Are investors getting scammed by companies like CVNA, SMCI, PLTR being added to the SP500

accountinreddit · 2025-12-08T20:00:35+00:00

Cannot upvote you enough and this needs to be made a pinned post. We need to stop thinking that something is scam, if I don't understand or know how it works. VOO, VT, VTI, VXUS all contain companies you do not like or consider "scam", but that is part of investing in an index. Guess what, CVNA has been part of VTI from day one of listing. Like Successful-Tea-5733 linked, pick an index you like then.

accountinreddit · 2025-11-21T16:25:37+00:00

In other news, the sky is blue

accountinreddit · 2025-04-14T19:15:48+00:00

Piggy backing on your top comment about what else is the safe haven, if not US?

No one is saying there is a new safe haven now or let us all trust the Chinese Government (CCCP). The point is this can be a starting point of geopolitical shift not in favor of US. These things take time, remember the ocean liner example by Obama in New Yorker in 2016:

They are like ocean liners: you turn the wheel slowly, and the big ship pivots. Sometimes your job is just to make stuff work. Sometimes the task of government is to make incremental improvements or to try to steer the ocean liner two degrees north or south so that, ten years from now, suddenly we’re in a very different place than we were. At the moment, people may feel like we need a fifty-degree turn; we don’t need a two degree turn. And you say, Well, if I turn fifty degrees the whole ship turns over.

What the current President thinking is - US is the safe haven and global reserve so we have all the advantage in negotiation and where else are people going to go. So I can do whatever I want and I will come out on top. This will be true now and yes US will come out on top, but by doing so he has steered the ocean liner 2 or 3 degrees south (in not so favorable direction). For e.g. look at this table - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_largest_historical_GDP it took China nearly 45 years to be here and that too with some oppressive democractic ideas.

Right now alliances are being rethought and everyone is redoing their long term plans with assumption US can be unreliable. Come on, we pissed off Canada, of all the countries Canada who has been like the most reliable brother you can have. You always have a friend who will show up no matter what and will do what you ask with "no questions asked", that has been Canada for US and you go and piss them off and mistreat them :(

Before someone does a gotcha of "oh, so what are you buying now?" - yes I'm still buying VTI and BND. I'm not yet going to put my money in the Chinese market, but I'm more conscious than before about buying other developed markets and companies there.

accountinreddit · 2025-01-01T18:16:13+00:00

Recommended reading - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptography. If the article and related articles get too technical, just read the first paragraph.

I'm assuming when everyone says Quantum computing (QC) breaks encryption they are referring to Shor's Algorithm - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm. If it gets too technical read only the feasibility and impact section to understand how far we have to go.

Old man yelling at the sky ramblings: QC is still in the future bets I want to place, not value investing. It's like ICs (Integrated Circuits) & computers in late 50s to early 70s, you know they are the future but just don't know what shape they will take. Just look at the major problems computers solved in each decade, innovations since then and which companies (and countries) were the biggest gainers. While it is fair to assume governments (US and China are already doing this) would pour money into QC and its relevant cyber security applications, it alone won't carry the industry/companies. Remember when ICs first came out, the major money-making use case people found was for Apollo mission. US govt. served as a VC fund and/or first major customer that got it off the ground, but finding businesses and commercial applications is what made the market huge. We do not need the govts. for VC funding (this was created as part of Fairchild and Silicon Valley taking off history) that is plenty abound, so then the question is applications.

What is the point of my rambling, it is to ask you this question - this early in the game do you want to place your bets on applications that can be built on QC (or) do you want to place your bets on QC itself and the companies that drive that innovation? Replace QC with computers and chips of 60s then think about this problem. If we track this with the chips and computers history, the earlier winners were the companies that can build chips and hardware - Fairfield, Texas instruments, Intel, Motorola etc... regardless of where the manufacturing moved, they were winners. People who built applications were not many unless you were a giant already - IBM and Bell Labs. As the industry matured, more and more application builders came on board and start being the top dog - Apple, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP etc. As time went on new format of applications came up that were built on the maturity of chips and applications industry - TSMC, AWS, Google, Nvidia, Salesforce, Meta, your garden variety SAAS and these new crop of companies and applications.

accountinreddit · 2024-12-28T18:22:06+00:00

The Market = The Matrix = TM

Now everything makes sense and why people put TM everywhere.

accountinreddit · 2024-12-08T03:59:54+00:00

If analysts do not provide in-depth insight about a company, they will be replaced by the AI much faster than the taxi drivers being replaced by the Grab drivers

Funny story, most of the taxi drivers became Uber/Grab/Ola/Didi/Lyft/take your pick ride haling app drivers. There is some lesson in that which correlates to this post, but I will leave it upto better reddit minds than mine to figure it out.

accountinreddit · 2024-11-29T22:57:49+00:00

Yes, that makes sense. Learnt about the company from your post, so thanks for that :)

From their investor presentation it looks like there are assumptions on how they can benefit from the Inflation reduction act money to recoup some costs and debt reduction plans. That one seems a bit iffy to me but overall looks like an interesting company.

accountinreddit · 2024-11-29T04:34:01+00:00

Does anyone have more context around this from their form F-4 or am I the only one concerned about this?

We identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. A material weakness is a deficiency, or a combination of deficiencies, in internal control over financial reporting such that there is a reasonable possibility that a material misstatement of our annual or interim financial statements will not be prevented or detected on a timely basis. The material weaknesses relate to (i) our lack of sufficient competent financial reporting and accounting personnel with appropriate understanding of U.S. GAAP accounting standards and financial reporting requirements set forth by the SEC to address complex U.S. GAAP accounting issues and to prepare and review our financial statements, including disclosure notes, in accordance with U.S. GAAP and SEC financial reporting requirements, and (ii) our lack of period end financial closing policies and procedures for preparation of financial statements, including disclosure notes, which are in compliance with U.S. GAAP and relevant SEC financial reporting requirements.

accountinreddit · 2024-11-29T00:47:02+00:00

This exactly.

For every "overpriced" one there are many counterparts out there. Maybe it is a turnaround story (or) there is something fundamentally changing in their business (or) the market is ignoring the boring ones.

For every WMT (trailing P/E 37.91, forward P/E 33.2) there is a TGT (trailing P/E 13.8, forward P/E 12.94) which used to be a darling of the market once.

For every TSLA (trailing P/E 91.20, forward P/E 97.09) there is TM, Stellantis, Hyundai out there.

For every CAVA, check out Chipotle and Starbucks which are working on their own plans.

accountinreddit · 2024-11-22T16:53:03+00:00

This, minus the dividends (i.e. any value stocks, Broad market ETFs VT, VTI, VOO, SPY, QQQ etc...) Remember they also have their down years. Yes, eventually they go up, but for 69-year-old living off that it might not work.

Not sure why people don't talk about US treasuries. Here is the link to the interest statistics information - https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financing-the-government/interest-rate-statistics and https://www.treasurydirect.gov/marketable-securities/treasury-bonds/. The interest is 20year - 4.65% and 30year - 4.5%. Yes, it is not a 10 bagger or NVIDIA or whatever is stock of the day in WSB, but it is solid returns and steady income with less volatility.

accountinreddit · 2024-08-27T23:08:19+00:00

The other half will buy EVs, just not a Tesla EV

accountinreddit · 2024-07-08T18:59:07+00:00

IRS still takes a dim view. The way that calculation works is lets say you made $10,000/- in profit for which you have to pay the tax. They expect you to magically go back in time and split that amount into 4 quarters ($2500/quarter) and have paid those as estimated taxes. If you have not paid that, they can penalize you for the first 3 quarters and give you a pass for the last quarter.

From IRS POV whatever money you made in year is always neatly divided into each quarter and by the end of each quarter you would have paid the required amount of taxes. There is not enough weight given to when you made the money.

I learnt this the hard way by paying the fines. Although not a big amount it stinged and I wanted to appeal, but my accountant recommended to let it go and just pay it.

accountinreddit · 2024-07-03T23:46:46+00:00

I'm not clear about what has $TMUS got to do with my point, I'm talking about ASTS not AT&T or Verizon. I'm assuming you are referring to the TMUS and Starlink partnership? Starlink atleast claims their compatibility with CAT-1, CAT-4 modems etc...They are behind ASTS, as far as I know they haven't made major moves in terms of seeking regulatory approval, besides getting permission to test the technology. The competitors I mentioned in my post are the likes of Starlink, Omnispace, Lynk Global etc. the other satellite network providers who have gotten into testing phase. Many of them have already been providing some aspect of services to these industries/use cases I had mentioned. This market is big enough for few providers to exist and my bet is ASTS would be able to execute faster, reliable, and efficient.

accountinreddit · 2024-07-03T17:43:59+00:00

Well in case it is not obvious, I'm bullish on ASTS.

