Indium price just shot up. It may go up some more, go down, or go sideways. I currently own 50 grams of indium shot. I like to play with it, but I prefer not to chew on it. What if I buy, like, a few ingots and store them under my bed? This would be an investment of a few grand. Would I regret doing it in 5 years from now?
Possible reasons for regretting it: price plummeting, inability to resell without high transaction costs, being scammed (the density of tin is very similar to that of indium), the government confiscating it, getting indium lung, unknown unknowns.
This will be resolved based on my subjective judgement, so I will not bet.
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@NivlacM Agreed. Though the question is how unreasonable. If you guys are collectively correct there’s 40% prob that I won’t regret it. Probably better wrt getting married :-D
@mariopasquato I would give you better odds for a marriage given the amount of effort and thought you've put into buying some indium
@vitamind I don’t have any private information on the price in five years. I just read a bunch of stuff online about how indium is produced as a byproduct of zinc extraction, it’s produced mostly in China and Korea, and it’s used for LCD displays and solder. See e.g. https://www.acs.org/greenchemistry/research-innovation/endangered-elements/indium.html
@LoganZoellner This is a great question! The counterfactual is the best realistic use of that money in hindsight, given that the metric is subjective regret. Obviously hindsight is 20/20 so I won’t be comparing with the best possible use of that money (that would always lead to regret) but with the best use that I could realistically have made of it. This is not limited to investment. Assume that losing this money is not going to negatively affect my standard of living in a significant way.
@mariopasquato open an account with a brokerage (Interactive Investors comes to mind) and ask them to provide you with x amount of Indium futures