^^^^

There are several huge red flags

e-stores that use bitcoin do _very_ little business in it. I guarantee. To the point where stores have just stopped supporting it

Let's be honest, NEETs do not spend much money on goods and services

Anyway, I'm gonna watch some tutorials on TD Ameritrade or something lol

I've used Schwab since I was 21, can't complain

@John O - yeah me too I like it a lot

@this_that5553 I like to use Bitcoin to buy stuff because a lot of merchants give discounts for using it

From what I understand though it is used a lot more in third world countries that don't really have a credit card infrastructure

Third world countries also don't have much of a landline phone infrastructure, so those places were very quick to adopt cell phone towers and basically "skipped" ever setting up landlines

So I’ve been listening to the “Money For The Rest of Us” podcast in my free time. I know very little about how finance works, and I thought it would be a decent way to learn some basics. But I can’t decide if the guy is a charlatan or ‘guru’ figure or if he is actually knowledgeable. Has anyone with more in-depth knowledge on the subject gotten a good read on the podcast? And if he is an intellectual fraud, are there any other good podcasts you’d suggest instead?

@Tim - NH not sure about podcasts but reddit has some good finance related sections. If you are having trouble understand what a topic is you can always post the thread here and we can review/discuss

@this_that5553 buy a broad based vanguard mutual fund. They have the lowest fee structure. Aim to choose a fund with broad exposure to the market rather than something sector specific. That’s how you eliminate company or industry specific risk.

You won’t become a billionaire overnight but I believe in avg the market appreciates ~7% per year so you can do the math as to how much you’ll make overtime given your contribution level and expected date of withdrawl

@Zyzz Solid advice, thanks

Does anyone want me to give a seminar on how financial options work? not a "here's how to get rich trading options", but rather "here is what options are and how they work." The knowledge you would gain from this would be applicable to trading options on stocks as well as other financial instruments such as bitcoin.

@Deleted User I think that would be great. I remember someone here was asking about that the other day though I can't find the convo now.

Yeah, people were talking about it in IE General, and with the upcoming BTC futures I thought it might be a topic of interest.

@Deleted User id be interested

OK, I'll plan to do a 30-minute seminar Sunday the 10th at 9PM ET. @Zyzz let me know if you want to team up. I'll do it on the "voicechat" channel of this server. LMK if that time doesn't work for you. I'll send a channel annoucement later today if no one objects to the time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojgznbLrcxQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmi-GtBG5vw @everyone Spencer gives a good take on bitcoin that I agree with 100%. The jist is people are buying bitcoin to sell bitcoin they don't actually want to hold it they just want to flip it and make money off of it. Anyone who is holding bitcoin should carefully consider how a 50-90% decrease in price would make them feel. I suggest you sell your holdings.

All newbs should lurk on the Reddit Personal Finance forum. and buy Ric Edelman's 'The Truth about Money'

https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/wiki/commontopics

Whats everyones thoughts on Lending Club?

@Zyzz Thanks, yes this is stuff that has been in the back of my mind. I'm just slowly selling my btc piece by piece

I was in around june july time, so my selling off 33% of my btc I've gotten my money back

@Deleted User I used lending tree as a borrower, it was fine on my end.

I invested 100 bucks back about a year ago and forgot about and ended up making fairly good positive returns but have been reading some bad reviews lately on Lending Club itself.

@Deleted User Like what?

Returns or the bad press?

Bad press

There was a scandal in the administration. During the founding the owners bought a bunch of loans to boost popularity

And the other big peer lender has been outperforming lately

From what I've seen as well, many people use automatic investing and then aren't happy when they have so many loan defaults because they don't look at who they're lending money to.

huh

@Deleted User I've run about $20K through lendingclub and gotten a 5.4% return so far. It will probably go down a few more percentage points by the time my existing notes conclude.

I've been happy with it, but I'm not doing automatic investing or putting any additional capital into it. I've read too many negative things about it.

@ThisIsChris congrats on the nice gains. i wouldn't leave anything on the table that youre not comfortable with losing. i wish i could be more optimistic about BTC but i have no way of valuing this currency so i have no way of telling if its over or undervalued. if this were a company we could do a discounted cash flow analysis or compare its PE ratio to peers and have a better understanding as to its valuation. i was talking to @Deleted User about this earlier but i believe BTC is rising off of the "Greater Fool Theory" also look up the Holland Tulip Mania. I would not be surprised if it plays out similarly. We shall see

@here Sunday the 10th at 9PM Eastern, I will give a short seminar explaining options on the "voicechat" channel. My goal is that anyone listening will come away understanding what options are, the difference between a call and a put, the meaning of "strike price," "expiration," and "exercising," and the basics of how options are priced on the open market. If you understand these you'll be able to understand an options chain, and you'll have a solid foundation to understand sophisticated options trading strategies. I'll try to make it interesting, informative, and fun.

I've been very satisfied with Lending Club, I have automatic investing set up, and the returns have been good. I've used it for years now.