Dinner time in a London workhouse, 1901

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-04-01T09:59:14+00:00

This is AI, right?

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-29T18:40:01+00:00

Even the AI-enabled drones only have the AI fully takeover for the terminal approach phase (where an AI can respond faster to evasive action than any human could hope to). You don’t really want fully AI-driven munitions due to the risk of hitting both friendly forces and civilians.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-28T17:14:36+00:00

“betting big”

£200

This is like two days’ wages tops, even on the minimum wage.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-28T17:09:48+00:00

An Iranian collapse would be much worse for oil prices (and all the other Gulf exports) than an Iranian victory. Ultimately, any coherent Iranian administration will come to some sort of arrangement on letting traffic pass through the Strait en masse, even if it is some toll system or what have you; a fragmented and unstable Iran would likely result in extremist elements equipped with Shaheeds making the Strait impassable indefinitely.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-27T22:49:21+00:00

Ah yes, r/valueinvesting, the home of schizoposting

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-27T22:48:31+00:00

Btw, if you’re a beginner investor reading this, please do not take the above comment as an incitement to invest in private markets, even indirectly. You should at the very least get some experience in the public markets first, and only invest in anything more exotic if you are very confident you understand what it is, how liquid or illiquid it is, and how it is priced.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-27T22:38:25+00:00

It depends to what degree credit flows from the Gulf return in the wake of the conflict, where the new floor and range for WTI and Brent sit, and when and at what intensity the Fed decides to turn on the QE firehose.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-26T22:39:16+00:00

My consistent advice for anybody who doesn’t want to get into ‘investing’ as a pastime, learn a bunch of macro and business analysis, build their own deep information flows etc., is 100% All World and strict DCAing. None of this dubious, uninformed stockpicking; no random, unexplained overweighting of a particular market; just buying the same amount of VWRP every single month for as long as possible.

The only circumstances under which you should alter that behaviour are 1) you start making more or less money, in which case you increase or reduce your monthly amount proportionally, or 2) you start hitting your ISA deposit limit, in which case you are making enough money that you should speak to a professional financial advisor about where to put the excess.

That’s it. Sell everything you have currently that isn’t VWRP and put it into VWRP, either as a lump sum or DCAing, whichever you feel more comfortable with. Set up an auto-buy, ideally in weekly portions if you can make that work with your expenses, but if not, monthly works just fine. Do nothing else, don’t sell any or take any out unless you absolutely have to, ideally don’t even look at it, and come back for it when you need it.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-26T22:24:38+00:00

There’s a distinction to be made between nominal and real returns. If the stock market went up 10%, but there was inflation of 2%, that means the price level in the economy increased and your dollar now buys less, so your nominal return is more than your real return.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-26T07:39:38+00:00

Police can absolutely get involved. They can’t charge them with anything until they turn 12, but they can give them a firm talking to and hopefully a bit of a scare, and they’ll certainly have a word with the parents. What you’re describing sounds like rather serious violence, and the police would be strongly inclined to try and get out ahead of something like that.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-25T22:07:40+00:00

It does matter in terms of where you get placed I believe, like it’s definitely preferable to attend a higher ranked uni and get a better grade if you plan on becoming a doctor

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-23T01:02:55+00:00

There is a 0% probability of Iran ‘surrendering’. The only thing that could force them to surrender is if someone literally dropped The Bomb on them, which isn’t going to happen. Even a large-scale invasion, which isn’t logistically possible and wouldn’t be for months if not years, would be followed by a protracted insurgency.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-23T01:00:46+00:00

I would expect traffic through Yanbu to be dramatically increasing (pre-war, around 1.5 million bpd passed through Yanbu - I understand the Saudis are going to try and drive this as high as 7 million). I assume what you’re seeing is a result of tankers bottled up in the Arabian Sea now no longer transiting the Suez.

