Mungofitch has left the building, but his bottom detector fired off

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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There are no guarantees that the signal is correct that it’s even ‘a bottom’, though waiting until there is a strong rally following the signal is one way of avoiding buying too early in a series of down days that all trigger the detector, you could still be exposed to buying before another major leg down. I.e. just look at the numerous indicators during the 2008-2009 bear market.

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The detector fired moderately strongly twice in July 2008, and there was a bounce after the series of drops that made it fire, so the indicator would suggest buying, with a likely entry ~1250. The S&P500 was ~20% off its peak at that point, so pretty comparable to the current situation.

It took 4 years for the index to finally pass and stay above that buy point again, after the serious selling ramped up in the fall-winter of 2008, dropping the index to ~750, a 40% loss from the rough entry point, and it eventually dropped to ~675 in March 2009. There were a whole slew of firings of the indicator in October and November. If you bought in after the first big up day following the string of market massacres in October, you’d have bought around 1,000, which would have ended up being a decent entry point, back ahead within a year, but still exposed to a ~32% decline to the bottom in March 2009.

The moral of this story might be that if the market is richly valued, and the prospects for the US and world economy are shaky, don’t go crazy off of a firing or two of the indicator, because if the macro environment continues to worsen there could be a LONG way down, and quite a long recovery time.

On the other hand, I have personally backed away from trying to time the market after I botched it badly during the 2020 bear. I’ll just try to ride it out this time. Who knows what the future holds. Maybe inflation will be more cooperative going forward and the Fed can stop raising rates soon, we have a soft landing and this ends up being a mild bear, not a vicious one, and this drop is roughly as low as it goes this time?

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23

Google does seem to have a knack for never really bring new projects to market. Stadia never should have been green lighted in the first place. It was never going to work. Unforced error for sure.

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I’m trying to have it both ways. ;^) Hold enough good divi payers to more than cover expenses, while having the surplus in FDIC insured accounts.

Steve

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I am in cash. Plus depending on my sales I will have more cash.

I am not timing the market. There is no such thing. I am waiting for a much less risky opportunity. We all need to be opportunistic. But many aren’t.

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Well, probably not the same pile of dollars, but I remember when a photocopier company named Xerox invented the Ethernet and connected laser printers and graphics terminals with affixed mouses to the local area network before there was an IBM PC or an Apple II.

OTOH, I guess if you added up all the eventual markets for those products it actually would be a pretty large number of pallets of money.

Jeff

Jeff

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A candidate part-of-a-company: Xerox PARC.

(It’s apparently a separate company now, but it wasn’t when the stuff I’m talking about happened.)

Creator of the user interface Apple copied for the Mac. Most of it was on the Xerox Alto, which debuted in 1973. A better version was on the Xerox Star, which debuted in 1982 and then got as much marketing as the average dead skunk.

I’ve also seen claims that the internet should have been a Xerox product, as PARC had demonstrated all the necessary equipment and technologies before the Defense Department decided a nationwide data network would be a good idea.

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Thanks all. Xerox is an excellent answer and one I should have been able to think of myself. But did not.

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I’m still wistful for the publishing software on the Xerox Star, which was my first office computer.

I’ve never understood a lot of the business decisions made by IBM and Xerox (and JC Penny), but that’s probably why I’m not a business executive.

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I started my computer resale business back in 1980. Long story made short, what started as a mail order provider of microcomputer equipment became a firm which did design/builds of government data centers.

During the more than three decades that I ran that three-ring circus I was constantly exposed to products ahead of their time (some of which I recognized as such and some that I didn’t) and products which were mis-marketed which could have been massive industry changers, but festered in some small corner of the marketplace.

Some of the errors were due to technical propeller-heads who pitched their products to nerds without the power of adoption, but more products were killed by executives who were afraid that their jobs would be jeopardized by new products they didn’t understand.

Xerox executives never understood that the advent of the laser printer wouldn’t just cost them part of their bonuses, but nearly their entire business. The same attitude had the group which developed the IBM PC sequestered down in Florida, well away from headquarters.

I picked up AutoCad as a product early enough to have a double digit dealer number. IUT was a product whose potential few understood (I had the advantage of having both a construction and a computer background as well as being a Professional Engineer) and, at one point, the sales of CAD systems wrapped around the software made up a fair proportion of our sales (as high as 25%) and had me hiring architects and engineers as sales staff - which ultimately gave my firm its ability to do design work.

On the other hand, I ignored a company which showed me a combination router, bridge and hub (which we would now call a layer 3 switch). NEC had a dye sublimation color printer which was cheaper and produced better color than laser printers, but they positioned it against much cheaper inkjet printers. We could sell all we could get our hands on, but the product died for lack of general interest. The same company, on another occasion, had a “portrait” format high resolution monochrome printer which was perfect for word processing (think Xerox Star) that they tried to sell as a general purpose monitor and got few takers (we bought a boatload and marketed them properly, but their national marketing was appalling and, again, the product died).

