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birb_cromble  3mo ago (text post)   1814 thread views

Weekly Finance Thread

Since a lot of us here have expressed interest in not starving to death in a gutter, I figured I'd start a weekly thread to discuss financial matters.

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Oh, good timing, I just crossed a very large milestone in my portfolio today. A few questions:

  • What do you think the chances are that we are currently in a large (AI related or not AI related) bubble that will pop? It seems like the money printing of the past few years has massive upward pressure on the stock market so I don't know how to unpick the two.
  • I have always been a saver and live fairly frugally. But I am itching to increase my standard of living with some of my invested money. At what number in USD would you personally be comfortable beginning to draw down, say, 4% of your portfolio a year to increase your standard of living sustainably?
  • It seems like I am outpacing the rate of inflation with my investments. For example I have doubled my money in 4 years, whereas I am not paying nearly 2 times as much for gas or groceries or restaurants compared with 2022. And it seems like inflation is much slower at the lower end of prices- for example goods at thrift stores or antique stores seem to be retaining low prices while things like houses and fine art are exploding in valuation. Do you think it's likely to stay this way in the US for a while or do you think the inflation will be coming for lower priced goods as well?
  • Do you think it's too late to buy bitcoin or is it still wise to buy it today? I have only like $2000 worth of bitcoin because I never found it very appealing or interesting but I can see its use in hedging against fiat currency debasement and many people smarter and richer than me are still interested in its success.
  • The older I get, the more I have access to but the less I want. I have already satisfied most of my needs and desires from my youth. How do I generate more desire within myself as I grow older? (I am in my mid thirties if that is relevant.)

What do you think the chances are that we are currently in a large (AI related or not AI related) bubble that will pop? It seems like the money printing of the past few years has massive upward pressure on the stock market so I don't know how to unpick the two.

Betting against AI will make you broke, betting for AI will make you broke. Staying away is the smartest thing so far. Take Deepseek - they did magic with inference and the model is next to free now. I use it as daily drivers for heavy coding sessions and it is essentially free - I can barely burn trough 1$ daily. Even if they increase the price - I guess I will have the same USD consumption after 31st of may because flash is just a gem. With china compute ramping up and open models being so close behind the closed ones - the margins that Anthropic and OpenAI expect are just not there.

On the other hand - the technology is transformative. I don't think that there is a single programmer left that doesn't use AI heavily - even the holdouts grudgingly started to admit that latest models are better than juniors. I expect tokens to end up like electricity and oil - ubiquitous, affordable, metered by consumption but absolutely commodified with a mix of locally and remotely running models.

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