#yes this is an extremely optimistic prediction considering the circumstances

[infinitecyanroses]

Random prediction: The eggs return/are rescued but they pull a 101 Dalmatians and end up finding a bunch of new eggs for the new islanders to adopt. It's played off as the islanders wondering where these new eggs came from and the other eggs are like "Can we keep them?"

[tanadrin]

"fairly suicidal" anon again. This kind of got away from me and ended up significantly longer than intended. Apologies for that, and if it's too long/involved/whatever to read that's genuinely totally fine. (Which is to say: please do not think you have some kind of obligation or I will be Extra Suicidal if you don't respond or whatever. I've got at least a couple more years or one more massive life-wrecking trauma left in me.)

I think your response is pretty typical of people who are, at baseline, pretty happy and optimistic, and I'm sure there are people who haven't heard its like before and would benefit from it, but.... let's be honest that's kind of a generic autocomplete response, and in my experience it tends to come from people who can't or don't really model serious depression well. My model of the perspective you are coming from is something like: It would be terrible for the things I'm saying to be true, and they don't feel true to you, so surely they must not be true for anyone-- you don't want the world to be one where those things are true, and sometimes they are untrue, so, therefore, they're probably untrue basically all the time forever. Unfortunately. I'm aware that 40 years is a decent length of time. I'm aware that my perspective is fallible and limited-- this is the primary reason why I haven't seriously tried to kill myself!. However, looking at how the past 30+ years have gone does not fill me with optimism. In particular the past 15 or so years, where I've technically had the most autonomy, I just kind of... barely existed. I am still trying things to get out of the hole but this really could easily just continue until I die. It is an extremely possible outcome that I spend my entire life wishing it was either worth living or over already, and eventually it reaches "over already." I kept expecting that I'd surely snap out of it eventually, year after year, no one can spend that long in this kind of state, right? And then 15 years passed and I simply did not. It is not unrealistic to believe that that could happen 3 more times.

"Every day you are alive in the world, you have the opportunity to find pleasure" rings really hollow when my physiological capacity to experience pleasure and happiness is extremely minimal and has been tangibly shrinking for as long as I've been a conscious human being. It feels tone-deaf. I know what my baseline looks like. It is not good. If I was guaranteed to die tomorrow, then having lived my life will have unequivocally been worse for me than not having lived it at all, and it will have been objectively a mistake that I didn't pull the plug when I was 12 and first having suicidal thoughts.

If, upon turning 80, I figured out how to have a life that was just barely worth living, and then died a year later, that does not actually undo the years of unhappiness before that, and that is still a life that was, on net, not worth living.

My impression is that people coming from your perspective have brains that just fully shut down when considering this prospect-- that you fall into the trap where you believe that even one second of a-life-worth-living is worth any amount of suffering endured to get to that point. It might help to imagine a person who experiences one single year of a life worth living, followed by 80 years of a life full of incredible misery, and then dies.

The me who exists now matters; the hypothetical-unlikely-certainly-not-guaranteed future version of myself who is marginally glad they exist doesn't just automatically get to trump all of that just because that's sad to think about.

Yes, there is no one life "track" but there certainly are circumstances more or less prone to granting happiness-predicting things like enough money to live on, autonomy, fulfillment, etc. Again, there is no rule saying this current status of being perpetually unable to get my feet under me has to end. I have spent the actual majority of my life like this.

Being unable to get a job that pays enough to live on without also making me want to die (more) does in fact hinge pretty strongly on being able to get that special insanely expensive little piece of paper. It is the cost of entry for the vast majority of non-horrible jobs, that is just what the system looks like in the US. (please do not tell me "oh just learn to code!" If I was capable of doing that I would have done it). The material conditions of my life obviously aren't that bad in objective terms given that I'm capable of using my time to send messages on the internet (if they were much worse I would have pulled the plug years ago) so it feels meaningful that I still manage to be so miserable despite that, and plausible that improving them would not help even if it were possible.

There just... there is actually such a thing as a downward spiral where the baseline becomes worse and incremental improvements become progressively harder and more fleeting, as much as it is sad to think about. Sometimes you accumulate damage and get both farther from your goal and worse at making progress towards it, and it just keeps happening. The brain is a physical object that can, sometimes, Just Get Worse. One instance of trauma can make it harder to recover from the next instance of trauma that comes along, and so on. I am still trying, clearly, and I'm clinging to the idea that lots of weird unexpected stuff can happen, but "just hope for a miracle to happen such that these patterns completely reverse against all odds" is... at minimum that's a huge ask. Please recognize it for what it is.

I'm not really looking for answers or anything here (I wasn't before either tbc, I just thought it was interesting how different my opinion apparently was compared with other extremely depressed people), but I tend to really chafe at what feels like clueless forced positivity from people who Really Don't Seem To Get It, and I hope this information will, idk, provide a potentially novel perspective. Or maybe it won't! Sorry again that it was so long.

i've spent a big chunk of my life dealing with depression. i know it pretty well actually. and if i've won any insight from that, it's that in depression we very often exactly misconstrue the causal axis of our thoughts. we think things like, "i am worthless -> therefore i am depressed." but our feelings shape how we think about ourselves and the world; even things which seem like incontrovertible and inarguably facts turn out to be a product of our rumination: "i was depressed -> therefore i felt worthless."

i know this feels like a platitude. i know when you are depressed saying something like "nobody is worthless" or "it's never too late" feels like somebody blowing rainbows up your ass, some hippy dippy shit that doesn't mean anything. but as someone who has frequently felt worthless, and has frequently felt that they have fucked up their life beyond repair, who has seen other people going through it and come out the other side, i'm telling you: as a matter of both personal experience and accumulated knowledge about the world, "nobody is worthless" and "it is never too late" is not a platitude. it is a rational, reasoned judgement i have been won over to, and which i am totally convinced of. i offer it, not as a panacaea (we cannot reason ourselves or be cajoled out of depression; the thoughts are subsequent to the feelings!), but as (hopefully) the very mildest of analgesics.

i'm not a negative utilitarian. i don't think you can take all the bad and good things that happen to a person, assign them a numerical score, and subtract one from the other to determine whether their life was worth it after all. reading about rare medical abnormalities on wikipedia is itself sufficient to convince one there are certainly short lives full of nothing but pain. and observing people dying of degenerative diseases is enough to why there are points at which people make the rational decision not to continue living. but i also know that there are people who have convinced themselves their life is not worth living, because the pain of allowing themselves to be hopeful again, only to have to deal with crushing disappointment, makes it more reassuring to abandon hope altogether. and i have known people so trapped in the teeth of their suffering, they are unable even to do the one thing that may bring them some relief, until they make the conscious choice to believe that that feeling of despair is not in fact a reliable guide to truth.

we prefer certainty to hope; the sure knowledge we are doomed is often cognitively a lighter load than the uncertain possibility of future happiness. but i think it's worth it to keep hope alive. not because i am a sunny optimist who has never felt miserable, but because i have lost days, weeks, months, years to the blackest despair. i have spent many an hour carefully ruminating on the very clear and inarguably true things that made me feel that way, carefully laying out why life was not worth living and maybe never would be, specifically debunking all the bullshit people told me to try to counsel me out of my depression. and that feeling that was ironclad certainty in my mind at the time is, looking back, like a fading mirage. one should always at least consider the possibility that what feels to us like an immutable truth of our life is less substantial than it seems.

[variousqueerthings]

thinking about these awesome tags from @catzy88​ and wanted to just speak to essentially what they talk about and one of my favourite writing choices of the show (so far, considering my predictions for what’ll happen moving forward):

and it’s Johnny’s two-steps-forward-one-step (sometimes several steps) -back journey. 

1. Introduction

there’s a few of things that happen on the show that get wrapped up in a semi-fantastical/wish-fulfilmenty way (Miguel recovering from his back injury like he does, Daniel sorting out his dealership problems with Doyona, etc.) and I’m not mad about it, it fits in with the generally optimistic tone of the show + various circumstances that surround these choices, so they’re not one-note writing decisions - 

ex. aftermath of Miguel’s surgery will continue to be explored on s4 so it’s not done and over with without consequences versus the way Daniel’s journey to Okinawa is about healing in various ways, so that deus ex machina fits in with the tone of that storyline. People’s mileage probably vary, but I think it’s all relatively well-balanced (pun not intended) with the deeper, less-easily-fixable issues and character dynamics that the show explores.

2. Johnny’s Story

If everything on this show were easy it wouldn’t be so watchable. Which is where Johnny comes in (amongst other characters, but I’m gonna focus).

in contrast Johnny’s journey for three seasons has had a lot of good intentions - help Miguel, get his life in order, forgive and forget the past, mend his relationship with Robby, be generally better to himself and others - and the majority of it’s gone pretty badly. 

I have predictions that there’ll be a flip in s4 and Daniel’s going to spiral more obviously, while Johnny’s going to be healing/functioning somewhat better. I also think it’s important to show him failing despite being in a better place than end season 2/beginning season 3. And failing again. And failing again. 

Johnny (and Daniel, but I shall focus!) doesn’t come onto this show with easily fixed issues. He’s likely been an alcoholic since he was in his 20s, he’s isolated to the extreme, he can’t hold down a job, he’s still under the thumb of his stepdad, and his relationship to Robby is non-existent at best. 

In 100 different ways he’s trapped and he’s so trapped that he can’t even envision being less trapped. Starting the dojo is a fluke, combined by meeting and saving Miguel and wanting to spite Daniel. He’s not planning on “getting better,” hell, he doesn’t even think that he has a problem that can be fixed to begin with. Up until this moment life has largely just happened to him and his decisions have been reactionary (and if there were times we don’t know about before now where he tried, he obviously failed)

His thinking clearly goes something like this: “I’ll make this kid not get beat up... and I guess now I’ve got a business so I need other kids? and now I care about this kid I guess, oh and his mom’s pretty nice (and pretty) too... and now I’ve got a business I can buy Sid out, that’s cool... ” etcetcetc. (still reactionary to an extent, although that gradually changes) right up until the tournament happens and he starts to have to face some of the shit he’s been telling these kids and Robby’s with Daniel and Kreese has reappeared...

I’d argue it’s not until mid-ish season 2, when Kreese reveals he’s homeless and Johnny decides that their forgiveness is tied into one another and especially when Tommy dies (still got one thing I don’t... time) that he actually really starts thinking about what all of this means for him longterm, that he can and should want for the future and that he has real responsibilities to do so because of others. It’s also the first time he properly admits that it’s not just “the tournament as a single event,” but the whole philosophy that he was taught that fucked him up (which is scary, because then he’s gotta admit a whole bunch of other stuff - that he has deep-rooted issues and that he needs to try to get better. That he’s both a victim and a perpetrator of this cycle. That just saying things are shit and won’t ever change won’t cut it anymore).

And just as he begins this thought-process and is incredibly vulnerable because of that everything goes to hell.

All of the structures Johnny had been building were on sand, right up to the choice to handshake deal on the dojo, and they all come crashing down spectacularly all at once in the season 2 finale.

Back to square one.

3. Square one (but not really)

This is amazing! It’s giving us a narrative on top of the more fantasy-like narratives that goes: “Not everything can be fixed easily just because we want to fix them,” and, “some things need to fail so that the next time you try, you try better!”

It’s not square one at all. 

A whole bunch of shit that Johnny was carrying with him without being able to voice in the first season is now out there, in the open. The ugliness needs to be exposed before it can be healed and (as myself and so many people who’re dealing with xy and z know) when you first “discover” what’s fucked up you can feel like everything’s worse. Your ability to deal with that thing can get a whole lot worse. 

Johnny relapses into a version of himself that on the surface looks even worse than in s1, but actually he’s way more open to change, he’s got reasons to get back up again, even if it takes a moment for him to pull himself together to actually do that. It takes pretty much all of season 3 for him to get there (and that was necessary too), but now he’s there he can start from a much stronger place than he previously did.

And there’s so much he’s still not facing - can you imagine the fallout when he has to deal with being an alcoholic? 

Johnny as a character has made so many mistakes (note: I’m not a fan of using the word “fault” as a descriptor for characters (as in “whose fault is X”) because they’re fictional and it’s more about motivations than tracing faults) and those mistakes make a whole lot of sense to his character - a broke, drunk, traumatized guy with more failings under his belt than you can count. 

I confess, I’m not sure how I feel about him not visiting Robby in juvie from a writing perspective, however it’s on the show, so now we get to analyse how it can make sense - which, considering that Johnny isn’t good at prioritising - and as an ADHD that’s a mood - it can totally work. Is it very bad? Yes. Does it sound like something Johnny would do when faced between an easy-fix of his relationship with the Diaz family and his much more difficult and complicated relationship with Robby? Sigh, yeah... unfortunately parenting Robby is the biggest fear he has... it’s not pretty, but it’s not meant to be...

