My point is that 20 years doesn't matter. Methane unless it's massive in a locality, doesn't matter. It goes away quickly even on a human time scale. CO2 causes warming for conservatively 20 human generations. Methane is comparable to a massive volcano, awful for a few years but not an extinction model. CO2 is a Chicxulub level event in very slow motion. And to repeat several of my earlier posts, there is no exit for us. As a species, we're not smart enough to stop seeking additional comfort to save the planet that affords it.

For me methane is an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin argument. Who cares? None of this matters as long as we continue to increase CO2 levels. And of course, we will. Let's not consider decreasing methane leaks or driving electric cars as anything more than a participation trophy. We're not winning. We're not even trying. I think any investor who doesn't understand this existential issue a rube.

First off, I want to say the goal to minimize methane leakage into the atmosphere is an excellent goal. Nothing wrong with it when accomplished without extraordinary additional cost. But this line quoted below from the article, (taken from one or more of the UN's AR reports), is at best a disingenuous scare tactic. Methane does create much more warming over a short period but the effects last only about 12 years as it oxidizes, whereas CO2 lasts hundreds to thousands of years.

The real danger with natural gas is an extremely large release over a short period of time. We tend to hear about this in relation to melting and/or possible melting of permafrost. The largest producer of methane, (about 1/3), are wetlands. There's not much we can do about this. Also, methane is not only released when mining and moving natural gas, it's released from both coal mines and when drilling for oil. So again, this is a good goal but using the short measurement period is classic lying with statistics.

Not a criticism, just a question. Should the average investor really leverage an account that is already highly leveraged due to it's tax avoidance? I've been funding both my kids Roth whenever they can't do it but both are invested in VOO. Nothing else. Don't think about it. Your careers and families are more important. I suspect when I'm gone and they retire they'll both be happy with that advice.

Mitch, like Bill Barr trying to reframe himself as less than a core member of the fascist right. We see you.

Two ideas Nick. We have no serious intention of stopping global warming and the pain will grow slowly enough that almost everyone will simply get used to the "new normal". There is an earth caused tipping point but it's likely 100-200 years out. We're boiling a frog in a pot.

My best investing lesson came in the late '90s when I was sure the idiotic dot-com market would crash. It did of course but I missed some of the best investing years. I try not to do that any longer. Here's the basic thesis that's worked for me: Investors are human and algos are developed by humans. Most humans are not very smart. Let them play their hand.

We live in interesting times and it's going to get more interesting over time.

I've sold all of my cars but one and it's just a daily driver. It costs almost exactly 3X what I paid a decade ago. Part of it is living in a much busier area of the country but insurance companies are reacting to problems like hurricane Ian. Home insurance isn't much better. I raised tenant's lease rates 10% this year and between inflation and insurance costs I'll make less money. I'm not complaining, just observing, as it's the tenants who suffer the most. It's only going to get worse over time. Those of us with a long term view will be out of real estate investing before it isn't profitable. For my canari-in-the-coal-mine company I watch PLD only because they're the largest US investor. Before the profitability issue is obvious their chart will have been sliding for months or maybe years.

We can only hope.

So odd to me. I worked for Chase for three years at 5 Wall in the late '90s. It was the center of the financial universe.

To my earlier point, what use will the great majority of humans be when machines can diagnose, calculate and create anything desired by those owning commerce and the infrastructure. It's not just the billionaire class, to an equal extent, it's the several million people around the world like us. How will we react when it becomes clear that our playground earth is changing drastically because 8B humans are acting as the cardiovascular equivalent of LDL.

The current fascism movement in the US doesn't concern me as much as it's the same old 'the other' nonsense. While most of these people are correctly perceiving their lack of value to modern society, almost none of them understand that's it's not going to get better for the unintelligent no matter how much they hate, defame and harm anyone not in their tribe. My concern is that the other side appears to be clueless. They're just focused on how terrible the fascist right is and how they're going to rebuild our infrastructure while the earth begins to lose it's ability to support worldwide expansion of the middle class.

