[mburke]

Can anyone recommend a good guide/literature for getting into investing? Been thinking about it the last few years as we started to have a little more disposable income. Really keen to learn more.

I enjoyed “The Long and the Short of It” by John Kay. You’ll have an opinion on the efficient market hypothesis by the end!

“Fooled by Randomness” by Nicholas Naseem Taleb is good and important (even if NNT himself is insufferable). Would be interested to hear the opinion of a stats and probability expert on his work, but for us punters it seems very useful.

He's pretty outspoken on twitter, often calling out prominent academics on all sorts of stuff - he commented on a paper that me and a friend wrote and luckily was quite kind about it. I think his work is probably a lot more realistic than other "forecasters"

[seankenny]

What was the paper?

[mburke]

This is the link he posted to it, they’re like 30 quid without an affiliation.

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1299072734853582853?s=21

But it was basically another opportunity for him to rip tetlock and Nate silver

[Bradders]

Will be interesting in the long term to see what the regulators do as from an outsider's viewpoint it would appear to be blatant market manipulation.

Maybe, but I'd be surprised if we see any successful prosecutions. Regulatory changes might be a different story.

Yeah 100%. Whole thing feels like a total failure of regulation to me.

It appears now that robinhood is closing out people's GME accounts without permission citing market volatility... This is even worse than just not allowing traders to buy.

In other stock news new concept energy shares are up over 600% today...

Shit gets deeper. Apparently Robinhood get about half their revenue from selling consumer data to Citadel, who bailed out Melvin Capital, the original primary target of the short squeeze!

A lesson if it were needed that if the product is free, you are the product, and may well be taking on risks you can't even begin to predict.

[seankenny]

This is the link he posted to it, they’re like 30 quid without an affiliation.

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/1299072734853582853?s=21

But it was basically another opportunity for him to rip tetlock and Nate silver

Thanks! Never knew there was a link between finance theory and election prediction, cool.

[galpinos]

The World Wide Robin Hood Society's Twitter account has just got very popular.

https://twitter.com/robinhood/status/1354786505873625091?s=20

[galpinos]

Interesting thread on the whole Gamestop thing:

https://twitter.com/endtwist/status/1354547622133051393?s=21

[mburke]

Nice, pretty good detail on all the trades too

[galpinos]

Nice, pretty good detail on all the trades too

For a punter like me, I found it very informative. These two posts were quite enlightening too:

So, the short interest was over 100% of total shares. In fact, it was 140%. Which makes no sense—how can you sell more shares than there are shares?

Keep in mind, not all shares are actively traded. In fact, over 75% of $GME is locked up in passive funds and GME board & C-suite.

So really, short interest was like 300-500% of *float* (float is how many shares are actively traded, basically).

Which is insane. Basically, the shorts (which are hedge funds like Melvin) were expecting $GME to go bankrupt and they'd never have to cover (return their shares).

[mburke]

Yea when people say short its not always clear how they've done it. The thread seems to suggest people were taking long interest with call options, and short interest can be generated with put options - but equally people can generate short interest the traditional way (borrowing shares from a broker for a fee, selling them at the spot price with a view to buying them back a week later (or whatever) to return them to a broker. This makes a profit only if the price actually falls). I imagine this has implications for the figures that are presented here.

I think the trades enter dodgy territory when people have no intention of buying them back to return to the broker

[sxrxg]

https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/l78uct/gme_yolo_update_jan_28_2021/

Just wow. The guy that started the whole gme thing deepfuckinvalue is still holding even after $14million loss yesterday. Amazing.

Will be interesting to see what happens today as the stock is up over 100% in after hours trading.

[petejh]

Away from the circus, here's a wonderful article on the mining requirements behind Tesla's plans for increased production of EVs. Worth reading twice and digesting the mid-long term implications for mining. Tesla is one company among many in a fast growing market.
(nod in there to the heavy rare earths also.. maybe one day Ucore will get its Bokan Mountain deposit into production..).

https://www.mining.com/all-the-mines-tesla-needs-to-build-20-million-cars-a-year/

Also good to know what goes on in the world to make your new EV, some of it isn't pretty. At least mining ESG is beginning to become more of a thing. The EV revolution will hopefully strengthen mining standards.

[shark]

Be interested to know if anyone still has any good recovery stock ideas at this late stage.

