X-Message-Number: 6045
Newsgroups: sci.cryonics
From:  (Brad Templeton)
Subject: How to invest for Cryonics
Date: Sun, 7 Apr 1996 10:29:19 GMT
Message-ID: <>
References: <4jq72d$> <>

In article <>, Brian Wowk <> wrote:
>>What does it cost per day ?
>
>	About $3.00 for whole bodies, $0.30 for neuros.
>

That low?  $110 per year?

This implies that a cryonics fun only needs about $2000 conservatively
invested(*) to maintain a neuro patient.  I was given to believe that
much more was allocated.


Or is this just part of the cost, ie. the LN2 and not the cost of
real estate, staff, etc.?

(*)I think the Alcor investment policy, as described to me, is incorrectly
conservative.   Centuries of history show that even with market crashes
and the like, investing only in super-secure instruments like T-bills and
government bonds is a money losing strategy, with the return often barely
keeping pace with inflation, expenses and taxes.

While one should not invest all the money in small-cap stocks, a diversified
portfolio with a decent amount in more speculative investments, another
decent amount in less speculative equities (international blue-chips) and
the remaining decent amount in guaranteed securities makes more sense.

The main fear is of course that a market collapse might wipe out the
investment.   But if only $2000 to $3000 is needed as a baseline to
maintain a neuro, and you have $10,000 to invest, the best policy would
be to invest only that baseline in T-bills and invest the rest in other
instruments, increasing the baseline a bit as you grow the other amount.

History shows that sometimes equity investments suffer serious falls,
though diversified equities have never been "wiped out."   So if you
have $10K, you might put $2K in T-bills and $8K in speculative equities,
with the knowledge that the worst that's ever happend in a short period
to the $8k is to drop it to 4K, leaving you with $6K.   But more likely
you can get the $8K to compound at a decent rate, so that in 10 years at
current rates you have $20K.   Then you can move to having say $5K in
T-Bills and the other $18K continue on in more speculative stocks.

Eventually you would not leave more than perhaps $10K in the T-bills,
since you know that's going to support you easily, and you let the rest
of the money build for revival expenses and research.  Keeping most of
the money in guaranteed securities is a false security.  History shows
that even over centuries the people who do that lose.

For Cryonics, international diversification is a good plan.  You don't
get the returns of the S&P 500 but you get much less risk of serious
wipe-out, since the whole world economy would have to tank badly for this
to happen, and if it does, the cryo-org will probably have other serious
problems.
-- 
Brad Templeton, publisher, ClariNet Communications Corp.	 
The net's #1 E-Newspaper (1,300,000 paid sbscrbrs.)  http://www.clari.net/brad/


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