Market 2017-12-11 & Bitcoin

Santa Rally continues, lead by Tech.

Crude +1.08% to $57.98. Gold -0.31% to $1,244.50.

It is observed that money flows from Gold to Bitcoin as BTC future started to be traded from Sunday.

Winners

OSTK +22% bitcoin fever.

AAPL +2%, iphone X can be shipped in 3-4 days if you order now. I am not sure if this is a good indicator. AAPL lifted QQQ +0.8%. Also  NVDA +1.7%, TWTR +4.5% (people like the double-sized version).

DIS +2.5%, close to reach deal with FOX.

GILD +2.2%, CELG +1.8%. 

LC +10.8%. Bounces back from the selloff on investors day.

My Trades Today

Exit QD, sold the rest @ $14.5.

Bitcoin

Bitcoin is decentralized, peer-to-peer, "cryptocurrency". The core is blockchain technology. Advantage: low inflation, fast and low fee transaction with no purchase tax, user anonymity. Bitcoin payments are processed through a private network of computers linked through a shared program. Each transaction is simultaneously recorded in a "blockchain" on each computer that updates and informs all accounts.

Bitcoin mining: miner runs the program (as gold miners dig), once the miner find a new block (as finding a piece of gold), he/she is rewarded by certain amount of BTC. The block reward is halved every 210,000 blocks, or roughly every 4 years. The block reward started at 50 in 2009, is now 12.5. Currently, 3/4 of possible BTC has been mined as the limit was been set when BTC was introduced. Everybody can be miner. For example, a single facility in China operates more than 25,000 computers for the mining of Bitcoin. These computers use more than $40,000 worth of electricity per day. Besides electricity, GPU (NVDA and AMD) is also in high demand.

Risks:

 1. There are no regulations so far in most of the countries. Governments lose certain tax revenue and tracks of financial activities. It is widely believed BTC is used for money laundry and illegal activities. It is not surprising because some law makers cannot even use smartphone. It is impossible for them to understand cryptocurrency. As blockchain gets popular, there will be regulations for sure. Nobody knows how damaging the regulations would be.

2. If you forget the private key, you lose the received BTC. It is not only lost in your account, it is lost for the whole supply --- nobody can recover it.

3. Hackers are definitely excited. Accidents have been reported from time to time.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wanna Retire Early, Start Planning Now!

Image
It is very important to plan your retirement  as early as possible.  Why? It is because the money you put into investment will grow fast. If you put $1k into your retirement account at age 20, it will grow into $15k when you reach age 60, assuming 7% annual return rate. As comparison, if you put $1k at age 30, it will only grow into only $7.6k, about half of the former case! One popular topic these days is to get retired early, for instance, at the age 50. Assuming the average yearly expense (including medical cost) is $100k and you live to age 90, you need at least $4M by age 50. Of course if you plan to get retired at age 60, then the retirement fund will be smaller ( $3M ). There is a new phrase " Million Dollar Poor "  ---- $1M may only support you from age 70 to 80 --- retire @ age 70 and decease @ age 80. In this article, I would like to introduce the possible stable income sources for retirement. (This is a brief introduction, for more details, p...
Read more

Impacts of Tax Reform --- My First Thoughts

Senate passed the messy tax reform bill last night. The new tax code will start in 2019 (not 2018). The next step will be negotiation between Senate and the House to put together the final bill for Trump to sign. Put aside how the tax reform will affect personal finance, one thing is for sure --- corporate tax rate will drop from 35% to 20% . Multinational companies will also bring cash back to US. Corperate Tax Rate Drop Well, many big companies have already managed to pay low tax rate, for instance, IBM pays only ~10%. You can find tax rate information in companies' ER. Therefore, not everyone benefits from the 20% tax rate. Following are a few companies who are paying tax rate > 35% (most in retailers and restaurants). Restaurant: CMG, DENN... Retailers: CVS, LVS, GPS, JWN, M... Auto retailers: AN, KMX... Healthcare: Anthem, HUM, DGX, DVA... Transportation: JBHT, LUV... Energy: COP, PSX... Industrial: GWW... Financial: SCHW, PAYX... Utility: WEC... ...
Read more

Market 2018-02-05 (WOW.... Bloody)

The quick bounce in the morning turned out to be a trap. The selloff is so violent that there are almost no survivors. The deep dip  around 3pm is especially evil. The market is definitely in panic mode. Dow -4.6% to 24,343. S&P -4.1% to 2,649. Nasdaq -3.8% to 6,967. And the selloff continues in AH. The money floods into Treasuries : 30-year +1.12%. 10-yr +0.74%. 5-yr +0.51% . 10-yr note drops from above 2.85% to 2.7% (about last Tuesday/Wednesday level). This may calm some nerve. Currently it is hard to predict how much lower indices will go. I would suggest to prepare your own shopping list and start to add positions. I am fully positioned myself. I plan to hold and wait. Commodities: Crude -2.73% to $63.66 . Gold +0.28% to $1,341.00 . Bitcoin is also facing another run of selloff as major US & UK banks ban Bitcoin credit card purchases . The lowest price today is below $6600 from coindesk. To be honest, there is no particular bad economic news today. Ins...
Read more

US Treasuries and Yields

Image
Rising Treasury Yields have been a hot topic in the past few weeks, which is blamed to be the reason behind recent  market correction. Some people are totally panicked as 10-year yield approaches 3%. I would suggest to " Keep Calm and Carry On ". In this article, I would like to give you some background, and possible trend. US Treasuries Basically US treasuries, including short-term and long-term, are the national debt of United States (国债). US currently have debt of $20T . Debt/GDP ratio is 104% in 2017 , as shown in the chart below (grey bars represent recessions). As comparison, China Debt/GDP ratio is 46% in 2016; Japan is 238% . The debt falls into two broad categories: Intragovernmental Holdings and Debt Held by the Public. Intragovernmental Holdings $5.6T, 30% of total. This is the portion of the federal debt owed to 230 other federal agencies, such as the Social Security Trust Fund. This part is not affected by market. Debt Held by the Public $1...
Read more

Market 2018-02-06 (XIV, MU, MOH, and more)

It is a choppy day. The early tradings are similar to yesterday --- opened low followed by a quick bounce. However, indices hung around afterwards and marched north around 2:30 pm. Dow +2.3% , S&P +1.7% & Nasdaq +2.1% . I think the -10% correction is over. The indices retreated back to pre-TAX-Reform level in the intraday low. However, it could remain the choppy way for near-term. Utilities has the worst performance, XLU -1.5% despite the broad market rally in late hours. Treasurys: 30-year -0.9%. 10-yr -0.6%. 5-yr -0.4% . 10-yr note stays @ 2.8%. Commodities: Crude -1.1% to $63.45. Gold -0.9% to $1,324 . The American Petroleum Institute (API) reportedly shows -1.05M barrels of crude oil for the week ending Feb. 1 vs. last week's build of +3.23M barrels. Gasoline reportedly shows -227K barrels and distillates show a build of +4.52M barrels. I think refiners face margin challenges. Yesterday, many analysts called for buying dip instead of being panic. Goldman's D...
Read more