General Investing and Economics Discussion - No Politics

[dtm1997]

They thought doggie was a joke & it is. At some point gravity will take over, just depends on how dumb investors are in general. For the time being I’m having fun with it. When you can have unlimited supply of a cryptocurrency, it fails to become a supply & demand proposition.

Edit: Forgot to answer your question. We were talking rate of return not $$.

Yeah. Any upward movement, let alone what you've probably experienced, was going to outstrip BTC returns.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Some interesting numbers on inflation (400% year over year increase in lumber, etc.) in Home Depot's earnings. Even more interesting to me was that Home Depot didn't just increase prices to offset their costs, they jacked up prices even more and profits widely outgrew costs. Pretty interesting - people are still willing to pay ridiculous prices for things.

Home Depot Q1 sales and profits lifted by skyrocketing inflation

Home Depot had a strong first quarter, but in the process experienced some shocking levels of inflation as the economy rebounds from the pandemic.

finance.yahoo.com

 

[dtm1997]

Important update on Safe Moon with Dave Portnoy making it his **** coin of choice.

Safemoon up After Barstool Sports Founder Buys It: 'I Like the Word Moon'

The pop culture publication boss also said of SafeMoon: "Invest at your own risk. I have no idea how this works."

www.newsweek.com

 

[LibertyTurns]

Ditched 3k doggie today & am now just playing with house money. Really only wanted to sell 2k, but that would have left me 13k. Not that I’m superstitious, but 13 is no bueno. I was thinking about 8888, the Angel number. I considered using the sieve of Eratosthenes to pick the largest prime number less than 13k, which was 12983. I’d sell 2017, which was a very good year for America. Seemed unpatriotic. I ended up just going with 3k because I like the number 3. Babe Ruth wore 3. In baseball 3k hits is a major milestone. Then there’s troika, many people’s favorite. Thomas Jefferson was our third President & he was a good dude. Satan tested Jesus 3 times. Just seemed right.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Ditched 3k doggie today & am now just playing with house money. Really only wanted to sell 2k, but that would have left me 13k. Not that I’m superstitious, but 13 is no bueno. I was thinking about 8888, the Angel number. I considered using the sieve of Eratosthenes to pick the largest prime number less than 13k, which was 12983. I’d sell 2017, which was a very good year for America. Seemed unpatriotic. I ended up just going with 3k because I like the number 3. Babe Ruth wore 3. In baseball 3k hits is a major milestone. Then there’s troika, many people’s favorite. Thomas Jefferson was our third President & he was a good dude. Satan tested Jesus 3 times. Just seemed right.

Milwaukee would have thought 3-somes are the best and been done with it in 3 seconds.

 

[LibertyTurns]

Hope this isn’t too political.

Money-Supply Growth Finally Slows in March, Drops to 10-Month Low | Ryan McMaken

After three months in a row of hitting new all-time highs, money supply growth slowed in March, dropping to a 10-month low.

mises.org

 

[MikeGT]

Some interesting numbers on inflation (400% year over year increase in lumber, etc.) in Home Depot's earnings. Even more interesting to me was that Home Depot didn't just increase prices to offset their costs, they jacked up prices even more and profits widely outgrew costs. Pretty interesting - people are still willing to pay ridiculous prices for things.

Home Depot Q1 sales and profits lifted by skyrocketing inflation

Home Depot had a strong first quarter, but in the process experienced some shocking levels of inflation as the economy rebounds from the pandemic.

finance.yahoo.com

"gross profit margin was almost flat with the last year at 34%", which indicates prices were not jacked up.

Home Depot (HD) Q1 Earnings & Sales Top Estimates, Stock Rises

The Home Depot, Inc. HD has posted first-quarter fiscal 2021 results, wherein earnings and sales beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate and improved year over year. The company gained from the continued strong demand for home-improvement projects as well as its ongoing investments.Sha

www.nasdaq.com

There was a lower expense cost, which leads to greater operating margins.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

"gross profit margin was almost flat with the last year at 34%", which indicates prices were not jacked up.

Home Depot (HD) Q1 Earnings & Sales Top Estimates, Stock Rises

The Home Depot, Inc. HD has posted first-quarter fiscal 2021 results, wherein earnings and sales beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate and improved year over year. The company gained from the continued strong demand for home-improvement projects as well as its ongoing investments.Sha

www.nasdaq.com

There was a lower expense cost, which leads to greater operating margins.

Flat gross margin percentages at significantly higher costs means prices were jacked up commensurate on a percentage basis.

In other words if a board cost $5 and Home Depot sold it for $10, they’d have a $5 gross margin. If their cost doubled to $10, they could just add their $5 markup on it, and gross margins on a dollar basis would be flat, but would collapse on a percentage basis. They’d have to charge $20 to maintain gross margins on a percentage basis. But on a dollar basis, now their gross margins also doubled.

 

[RonJohn]

Flat gross margin percentages at significantly higher costs means prices were jacked up commensurate on a percentage basis.

