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Comment by xbmcuser | Hacker News Reader

As someone that is the food mostly spice trade prices have started going up in the last 2-3 weeks though prices have not even reached pre pandemic levels. Black Pepper prices have jumped 20+% in the last 20day that price is still 50% cheaper than what it was 4-5 years ago. The largest problem is not availablity of goods rather shipping. I would advise investing in shipping companies if you are active in the stock market. As now days they are charging 3-4 times the freight and still hard to get space so they probably rare raking it in

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Surely you're familiar with the Baltic Dry Index, an index of shipping costs:

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/baltic

Also, in case anyone thinks the current environment is crazy then check out the commodities bubble period of 2008 for that index.

Woah. For anyone interested, go to stats and click 25yrs - it's pretty clear what the above comment is referring to.

Which was all caused by an extremely large drop in the dollar. Anytime there is such a drop, you get global food chaos from a big spike in the price of commodities that destabilizes markets until they're able to adjust. And then you get civil wars out of that inevitably, it helped to cause the Arab Spring as one example.

The US Dollar Index was at 120 in early 2002, and then proceeded to fall persistently until the middle of 2008 when it rested at around 71. An epic collapse by the dollar that triggered all sorts of nasty global effects. Fortunately this time around the dollar drop hasn't been so bad, most major currencies are debasing at the same time. The dollar is merely back to where it was in 2015 and 2018, so far.

I'm just beginning to learn about investing...Is there any book and/or website to learn about how the dollar can affect commodities that you would recommend?

I don't think you need a book. When commodities are priced primarily in USD then a decrease in the value of USD leads to an increase in the number of dollars required to make the same purchase.

Increase in any price can be seen as an increase in item value or a decrease in USD value. It takes a more in depth analysis of the market to determine which is the cause of price increase.

Its amazing that a 50% drop in the dollar was barely detectable in US, due to price stickiness, subsidies, and whatever else.

Are there books that would help me get more familiar with these sorts of things?

Be careful with your reliance on BDI. As the name implies, it does not reflect prices for the entire shipping industry (e.g. container ships). I used to have investments in the area as an institutional investor, and it was common to see people not understand this.

Most shipping companies in the stock market have rocketed in the past 2-3 months, so that opportunity has passed I think.

Common stock advice: if you hear about an investment opportunity, you've probably already missed out.

Ex: Bitcoin stocks (yes they're stocks / investment products) are only really reported on when they're at an all-time high. They may go up a little more if you're reading something fresh off the press, but it's not going to go up as much as it already has. I mean if you bought a year ago you could have had a 10x return on investment, if you invest now it'll be 10-20% return on investment at best.

Pretty much this. Once the hype has reached the mainstream, the opportunity has peaked or already passed.

Bitcoin has different fundamentals IMO. For buy and hold I still think 10x from here (over the long term) is possible. This year we might see up to 100k. It’s extremely fickle. We could easily see 5k again. No one really knows, though. The best fundamental analysis that gives a bright future is of Bitcoin replacing some significant market cap for gold. Probably not though.

Where can I find this Bitcoin corporation that issues stock?

$MSTR is one.

Yep, the only reason you should buy into the Bitcoin is when you see the news that it's going the other way (ie: Bitcoin drops $2,000 in 30 minutes)

$2k is only 4%, swings like that happen like every day. Would not recommend trading on that news.

If “hear about” means major media wrote a news story about it because it has gone up then yes. But I’ve learned about profitable investments from places like twitter, reddit etc if you are deeply plugged in to what is happening.

Or deeply plugged into the world of fantasies and pump-and-dump scams. It can be hard to tell.

Also once Wall Street turns it into a structured product or an ETF, then stay far away.

SPY has gone up 191% in 5 years. I'd say the good ETFs are fine.

Historically when they reach all time high again after a crash they still go up quite a bit (like 400% last upswing). Obviously not a huge sample size there though

That's the reasonning that prevented people from buying the ATH when Bitcoin made the news in 2011. And in 2013. And in 2017. And 2020.

Yup, stock market is all about factored in valuations and others saw the writing on the wall. Since rises and drops are due to surprises, the only way it’ll rocket further is if things will go even EVEN better than already expected. I sometimes have to repeat all this for myself... it helps :p

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