Ray Dalio, multi-billionaire and founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, said investors should not miss out on traditional markets, CNBC reported on Jan. 21.

Dalio warned from holding Bitcoin, saying that its neither a medium of exchange nor a store of value.

Dalio was interviewed at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he advised investors to hold a global and diversified portfolio in this market, while increasing their stake in stock markets.

While Dalio acknowledged recession concerns, he argued that cash is trash due to the governments ability to print it at will something he believes they will be forced to do during a market downturn. Due to this, jumping into cash just before the eventual market fall is ill-advised, according to Dalio.

The billionaire still cautions balance, advising investors to hold a certain amount of gold in their portfolios.

His stance on Bitcoin (BTC) was far more negative, however, noting that it is not currently functioning as money:

Theres two purposes of money, a medium of exchange and a store hold of wealth, and Bitcoin is not effective in either of those cases now.

He added that the volatility of Bitcoin makes it unattractive for serious investment, while something like Libra could be a better option. Elaborating on his preference of gold as a store of value, he noted that central banks are some of the largest metal holders:

What are they going to hold as reserves? What has been tried and true? Are they going to hold Bitcoin digital cash Theyre going to hold gold. That is a reserve currency.

Bitcoin is often touted as digital gold, a reserve asset independent from government control.

But while many believe in the store of value thesis of Bitcoin, its performance so far has not indicated meaningful correlation with global markets. While it does appear to have slightly positive correlation to gold, the indexes are small enough that they can be attributed to coincidence.

These may still be teething problems due to the relative novelty of cryptocurrencies. As noted by Duke University professor Campbell Harvey, the sample size is still too small. Over thousands of years of history, even gold was not always a reliable safe-haven asset.

Original post:
Ray Dalio Calls for Investment Diversification, But Not in Bitcoin - Cointelegraph

SALEM The Oregon Division of Financial Regulation is warning people to avoid investing with Robert Lee Adams, also known as Bob Adams, and his business, SimTradePro Inc. The division issued a cease-and-desist order against Adams and his business for operating as a state investment adviser without a license, and he may still be soliciting Oregon consumers.

Adams, a Bandon resident, formed a related company, Winning Investments, LLC, in 2017 allegedly to pool investor funds and invest them in the foreign currency exchange market, according to a press release from the Oregon Department of Consumer and Business Services. Four investors who participated lost more than $279,000 in less than a year. An elderly victim lost most of her retirement savings.

Adams charged each investor a $3,000 origination fee, offered the group investment strategies he selected, and pooled the investors funds in a local bank account. Adams then allegedly invested their funds in foreign currency trading programs that operated offshore. Adams and SimTradePro have never been licensed with the division as an investment adviser or investment adviser representative.

Investments in foreign currency trading programs are extremely risky, and they are not for everyone, said Andrew Stolfi, division administrator. Before investing money you cannot afford to lose, and certainly before parting with your life savings, learn as much as you can about the firms and individuals you are considering. Make sure your investment adviser is licensed by the division and works with registered, reputable industry professionals.

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The division encourages everyone to protect their money. Ask questions to learn about your advisers registration status, disciplinary record, and complaint history. The first step before making an investment is to carefully choose a financial professional by checking their licensing status and background.

Oregonians are also encouraged to contact the divisions advocates at 888-877-4894 (toll-free) with questions or concerns about a financial adviser or product. If you have information or questions specifically regarding Robert Lee Adams and his business activities, contact Investigator Rachel Royston at 503-947-7093.

About DCBS: The Department of Consumer and Business Services is Oregon's largest business regulatory and consumer protection agency. For more information, visitwww.dcbs.oregon.gov.

We'll send breaking news and news alerts to you as as they happen!

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Consumers warned of investing with unlicensed Bandon business - Coos Bay World

The next market downturn, crash and bear market are coming.

Not particularly soon, if you believe most experts, but theyre somewhere on the road ahead.

They will happen with little warning, with few soothsayers calling them out, and despite political, societal and monetary efforts to keep them at bay.

Investors who invest to avoid that downturn or who dont invest at all in fear of it will miss out on the next uptick, and possibly much more. While the long-in-the-tooth bull market cant go on forever, the message now from all sorts of Wall Street observers is that even in a slowing environment, theres a lot of upside left before the next turn. Moreover, the next decline may not last so long.

In short, this is not a time to invest in ways that avoid the next downturn, its time to invest despite that inevitable event.

Scott Wren, senior global market strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, has said for years that too many average investors have simply not recovered emotionally from the shock of seeing their portfolio cut in half during the financial crisis of 2008.

While investors who rode out the troubles recovered in short order, Wren talks about the investors who couldnt stand the pain and who pulled out of the market at the worst time when their portfolios were down 40 or 50 percent and who have ever really known how or when to get back in.

While they may have dipped a toe back into the bull market and recovered some of their losses, they havent felt comfortable enough to fully reinvest.

Overall, if you look at our client base, they have held and continue to hold meaningfully more cash in their portfolios than what we would recommend, Wren said in a recent interview on Money Life with Chuck Jaffe. Clearly that has cost them some upside here, and I would argue that sentiment is nowhere near where it would be at a market top and the lack of action from our clients is telling us that this bull market is not likely over.

Market sentiment measures have been on the rise, but Wrens point that good feelings have not gotten to euphoric levels that keep the bull running on fumes is well taken.

Meanwhile, a growing number of market observers say they dont see a meaningful downturn occurring in the near future.

For example, Abhay Deshpande of Centerstone Investors, said on Money Life last week that The era of the 50 percent bear market is behind us.

He was not suggesting that declines and bear markets have been canceled, but rather that the conditions necessary to create massive downdrafts are nowhere in sight. Moreover, he suggested that those conditions may not occur again in our lifetimes.

By comparison, Marc Chaikin, the founder of Chaikin Analytics, noted on Money Life that the end of the long bull market is on the horizon just becoming evident in numbers showing slower growth but he noted that the final phase of a bull market is a period where you can make a lot of money.

Chaikin calls the final stages of a bull market blue-sky territory, the point with no signs of a recession in sight and little to no resistance to stop a market run and make investors unhappy.

Yes, that changes in time often as investors become too happy and irrationally exuberant but Chaikin noted that investors can make a lot of money while the skies are blue and the warning signs are nowhere to be seen.

Consider that the most common comparison veteran observers are making for the current market is to 1999 and the period leading to the bursting of the internet bubble. That triggered a bear market that lasted roughly three years, with the Standard & Poors 500 dropping 10 percent, 13 percent and 23 percent in consecutive years.

While similarities can be drawn, few of the experts making the comparisons believe any downturn will be that protracted.

So an investor looking to avoid the next bear market is trying to miss something that, by most accounts, will be relatively short and not too steep. Even if it is a 20 percent decline, thats not a problem so long as it is within expectations.

Meanwhile, the market appears likely to keep moving forward until it doesnt, to treat each setback as a buying opportunity rather than the start of something bad.

Investors who were pulling out a year ago when the market suffered through a miserable fourth-quarter wound up missing out on a much bigger than expected 29 percent gain in 2020.

The S&P 500 already is up more than 3 percent this year; the strong December stretch run means that the gains of the last six to eight weeks are equal to what many Wall Street firms were expecting for the entire year.

Investors should be changing with the times, building all-weather portfolios that anticipate downturns without necessarily avoiding them; dont expose more of your money to even a temporary 25 percent or 50 percent loss than you can afford to, but do expose money that you need to grow to the long-term ability to grow in the market, even if that means slogging through downturns in the interim.

Find the balance, because staying out of the market because you fear the next downturn is not an option for most individual investors.

The conditions for a major, major decline in the economy dont exist, excluding the prospects for war or something, said Deshpande. If nothing like [war] happens, what we are looking at is muddling through economically not enough to drive the US into a recession

You can lose a lot of ground by standing still while the market is moving forward toward that next downturn. Its better to keep pace, sensibly, then to wait for something bad to happen and hope you can catch up afterward.

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Better to invest through troubled times than to try avoiding them - Seattle Times

Humans like complexity. Clever, elaborate schemes makes us believe we're accomplishing something -- even when the results don't bear that out. The vast majority of the time, painfully simple solutions are actually the best option.

Consider the question University of Michigan professor Robert Axelrod tried to answer in 1980: What's the best strategy in the prisoner's dilemma?

Image source: Getty Images

The prisoner's dilemma is a famous thought exercise.

Over the long run, what strategy works the best in such situations?

After getting various strategies from credentialed game-theorists, Axelrod ran lengthy computer simulations.The winning strategy was also the simplest: Start by cooperating, then do exactly what your partner does thereafter. This is referred to as the "tit-for-tat" (TFT) strategy.

Thousands of hours were likely spent on more clever designs, but that didn't mean they were effective. Writing about the phenomenon in his 2017 bookBarking Up The Wrong Tree, author Eric Barker says:

TFT was the simplest of them all...Getting too clever muddies the waters, and the other person can quickly become very skeptical of you.

Now, in zero-sum games like chess, you want your intentions to be unclear, but in the iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, it's the exact opposite. You want the other player to see what you're doing so they can join you.

Life is more often like the latter(emphasis added).

Not only does keeping it simple force us to find the signal in the noise, it also provides advice we're far more likely to follow through on.

This is true when it comes to finances, investing, and life in general.

Helping people get out of debt and build a sustainable financial foundation is an enormous industry. That's a big part of what we do here at The Motley Fool.

You'll find a lot of suggestions about how to improve your financial life, but I've found that readers tend to get the most benefit from a pretty short list. Pareto's Principle says that 1% of your input can account for 50% of your output.In other words, if you get a list 100 personal finance rules to follow, a decade later, it's likely that just one accounted for half of the improvement in your finances, and four of them accounted for two-thirds of the improvement.

Exactly which rules will help you the most depends on you and your particular situation. But my best guess is that the most important one would be:

Live within your means.

As writer and former Fool columnist Morgan Housel is fond of saying: "When most people say they want to be a millionaire, what they really mean is 'I want to spend a million dollars,' which is literally the opposite of being a millionaire."

What would the next three be? My best guess:

If you want to stay out of trouble and rest easy at night, don't buy stuff you don't need.

When I started investing, I came up with complicated ways to measure how "expensive" a company's stock was, how its sales "should" grow, and what the price of the stock "would" be in a few years' time. Needless to say, this didn't work. Over time, my goal has been to keep the process of investing simple.

Of all the investing rules that we hear, I think one plays the biggest role:

Buy a stock (with money you don't need in the immediate future), and then forget it.

In a 2013 study,Fidelitydiscovered that its best investors were the ones who never touched their accounts. More often then not, they forgot about them or -- as my UK colleague Paul Summer pointed out -- they were simply dead.

As long as you don't need the money soon, just buy and hold. Sure, if you time the market you might get out before a crash -- but you're also just as likely to miss a huge upswing.

The next three rules, in my opinion, would be:

Finally, I feel compelled to point out that keeping it simple matters in the most important realm of all: our personal lives.

The single rule above all else:

Maintain and nurture meaningful relationships.

Back to Housel, who in 2013 provided us with what the next three should be:

Of course, there's lots of overlap between these factors. But my guess is that by keeping it simple and focusing on these steps, you're going to appreciate the results.

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In Investing -- Like in Life -- It Doesn't Pay to Be Too Clever - The Motley Fool

Saturday, 25 January 2020

Greeces debt was upgraded by one notch on Friday by the Fitch rating agency, announcing that the countrys debts sustainability continued to improve.

Thus, the Greek rating went from BB- to BB, meaning it is more prone to changes in the economy, but is still in the speculative category. The grade is accompanied by a positive outlook, meaning it could be raised again in the coming months.

The general sustainability of the debt continues to improve, supported by a stable political environment, Fitch announced, which also expects the debt to continue to decrease.

The Greek State Budget for 2020 forecasts a surplus just over the threshold imposed by its lenders.

Despite the end of the financial assistance plans between Athens and its creditors in August 2018, Greece is still required to comply with a primary budget surplus (excluding debt charges) of 3.5% of GDP until 2022.

Greece plans to borrow between 4 and 8 billion from the markets in 2020, after a year in 2019 when interest rates sometimes reached below 0%.

The national debt agency forecasts the 2019 debt rate to decrease to 173% of gross domestic product (GDP) compared to 181% in 2018 (335 billion euros).

The Brussels Times

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Greece upgraded to 'BB' investment rating - The Brussels Times

Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio) has warned investors about the risks of borrowing money to buy stocks again and again. He has also said that he has never borrowed a significant amount of money to invest and never plants to.

Buffett on borrowing

Buffett's comments on borrowing are very sensible. It all comes down to volatility.

In the Oracle of Omaha's 2017 letter to investors of Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A) (NYSE: BRK.B), he presented a table showing the returns of the conglomerate's stock price between 1973 and 2009.

During this period, on four occasions, Berkshire's stock price dropped by between 59% and 37%. According to Buffett:

"This table offers the strongest argument I can muster against ever using borrowed money to own stocks. There is simply no telling how far stocks can fall in a short period...

Even if your borrowings are small and your positions aren't immediately threatened by the plunging market, your mind may well become rattled by scary headlines and breathless commentary. And an unsettled mind will not make good decisions."

In an interview with CNBC after the letter was published, he said, "It is crazy in my view to borrow money on securities. It's insane to risk what you have and need for something you don't really need... You will not be way happier if you double your net worth."

But here's the thing, while both Buffett and his right-hand man, Charlie Munger (Trades, Portfolio), have tried to discourage investors from using leverage, they both have, in the past, borrowed significant amounts of money to turbocharge returns.

Buffett's big loan

Glen Arnold's book, "The Deals of Warren Buffett (Trades, Portfolio), Volume 1: The First $100m," explains how a young Buffett borrowed about 25% of his net worth to increase his capital available for investment in the stock market in 1951.

At the time, Arnold reports that the young investor had around $20,000 of savings, and despite receiving advice from his mentor, Benjamin Graham, as well as his father, not to invest in the stock market because prices were too high, he went ahead and started buying anyway:

"He did not agree with their logic and made up his own mind, deciding that 1951 was a perfect time to pick up good companies. He thought the potential was so great for the first time he borrowed money to buy shares (he borrowed a quarter of his net worth $5,000)."

Unfortunately, Buffett ended up making a few mistakes with his capital. He bought a Sinclair gas station with his friend for $2,000, which ended up being a total loss.

He also bought shares in Cleveland Worsted Mills, a deep value stock. Arnold describes the company in his book:

"As well as Cleveland Worsted Mills selling at half its NCAV, it paid a high proportion of its earnings in dividends. These combined factors made Cleveland appear an attractive investment and Buffett sold the idea of this investment to stockbroker clients in Omaha. Then it went wrong -- the company faced intense competition from textile plants in the Southern US states and from synthetic fibers. It made large losses, cut its dividend and its share price dropped."

As I have explained in a previous article, Buffett was able to make back the money he lost on the Sinclair station and Cleveland Worsted Mills in a relatively short space of time. Nevertheless, this scenario makes it clear how risky it is to borrow money to invest. Buffett took his loss as well and went back into the market to try and find opportunities. If he had let them get the better of him, he might not have become the world-famous billionaire that he is today.

Disclosure: The author owns shares in Berkshire Hathaway.

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The Time Buffett Borrowed 25% of His Net Wealth to Invest - Yahoo Finance

Chicago, IL January 20, 2020 Today, Zacks Investment Ideas feature highlights Features: Tesla TSLA, Boeing BA, Virgin Galactic SPCE, Northrop Grumman NOC and Amazon AMZN.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be an astronaut. I watched every NASA launch and clipped every newspaper article I could find about space shuttle flights and astronomy discoveries.

Clearly, Elon Musk achieved my dreams and then some. Did you know he founded SpaceX in 2002, beforeTesla? Yep, Tesla was actually founded by two auto engineers in 2003 and Musk, through his early series A investment, earned founder status and took over quickly.

SpaceX was the first private company able to compete on NASA's playground and it still astounds me thatBoeing didn't plan to be first in some key areas of space rocketry. That is the power of a visionary disruptor like Musk.

Among the top "firsts by SpaceX" are (1) launch a liquid-fueled rocket into orbit with the Falcon 1 in 2008; (2) launch, orbit, and successfully recover a spacecraft with Dragon in 2010; and (3) send a cargo flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

I took this list from the new book by SpaceX mission manager Andrew Rader. In 2019 he publishedBeyond The Known: How Exploration Created the Modern World and Will Take Us to the Stars. Here's what he wrote on page 248...

"With its ability to make regular supply flights to the Space Station and return, SpaceX's Dragon capsule offers the only means of returning science cargo to Earth. As of January 2019, SpaceX has flown more than sixty successful launches and soon plans to fly astronauts under a NASA commercial crew contract."

Rader goes on to talk about the significance of the Falcon reusable rocket family which also marks a series of firsts (listed here courtesy of Wikipedia): the first propulsive landing for an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2015), the first reuse of an orbital rocket (Falcon 9 in 2017), and the first private company to launch an object into orbit around the sun (Falcon Heavy's payload of a Tesla Roadster in 2018).

Instead of one booster of nine engines like Falcon 9, Falcon Heavy uses three boosters for twenty-seven total.

In the video that accompanies this article, I address the question of whether and when SpaceX will become a publicly-traded company that you and I can invest in.

Speaking of space companies the average Joe or Sue can invest in, the video opens discussing Richard Branson's foray into aerospace with his newly publicVirgin Galactic.

This venture is nearly as thrilling Musk's because of Branson's focus on eventual passenger travel to the ISS and beyond -- and his alternative method for getting a spaceship safely airborne and out of Earth's gravity and atmosphere, the biggest challenges in space rocketry.

Branson's innovation was an air-launched suborbital "spaceplane" (like the NASA Shuttle) that is hauled to an altitude of about 50,000 feet by a large carrier airplane and released. The spaceship then fires its rocket motor to catapult it to at least 50 miles above Earth, high enough for passengers to see the curvature of the planet.

Of course he didn't come up with these space-age ideas and designs all by himself. From Wikipedia...

The Spaceship Company (TSC) is a British/American spacecraft manufacturing company that was founded by Burt Rutan and Richard Branson in mid-2005 and was jointly owned by Virgin Group (70%) and Scaled Composites (30%) until 2012 when Virgin Galactic became the sole owner. TSC was formed to own the technology created by Scaled for Virgin Galactic's Virgin SpaceShip program. This includes developments on the care-free reentry system and cantilevered-hybrid rocket motor, licensed from Paul Allen and Burt Rutan's Mojave Aerospace. The company is manufacturing Virgin Galactic's spacecraft and will sell spacecraft to other buyers. The suborbital launch system offered will include the SpaceShipTwo spacecraft and the White Knight Two carrier aircraft.

So this story is also exciting for me personally because of another fascination of my childhood: the experimental aircraft designs of the maverick Rutan brothers. Since my dad and older brothers were professional and aerobatic pilots, we often ventured to the annual Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) Fly-In at Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

The Rutans designed these radical airplanes with engines in the back that used the propeller to push the craft. They also featured a flight control surface in front of the fuselage called a canard. And two models, the VariEze and Long-EZ, were sold as homebuilt kits! Every time I saw one on the front of the flying magazines, I was captivated by its out-of-this-world look.

The Rutan boys also designed and flew the Voyager aircraft that traversed non-stop around the globe in 1986 without refueling,in 9 days. Actually it was Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager who piloted that record flight, while Burt Rutan was the main designer.

But I didn't make the connection between those "spaceships" of my youth and Richard Branson until my oldest brother Rory and I were talking about Musk's SpaceX technologies over the holidays. That's when he told me that Virgin Galactic's designs came from Scaled Composites, which is now owned byNorthrop Grumman.

Burt Rutan started Scaled Composites in 1982 and after several changes of ownership -- Beech Aircraft used Rutan designs for the Beechcraft Starship, a twin-turboprop business aircraft that was not commercially successful -- Rutan gathered new investors to launch SpaceShipOne, an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 900 meters per second (3,000 feet/sec), using a hybrid rocket motor.

Rutan's ideas about the project began as early as 1994 but he didn't begin working full-time on it until 2001. By beautiful coincidence (or clever mission planning) the vehicle first achieved supersonic flight on December 17, 2003 --the one-hundredth anniversary of the Wright brothers' historic first powered flight.

SpaceShipOne completed the first crewed private spaceflight in 2004. That same year, it won the $10 million Ansari X Prize and was immediately retired from active service.

Its mother ship was named "White Knight." Both craft were developed and flown by Mojave Aerospace Ventures, which was a joint venture between Scaled Composites and Paul Allen, who provided funding of approximately $25 million.

The WhiteKnight "Stratolaunch System" employs aircraft with the world's largest wingspan and twin fuselages, and the first model held SpaceShipOne in a piggyback configuration on top of the wing spar between them.

The WhiteKnightTwo models carry SpaceShipTwo passenger rocketsundertheir twin fuselages. WhiteKnightTwo is a custom-built, four-engine, dual-fuselage jet aircraft, designed to carry SpaceShipTwo up to an altitude of 50,000 feet. You can see a great clip of the "drop and launch" on the Virgin Galactic website.

