Some weeks ago, maybe months ago, I thought about the following, and mentioned it once or twice on the blog. I'm reminded of it again, today, watching CNBC.
I recently mentioned "folks (who are) afraid to get rich. Really rich."
An analyst for one of the large Wall Street investment firms was arguing her case on CNBC: she's still not ready to recommend that folks put new money into the market. She said there were just too many unknowns.
She really came across as someone who was afraid to get rich.
I wouldn't want her as my financial advisor.
Bears and bulls.
Watching the market for the past month, it comes back to this for me: if you aren't ready to invest now, when will you ever be ready to invest?
My audience: those with a rolling 30-year investment horizon. "Rolling"? It means that every day, the horizon begins another 30-year investment period.
MP Materials. A "new one" that pops up on my radar screen. From wiki:
MP Materials Corp. is an American rare-earth materials company headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada.
MP Materials owns and operates the Mountain Pass mine, the only operating rare earth mine and processing facility in the United States.
MP Materials focuses its production on Neodymium-Praseodymium (NdPr), a rare earth material used in high-strength permanent magnets that power the traction motors found in electric vehicles, robotics, wind turbines, drones and other advanced motion technologies.
MP Materials is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "MP." As of December 2021, JHL Capital Group, QVT Financial and CEO James Litinsky were the company's three largest shareholders, with about 7.7% of the company owned by Shenghe Resources, a Chinese company partly owned by the country's Ministry of Natural Resources.
Has anyone, lately, heard of magnets? Asking for a friend.
Disclaimer
Brief
Reminder
Briefly:
- I am
inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken and I am often well out front
of my headlights. I am often appropriately accused of hyperbole when it
comes to the Bakken.
- I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market.
- I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
- See disclaimer. This is not an investment site.
- Disclaimer:
this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial,
job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read
here or think you may have read here. All my posts are done quickly:
there will be content and typographical errors. If something appears wrong, it probably is. Feel free to fact check everything.
- If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.
- Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the Bakken, US economy, and the US market.
- I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.
- And now, Nvidia, also. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Nvidia. Nvidia is a metonym for AI and/or the sixth industrial revolution.
- I've now added Broadcom to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Broadcom.
- I've now added Oracle to the disclaimer. I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Oracle.
- Longer version here.
Since 2000 there have been four periods in which there were significant pull backs in the market. All four periods/events generated huge angst, investors and non-investors alike, and the angst was clearly exacerbated by the media looking for eyeballs to drive ratings, or for those with political agendas.
The next four links are all mainstream -- wiki links:
- dot.com bust: 2000; link here;
- while many companies failed, some, like Amazon, eBay, and Qualcomm, survived and became major players
- financial crash of 2008: link here; clearly the worst, without question;
- Covid crash of 2020: link here; really, really bad at the time, but rational folks ...
- Trump's tariffs: 2025: link here;
Three of the four having something in common. One is an outlier.
So, I ask investors who are still afraid to invest: if you won't invest now, when will you invest?
Hey, on another note. Try to catch a short CNBC video on the "Transformation of the Army." Wiki page here. US Army Chief of Staff, General Randy A George; and, US Army senior civilian: Secretary of the Army Daniel P. Driscoll.
Driscoll:
Daniel Patrick Driscoll is an American politician, businessman, lawyer, and former military officer serving as the 26th United States secretary of the Army as well as the acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives since 2025.
A member of the Republican Party, he was a candidate for North Carolina's 11th congressional district in 2020. Early life and education Driscoll was raised in Banner Elk, North Carolina.
He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School after his military service using the post 9-11 GI Bill.
He was a Yale classmate and friend of Vice President JD Vance, former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, and Matt Blumenthal (the son of U.S. senator from Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal).
Driscoll's father was an infantryman in the Vietnam War and his grandfather served in World War II. [Both of these count for a lot.]
The 2028 GOP presidential candidate bench is going to be very, very, very deep.
Latest: CNBC's "Fast Money" folks have given mom-and-pop investors something else to be worried about: weakness of the dollar and the US dollar as the reserve currency. Dollar index.
