Jurgis

Mr. Tepper's book has been on the to-buy list but was under the impression that it may have been based on an idea (ideology?) looking for facts. Perhaps. Though I think he's not the only one remarking about elevated corporate margins, oligopolies and monopolies. It's possible though that even with apparent monopolization of various industries the present is not (much) worse than the past. Perhaps even better in some ways. E.g. taking the airline example, the competition in Europe (and somewhat US) from budget airlines is way higher and the prices are way lower than what was there during the time of flag carriers (AFAIK). Not sure what you expect "a Great Reset" to be, so I can't answer. IMO it's very hard to predict the future. Edit: Just in case some people missed it, here's the link to part 2 of the article: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-26/tech-monopolies-strangle-economic-growth The author does provide some numbers substantiating his thesis of monopolization trend. He does jump around a lot and some of his examples are anecdotal and self-contradictory, but perhaps that's because he tried to condense the book into two articles.

Capitalism is dead, long live monopolies (and investors?): https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-11-25/the-myth-of-capitalism-exposed

I prefer a banana over a banana explanation. 8)

But when police find an escaped prisoner camping in a forest, they have a clear case of a criminal in tent.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/opinion/monopolies-in-the-us.html Somewhat interesting graph about monopolization of business. (Yeah, some of the data is a bit misleading, but that's for observant to notice.) Even some "commodity" businesses are no longer very competitive, but rather oligopolies. Like Buffett observed too.

Great interview. Definitely worth watching.

Yes, it seems that companies have learned the lesson of (im?)perfect capitalism: screw free markets, screw supply and demand, price wars are for wussies only, keep prices high (and executive compensation higher). Dis iz good for shareholderz, ya? 8)

Unfortunately, this.

LOL. It's a standard dismissive response: It's not AI, it was easy, it's only AI when it's AGI, it's only AI if it exceeds human in every single area, etc. Every single time AI does something (better than humans), it's the same response. Jeopardy? Poker? League of Legends? Image recognition? Self driving? Medical diagnosis? Not to lessen the value of theory of relativity, but what matters is the theory and not the feel-good story about riding the beam of light from the back of a bus. I'm sure computers will be able to do the theories better than humans (minus the story) pretty soon.

This is a Hollywood trope that has very little basis in reality. I'm sure Chess and Go grandmasters thought they had inclings, hunches, instincts, and sparks of genius too. Yes, there is currently no AGI. This doesn't mean that A(G)I cannot eventually outperform humans in pretty much any area.

I know someone who dumpster dive for fruit juice. While I like a bargain, I like my dignity intact as well. If you are serious, we can never be friends. Dumpster diving is where I draw the line of people that I want to be friends with. Because if you are financially secure, it is simply not acceptable in my books. What if I was to tell you that I wear a snorkel when I dumpster dive? Does that make it more acceptable? Only if you got the snorkel from the dumpster. You all are not thinking like entrepreneurs. Some time ago there was an ad in UK looking to hire skinny Lithuanians shorter than 5'5". The job applicant was thrown into the charity clothes donations container. They had to get the clothes out of container to the entrepreneur waiting outside. When they were finished, the entrepreneur left with the clothes and the job applicant was left in the container. I'm sure you can make an outstanding business by employing someone to dumpster dive for you. Especially if you give them a snorkel.

It's OK if the kitchen knife had blood all over it.

If you don't remember anything exciting about the late 90s and early 2000s, maybe you weren't paying much attention? ;) Apart from being stupid and not investing into BRK? ;) And not going to Wesco shareholders' meeting that was in my backyard (more or less)? :'( Nah, I remember bits and pieces. Possibly enough to give a fun half hour talk - especially if I dug through my records, numbers and notes. But honestly I remember pretty much zero from the tech crash of 2001. Like I'm trying to remember anything right now and nothing comes to my mind... ::) You might be right about not paying attention. I remember other things (not investing) from that timeframe more. 8)

Not true for me. I think changes are memorable. I.e. location changes, school/university/job changes, marital status changes. Plus traumatic and/or very happy memories. Things like travel/vacations are somewhere in the middle: some are memorable like bigger changes, some are mush. Plus some not that special moments that for some reason get stuck into memory (maybe they are somehow special for my brain/mind/persona). Investing wise, I'm sorry to say I don't think I have the same experience as you. 8) 2008-2009 was memorable because of the huge drawdown. But I started investing around 1996ish, so it wasn't formative for me. But then 1996 and even 2000-2001 tech crash was not formative for me either. I don't remember anything super exciting from these times. I'd have to read my posts/notes to remember what I did (wrong 8)) then.

