Good news. IBKR is eliminating monthly account maintenance fees!
“ Effective July 1, 2021, you will no longer be charged USD 10 for not maintaining a minimum balance or transaction activity for account U****. This change will be reflected in your August 2021 account statement.”
Plus looks like they’ll be entering crypto trading soon:
Sweet thx
Brokers have the tendency to charge you where you can’t see it. So unless there is more transparency, don’t thank them just yet.
Retail investors = 
holders
After using brokers in Taiwan everything is great with ibkr. I have zero complaints even at 10usd a month .
I noticed some improvements in the overall experience using IB over the last year, it’s down less as well. So that’s good. Let’s see how the Crypto side of things develops.
Going back to the topic of Chinese stocks, I see some talking heads online referencing opportunities to buy these stocks at discount. I suppose it’s reasonable to assume the sky doesn’t crash down on them immediately, and if you could manage to pick your spots maybe you could benefit. But I don’t know why anyone would want to add that risk on top of normal investing risks.
Just following the general sentiment of talking heads and online chatter, there are definitely waves growing talking about getting out of Chinese stocks, there is momentum and warning there already. Rationally again, CCP may not come down at once on isolating their market, but sentiment may get to it well before that happens anyway. I also think CCP will ‘regulate’ faster than expected.
Another interesting theory of where to put money in downmarkets, should interest rates need hiking, is in the typical FAANG plays. Traditionally the conversation revolves around companies that produce stuff you use in the bathroom, but though FAANG stuff isn’t technically a necessity, they are ingrained in daily life to the point where people will absolutely not stop using them. I have to agree with this one, and they’re obviously higher growth than someone who makes toothpaste.
Funniest thing I saw today was reports of Levi’s profitability. Their CEO (I think?) was on TV saying the reason for it, paraphrasing, is ‘changes in weight’. 
I assume soon we’ll see that Frito Lay/Levi’s collab, also a Levi’s/Peloton collab. Frito in the winter and Peloton in the summer? 
I wouldn’t recommend GM normally anyway, but these guidelines…
Basically for Chevy Volt owners 2017-2019, recalls are happening, because I guess they’re catching on fire just sitting there? The recommendation for these owners is to…
Not charge the car overnight unattended.
When you’re done charging, park it outside.
General Motors is telling owners of 2017-2019 Bolt EVs that were part of a recent recall not to park their vehicles inside or charge them unattended overnight after two of the vehicles caught fire.
The two Bolt EVs were repaired as part of a recall of nearly 69,000 of the vehicles that were flagged for fire risks. The recall was initially announced in November by GM and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
One of the fires occurred while the vehicle was charging at the home of a Vermont state lawmaker earlier this month. The other fire happened in New Jersey, a spokesman for GM said, adding that it was notified about it earlier this week.
They’ve doubled in the past 52. What’s not to like?
The fact they’ve doubled and are part of a legacy automaker industry about to struggle big time.
Because of two cars? If there’s a recall maybe, but not for this news so far. Has a recall been formally announced?
Oops yeah I see. 68k cars. Ok but taking precautions is s good move. We’ll see what happens? Could be a buy in opportunity.
No, I said I wouldn’t recommend them anyway. 
Legacy automakers are in for a world of hurt generally, because they need to shift to electric. Mass production of electric vehicles is difficult enough in it’s own right to get good at, on volume and cost efficiency (much different from what they’re good at with ICE production). And then stuff like cars catching on fire on top of that, apparently.
Legacies are already lagging on electric, and an equally big, maybe bigger problem for them is what to do with ICE vehicles. If they promote electric too hard and fast, people will hold off buying ICE cars, which will remain their main revenue stream for some years. So they’d be cannibalizing themselves.
Also, if they promote it and demand is there, they still won’t be able to ramp production of electric fast enough, and people will go buy electric from someone who can produce them en masse.
On the other hand, if they slowly grow their electric side, they’re going to be hanging onto ICE sales (which will be a dead industry in 10 years), and losing market share and falling behind even more to companies building only electric.
Which is why car companies starting from scratch at electric are actually in a better position to just not profit from making cars, but to survive, period.
About GM specifically, they also seem fairly shite at figuring out who to collaborate with:
Nikola Chairman Trevor Milton Resigns Amid Fraud Claims - The New York Times.
It’s not like Tesla’s haven’t caught fire.
I think that horse has left the barn. People who want electric are buying them already. So they’re saddling up.