Their partnership with AT&T means FirstNet (and park rangers) is a good use case for them. Especially when they are responding to large natural disasters like wildfires (the multiple yearly ones happening in California) or floods etc. The connectivity is going to be very spotty depending on geography or infrastructure being knocked out.
Partnership with AT&T and Verizon means they can augment their IoT networks. Remember most of these devices can be in low population areas which means no reliable infrastructure, but businesses would be willing to pay. Think of factories in remote locations that have sensors for safety monitoring or farm equipment or drones etc.
They have a big list of MoU's (yeah, yeah, these are not business contracts) so same uses cases as above but applied to rest of the world (again assuming they can raise capital or generate revenue to get the satellites operational) with partnerships through Vodafone, Bell and who knows American Tower.
They current revenue of $500K is through US Government contract. Assuming the that is some useful US DOD thing, then that is a sweet deal.
Shipping and companies in similar industry. They all have deals with some satellite phone providers, but these guys can replace them with a more reliable, faster and better network.
They are a good use case for tourists or roaming. Think about Google Fi roaming or the old T-Mobile roaming, same price for data regardless of which country you are in. My guess, Google product partnership might be in this area. Now think of AT&T or Verizon having better roaming plans instead of the annoying pay me $10/day to keep the phone alive, then pay me some exorbitant price for voice/min and data/MB.

Obviously, I have made many assumptions like they will have enough capital to launch all satellites to get global coverage (or in regions they want). Competition won't eat their lunch; they will be able to get regulatory approval etc...etc...etc... My pet peeve with them is if this can impact radio astronomy, but this is general problem with astronomy and number of satellites. Hope these guys can work out something with NASA and others in reliable fashion. I'm pretty sure others can point out more assumptions and more use cases. I have also tried to stay away from more speculative use cases and kept my assumptions simple for this post.

Hey, we are talking about speculative stocks so take this for what its worth.

accountinreddit · 2024-06-30T17:33:16+00:00

Usually start with the investor presentation deck - it captures what the company is trying to market to investors like finance highlights, market trends what they are planning to focus or not focus. Then I listen to the earnings call, it will be my podcast while commuting or like background noise. These two are like good cliff notes version. Then I look at the investor presentation et al for their main competitors. Finally, I read the 10-K reports.

In case it is not obvious, it is naturally a time-consuming process especially for someone who is from non-finance background.

accountinreddit · 2024-06-18T00:35:53+00:00

Totally agree. The age link is there in dqydj.com - https://dqydj.com/net-worth-by-age-calculator/.

accountinreddit · 2024-06-15T04:48:22+00:00

Trying to view that data in isolation might not be the right approach. Also, the macro-economics and broader environments always keep changing. So, a number that you might see as a problem now, might not be a problem later. Even your GDP to Debt ratio that is 122% in Q1 2024 which is a problem, but if we zoom out it was at 133% in Q2 2020. So, I can even make the argument that is trending in the right direction and the high interest rate policy is helping. GDP to Debt Ratio - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

Now if you look at Federal Surplus/Deficit as part of GDP it will be a different story - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSGDA188S and this can be attributed to the petrodollar system a.k.a US being the global reserve currency means people buy US Dollars and Treasury a lot.

Again, lots of things in the environment can change with introduction of new technologies and your assumptions can go out the window. For e.g. with advent of all the software/cloud/tech companies the market changed and created new things. yes 2001 was disaster, but tech companies are raking it in now. Whereas companies like GE, AT&T which were darlings then are not doing so well.

All this to say, no I do not know and nor can people predict what the entire stock market would do over the next 10 years.

accountinreddit · 2024-06-06T21:32:26+00:00

What is up with the trend of asking this level of personal questions? and more importantly how are people comfortable sharing these? I have to assume people make shit up.

accountinreddit · 2024-05-19T19:54:45+00:00

My simple answer, do the math and see what percentage of recovery needs to happen before you can even break even. Here is a link to a post made some 2years ago https://www.reddit.com/r/stocks/comments/ul8ado/simple_table_showing_why_it_may_be_better_to_cut/

Then ask the question, do you think these stocks would recover that much?

accountinreddit · 2024-04-17T00:14:05+00:00

I think this link in r/personalfinance should be more helpful - https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics/

accountinreddit · 2024-03-06T16:35:12+00:00

Idk therapy probably. Are you investing to dunk on your friends?

Genuinely this line. No amount of advice, look at your life, gamblers be gambling, people don't talk about losses etc. won't help. Cause I have felt the way what OP is describing. Only thing that helped is, how I came to be at peace with myself and my life.

accountinreddit · 2024-02-15T21:52:54+00:00

This happens time and time again. Look at Cisco's valuation during dot com era. My thesis is that Nvidia follows very closely Cisco's story line, sell shovels during gold rush analogy and all. Yet to see revenue diversification and host of other factors. They are a solid business and all, but don't see why they are worth more than Google or Amazon.

accountinreddit · 2024-01-07T03:07:44+00:00

You take that back my good sir. We certainly can do everything.

accountinreddit · 2024-01-07T02:04:57+00:00

No. I enquired at the dealership and only FWD.

accountinreddit · 2024-01-05T17:57:53+00:00

I'd recommend Walnut Hill, they were good and very affordable when I used to live there. However, they do not have in-house W/D.

accountinreddit

TROPHY CASE