I would have thought petroleum, neodymium, platinum, and other rare industrial catalysts would be a far better investment than gold. In and of itself, gold is a rather useless metal; structurally its crap. Its one saving grace is that it is very resistant to corrosion. But then, so are a lot of other far more abundant materials. We seem to have earmarked it as a "store of wealth" over the ages only because someone could not print up a pile of it on a whim.

If you were on the Titanic in its final moments, what would be worth more - a satchel filled with gold? A bag of diamond jewelery? A big old stryofoam cooler box with a broken lid?

Frankly, it surprises me other countries would hang onto a US dollar as an investment, and only accept it as a medium of exchange to quickly buy something else of real intrinsic value. I think of the dollar as more of a copper transmission line for wealth - not a battery - because the dollar as leaky as hell. Its printed on demand in reckless abandon, created from nothing, and in and of itself not worth the paper its printed on. It seems a game of musical chairs, and whoever is holding the dollar when the music stops leaves the room - broke.

When all is said and done, it seems the only investment that survives is the ability to physically intimidate and coerce people - and a people trained and intimidated enough to take it. aka "He who has the gun soon has the gold and the gun."

My take is if she may well patent it as an UNDERWATER communication medium.

The "talk on a beam of light" has been a popular science fair project since LED's and photodiodes became available.

Nothing new, but the idea of having divers being able to communicate underwater, voice or texts, seems useful. You wanna text someone? Use your flashlight. Light him up. The light contains the message.

Well, my results may be different from yours, because I live in Seattle, and we're the top city for twitter trends.

We start trends here. We make San Francisco look like a backwards place.

Except when it extorts things to stop a crackdown on illegal acts.

Snowden is still a patriot, but Freedom is never free.

If you don't understand that, realize it's 1984 right now.

And you're all Serfs.

1. The end of the world is nigh and the Big J is coming (oil/gas backers view)

2. Fracking is causing this.

Choose one. Because climate change is now, and sticking your head in the tar sands won't change that basic fact.

LOL. How naive you are.

I've been investing in tech since buying shares of Apple on Black Monday.

Stuff changes. FB is starting to die, and a lot of us "still on it" are migrating off of it day by day.

Keep dreaming.

That reminds me, I need to update AdBlocker again.

There are four types of twitter users.

1. MSM outlets - they tweet links to their stories vids etc
2. Active bloggers/users - we retweet stuff and tweet stuff - depends on when we have time
3. Passive users - they read stuff but rarely tweet anything.
4. Passive non-users - the read tweets but have no account.

yes, I said hordes not hoards. when they get that big ...

The main problem with most tech stocks is the lack of dividends. It's based on the concept that the highest use of cash is to reinvest in research and gaining new customers, but when most tech sits on large piles of cash hordes, it's not the highest use, as cash has very low earnings nowadays.

Tech used to be new, now it's not new. One reason for dividends is to allow you to hold the stock, reduce transactions both as an Owner and for the Corporation, and realize your investment as income.

Lol. that's what people said about Crackberry.

The main factors are that dividends represent half your return, typically. And most of your costs are trading - sticking to a low cost no load institutional or higher (e.g. $10,000 or more invested) fund reduces your costs dramatically.

I did not say just buy stocks all the time, or S&P 500 all the time. Right now - that's the best choice. I've bought distressed bonds at fire sale prices and made a lot on those, and I've done options and IPOs. Everything has a season.

Never, ever, get involved with wealth managers. Ever.

No, I wouldn't say that. S&P 500 has been double digit yr/yr gains actually.

I've been investing since I was 16. You can do what you want, but my gut feel is usually right.

The best investment is an education, actually.

Hey, it's not like there are hundreds of millions of Indian kids who don't have access to clean water and are therefore at risk of major infections.

Oh.

Wait.

It is.

I for one welcome our Martian Bollywood Overlords, but wish they followed Vishnu not Kali.

Educated guess. It's actually a mix of 90 pct S&P 500 index (0.04 pct cost), 5 pct total bonds (0.12 pct cost), 5 pct total stock market (0.07 pct cost), without rebalancing but with reinvestment.

Total market exposes you to risk stocks during excessive churn. Climate change means excessive churn.

Overpriced assets need to come down sometime.

FB will be dead soon. Twitter IPO overpriced (but still not that bad). Most Silly Valley stocks are based on insane projections for the most part.

I used to do tech IPOs. My money's in broad S&P 500 low cost index funds now.

(yes, I made lots of money from the tech IPOs, and the other IPOs)