I don't see anyone with standing willing to deliver the difficult message; there are too many people in the human tribe. Even scientists who should know better are still making the Malthusian argument that feeding humans is the problem while their counterparts argue that technology will solve the food issue. Of course the tech side is correct not unlike the fascists but their solution is also nonsensical.

I don't have an answer but I'm sure it's an issue that will be solved in a non excellent manner for most people.

When I look at that machine why do I get the distinct impression this contraption will look like ENIAC in 50 years and the average human will be about as useful since we adapt generationally at a ~10X slower rate.

We were by an earlier account about seven iterations of Moore's Law from computing systems possessing the capacity of the human brain. That's ~10-15 years. The software to train these systems takes longer but that report was over 25 years ago. Bill Joy famously predicted this about the same time. We may be nearing an inflection point. Global warming, fascism, (again), and AI mostly in control of corporations that see fascism as a good thing.

Investors should be careful, there are some massive unknown unknowns in our near future and no one in our government or our media has an incentive to analyze it. No one gets elected who delivers bad news and no one in the media gets paid serious money to produce serious news.

Like the nuclear bomb, how do we use this super-human ability? We don't have an excellent history of good decisions and I don't see anyone with standing trying to manage and bound the development of AI within a human rights and political democracy model. We'll see but I don't have high hopes.

It's already bad enough that insurance rates are at least double what they were 10 years ago.

We can have a side bet. I think Tesla wins because they have the most data, waymo data. Also, Elon doesn't care how many people die while he perfects a very imperfect system and he'll get away with it. Look at Trump. In any other 1st world country he'd be in prison. Here he's a contender to run the country. Elon is at least as ruthless and a lot smarter.

I just got an ad from IH for a Rolls Royce Bentley. Seriously? A Mercedes could be the worst car purchase in the world if RR didn't exist. You may as well buy a 55 gallon barrel, fill it with cash and light it on fire. I guess IH has arrived? Good for them.

I've posted bits of Molly White's very useful ideas before. If you're interested in tech investing, especially leading edge tech, ignore her at your own peril. Here's her latest article, this time about AI. Yeah, it's a lot like self driving cars, blockchain and other massively over hyped technology. And, of course, there's a dark side.

AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?

As someone known for my criticism of the previous deeply flawed technology to become the subject of the tech world's overinflated aspirations, I have had people express surprise when I've remarked that generative artificial intelligence toolsa can be useful. In fact, I was a little surprised myself.

But there is a yawning gap between "AI tools can be handy for some things" and the kinds of stories AI companies are telling (and the media is uncritically reprinting). And when it comes to the massively harmful ways in which large language models (LLMs) are being developed and trained, the feeble argument that "well, they can sometimes be handy..." doesn't offer much of a justification.

Some are surprised when they discover I don't think blockchains are useless, either. Like so many technologies, blockchains are designed to prioritize a few specific characteristics (coordination among parties who don't trust one another, censorship-resistance, etc.) at the expense of many others (speed, cost, etc.). And as they became trendy, people often used them for purposes where their characteristics weren't necessary — or were sometimes even unwanted — and so they got all of the flaws with none of the benefits. The thing with blockchains is that the things they are suited for are not things I personally find to be terribly desirable, such as the massive casinos that have emerged around gambling on token prices, or financial transactions that cannot be reversed.

When I boil it down, I find my feelings about AI are actually pretty similar to my feelings about blockchains: they do a poor job of much of what people try to do with them, they can't do the things their creators claim they one day might, and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that beneficial. And while I do think that AI tools are more broadly useful than blockchains, they also come with similarly monstrous costs.

What's hilarious about this is that they've likely been doing this for years and just happened to time seeding at exactly the wrong time when they were about to get large rainfall. It reminds me of our government that never thought that a clever con artist and devout fascist would be elected, (by land owning white men), and then that same guy would stuff the Supreme Court with Christo-fascists who would continue to work to get him reelected for life.