4. Anyway, TL;DR 

I’d have felt cheated if Johnny could just magically “become” better - both mentally and in his relationships to others. He’s made big mistakes, has a lot of unresolved mental health issues, and - ironically - has chosen flight over fight for so much of his life that “simply wanting to become better” being  enough of a motivator to change all of that around would’ve been unrealistic for his character and unsatisfying for a longterm plot in which we see how difficult it is and (hopefully) get to revel in the continued upwards journey despite that.

Also it would’ve been kind of insulting to these journeys in real life (to do a little conflating for a moment). 

Trying to make good is admirable, but it sure isn’t easy and it won’t always work, especially if you don’t know where to even start.

The joy of his story is in seeing someone continue to try despite that.

[talabib]

How To Become An Intelligent Investor

Have you ever thought about investing in the stock market? Many of us have given it serious consideration. Yet, most of us have been hesitant to take action due to the financial crises, burst bubbles and economic crashes we’ve witnessed.

However, there is a way to invest in the market that doesn’t leave you at risk of losing everything: intelligent investing. First outlined by Benjamin Graham in 1949, intelligent investing takes a longer-term, more risk-averse approach to the stock market. And it works.

In the decades since The Intelligent Investor was published, many have used Graham’s approach and made fortunes, among them, perhaps the most famous is Warren Buffett.

This post, based on Graham’s original advice, shows how you can become an intelligent investor yourself.

Intelligent investors don’t rush in; they take time to rationally examine a company’s long-term value.

There is a lot of money to be made through investing. But also a lot to lose. Finance history is full of stories of investors like Warren Buffett, who, by investing in the right companies, earned vast amounts of money in return. There are just as many — if not more — stories of misfortune, in which people place the wrong bets and end up losing it all.

So, we have to ask ourselves: is investment really worth the risk? The answer is yes, it can be, so long as you follow the strategy of intelligent investing.

Intelligent investors use thorough analyses in order to secure safe and steady returns. This is very different from speculating, in which investors focus on short-term gains made possible by market fluctuations. Speculations are thus very risky, simply because nobody can predict the future.

For example, a speculator might hear a rumor that Apple will soon release a new hit product, and would then be motivated to buy lots of Apple stocks. If she’s lucky, then this knowledge will pay off and she’ll make money. If she’s unlucky and the rumor proves wrong, then she stands to lose a lot.

In contrast, intelligent investors focus on pricing. These investors buy stock only when its price is below its intrinsic value, i.e., its value as it relates to a company’s propensity for growth.

As an intelligent investor, you’ll buy a stock only if you believe there is a probable margin between what you pay and what you will earn as the company grows. Think of this margin of safety the same way you would if you were out shopping. An expensive dress, for example, is only worth it if you end up keeping it for a while. If the quality is insufficient, then you might as well buy a cheaper one that lasts for the same amount of time.

The life of an intelligent investor isn’t very exciting, but that’s not the point. The point is the profit.

Intelligent investing is broken down into three principles.

There are three principles that apply to all intelligent investors: First, intelligent investors analyze the long-term development and business principles of the companies in which they’re considering investing before buying any stock.

A stock’s long-term value is not arbitrary. Rather, it depends directly on how well the company behind it performs. So, be sure to examine the company’s financial structure, the quality of its management and whether it pays steady dividends, i.e., the distribution of profits to investors.

Don’t fall into the trap of only looking at short-term earnings. Look instead at the big picture by examining the company’s financial history.

These steps will give you a better idea of how well a company performs independent of its value on the market. For instance, a company that isn’t currently popular (and therefore has low share price) but shows promising records, i.e., has earned consistent profits, is likely undervalued, and would thus make a prudent investment.

Second, intelligent investors protect themselves against serious losses by diversifying their investments. Never put all your money on one stock, no matter how promising it appears!

Just imagine the horror you would feel if the promising company that you poured all your investments into shows up in the news for a tax fraud scandal. Your investment will lose its value immediately, and all that time and money will be lost forever. By diversifying, you ensure that you won’t lose everything at once.

Finally, intelligent investors understand that they won’t pull in extraordinary profits, but safe and steady revenues.

The target for the intelligent investor is to meet her personal needs, not to outperform the professional stockbrokers on Wall Street. We can’t do better than those who trade for a living, and we shouldn’t be aiming for fast money anyway; chasing dollar signs only makes us greedy and careless.

Intelligent investors understand the importance of stock-market history.

The first thing you should do before you invest isn’t to look at a stock’s history. That’s important, sure, but what’s more important is looking at the history of the stock market itself.

Looking back through history reveals that the stock market has always been defined by regular ups and downs. Often, these fluctuations can’t be foreseen. The unpredictability of the market means that investors need to be prepared – financially and psychologically.

Economic crises, like the Wall Street crash in 1929, are a fact of life, and happen from time to time. Thus you need to ensure that you can take a big hit and survive. This means that you should have a diverse stock portfolio, so your investments don’t all get hit at once.

What’s more, you should be mentally and psychologically prepared for crisis. Don’t sell everything at the first sign of danger. Remember instead that, even after the most devastating crashes, the market will always recover.

And while you can’t predict every crisis, looking at the history of the market will give you a better idea of its stability.

Once you’ve determined that the market is stable, focus on the history of the company in which you’d like to invest.

Look, for example, at the correlation between stock price and the company’s earnings and dividends over the past ten years. Then consider the inflation rate, i.e., the rise in prices generally, in order to see how much you’d really earn, all things considered.

For example, you calculate a 7-percent return on investment within one year, but if inflation is at a 4-percent rate, then you’ll earn a return of only three percent. Think carefully about whether it’s worth the effort for only a three-percent return!

When it comes to shrewd trading, a knowledge of history is a fine weapon, so be sure to keep it sharp.

Don’t trust the crowd or the market.

To understand the whims of the market, it’s sometimes easier to imagine the entire stock market as being a person, let’s call him Mr. Market. As far as people go, Mr. Market is unpredictable, very moody and not very clever.

Mr. Market is easily influenced, and this causes him to have major mood swings. You can see this in practice in the way the market always swings back and forth between unsustainable optimism to unjustified pessimism.

When a new iPhone is released, for instance, people lose themselves in their excitement. Mr. Market is no different, and we see this reflected in the stock market when something exciting is about to happen: prices go up and people are more willing to overpay.

As result, when the market is too optimistic about future growth, stocks become too expensive. On the other hand, sometimes the market is too pessimistic, warning you to sell in unwarranted circumstances.

The intelligent investor needs to be a realist and stop herself from following the crowd. She should likewise ignore the mood swings of Mr. Market.

Moreover, when Mr. Market is happy, he makes you see future profits that aren’t really there.

Just because a stock generates profit in a given moment doesn’t necessarily mean that it will remain profitable forever. Quite the contrary: stocks that have been performing well are more likely to lose value in the near future because demand often inflates the price to the breaking point.

Even knowing this, it’s exceedingly easy to become enticed by short-term gains; we have evolved to easily recognize patterns, especially those that promise good things to come. In fact, people are so good at recognizing patterns that, when psychologists show them random sequences and even tell them that there is no pattern, they will still try to search for one.

Likewise, when we see profits rising and rising, we trick ourselves into seeing a pattern that we believe will continue.

By this point, you should understand the basic principles of intelligent investing. The following will offer you practical investment tips based on your unique investment style.

The defensive investor’s portfolio should be well balanced, safe and very easy to manage.

When you start on the path of investing, it’s important that you pick a strategy that best matches you as an individual. You’ll need to decide whether you’re a defensive investor or an enterprising investor. Right now, we’ll focus on the defensive investor:

The defensive investor hates risks. Thus, safety is her main focus. This safety can only be achieved if she diversifies her investments.

First, you should invest in both high-grade bonds, things like AAA government debt securities, as well as common stocks, by which your share of the company translates to voting power for major business decisions. Ideally, you should make around a 50-50 split between the two; or, for the extremely risk-averse investor, splits of 75 percent for bonds and 25 percent for stocks are acceptable.

Stocks and bonds have different degrees of safety and profitability: bonds are more secure but produce less profit, while stocks are less secure but can lead to greater rewards. This kind of diversification accounts for both tendencies.

Second, your common stock portfolio should be likewise diversified. Invest in big, well-known companies with long histories of success, and try investing in at least 10 different companies to reduce the risk.

This diversification might sound to you like more work than we initially promised, but don’t worry. To make things simpler, you’ll make use of the simplicity of choice:

When deciding on common stocks, it’s best not to reinvent the wheel. Look at the portfolios of well-established investment funds and simply align your portfolio with theirs. This doesn’t mean you should follow the bandwagon and buy the stocks that are fashionable. Rather, look for investment funds with a long history of success, and copy them.

Finally, always make sure to employ the services of an expert. They know the game better than you, and can guide you to making the best investment decisions. If you follow these simple principles, then your prudence will be rewarded sooner or later with good results.

Investing is easy when you follow the formula.

Once you’ve chosen the companies you want to invest in, then it’s time to congratulate yourself. Most of your work is now complete! Now all you have to do is determine how much money you want to regularly invest and check your stocks from time to time.

During this time, you will use a process called formula investing, in which you act strictly according to a predefined formula that determines how much money you will invest and how often. This approach is also called dollar-cost averaging, whereby you invest in a common stock every month or quarter and always with the same amount of money.

Once you’ve found a stock that you’ve determined to be safe and sound, you’ll want to set your investments on autopilot. Start by committing yourself to a certain amount of money, e.g., $50, which you will invest every few months. Then buy as many stocks as possible for your $50.

The advantage here is that you now have to exert no further effort. You won’t ever invest too much, and you certainly won’t gamble.

The disadvantage, however, lies in the emotional demands of formula investing. Even if the price for your target stock is a real bargain and you want to buy more, you’ve already limited yourself to spending only your limit.

Nevertheless, defensive investors should check from time to time to ensure that their investment portfolios are still running well.

A good rule for this is to readjust your portfolio’s division of common stocks and bonds every six months. Ask yourself: are my stocks still profitable? Is the ratio about the same as when I had initially invested (e.g., 50-50)?

Finally, you should seek out a professional once a year to consult about adjusting your funds.

You now know all you need to start your career as a defensive investor. The following will lay out the strategies you need to become a successful enterprising investor.

Enterprising investors start similarly to defensive investors.

To become a successful enterprising investor, you’ll want to employ many of the same strategies as defensive investors. Just like a defensive investor, you will divide your funds between bonds and common stocks.

Whereas the defensive investor will most often opt for a 50-50 split between stocks and bonds, the enterprising investor will invest more in common stocks, as they are more profitable (yet riskier). And just like the defensive investor, enterprising investors should also consult a financial planner.

However, the enterprising investor sees her financial planner not as a teacher, but rather as a partner in managing her money. That is, she is not led by her financial planner; they make decisions together.

In addition to using bonds and common stocks as the base for their portfolios, enterprising investors will also experiment with other kinds of stocks that have higher risk and higher reward.

For instance, you might have read about an up-and-coming start-up, and you suspect that it might be the next Google. In other words: it represents an amazing opportunity. As an enterprising investor, you have an opportunity to take a risk on this company, but only with a limited amount of money.

No matter how exciting or promising an investment opportunity seems, enterprising investors should limit these stocks to a maximum of 10 percent of her overall portfolio.

Remember: intelligent investors are not without fault, and sometimes Mr. Market is too wild for any rational person to predict. So, we have to place limits to protect our money in case of economic downturn or poor investment.

And like defensive investors, enterprising investors don’t forget that continual research and monitoring of their portfolios is essential to maintain an incoming profit flow.

The enterprising investor doesn’t follow the market’s ups and downs.

If you own stocks and their price falls, do you sell them immediately or keep them? If another stock is rising, is it a good idea to get in on the action before it’s too late?

This approach, known as trading in the market, is typical of investors, because they fear that going against the flow will result in financial losses. An intelligent investor, however, knows better!

Trusting Mr. Market is dangerous. If a stock’s prices are climbing fast, then chances are that it’s either already more expensive than its inherent value or it will make a risky investment.

Do you remember the US housing bubble only a few years back? Everyone kept investing in housing, and as prices continued to climb, nobody realized that prices were already totally unrepresentative of their intrinsic value. Once this became too obvious to ignore, however, the entire market crashed.

To avoid this exact scenario, enterprising investors buy in low markets and sell in high markets.

Check your portfolio regularly and examine the companies you invest in. Ask yourself questions like: Is the management still doing a good job? How is the financial situation?

As soon as you realize that one of the companies in your portfolio is overrated and its stock prices are growing without any relation to its true value, then it’s better to sell before it crashes.

On the other hand, you’ll want to buy in low markets.That’s exactly what Yahoo! Inc. did in 2002 when it bought Inktomi Corp. for only $1.65 per share. It was a sensational bargain. Mr. Market had become depressed after Inktomi’s shares fell from the seriously overrated $231.625 per share, at a time when the company wasn’t profitable.

The enterprising investor has the chance to find real bargains.

By this point, the idea of becoming an enterprising investor should sound like a fun challenge. But is it really worth it to go through all this trouble of constantly checking your portfolio? As a matter of fact, it is, since that’s where the best bargains lie — but only if you start smart.