You are probably right. You could suggest to the authors to rerun the experiment with the same subjects couple years later and see if the subjects internalized Kelly that they were told about. And the authors would get another paper to publish. And everyone would be happy. 8)

It just cancels out. It's all digital. Right, I understand that it's digital. 8)

So in QT, when bills mature and Fed gets cash for matured bills, do they destroy that cash?

Amazon is selling this today at price close to the one "in the upper right corner". 8) https://smile.amazon.com/Money-Game-Adam-Smith-ebook/dp/B00VSLI6NI/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1543264960&sr=8-4&keywords=money+game I read the intro and I doubt I'd be interested in it, so I'm saving my hard earned $1.99 and not buying.

I just bought Instant Pot on Amazon. I'm mad since I overpaid. It dropped $XX more on Black Friday. Interestingly, Amazon allows to return and rebuy at cheaper price, but does not allow just getting price difference. Which makes sense, since I just let it slide. OTOH, I used that via mental bias ("Revenge!!!") and did not buy some other stuff. So there. 8) Also, when I received it, it did not have any weed. I thought I'm gonna get insta high, but it was just an empty casserole. So I guess I'll return it and mark it down to deceptive marketing. ::)

Right. But like your poster shows, it's not that simple. You can't just accept that you are wrong anytime someone says you are wrong. There has to be clarity of "yes, I am wrong" vs. "you say that I'm wrong and give these arguments, but there are other arguments that I'm right and I'm gonna follow these". Life is not a math problem and arguments are not ironclad. I am pretty sure there were (are?) a lot of people claiming Lincoln made numerous mistakes. And he probably accepted that he was wrong on some things, but probably did not accept that he was wrong on others. Heck, looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln pretty everyone seems to have thought him wrong in one way or the other. ;)

I haven't heard It makes sense though and I think I've used that approach in the past. And assuming your next best alternative is BRK, then 9-10% might be a good return expectation and good discount rate. OTOH, this is a bit circular definition. Assume you say the discount rate is X% because you expect stock XX to return X% long term. But why do you expect XX to return X%? Is that because you did DCF on XX? What discount rate was used on XX then? If it was X%, then where did it come from? If it was not X% then why use X% as discount rate now and why it was not used to evaluate XX?

Thanks for the checklist. How did "for the brave" go? 8)

Damodaran uses Monte Carlo in valuation. I haven't looked into details. Cursory Bing search found this: http://people.stern.nyu.edu/adamodar/pdfiles/ovhds/inv2E/probabilistic.pdf

Somewhat interesting questionnaire: http://www.shanesnow.com/take-the-intellectual-humility-assessment It can suffer from "garbage in, garbage out". Sometimes self-evaluation is hard even if you're honest. Some questions are abstract, which makes it hard to answer since I'd behave differently depending on context. It asks you for email, just use a one-time burner email if concerned.

CoBF is a Vampire Forum because it sucks the life out of you. Everyone one of us a finite time on this earth and it passes quickly. Do you choose to interact in person with real people or this forum? Do you want to do deep work or stay in the shallows? This article is about young people but adults are massively addicted too. I have come to realize for myself that time spent away from phones, screens, etc and with real people is so much more meaningful. Here are my recommendations: 1. Turn off all notifications about CoBF - text, email, facebook, etc. 2. Check CoBF 1x per day month. 3. Turn off CoBF for intervals during the day month. 4. Go into nature without CoBF or any distractions. 5. Put CoBF out of sight when at work or even at home. Seeing it has a mental attention pull. 6. Read more documents in paper for better understanding. In essence, don't be a slave to CoBF. There. Fixed that for you. ------------------------------------------------ And, yes, "guns don't kill people, phones (and CoBF) kill people"