[long post about China trip]
finishing up 3 weeks in china which is the longest i’ve been on the mainland (not inc. HK or Macao). i’ve lived in HK and Taiwan so have a pretty good idea about comparable places, but previously have only been to shenzhen
overall thoughts are that it is an amazing place to visit and I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking about visiting
beautiful places to visit, very convenient high speed rail to get around + cheap and abundant taxis everywhere, and amazing food. and much cheaper food, hotels, transport than places like Japan
however there are some things to be aware of
1. everything is app-ified here. setting up wechat and alipay before you arrive is an absolute must as you will not be able to do anything here without them. you can technically pay for things in cash, but you will always be expected to pay using wechat or alipay. mastercard/visa is a no go for 99% of places
2. language barrier is real, but it is manageable using apps to translate. i speak decent mandarin so had no issues, but do not expect people to be able to speak english, even in major cities. if you speak zero mandarin you will need to rely on translation apps
3. the internet firewall that blocks common websites (google, all social media apps etc) isn’t that easy to bypass as most VPNs I tried either didn’t work at all, or were hit and miss. I have a Hong Kong sim, so just used phone data the whole time and hotspotted when I wanted to use my laptop. using a foreign sim’s data package is the only way to reliably bypass the firewall, unless you are able to find a VPN that reliably works (I couldn’t). mullvad was the only one I could sometimes get to work
4. for the vast majority of ticketed things, your passport = your ticket. including tourist attractions and train tickets. you rarely get issued an actual ticket, instead they scan your passport at the entrance and can see your assigned ticket. use trip .com to book tickets for everything, including trains. just don’t forget to take your passport with you every time you are going somewhere otherwise they won’t let you in
5. tourist attractions are busy, even during off season (i was going in november during the week). avoid going during peak season or around chinese holidays as they will be RAMMED. 95%+ of the tourists are domestic chinese tourists, not foreigners, and a large number of them are part of tour groups.
some of the places we went were quite busy even though it was a random wednesday in november. i can’t imagine how busy they are during peak holiday season or even the weekend
6. use apple maps for navigation. google maps doesn’t work that well
7. everywhere is very safe. no point felt unsafe + never saw criminal activity, nor was ever worried about any of our belongings going missing. solo female travellers will be fine here
8. in general, everywhere is very clean *except* public toilets. some are ok, but the majority are pretty disgusting, with many not having any tissue paper or soap. would recommend carrying tissues + hand sanitiser
9. beijing traffic was insane. no other city we went to had traffic like that
10. chinese people are v friendly but also have societal norms that foreigners might struggle with
- hawking / throat clearing / spitting is out of control here. It is inescapable no matter where you go, and is something we found particularly jarring. doesn’t matter if you’re at a restaurant, on top of a mountain, or on a train, there will be people LOUDLY clearing their throat and spitting
- there isn’t much concern for personal space/crowding or pushing. at many of the busier sites we went to, people will happily crowd around and push. same with queueing, it’s more just pushing forward. people will also happily block walkways and you’ll need to just push past them. they aren’t being rude, it’s just the norm here
9/10 trip loved it
if any chinese people read this lemme know if I’ve gone wrong anywhere
broke through this and now teetering on the $1,000 level
doubt this is the bottom sadly, as I would have expected a stronger bounce here otherwise
debating whether to cut what I have here or zodl a bit longer
let’s see
not really a TA guy but the 100d sma seems like a decent spot for a bounce on zcash:native
i was already long, but bought more here below 1100
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some personal reflections after a horrible month:
still up on the year on both the crypto and equities accounts (even not including having to offramp a bunch for IRL expenses) but man it has been a rough month. one of the worst in a long while for me
liquid port is down ~22% since 6th October (which was within 2% of ATH port value) and I'm back at roughly the same levels as I was in late May
some reference points for the same time frame since 6th Oct:
QQQ down 13%
NVDA down 31%
HYPE down 25%
ZEC down 24%
BTC down 15%
SMH down 25%
NBIS down 45%
I really did believe that Oct/Nov could be bullish for both crypto and equities and paid the price for it
