Category: Business and investments

Google’s Gemini

AI, Business and investments

I’ve spent a few days fooling around with Gemini and the Nano Banana image generator. I really like it. I find its reasoning more in depth both in chats about video/photographic equipment, possible investment ideas and geopolitics. I found some of the investment suggestion reasonings to be more in depth than ChatGPT.

I’ve also asked Nano Banana to put together a video of a witch and a dragon:

And a possible new logo for Androken.com:

I thought both came out better than earlier videos and images. I will try my pterodactyl next, although I may have used up all my Nano Banana credits for the day.

All in all, I think Alphabet has an AI winner. Looking forward to see where it leads.

As for investment, I closed all my put positions for the Thanksgiving week. I’m still long gold (ETFs), I have both domestic, developed international and emerging market ETF’s in equities and bonds, but over a third is in cash and money market.

I’m sure nincompoop will shake the investment tree hard over the next week about some slight. We shall see.

No new News, that’s good

Business and investments

This Monday starts off quietly. No noticeable rants from nincompoop, the G20 meeting ended without noticeable fireworks, war hasn’t started in Venezuela yet and the Chinese haven’t invaded Taiwan yet.

So without much to go on, I’m going to close my puts on PLTR, keep them on MSFT and NVDA for a bit. Still too early for me to dive back into US equities, I lightened up on Europe last week, left Asia alone. Mostly bonds and cash now. I’m sure there will be some new crisis soon.

Why the market is acting weird

Business and investments

We are now a socialist country

While many factors affect the stock market, my primary concern is the nincompoop in the White House. He makes pronouncements that are off the wall, he runs the country on fear, he does not allow independent thinking, he is a socialist.

Why do I say this? There are two types of socialists, communal and nationalist. I’m not going to go into the history and derivation of each type, but from my viewpoint they ended up at the same place. A few men, who due to timing, some ability and mostly luck, think they can outperform everyone else. You find these elitists in all authoritarian governments and in some democracies.

They destroy capitalism and democracy by dictating what they want and forcing their will on both individuals, companies and organizations. They think they know best and will destroy anyone and everything that gets in their way.

So what does this lead to? Fear of trying things. Fear of innovation. The mindset is always CYA, Cover Your Ass.

Unfortunately, this situation is effecting a vast majority of countries. The US, China, Russia, India, various countries in Europe and Latin America are all in the same boat. It’s almost like we are entering a new Dark Age. Too much governance by “gut feelings” little governance by science and knowledge.

So where does this leave us. Fluctuating markets moving with little rhyme or reason. Broken alliances, nationalistic pride and most likely destructive wars. Once again, gold makes the most sense as an investment, but remember gold doesn’t make anything, it’s just a place to store wealth.

Muddled World Investments

Business and investments

I purchased NVDA and MSFT puts during the last two weeks expecting a decline in their prices due to an overly strong expectation about AI. I held those puts despite yesterday’s good earnings reports from Nvidia. Today I added PLTR puts just because of the high P/E valuations.

Until this year, most of my positive investments have been long in tech, but these days I’m very wary. The circular financing for massive AI projects, discussed in last week’s financial newspapers, need to be remembered! Creative financing always kill small investors.

I still like gold. As long as nincompoop keeps buying gold toilet fixtures and the Saudis, Indians and others keep buying gold, it will continue to go up. It’s too bad gold doesn’t produce anything, that’s partly why I hate investing in it.

As for crypto, well, now you know. To heaven one quarter to hell the next. If you do indulge, just make sure you know which way the wind is blowing.