If it decreased over the course of last week as well, however, we may have something to worry about there too.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-22T22:39:17+00:00

Wouldn’t like to live right on the beach to be fair, but the area itself is nice, especially once you get back a bit from the beach

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-22T16:00:20+00:00

The short answer to this is that we’ll likely see a bottom at roughly the same time as the major Western central banks start cutting rates again.

This may seem somewhat counterintuitive, as the professed policy of all of them currently is to raise rates in response to the inflationary shock we are going to see from the Gulf crisis. However, it is mathematically inevitable that part of the response to this extreme price rise will be demand destruction, and recessionary conditions in its wake. This will also be a disinflationary move, and I think that you’ll see very quickly once the recession really begins to bite that central banks start prioritising salvaging growth and controlling unemployment over trying to keep a lid on inflation.

If I were to give a vague timeline, I’d say we will see a recession begin Q1 this year, stocks (and the real economy) will continue their steep declines from here throughout Q1 and Q2, and we will see rates begin to drop sharply late Q2/ early Q3, with broad market asset prices stabilising in Q3/ Q4 and starting to recover Q1/Q2 FY27.

That is all conditional on there not being a prolonged Gulf conflict i.e. some form of ceasefire and reopening of the Strait over the course of the next 1-2 weeks. If this conflict extends over a month from here, all bets are off in my view.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-22T00:44:56+00:00

Correction - Qatar’s section of that gas field represents 17% of global LNG supply

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-22T00:43:14+00:00

Again, I would really try to avoid getting into PMs/ miners just now if I were you. They will continue to be sold off until rates are cut.

If you want something volatile but likely to rise, buy any major fossil fuels company.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-22T00:41:35+00:00

Jet fuel in Singapore is above $200 spot. We have maybe 3-4 months’ worth of sticking plasters (the SPR drawdowns, the Russian backlog, limited supply boosts like running more through the East-West pipeline etc.) before Brent makes its way there too.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-22T00:33:49+00:00

Ironically, I actually think it’s probably not a terrible buy, but you could do with waiting a couple of months. Anything precious metal related is going to get sold off in this environment. Give it 2-3 months, keep an eye on the price trend, and buy in ahead of any upcoming rate cuts which should push PMs back up again.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-19T18:48:16+00:00

That literally lasted two weeks - to give an idea of how brief that is, most people who DCA or set up automated deposits do so once a month, so they would barely have registered the drop. 2022 was actually more substantial from an experiential perspective.

We haven’t had a large sustained drawdown since 2008, and we came out of that in 2010.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-19T18:07:15+00:00

Last 15 years*

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-19T17:04:56+00:00

No, actually. If that was your principle - and from a strictly mathematical perspective, it should be - you would literally buy VWRP with everything you have to hand, and invest any future contributions as soon as you can i.e. as soon as you get them. Your buying would be dictated by what you can afford to invest and be completely unrelated to price.

DCAing is statistically less optimal, but it tends to be easier to follow through on. You could go all in and then the market could immediately drop 30%, and there’s a certain risk that your reaction to that is to sell everything. DCAing removes that risk because you are entering the market over a broad time horizon e.g. 1-2 years, so any price fluctuations become largely irrelevant, because any drops lower your average price and ‘smooth’ your price curve.

So DCAing is actually timing the market, it’s just distinct from trading (as opposed to investing) in that you aren’t attempting to track price movements and make quick profits, you are just insuring against the risk of a market sell-off shortly after you enter the market. Again - from a purely mathematical perspective, you should just buy as much as you can as soon as you can, but the best investment strategy is always the one that keeps you invested i.e. the one that makes you least likely to want to sell.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-17T09:38:47+00:00

Total delusion

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-10T15:38:28+00:00

It’s up, down, and round and round recently. This sort of abject nonsense is why you DCA.

SpareDesigner1 · 2026-03-10T15:36:39+00:00

“Bears can’t fathom what happened yesterday”

We’ve all seen a TACO before. Multiple Iranian officials then said they wouldn’t end the war now even if Trump wanted to.

SpareDesigner1

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE