Investing - the stock market and more

[Vive_La_Villa]

So why are stock markets so bullish, particularly in America?
 

Is it due to the extreme monetary easing policies to deal with the impacts of covid?

I wouldn’t underestimate how long the bull market could go on for. I made that mistake trying to short indices after the euro crisis and after Trump got elected. My money management was out of control and of course this was before the FSA tightened up on margin requirements for retail traders. 
 

Very much learnt the hard way that it’s extremely difficult to catch a top. Theres plenty of indicators to show weakness before a crash. At the moment I’m not seeing them.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Vive_La_Villa

[Genie]

8 hours ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

What App are you all using to buy / sell ? 

Any of them really impressed anyone ?

I’m interested in this too.

I used to trade some stocks 15 years or so back and it was a ball ache. I’m sure it’s much slicker now.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

2 hours ago, Vive_La_Villa said:

So why are stock markets so bullish, particularly in America?

They are (My guess) relying on pent up demand.  Mostly in the consumer channels (30% of their economy ?New trainers / Samsung and f150 for every ****) 

Due to COVID + Government money + Money people haven't spent  in lockdown and all the travel.  + Betting against covid variants doing F all.

However,  the record highs in a Pandemic with lockdown and a war time death toll I also think this is a bit OTT.

I don't see why its going so high and seemingly not stopping for no one.  

I will invest just not at the moment.  I am just not feeling it.

Or the Dow Jones graph is showing the Covid graphs what's up graph wise.

[Xela]

On 17/02/2021 at 08:07, Genie said:

It’s all setting up for a crash. Tesla another one, never made any money, has horrific quality issues (they made Range Rover look like Toyota) and now there’s an army of electric car competition coming over the hill.

As someone who works in that industry, are car companies best placed for the electric car revolution? Or will it be tech companies? Talk of an Apple car in the future. 

Regarding full EV, I'm surprised Toyota has been so slow with it, especially when they were leading the way with hybrid tech. They seem to have spent years working on Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 

[Genie]

52 minutes ago, Xela said:

As someone who works in that industry, are car companies best placed for the electric car revolution? Or will it be tech companies? Talk of an Apple car in the future. 

Regarding full EV, I'm surprised Toyota has been so slow with it, especially when they were leading the way with hybrid tech. They seem to have spent years working on Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 

The infrastructure to develop a car is ridiculous. Billions and billions of pounds are needed for all the development and ongoing testing. Then there’s the assembly plants and thousands of workers to put the cars together. This is what scared Dyson off once they got into it.

The tech and battery is only a small part of it. You still need proper, working, refined, durable chassis systems. The body needs to go through all the crash testing and structural durability. Then heating, cooling, infotainment, ride, steering, handling, the interior design and materials. These things take many years to perfect.
The battery propulsion system and a sexy big screen interface are only a tiny bit of what makes a car.

I expect that given some time when the novelty of having one of the first battery powered cars starts to wear off the usual suspects in the car industry will leave the likes of Tesla, Rivian, Apple, Polestar behind. Being electric is all they really have in their locker. When everyone has that it will be old guard who claw back the market share.

Tesla’s quality is off the scale bad. They average 250 faults per 100 vehicles and bottom of the table by a mile. They clearly don’t know how to engineer and assemble cars in volume. They have a major problem in China currently because their touchscreens are failing which means the driver cannot access functions like the screen de-mister. Could be a HUGE recall coming and potentially kicked out of the market.

 

 

[Davkaus]

I look forward to the Apple Car that gets a firmware update to limit it to 10mph as soon as they want to flog you a new version   It'll probably beat the Google Car which gets deprecated 7 months after launch.

I'll stick to traditional car companies, I think.

[fruitvilla]

34 minutes ago, Genie said:

The infrastructure to develop a car is ridiculous.

The thing that I don't quite get is where the energy to run these cars comes from? Imagine the energy required to replace petrol.

Hydrogen is not the answer really because it either comes from alternative sources or fossil fuels. Hydrogen simply overcomes a storage issue.

[Xela]

30 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I'll stick to traditional car companies, I think.

I'm a bit of a luddite when it comes to cars. I imagine my next car will be something from the late 80s / early 90s. Golden era of cars for me - had overcome the poor quality built of the 70s but not reliant on tech as cars from 2000 onwards. I rented a 'modern' a few months back and it has more tech in there than a spaceship! Not for me thanks. 

[LondonLax]

1 hour ago, fruitvilla said:

The thing that I don't quite get is where the energy to run these cars comes from? Imagine the energy required to replace petrol.

Hydrogen is not the answer really because it either comes from alternative sources or fossil fuels. Hydrogen simply overcomes a storage issue.

Even if you are running a power station on fossil fuel surely it is a more efficient way to generate energy to run a car than every car having a series of petrol explosions under the hood, pumping noxious gases out the back?

The interesting thing about electric cars is their potential use as power storage for the grid. The cars are charged at night during periods of low demand but most cars are not used most days and can remain plugged in. That means undriven cars parked in people’s garages (or potentially even at people’s offices) can be used to discharge power back into the grid during the daytime when power is at its highest demand. 

[villakram]

18 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Even if you are running a power station on fossil fuel surely it is a more efficient way to generate energy to run a car than every car having a series of petrol explosions under the hood, pumping noxious gases out the back?

The interesting thing about electric cars is their potential use as power storage for the grid. The cars are charged at night during periods of low demand but most cars are not used most days and can remain plugged in. That means undriven cars parked in people’s garages (or potentially even at people’s offices) can be used to discharge power back into the grid during the daytime when power is at its highest demand. 

