Josh Brown, a Wall Street financial advisor, writes about markets, investing manias, and finance culture.
Commenters recommend his podcast and posts, and HN links it for his takes on Wall Street, passive indexing, and valuation.
If you're starting from scratch, I'd recommend this Khan academy course (it's short and sweet): https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/core-finance/money-and-banking/bitcoin/v/bitcoin-what-is-it
There's a lot more advanced stuff out there (as you can see in the other comments) that I would touch on once I have a rough overview.
A lot changes in the crypto world month-to-month, and so forums like Reddit and Twitter are usually the best to stay up to date. Unfortunately, there's a lot of useless chunder on these forums you'll have to learn to filter to get access to the quality stuff.
Personally, I avoid the fanboys/girls and like following people who are more critical of the space. Because of this, I've discontinued following r/Bitcoin on Reddit (I'm sure there're smart people out there—there was just too much I didn't agree with and decided to leave).
Some of my favorites today are:
- patio11 on Twitter
- prestonbyrne.com website and Twitter
- buttcoin on Twitter
- Tim Swanson (ofnumbers on Twitter)
- Bitfinexd on Twitter
- http://thereformedbroker.com/2017/11/27/it-just-got-real/
I know this is more of a crypto pessimist crowd but I tend to agree with their views way more than the rest of the herd. I think they're a lot more rational and highlight some great things to look out for.
I would encourage you to fish for some of the rational optimists as well. If anyone has recommendations, I'm all ears!
I believe the argument is along the following lines:
The more money that is placed into passive indexes (funds that merely attempt to track the performance of something like the S&P500 by owning a proportional, market cap weighted amount of each stock in the index), the less that is being actively managed by a human being or algorithm with the affect of price discovery.
With less 'players' in the game acting on their competing investment theses, inefficiencies are expected to widen. In other words, if AAPL is at price X on any given day, that price is the sum total of all buy and sell orders being placed. One can assume that even with a large portion of passive buying today, most involved in trading AAPL are trading on their own assessment of the true value of Apple's stock. If at some future point the majority of money in the market is simply passive/buy-and-hold, the price of AAPL (or any stock/wider index) will be less "efficient" because of the distortion in supply & demand created by an increase of mindless buy orders.
Some market watchers have attributed the abnormally placid bull tear of 09-present, at least in part, to this consistent buying. Josh Brown called it the relentless bid [0] and explained how the increased popularity of dollar cost averaging, scheduled index fund purchases, etc could be a major factor.
[0] http://thereformedbroker.com/2014/03/05/the-relentless-bid-explained/
This is the post that businessinsider takes from:
http://thereformedbroker.com/2016/02/25/abundance/
Someone else submitted this earlier today:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11177389
Thanks for the link. Here's the quote I like:
"No one cares how many actual business models get wrecked in the process. How many useful jobs are lost in the process. The new fixed income or currency trader on Wall Street will never need health care, or take a vacation or grab a female co-worker’s ass. It’s a chip on a server. Much cheaper to employ, much easier to manage.
"Automate everything, outsource the rest – it’s cheaper for the customers. “But now there are no customers left, no one has the money to be a customer anymore.”
...
"“Let’s take a product or service that people used to charge for, make a worse version and give it away for free!” Why would we do that? “Bro down.”"
Epic Groupon poem, especially for those who do not understand why this is price action is happening!
http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2011/10/30/groupoem/
Here are the first three verses as a teaser:
Gather round, dear investors, and hear all about
The worst IPO that has ever come out
It's hitting this week if the stars align right
But only the foolish would look for a bite
---
For Groupon is now past the peak of its glory
Its promising start a well-known story
Of youthful intensity, vision and zeal
Of crafting the perfect consumer-led deal
---
City by city, Groupon grew like a weed
Positioned as marketing for the small biz in need
Coupons for shoes and coupons for socks
Offers for Lasik and half-off on Crocs
I keep saying similar things. Unfortunately, everyone is enamored with Bitcoin. But what they really want is a lower friction way of electronic money transfer. What they don't want is for their savings to be easily stolen.
"You know what's cooler than a million dollars? Virtual currency backed by nothing and nobody."
Here's Bitcoin explained using a Venn diagram. If you don't understand this diagram, you're the ideal Bitcoin user.
http://www.thereformedbroker.com/2013/11/20/bitcoin-likely-users-venn-diagram/
Josh Brown starts the podcast episode released yesterday telling this story. It's a fantastic re-telling, highly recommend.
As he says repeatedly in the episode, "Wall Street always changes the rules."
https://thereformedbroker.com/2021/01/29/pigs-get-slaughtered-doing-the-work-with-rachel-robasciotti-gamestop-short-squeeze/