Jump to content

Jurgis

Member
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    6,042

  • Joined

  • Last visited

 Content Type 

Posts posted by Jurgis

    What are you buying today?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    One thing I've been reading a lot of is people suggesting that revenues are down 20%, so it makes sense the stock is down that % too.  It's not clear to me that as many investors understand how -20% often means earnings are -50%, -100% or worse.

     

    You don't understand. The fact that revenues are down 20% means that the stock should be flat or up. Since the revenue growth will be 25%+ just to get back to the old revenues! Market is forward looking, duh!

     

    Not happy to admit it, but I very clearly do not understand!

     

    It was a joke, just in case you took it seriously.

     

    Good luck.

    What are you buying today?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    One thing I've been reading a lot of is people suggesting that revenues are down 20%, so it makes sense the stock is down that % too.  It's not clear to me that as many investors understand how -20% often means earnings are -50%, -100% or worse.

     

    You don't understand. The fact that revenues are down 20% means that the stock should be flat or up. Since the revenue growth will be 25%+ just to get back to the old revenues! Market is forward looking, duh!

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

     

    So I just had this crazy thought in the shower after reading this: What if the real reason stocks were going up despite all the seemingly bad news is that they all improve the chances of Trump being replaced by someone better suited for the job? That is a bull case I can actually buy.

     

    Throughout 2019 and beginning of 2020 majority of money managers polled by Barron's expected Trump to win and considered his expected win to be bullish. I doubt (m)any of them changed their minds on Trump.

    Munger and Psychology of Misjudgment COBF Class idea

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Becoming an expert in a field X to overcome incentives of the salesperson in field X is a possible solution, but it's also a costly solution. To take the OP example, you'll never be a real dentist (unless you go to dentist school ;)). You might be able to bullshit a level-1 dental procedure salesperson, but you won't be able to bullshit level-2 one. Also there is a risk: what if they agree with you that procedure is unnecessary (because they are level-1 in sales or because they don't want to argue), but then you discover in couple months that instead of a cheaper filling you now have to do a root canal or crown? Are you gonna seek second opinion? Are you gonna read dental x-rays yourself?

     

    Ultimately, this is IMO not an easily resolvable problem apart from simple or (obviously) scammy situations. It is tough to know if:

    1. The salesperson is just pushing unneeded product/service because of incentives.

    2. They really think you need this product/service

    3. They are misinformed and think that you need this product/service

    and on your side

    4. You really don't need this product/service

    5. You are misinformed and need this product/service

     

    -------------------------------------

     

    Another subtopic is self-incentives or pros/cons for decisions (this goes a bit above just incentives).

    There's a popular advice to write pros/cons for some decision (financial or not) to ease making the decision. The issue there is that sometimes the pros/cons are difficult to measure, evaluate, and compare. To take LC's example, moving to Denver from NYC would probably fill pages of pros and cons on a paper. How would one evaluate and weigh each of these? Even in a simpler case, how much one would value extra half hour commute vs. $XX cheaper or YY-sqft bigger house? People make these decisions, but I'd say they are mostly hand-waved even if they try to make a rational weighted decision. And BTW hand-waved or emotional decisions might be better than 10-spreadsheet ones...  ::)

    the death of the urban office building

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hard to build and maintain a healthy company culture and camaraderie when employees rarely (or never) meet in person.

     

    Works just fine.

     

    Tough to track what people are actually doing (or not doing) all day. The unfortunate reality is that some people will try to "skate" along doing minimal work because they feel like they are completely unsupervised. It is time consuming and costly to fire these people as they will use a myriad of excuses (like internet outages) to extend the gravy train as long as possible.

     

    Not sure why you are so negative about other people. I haven't seen this happen through X number of distributed teams.

     

    People working from home tend to have big problems compartmentalizing the different parts of their life since they are spending so much time at the house. This leads to a lack of structure, which leads to weird shit like younger employees sending emails late at night, middle age employees working regular office hours, older employees sending emails at 5AM. This becomes even worse when everyone is in different timezones. The end result is that people feel like they need to check email 24/7, which makes them miserable

     

    None of this is an issue. Yeah, sure people send emails and messages at weird times. And other people answer them when they can. It's not an issue unless you make it one. In good distributed team nobody makes it into an issue.

     

    Difficult to hire effectively without meeting people in person

     

    Not an issue. Actually possibly positive since hiring then is done on merits and not based on (unconscious) biases.

    the death of the urban office building

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    In my opinion this work from home thing is actually proving to me why we NEED offices.

     

    You can't form relationships over Zoom. You might be able to maintain them, but you can't form them. You can't truly build trust. You can't learn by watching how someone manages their day. You can't have spontaneous discussions by the coffee machine.