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case where the lower court ruled that a person who organizes a rally is responsible for anyone who harms another person at that rally. Currently, thanks to the Supreme Court, there are three states that have essentially banned free speech; Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, (of course). Welcome to Republican America where money is speech, corporations are people and people only have the rights corporations, money and the Christian right allow. It's getting ugly.

I think the Millennial need to form households like the Boomer requirement in the late '70s and early '80s will keep housing prices at least steady. Rents have moved up enough over the last few years to make home buying reasonable, especially with builders who can incentivize sales with short term lower rates and new homes with warranties. If the best homebuilders fall they will be a good investment.

My first thought was that countries with money can flood other countries or the reverse, drought them out of existence by moving rainfall out of their reach. Fascinating stuff. I'm sure CO2 sequestration will have amazing surprises for those close to the point of sequestration. It's always best to do this sort of thing near the powerless. There's a reason New Mexico is where radioactive waste is stored. What could possibly go wrong? And if it does, do it in one of the poorest states in the country.

I've seldom tried short term options trades but I'm sure you're correct. I generally look 2-4 months out with a return in the 5-10% range. These trades, mostly selling covered calls are quite safe, (90% or so positive), and tend to add 1-2% overall to my portfolio's return.

I've been quiet here lately as I've moved back into real estate which I used to think was more time consuming than stock investing but after the last few years, I think it's about the same amount of work if you want to maintain a consistent return. Also, little exercise in the equity world, lots of it in the real estate world. The main difference with real estate is that it has longer cycles and the write-offs are spectacular. If the market moves against you in real estate you don't sell you rent, maybe for a decade until the market turns around. You basically turn it into a very low tax, high yield, bond.

If you have to sell a home because it's gone up in value so much the rent return is too low, you do a 1031 exchange and buy a run down, under appreciated property. Rinse, repeat. One of the great things about real estate is that you receive a regular income which generates very little tax consequences and when you pass-on your children get the property at the current, stepped up, value and don't have to account for all the depreciation you've taken over decades.

One of the concerns I hear is the idea that real estate requires 'sweat equity' to perform well. Excuse me, everything requires sweat equity to perform well, even if you don't sweat while you work at it..:)

Medicare isn't even close to the most problematic system. Why do billionaires have to pay for a communist inspired fire department? Police? Roads? Education? Under a 2nd Trump administration we can shut all of this down except for the protection he and real billionaires require. It's not just Trump voters who are idiots, it's everyone who is too lazy to ensure they're registered to vote and actually vote. We'll get the government we deserve and I suppose we'll see what we deserve in November.

If we count the people who are too lazy to vote and those who will vote for a dictator the great majority of Americans would rather have a dictator run the country. Election turnout has been calculated for almost 100 years and 2020 was the highest turnout and that was only 62%. Seriously, a dictator was running for president and 38% of eligible voters were too busy to show up. There is a part of me that hopes they get what they deserve. This has been coming for over 40 years and they didn't see it coming?

VAT, (value added tax), is always regressive. Lower income folks spend all their money buying things they need and some of their food expenditures are already subsidized. There are over 36MM Americans on the SNAP welfare program. It costs about $1,600 a year per participant to keep these people from starving. Of course Republicans want to cut this program along with Medicaid.

What goes unreported is that the biggest welfare queens are corporations. Walmart, Amazon and McDonalds have tens of thousands of workers on both SNAP and Medicaid. Some of the usual suspect states also have a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia and Wyoming.

If we want to get rid of politicians like Trump and others, pay people a living wage which is likely over $20 an hour, offer free education through college, fund all K-12 schooling at the same level, not based on property taxes, subsidize public pre-school, stop funding private education, offer Medicare to everyone. Tax corporations at 20% minium.

See my previous post Nick. About half of American workers can't afford higher taxes. It will have to come from the upper income tiers.

Nick, this research from Pew should help clarify the tax and income problem. Not everyone is doing worse over the 50 years of this data but poorly educated white households are doing much worse. There's a reason Trump is focused on this already angry group, because they want to blame a system that no longer gives as much advantage to them based on skin color.

