Bears, Beats, Bitcoin

In honor of my favorite vignette from The Office…

Question:  What kind of bear is best?

‘Tis the season for market predictions (and forgetting last year’s predictions).  The optimists predict low single digit returns for equities.  The bears predict bear things.  Which means no one expects even decent stock market returns.  Now more than ever it makes sense to hold a portfolio that doesn’t require you to predict the future to be successful.

Bears Eat Beets

Schwab’s Jeffrey Kleintop points out that while stocks have gone up every month this year, so have earnings.

Battlestar Galactica

Bitcoin is going bananas yet again.  Charlie Bilello has tracked bitcoin sentiment via Twitter polls at major milestones which is fascinating.  He also occasionally marks bitcoin’s “market cap” (or whatever you want to call it) which has hit $214 billion.  OMG!  That’s more than Home Depot!!!

Calm down, Apple’s cash hoard is around $270 billion.

Wait, did I just predict Apple buying all the bitcoins?  No, but that’s a fun thought.  It’s interesting to look at bitcoin’s market cap and its meteoric rise, but nobody even knows what to classify bitcoin as.  Some people talk about it like a stock, others treat it like a currency.  Some liken it to gold.  My opinions on crypto are here and here.  It’s going to take a while before this space calms down.  I like Patrick O’Shaughnessy’s latest podcast where his guest, Adam Ludwin (wrote the best crypto primer), says many of the new crypto assets aren’t being utilized for anything more than speculation.