Economics seems to lack a thread, and there's so much that can be discussed. From what bank to get a loan from, to what stock to buy. A lot of economics is following the news, and it seems you guys like to do that around here. I figure even if you haven't looked into the stock market, you probably know the major issues that will be effecting your investment today. Who knows, you might find out you have a knack for it and become a multi-millionaire.

Here are a couple recommendations.
http://www.vse.marketwatch.com has a game that is a good way for people to see how they'd do in the stock market, without investing money.
http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Street-Fifth-Jeffrey-Little/dp/0071633227 by Jeffery Little is a nice book about how modern economics works.

I'm in a game in Marketwatch and hold 100 Yahoo(YHOO) shares, 50 in Webs.com(WWWW), and 200 in Oracle Corp.(ORCL). My gains/losses are $-17.00, +$46.00, and +$157.98 respectively. My plan is that Yahoo is a solid company, so it's a pretty safe investment. If they create something huge, which I don't think is outside the realm of possibility, then that's excellent. Webs.com was sort of a leap of faith, I think they have a good idea ( website builder ), which although done a thousand times (that's probably a pretty accurate number) it has the domain and professional look to get ahead of its competitors. Finally there's Oracle Corp., I picked them because they're a smart company and have a firm foothold in the software field, it seems to have worked out so far. I'm not sure if I'm making excuses or not, but Yahoo lost some money around the time Japan was hit by an earthquake (not long before I bought these stocks) so the loss could be from that.

If there's any interest I'll set up a BGSF game on the site and we'll see who among us is the master investor.

A couple general questions. What do you all think will be the next big thing in the technology industry? For those who invest in non-technology stocks, what kind of industry do you mostly follow and how do you pick your winners?

The next big thing varies from country to country but steel (minerals/resources) has been hiked by the natural disasters. Rio and BlueScope have done very well over the past week. I've always you could always speculate in platinum and do very well for yourself - 90% of the world's platinum mines are in Sth Africa and we shall be needing more for our hybrid cars. In fact, mining resources in Africa is pretty safe, barring any civil wars. Cobalt for the mobile phones, platinum for cars, diamond speculations....oil. Steel for expanding infrastructure. Its not that hard to see why China has been throwing money at them for years.

i've invested a lot of money in stocks, real-life stocks i mean - i had over a hundred grand in worldwide shares when the recession hit, and i recently sold the lot (just before japan hit) and very luckily came out five grand up.
tbh i don't think the global market will recover by much anytime soon, and i think further downturns are most likely on the way, and to be really honest i think the market economy has had it's day altogether and inflation will finally kick us all in the butt, and maybe collapse the dollar, and perhaps force us to back onto the gold standard, which will mean hard times for everyone for a long while.
if you want to invest in something - go with gold, i made a packet on it, apart from that, get yourself a roof over your head and dig a hole in the garden to bury your cash in.

Gold? Ha.

Before 9/11 it was trading at around 300 an ounce. Boom, decade later, its 1500 an ounce. Maybe you could wait for another war to brew up.

It's hard to talk economics without politics...

I'm a little wary about tech stocks. To be honest I invested in AAPL (Apple) when it was $94 a share, and I did it even though I despise Apple products. I've never owned any Apple product, I don't like them, I don't want to own them, etc. But if you look at how much people are willing to pay simply for the name, it's amazing. So I invested, and I'm making a great potential profit. This is after I exited my other big investment, (for me, heh, I'm not wealthy enough to invest very much) NOK (Nokia) turned out well. NOK has been struggling recently though, and I'm thinking about jumping back on...I think they're undervalued.

I think gold is an excellent investment. I personally don't see the appeal but people love their shiny things and when the dollar inevitably collapses we will be going back to a gold standard.

Capital, Ill roll the virtual dice in your little game.

They'll just confiscate the gold first.

If you listen to the whispers, gold hoarding is already going on.

Yea, the price of goal, in my opinion, is way overvalued. There's a 'gold bubble' so to speak. It's dangerous.

Gold is one of the very few things that have been valuable throughout almost all of human history.

I'm game. Could be interesting, and getting some free education is always good.

You guys can invest in gold. I'll invest in silver.

Whatever you do, learn the lesson that US dollars are not the thing to invest in anymore. They ditched the gold standard, play games with their currency.. they go byebye.

I see HTC's stock rising since they keep coming out with droid phones so many customers want, and in the US/Canada every major carrier has an increasing supply of HTC phones to sell or subsidize. Short or long term? Pshaw, you should find that out yourself. :whistling:

I take it then OP that you are taking a Economics class given that we are doing the same thing with marketwatch. Currently have a total .80%+ gained and been playing this for about 3 weeks, any good?

Also taking an economics class. We're currently learning about the labor market which is pretty cool, seeing how wages are decided and such.

Stocks are a different story. Should have just bought Chipotle because that stock seems to always be growing.

We did something like marketwatch when last year in economics. We chose high rated and/or blue chip stocks while this one guy chose stock in a company he liked without doing any research in their portfolio at all. He had the highest gain. He was 1st and the teacher was 2nd.

I don't like gold. I'd pay more for silver.

For those of y'all who are not familiar with economics I suggest you start off with Peter Schiff's How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes. Then read Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics. If you are really ambitious then read F.A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom.

So, any other Austrians on these forums?




Silver is a better investment; cheaper and less of a risk.

Not as bad as the Euro, that currency has been all over the place due to austerity measures and protests preventin' them from occurrin'.

The Euro union is significantly stronger than the dollar in the long run. China has been trying to lose their dollars and bonds for more reliable assets. Dollars value is on an unsustainable course down the crapper thanks to countries moving away and the Fed purposely driving up inflation by printing out more in a fashion that can only be described as insane.