The best way to start your life as an enterprising investor is to virtually track and pick stocks. Invest virtually for one year in order to hone your ability to pick out a bargain and track your stocks’ progress.

Today, there are many websites that allow you to make virtual investments. All you have to do is register in order to see if you can really achieve better-than-average results. This one-year practice period serves a number of purposes: not only does it help you learn the ins and outs of investment, but it will also free you from your fantastic expectations.

Once you’ve had your year’s virtual experience, then you’re ready for bargain hunting. The best place to find a bargain is in undervalued companies’ stocks.

The market normally undervalues the stocks of companies which are either temporarily unpopular or are suffering economic losses.

To illustrate this, imagine that Enterprise B is the second-strongest competitor in the refrigerator market. The company is large, and has shown sound — but not spectacular — profits over the past seven years. However, due to a production error, the company hasn’t been as profitable over the past two months, causing its share price to plummet as skittish investors get scared.

Once that production error is resolved, the company will be right back where it was, and an intelligent investor would see these falling prices as an opportunity to get a great bargain.

But finding bargains is hard. That’s why it’s so important to get your year’s worth of practice in first. If you can make it in the virtual world, then you can make it in real life!

Whether you want to play it defensively or go the route of the entrepreneur, when it comes to stocks, you always want to walk the path of the intelligent investor. All you have to do is follow the guidelines laid out here, and you too can turn your investments into modest — but steady — profits.

[tipsycad147]

Good Luck Spells & Powerful Wiccan Rituals to Bring Success

Do you believe in Luck? Do you have any personal rituals or superstitions for Good Fortune? 🤞 After all, Luck is nothing more than the right attitude which can help you find and embrace good opportunities in life. If you believe that Luck is on your side, then you’ve already paved a large part of the way. For those who believe, Fortune awaits with her beautiful smile.

Join me in this step-by-step guide to Good Luck Spells for beginners and learn how to bring Fortune to your life.

What is Luck?

Luck is defined a set of events that happen by chance rather by our own actions. But research has shown that luck is also a matter of how we choose to look at our lives. Lucky people tend to feel more successful and confident all the time. 🙌

How to Increase your Good Luck

First of all, we need to understand that feelings of success and self-confidence will make you successful. This is how you can make your own luck. And the same principles work for those who tend to attract “bad luck”. It’s important to be clear on this: Bad luck is usually a result of bad energies, negative feelings, and ill intentions that come from us or our surroundings.

You probably have heard about the Evil Eye and other types of curses. Malevolent energies can be very powerful because they feed on hatred, envy and resentment: these are Toxic emotions that create a feedback loop. But there are ways to protect yourself and remove bad luck with homemade rituals and simple good luck spells 🍀. Some are very simple and others a bit more advanced. Keep reading to learn more!

Rituals and Spells to Attract Good Luck

These are some of the rituals and spells that will help you clear away all bad luck and promote an optimistic and positive lifestyle. You can use the one that you think is closest to your needs, or try them all and see which works best for you.

Good Luck Meditations

If you’re lucking for good luck spells without ingredients, explore the Guided Meditations on this site. Pairing your rituals for good luck with a guided meditation or devotional prayer can help you achieve greater success in your goals. The power of good luck chants comes from the ability to stop, breathe, and assess the situation. A simple exercise like a daily meditation can clear your vision and help you find opportunities everywhere in your life.

Purple Candle Guidance

Burn a purple candle as you follow this guided meditation to connect with the Divine Light and higher consciousness.

1. Be Clear on your Intentions

It’s impossible to achieve something unless you believe that you can do it. Use your mind as a projective tool to shape what you want to see happen in real life. “Good Luck” is a different concept for everyone, so you need to have a clear picture of what it is exactly that you want to attract. It could be health, it could be money, a relationship, a better job, etc. Start by defining what you want and then visualize in great detail what that looks like to you. This will allow you to cast an extremely powerful good luck spell.

2. Use the Law of Attraction

The Law of Attraction works just like a magnet: I think of myself as a magnetic compass that automatically attracts matching circumstances and events. The Law of Attraction states that “like attracts like”. This occurs at a physical level, a mental level, and a spiritual level.

How to cast a good luck spell on yourself? Think like this: My job as a creator of prosperity and good luck in abundance is to keep my thoughts focused on what I want, all the time. Because I strongly believe in this unbreakable Law of the Universe, I owe to myself to make it very clear in my mind exactly what I want, without error.

Like that, you will become what you think about the most, and you will also attract into your life what you think about the most. This happens on a subconscious level to all of us. Our destiny is not written for us, but by us, and most of the time we don’t even realize it!

Thoughts and Emotions can be extremely powerful in creating or destroying your Good Luck. Always see yourself living in abundance and that’s what you will attract. It works for everyone, without exception.

3. Take Action

Imagine that you want to get a new job, but you never go to a job interview or tell anybody that you’re looking for a job. It would be impossible to achieve it, right? For the same reason, always be on the move and never give up. Open up to new experiences, try new things, and meet new people. With every step you take, you open the door for something different to happen to you.

A spell to bring good luck will open doors and help you see new opportunities, but it’s up to you to cross the doors and take the chances.

What is the best moon phase for Good Luck spells?

The Waxing Crescent Moon 🌙 will help you attract positive change, good luck, and growth. Cast these spells as soon as you see a crescent moon. You could also try them on the New Moon to start the new lunar cycle with the best possible energies.

Are these Spells Safe to Cast?

Yes! All of these lucky rituals are considered White Magic spells for good luck. Along with spiritual cleanses, they are the easiest and safest type of spells to try even if you are a Beginner Witch. Most of these come from ancient good luck rituals and are designed to be safe since no external or negative entities are being called upon. If you aren’t sure, read these Safety Rules for Spellcasting before starting your ritual.

Are there Good Luck rituals for money?

Rituals for good luck and money spells can be combined or simply click here to find our Money Spells collection, which are specifically designed for the intention of attracting money, wealth, and prosperity into your life.

Are there any good luck rituals for lottery?

Be very careful when searching for “spells to win the lottery”. Anyone who claims they can predict the winning numbers with Numerology, or make you win the Powerball with Magic spells, Voodoo or Witchcraft is lying to you. Money spells can help you accomplish a lot of things, like manifesting money that you really need, but manipulating the odds of winning the lottery to make you a millionaire is not one of them.

I need spells for Good Luck in a job interview

Here’s a quick good luck spell: The day before the job interview, write the word ‘success’ and your name on a bay leaf. Place it under your pillow and go to sleep. The next day, put that bay leaf in your pocket or wallet and go to the interview. Keep it with you until you get the job. Click here to find more spells for Good Luck in your Job 💼

https://spells8.com/good-luck-spells/

[cryptoquicknews-blog]

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/OF6MVC

Interview With Crypto ‘Optimist’ Brian Kelly: Bitcoin Is Still 50 Percent Undervalued

This post was originally published here

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The author of the “The Bitcoin Big Bang — How Alternative Currencies Are About to Change the World,” Brian Kelly calls himself an optimist when it comes to the future of the cryptocurrencies. CNBC’s prominent commentator, who is also the founder and CEO of digital currency investment firm BKCM LLC, analyzes markets on an everyday basis and tends to be 50 percent right “trading-wise.”

We met with Brian Kelly at the Crypto Finance Conference in Switzerland and talked about Bitcoin ETFs, the next financial crisis, and the best and worst jobs at the same time.

Catherine Ross: The most obvious question to you is, what is 2019 going to look like for the crypto industry?

Brian Kelly: That’s a great question! The trillion dollar question. I think it’s going to be better than 2018, which is a pretty low bar.

CR: In terms of what?

BK: As an investor, my number one concern is price. I look at the price and I say that we’ve seen three or four of these kind of boom-and-bust cycles in Bitcoin. If you look at the most recent two or so, we’re following roughly the same path as we’ve had, which means we’re somewhere closer to the end. We might have another dip lower — it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

CR: Lower that $3,000?

BK: Sure.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it [Bitcoin’s price] went to $1,500.

CR: And you feel it’s going to be short term?

BK: I think very short term. And I think we’re coming to an end. Here’s the thing, the sellers that we’ve seen recently are almost forced sellers. Some CEOs had to raise cash because they say they “can’t hold it in crypto all the time.” These are signs of the end. I don’t know if it [the end of the cycle] is here or it’s a little bit lower, but those are the signs of the end.

In 2019, if I’m looking at it, the focus will be on the currency — Bitcoin, Litecoin, some of those — because we have quite a bit of geopolitical tension in the world.

CR: And you feel it is contributing to the price?

BK: Yes. We’re starting to see some global macro players use Bitcoin as an alternative to their gold position or as a way to hedge against fiat currency fluctuations and volatility.

CR: Using Bitcoin instead of gold?

BK: Yeah.

CR: But is it stable enough?

BK: No (laughs).

But they’re not looking for stability, right? They’re looking for a safe haven that’s uncorrelated to every other asset. So, for an investor and a speculator, the stability is actually not what you want.

You want that volatility because you’re trying to get good returns. You’re trying to get something that’s uncorrelated to everything else. And that persists through 2019, and it starts to get to be more of a quote-unquote mainstream asset within the investment community.

One of the most anticipated events in the crypto industry is the approval of a Bitcoin ETF, which hasn’t happened yet, despite the numerous attempts. Last year alone, companies and institutions like the NYSE, VanEck, SolidX, Proshares and internet entrepreneurs the Winklevoss brothers (whose first attempt in 2017 failed) all filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC), but were rejected or are awaiting a decision.

The most recent development on the matter is the SEC’s review of a NYSE Arca’s Bitcoin ETF rule change proposal on Feb. 11. The proposal suggests “to list and trade shares of the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Trust under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E.” This might end up being positive for the market, given the latest statement from SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson Jr. Speaking to Washington D.C.-based publication Roll Call on Feb. 6, he said, “Eventually, do I think someone will satisfy the standards that we’ve laid out there? I hope so, yes, and I think so.”

CR: One more very important question for you — will there be an ETF in 2019?

BK: No shot.

CR: I’m going to put that in the headline! “No shot for an ETF in 2019,” says Brian Kelly.

BK: That’s fine! I would bet against it. I don’t think it’s going to happen this year. There’s too much unresolved that is going to take longer than a year to resolve and before the SEC gets comfortable with what’s going on.

CR: What kind of time frame are we talking about?

BK: I think 2020 is a very good shot.

CR: Sounds promising! But major companies, like ShapeShift and Consensys had to lay off a lot of employees recently. What does this indicate?

BK: This is a part of the maturation process. We all got caught up in the big bubble. That being said, this is just a very natural part of the process. There are, unfortunately, some very good people that had to be laid off just because of market circumstances.

It doesn’t feel great right now, but it will make the industry stronger.

CR: From the trading point of view, what are the major signs or indicators of bullish and bearish markets?

BK: You look at the bottoms and the tops.

I can remember in November and December — and even frankly in January, a year ago — I was getting phone calls daily like “How can I get into your fund?” “I need to get into that.” And we [at BKCM LLC] do a monthly entry and it’s not something that you get into every day.

That was happening at the peak. At the bottom, the phone does not ring. It’s the exact opposite. The euphoria that we saw last year is a mirror image of the pessimism we’re seeing now. And so, what you want to look for at bottoms are extreme pessimism.

CR: Are you’re talking about technical analysis?

BK: Sentiment, really.

CR: And what about fundamental analysis? How does it look for the crypto industry?

BK: It’s interesting! We have a proprietary model that gives the fair value for people.

Right now Bitcoin is about 50 percent undervalued.

So, you could have a significant upside. That being said, we’ve seen that a couple of times in the last year. We saw that in April of 2018 — a huge run in Bitcoin.

And that’s what I’m talking about sentiment. So, the sentiment in the market has pushed the price of Bitcoin well below what you would consider a fair value — or at least, what I would consider fair. And that’s another sign that we’re near a bottom.

CR: How does analyzing crypto markets differ from analyzing traditional financial markets?

BK: Sentiment wise, no difference. Human beings are human beings. Fear and greed, booms and busts. In terms of how people trade markets, how people react to price movements — also no difference.

But on the fundamental side, there is a very big difference. It’s probably closer to foreign currency analysis, where you analyze supply and demand, and what’s going to affect the supply and demand factors.

In the traditional currency world, supply and demand might be impacted by central banks. In the crypto world, the supply-demand being impacted by the miner-supply versus the investor-demand at this point in time. So, it’s a little different.

There’s a big learning curve to getting into analyzing cryptocurrencies. It’s not like if you were analyzing airlines or the auto industry and you could immediately jump over and apply the same tools — these are very different tools.

CR: And how did you start in the financial world?

BK: I started as one of those annoying cold callers back in the 1990s. And I’d describe it as the best job on the worst job I’ve ever had in my life.

CR: Can you elaborate?

