Discussion Banking, Investing, Finances

[YakuInTheFlesh]

I'm pretty sure most of you have heard about the Silicon Valley Bank collapse which has lead to quite an interesting spiral around the world.
If you don't know, her is a basic overview of events:

SVB was one of the largest banks in SV, which is an odd customer base to begin with. This is because SV very much is based around the idea of 9/10 companies failing and loosing millions and 1/10 making up for the rest and making money back. Now in the last two years we saw a huge growth in everything tech and for whatever reason no one was able to predict that this growth won't fall after the worst of Covid was over. This leads to the problem that SVB started to make huge losses and investors got scared. The same investors now ran to the bank to pull their money out, causing a bank run.
In case you don't know: Banks are only obligated to hold 10% of their total money in liquidity, the rest can be in stocks, mortages, loans, etc. thus if suddenly too many people want to pull out 100% of their money they can not cope with the amount and go bankrupt within hours.
Now after the SVB collapsed you'd think it's done and people in SV would get a wake up call and stop wasting money. This is not what happened. The collapse of a single bank caused problems for banks all around the world, with the newest being DB and Credit Suisse. CS made huge losses and had to get a small loan of 50 billion CHF from the National Bank. This scared the customers and caused ~10 billion CHF to get pulled out. This is indicative of a bank run happening. To prevent this they shotgun sold it to UBS last Saturday, before the market opens on Monday for 3 billion CHF and a bank run was prevented.
Now the newest victim is the Deutsche Bank. Stocks dropped by a lot and if this continues there could be another risk of a bank run.

The world of finances is weird and uncertain, but despite all of this happening there will very likely not be another crisis like in 2008. I just freshly came off from discussing this with someone I know (ex high ranking UBS employee) and had some concerns alleviated, despite loosing money in various places. My baskets are down because of NASDAQ, SMI, etc. tumbling, crypto is in general still down since last year and my physical investments are neither up nor down.

Now to the discussion. Do you invest? How / in what do you invest? Do you have concerns about the economy? Should banks change their approach to money? Etc.

As for me:
As mentioned I have some money in the stock market (mostly baskets) and a little floating in crypto. I am currently very reluctant to move money on either of them. I won't sell nor buy right now. I also have some physical goods, which have quite a value (roughly half a years worth of my salary. I don't want to go further into it than that), that are currently collecting dust.
I think that certain countries will have a wake up call when it comes to how they spend money and I believe companies that have thrived till now will collapse. There won't be a crisis, but we will feel the effects in the next few years. The biggest problem we will face is that times of uncertainty can lead to surprising unity. I think we have to be careful about certain groups as now is their time to strike, especially since they are already exhibiting notions similar to the Nazi party (I'm talking about the Alphabet people btw.).
I also believe, that banks should figure out a way to be more prepared for a banking run, but I wasn't able to come up with something for now since in my discussion it was shot down pretty fast that any form equal value to money physical good wouldn't work with today's amount of money (e.g. there is more money than gold, so banks couldn't store 100% of peoples money in it)
Stay safe and if you don't trust your bank you should pull out before a run happens, otherwise leave it if trust them.

 

[Halo]

. Do you invest? How / in what do you invest?

Yes, anything that sounds funny to me

Do you have concerns about the economy?

No, I'm dead inside already, and if the economy collapses I'll keep my job anyway

Should banks change their approach to money?

Probably, but i'm no schooler, quite frankly I barely know how to pay my bills


Finally
Bold to assume anyone on this site is responsible enough to have money to invest, or be smart enough to invest.

my true investments are anime figures.

 

[YakuInTheFlesh]

Bold to assume anyone on this site is responsible enough to have money to invest, or be smart enough to invest.

You don't need to be smart to invest. You only need to be smart to not loose your money
But I know enough spergs that at the very least invest in shit-coins or some obscure metals.

my true investments are anime figures.

True enough. If troons manage to ruin anime they will be worth their weight in gold. And if not they will still be worth a lot.

 

[Hexasheep93]

I like your funny words magic man

But seriously my knowledge of finances is limited at best, and Im too big of a coward to invest.
As far as I know my bank hasnt run into problems so I should be fine. I hope. Im not ambitious as long as I have food to eat and a place to live Im fine.

Still as Im getting closer to a significant moment in my life it wouldnt be a bad idea to learn a little I guess

As for my thoughts on the economy, well I think its broken beyond repair, a nearly indesipherable web where one change is felt everywhere. This may not cause a crisis yet, but I think is a sign for things to come. Something big is gonna happen and I dont know if anyone is prepared for it

 

[YakuInTheFlesh]

But seriously my knowledge of finances is limited at best, and Im too big of a coward to invest.

Still as Im getting closer to a significant moment in my life it wouldnt be a bad idea to learn a little I guess

The "safest" and easiest way to invest is to go with a basket of the top companies. Like a S&P 500 or a market index like the mentioned SMI & NASDAQ. You won't get some huge returns that will make you a billionaire within a month, but you get a on average steady uptick in value + yearly dividends (which are tax free everywhere iirc). It depends of course on the rate, but if you manage to feed $1000 into it per month for 10-20 years you turn an investment of $120k - $240k into $1+ Mil.
It's strongly generalized, but that's roughly a strategy that everybody can follow without too much worry.

Edit: Also first check your banks fee for investing. They can be insane, which is why I use an entire separate bank for investing

 

[Grönsak]

"Every thing is fine"

 

[FunsLeaf]

I would like to suggest acquiring a firearm or any sort of weapon in general in case things go to shit, and generally keeping physical assets that you directly control as opposed to intangible assets like stocks or bonds would be a good idea considering how shit everything is going to be soon.