Betting on higher rates can be done using interest rate futures: https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/interest-rates.html These are fairly complicated instruments though so you'll want to do a bit of reading in order to be sure you're making the bet you want to make.
Betting on AI is more complicated: Obviously chip makers are likely beneficiaries, along with tech giants, in particular Google via Deepmind appears to be a leader in this area. But there are other ways for this sort of thing to play out, a lot of companies HNers probably never think about are investing in AI automation for their factories and automation in various ways. One possible future is that Deepmind builds The General AI Solution, and then licenses it to everyone. Another possible future is that the tech becomes so easy to build that each company just builds its own tailored solution for its particular problem.
I think I find the latter solution somewhat more plausible, but both are definitely in play. How you invest to benefit from that is tricky. It's likely in that scenario that some big companies will develop solutions in house, and others will buy startups that you'll never have a chance to invest in. Your job as an investor at this stage would be to figure out which big companies that you can invest in are likely to be the ones who do this successfully.
And when I talk about big companies here I don't necessarily mean the big tech companies. I mean companies like Tyson that makes chicken, or chemical companies, or firms like Accenture, etc. This is the harder side of the bet, because it's going to play out over quite a while, and there is a lot of uncertainty about exactly how.
Moreso than AI, ML will continue to integrate into business and improve overall productivity. I don’t worry so much about monopolies in AI, because compared to the business solutions from ML — which are often much smaller, boutique models that perform more efficiently than large, general purpose models.
I believe the soon to be realized lesson is that solving one specific problem is significantly cheaper than trying to leverage much more expensive models built to solve a great many problems.
There’s still a lot of runway left in “small” models (eg BERT) that are still being researched and augmented to solve common business problems. 10 years from now, I believe some form of the current models will become industry standards as methods for solving specific problems.
Yep, I totally agree, as a median forecast. But the future is always uncertain, and it is possible the things we're seeing now will hit some sort of wall, where only large companies will be able to build highly general models and everyone else will be left licensing from them. I think that's unlikely, but I just wanted to enumerate it as a possibility. And when you're constructing portfolios for long time scales, you want to think about all the likely paths things might take and try to roughly assign a weight to them and construct your portfolio accordingly.
Global stock market is 18 P/E, so returning 5.5% + inflation medium & long term, assuming no growth. That's 14% nominal right now, more if there's any growth (which there usually is medium & long term).
Really enjoyed this piece. Many of my developper colleagues like to boast that emotions have no place in our field. However this is going against human nature and is in my opinion futile.
I wonder how the younger generation is supposed to plan for the future? Even myself as a 30 year old, I'm finding it very difficult to plan my financial future considering traditional personal finance knowledge can become irrelevant within my working life-time. Anyone have resources to guide my financial decisions taking into consideration these dooms-day scenarios? Index-fund investing seems bound to failure with such scenarios.
If society is going to hell, there is no safe investment. You’re too young to have lived through the 2008 crisis, but in the months following Lehman Brothers’ failure, friends of mine who invest billions of dollars for clients or themselves were running for the hills - literally. They were prepping their disaster ranches.
Then, in March 2009, a bunch of billionaires got together and decided that the world probably would not end. They put their money back into markets. And they enjoyed an insane period of recovery over the next year, even though the average person didn’t see their own income start to rise for many years.
Here’s the thing about investing when you’re 30: if you think the world is going to end, just give up now and live in the moment. Why save if you believe the world won’t make it beyond 2040? But if you think there is a chance humanity will figure things out and avoid calamity, then index fund investing is the most efficient way for you to participate in the economic system as a part owner of it.
he was 17 in 2008.. I'm sure he remembers it just fine. I know I do, my family lost their business and home. It wasn't exactly something that didn't affect teenagers.
as far as safe investment, you kind of just answered it when talking about the billionaires. property/land with a possible dooms day bunker.
Society ending wouldn't mean everyone would die. I don't think society will end, but if someone truly believes it, there are tangible assets that could be viewed as investments. You could do the prepper stuff and build a secure compound, buy guns and ammunition and buy non perishable food. If society ends, those assets will be ridiculously good investments and appreciate a large multiple in value.
The 2009 collapse was a shake down by the most wealthy that profiteer off of the debasement of the US currency, they figured out the game and knew they were too big to fail. There was never any risk to society collapsing imminently, that was propaganda by Paulson and Obama to make them seem like innocent little sweethearts. Our monetary and capital control policy is a slow moving train wreck that started way before 2009. Maybe Nixon?
Either way, fear mongering about what could’ve happened ignores what did happen and how it was predictable by those in power.
In a dooms-day scenario, you're best bet is to affiliate yourself with a local, ideologically coherent group whose identity is driven by a narrative of historical persecution and already practices pooling resources. In the event of government or institutional collapse, members of these groups would automatically switch to treating the group leaders as the main authority. And these leaders would be inclined get their community to take care of each other and pool resources.
Examples would be Jews in Israel and tribes of American natives. If you can assert membership in these groups, it would be a good investment to go through the process before hand.