BK: It was the worst job because every day I would come into the office. I worked at Lehman Brothers [Eds: Lehman Brothers was the fourth-largest investment bank and global financial services firm in the United States. In September 2008, it filed for bankruptcy, which, many believed, started a global economic crisis]. They would hand me a stack of 700 phone numbers — I was supposed to dial two phones at once. My only job was — I wasn’t allowed to pick stocks or anything like that — to connect the person on the other end with the broker.

I did that all day long as a summer internship, and then I did it a little bit after I graduated. But despite it being mind-numbingly boring, it taught me a lot about sales and human interaction. It didn’t teach me too much about the stock market. But it did give me a really good foundation in how people think about the stock market and investing. That’s where I started.

Then, I was an equity sales trader. Then, I started a company called MKM Partners, which is an institutional broker dealer. After that, I started a global macro fund, trading foreign currency — and that got me into the Bitcoin world.

CR: How many times were you right in your analysis or predictions?

BK: Generally speaking, if I’m right slightly more than 50 percent of the time, I consider that good. On a longer-term basis, trading-wise, I’m generally right about 60 percent of the time — there’s some good periods and some bad periods. But it’s important for people to understand that…

It doesn’t matter how many times you’re right and how many times you’re wrong; it matters how much you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.

You have to have that ratio right. You could be right only 30 percent of the time and still make a lot of money as long as you make three times more on your right predictions as you do on your losses.

CR: You’ve mentioned that you started at Lehman Brothers. Can I ask you how many years ago it was?

BK: In 1991 — 28 years ago. Long time!

CR: So, 17 years before the 2008 financial crisis, right? Did you see any signs of it coming?

BK: I wish I could say I saw that. I knew something was wrong, but I can’t say that I predicted that.

CR: Have you seen any indicators of the real estate bubble [Eds: the housing and credit bubble most analysts call the reason for the 2008 financial crisis] back then?

BK: Without question — the real estate looked like a bubble! Not too dissimilar from what we saw with the crypto ICOs bubble. So yes, you could see the signs of trouble. The problem with seeing them is that it’s very hard to predict when they’re going to end.

CR: And the real consequences, probably.

BK: Yeah, the real cost. For me, in 2007, when Bear Stearns [Eds: the now defunct New York-based investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm] got bailed out by the Federal Reserve, that was the first signal for me that something was very, very wrong.

CR: Is it at all possible to predict the next financial crisis? There are a lot of headlines about the looming recession and upcoming financial crisis. Should we prepare ourselves for the worst?

BK: I can almost guarantee you we’ll head to another recession. There’s never been a period of time where we don’t have a recession — it’s just the business cycle. You know the Federal Reserve sometimes thinks that they can short-circuit the business cycle. But eventually, you will have another recession.

CR: It’s just the way the market works, right?

BK: Yes, but this one is going be a little different than the other ones we’ve had.

CR: How so?

Because what we’ve done lately is taken all the risk off of the private balance sheets and put them onto the government balance sheets. And so that’s a very different scenario. And that’s very positive for crypto. If you think about what backs a fiat currency — [it’s the] full faith and credit of the government.

If the government debts are to a point where they can’t pay it, then the credit of the government is in question. You may want to look for an alternative type of currency.

And so I don’t know when we’re going to have that [recession] — in 2016, I thought that was going to be the beginning of it.

CR: Do you see the signs of the start of the recession right now?

BK: There are some signs.

CR: Not major, I assume?

BK: There are some signs — but no, not major. My hesitation is that I still think the Federal Reserve has some leverage to pull, before we go into a full-blown recession. So, I think there’s still time — and I don’t know if it’s going to be a year or three years — where the Federal Reserve will be trying a bunch of things to make sure we don’t go into recession, and that could prolong this period.

CR: And it really does look positive for the crypto industry!

BK: Absolutely! I mean, you know, call me an optimist, but this looks very positive.

Even though there are signs of the bottom — when everybody says it’s going away — that’s what I love to hear.

If everybody agrees that crypto is going away — that’s the time I want to buy.

I don’t think crypto is going away. In fact, I see it becoming much more of a mainstream asset. I think the next two years could see Bitcoin — and I what I would call the other currencies, probably five or six of kind of “pure currencies” — I think you could see those play a major role in investors portfolio over the next two years.

Cointelegraph editorial team thanks Brian Kelly and the Crypto Finance Conference  for the interview.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #btc #xrp #litecoin #altcoin #money #currency #finance #news #alts #hodl #coindesk #cointelegraph #dollar #bitcoin View the website

New Post has been published here https://is.gd/OF6MVC

[zodiacc-horoscope-blog]

Daily Horoscope

Monday February 13,2017 Aries (3/21-4/19) It is time to put on your rose-colored glasses, Aries. You need to look at an unfolding situation through a happily hazy fog. If you see it too clearly, you may begin to find fault with it and criticize it, and then you won't be able to take advantage of all that it offers. Yes, there may be flaws and things you will have to work through. No, it might not be perfect. But within this situation, there are countless blessings that could benefit your life in many ways. Try to see this situation in the kindest possible light because it could help bring some of your dreams to life if you do. Taurus (4/20-5/20) There is something about someone who you know as family or through a group of friends who is like a burr under a saddle. Yes, there is something that you find very annoying about this individual, Taurus. So you tolerate this person rather than enjoy them, and that's a shame. Everyone has little flaws and idiosyncrasies. In time, however, we stop noticing the things that bother us and we rise above them. Give this individual a chance because there is so much more to the big picture. You could find wonderful qualities if you just overlook the things that bug you. Gemini (5/21-6/20) If you walked into a department store and needed to get to the second level, you would probably look for the escalator - the one going up. But if you chose to get up to the second level on the escalator that was going down, you would have quite a challenge. You would be stepping up while the stairs were flowing down, and you would have to move twice as quickly to cover enough ground to get upstairs. It would be silly, and possibly even dangerous, but it could be done. You may be doing something the hard way now, Gemini, perhaps trying to prove something. But isn't it a silly waste of your time? Cancer (6/21-7/22) You may feel resentful about a lesson you are being forced to learn right now. It may make you feel foolish. It may seem unfair. After all, you've always studied the world around you. But your resentment may be precisely why you are going through this, perhaps for the second or third time, Cancer. You are not embracing the lesson. You are making it a battle instead. You are fighting what you have to do, and therefore you aren't getting it. Look at this as a journey of self-discovery, and you will actually enjoy what you're going through. Not to mention the benefits it will bring. Leo (7/23-8/22) You may be asking someone's permission for making a decision that is really up to you alone. You may think this is the reasonable, courteous, thoughtful thing to do. And while your motives may be admirable, Leo, getting someone else involved could complicate things quite a bit. It's one thing to leave this person out of the situation entirely; but involving them puts an additional burden on that person and on yourself. Consider this instead; Just do the best you can, then lovingly inform the other person when you're sure you know what to do. Virgo (8/23-9/22) Have you ever driven from one place to another in a daze, finally arriving at your destination without remembering what route you took to get there? Your life may have wound up in a similar position, Virgo. You don't know how you got into a certain situation, and it just doesn't feel good. But it doesn't matter how you got there, as long as you are astute and aware, you can now do something about it. This can also serve as a life lesson for you - live more in the moment, and you will make better choices in the future. Libra (9/23-10/22) You are headed along a path you chose not too long ago, Libra. It may be scary because ahead lies the unknown. But the unknown is not a bad thing. In fact, it can be very, very good and also exciting. You could be met with happy times and wonderful surprises, and that's what you should think about now. You did the best you could in choosing this path, and now you need to have faith in your own judgment. You can't predict everything of course, but you can believe in yourself and move forward with optimism and conviction. Scorpio (10/23-11/21) A bit of good luck related to your career or your own business may fall into your lap today, Scorpio. It could come in the form of a break, a way to venture further, or a windfall you had not expected. This could certainly be something to celebrate, but it will also be something you will have to work at. Just receiving this blessing and being happy and grateful for it are not enough. You must also put in the effort to take it all the way. If you do, you can reap rewards from this one gift for quite some time, and it could pave the way to even bigger success. Sagittarius (11/22-12/21) People who go rock climbing struggle to reach extreme heights, always striving to maintain harmony with the elements. When they ascend toward the top, and they look down hundreds or thousands of feet, the sight can be both exhilarating and terrifying. Comparably, you may find yourself in a similar position in some area of your life, Sagittarius. You will head toward a peak of some kind - an achievement - and thinking about it as you do will be both inspiring and frightening. So just think about how far you've come and what you stand to gain, and the climb will be easier and much more enjoyable. Capricorn (12/22-1/19) You can look at an obligation you now have as a burden or as an adventure. You may have started out feeling resentful about having to take this on, Capricorn, and you may feel that it isn't truly your responsibility. Maybe it isn't. But sometimes life hands us the chance to do something wonderful, and it comes disguised as a burden like this one seems to be. But if you go into it enthusiastically, and you start to imagine what you might discover and learn from it, this could be a truly wonderful experience. Aquarius (1/20-2/18) If frustration is getting to you because things don't seem to be working out very well for you now, you may want to try positive thinking. If all else has failed, what have you got to lose, Aquarius? You aren't a negative person, generally speaking, but when you find yourself buried under a lot of hardships and challenges, you naturally begin to feel dark and dreary. A hopeful, optimistic outlook is probably something you would advise to someone else in your situation, so why not turn the tables and try it yourself. You will be surprised how quickly your mood lifts and your circumstances change. Pisces (2/19-3/20) You may fear that if you say yes to a new endeavor you will be stuck with it for the duration. Maybe you are afraid that other people who are involved will begin to count on you, and you won't be able to back out, even if you discover that it isn't right for you. But have you ever thought about the other possibility, Pisces? You could actually discover that the experience is wonderful, enjoyable, exciting, and maybe even profitable in some way. You may find that you don't want a way out. Be adventurous. The best is yet to come.

[gldngrl7]

Karamel Fic: A Favor Among Friends

So, I did this thing.  I’ve been working on it for a while, steering clear of other Karamel fics during this time so I’m not influenced by them,  It started with a small idea and kinda took on a life of its own.  So here’s this thing...about Kara’s sexual awakening.

Title: A Favor Among Friends

Chapter: 1 / 4

Rating: M / NC-17 / Explicit (for Chapters 3 &4)

  Chapter 1

She couldn’t stop thinking about that kiss.

 Long after she’d convinced herself he must have been delirious and thinking of someone else as his lips lingered over hers.  Long after she decided to play it off to spare him the embarrassment of discovering she’d been the convenient avatar for whomever he’d been fantasizing about. Even days after returning from helping her new Earth-1 allies defeat the Dominators, she could still feel his lips on hers.  Could still feel the rush of heat beneath her skin that had nothing to do with the rays from the yellow sun.

She tries not to think about it, just like she tried to stamp down the joy that rose up in her when, stepping out of the dimensional portal, she saw him standing there, his arms crossed, his jean-clad hips cocked to one side, a look of concern mixed with relief on his face.  She tries not think about how attractive he is, or how his carefree grin makes her heart skip a beat, and how it sets to racing when he laughs, like a thoroughbred after the gate releases.

 She tries not to think about any of it – until it’s all she can think about.  Even Alex notices, teasing Kara with her eyes whenever the three of them are in the same room together.  And then it becomes a freak show.  He smiles and she flusters…even more than usual.  His hand (unintentionally?) brushes against her arm and she’s certain he can hear her breath catch and her heart lock up for a moment before her blood is racing through her veins again.

 Of course, it’s not long before the dreams begin.  His mouth moving against hers, his hands finding their way to her skin; groping, grasping, sometimes with a light touch and sometimes something more commanding.  His voice rasping out her name like it’s everything, and her own sighs of pleasure so loud in her ears.  Each time, she awakens with a thin sheen of sweat on her face and between her breasts, her brain still insisting that his hot open mouth sliding down her neck is so very real.  She almost cries because it isn’t.

 But it never goes farther than hot breath on hotter skin or roaming hands finding the hollow of her lower back.  No matter how she falls asleep hoping that her mind will conjure new, deeper paths of pleasure, she awakens each time unfulfilled and disappointed, with only her fingers to help her find her way.

 And she knows why, can admit that much to herself at least.  Even in her dreams her mind can’t go further than she’s actually been in the waking world.  Her mind can only barely conceive of what it feels like to have a man’s hips cradled between her thighs, or feel the bare sweat-slicked skin of his belly moving against hers.  She has only her imagination for that – an imagination which refuses to put any skin in the game when it comes to her dreams.

 Kara Danvers is a virgin, which if the average person were to ponder upon, should come as a surprise to no one.  Even if she weren’t an alien, she’d still be completely awkward girl around cute boys, not mention self-conscious about…everything.  Not to mention the secrets!  There’s all the secrets she’s had to keep since arriving on Earth; about herself and about her family.  Secrets which have only become more involved as she’s gotten older, moved out on her own and tried to make her way in the world.  Of course, it doesn’t help that not knowing when to stop talking is a problem she struggles with every day – especially around boys who might show a little interest.  And it can’t be overstated that it’s no easy feat maintaining a dual identity, which limits the options when it comes to meeting someone and having an open and honest relationship.  Kara still cringes when she thinks about Cat’s son and how exhausting that had been.