On occasion, the opposite was true and, for example, Xerox kept an obsolete model of the Diablo daisywheel printer which sold for far more money and was slower than their current model because federal government purchasing agents continued to buy it without bothering to see if there were better alternatives.

From a procurement standpoint, we actively looked to take advantage of “channel conflict” situations and, depending on manufacturer, presented ourselves as a dealer, reseller, value-added reseller, installer, distributor, OEM or whatever alphabet soup would get us the best pricing and terms and conditions of sale.

Jeff

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Oh yeah - I forgot:

BAck in 1980, Teletype had a high resolution graphics terminal with an attached mouse. Since there was no software available (that I was aware of) to make use of this, we never ended up selling any.

Jeff

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Google monetizes almost everything, including products made by others (like Apple iPhone, Samsung Android phones, etc). Their business is advertising (mostly via search), and they are VERY good at it and have a substantial market share. Their business is not selling “stuff”, so they don’t need much direct margin when they sell stuff.

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(Which is great, till you get a collapse in advertising revenue, because putting 5x youtube ads in front of each youtube video just destroys youtube, it doesn’t add 5x revenue)

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This differs from my view. I’m almost a daily user of Google Maps. While I frequently use the GPS function while driving, I also use different Maps views prior to traveling to a new area. I suspect Maps monetizes it users by selling to business but don’t know the details. I do know that I would pay an annual subscription fee to access Google Maps.

I also use Google translate at no cost. I’m not clear how Google monetizes this feature. My most frequent usage is to use the camera function on the phone to translate written language, such as on a menu in a foreign country. I’d also pay Google to have access to this App.

I own Alphabet stock for may reasons, but one reason is I believe they have the ability to further monetize many of their products.

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@crackdclaw - I love lobster - just saying!!

I’m pretty sure that google monetizes your activity by:

  • using AI to gather a profile picture of you - where you travel, where you shop, what languages you translate to…

  • Synthesizes this data into a pretty accurate view of your interests and travels

  • From that, they can offer you purchasing / promotional deals

  • Or sell that information to others who will offer you purchasing / promotional deals

Either way, google makes money and the more accurate a picture they have of you, the more they can charge for that information because google’s paying customers (the advertisers) are more confident that they can turn that lead into a sale.

Just my 2 cents.
'38Packard

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Looking at possibly setting up an NFT exchange platform, Google and Apple are charging the little guys 30% to be in the Play Store and App Store. This based on early video game charges to sell the games not in the Play or App stores mind you. When I go to Opensea it is on their website as mobile ready. The little guys foolish enough to use the app stores are getting creamed.

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This might not be the best time to set up an NFT exchange.

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Most of the issue with citing trading volume is in the value. The headlines misstate they are looking at the dynamic of pricing values that have dropped a great deal in favor of discussing it as a traffic or trading decline only.

snippet from your article

While NFT trading volume reached a record high of $17 billion in January, it fell to $466 million by September, as reported by Bloomberg.

Now consider Eth was off at just under $1000 by roughly 80% from its high of $4700. And in the process NFTs are off. Meaning the drop of 97% some 17% at the very bottom and $1300/4700 27% off means NFTs at these lows are roughly off only 17% plus 7% or 24% over all. The actual trading has held up. It is in a tight range towards the bottom of that range BUT NOT in decline.

Our platform was held up by another company our CEO manages. He is bringing in his CIO as a partner. That movement of resources has been worked out. But the thinking is to go slow. Your post has me thinking, I need to show him your linked article and discuss moving faster because the perceptions are different than the reality of down markets. Our CEO’s other company was to be sold this year. He is prolonging that because of current market values into three years from now. That does not mean we need to delay with our NFT platform.

Thanks really, this has been a useful exchange for me.

This project sold out today within minutes. Interesting way of using NFTs.

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I think your math is off. The easiest way to compare while adjusting for the effects of the $/ETH conversion rate is just to express both trading volumes in ETH.

ETH wasn’t $4,700 in January. That peak was in 2021. $17 billion in January, when ETH was never really higher than $3,700, translates to about 4.6 million ETH in trading volume. $466 million in September, when ETH was never lower than $1,200, translates to about 0.39 ETH in trading volume. About a 92% reduction in trading volume in the native currency at a minimum (the reality is that ETH traded well below $3.7K for most of January and well above $1.2K for most of September).

There’s no way that you can consider that NOT in decline. Actual trading has not held up. It’s been cut to ribbons.

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S/B 0.39 million ETH - so you have 4.6 million ETH of NFT activity in January falling to 0.39 million ETH in September. A 92% drop.

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Al,

There are around 30k trades per day for around $12 million in volume per day.

900k trades per month and $360 million per month. This measure may not be picking up all NFT sales. Opensea is 60% of the market taking 2.5% on trades so $5.4 million in revenues at a low in the market.

That is very volatile. That is not a death march.

This is like looking at KO in 1986 and saying it is over. Nonsense.

When setting up a platform it depends on how you come at it.

As Eth and BTC rise again excitement will build. Equities are likely to be falling during the beginnings of BTC and Eth’s rise. The millennials are far less likely to be in equities. Know your clientele.

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