What About Jeff Bezos and Blue Origin?

In the video attached to this article, I couldn't resist showing off the latest handy work of theAmazonfounder's space company, Blue Origin.

Did anyone really think that Bezos was going to let Musk have all the fun in successfully designing reusable rocket technology for space travel?

New Shepard is a vertical-takeoff, vertical-landing (VTVL), human-rated rocket that is being developed by Blue Origin as a commercial system for suborbital space cargo, travel and tourism.

The rocket borrows its name from the first American astronaut in space, Alan Shepard, one of the original NASA Mercury Seven astronauts, who ascended to space on a suborbital trajectory similar to New Shepard's designs and objectives.

Prototype engine and vehicle flights began in 2006, while full-scale engine development started in the early 2010s and was complete by 2015. Uncrewed flight testing of the complete New Shepard vehicle (propulsion module and space capsule) began in 2015.

On December 11, 2019 the Blue Origin team launched their 12th flight for the New Shepard system without a crew but with a capsule full of payloads from over a dozen commercial, scientific, NASA research, and educational projects. This mission also marked their 100th customer, with everything from university medical research to small business materials testing.

Of 12 launches, they have re-used the same booster rocket at least 5 times,twice. They also have 12 successful crew capsule landings and 3 successful escape tests as they prepare for eventual crewed flight. With veteran reusable boosters, NS-12 successfully reached over 350K feet (~66 miles) above Earth. And, from mission control in the West Texas desert, they accomplished their 12th powered vertical landing with the rocket.

Blue Origin folks will also be quick to tell you that their rockets are ascending to true outer space, defined as at least 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth.

The video clip of that mission is a blast to watch because they equip the viewing screen with not only live altitude and speed readings but a vertical tracker and "key" to mission checkpoints, like the separation of capsule and booster and the apogee (peak altitude after engines are turned off, and thus a speed of zero MPH).

And then on the way down, we get to see and understand the functions of various fins, stabilizers and drag brakes before final touchdown. The descent and landing are simply amazing, especially with the commentary guide from Blue Origin team members Ariane Cornell and Caitlin Dietrich. The payload capsule lands later in the desert with the help of 3 parachutes and retro-rockets for a soft touchdown.

Here's what I texted my brother Rory after I saw it the first time in late December...

"Jeff Bezos Blue Origin. Amazing video capture here w altitude and speed. Goes to 350K feet, and comes back just under 1K MPH for reentry. Hits atmosphere under 300K ft and accelerated to 2,500 MPH. Drag fins slow down before drag brake rocket. Sonic boom at 6K feet and 400 MPH!"

But I actually got that last part wrong. Upon another viewing this week, I hear that the sonic boom "crack" doesn't occur until just above 2,000 feet and 350 MPH. I don't know what the two smaller "snaps" were at 6K feet, but guessing they had something to do with the drag brakes that really slow the ship down fast.

The homepage of BlueOrigin.com currently has the 50-minute launch video from Dec 11 and it includes all the "pre-game" stuff before the countdown, including payload customer visits, snapshots of BO facilities in Texas and Alabama, the obligatory "holds" in the countdown sequence, and a slice of Jeff's recent keynote where he explains that Earth has become small compared to the size of humanity and that we need to think long-term about our future in the stars...

"Blue's vision is a future where millions of people are living and working in space. In order to preserve Earth, our home, for our grandchildrens grandchildren, we must go to space to tap its unlimited resources and energy. If we can lower the cost of access to space with reusable launch vehicles, we can all enable this dynamic future for humanity."

Galactic MVP (Mission, Vision, Purpose)

Not only do I want you to check out the New Shepard launch and reentry/landing, I highly recommend visiting the websites for SpaceX and Virgin Galactic where their homepages have some stunning visuals of their spacecraft in action.

As you might imagine, any space program will have its share of failures and tragedies. My generation remembers where they were on January 28, 1986 when the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, including a civilian school teacher.

On October 31, 2014, during a test flight, the first SpaceShipTwo VSS Enterprise broke up in flight and crashed in the Mojave desert. A preliminary investigation suggested that the craft's descent device deployed too early. One pilot was killed and the other was treated for a serious shoulder injury after parachuting from the stricken spacecraft.