 But the real problem about being a girl from Krypton on a planet orbiting a yellow sun, is the invulnerability.  The imperviousness to outside forces trying to penetrate…yeah…Kara cringes at the thought, because she’s not just invulnerable to speeding bullets and randomly tossed street signs.  She’s invulnerable to all of it.

 All of it.

 It’s why she chickened out with James.  She couldn’t, in good conscious, ask him to enter into a relationship with the knowledge that they could only top out at heavy petting and oral sex. And she didn’t feel comfortable enough telling him the truth – didn’t want to see the look in his eyes – so she fed him some line about needing to figure out who she is before she can be in a relationship.  James deserved better, she told herself; a relationship with her might have been a fun novelty for a while, but would have ultimately been unfulfilling for both of them. It was this shortcoming of her own unintentional and unwanted making, which had been in the forefront of her mind when she’d broken things off with James before they’d hardly had a chance to begin.

To be fair, she has considered several work-arounds, including employing the strategic use of Kryptonite to serve her purpose.  But there are two problems with that.  One: Kryptonite has a tendency to alter her body on a molecular level and there is no predicting what that could do to her under a specific set of (erotic) circumstances.  And two: luckily, in most instances, physical damage done while exposed to the green element heal completely once exposed to the sun’s radiation.  So…using Kryptonite to facilitate the loss of her virginity might only be a short term solution.  Also, exposure to Kryptonite is excruciatingly painful for her, so realistically she would be unable to enjoy any amorous activities performed while in its presence.  Her (Earth) mother, always pragmatic about such things, would definitely tell her that self-imposed misery during the process would defeat the whole purpose.

 Which is why, this time, when the abrupt ending to her recurring dream has her eyes snapping open, she also rockets straight out of bed, hovering over the mattress as though her entire body has become a giant light-bulb of inspiration.

 Mon-El!

 Of course!  Why hadn’t she thought of it before?  Mon-El had literally dropped into their lives – a Daxam boy in his stolen Kryptonian pod, escaping a dying planet and getting knocked off course for who knows how many years.  Like an extremely attractive but undisciplined angel from the heavens sent to help her take care of her little problem.  Her cousin Clark, even more hopeful and optimistic than her, would tell her that everything happens for a reason.

Mon-El can do what no man on Earth (that she isn’t related to by blood) can do for her – end her years-long torment rid her of this no-longer needed or wanted virginity.  All she has to do is work up the nerve to ask him and then convince him to say yes. Kara, still hovering over her bed, snickers and blushes.  Who is she kidding?  Mon-El is a Daxamite; he’d probably be out of his clothes before she could say, ‘let’s get it on.’

 Not that she would ever say that.  Ever.

She’s half-tempted to speed dress and fly to the DEO right now, lest she lose her nerve, before noticing that it’s just 4 am.  That will never do.  Mon-El doesn’t handle being jarred from sleep very well, even in the best of circumstances, and Kara needs him to be fully awake and able to properly process her request when she approaches him with her quandary.  Kara shivers.  She will have to find a way to tell him everything…everything…and hope that he can take her seriously and above all, be discreet about it.

 She finds herself in the strange and tenuous position of hanging a lot of faith on a guy that just a few short weeks ago was beating people up for money. Except that since then he’s begun to step up as if, despite his Daxam upbringing, he’s decided he wants to be a part of something bigger than himself.  It didn’t exactly make him a hero, but for now it is enough.  Given enough time and guidance, Mon-El could really turn into a story of inspiration.

 But he’s still who he is; a Daxamite nobleman who had a human girl practically out of her panties five minutes after being released from full-time surveillance. Kara wonders if Mon-El has been tested for sexually transmitted diseases, before shaking her head at the prospect.  He had been tested for everything while still in his stasis coma (once they figured out how to inject the needle), and it was unlikely that he could pick anything up from human physiology.  If human viruses can’t affect Kryptonians then they’re unlikely to affect Daxamites.

 Kara spends the next few hours formulating a battle plan…and rules.  If they were going to do this they were going to have to lay down some ground rules.  She narrowly resists the urge to write them down on a pad of paper.

 Despite her nervous anxiety screaming at her to go see him at 7 am, Kara waits until her lunch break from work before speeding over to the DEO.  She sneaks past J’onn and Winn hovering near a bank of computer terminals and barely misses barreling into Alex.

“Hey, Kara!” Alex says, her eyes widening with surprise.  Her face shifts quickly to one of confusion.  “Did J’onn call you in?  Is there something going on?”

 “No,” Kara answers, her lips pursing together.  “I just…promised Mon-El I’d take him to try Cuban food.  I’m here to pick him up.”

 “Well, good,” she replies.  “I think he’s going stir-crazy.  Last I saw him, he was wearing out another treadmill in the gym.”

 “Thanks, Alex.  I’ll have him back in an hour.  Maybe less,” she muttered.  Kara could feel her skin flushing with heat again.

“Shouldn’t be problem.  Hey, are you sure you’re okay?”

“Fine,” Kara waves her off, downplaying the state of turmoil going on inside of her right now.  “Fine. It’s nothing.  See you later?”

 “You bet.”

Kara could smell the tell-tale odor of burning rubber before she stepped into the gym. “You’re supposed to stop when that smell happens!” she warns him, raising her voice over the booming music coming from a stereo system in the corner of the room.  “Give the machine a chance to rest.”

Hearing her voice, his head snaps up catching her eyes in the gym mirror. He’s unable to stop the grin that spreads across his face when she places her hands solidly on her hips. With a click of a remote control the room is plunged into silence.  “They should build one that needs rest less than I do.”

“My friend Barry has one,” she informs him, good-naturedly.  Mon-El is wearing running shorts and a skin-tight shirt made by UnderArmour.  His muscle ripple beneath the material with every shift and move of his body.  Her mouth goes suddenly dry and she finds herself in need of a drink.

Mention of her ‘friend’ Barry from Earth-1 has him feeling like he’s swallowed an icicle, tearing his smile from his face.  It reminds him that she’d been gone for nearly a week, while he waited and worried that she might never return.  Fighting the Dominators, he’d been told, after she was already gone without a goodbye.  He paced and shook a finger angrily at J’onn.  He should have gone with her!  Daxam had twice repelled an invasion from the Dominators.  Perhaps he could have been of some use, he’d explained. But the truth was, he was just afraid she’s like it better over there and decide never to return.

When the grin that lit a fire in her belly only a moment before, slides from his face at the mention of her friend Kara ducks her head to hide her disappointment.

“The speedster, right?” Mon-El nods avoiding her eyes.  He dabs what little amount of exertion had gathered on his skin from his forehead with a towel.

“Right.” Kara tucks her hands behind her back nervously.  “Maybe next time I talk to him I can ask him for the blueprints.”

“Maybe,” he replies with a shrug.  “Hey is there something going on?  Shouldn’t you be at work?”  He doesn’t want to talk about her special friend Barry anymore.  The thought of him makes Mon-El want to tear the building down brick by brick.

She takes a deep breath to quell the butterflies in her stomach, reminding herself that this wouldn’t even be the most difficult question she asked today. “I was wondering if you would be interested in getting Cuban food,” she said in a rush.  “With me…for lunch?”  His grin is back and she has to lock her knees to keep them from turning to mush

Lunch? Outside of the DEO?  And alone with her?  Once again, he’s unable to suppress his pleasure at her request.  As Winn would say, ‘he has no chill’. “I’ve never had Cuban food,” he points out.  “I do like their music though.  It’s fun. Reminds me of home.”

“If it would bother you we can go somewhere else—“ She doesn’t want to make him said.  That would not be conducive to getting what she needs from him.

“It’s fine,” he cuts in.  “Give me a minute to shower and change?” he asks.

Kara nods and he zips out of the room, returning literally a minute later, dressed in chinos and long-sleeved burgundy Henley that fits him like a second skin. His hair is still wet from the shower, but combed neatly into place.  She’s struck with the desire to tuck her face into his neck and smell his skin.  “Ready?” he inquires.

She has to shake off both the desire to smell him, and the eclipse of moths that seems to have settled into the deepest parts of her belly.  “Yeah,” she answers, her voice little more than a croak. “Let’s go.”

It’s a short walk to Flor de Cuba and Kara spends much of it debating in her head whether she should ask him before or after the meal.  If she waits until after, then lunch is likely to last longer than she strictly has time for.  As they’re seated at a table near the back of the restaurant, Mon-El effectively decides the course of the conversation when his voice intrudes on her thoughts.

“You seem to be thinking about something pretty hard over there.  It’s giving you wrinkles,” he chuckles.

She covers her forehead with one hand, smoothing out the wrinkles between her eyebrows.  “Is not,” she whines, though she knows it’s true.

He sighs, his Adam’s apple moving beneath the skin of his neck with a gulp and he licks his lips before speaking.  “Something tells me this isn’t just a friendly lunch.  Did I do something wrong again, Kara?”  This time it’s his brow’s turn to furrow.  It seems as if he’s if forever disappointing her no matter how hard he tries.  And now that…that he’s found that he’s falling for her, it makes her irritation with him that much more difficult to bear.

Something about the sad look on his face makes her want to reach across the table for his hand to comfort him.  She doesn’t. Instead she twists a napkin between her fingers in her lap, out of his line of vision but quickly tries to set him at ease.  “No, it’s nothing like that,” she reassures.  “I did want to talk to you about something, but I wanted us to be away from prying ears and security cameras.”  She clamps her mouth shut when the waitress steps up to place two glasses of water on the table and drops a menu in front of each of them.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” he presses finally, after the silence between them lingers just a moment too long.  He attempts to appear slightly disinterested by perusing his menu.

“What are you hungry for?” she asks, an obvious redirection.  ‘Don’t chicken out,’ she tells herself.

“You pick.  Whatever’s good here,” he tells her before setting aside his menu.  He can’t stand the suspense and doesn’t want to wait another minute to find out what he’s done to create that frightened look on her face. “What did want to talk to me about? You should just tell me before you burn a hole in the menu with your eyes.”

He is right.  She stares at her menu as if it had personally tried to attack her and she is planning a way to take it down.  Still, Kara grips the menu more tightly in her hands and wonders if it would be too immature to hide behind it.  She recalls what her high school Health teacher used to say in class, ‘If you can’t talk about it, then you shouldn’t be doing it.’

Kara straightens her spines and squares her shoulders, leaning her back hard against the booth.  Mon-El’s eyes widen in response and he seems to steel himself for whatever might come next. “I need your help with something,” she begins.

“Great,” he breathes a deep sigh of relief.  Asking for his help is a good sign, he thinks.  Perhaps it means that he’s earning more of her trust.  “I’m all about the helping these days.  What is it?  Do you need back-up finding your Earth father?  I heard you and Alex talking about it the other day.  And I can’t help but feel like I owe him.” Jeremiah Danvers, long held captive by Cadmus had saved his life by fishing a lead bullet out of Mon-El’s leg when Cadmus had taken him hostage.

“No,” Kara shakes her head, though she thinks he’s sweet to offer.  “It’s not that.  It’s more personal.”

Mon-El’s eyes squint and he tilts his head to the left.  “What’s more personal than saving your father?”  He wonders is this had anything to do with the kiss he denies remembering.

Grasping her water glass, she drains the glass in one go before setting back on the table.

“Seriously, Kara…are you okay?”  She’s the nervous sort, in a flustered way that he finds completely charming and adorable, but what he sees on her face and in her body language tells him that this is more than garden variety nerves.

“I need you to have sex with me,” she blurts out, her eyes refusing to meet his. Damn it!  She hadn’t meant to phrase it that way, but part of her just wanted it over with.  A beat of silence fills the space between them and Kara can hear a mouse chomping through a cardboard box in the back alley. 

This time it is Mon-El’s turn to drain his glass of water.  “Excuse me?” he croaks.  “What was that?”  Super hearing or not, he must have misheard her, of misunderstood what she was saying. Surely, she wasn’t suggesting they have sex – not after she’d been so relieved to find out he didn’t remember kissing her.

“I need to lose my virginity, and it has to be you.”  Kara clears her throat, hopping that might distract from the blush she can feel spreading across her face.

Well that wasn’t…he hadn’t been expecting to hear that.  A burst of joy mixed with relief explodes inside of him upon hearing that she’s a virgin.  Not that it would matter, but still…knowing that she’s untouched somehow lift a weight off his shoulders.  So…Barry wasn’t a thing.  Mon-El’s face splits with a grin and his mouth drops open.

“Don’t you dare laugh,” she warns, pointing a finger at him and squinting her eyes as though she’s prepared to let loose some highly focused heat vision.

He makes a clearly concerted effort to ease his face into a more neutral expression. Clearing his throat, he bites down on his lower lip and squeezes his eyes shut, telling himself to get control. He’s not completely sure what she’s asking of him, so he decides to plot his next moves before getting the answers he needs.

