Stephen – “The folks at Morgan Stanley are either ignorant or malicious.”

There’s plenty in category one on the Street and some in category two, but the real cause is that their job is to SELL STOCK, not advise you on wise investing. Think of them as used car salesmen in better suits and fancier offices and you won’t go far wrong. Most of their income is on commission, there are often in-house competitions for money and perks (free vacations, etc) for selling the most of a certain stock in a given period and their annual bonus (a big portion of their annual take for the Wall Street crowd) depends on how much they have flogged in the previous year.

I speak from the position of having a MBA with a concentration in Finance and Accounting and a decade in Corporate Treasury – the part of the company that deals with the Jackals of Wall Street – for a Fortune Fifty firm after I retired from the Army

Best advice – pick a diversified mutual fund. A good deal of my money is now in a fund that deals in tax-exempt municipals – but that meets my goals as far as return and risk go, yours may differ. Talk to an independent (not working for the Street) financial advisor. https://www.forbes.com/sites/feeonlyplanner/2018/01/29/six-mistakes-people-make-when-hiring-a-financial-advisor/#6690aeba3ec8

Forget all the technical stuff; Morgan Stanley expects us to wait two decades for the price to triple? Two decades? That is their advice?

This due to Virgin’s suggestion that they might do point to point someday in the far distant future, not due to a plan to or even that they are investigating the possibility.

https://www.virgingalactic.com/vision/
“In time, we expect to be operating a variety of vehicles from multiple locations to cater for the demands of the growing space-user community. Whether that be transporting passengers to Earth orbiting hotels and science laboratories, or providing a world-shrinking, transcontinental service – at Virgin Galactic we will always be striving to open space to change the world for good.”

I think that the better investment is for the near future of Virgin’s suborbital flights, both tourist and scientific. What does Morgan Stanley think will happen to the price when tourist operations begin in 2008 — oops — 2012 — oops — 2014 — oops — 2017 — oops — 2018 — oops — …

Well, I guess that investment would depend entirely on Virgin actually beginning that service sometime in the near future. Such as the promised next six to nine months. Like we have been hearing for the past — how many years? They may be striving, but it would sure be nice for them to finally start opening space to change the world for good.

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2019/12/spacex-starlink-satellites-cost-well-below-500000-each-and-falcon-9-launches-less-than-30-million.html

Grossly overestimating the cost to launch the Starlink constellation.

Unless you really enjoy watching your fuselage melt around you, you have to spend all the delta-V necessary to claw your way into orbit… then deal with all the atmospheric heating effects on the way DOWN from orbit… all within 45 minutes or so. So your costs aren’t going to be materially different from an orbital launch. Add in the amount of time getting to a suitable launch site, dealing with TSA, listening to the flight attendant’s lecture, getting your bags at the other end, sitting in an Uber to your destination… there just aren’t enough people in the world willing to spend a few million dollars to save a couple of hours door-to-door. For way less money, charter a Gulfstream G650 and get a good night’s sleep in the back.

The folks at Morgan Stanley are either ignorant or malicious. I don’t know which way to place that bet.

(Some adult content, but a great scene.)

–personally, I never buy individual stocks. Highly recommend (any number of) Index funds from Vanguard, THE low-cost methodology to buy an entire market for miniscule advisory & management fees.

“Bull’s & Bear’s make money, Pigs get slaughtered.”

I am a non-engineer and I can easily see how idiotic this advice is.

We are talking the difference between a orbital Titan and an ICBM Titan for point to point. If you are not going trans-continental or intercontentinal, there is no point to point to point, it becomes patently pointless.

SpaceshipTwo might bee the bees knees if people want a two stage ride from White Sands to Taos. I sure the business case will close easily. /sarc