Not very racy but VLE (Volvere) is a cautious turnaround operation with a great track record of buying distressed companies cheaply turning them around and selling them for multiples of the purchase price. They have recently raised a lot of money through a placing so have a sizeable war chest to take advantage of the current market conditions. There is a lot of downside protection as their market cap is roughly equivalent to their ‘true’ NAV. There is a great thread on ADVFN if you want to look into it further. Because of some recent stupid rules it’s classed as a complex investment (it isn’t) so you can’t buy it in an ISA. I hold mine in a SIPP. It’s by far my largest holding.

Just remembered its just some ISA platforms (notably in my case IWEB) that dont let you buy VLE whereas others such as AJBell/Youinvest do.

[teestub]

...

https://www.mining.com/all-the-mines-tesla-needs-to-build-20-million-cars-a-year/

Also good to know what goes on in the world to make your new EV, some of it isn't pretty. At least mining ESG is beginning to become more of a thing. The EV revolution will hopefully strengthen mining standards.

Or if you’re not interested in investing in extractive processes, you could instead look at companies starting battery recycling facilities https://www.wired.co.uk/article/electric-car-battery-recycling

[petejh]

 


..hence the huge interest in solid state batteries, which aren't flammable and will have a massively longer life.
Cough.. Ilika 

[galpinos]

Also good to know what goes on in the world to make your new EV, some of it isn't pretty.

Having been involved in the design of a pilot plant to produce a low cobalt cathode material for EV batteries, the fabrication process is pretty grim. I was also somewhat surprised I found out the commercial plant was getting its power from a coal fired power station.

Anyone who thinks EVs are getting us out of this mess in on cloud cuckoo land...

[petejh]

Agreed, although it's better than the alternative..
And the UK at least is moving towards majority sustainable power generation, so there can be a virtuous circle in some countries. Even China is making massive progress towards sustainable power generation. The short term may look messy but longer term direction of travel looks positive.

That said I do wish some of the more preachy in the population would honestly acknowledge the whole picture of what goes into manufacturing their green status badges, as the reality would likely accelerate making them even greener!

Was the cathode Nickel Sulfide by any chance?

[Jerry Morefat]

Shit gets deeper. Apparently Robinhood get about half their revenue from selling consumer data to Citadel, who bailed out Melvin Capital, the original primary target of the short squeeze!

I think it's unlikely the reason why Robinhood restricted trading was due to pressure from the hedge funds who pay for their data. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/29/robinhood-to-restore-gamestop-trading-as-it-wins-1bn-backing

[Bradders]

Shit gets deeper. Apparently Robinhood get about half their revenue from selling consumer data to Citadel, who bailed out Melvin Capital, the original primary target of the short squeeze!

I think it's unlikely the reason why Robinhood restricted trading was due to pressure from the hedge funds who pay for their data. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/jan/29/robinhood-to-restore-gamestop-trading-as-it-wins-1bn-backing

Oh I agree. It doesn't look good though!

[AndyR]

Was the cathode Nickel Sulfide by any chance?

Don’t think anyone’s looking at nickel sulphide as an ev cathode are they? More likely NMC 622 or higher or NCA I would assume.

[petejh]

I was talking about the feedstock, in the context of an investment thread, rather than the specific Nickel alloy end product. And I'm mixing my suphides and sulfates! Nickel Sulfate: https://www.greencarcongress.com/2020/06/20200602-roskill.html

There are some good opportunities (imo) among certain Nickel miners with high purity deposits. I hold shares in Centaurus Metals for e.g.

[duncan]

This is all very interesting. I'm the anti-Pete, very cautious about money, so feel free to ignore me. However, my gut feeling says, when a small bouldering forum starts discussing stock-market tips it may be time to think carefully about whether you should be in the stock-market.

[AJM]

This is all very interesting. I'm the anti-Pete, very cautious about money, so feel free to ignore me. However, my gut feeling says, when a small bouldering forum starts discussing stock-market tips it may be time to think carefully about whether you should be in the stock-market.

Is this the climbing equivalent of the shoe shine boy story?

[sxrxg]

I would agree that the market appears to be heading for a large crash. It works both ways though in that if you have disposable cash and jump on a bullish stock you could make big money very quickly. Several stocks last week and you could have made 500% day trading even with only £100 starting that is life-changing for lots of people.

[sxrxg]

Missed a zero off in there...