SimonRVA

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@porterstansb Remember that all of this short duration government debt (T-bills) is collateral behind 50x hedge fund levered carry trades, digital dollars, and inordinate amounts of futures and levered trading. If T-bills go, the whole house of cards comes down.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@RonStoeferle @TaviCosta Big question - is it gold going up or stock market cap going down?

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@kurtsaltrichter They can’t cut rates and chase investors out of money market funds. You know what most of those funds own? Treasury Bills. Who is going to fund $2T deficits? And do you notice how money market assets track right along with Treasury Bill issuance?

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@robbysoave Calling @Peter_Turchin !!!

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@RomanPuglise Isn’t it true that if your child doesn’t use all of the 529 funds, it can be passed down to their children? That’s even more optionally.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@SusanSchoe26318 @FIFAcom It was actually only 63 matches before. The expanded group stage with 48 teams already played 72 matches, and the first elimination round was 16 matches, so we’re already up to 88 matches vs prior World Cups total of 63.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

Has anyone noticed how many hurricanes develop in the middle of the ocean, last a day or two, then dissipate without any impacts? 50 years ago those would never have been counted. And 20 years ago they wouldn’t have bothered to record them unless they started to approach land. National Hurricane Center needs clicks to justify themselves so they name storms that have no business being named. You can’t do any valid historical comparisons here.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@ROOZVA Have you heard about the $2 Billion rate cut promised by NextEra if their acquisition of Dominion is approved? That will be totally taken away by the RGGI tax!!

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

It is sad that Colonial Williamsburg Foundation has blown through nearly all of endowment started by Rockefeller 100 years ago. Skating rink on Duke of Gloucester Street? Really? They have completely mismanaged the site for decades. Unfortunately the steady stream of school kids has dwindled for the reasons cited by Sean. I see no future for the site beyond being taken over by the National Park Service or being sold off back to private hands piece by piece.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

How come earlier this morning the CA Gov and LA mayor primaries showed 62% and 69% of votes counted, but now, with the same vote tallies, it’s showing 56% and 62% of votes counted. I’m not a conspiracy theorist but this does not instill confidence in electoral integrity.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@joefrancis505 Biden drained it to try to win the 2022 mid-terms.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@PatrickHeizer Guess you haven’t met me. Boomer, already retired, have assumed zero social security since I was young. Writing was on the wall decades ago. Should be means-tested so that only the most needy get paid out.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

1929 All Over Again? Looking at where markets are today, there’s been a large shift out of publicly traded stocks (the number of publicly traded companies is about half what it was a few decades ago) into privately held companies (I recall over 800 private unicorns now), and the parallel shift in loans from syndicated and public issuances to private credit. This looks like we’re going back to the 1920’s, where there was no SEC and related public filing and reporting requirements, non-existent bank capital requirements, and non-public trading of securities, and a Federal Reserve that is included to keep filling the punchbowl with liquidity.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@lisaabramowicz1 Has anyone looked into the private loans that Blue Owl recently sold for 99+% of NAV? I am concerned that they cherry-picked the best performing loans to sell as a way to demonstrate that their marks are valid, only to leave the remaining pool of loans even more stressed.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

@RayDalio So what is the consequence of exceeding 3%?

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

Yes, but doesn’t that reflect the changing demographics? You can see the Baby Boomer ‘pig in the python’ as you look at the shape of the curves. There are simply more folks in the older age group now than there were before, and relatively fewer in the younger cohorts. Perhaps adjusting the data on a per capita basis may help???

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

The units in the chart are misleading. The real metric to measure is MWH, not MW. A 1 MW battery that only lasts 4 hours is 4 MWh. If you want a 1 MW solar farm to be a 24/7 resource, at an industry standard 20% efficiency rate, it will produce 20% of its nameplate capacity on average: 1 MW x 20% x 24 hrs =4.8 MWh. You need 19.2 MWh of battery capacity to provide 24 MWh on a daily basis. If you’re installing 1 MW batteries with 4 hours of storage (4 MWh), you need 5 of them. And if you have several cloudy days in a row, you need even more. I believe the economics go down the tube when you compare the cost of the solar plus 5+ battery units versus a modern gas turbine.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

Maybe this is the perfect test case for AI and robotics. Japan may well be in the perfect situation for broad adoption without fear of mass unemployment. If the AI hype is what it claims, you need a lot fewer workers to produce the same output. Robotics can continue to augment/supplant humans for industrial production and importantly, elderly care until the population pyramid re-stabilizes.

AI may be the answer to the puzzle of how the developed world can survive depopulation. But also begs the question of how countries with growing populations (sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia) will cope potentially without the emigration safety valve.

https://t.co/FKFdtf6PVI

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

Capacity does NOT equal output. Solar only produces about 20% of the time, and NONE of it during the peak times needed in winter (the sun isn’t up when heating demand is highest). It’s all about tax incentives, mis-priced utility policies (solar should not be credited at a full retail price because it is unreliable and unpredictable (except at night, when it is 100% unavailable), and shady sales practices at the retail level.

[SimonRVA @RvaSimon]

This fits with the rapid growth of online gambling and prediction markets on top of crypto and online trading (Robinhood, Coinbase) and meme stocks. It’s all the same dynamic - mostly younger folks saying ‘I will never be able to save my way to a stable future. My only chance is to ‘put it all on red’ and hope it hits’.