Kara isn’t sure but she suspects he’s having a conversation with himself in the privacy of his own head.  Mon-El gasps for air, as though he had forgotten momentarily to breathe, although Kara knows he would have to go much longer than a minute without air to necessitate the taking of a breath that desperate.

“Just for clarification…you wish to undergo the Rite of—“

“No rites,” she cuts in.  “No ceremonies.  Just a simple business transaction.”

“Kara….” He does that adorable thing where he tilts his head again, trying to wrap his mind around the constant contradictions of the cultures of planet Earth. “It’s my understanding that…I mean from what Winn tells me…sex as a business…there are laws against that here. Stupid laws, by the way, but laws I’ve promised to follow nonetheless.”

“Oh!” she quickly realizes her mistake.  “No, no, not like that.  There will be no money changing hands…or exchange of goods…in any way.”

“Then how is it a business transaction?” he asks, more confused than ever.

Back to the drawing board, she sighs.  “Okay.  What if we called it…a favor between friends…?”

“Friends,” his voice drops, his brow furrowing again.  That doesn’t bode as well as he’d hoped based on how their conversation began.  Mon-El didn’t want to be ‘friends’ with Kara.  He wanted much, much more.  But he also knew he wasn’t good enough for her, wasn’t what she wanted, not really. “But there are others who’ve known you far longer.  Men that you clearly prefer…to me.”

Kara opens her mouth to speak, but closes it.  She wonders what she might have done since his arrival to give him that impression. She’s been playing her cards super close to the chest these last few months.  And besides that, he’s completely wrong…if her dreams have anything to say about it.

“Such as this Barry person,” he suggests, tentatively, as though testing a fence.  “Or…James?”

Shaking her head resolutely, she insists, “It has to be you, Mon-El.”  She doesn’t understand why he is so hesitant. Is she really that unattractive to him? She knows that she’s quite attractive by Earth standards, at least if some of her headlines are to be believed. Somehow though, when she imagined this scenario, she envisioned him halfway to undressed by this point.  “You have super strength and you’re invulnerable. Don’t you understand?”

Mon-El tries not to imagine her arms around him, clutching at his naked back while he…does things to her.  “I’m sure if you’re gentle, you wouldn’t break—“

“It’s not about me breaking them, Mon-El.  It’s about them not being able to…break – do I really have to spell this out for you?” Kara can hear the pitch of voice rising to unflattering levels, and she drops her face into her hands to hide her abject humiliation.  In spite of the growing lump in her throat, she refuses to get emotional over this.

“Oh!” he croons, finally realizing the nature of dilemma.  “Because you’re invulnerable.  So…everything’s invulnerable.”  He imagines a human man trying to solve her problem, and cringes painfully at the only possible outcome of that scenario.

“Right,” she sighs with relief, the worst is over. 

“Yeah, that’s definitely a tough break.”  And then, like an idiot, he grins at his own pun.

The waitress returns and Kara orders the ropa vieja for them both, with an extra serving of black beans and caramelized plantains, because she’s feeling the need for something sweet.  Mon-El picks at a piece of bread while rolling her request around in his head. They sit quietly, Kara tugging uncomfortably at an errant curl of hair at the back of her neck, until their food arrives some minutes later.

“So when would this event take place?” he wonders.

“You’ll do it then?” she perks up immediately, though she has to restrain the nest of writhing snakes his question has awakened in her belly.

Mon-El shrugs and then decides for a joke to lighten the mood.  “What kind of Daxamite would I be if I left a beautiful woman like you untarnished?  I would hardly be doing the Daxam reputation justice, now would I?”  It’s clear from the shifting expression on Kara’s face that his attempt at humor has hit wide of the mark.  Very wide.

Kara’s smile slides from her face and her hopes plummet to the soles of her feet. The nonchalance of his attitude disappears just as quickly as her smile and Kara can tell that Mon-El recognizes his misstep.

Quickly reaching across the table, all humor vanishing from his demeanor, he covers her hand with his.  Mon-El’s voice lowers to a gentle, reassuring timbre.  “I promise I’ll take care of you, Kara.  I’ll make sure it’s done right, okay? 

“Okay,” she nods, her eyes misting up, quite against her will.

Seeing her emotion and wishing to reassure her more fully he adds, “Don’t worry, I have all the training needed.”

“Training?” she wonders, her widening with shock.  “What do you mean?”

“Oh,” he says.  “I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

“It’s standard in the court of the Crown Prince, that all courtiers receive training and discipline in the pleasure arts.  It begins for the males when their fifteen, seventeen for the girls, and it’s quite comprehensive.”

“Why would you need—you know what?  I don’t want to know.”  Kara shakes off the thought though she knows it’s likely to haunt her until her curiosity is satisfied.

“All you need to know, is that you’re going to be in good hands.  But before I agree to this, you have to promise me one thing first.”

“What’s that?”

“This can’t just be a ‘transaction’ like you called it.  You can’t just lay there with your eyes closed…pretending I’m someone else.  Not if you want your first time to be something worth remembering, as it should be. You have to be a participant.  You have to be open to me...trust me.  Can you do that?  Because if you can’t…”

The eyes that usually sparkle with mischief or impending irresponsibility, darken with intense sincerity.  In that moment she sees in Mon-El as the man he she knows he can be and Kara feels her mouth go dry.  Thankfully the waitress had refilled their water glasses after dropping off their meal. She realizes that part of her had wanted him to take it all seriously, despite the utter ridiculousness of her requests.  A sigh of relief escapes her mouth before she nods in agreement with his request.

Mon-El smiles reassuringly.  “Everything will be fine, Kara.  I’ve seen enough of your Earth entertainment programs to know that sex between friends without current romantic entanglements can be a mutually beneficial agreement.  Friends with benefits, I think they call it.  I saw one movie where two friends agreed to mate when they were of a certain age if they hadn’t found their partners yet.  I liked that one.  A little sappy, but there were some funny moments.”

“I didn’t realize they were supplying you with a selection of rom-coms.”  Kara is thrilled for an avenue of escape from their current discussion.

“Rom-coms?”

“Romantic comedies,” she explains.  “Doesn’t seem quite your style.”

“The powers-that-be decided that I’m not allowed to watch anything that depicts explosions or alien invasions, or aggression of any kind.”

“So…no action movies allowed,” she surmises.

“Romantic comedies and sad stories written by a man named Nicholas Sparks are the only films on the approved watch list, I’m afraid.  I hear good things about this Liam Neeson person though.” Mon-El chuckles and Kara remembers that she’s always liked his sense of humor, although begrudgingly at first.

“I’m sure that will all change in time.  They’re just being cautious.”

“I know that I still have a lot to learn, Kara.  They can’t just release me to the wild…I get it.  I may speak the language, but sometimes that creates more questions than it answers.  On the upside, thanks to these rom-coms I’m learning a lot about how to woo Earth women.”  He waggles his eyebrows suggestively, though she can tell he’s just trying to elicit a laugh from her.

He goes on to detail all the ridiculous things he’s learning from watching rom-coms and before she knows it, she’s forgotten all about how nervous she was when they walked into the restaurant.  He’s enamored with the taste of Cuban food, but makes a bit of a mess on his face eating the ropa vieja.  Kara leans forward with her napkin and wipes away the smear of greasy beef gravy on his chin.  Something she can’t interpret flashes in his eyes as he offers his thanks.

Before leaving the restaurant to walk him back to the DEO they decide that Friday night would be good night, so she leaves him at the front door of building her chest filling with a combination of excitement and terror.

TBC

[legit-scam-review]

Bitcoin Is Still 50 Percent Undervalued

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The author of the “The Bitcoin Big Bang — How Alternative Currencies Are About to Change the World,” Brian Kelly calls himself an optimist when it comes to the future of the cryptocurrencies. CNBC’s prominent commentator, who is also the founder and CEO of digital currency investment firm BKCM LLC, analyzes markets on an everyday basis and tends to be 50 percent right “trading-wise.”

We met with Brian Kelly at the Crypto Finance Conference in Switzerland and talked about Bitcoin ETFs, the next financial crisis, and the best and worst jobs at the same time.

Catherine Ross: The most obvious question to you is, what is 2019 going to look like for the crypto industry?

Brian Kelly: That’s a great question! The trillion dollar question. I think it’s going to be better than 2018, which is a pretty low bar.

CR: In terms of what?

BK: As an investor, my number one concern is price. I look at the price and I say that we’ve seen three or four of these kind of boom-and-bust cycles in Bitcoin. If you look at the most recent two or so, we’re following roughly the same path as we’ve had, which means we’re somewhere closer to the end. We might have another dip lower — it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

CR: Lower that $3,000?

BK: Sure.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it [Bitcoin’s price] went to $1,500.

CR: And you feel it’s going to be short term?

BK: I think very short term. And I think we’re coming to an end. Here’s the thing, the sellers that we’ve seen recently are almost forced sellers. Some CEOs had to raise cash because they say they “can’t hold it in crypto all the time.” These are signs of the end. I don’t know if it [the end of the cycle] is here or it’s a little bit lower, but those are the signs of the end.

In 2019, if I’m looking at it, the focus will be on the currency — Bitcoin, Litecoin, some of those — because we have quite a bit of geopolitical tension in the world.

CR: And you feel it is contributing to the price?

BK: Yes. We’re starting to see some global macro players use Bitcoin as an alternative to their gold position or as a way to hedge against fiat currency fluctuations and volatility.

CR: Using Bitcoin instead of gold?

BK: Yeah.

CR: But is it stable enough?

BK: No (laughs).

But they’re not looking for stability, right? They’re looking for a safe haven that’s uncorrelated to every other asset. So, for an investor and a speculator, the stability is actually not what you want.

You want that volatility because you’re trying to get good returns. You’re trying to get something that’s uncorrelated to everything else. And that persists through 2019, and it starts to get to be more of a quote-unquote mainstream asset within the investment community.

One of the most anticipated events in the crypto industry is the approval of a Bitcoin ETF, which hasn’t happened yet, despite the numerous attempts. Last year alone, companies and institutions like the NYSE, VanEck, SolidX, Proshares and internet entrepreneurs the Winklevoss brothers (whose first attempt in 2017 failed) all filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC), but were rejected or are awaiting a decision.

The most recent development on the matter is the SEC’s review of a NYSE Arca’s Bitcoin ETF rule change proposal on Feb. 11. The proposal suggests “to list and trade shares of the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Trust under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E.” This might end up being positive for the market, given the latest statement from SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson Jr. Speaking to Washington D.C.-based publication Roll Call on Feb. 6, he said, “Eventually, do I think someone will satisfy the standards that we’ve laid out there? I hope so, yes, and I think so.”

CR: One more very important question for you — will there be an ETF in 2019?

BK: No shot.

CR: I’m going to put that in the headline! “No shot for an ETF in 2019,” says Brian Kelly.

BK: That’s fine! I would bet against it. I don’t think it’s going to happen this year. There’s too much unresolved that is going to take longer than a year to resolve and before the SEC gets comfortable with what’s going on.

CR: What kind of time frame are we talking about?

BK: I think 2020 is a very good shot.

CR: Sounds promising! But major companies, like ShapeShift and Consensys had to lay off a lot of employees recently. What does this indicate?

BK: This is a part of the maturation process. We all got caught up in the big bubble. That being said, this is just a very natural part of the process. There are, unfortunately, some very good people that had to be laid off just because of market circumstances.

It doesn’t feel great right now, but it will make the industry stronger.

CR: From the trading point of view, what are the major signs or indicators of bullish and bearish markets?

BK: You look at the bottoms and the tops.

I can remember in November and December — and even frankly in January, a year ago — I was getting phone calls daily like “How can I get into your fund?” “I need to get into that.” And we [at BKCM LLC] do a monthly entry and it’s not something that you get into every day.

That was happening at the peak. At the bottom, the phone does not ring. It’s the exact opposite. The euphoria that we saw last year is a mirror image of the pessimism we’re seeing now. And so, what you want to look for at bottoms are extreme pessimism.

CR: Are you’re talking about technical analysis?

BK: Sentiment, really.

CR: And what about fundamental analysis? How does it look for the crypto industry?

BK: It’s interesting! We have a proprietary model that gives the fair value for people.

Right now Bitcoin is about 50 percent undervalued.

So, you could have a significant upside. That being said, we’ve seen that a couple of times in the last year. We saw that in April of 2018 — a huge run in Bitcoin.

And that’s what I’m talking about sentiment. So, the sentiment in the market has pushed the price of Bitcoin well below what you would consider a fair value — or at least, what I would consider fair. And that’s another sign that we’re near a bottom.

CR: How does analyzing crypto markets differ from analyzing traditional financial markets?

BK: Sentiment wise, no difference. Human beings are human beings. Fear and greed, booms and busts. In terms of how people trade markets, how people react to price movements — also no difference.

But on the fundamental side, there is a very big difference. It’s probably closer to foreign currency analysis, where you analyze supply and demand, and what’s going to affect the supply and demand factors.

In the traditional currency world, supply and demand might be impacted by central banks. In the crypto world, the supply-demand being impacted by the miner-supply versus the investor-demand at this point in time. So, it’s a little different.

