A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a local friend who is a building inspector. We had an interesting conversation:
- Me: Is work busy?
- Him: Well, it was. But not now. A lot of builders I deal with were booked two years out as recently as 6 months ago. But many of the projects have been canceled. So now they’re looking for work.
- Me: Wow, why?
- Him: Dunno. Uncertainty about the economy?
In my head:
AHHHHHH RECESSION!!!!!!
And then this came across my feed:
And then I read that the Air Force and Space Force met their recruiting goals months early. Some think this is a bad sign for the economy. The thought is that when jobs are scarce, people sign up for the military.
On the flipside, the betting markets aren’t as pessimistic:
What to do?
Don’t ask me! I play with plastic dinosaurs. Why are you even reading this?
OK, you want to know what I’m doing with my money? I’ll tell you.
I really dislike cash on the sidelines. It’s like when you hire an hourly worker and you catch them sitting in their truck looking at their phone when they’re supposed to be doing whatever you hired them to do. GRRRRRRR!!! Same with money:
No sitting on the sidelines little dollars. You will get to work for me IMMEDIATELY. Don’t dare utter the phrase dollar cost averaging in our house!
I’m a harsh boss. At least when it comes to money. And I just came into a lot of it.
I’m a fan of private lending and one of my borrowers just paid me back, so I had $362,000 dollars to deploy. Most of it went to two index funds:
- VTI (ETF version of VTSAX): $212,175
- QQQ (NASDAQ 100): $99,726
But I still like to play a little, so:
- GOOG (Alphabet): $50,335
Folks are down and out on Google. It has a PE of 20, less than the S&P 500’s PE of 26 (!!!). Investors think Google is cooked:
ChatGTP is coming for Google’s lunch!
While Google was certainly caught off guard by ChatGPT, it has a lot going for it:
- Google is very good at AI. Its efforts haven’t been as public facing as some of the others, but Google is going to be OK.
- Waymo has completed 10,000,000 paid rides. 10,000,000!!! Tesla fanboys like to point out all of the issues with Waymo’s approach, but Tesla’s FSD has yet to do even one paid ride without a safety driver. Tesla may still eat Waymo’s lunch, but I have my doubts. FSD is very good, but still not nearly good enough for driverless autonomy. 2026? 2027?? Who knows. I don’t!
- Quantum computing is the Next Big Thing. And I think it will be a Very Big Next Big Thing. And Google isn’t messing around. Check out this quote from Google’s blog:
Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion (that is, 1025) years — a number that vastly exceeds the age of the Universe.
Whaaaaaat?!????? I can’t even find my underwear in under 5 minutes.
But I digress…
What About That Recession?
A recession is coming. A recession is always coming. Like most things, markets are cyclical. A black swan will flap its wings and send Mr. Market crashing down. But then he’ll pick himself back up. It could start next month or next year. The only thing I know is that I don’t know. Trying to chase the timing is a silly errand for the long-term investor. Over decades, it just won’t matter. Tomorrow’s calamity will be a tiny blip 10 years from now.
I’m all-in all-the-time.
More 1500 Days!!!
You can also find me (and the dinosaurs) at:
- Longmont: Want to join our community? Get your ass here! While your at it, join our coworking spot!
- Instagram: Pretty pictures of dinosaurs, sunsets, and nail guns!
- Twitter: Spontaneous, often insane, ramblings
- YouTube: My channel is mostly devoted to home improvement, but I have some other material coming up soon too.
- Buying a Tesla? Use my referral code to get some perks!
“No sitting on the sidelines …. get to work for me IMMEDIATELY”
This is so smart and I know it’s the right thing to do.
Time in market not market timing!
However, I am still a sucker for “buying the Dip!” sometimes leaving money on the sidelines in a high interest account (so still working just at a much lower percentage) waiting for the dip. I agree in the long-term stressing over getting the timing right is a fools game. Blame it on my bird brain. lol
Buying the dip! The struggle is real!
But sometimes you just get lucky. One of our loans paid off back in April and I caught VOO almost at its year-to-date low. We bought at $458 and it’s now $579 three months later. Craziness.
26.42% over three months amazing return!
Soooooo lucky.
I have learned my lesson earlier in my life.
“Don’t be afraid of things which have not happened.”
Or
“Don’t suffer imagined trouble.”
I had suffered these two because I always worried about future. There were too many “what if” scenarios in my life.
Few examples:
What if I lose my job and get out of US.
What if I get my visa denied.