If you don't have ethnic ties that are useful in that way, you could join a religious sect. The main example would be Mormons. They cluster in communities, have a persecution mentality, and encourage their members to store food and other emergency supplies. You'd have to at least pretend to believe their stuff though. I have trouble thinking of other examples. Perhaps Scientologists? Jahovah's Witnesses? I assume one doesn't just "join" the Amish. Mennonites?
If there are some survivalist groups that are already off-the-grid, that could be an option. Intentional communities, particularly of the survivalist strain, often care about ethnicity too though, particularly the ones in the US.
If you can't join a group, some countries might handle collapse better than others. One might invest in immigrating to a country that could tough out a collapse. Switzerland's canton-based political system seems pretty robust. Iceland has geothermal energy. The way the Japanese came together as a country during Fukushima was impressive (but you'd probably need to be ethnically Japanese to cash in on this). Rich folks seem to think New Zealand is a smart place to bug out.
New Zealand brings up another point. If a place, country or no, is a remote island has the ability to support itself without imports, it could also be a good option.
If you're asking for financial advice based on the assumption that conventional finance may collapse, your hedge would be to invest in making yourself self-sustainable. Land, wood, gas, knowledge.
I live in a not so big town in Oregon and spend plenty of time outside the city. Ordinary people who live a more rural existence are mainly fine people. "End of the world" people are... a mixed bag. Some of them are unwell.
My guess (or I guess hope?) also as a 30 year old is the system is going to limp along until after I'm dead. Things will get much worse but the US economy won't collapse to the point where it's better for me to try subsistence farming. I don't live on the coast or in the more deserty regions of the US so I'm pretty isolated from the direct effects.
To answer your question, I recommend actually taking traditional investing advice. But assets that make money, so a farm or rental property. These increase in value and you can lease them for revenue. It’s common to invest in stocks, but due to financing rules & policy since 2008, I think there’s a decent risk of a massive bubble bursting. Land is always valuable (baring pollutants) and it’s a limited commodity.
Diversity is key though. I have a farm, rental property, stock, bonds, crypto, gold/silver, etc.
Regarding the sentiment, It feels like there is a cult of self-destruction (note, these may be true, but sensationalized):
- global warming is going to kill us all
- covid19 will kill is all
- inflation is soaring, better learn to eat bugs
- normalizing abortions
- mass shootings regularly on TV (though rare)
- highly addictive opioids prescribed wildly and having FDA approval (claiming they aren’t addictive)
Freedom is only obtained through owning land. Without owning the means of production, you’re nothing more than a slave. To your point, owning land you can live off of is a protection against all form of “dooms-day” scenarios.
> owning land you can live off of is a protection against all form of “dooms-day” scenarios
In doomsday scenarios I doubt people will respect ownership rights very much. In that scenario, "ownership" isn't as much of a protection as your ability to defend and maintain control over whatever valuable resources you have on the land.
Guess what we mean by doomsday, but I’d 100% prefer to own a rural property if say the electric grid fails than a city. A lot of farms are installing solar, grow their own food, etc.
In terms of protection, I guess it’s possible people will come to try and take your land, but that really depends on the scenario. In either case, if you live more rurally you’re going to probably need a gun. If you have roaming bands of criminals you’re still going to want to own your own land as opposed to a massive complex or something.
Regardless, this person was asking about financial advice. You’re still better off owning land in most cases as opposed to stocks or gold if it hits the fan. If you’re really worried about it hitting the fan, invest in guns and ammo.
You don't even need a doomsday scenario. The Landless Workers Movement[0] has existed in Brazil for decades and it basically consists of large groups of people forcefully occupying private land. It ain't pretty when it gets violent (and it does).
Owning land is the first step in securing control over that land (and establishing other infrastructure) while you still have the option to use capital and global economies of scale to your advantage.
Absolutely, you'll need to own guns and be willing to use them. As some decide to not respect your right to life, you either to learn to reciprocate, or perish.
I feel like you need more than guns, as there are already groups preparing for this sort of thing are not only well armed, but appear to be well armored as well. Ofc, the sort of thing I imagine would counter that well could probably land you an open file with the FBI if you do too much research into them.
Agree with this. It's common for preppers/survivalists to believe that somehow the chaos isn't going to devour them.
I'm really fine with being prepared for disasters, human-made or natural, but in a complete upheaval of global civilization you need more than property and a castle loaded with ammo to thrive. Looking at foreign countries ravaged by civil war, can you really imagine riding that out because you bought a farm?
Do you really own land? Or do you have an indefinite lease on it from the state? If it turned out there were valuable mineral deposits under your farm, kiss your farm goodbye.
Or if a property developer wants it and can convince the local governing authority that they will grab more tax revenue by forcing you sell it to him at a shitty price.
All of those are transitory cultural issues, backed by the increasingly sensationalist media, except covid and global warming. Covid has already spent its wrath for the most part. Climate change (global warming, as a term, doesn't cover the multipronged destruction of ecosystems throughout the world) is legitimately catastrophic; if anything it's undersold. The only question is the exact timeline of its effects.