There’s a big learning curve to getting into analyzing cryptocurrencies. It’s not like if you were analyzing airlines or the auto industry and you could immediately jump over and apply the same tools — these are very different tools.

CR: And how did you start in the financial world?

BK: I started as one of those annoying cold callers back in the 1990s. And I’d describe it as the best job on the worst job I’ve ever had in my life.

CR: Can you elaborate?

BK: It was the worst job because every day I would come into the office. I worked at Lehman Brothers [Eds: Lehman Brothers was the fourth-largest investment bank and global financial services firm in the United States. In September 2008, it filed for bankruptcy, which, many believed, started a global economic crisis]. They would hand me a stack of 700 phone numbers — I was supposed to dial two phones at once. My only job was — I wasn’t allowed to pick stocks or anything like that — to connect the person on the other end with the broker.

I did that all day long as a summer internship, and then I did it a little bit after I graduated. But despite it being mind-numbingly boring, it taught me a lot about sales and human interaction. It didn’t teach me too much about the stock market. But it did give me a really good foundation in how people think about the stock market and investing. That’s where I started.

Then, I was an equity sales trader. Then, I started a company called MKM Partners, which is an institutional broker dealer. After that, I started a global macro fund, trading foreign currency — and that got me into the Bitcoin world.

CR: How many times were you right in your analysis or predictions?

BK: Generally speaking, if I’m right slightly more than 50 percent of the time, I consider that good. On a longer-term basis, trading-wise, I’m generally right about 60 percent of the time — there’s some good periods and some bad periods. But it’s important for people to understand that…

It doesn’t matter how many times you’re right and how many times you’re wrong; it matters how much you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.

You have to have that ratio right. You could be right only 30 percent of the time and still make a lot of money as long as you make three times more on your right predictions as you do on your losses.

CR: You’ve mentioned that you started at Lehman Brothers. Can I ask you how many years ago it was?

BK: In 1991 — 28 years ago. Long time!

CR: So, 17 years before the 2008 financial crisis, right? Did you see any signs of it coming?

BK: I wish I could say I saw that. I knew something was wrong, but I can’t say that I predicted that.

CR: Have you seen any indicators of the real estate bubble [Eds: the housing and credit bubble most analysts call the reason for the 2008 financial crisis] back then?

BK: Without question — the real estate looked like a bubble! Not too dissimilar from what we saw with the crypto ICOs bubble. So yes, you could see the signs of trouble. The problem with seeing them is that it’s very hard to predict when they’re going to end.

CR: And the real consequences, probably.

BK: Yeah, the real cost. For me, in 2007, when Bear Stearns [Eds: the now defunct New York-based investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm] got bailed out by the Federal Reserve, that was the first signal for me that something was very, very wrong.

CR: Is it at all possible to predict the next financial crisis? There are a lot of headlines about the looming recession and upcoming financial crisis. Should we prepare ourselves for the worst?

BK: I can almost guarantee you we’ll head to another recession. There’s never been a period of time where we don’t have a recession — it’s just the business cycle. You know the Federal Reserve sometimes thinks that they can short-circuit the business cycle. But eventually, you will have another recession.

CR: It’s just the way the market works, right?

BK: Yes, but this one is going be a little different than the other ones we’ve had.

CR: How so?

Because what we’ve done lately is taken all the risk off of the private balance sheets and put them onto the government balance sheets. And so that’s a very different scenario. And that’s very positive for crypto. If you think about what backs a fiat currency — [it’s the] full faith and credit of the government.

If the government debts are to a point where they can’t pay it, then the credit of the government is in question. You may want to look for an alternative type of currency.

And so I don’t know when we’re going to have that [recession] — in 2016, I thought that was going to be the beginning of it.

CR: Do you see the signs of the start of the recession right now?

BK: There are some signs.

CR: Not major, I assume?

BK: There are some signs — but no, not major. My hesitation is that I still think the Federal Reserve has some leverage to pull, before we go into a full-blown recession. So, I think there’s still time — and I don’t know if it’s going to be a year or three years — where the Federal Reserve will be trying a bunch of things to make sure we don’t go into recession, and that could prolong this period.

CR: And it really does look positive for the crypto industry!

BK: Absolutely! I mean, you know, call me an optimist, but this looks very positive.

Even though there are signs of the bottom — when everybody says it’s going away — that’s what I love to hear.

If everybody agrees that crypto is going away — that’s the time I want to buy.

I don’t think crypto is going away. In fact, I see it becoming much more of a mainstream asset. I think the next two years could see Bitcoin — and I what I would call the other currencies, probably five or six of kind of “pure currencies” — I think you could see those play a major role in investors portfolio over the next two years.

Cointelegraph editorial team thanks Brian Kelly and the Crypto Finance Conference  for the interview.

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Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/bitcoin-is-still-50-percent-undervalued-3

[legit-scam-review]

Bitcoin Is Still 50 Percent Undervalued

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The author of the “The Bitcoin Big Bang — How Alternative Currencies Are About to Change the World,” Brian Kelly calls himself an optimist when it comes to the future of the cryptocurrencies. CNBC’s prominent commentator, who is also the founder and CEO of digital currency investment firm BKCM LLC, analyzes markets on an everyday basis and tends to be 50 percent right “trading-wise.”

We met with Brian Kelly at the Crypto Finance Conference in Switzerland and talked about Bitcoin ETFs, the next financial crisis, and the best and worst jobs at the same time.

Catherine Ross: The most obvious question to you is, what is 2019 going to look like for the crypto industry?

Brian Kelly: That’s a great question! The trillion dollar question. I think it’s going to be better than 2018, which is a pretty low bar.

CR: In terms of what?

BK: As an investor, my number one concern is price. I look at the price and I say that we’ve seen three or four of these kind of boom-and-bust cycles in Bitcoin. If you look at the most recent two or so, we’re following roughly the same path as we’ve had, which means we’re somewhere closer to the end. We might have another dip lower — it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

CR: Lower that $3,000?

BK: Sure.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it [Bitcoin’s price] went to $1,500.

CR: And you feel it’s going to be short term?

BK: I think very short term. And I think we’re coming to an end. Here’s the thing, the sellers that we’ve seen recently are almost forced sellers. Some CEOs had to raise cash because they say they “can’t hold it in crypto all the time.” These are signs of the end. I don’t know if it [the end of the cycle] is here or it’s a little bit lower, but those are the signs of the end.

In 2019, if I’m looking at it, the focus will be on the currency — Bitcoin, Litecoin, some of those — because we have quite a bit of geopolitical tension in the world.

CR: And you feel it is contributing to the price?

BK: Yes. We’re starting to see some global macro players use Bitcoin as an alternative to their gold position or as a way to hedge against fiat currency fluctuations and volatility.

CR: Using Bitcoin instead of gold?

BK: Yeah.

CR: But is it stable enough?

BK: No (laughs).

But they’re not looking for stability, right? They’re looking for a safe haven that’s uncorrelated to every other asset. So, for an investor and a speculator, the stability is actually not what you want.

You want that volatility because you’re trying to get good returns. You’re trying to get something that’s uncorrelated to everything else. And that persists through 2019, and it starts to get to be more of a quote-unquote mainstream asset within the investment community.

One of the most anticipated events in the crypto industry is the approval of a Bitcoin ETF, which hasn’t happened yet, despite the numerous attempts. Last year alone, companies and institutions like the NYSE, VanEck, SolidX, Proshares and internet entrepreneurs the Winklevoss brothers (whose first attempt in 2017 failed) all filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC), but were rejected or are awaiting a decision.

The most recent development on the matter is the SEC’s review of a NYSE Arca’s Bitcoin ETF rule change proposal on Feb. 11. The proposal suggests “to list and trade shares of the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Trust under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E.” This might end up being positive for the market, given the latest statement from SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson Jr. Speaking to Washington D.C.-based publication Roll Call on Feb. 6, he said, “Eventually, do I think someone will satisfy the standards that we’ve laid out there? I hope so, yes, and I think so.”

CR: One more very important question for you — will there be an ETF in 2019?

BK: No shot.

CR: I’m going to put that in the headline! “No shot for an ETF in 2019,” says Brian Kelly.

BK: That’s fine! I would bet against it. I don’t think it’s going to happen this year. There’s too much unresolved that is going to take longer than a year to resolve and before the SEC gets comfortable with what’s going on.

CR: What kind of time frame are we talking about?

BK: I think 2020 is a very good shot.

CR: Sounds promising! But major companies, like ShapeShift and Consensys had to lay off a lot of employees recently. What does this indicate?

BK: This is a part of the maturation process. We all got caught up in the big bubble. That being said, this is just a very natural part of the process. There are, unfortunately, some very good people that had to be laid off just because of market circumstances.

It doesn’t feel great right now, but it will make the industry stronger.

CR: From the trading point of view, what are the major signs or indicators of bullish and bearish markets?

BK: You look at the bottoms and the tops.

I can remember in November and December — and even frankly in January, a year ago — I was getting phone calls daily like “How can I get into your fund?” “I need to get into that.” And we [at BKCM LLC] do a monthly entry and it’s not something that you get into every day.

That was happening at the peak. At the bottom, the phone does not ring. It’s the exact opposite. The euphoria that we saw last year is a mirror image of the pessimism we’re seeing now. And so, what you want to look for at bottoms are extreme pessimism.

CR: Are you’re talking about technical analysis?

BK: Sentiment, really.

CR: And what about fundamental analysis? How does it look for the crypto industry?

BK: It’s interesting! We have a proprietary model that gives the fair value for people.

Right now Bitcoin is about 50 percent undervalued.

So, you could have a significant upside. That being said, we’ve seen that a couple of times in the last year. We saw that in April of 2018 — a huge run in Bitcoin.

And that’s what I’m talking about sentiment. So, the sentiment in the market has pushed the price of Bitcoin well below what you would consider a fair value — or at least, what I would consider fair. And that’s another sign that we’re near a bottom.

CR: How does analyzing crypto markets differ from analyzing traditional financial markets?

BK: Sentiment wise, no difference. Human beings are human beings. Fear and greed, booms and busts. In terms of how people trade markets, how people react to price movements — also no difference.

But on the fundamental side, there is a very big difference. It’s probably closer to foreign currency analysis, where you analyze supply and demand, and what’s going to affect the supply and demand factors.

In the traditional currency world, supply and demand might be impacted by central banks. In the crypto world, the supply-demand being impacted by the miner-supply versus the investor-demand at this point in time. So, it’s a little different.

There’s a big learning curve to getting into analyzing cryptocurrencies. It’s not like if you were analyzing airlines or the auto industry and you could immediately jump over and apply the same tools — these are very different tools.

CR: And how did you start in the financial world?

BK: I started as one of those annoying cold callers back in the 1990s. And I’d describe it as the best job on the worst job I’ve ever had in my life.

CR: Can you elaborate?

BK: It was the worst job because every day I would come into the office. I worked at Lehman Brothers [Eds: Lehman Brothers was the fourth-largest investment bank and global financial services firm in the United States. In September 2008, it filed for bankruptcy, which, many believed, started a global economic crisis]. They would hand me a stack of 700 phone numbers — I was supposed to dial two phones at once. My only job was — I wasn’t allowed to pick stocks or anything like that — to connect the person on the other end with the broker.

I did that all day long as a summer internship, and then I did it a little bit after I graduated. But despite it being mind-numbingly boring, it taught me a lot about sales and human interaction. It didn’t teach me too much about the stock market. But it did give me a really good foundation in how people think about the stock market and investing. That’s where I started.

Then, I was an equity sales trader. Then, I started a company called MKM Partners, which is an institutional broker dealer. After that, I started a global macro fund, trading foreign currency — and that got me into the Bitcoin world.

CR: How many times were you right in your analysis or predictions?

BK: Generally speaking, if I’m right slightly more than 50 percent of the time, I consider that good. On a longer-term basis, trading-wise, I’m generally right about 60 percent of the time — there’s some good periods and some bad periods. But it’s important for people to understand that…

It doesn’t matter how many times you’re right and how many times you’re wrong; it matters how much you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.

You have to have that ratio right. You could be right only 30 percent of the time and still make a lot of money as long as you make three times more on your right predictions as you do on your losses.

CR: You’ve mentioned that you started at Lehman Brothers. Can I ask you how many years ago it was?

BK: In 1991 — 28 years ago. Long time!

CR: So, 17 years before the 2008 financial crisis, right? Did you see any signs of it coming?

BK: I wish I could say I saw that. I knew something was wrong, but I can’t say that I predicted that.

CR: Have you seen any indicators of the real estate bubble [Eds: the housing and credit bubble most analysts call the reason for the 2008 financial crisis] back then?

BK: Without question — the real estate looked like a bubble! Not too dissimilar from what we saw with the crypto ICOs bubble. So yes, you could see the signs of trouble. The problem with seeing them is that it’s very hard to predict when they’re going to end.

CR: And the real consequences, probably.