Except in unusual circumstances (e.g., Texas right now), where people don't have enough power at home and then can't get to work. That idea is driven by the great reset, you'll be renting everything crowd, with no sign of a serious analysis demonstrating that to be anything more than curiosity given the known extra wear and tear on the power-pack and the grid infrastructure issues. 

Edited February 18, 2021 by villakram

[fruitvilla]

25 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Even if you are running a power station on fossil fuel surely it is a more efficient way to generate energy to run a car than every car having a series of petrol explosions under the hood, pumping noxious gases out the back?

I suspect a coal/oil power stations are marginally more fuel efficient. So if we factor in the transmission losses and the small inefficiencies in an electrical vehicle then I don't see any big gain there if any. The CO2 emissions will be similar but the coal fly ash won't be without its challenges depending on the coal source. The noxious emissions from vehicles continue to be reduced.

Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of electric cars, I am just concerned as we can quickly move away from fossil fuels.

25 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

The interesting thing about electric cars is their potential use as power storage for the grid. The cars are charged at night during periods of low demand but most cars are not used most days and can remain plugged in. That means undriven cars parked in people’s garages (or potentially even at people’s offices) can be used to discharge power back into the grid during the daytime when power is at its highest demand.

Yep storage is one advantage that electric cars may provide. But I would be pissed if the batteries were drained before a long trip. 

Speaking of storage cryo storage (I might have come across it on VT even) seems interesting.

Highview Power Cryogenic Energy Storage System - Trailer - YouTube

 

Edited February 18, 2021 by fruitvilla

[LondonLax]

6 minutes ago, fruitvilla said:

I suspect a coal/oil power stations are marginally more fuel efficient. So if we factor in the transmission losses and the small inefficiencies in an electrical vehicle then I don't see any big gain there if any. The CO2 emissions will be similar but the coal fly ash won't be without its challenges depending on the coal source. The noxious emissions from vehicles continue to be reduced.

Don't get me wrong, I am all in favour of electric cars, I am just concerned as we can quickly move away from fossil fuels.

Well we were looking at a worst case scenario, where your grid power is also fossil fuel generated. If you start adding some renewables into the grid the equation gets even better.

Thats not even looking at the impacts of exhaust pollution on human health. At the moment with the air being so cold where I am you can clearly see the whole cloud of exhaust fumes as they drift out of the exhaust pipe and waft up. It’s mental how big a cloud of noxious gas is produced from just a few seconds of the engine running. 

Future generations will look back on us like we were mad running so many internal combustion engines and thinking nothing of it (and they’d probably have a point!)

Quote

Yep storage is one advantage that electric cars may provide. But I would be pissed if the batteries were drained before a long trip.

   I’d presume you would have full control over whether you wanted to rent your car battery out as grid storage or not.

[Kuwabatake Sanjuro]

3 hours ago, Xela said:

As someone who works in that industry, are car companies best placed for the electric car revolution? Or will it be tech companies? Talk of an Apple car in the future. 

Regarding full EV, I'm surprised Toyota has been so slow with it, especially when they were leading the way with hybrid tech. They seem to have spent years working on Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. 

I'd say Toyota will make a success out of their EV rollout in the next couple of years, generally when they focus on doing something they do it right. That being said the electric UX hasn't pulled up any trees.

[TrentVilla]

Meanwhile.....in the stock market thread...

[Xela]

10 minutes ago, TrentVilla said:

Meanwhile.....in the stock market thread...

Just a roundabout way of saying buy EV stocks 

[Enda]

5 hours ago, Genie said:

I’m interested in this too.

I used to trade some stocks 15 years or so back and it was a ball ache. I’m sure it’s much slicker now.

I don’t know if they operate in the UK market, but I have an account with JP Morgan.

Very happy with their offering, I’ve bought in about forty ETFs ranging from bog standard market trackers to more niche stuff like ARKG and BLOK.

[mikeyp102]

14 hours ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

What App are you all using to buy / sell ? 

Any of them really impressed anyone ?

I use an app called interactive investor. Fairly simple to use, even for someone like me who doesn’t really know what he’s doing. Used to be free, pay a tenner a month now though.

[mikeyp102]

Market seemed to take a hit today. I’ve got most of my stick in renewable energy companies. Was doing well with one called, Powerhouse energy. I managed to buy at ridiculous cheap. Think I invested about £500 a few years back. I’ve been able to withdraw my investment and still up £5000, but it’s dropped today a bit. My others also renewable energy have also dropped a bit. Happy to play the long game on these though.

[Enda]

15 hours ago, mikeyp102 said:

Market seemed to take a hit today. I’ve got most of my stick in renewable energy companies. Was doing well with one called, Powerhouse energy. I managed to buy at ridiculous cheap. Think I invested about £500 a few years back. I’ve been able to withdraw my investment and still up £5000, but it’s dropped today a bit. My others also renewable energy have also dropped a bit. Happy to play the long game on these though.

Hi Mike, congrats on the gain. At the risk of butting in where I’m not wanted, here’s some unsolicited advice: unless you really know the ins and outs of the company, I’d back a renewable energy ETF rather than an individual stock. Every time, 100%.

It eliminates your risk of losing it all and will earn you the same return on average.

(Unless you’re an insider. Then do your own thing.)

[mikeyp102]

5 minutes ago, Enda said:

Hi Mike, congrats on the gain. At the risk of butting in where I’m not wanted, here’s some unsolicited advice: unless you really know the ins and outs of the company, I’d back a renewable energy ETF rather than an individual stock. Every time, 100%.

It eliminates your risk of losing it all and will earn you the same return on average.

(Unless you’re an insider. Then do your own thing.)

What’s an ETF? Defo not an insider