Education also has a large influence on income. In section 3 of the report you can see that those with only a high school education have almost completely lost 'the American dream'. Working hard no longer pays a dividend, only working smart.

Although the Trump era tax cuts are heavily weighted toward the top 1% of earners there is one piece of this legislation that works well for middle and lower middle class workers and that's the doubling of the standard deduction. That's scheduled to go away next year and the part that provides additional income for those who don't need it will just continue on.

As you can see, the Trump era tax cuts were designed to sunset for working people just as he finished his 8 years as president. Then Republicans could attempt to hang that noose around the neck of Democrats. Fortunately Donnie's plan didn't work out so well. Let's hope his bad luck continues.

Pew Research - Income distribution 1971-2021

I didn't read the link but from what I've read, I don't think Google is winning the AI round.

That's the Chinese real estate model. I never think a dictatorship will out produce or out create a democracy. If we can avoid the MAGA madness we should be able to continue to hire the best people in the world.

Nick, Samsung is a good company but run by very boring corporate types. Reminds me a lot of IBM. This is the company that took their massive lead in the Android world and produced the Note 7. You didn't need a fire place, your Note 7 might catch on fire any moment. Eight years later they're still trying to recover.

Trailer-Queen, nice one. Maybe Mockery Trailer-Queen. Personally I was hoping to grab onto one of those Christians as they rose to their heaven during the eclipse..:). They've been waiting for the 2nd coming for over 100 years so no doubt, Trump will just have to do. I would not make a very good politician as I'd require a sanity test: Do you believe in a all knowing, all seeing dude in the sky more strongly than democracy? Human rights, including women? No...sorry, no vote for you. Next!

Well, maybe people will actually get out and vote to stop this. As they say, we get the government we deserve.

Yes, as I said, for now, INTC is not investable.

Intel, for now, is uninvestable.

This accounts for the 20% profit private companies need to make to satisfy their stock holders and a few percent to wine and dine the politicians. My god those whores are cheap, (with apologies to whores who actually perform a service).

Interesting. In racing one of the most important things we work on is weight. Horse power is nice but weight is more important. There are two types of weight, sprung and unsprung. Lowering unsprung weight or that weight in and around the wheel is an order of magnitude more important than, for example, taking out any part of the interior not useful to the driver. This is why people will spend up to $10k for carbon fiber wheels, another 10k plus for light weight brakes, etc. That these engineers have dropped all of this weight into an unsprung area seems antithetical to me.

While your photo of Trump is charming I don't think it caught the essence of his speech. When he said, "Everyone needs a bible in their home, I have many. It's my favorite book.", even the greatest liar of the 21st Century could not keep a straight face.

And let me add, to any liberal naysayers, this man is more sharp than he was many years ago. Look at this bible, it's right-side-up...:) You can't see it of course because the liberal media doesn't want you to know this God fearing man now holds his bible correctly.

Texas is the only state with its own electrical grid. As Minnesota's PUC said, this is a Texas problem. People are leaving Texas. It used to produce some great leaders but today they've got Abbott and Cruz. Good luck.

Hi Nick. Sorry I missed our call this morning. My daughter had her baby yesterday and we're hanging out with the family. Talk to you next Sunday. Eric

Nice article from Barron's tech regarding NVDA. They just might be the most valuable company in the world in another few years - they're #3 today but are maybe overvalued at over $900 a share.


Power Moves. Everyone wants to find the next Nvidia. Sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East are reportedly considering investing tens of billions of dollars into artificial intelligence start-ups in an effort to compete with the current king of AI data center chips.

But start-ups and other large chip rivals may now have a steeper hill to climb after Nvidia unveiled its latest product roadmap this week.

On Monday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced the company’s next-generation chip architecture called Blackwell. “Blackwell will be the most successful product launch in our history,” he said during a keynote address at the GTC developers conference in San Jose.

The first issue for rivals is the sheer scale of investment required to create a state-of-the-art AI chip. Huang revealed that Blackwell, with its 208 billion transistors, cost Nvidia $10 billion to develop.