     

    Let me take something like Shopify as an example, and many tech firms are in this position. They are saying that in the future they will have more employees working from home. Now I've been to their office. Free food and drink, including alcohol, for everyone, all day long. Once you've given this benefit to people, it's hard to take it away. This is a "get out of jail free" card for them. A way to take away this costly benefit without the blowback from employees.

     

    If you have a job you can do remotely, and choose to spend most of your time at home, you are just a step or two away from having your job outsourced to India. Get in the office. Form and strengthen relationships. Learn. Mentor. Lead.  You can't do this shit from your kitchen table on Zoom. Sorry, you just can't. Unless you have no aspiration other than to be a cog in the machine.

     

    This thread and people in it are just rehashing the same arguments again and again that were already rehashed in other threads.

     

    Not to (particularly) pick on you: I know two people in tech company who did the fastest career advances while working completely remotely. Closest office within maybe 100 miles or so. And yeah they learn, mentor, lead, etc. And they went up the career ladder way faster than people in the office who can schmooze, etc. So perhaps you should be more open minded.

     

    Although I mostly agree that offices will survive.

    I Need a Laugh. Tell me a Joke. Keep em PC.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Saw this riff on an old one on reddit, thought I'd share:

     

    He's hot and miserable, so he decides to take action. The A/C has been busted for a long time, so he fixes it. Things cool down quickly. The moving walkway motor is jammed, so he unjams it. People can get from place to place more easily. The TV was grainy and unclear, so he fixes the connection to the satellite dish, and now they get hundreds of high def channels.

     

    One day, God decides to look down on Hell to see how his grand design is working out and notices that everyone is happy and enjoying umbrella drinks. He asks the Devil what's up? The Devil says, "Things are great down here since you sent us an engineer." "What?" says God. "An engineer? I didn't send you one of those. That must have been a mistake. Send him upstairs immediately." The Devil responds, "No way. We want to keep our engineer. We like him." God demands, "If you don't send him to me immediately, I'll sue!" The Devil laughs. "Where are you going to get a lawyer?"

     

    (and the first comment: "But he's a cunning old sod, and he sends a project manager down... and it all turns to shit and the engineer begs for release .")

     

    All the project managers were down there already, so really none of the improvements happened, engineer immediately sent SOS to God, got uplifted, and lived happily every after.

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27223/v1

     

    "Hydroxychloroquine in the treatment and prophylaxis of SARS-CoV-2 infection in non-human primates"

     

    Look who wrote this:

     

    Pauline Maisonnasse, Jérémie Guedj, Vanessa Contreras, Sylvie Behillil, Caroline Solas, Romain Marlin, Thibaut Naninck, Andres Pizzorno, Julien Lemaitre, Antonio Gonçalves, Nidhal Kahlaoui, Olivier Terrier, Raphael Ho Tsong Fan, Vincent Enouf, Nathalie Dereuddre- Bosquet, Angela Brisebarre, Franck Toure, Catherine Chapon, Bruno Hoen, Bruno Lina, Manuel Rosa Calatrava, Sylvie van der Werf, Xavier de Lamballerie, Roger Le Grand

     

    Any true red blooded Americans in this list?

     

    Clearly fake news from illegal immigrant liberals.

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    On another note, it's interesting how Japan has had 6 COVID-related deaths per 1 mm capita (near the lowest in the world) despite not having a lockdown and having one of the oldest populations in the world and some of the densest cities in the world. I'm guessing that simply hand washing and wearing a mask in public places does 90% of the work in reducing transmissions?

    Yes. Now can all you have to is turn Americans into Japanese. Hygiene obsessed, mask wearing little drones, social distance, no kissy huggy stuff. Good luck.

     

    https://youtu.be/XedDyR0opow?t=63

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    You must admit that you love the bullshit. The last go around the libtards were the bunch who were expecting handouts from the dems, like food stamps and free healthcare off the backs of the hard working republicans. Fast forward and this time the libtards are sitting pretty with cashed up portfolios wanting to crash the economy and hurt the hard working republicans to get rid of Trump.

     

    THEY ARE BOTH!

     

    Damn those libtards are a really crafty bunch.

     

    Nasty little hobbitses! We hates them! We hates them all!

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    From a doc I follow (his background: "ICU doc with expertise in biothreats preparedness, translational research, and drug/vaccine development."):

     

    Big drop in MA cases today - 16 days after universal mask-wearing became law.

     

     

    Daily stats from states are unreliable and I hope people don't make conclusions based on them.

    There were zero cases in MA one of the days: https://covidtracking.com/data/state/massachusetts#historical

     

    Of course. It's still a better sign to see it down than up, it's just a small update to priors that should be tracked over time to get a significant sample.