What if I get really sick like my cousin and be dead by 37.
We all worry about something in our life.
Money in my bank account enabled me to look at things differently.
If I lose my job or get visa denied, I will be sad and emotional but I can begin a new life anywhere in the world.
If I get sick and die unexpectedly, my family will be sad but they won’t need to worry about money. Yay! Term life insurance!
Coming back to recession. I was surprised to learn from you and many other from Fi world that people are so afraid to invest because of 2008 or covid era , that they sit on pile of cash. Why!!! If they are worried about recession, they should investing as cash loses its value every year. Just yesterday, I read somewhere $100k salary in 2020 is now $124k salary in 2025. Just lost 20% of cash value to inflation.
So,
“Don’t suffer imagined trouble or don’t be afraid of things which have not happened.”
Thanks Carl as always. Your words work like a therapy for me.
I’ve suffered much more imagined trouble than real trouble! Silly me!
Thank you for the kind words Rakesh!
Thanks, Carl! It’s good to be back home (Dallas). I saw your travel
Plan and you and Mindy continue to ignore Dallas as your place to visit. I know it’s not great but please visit us. We will be happy to host you all.
During covid or a recession many are afraid they will lose their job and want to hold cash as a buffer.
For me Covid was just what I needed to buy the dip and I depolyed all my cash. I rebuilt that cash buffer and now waiting for the next big dip (recession) but so far the market has made me look like a fool and I should have been buying into the market all along.
> Tesla fanboys like to point out all of the issues with Waymo’s approach, but Tesla’s FSD has yet to do even one paid ride without a safety driver.
You being a software guy, I’m sure that you’ve heard this or something like it: “getting the product on the market is the most important feature”.
But this is different. If Microsoft Office has a bad day, you lose your document. If FSD has a bad day, someone dies. Then the lawyers will pile on. The software has to perform incredibly well from the start.
I’m definitely not arguing on that point. Rather, it’s that the exacting nature of autonomous vehicles directly conflicts with the way that the (still relatively young) software industry has grown up in the last few decades. It’s precisely the mentality of “ship it now and fix the bugs in the next service pack” that I think has made shipping working autonomous vehicle software much more difficult than it might have been if this mentality hadn’t essentially permeated the entire software industry.
Tesla has already had their first major legal setback, though technically with Autopilot not FSD. Perhaps the start of a pile on? Or new legal or insurance standards? Maybe Elon cools his jets or installs proper sensors in his cars or at least stops overselling features and undertraining drivers?
Waymo has been doing it right.
Legal setback: I always look to see where the money flows when something like this happens. I thought the stock would take a substantial hit. Instead, it’s gone up since the judgment. I wish I understood what is going on.
FSD: The Tesla fanboys like to point out how fragile Waymo’s approach is and the sensor fusion issues that Elon cites. I think the fanboys get it wrong. Regarding the first point, I think Waymo is just ultra-cautious. The service seems to be starting to accelerate. Regarding the second point, couldn’t another AI layer sort out the fusion issues? AI could also use visibility, weather, traffic, and location decisions to give appropriate weight to the different sensors. For example, under perfect conditions, perhaps the cameras are given a stronger weight.
Overall, I think the Tesla fanboys don’t understand how good Google/Waymo is with AI. I’m pretty confident that given enough time (end of decade), Waymo will be deployed in most major cities. The Tesla Robotaxi service will be in a lot of major cities much quicker than that (end of 2026), but when is Tesla able to pull the safety driver? Again, no clue.
Counterpoint: Given enough training data, and perhaps with hardware improvements to the cameras and processors, I’d bet a vision-only approach will work eventually too. I’m just not sure it’s possible with Tesla’s AI4.
I think there’s a decent chance TSLA FSD never is good enough for driverless autonomy. Their choice to use cameras only is a huge limitation. The best self driving cars (like Waymo) incorporate LiDAR (and other sensors) which to me makes way more sense than a ‘camera only’ approach. (Long way of saying – your assessment of Waymo makes a lot of sense).
Interesting recent YouTube video showing these differences: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ
I think you could be right about Tesla. I wish they would have gone with at least a front facing LIDAR sensor. A camera/LIDAR combo that uses AI to help solve any sensor disagreements seems optimal. This is probably what Waymo is actually doing.
I do think Tesla will solve it, but perhaps it will be limited to certain conditions.
Here in Colorado, FSD is now really good. Probably one safety intervention every 3,000 miles. However, that’s nowhere good enough for a Robotaxi.