I agree entirely about Schiff. He's always been direct and no BS to the public about what the good investments are. How many videos are on YouTube about him saying stay away from the innumerable amount of toxic assets in the US and how many people laughed at him only for him to be 100% right. I rate him right up there with Niall Ferguson in brilliance.

Or I suppose you can listen to Krugman and do the exact opposite of what he says to invest in.

I never really understood echo gnomics :nope:

Rule #1. Read "Wealth Of Nations"
Rule #2. Never invest more than you can afford to lose
Rule #3. Losses are not realized unless you cash out
Rule #4. Do your homework, it is beyond stupid to buy stock in a company you do not understand (Enron, anyone?)
Rule #5. Keep up on current events, a faltering company can offer the greatest returns if you buy when they are down (you can also lose your investment if they dissolve, so remember Rule #2)

Those are my 5 rules of investing. They have worked very well for me so far and I have no problem sharing them for free (unlike some other people who prefer to charge for their "secrets").

Me reading economics is going to turn out just as well as trying to read anything Niche has written. He literally lost me on the first sentence. That takes skill

Nice, economics and markets thread

About economics, the first thing we should all know (and unfortunately very few people do), is that capitalism can't be sucessful in the long run, its tendency is towards stagnation (rising unemployment and declining wages). There are inerent contradictions in the capitalist system, whose Marx pointed out back in the 19th century (no I'm not a communist, I don't even agree with any political party, they all fail). Foster and Magdoff develop this idea on a book recently released called "The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences". It explains and shows how capitalism has failed, and they've been pointing out the problems since the 80s. The excessive importance of the financial sector in advanced capitalism economies (contributing to 40% of US's GDP if I'm not mistaken in the numbers) is because capital has no place to go, so it goes to the financial sector. The GDP of the productive sectors of the economy, as a percentage of total GDP, has been declining since the 80s in USA, when the financial sector started to grow excessively (this is how US got out of the stagflation of the 70s).
Advanced capitalist economies turn into a "paper economy". Japan is a good example, it's in economic stagnation since 1990.
Of course before this last financial crisis, most economists, including Nobels, were unaware of all these problems. Now it's common to praise Minsky, an economist who pointed out the failures in capitalism a long time ago. It's ironic to see that the economics big boys that won Nobels were so dumb tthat they didn't understand this.

Sorry for the long text...

If you really want to learn economics you should learn about white-collar crime then watch the show American Greed.

While I agree with your assessment of the dollar, the Euro still has some major flaws that make it more dangerous. Many of the countries (Greece, Spain, Portugal) attached to it have too many entitlements that cause the government to 50% or more of the country's GDP and it spends more then it takes in. The banks that are responsible for givin' out too much money are interconnected with banks all across Europe. If a country like Greece, despite a GDP comparable to that of Dallas, Texas, fails the entire currency runs into issues because each individual country cannot print off more money.

Though, I am very concerned that a similar event may unfold with California and Illinois. They have run record deficits and are not even apologetic about it.




I would agree that Capitalism has some flaws, but that certainly does not make it a failure. The rise in the financial sector does have its benefits, companies that accomplish breakthroughs in technology are able to receive funding at faster rates so they can invest more in their products. Granted, it opens up the possibility of crashes if a bubble is formed, but allowin' for successful businesses to expand is beneficial for many people. I have not read the book, but as a rule I make a point to stay away from anything Marx related.

Japan's stagflation was not caused by capitalism but rather excess amounts of Keynesian economics.

I agree about Japan, in fact, the US has been headed that way, thanks to the Fed, which actually brings me to the Euro and how it has it's own central banking agency that is responsible for printing coins and notes, and while Greece may have a crappy economy and be quite spendthrift they do not have the ability to print as much as they like, so their damage to the Euro is actually pretty limited, especially given how small their economy is compared to the other members. No doubt bad apples like Greece might affect investment in the Euro but really it would create a buyer's haven on fears of Greek economic collapse. What about Ireland? Their insolvency didn't seem to much affect the pound and Euro. The reason the US dollar is on a trainwreck long before the Euro is firstly the Euro is getting increased investment, China is selling off it's US notes for more tangible assets or even Euros. Dollar value is greatly diminishing, plus the Fed has outright declared it wants to keep printing like crazy, further devaluing the dollar. The only reason the dollar was ever strong was because of past exports, and worldwide implementation of dollar as a trade currency, along with the gold standard. Soon as the gold standard was ditched, soon as the artificial inflation began just pre-dotcom boom, soon as more countries move away from the dollar, the more unstable the dollar becomes. It's quite a trend that since the dotcom boom and after the dollar has sunk significantly. Both Schiff and Ferguson point out that overseas is, unfortunately, the best investments, especially for long term, as it's very very unclear what shape the dollar will be in 10 years down the road. The Euro will rebound, and countries like Greece can always go back to their own currency.

I will agree with Tosh and for the very same reason you did about long run capitalism not working but that is indeed because of Keynesian economics on steroids. I don't think the dollar would be in as bad of shape had there been no artificial inflation of prices, reckless amount of printing, and government taking over bad debt. However, the dollar decline and the high amount of US debt needs to have someone banking off of it, and well, ironically, it's China. Perhaps the RMB is a better long term investment given the path to restrained inflation they are headed.

I gotta say though I like the fact that I'm discussing with some fine chaps who actually know what they're talking about. It's really soured me on any subject concerning the dollar with the Captain America attitude and how brilliant guys like Schiff get the flag in the face for being more forthcoming about the dollar and US investments.