BK: Yeah, the real cost. For me, in 2007, when Bear Stearns [Eds: the now defunct New York-based investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm] got bailed out by the Federal Reserve, that was the first signal for me that something was very, very wrong.

CR: Is it at all possible to predict the next financial crisis? There are a lot of headlines about the looming recession and upcoming financial crisis. Should we prepare ourselves for the worst?

BK: I can almost guarantee you we’ll head to another recession. There’s never been a period of time where we don’t have a recession — it’s just the business cycle. You know the Federal Reserve sometimes thinks that they can short-circuit the business cycle. But eventually, you will have another recession.

CR: It’s just the way the market works, right?

BK: Yes, but this one is going be a little different than the other ones we’ve had.

CR: How so?

Because what we’ve done lately is taken all the risk off of the private balance sheets and put them onto the government balance sheets. And so that’s a very different scenario. And that’s very positive for crypto. If you think about what backs a fiat currency — [it’s the] full faith and credit of the government.

If the government debts are to a point where they can’t pay it, then the credit of the government is in question. You may want to look for an alternative type of currency.

And so I don’t know when we’re going to have that [recession] — in 2016, I thought that was going to be the beginning of it.

CR: Do you see the signs of the start of the recession right now?

BK: There are some signs.

CR: Not major, I assume?

BK: There are some signs — but no, not major. My hesitation is that I still think the Federal Reserve has some leverage to pull, before we go into a full-blown recession. So, I think there’s still time — and I don’t know if it’s going to be a year or three years — where the Federal Reserve will be trying a bunch of things to make sure we don’t go into recession, and that could prolong this period.

CR: And it really does look positive for the crypto industry!

BK: Absolutely! I mean, you know, call me an optimist, but this looks very positive.

Even though there are signs of the bottom — when everybody says it’s going away — that’s what I love to hear.

If everybody agrees that crypto is going away — that’s the time I want to buy.

I don’t think crypto is going away. In fact, I see it becoming much more of a mainstream asset. I think the next two years could see Bitcoin — and I what I would call the other currencies, probably five or six of kind of “pure currencies” — I think you could see those play a major role in investors portfolio over the next two years.

Cointelegraph editorial team thanks Brian Kelly and the Crypto Finance Conference  for the interview.

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The post Bitcoin Is Still 50 Percent Undervalued appeared first on Review: Legit or Scam?.

Read more from → https://legit-scam.review/bitcoin-is-still-50-percent-undervalued-2

[legit-scam-review]

Bitcoin Is Still 50 Percent Undervalued

This interview has been edited and condensed.

The author of the “The Bitcoin Big Bang — How Alternative Currencies Are About to Change the World,” Brian Kelly calls himself an optimist when it comes to the future of the cryptocurrencies. CNBC’s prominent commentator, who is also the founder and CEO of digital currency investment firm BKCM LLC, analyzes markets on an everyday basis and tends to be 50 percent right “trading-wise.”

We met with Brian Kelly at the Crypto Finance Conference in Switzerland and talked about Bitcoin ETFs, the next financial crisis, and the best and worst jobs at the same time.

Catherine Ross: The most obvious question to you is, what is 2019 going to look like for the crypto industry?

Brian Kelly: That’s a great question! The trillion dollar question. I think it’s going to be better than 2018, which is a pretty low bar.

CR: In terms of what?

BK: As an investor, my number one concern is price. I look at the price and I say that we’ve seen three or four of these kind of boom-and-bust cycles in Bitcoin. If you look at the most recent two or so, we’re following roughly the same path as we’ve had, which means we’re somewhere closer to the end. We might have another dip lower — it wouldn’t surprise me at all.

CR: Lower that $3,000?

BK: Sure.

It wouldn’t surprise me if it [Bitcoin’s price] went to $1,500.

CR: And you feel it’s going to be short term?

BK: I think very short term. And I think we’re coming to an end. Here’s the thing, the sellers that we’ve seen recently are almost forced sellers. Some CEOs had to raise cash because they say they “can’t hold it in crypto all the time.” These are signs of the end. I don’t know if it [the end of the cycle] is here or it’s a little bit lower, but those are the signs of the end.

In 2019, if I’m looking at it, the focus will be on the currency — Bitcoin, Litecoin, some of those — because we have quite a bit of geopolitical tension in the world.

CR: And you feel it is contributing to the price?

BK: Yes. We’re starting to see some global macro players use Bitcoin as an alternative to their gold position or as a way to hedge against fiat currency fluctuations and volatility.

CR: Using Bitcoin instead of gold?

BK: Yeah.

CR: But is it stable enough?

BK: No (laughs).

But they’re not looking for stability, right? They’re looking for a safe haven that’s uncorrelated to every other asset. So, for an investor and a speculator, the stability is actually not what you want.

You want that volatility because you’re trying to get good returns. You’re trying to get something that’s uncorrelated to everything else. And that persists through 2019, and it starts to get to be more of a quote-unquote mainstream asset within the investment community.

One of the most anticipated events in the crypto industry is the approval of a Bitcoin ETF, which hasn’t happened yet, despite the numerous attempts. Last year alone, companies and institutions like the NYSE, VanEck, SolidX, Proshares and internet entrepreneurs the Winklevoss brothers (whose first attempt in 2017 failed) all filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commision (SEC), but were rejected or are awaiting a decision.

The most recent development on the matter is the SEC’s review of a NYSE Arca’s Bitcoin ETF rule change proposal on Feb. 11. The proposal suggests “to list and trade shares of the Bitwise Bitcoin ETF Trust under NYSE Arca Rule 8.201-E.” This might end up being positive for the market, given the latest statement from SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson Jr. Speaking to Washington D.C.-based publication Roll Call on Feb. 6, he said, “Eventually, do I think someone will satisfy the standards that we’ve laid out there? I hope so, yes, and I think so.”

CR: One more very important question for you — will there be an ETF in 2019?

BK: No shot.

CR: I’m going to put that in the headline! “No shot for an ETF in 2019,” says Brian Kelly.

BK: That’s fine! I would bet against it. I don’t think it’s going to happen this year. There’s too much unresolved that is going to take longer than a year to resolve and before the SEC gets comfortable with what’s going on.

CR: What kind of time frame are we talking about?

BK: I think 2020 is a very good shot.

CR: Sounds promising! But major companies, like ShapeShift and Consensys had to lay off a lot of employees recently. What does this indicate?

BK: This is a part of the maturation process. We all got caught up in the big bubble. That being said, this is just a very natural part of the process. There are, unfortunately, some very good people that had to be laid off just because of market circumstances.

It doesn’t feel great right now, but it will make the industry stronger.

CR: From the trading point of view, what are the major signs or indicators of bullish and bearish markets?

BK: You look at the bottoms and the tops.

I can remember in November and December — and even frankly in January, a year ago — I was getting phone calls daily like “How can I get into your fund?” “I need to get into that.” And we [at BKCM LLC] do a monthly entry and it’s not something that you get into every day.

That was happening at the peak. At the bottom, the phone does not ring. It’s the exact opposite. The euphoria that we saw last year is a mirror image of the pessimism we’re seeing now. And so, what you want to look for at bottoms are extreme pessimism.

CR: Are you’re talking about technical analysis?

BK: Sentiment, really.

CR: And what about fundamental analysis? How does it look for the crypto industry?

BK: It’s interesting! We have a proprietary model that gives the fair value for people.

Right now Bitcoin is about 50 percent undervalued.

So, you could have a significant upside. That being said, we’ve seen that a couple of times in the last year. We saw that in April of 2018 — a huge run in Bitcoin.

And that’s what I’m talking about sentiment. So, the sentiment in the market has pushed the price of Bitcoin well below what you would consider a fair value — or at least, what I would consider fair. And that’s another sign that we’re near a bottom.

CR: How does analyzing crypto markets differ from analyzing traditional financial markets?

BK: Sentiment wise, no difference. Human beings are human beings. Fear and greed, booms and busts. In terms of how people trade markets, how people react to price movements — also no difference.

But on the fundamental side, there is a very big difference. It’s probably closer to foreign currency analysis, where you analyze supply and demand, and what’s going to affect the supply and demand factors.

In the traditional currency world, supply and demand might be impacted by central banks. In the crypto world, the supply-demand being impacted by the miner-supply versus the investor-demand at this point in time. So, it’s a little different.

There’s a big learning curve to getting into analyzing cryptocurrencies. It’s not like if you were analyzing airlines or the auto industry and you could immediately jump over and apply the same tools — these are very different tools.

CR: And how did you start in the financial world?

BK: I started as one of those annoying cold callers back in the 1990s. And I’d describe it as the best job on the worst job I’ve ever had in my life.

CR: Can you elaborate?

BK: It was the worst job because every day I would come into the office. I worked at Lehman Brothers [Eds: Lehman Brothers was the fourth-largest investment bank and global financial services firm in the United States. In September 2008, it filed for bankruptcy, which, many believed, started a global economic crisis]. They would hand me a stack of 700 phone numbers — I was supposed to dial two phones at once. My only job was — I wasn’t allowed to pick stocks or anything like that — to connect the person on the other end with the broker.

I did that all day long as a summer internship, and then I did it a little bit after I graduated. But despite it being mind-numbingly boring, it taught me a lot about sales and human interaction. It didn’t teach me too much about the stock market. But it did give me a really good foundation in how people think about the stock market and investing. That’s where I started.

Then, I was an equity sales trader. Then, I started a company called MKM Partners, which is an institutional broker dealer. After that, I started a global macro fund, trading foreign currency — and that got me into the Bitcoin world.

CR: How many times were you right in your analysis or predictions?

BK: Generally speaking, if I’m right slightly more than 50 percent of the time, I consider that good. On a longer-term basis, trading-wise, I’m generally right about 60 percent of the time — there’s some good periods and some bad periods. But it’s important for people to understand that…

It doesn’t matter how many times you’re right and how many times you’re wrong; it matters how much you make when you’re right and how much you lose when you’re wrong.

You have to have that ratio right. You could be right only 30 percent of the time and still make a lot of money as long as you make three times more on your right predictions as you do on your losses.

CR: You’ve mentioned that you started at Lehman Brothers. Can I ask you how many years ago it was?

BK: In 1991 — 28 years ago. Long time!

CR: So, 17 years before the 2008 financial crisis, right? Did you see any signs of it coming?

BK: I wish I could say I saw that. I knew something was wrong, but I can’t say that I predicted that.

CR: Have you seen any indicators of the real estate bubble [Eds: the housing and credit bubble most analysts call the reason for the 2008 financial crisis] back then?

BK: Without question — the real estate looked like a bubble! Not too dissimilar from what we saw with the crypto ICOs bubble. So yes, you could see the signs of trouble. The problem with seeing them is that it’s very hard to predict when they’re going to end.

CR: And the real consequences, probably.

BK: Yeah, the real cost. For me, in 2007, when Bear Stearns [Eds: the now defunct New York-based investment bank, securities trading and brokerage firm] got bailed out by the Federal Reserve, that was the first signal for me that something was very, very wrong.

CR: Is it at all possible to predict the next financial crisis? There are a lot of headlines about the looming recession and upcoming financial crisis. Should we prepare ourselves for the worst?

BK: I can almost guarantee you we’ll head to another recession. There’s never been a period of time where we don’t have a recession — it’s just the business cycle. You know the Federal Reserve sometimes thinks that they can short-circuit the business cycle. But eventually, you will have another recession.

CR: It’s just the way the market works, right?

BK: Yes, but this one is going be a little different than the other ones we’ve had.

CR: How so?

Because what we’ve done lately is taken all the risk off of the private balance sheets and put them onto the government balance sheets. And so that’s a very different scenario. And that’s very positive for crypto. If you think about what backs a fiat currency — [it’s the] full faith and credit of the government.

If the government debts are to a point where they can’t pay it, then the credit of the government is in question. You may want to look for an alternative type of currency.

And so I don’t know when we’re going to have that [recession] — in 2016, I thought that was going to be the beginning of it.

CR: Do you see the signs of the start of the recession right now?

BK: There are some signs.

CR: Not major, I assume?

BK: There are some signs — but no, not major. My hesitation is that I still think the Federal Reserve has some leverage to pull, before we go into a full-blown recession. So, I think there’s still time — and I don’t know if it’s going to be a year or three years — where the Federal Reserve will be trying a bunch of things to make sure we don’t go into recession, and that could prolong this period.

CR: And it really does look positive for the crypto industry!

BK: Absolutely! I mean, you know, call me an optimist, but this looks very positive.

Even though there are signs of the bottom — when everybody says it’s going away — that’s what I love to hear.

If everybody agrees that crypto is going away — that’s the time I want to buy.

I don’t think crypto is going away. In fact, I see it becoming much more of a mainstream asset. I think the next two years could see Bitcoin — and I what I would call the other currencies, probably five or six of kind of “pure currencies” — I think you could see those play a major role in investors portfolio over the next two years.

Cointelegraph editorial team thanks Brian Kelly and the Crypto Finance Conference  for the interview.

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