also took some shots at earnings surprising to the upside and got punished on basically all of them lol. this could just be considered pointless gambling
still pretty exposed on both crypto (hype + zec) and equities (qqq, nbis, and recently added meta + nvda on these dips), but I'm going to reassess everything I hold when I get back home from travelling in the next couple days
not a big fan of just panic dumping everything instantly after a huge amount of red candles unless there is good reason to, so would rather reassess with a clearer head over the next 48hrs
will also reply to this with all the mistakes I made the past month
so fucking boring seeing people brag about nailing a 5% move
we used to dream in this space about how many multiples we could hit
now the timeline is filled with “DID YOU FADE MY CALL” because something is up single digit percentages from their entry
the indexes alone are up 3.5% today lmao if I was chasing such returns I’d just sit in QQQ and Gold and never log on here again
think this was mostly spot on as things have nuked pretty hard since then
wanted to jot down some longer thoughts on the "AI trade" in general:
want to preface this by saying I don't think the "AI trade" is dead. AI, robotics, and space are clearly a big part of the future and so it is crazy to think the entire trade is completely finished
with that being said, I think there is still a lot of complacency within the whole trade right now
and this is from someone who still holds a good chunk of AI stocks
a lot of the posts I see about these stocks that have nuked (memory, neocloud, power, other "bottlenecks") are
"this price doesn't make sense, the numbers are so good!"
"the forward PE is so low!"
"their 2027 ARR is equal to their marketcap!"
"YoY growth is 400%!"
"this stock is the cheapest it has ever been based on X metric"
"they can buy their entire stock's marketcap with their revenue!"
and while all that might be true, it still sounds all too like the typical things you hear during complacency/anxiety/denial phases of market cycles
people are still too hopeful that pure math means the charts somehow cannot physically go lower
micron is still up almost 3x on the year. sandisk is still up almost 6x on the year. these charts can fall a lot lower AND still be up massively on the year
even in tradfi, I still believe price drives narrative not the other way around
if memory stocks drop another 50% from here, people will say "oh it dropped this much despite a forward PE of 3 because china is inventing new memory"
it is always easy to explain why price moved a certain way in hindsight because there an unlimited number of narratives that can be assigned to a chart no matter which way it moves
based on the above I still think there is further to fall. I'm not capitulating on everything I hold, as I think further drops are just buying opportunities rather than the entire trade being over
but I think people who are overexposed or overleveraged and relying on 2027 revenue numbers to somehow form a magical unbreakable price barrier will be shocked at how far things can drop
either way I hope we bottom soon as I'm always a bull at heart and don't enjoy seeing prices go down
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why are people shocked than ansem takes undisclosed paid deals 😆
i don’t think this man has shilled a single thing below $10b that wasn’t a paid shill in years lol
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beijing has some great stuff to see, but man getting around the city is horrible
traffic is insane. just took us 45 minutes to drive 4 miles
would advise anyone visiting to tick off all the must-see places and try all the great food within 3-4 days and move on to elsewhere
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made some profit on HYPE and ZEC recently but man I got absolutely shafted on AMZN and GOOG
bought both for earnings and sold both at a loss after they nuked. just for amazon to giga-reversal to what would have been great profit
google still at the price I sold for now...
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markets usually dislike uncertainty more than they dislike bad news
once something has happened, even if it is "bad", it can instantly start to be digested by the market
uncertainty cannot be digested by the market as by definition it isn't yet clear what will actually occur
resolution of uncertainty is almost always better — even if said resolution is deemed "negative" for the market
(eg. people saying dem sweep is bad for AI trade. but what is even worse for the AI trade is an uncertain overhang of what will happen pre/during/post midterms — something which is now in the process of being resolved)
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not saying this is the bottom, but did these people not look at the BTC $15k bottom in 2022?
btc sat at $15-16k level for 3 MONTHS before starting its move to 125k
just because price sits at a certain level for a period of time doesn't mean it is guaranteed to go lower
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