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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1185 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Someone recently claimed that people here would greatly outperform the market given their higher-than-average intelligence. So let's run a hypothetical - you've got $1m and your goal is to 5x it (pre tax) in the next 2 years. Perhaps we can look back at replies to this post few years later and see how everyone does. Anything goes, from investing to leveraging your unique skills or connections if you have any.

My plan would be this: 900k into a leveraged Uranium long. 100k dry powder for any other opportunities - long Korean hardware stocks (Samsung, SK Hynix) right now, then rotate to INTC leaps and/or lithium, then try to time crypto bottom and buy a few good coins on spot (LINK, HYPE). I think Uranium position does a 3-4x so would have to do a magical 14-23x with that $100k.

If I had 1m$ I wouldn't bother with investing in markets. Way too many good ideas to pursue in the military industrial complex that will pay off handsomely.

What ideas are those? Every big Euro and most US VCs and a lot of other private equity is super into early-mid stage defense now, the big private companies like Anduril and that German drone company are valued lik AI firms, and the big public companies are trading at tech-level multiples priced to perfection for insane earnings growth over the next few years.

Right now the bom for a sniper style turret is quite cheap. You take couple of 22cal to .50 and the rest is core xy. And combination of AI + classical algorithms could make the governing software both capable and able to fit into modest hardware. Throw couple of sensors for the wind and rain and you should be able to throw a bullet quite far away with nice precision. The west was moving in direction to have dumb guns and smart munitions. I think that the opposite approach is better.

I used to work with some guys who did a related project ~20 years ago. I think you’re slightly underestimating the difficulty of reliable, real time image processing, but more importantly, I think you’re seriously underestimating the culture around automated weapons. Even in peak COIN years, there was an obsessive focus on “human in the loop”. You could only point, not shoot. Couple that with the regulatory and reliability hurdles, and your project bogs down pretty easily.

Those qualms probably go away in an Ukraine situation, sure. Until a Western nation starts planning for that, you might have a hard time with funding.

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