Richard Branson has stated that Virgin Galactic was in the best position in the world to provide rocket-powered, point-to-point 3,000 mph air travel on Earth. And while he suggested in October 2017 that he could travel to space aboard SpaceShipTwo within six months, it was not until December 2018 that VSS Unity achieved the project's first suborbital space flight, reaching an altitude of 51 miles, officially entering outer space by US standards.

But Richard's long-range commitment to safe, reliable and affordable spaceflight is as clear as Elon's and Jeff's. The homepage of VirginGalactic.com has their Purpose, Mission, and Vision statements that will likely endure beyond many other risk-inherent launches. As George Whitesides, CEO of Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company, has said...

"Space is not only important for the future of transportation, it's important for the future of imagination."

Kevin Cook is a Senior Stock Strategist for Zacks Investment Research where he runs the TAZR Trader and Healthcare Innovators portfolios.

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Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN) : Free Stock Analysis Report The Boeing Company (BA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Northrop Grumman Corporation (NOC) : Free Stock Analysis Report Tesla, Inc. (TSLA) : Free Stock Analysis Report Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (SPCE) : Free Stock Analysis Report To read this article on Zacks.com click here. Zacks Investment Research

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Zacks Investment Ideas feature highlights: Tesla, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, Northrop Grumman and Amazon - Yahoo Finance

Investment into mental health start-ups surged past 500m in 2019 amid rising demand for apps and other services that offer therapy, exclusive figures show.

Investors have increasingly ploughed cash into start-ups and apps that offer therapy, with investment increasing almost fivefold since 2014 to 580m, according to Pitchbook data analysed by Octopus Ventures, a venture capital firm headquartered in London.

Funding rounds led by investors eyeing up mental health apps have increased in size, while deal counts in the sector more than tripled in the same period, rising from just 30 in 2014 to 105 last year.

The uptick in interest comes amid a growing appetite for therapy services that are readily accessible, as patients risk facing months on a waiting list to see a therapist through the NHS or other public health systems across the world.

A number of apps hoping to offer therapy services digitally and other mental health start-ups have emerged in recent years which have prompted investors to inject them with cash.

Compass Pathways, an early-stage start-up developing forms of therapy for depression involving psilocybin, has won the backing of Silicon Valley mogul Peter Thiel, while Big Health, which has been backed by Octopus Ventures, gives users access to digital therapy for anxiety and insomnia.

Link:
Boom in therapy apps as investment surges past 500m - Telegraph.co.uk

By Dhirendra Kumar

With the stressful growth situation continuing, higher interest rates are unlikely to be seen any time soon. This means smart savers need to think clearly about using equity-based mutual funds as a source of regular income. The realisation that bank fixed deposits are a poor way of earning an income hasnt come a day too soon. On an inflation adjusted basis, fixed deposits (and other interest-bearing assets) were always a bad bet. In reality, for deriving a regular living income, specially for long periods as in retirement, equity mutual funds or balanced funds are by far the best option.

Every kind of logic points to this: One, a lower tax rate. Two, taxation only on withdrawal. And three, higher returns. Taken together, this effectively closes the argument. Lets see how.

Lets examine fixed deposits first. Suppose you have Rs 1 crore as savings from which you need a regular income. In a bank FD, a year later, it will be Rs 1.07 crore. So you have earned Rs 7 lakh, effectively Rs 58,000 a month, right? Only in theory. Assuming an inflation rate of 5%, if you want to preserve the real value of your Rs 1 crore and continue earning for years, you must leave Rs 1.05 crore in the bank. That leaves Rs 2 lakh for you to spend, which is just a paltry Rs 16,666 a month! This means that if you need Rs 50,000 a month, you need Rs 3 crore. Of course, at that level, income tax also kicks and about Rs 30,000 a year will have to be paid. Its actually even worse, because the tax has to be paid whether you realise the returns or not.

The situation is different when, instead of receiving interest, you are withdrawing from an investment in a hybrid (balanced) mutual fund. Unlike deposits, these are high-earning but volatile. In any given year, the returns could be high or low, but over five to seven years or more, they comfortably exceed inflation by 6-7% or even more. For example, over the past five years, a majority of equity funds have given returns of 12-14% or more. The returns may have fluctuated in individual years, and thats something that the saver has to put up with, but this is the way to defeat the threat of old age poverty.