     

    I mostly didn't know that MA had done this about masks, that was the most interesting part of it, so it'll be interesting to track

     

    It's not as restrictive as you probably think. It just pretty much means that you have to wear mask inside a business. You can go maskless outside.

     

    Edit: Here is the official ref: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/frequently-asked-questions-about-covid-19#should-i-wear-a-mask-when-i-go-out-in-public?

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yes, emergency care was never stopped but how many people would really know that? Can you expect the vast majority to distinguish between what's considered an emergency and what's not? Can you expect the majority to properly weigh health risks and think rationally when everywhere they look they're reminded of COVID? I think the answer is a clear no given the data in the articles and I think it's a leap too far to assume that the majority of the populace will make rational decisions when the public health messaging on this topic has been ambiguous at best yet extremely black and white on lockdowns.

     

    Would it not have been more informative to tweet "Emergency Rooms still open!" than "Liberate Michigan!"?

     

    I sympathize with the difficulty in public messaging during a time of panic and confusion. But I don't think public figures have devoted enough attention to nor sounded the alarm enough about the huge public health collateral damage. The media hasn't helped either. That treatments for all these afflictions that are many times as deadly as COVID have been forgone can only be charitably viewed as a failure by public health officials. Moreover, we won't see the effects immediately - they'll only surface over time at which point they'll surely be another data point and forgotten.

     

    My wife is in HR at a large healthcare company that owns and operates hospitals and clinics.  She was telling me that some organ transplants didn't happen because they were classified as "elective surgery".

     

    She works from home so I hear a lot on the conference calls about the red ink spilling.

     

    Yeah, just sad. What demarcates the line between elective and non-elective? It also seems like an arbitrary line that hospitals are unsure of as well.

     

    Any scheduled surgery is elective.  Cancer surgery is elective because it is scheduled.

     

    They were all banned in order to make room for the surge that never came close to occurring.  Meanwhile, the elective surgeries are the bread-and-butter cash cow for the company.  Cancelling surgeries was supposed to free up staff, but instead they had to lay off staff.

     

    Mistakes were made in what was locked down, but it would look different if the surge really did come.

     

    This pretty much.

     

    I think this discussion is a bit colored by locality too. Some clinics closed everything preparing for the surge. Some already reopened. Some never closed. Even in California friend's wife works in Stanford cancer center (not sure exact name), and AFAIK they never closed.

    Coronavirus

    in General Discussion

    Posted

     

    The prior article on the suicides suggested that lifting the lockdown will reduce the suicide rate.

     

    Those new articles you offer are suggesting that COVID-19 is scaring them from coming in to the hospital or clinic, which were never locked down for heart attack and stroke patients.  They will vaccinate your children.  Lifting a lockdown may scare these people even more if it led to an increase in the numbers of people infected with COVID-19.

     

    If a major part of the rationale for a lockdown was its practicality, then I think that public health officials were very impractical in not sufficiently considering the second order effects from the lockdown.

     

    Yes, emergency care was never stopped but how many people would really know that? Can you expect the vast majority to distinguish between what's considered an emergency and what's not? Can you expect the majority to properly weigh health risks and think rationally when everywhere they look they're reminded of COVID? I think the answer is a clear no given the data in the articles and I think it's a leap too far to assume that the majority of the populace will make rational decisions when the public health messaging on this topic has been ambiguous at best yet extremely black and white on lockdowns.

     

    So basically you are saying that everything should open and people should be told that going out is perfectly safe so that the people who don't understand that medical clinics are open would go there?

     

    Medical clinics actually have been emailing their patients and telling them what is open and what they should do if they have medical condition - whether emergency or chronic one.

    Picking Dollar Bills from the Street

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Reminds me of something that happened to me a few years back. Where I live the practice of Santeria is somewhat common. It mostly takes the form of fruit and baked goods placed around palm trees as a fertility offering - I've seen perfectly edible looking cakes from local bakeries that would probably cost $50 placed on the ground.

     

    The other, less pleasant, variety comes in the form of sacrificed animals, usually chickens and rarely goats. Accompanying the offering is almost always a bag of coins in cloth or paper bags. When I'm cleaning up an offering someone placed in the street near my house (I worry about my dogs eating them and they start to smell awful) I usually just toss the bag of coins after checking it for bills, especially if it's too gross to separate from the rest of the offering. However one time I was cleaning one up and the paper bag that the coins were in fell apart and out fell not only coins but several hundred dollars, it ended up being over $700 - so yes (hundred) dollar bills do occasionally lie in the streets around here. Aren't religions fascinating?

     

    You know that you are voodoo cursed now, right?

×
×
  • Create New...