papabrown

I'm not sure if they're still around, but I remember back in the 1990s there was a family of mutual funds that aimed to do exactly what you're describing. They actually advertised the fact that they won't have the best returns in bull markets because they were protecting people in down markets.

The idea was that people benefitted more from staying in the market over a long period of time rather than maximizing their returns in any particular year.

So the fund was aimed to smooth out the peaks and valleys along the ride so investors would be more inclined to leave their money parked in the fund rather than getting a statement that said that they're down 30% and going to cash and missing the next run up.

I would presume that as well. However, that doesn't negate the fact that 10% vs 55% is a considerable gap.

In 1929 if the shoeshine guy was giving you stock tips, it signaled a very different level of market euphoria than today when your gym trainer is talking about stocks.

Also, today we live in a world where there's just so much more accessibility to information. Only about 1.3% of the planet has ever owned Bitcoin. About 13% of Americans have ever owned Bitcoin but 90% of Americans surveyed have heard of Bitcoin.

I don't mean this to be about Bitcoin, only trying to point out the massive gap between something that is relatively niche, and the number of news articles/stories, discussion, etc about it.

>the default bubble is potentially a lurking time bomb

Many things are potential lurking time bombs. I can't think of a single period during any bullish market where you could not point to something and claim that that could be a potential end to the bull run.

The problem is when you are in the business of making predictions, if you just scream "Bear" long enough, eventually you'll be right and then you can write a book subtitled, "By the man who called the 2021 (or 2022 or 2023 or 2024 ...) stock crash" and people think you're some sort of genius.

If bubbles were a concern for Navy SEALs they would use a rebreather which emits no bubbles.

You cannot conceal bubbles while on SCUBA.

I’ll also add to my previous comment and say that the reason you’re taught slow, diaphragmatic breathing is because your lungs impact your buoyancy in the water.

Breath in, you begin to ascend. Breath out, you will sink.

Your goal is to find a breathing pattern that allows you to stay neutrally buoyant so you’re not fighting the rise and fall by swimming against it.

Part of the instructor exam, at least when I took it, was a pool session where they tested your ability to achieve and maintain neutral buoyancy.

You would sit cross legged holding your fins for balance like a meditator half way between the bottom and the surface and you could not rise or fall more than a foot.

It’s something a lot of divers also practice when doing safety stops. Even if there’s an ascent line, many will simply stop at 15 feet, and watch their dive computer trying to maintain exactly at 15 feet using only their breathing.

The reason for that is often there will be no ascent line or you may have to do decompression stops in open water with no physical point of reference.

As a former SCUBA diving instructor and dive master, teaching students not to hold their breath is simply easier than teaching people a technique that would take a considerable amount of time to master.

I have 5 classroom sessions of about an hour each and two pool sessions and 4 open water dives to take you knowing nothing to keeping you from killing yourself.

When I first got certified as a diver, I would suck down a tank in 15 minutes. By the time I became an instructor, my longest dive on a single tank was close to 1.5 hours and I had plenty of air left.

It would be pointless for me to try and teach breathing control techniques I was using by the time I became an instructor to an Open Water Diver student who will be lucky enough to remove and replace his regulator to pass the course.

We teach not holding your breath because most inexperienced divers will default to panicked fight or flight the second anything goes wrong.

Believe me, I’ve had to physically restrain students underwater when the reg fell out of their mouth and it took them more than 2 seconds to find it. They immediately want to shoot to the surface and 100% they’ll be holding their breath (another aspect of panic) if I don’t hold them down, put the reg back in their mouth, and calm them down.

While I also believe what you’d at to be true, I fail to see how this is any different than Tim Ferriss or many other people like him.

If Tim says X works, how many Silicon Valley types suddenly start doing it?

In fact, given that former Navy SEAL Jocko Wilnick is all the rage in the business world and Tim Ferriss is also followed by the same crowd, the crossover between those two groups is probably larger than you think.

I'm not overly concerned about getting the best rate. If I wanted to make the maximum possible I would stay in management and ride things out until retirement.

I have savings that I don't want to have to tap into so I can just let it grow for another 10 years or so. Really, I just need to make enough to cover my monthly expenses and have health insurance.

Also, I've managed development projects across multiple continents (US, Europe, Middle-East, and Asia), so I'm hoping that I have a pretty good understanding of what management needs to make them feel comfortable.

It's probably a little different for me because I'm not necessarily looking to advance my career the way someone earlier in their career might. Obviously, I want to do a good job and add value, but I could just as easily teach scuba diving or something.

I code because I like it. It also pays better than average. A good combo.

Another 50+ guy here.

I've been thinking about getting back into coding after a multi-decade hiatus. I taught myself to code in my early 20's. Coded through my early 30's and have been in management roles (involving software development or for technology companies) ever since.

I went from Perl to Java (hated Java) to PHP and have played around with tons of languages (just enough to complete the project) in between. Right now, PHP is my go-to language for my own projects simply because I'm used to it.

I still hack stuff. I run a few websites. I write plugins for WordPress. I write little PHP or Bash scripts to automate some stuff on my server.

Recently, I've been diving into Swift. I hope to get good enough at that, that I can get a remote job and semi-retire. For me, working from home would be almost like working part-time. I don't mean that it's that easy, just that a lot of management and office politics is so soul sucking that it feels like you're working 24 hours a day.

It's tough coming back. But, I've never strayed too far from coding to begin with.

It seems the advantage I have is experience. I've been there and done that before, even if I wasn't the one writing the code. Even being in management, I still enjoy sitting in a room with engineers and white boarding solutions.

And having worked in management, I have a better understanding of the "why" behind features and can suggest different paths to get to the same outcome.

I guess I'll find out if you're too old to code when I start looking for jobs :-)

I used to believe that as well. I have business and family in other countries and the traditional approaches were way too expensive ($50 for a bank wire, $X fee plus horrible exchange rates via Moneygram, etc). I used Bitcoin a few times to move money from my US accounts to my overseas accounts where I could then transfer it in local currency through the local banking systems.

But then it started taking longer and longer for bitcoin transactions to clear. And the price was often moving during this window between when I bought in one currency and I could sell in another currency.

Now I just use TransferWise. Less hassle. Costs are much more reasonable (a few bucks for small amounts) and I don't have to have do multiple transactions to get money from Point A to Point B.

Anybody who owns real estate isn't concerned with foreign buyers. They help keep prices for real estate higher which amongst real estate owners creates additional wealth. For people who don't own real estate, those higher prices make it more difficult for them to get into a home so there are positives and negatives in this.

That said, I think the old "unoccupied houses" thing is way overblown. It presents the most ugly side of foreign real estate ownership so that people who are priced out of the market get angry at all of the foreigners buying property. Even if you removed every unoccupied SFH (single family home) from the market, prices, generally, would still be rising.

It's sort of like saying that the reason that a car costs so much is because the demand is high based on too many families owning more cars than they need. It gives people a target for their dissatisfaction with current auto prices but really isn't the main issue and even if you solved for that issue it wouldn't dramatically impact auto prices.

But having a target for your anger is a wonderful way to distract people.

So true. As an American who has spent close to a decade living overseas, opening a bank account in a foreign country has become increasingly difficult. I'm not hiding money. I'm not doing anything shady. I have a legit job working in another country and nobody wants to do business with Americans because of FATCA.

>A third of people born today do not have government identification

I think that number is closer to 100%. Most babies do not obtain government IDs on their date of birth.

Do you mean a third of people on earth? A third of people over a certain age?