Definitely agree on this. My biggest peeve is that carbon emissions is a misdirection or at least not anywhere near the #1 issue. US has produced less CO2 (almost) every year since 1990.
The real concern are the pesticides that have reduced insect populations. They build up in the ecosystem and can take many years to flush out.
> owning land you can live off of is a protection against all form of “dooms-day” scenarios
I imagine that global warming, if it hits some threshold/tipping point that changes the climate enough to wreck the land, might be the one counter-example here. Though I don't know enough about farming to know if it could sustain through a wide range of climates and potential consequences of severe temperature/climate change.
Rough rule of thumb: if you're in a temperate climate now, you're probably ok. Crops that will grow well will change, but as long as the water doesn't dry up, you'll be able to grow something.
Strictly speaking, pour all your resources into preventing the collapse is the best choice (with the usual prisoner dilemma applying). No kind of investing will survive a society collapse. Money is a mean to delay your own consumption. And once society collapses, a lot of consumables are just lost.
That goes to the next rational action: spend like there is no tomorrow, adjusted for risk of society not-collapsing? Pick your poison, I guess.
You can rest assured that the true doom will come from a place you didn't plan for. The traditional pf knowledge is to diversify so that any number of events wont adversely affect your financial future. I think the future will present more channels of diversification from the traditional stock and bonds but the principles remain the same.
>I wonder how the younger generation is supposed to plan for the future?
Take a few lessons from people who live in 2nd- and 3rd-world countries. They used to not rely on government or expect financial stability for decades ahead. Yet, they survive pretty well and some even thrive.
People didn't always have stable currencies, pension funds, and unemployment benefits over their history.
Max out 401k, IRA if eligible, mutual funds for the rest, live below you means. Don’t finance more than 30% of your income (after taxes!) on house, cars, or boats.
Live in or plan to move to a lower cost location during retirement.
I think you're misunderstanding what I was saying. I do all the normal things for investing/retirement. If nothing in the world changes I will retire comfortably and early.
My concern is that none of those things will matter in 30 years. Dumping money into 401ks/markets/property used to be sound investment advice. Today they feel more like speculation. Even holding USD/bonds is a gamble. I'm not talking about traditional risk tolerance like large/small cap or foreign markets.
If you haven't gone to a financial advisor, I highly recommend it. Best decision I made, I happily pay her annual fee because I am guaranteed to make/save more in the long run with her advice each year than without it.
I have been to a few financial advisors and still use one. The problem is I lack faith in all of our current financial systems and the "solid" advice of investing in mutual funds, indexes and property seem to be long-term speculation these days, not investment.
Well my experience was different. I was doing nothing. I was letting paychecks accumulate in my checking account, and just guessing at what percentage I should be contributing to my retirement. Turns out that wasn't the right thing to do, and her advice showed me why.
I think you're over-simplifying - land with water access today doesn't mean anything in ten years with continued climate change. Unless you have water rights (and even if you do), that water won't necessarily be present (or potable) in ten years, and your water rights likely won't matter either.
The dead sibling to this comment is correct. I suspect, though, that it was flagged not because of its inaccuracy, but simply because it goes against the feel-good positive capitalism that is so pervasive throughout western society.
It wasn't flagged, it was killed by software. That's what happens to comments posted by banned accounts.
If you see a [dead] post that shouldn't be dead, you can vouch for it by clicking on its timestamp, then clicking 'vouch' at the top of its page. There's a small karma threshold (> 30) before vouch links appear.
I suspect it may have been downvoted due to the ending "that's all you can do to prep". Dead uncle comment (parent's sibling eh?) is a good start, but far from "all you can do".
As a VIM user I use Blink Shell connected to EC2 instance running Ubuntu. If you’re used to macOS/Linux environments you‘ll not miss anything, and with Mosh support you will be always connected. Users that don’t use VIM or want to use different approach also have an option to do so with code-server, Coder or by using native editors(Textastic, Pythonista or play.js).
In addition to Blink Shell I also use Inspect Browser, Rest, Jayson, TLS Inspector, and native GitHub client.
Margarine without trans fats is readily available and can be a healthier fat than butter though. But I agree the initial, high trans-fat margarines were bad.
Red meat is not very hard to beat in terms of negative health outcomes, so I doubt plant-based meats will be as horrid as the initial margarine put to market.
> Margarine without trans fats is readily available and can be a healthier fat than butter though
No.
> high trans-fat margarines were bad
There's no such thing as "high trans-fats". Industrial trans fats, like from margarine or other ultra-processed products, is unsafe in any quantity, low or high. There is indeed a principle of toxicology that "the dose makes the poison", however in case of trans fats that dose is really, really low.
> Red meat is not very hard to beat in terms of negative health outcomes
There is in fact no tangible proof that red meat has negative health outcomes. All you have are surrogate markers and some poor and old observational studies that can't be reproduced in randomized controlled trails.