In such mutual funds, one can withdraw 4% a year and still have a comfortable safety margin. On top of that, the tax is much lower. Instead of being added to your income, as with interest income, you have to pay capital gains tax on withdrawal. As long as the period of investment is greater than one year, returns from equity funds are taxed at 10%. So for a monthly income of Rs 50,000, Rs 1.5 crore will suffice instead of Rs 3 crore as with FDs. And no matter how high your savings and expenditure, its still taxed at 10%.

However, the tax advantage has yet another hidden factor. Lets say you invest Rs 10 lakh in a mutual fund. A year later, the value of the investment increased to Rs 10.80 lakh. Now, you want to withdraw the Rs 80,000 you have gained. In your holding, 7.4% is the gain and the rest (92.6%) is the original amount you invested. When you withdraw any money, the withdrawal shall be considered (for tax purposes) to consist of the gains and the principal in this same proportion. Therefore, of that Rs 80,000, only Rs 5,926 will be considered gains and will be added to your taxable income. Obviously, this makes a big difference in the tax you pay.

The conclusion is clear: in every possible way, it is better to draw your earnings as regular withdrawals from an equity mutual fund, rather than as interest income. The SWP (Systematic Withdrawal Plan) facility is available for regular withdrawals from every open-ended fund. The volatility may be a little uncomfortable in the short-term, but the maths and the logic are crystal clear.

(The writer is CEO, Value Research)

See original here:
How to earn regular income by investing in mutual funds - Economic Times

Time-honoured practices may no longer work

If there is sense and sensibility in investing, bonds are undoubtedly the choice for Jane Austens grounded Elinor rather than her flighty Marianne. In modern times the regular income they provide has made them a bedrock of portfolios for those wanting to avoid the sturm und drang of volatile equities. But do they make sense today, when trillions of dollars of bonds worldwide offer outright negative yields if held to maturity?

The worry is that bond prices, which are inversely related to their yields, are perilously high. Maybe they can climb a little further, buffing the established capital gains of the funds that hold them. Or they could fall a long way, denting the wealth of those who depend upon them. Reaching a view on the merits of bonds is crucial for investors in 2020. These longer-term forms of debt, issued by governments and companies, traditionally provided ballast to steady returns. A commonly followed rule in sensible retirement planning is to hold an increasing share of savings in bonds when approaching pensionable age.

But time-honoured practices may no longer work in the strange era of negative bond yields. Though these are essentially a eurozone and Japanese phenomenon, yields elsewhere reached historic lows in 2019. Those on 10-year gilts issued by the British government fell to around 0.4 per cent. At such nugatory levels, returns rely primarily on further price rises, but their logical corollary is still-lower yields. You can try to offset them by holding higher-yielding corporate bonds, but these expose you to the risk of firms that have issued them going bust.

Despite these real concerns, some current anxieties about investing in bonds are overdone. Though gilt yields have moved up from the depths of last year, they were still only a meagre 0.75 per cent as 2020 dawned. For years investors have been wrongly fretting that bond yields are unnaturally low and will rebound, driving prices down. Back at the start of 2017, yields on 10-year US government debt looked set to rise from around 2.5 per cent as the newly-elected President Trump eyed a borrowing splurge. In the event, though they broke 3 per cent at times in 2018, in 2019 they sank back below 1.5 per cent and started 2020 below 2 per cent.

The world of ultra-low interest rates shows little sign of disappearing. Population aging is a structural force holding rates down. A bulge of middle-aged people, who typically save more, has pushed up savings, while investment opportunities have diminished as fewer young people join the workforce. The resulting downward pressure on bond yields should eventually abate as more baby boomers retire and run down savings, but the process is an inherently gradual one.

There are also more immediate forces constraining yields. Global trade growth has slowed to a virtual standstill and the world economy looks stuck in a low-growth rut. The US Federal Reserve and other central banks eased monetary policy still further last year and are on standby to deliver yet more stimulus, bearing down on both short- and long-term interest rates.

As developed economies turn Japanese, with very low inflation and interest rates, it is worth learning lessons from this demographic forerunner, whose working-age population started to fall more than two decades ago. Since then bond yields have subsided and investors hoping to gain from a reversal in the trend have fared so badly that their strategy was dubbed the widowmaker. Global bond markets may appear scarily overpriced, but betting against them this year may be even more dangerous.

Read the rest here:
Investment report: betting on bonds - Prospect