Factories starting from scratch, in the US, have the advantage of not being burdened by legacy contracts. As to who’ll survive, we’ll see. There’s 1 company that’s made an actual good go of it so far, and they’re still not actually profitable from car operations yet.
After stuff like crashing into trees, not sitting there charging. There was a report of it happening to a driver last month with no crash, but we’ll see about the details of that. There’s a Geragos involved. No recalls issued, or mandated either. They’re one of the safest rated carmakers overall:
Tesla’s vehicles have been acing the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) crash tests for years, and the Model Y is now the latest to join those ranks, with the midsize SUV scoring five stars in every category that the group tests for crash safety.
NHTSA grades cars on a variety of crash test metrics, including frontal crashes (with subcategories for both the driver and passenger seats), side crashes (for crashes into both a barrier and a pole), and rollover scenarios. The Model Y scores five-star results across the board
But it is worth mentioning all of it to point out the engineering difficultly in doing it well.
Yes, they have to, the transition is well under way. But again, the legacies are trying to catch up to cheetahs with gorillas strapped on their backs. They can’t catch up without shedding those first, and how you do profit like that?
It’s basically Tesla and then chinese copycats in the realm of affordable electric at the moment. There are US luxury brands like Rivian and Lucid, which may do well, but only really luxury right now (where Tesla was 10 years ago) and both have yet to show ability to produce even a limited amount of luxury vehicles effectively at volume. Much of what they talk about is what they ‘project’ to do, neither has actually made a car yet, I don’t think.
They’ve definitely caught fire while charging. And sitting there, not charging.
Yeah I see the records now, seems like the one this month was first since 2019, before that there were several incidents…
Seems pretty widespread among all the makers, Tesla I imagine has more in this record by sheer production numbers. Should be interesting to see what happens when other companies hit bigger numbers on their deliveries.
As I mentioned about EV startups, easy to make a prototype, not so easy to ramp to scale. I believe Lucid recently backtracked on some projected production numbers as well.
I wonder if Apple ever throws their hat in the ring on EVs. They have a ton of cash just sitting there always, like buying the entirety of Ford, for example, is almost pocket change for them if they wanted to.
Rumors are they’re fishing around for partners, Lucid being one of them. Lucid for design and customization of high end Apple cars, with production being sourced to a legacy maker that needs some partnership, makes sense (and Lucid seems like it could use it too). At some point they have to jump in I think, they’ve been working on a car project called Titan for 7 years.
Rivian has delayed the first deliveries of its long-awaited electric pickup truck again, this time until September. Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe broke the news to buyers in an email sent Friday morning.
The Amazon and Ford-backed EV startup originally planned to start delivering its electric pickup, the R1T, and its SUV, the R1S, in 2020. But it scuttled those plans at the beginning of the pandemic and said at the time that it would start deliveries in 2021 instead. Rivian eventually settled on starting deliveries of the R1T in June of this year, only to push that back to July, and now to September.
Pretty sure they don’t want to deal with owning factories, pensions, and a union workforce.
Bought a few stocks of GGPI yesterday a SPAC that’s going to merge with EV company Polestar, which is part of Volvo/Geely. At 10 dollars per share. Let’s see how that will develop. On the plus side is that they already have two cars on the market, unlike companies such as Lucid who have yet to deliver.
Definitely not, just pointing out they have some serious cash to enter the EV industry in any way they see fit. I imagine they, maybe a Japanese or Korean automaker, and a company like Lucid could enter into some kind of symbiotic threesome at some point.
I think they have talent at Lucid but they would definitely seem more of a fit partnering with someone who can help them with production. They seem underwater on the actually making cars part.
I bring up Apple and Lucid specifically, in part because their CEO was asked about Apple approaching them, he didn’t deny it (which means they have, he can’t misrepresent), and Lucid looks like what I’d imagine Apple would want their cars to look like.
So Lucid on their own I wouldn’t invest in, but the idea their talent and design could attach to an Apple at some point, that could make for an appealing investment in CCIV. Or maybe just smarter to buy some Apple?
I’m not putting anything in either, but it’s an interesting thing to try to figure out Apple’s next move. From everything I gather it is a car play as the ‘next iphone’, just when and where and who. They have to do something with their cash eventually.
Quick follow-up on that Chevy Bolt recall story. It’s the third time that same batch has been recalled. This applies to every single bolt made in the US from 2017-2019, if I understand this guy correctly. Insane. Same issue too, that they supposedly fixed already.