Second, AI chip start-ups have taken solace in Nvidia’s inability to meet chip demand, hoping to become a second source based on shortages alone. But that may change with Blackwell. Unlike last year, when the rise in demand happened suddenly, Nvidia has worked with suppliers to have more production ready. “The benefit we have is we’re not surprised this time,” Huang said during a financial analyst Q&A session at GTC on Tuesday. “We are geared up for an exciting ramp.”

Finally, there’s the product breadth. At GTC, Nvidia revealed several Blackwell products—including the B100, B200, GB200 Superchip, HGX B200 server board, and GB200 NVL72 liquid-cooled rack system with 72 GPUs. Got all that? The gist is that Nvidia has an offering for a wide range of AI needs and customers, from small corporate workloads to supercomputing.

The lineup fulfills the company’s promise late last year to accelerate its AI launch cycles from two years to one. “The bigger AI gets, the more solutions that will be needed, and the faster we will meet those goals and expectations,” Nvidia’s chief financial officer Colette Kress told Barron’s at the time.

The strategy isn’t new for Nvidia. It harkens back to the company’s first decade when Huang figured out a plan to win against dozens of competitors in the market for graphics chips.

In the late 1990s, Huang observed that graphics chip companies were only maintaining a leadership position for up to two years. It became a game of leapfrog. PC makers would choose new parts twice a year during the fall and spring. Since a typical graphics chip took 18 months to develop, the market leader would always fall to a better-performing chip from a competitor.

Huang cracked the code. Instead of one engineering team, Nvidia split the design team into three groups. The first would design an overall new architecture, while the second two would develop faster derivatives. It enabled Nvidia to ship a new chip every six months. The plan was called “Three teams, two seasons,” and, once deployed, the competition couldn’t keep up. The list of competitors fell from 50 to 10 virtually overnight.

Beyond product speed, Curtis Priem, who co-founded Nvidia with Huang and Chris Malachowsky in 1993, emphasized the importance of the ecosystem surrounding the company’s hardware. Nvidia provides industry specific libraries and tools to make applications rapidly. “There are a lot of me toos out there saying you can do a chip as fast, but they don’t have the software stack,” Priem recently told me.

Then there’s the issue of hiring the talent to get this all done.

“What’s the strategy with other start-ups?” You have to hire half the people at Nvidia, but they are still locked down with stock,” Priem says.

For future employees, a megacap stock that continues making new highs could be the biggest advantage of all.

I hope you're correct but this is what pacifists thought in the 1930s as fascism took over in Europe with massive support in the US. Thankfully the Great Depression made people here decide they'd rather eat than join the KKK. We were about one instant away from a 2nd Trump presidency before COVID. Fascism was so popular in the US before COVID we would have elected that idiot without any thought of consequence. American voters are dumb as a bag of hammers. Let's hope the economy doesn't give Republicans a lollipop before November.

The Republican party will officially rename itself the Sycophants for Jesus. Dear Leader, your legal bills are our burden. Your discretions are our problem. Your failures are our flogging. Take all of our earthly positions.

I really missed my evangelical calling...:). What did Trump say?

Yup, only the poorly educated, the fearful and the insane will vote for him but is that the majority if voters in the US? Honestly I have no idea but I do have an exit plan if the idiots take over again.

Since the Reagan presidency the Republican plan has been as Grover Norquist so eloquently said,

This is the modern Republican party. It took them some time to take up Norquist's more radical ideas like: And Biden is Rodney King asking if we can all get along. Neville Chamberlain Biden is not helping by playing his environmental violin while the US burns. I've got more but I'll spare you. We need leadership willing to destroy these people. Biden, King, Chamberlain, Nero, et. al. is not the answer.

Someone who understands the crisis and has the charisma, intelligence and humble leadership to guide humanity forward. I think Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt had most of those characteristics. We've yet to find that person today but they do seem to appear when it seems all is lost. Maybe we'll get lucky.

Same here. I'll likely exit before the end of the year.