to plunge, Pepsi stock is also going to plunge. The simplest way to reduce your exposure to the stock market is to shift assets toward cash: sell shares, keep dollars, maybe in the money market rather than just as cash. Dollars are exposed to the risk of inflation (hyperinflation hasn't happened yet in the US but it's so common that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation doesn't even attempt to list all historical episodes of hyperinflation, just dozens of notable ones) so investors commonly try to move to metals to balance that risk. Cryptocurrencies have emerged as an alternative, and they have the advantage of being more portable in emergency evacuation situations.
2 comments
tdeck 242 days ago
> Cryptocurrencies have emerged as an alternative, and they have the advantage of being more portable in emergency evacuation situations.

God help us if Crypto is our backup.

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kragen 242 days ago
It is not known whether Satoshi was a theist, but I was surprised at how many Christian fundamentalists there were on Cypherpunks in the early days. So, possibly that was the idea.
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ryandrake 242 days ago
One can't time the market, though. Every time in the past, where I thought to myself, "I should diversify away from the US stock market," when I looked back and did the math, I would have lost more money doing that than leaving it invested. The only way I would have come out ahead was if I sold everything the exact right month in 2000, the exact right month in 2008, and the exact right month in 2020. Who knows in advance what that correct month is?
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kragen 241 days ago
Diversification is a tool for reducing risk, and reducing risk does reduce the expected return of your portfolio. You can make money by running in front of a steamroller picking up pennies. But most people are not risk-neutral.
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judahmeek 242 days ago
If you're going to make a claim like this, then why not provide enough information so that the rest of us can actually verify it?

What would have been the exact right month in 2000, the exact right month in 2008, and the exact right month in 2020?

What were the majority of your holdings at those times?

What would have happened if you had diversified a month earlier in all three cases?

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