To The Moon

Is it really a rebound when the slight dip was signalled to be a profit taking exercise? Gold's rise was forecasted, although I would be the first to advise against believing every prediction you see out there, to go up to 5000 (from 4000) in a year. While that was slightly ludicrous to read, it made sense considering the world's instability never truly went away. Beginning from COVID, russia invasion, Israel Hamas war, Thai Cambodia border conflict, things just kept churning, helping to prop up gold as a safe investment.  When gold, silver and other precious metals spiked and news of record highs came out, it likely fueled latecomers to rush in when the profit taking exercise happened and prices dipped. However, not all precious metal have the same attributes, some have more exposure

While the number of units sold looks strong, Tesla can no longer compete while having higher retail prices, not in the China market where competitors constantly try to bring great bang for buck, all while selling a ridiculously cheap car, almost in a race to the bottom. So the numbers have improved and growth is always heartening for a brand, but the long term outlook is whether Tesla still has room to conpete in the EV field based on price (not just in China, but the world too), because they cannot only focus on 1 market (look how China is trying to infiltrate the India EV market). Tesla has obviously pivoted hard to their other newer lines, like FSD/robotaxi, although whether that has any true success because Musk insists on using pure camera vision, is another mess in its

Oil will likely have a sustained slide, what with US tightening their grip on Venezuela. Interesting to note that Trump did not try to install the opposition that likely won the elections, had Maduro not rigged the results. Maduro's vice president, Rodriguez's tone does not seem to be friendly to Trump though and it is unlikely that the US president will take it quietly. She (or the powers that be) might have made a deal for the US to control the oil to allow her to stay in power as interim president for now.

B Always nice to learn

$Tiger Brokers(TIGR)$ bought into gold ETF and before the year ended, it was already making huge gains together with other precious metals. It may be a safe haven investment, but with the volatility all over the world, it actually pays off handsomely. I am happy to have followed my instinct and buy in before it took off. It is never too late to invest and we can never truly buy into the lowest point but as long as we are paying attention, we can get a price that would still pay off nicely.

I am a little lost about the hype of the robotaxi, feels like it is artificially stirred up to keep the stock value going and to avoid casual meme investors from turning away. To begin, Waymo already has a product running around in San Francisco. While it is not perfect, like the recent news of people being paid to help close car doors that were not shut properly, there already is a steady track record. Meanwhile Tesla is entering a market where they not only have to compete with other Western brands, but also fight off the Chinese competitors who are likely to bring better value and are more agile. I am sure Cathie Wood making the call to continually dump, knows that the road ahead is rocky. Tesla as a brand is highly reliant on their caricature of a CEO to bend the rules with his we

Honestly, it was a good time to cash in on the profit. Even as a fairly lazy investor who looks at long term gains, hindsight (and some time to look at the numbers) tells me that I would have sold off my holdings, then buy back in when it dropped lower. The numbers within these couple of months have been great for precious metals. It started off with the hype in gold, which shone a light on silver, then palladium and platinium caught fire (figuratively). Precious metal as a safe haven calms the investors' nerves and everyone keeps flocking back when things get rough. I'll look to pick up more if the slide continues a little more.

As always, having a diverse portfolio is important, but I am certain that precious metals overall trend will be upwards. Gold has not had a significant drop such that investors have to panic about its value. As long as you are rational and not selling when small slides happen, precious metal is a safe haven to park some money. Take for example when gold went up and people felt priced out, they flooded into silver and triggered an insane spike. This wave flooded into Platinium and Palladium too, so all the metals are shining very bright.

Expecting AI to boost US economy is borderline delusional, if they believe that the current iteration of LLM by the various companies is going to make a huge difference. Firstly, the AI that is pushed on to the general populace is not fool proof, that in itself makes it unreliable to use full time especially in the corporate context, no matter how much CEOs want it to be the case. Secondly, it consumes too much energy, further causing environmental problems. Couple that with the tech waste that it generates, with the constant updating of chips etc. AI in its current form is terrible, especially considering how some people use it like a search engine or their emotional support buddy, further contributing to the energy consumption and polluting problem. Finally, the true purpose of AI where

I missed the China tech stocks repricing. I was optimistic about them but did not have enough faith in their government to not be unnecessarily disruptive and affecting prices through random interventions.