In other words if a board cost $5 and Home Depot sold it for $10, they’d have a $5 gross margin. If their cost doubled to $10, they could just add their $5 markup on it, and gross margins on a dollar basis would be flat, but would collapse on a percentage basis. They’d have to charge $20 to maintain gross margins on a percentage basis. But on a dollar basis, now their gross margins also doubled.

Nobody does it that way. If you are selling an item worth 20 cents, you can't have a margin of $5 on it in a reasonable market. If you are selling an item worth $30k, you can't have a margin of $5 on it and stay in business. Markups in stores are based on cost of goods, not on quantity of goods.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Nobody does it that way. If you are selling an item worth 20 cents, you can't have a margin of $5 on it in a reasonable market. If you are selling an item worth $30k, you can't have a margin of $5 on it and stay in business. Markups in stores are based on cost of goods, not on quantity of goods.

Sorry I didn’t type it more clear, but that’s what I just said.

 

[RonJohn]

Sorry I didn’t type it more clear, but that’s what I just said.

I took it from this:

... Even more interesting to me was that Home Depot didn't just increase prices to offset their costs, they jacked up prices even more and profits widely outgrew costs. ...

That you believed they were price gouging.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

I took it from this:

That you believed they were price gouging.

Huh, first of all there isn't such thing as price gouging in open and competitive markets. But that certainly wasn't my intent to imply that.

 

[dtm1997]

The casino is wild today!

Get your pepto-bismol ready!

 

[dtm1997]

 

[RonJohn]

I took out my original $200 that I put into Dogecoin from Kraken. I thought it was going to be an ACH transfer and take a few days. It was a wire transfer and was in my bank account in about an hour and a half.

 

[orientalnc]

 

[Deleted member 2897]

No intrinsic value. Company of a product with no intrinsic value itself has no intrinsic value. Decimates the environment to produce - a huge negative risk to regulation. A huge risk to regulation period (we can’t go buy things with gold). Governments could outlaw it or create their own and restrict everything else.

Could drop 99%. Could increase 10,000%.

 

[RonJohn]

No intrinsic value. Company of a product with no intrinsic value itself has no intrinsic value. Decimates the environment to produce - a huge negative risk to regulation. A huge risk to regulation period (we can’t go buy things with gold). Governments could outlaw it or create their own and restrict everything else.

Could drop 99%. Could increase 10,000%.

If you compare it to a stock, it is pure speculation. However, it has as much intrinsic value as the dollar. The idea of cryptocurrency in 2011 was a non-government currency that could be verified, but not tracked. People began pure speculation. Instead of using Bitcoin to purchase and exchange, people purchased Bitcoin solely as a form of gambling. Governments cannot control Bitcoin, but they can control exchanges used to acquire and sell cryptos. I haven't read news stories today, but I believe a lot of the crypto pullback today is related to China cracking down on exchanges.

Cryptocurrencies have no value unless people are willing to purchase or exchange for it. It isn't a public company with a market cap. I even disagree with labeling the value of cryptos as a market cap. We don't list a market cap for the US Dollar or the Euro. If people were using Bitcoin as currency instead of speculation, it would not have risen anywhere near as quickly. Also, it is using almost 1% of all of the electricity used in the world to encrypt the transactions in the register. If actual transactional usage of Bitcoin becomes normal, I don't see that it will be able to keep up. It could possibly get to 10 or 20% of all of the world's electricity in a few years. I could be totally wrong, but I do not see Bitcoin as being able to take over as the currency of the world, so it's actual value is zero.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

If you compare it to a stock, it is pure speculation. However, it has as much intrinsic value as the dollar. The idea of cryptocurrency in 2011 was a non-government currency that could be verified, but not tracked. People began pure speculation. Instead of using Bitcoin to purchase and exchange, people purchased Bitcoin solely as a form of gambling. Governments cannot control Bitcoin, but they can control exchanges used to acquire and sell cryptos. I haven't read news stories today, but I believe a lot of the crypto pullback today is related to China cracking down on exchanges.

Cryptocurrencies have no value unless people are willing to purchase or exchange for it. It isn't a public company with a market cap. I even disagree with labeling the value of cryptos as a market cap. We don't list a market cap for the US Dollar or the Euro. If people were using Bitcoin as currency instead of speculation, it would not have risen anywhere near as quickly. Also, it is using almost 1% of all of the electricity used in the world to encrypt the transactions in the register. If actual transactional usage of Bitcoin becomes normal, I don't see that it will be able to keep up. It could possibly get to 10 or 20% of all of the world's electricity in a few years. I could be totally wrong, but I do not see Bitcoin as being able to take over as the currency of the world, so it's actual value is zero.

They can outlaw cryptocurrency. It’s the Wild West.

 

[awbuzz]

Flat gross margin percentages at significantly higher costs means prices were jacked up commensurate on a percentage basis.

In other words if a board cost $5 and Home Depot sold it for $10, they’d have a $5 gross margin. If their cost doubled to $10, they could just add their $5 markup on it, and gross margins on a dollar basis would be flat, but would collapse on a percentage basis. They’d have to charge $20 to maintain gross margins on a percentage basis. But on a dollar basis, now their gross margins also doubled.

Yep, it's just math!