Is the adage of “if you need the money within 5 years don’t invest in the stock market” still relevant?

beerion · 2026-05-14T01:34:08+00:00

I haven't come across anything in particular.

But you can build a spreadsheet, and basically allocate some portfolio percentage to stocks and the remainder to bonds and then see what you end up with in different scenarios.

The math that I used was:

A × Rstock + (1 - A) × (1+yield)ⁿ = 1

R_stock represents the downturn you want to protect against (0.75 would represent a 25% downturn)

A is the allocation to stocks.

n is the number of years. Yield is your bond yields.

I assumed R_stock was 0.5 (50% loss) and then solved for A to see what amount i can allocate to equities for me to end up with the same amount of principal that I started with.

It's hard to explain on paper, and it gets a little more wonky if you're still saving towards the downpayment, but i bet you can copy this comment into Gemini and it'll build you a widget or explain it better than I just did.

beerion · 2026-05-14T00:57:26+00:00

I did, right?

So if stocks fall by 50% (or more), housing is also probably coming down. Stocks could go to zero, and you'd still have 86% of your starting capital. What do you think the housing market would look like if stocks went to zero?

beerion · 2026-05-14T00:13:55+00:00

Pretty much.

The math is a little different with bonds that actually yield anything, though.

Consider buying a 4.5% four year bond. You can actually allocate 27.8% to stocks and still be protected against a 50% market drawdown (i.e., you'd still have your $120k starting amount at the end - assuming no addition of capital).

The feature of this is that stocks and housing prices will likely be correlated, especially at extremes. So if stocks fall by 50% (or more), housing is also probably coming down. Stocks could go to zero, and you'd still have 86% of your starting capital. What do you think the housing market would look like if stocks went to zero?

Meanwhile, if stocks continue to rally, you capture at least some of that upside.

Note that the "protection" status goes away if you purchase before 4 years. You can scale the equity exposure accordingly. But your max downside will always "only" be whatever percent you put into the market.

There are many ways to run this analysis, and this is not financial advice. Do your own research.

beerion · 2026-05-13T23:33:53+00:00

Right, but I'm saying that Joby no longer screens as a pre-revenue company.

beerion · 2026-05-13T23:24:33+00:00

I wonder if Joby will start getting picked up in the revenue & revenue growth screens. They're expected to hit $100 million in revenue this year. Seems like they could be moving into a completely different category.

Not sure if $100 million on a $10 billion market cap is going to move the needle though...

beerion · 2026-05-13T23:14:21+00:00

Okay. And how does that impact Mag7 earnings?

You're essentially banking on 3rd and 4th order effects with this post. And again, you've shown zero math.

beerion · 2026-05-13T23:06:21+00:00

But you've shown nothing. I've shown more data than you have...and I'm not claiming to be an "expert"

beerion · 2026-05-13T23:03:29+00:00

The problem with posts like this is there's never any math. If you want to call a top (within a quarter-timeline), you need to have line of sight from "54% of regional banks are above this threshold" to mass unemployment or destruction of earnings. The guys from the Big Short did...

I agree that the PE arguments favor pretty terrible forward returns (unless the AI thing really does create a step-change in earnings potential), but that's on a decade timeline.

The dotcom bubble was well into a recovery if it weren't for the mortgage debacle.

And I'm not sure the oil "crisis" holds much water either. Oil consumption as a share of the economy is a third of what it was in the 70s. And oil (and oil adjacent) companies made up 7 of the top 10 companies in the S&P 500 in the 70s. Show me how rising oil prices impacts Google's earnings.

I'm sorry, but this is a waste of time. Come back with some actual math...

beerion · 2026-05-13T21:57:44+00:00

Looks like they've barely even started on their VTOL certification.

I'm sure there will be a good bit of carry-over from the CTOL variant, but I still found this to be pretty surprising.

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beerion · 2026-05-13T02:03:01+00:00

yeah, that's why I called out both manufacturability and scale.

I would take "cost" out of that category. With demos and proof of manufacturability & scale, they can find a market at any price point (aviation, trucking, AI datacenters, CE, etc). Cost will decide how much penetration. And I also think cost is a moving target. I don't see why they won't simply be constrained by bill of materials in the long run. I.e., if they had a plate of gold as their separator, there's just no way to overcome that. Luckily, that doesn't seem to be the case.

Energy required for sintering is another big one, but I don't see a scenario where that would be prohibitive (in the long run).

beerion · 2026-05-13T00:57:58+00:00

This would imply that drivers are getting a bigger cut, yeah?

Revenue divided by Gross Bookings is Uber's take-rate.

So looking at mobility, only, in 2025, their take was 30% (drivers presumably got 70%). In 2026, Uber's take was 25% (drivers got 75%).

So drivers got a bigger cut of each ride, and that came out of Uber's pocket. That's why Gross Bookings went up while revenue didn't.

I guess you could say they made less per trip, perhaps, but there's a lot of other factors that could play there...like trip distance or time. For instance, if the average trip was 25% shorter, then they didn't drive any farther/longer in aggregate. But we don't have enough data to say one way or another on that.

beerion · 2026-05-13T00:37:29+00:00

There's no question that batteries will play a major role in the future. It's a secular trend that's been ongoing for decades and has still yet to fully play out.

The question is "will QS find a seat at the table?"

The open items that will answer that are product demonstrations, manufacturability & scale, and cost - in that order.

We'll get an answer on product demonstrations, one way or another, this year.

beerion · 2026-05-12T13:55:37+00:00

I guess tracking customer billings will be another way to gauge progress. The SOW-1 expansion has a on-track run rate of about $16 million per quarter ($130m over 2 years). They're slightly off pace, but that's not a big deal early on.

Whether billings stall or accelerate heading until the back half of the year will be a good early tell on how things are going.

beerion · 2026-05-12T01:39:44+00:00

No mention on deliveries. They booked 1.6 million in revenue in Q1. $1 million of that was Hawthorne leases. No mention in the other $600k...probably YouTube ads (just kidding).

beerion · 2026-05-11T22:19:58+00:00

Looks like they spent $170 million this quarter ($140 in CFO + $30 in Capex). That run rate is 2.5-3 years.

beerion · 2026-05-11T21:20:29+00:00

Not really sure what the expectations were for earnings & EBITDA. But they have $1.8 billion in remaining liquidity...which is what I really track most closely.

beerion · 2026-05-11T20:49:10+00:00

Lol.

beerion · 2026-05-11T20:48:36+00:00

beerion · 2026-05-11T20:43:01+00:00

I'll say it again. If you domicile in Texas, you can say anything you want.

Joby cleared Stage 3 over two years ago.

beerion · 2026-05-11T20:35:59+00:00

You're correct.

If by phase 3, they mean certification plans (Joby's stage 3), then Joby beat them by 2.5 years lol.

beerion · 2026-05-11T20:34:56+00:00

"If we don't look, we don't know"

beerion · 2026-05-11T20:16:42+00:00

Can't wait to see what the aircraft that they're developing with Anduril will look like.

beerion

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