rkbabang

A woman walks into a pharmacy and asks the pharmacist for some arsenic. He asks "What for?" She replies "I want to kill my husband." He says "Sorry, I can't give you that." She then reaches into her handbag and pulls out a photo of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife and hands it to him. He looks at it closely and says, "Well, you didn't tell me you had a prescription."

Take 1000 people with $10M in annual income and come back in 30 years and see how many of them are worth over $2B in 2019 dollars that is not due to the growth of their own business. My guess is 0-1 of them. This guy is extraordinary any way you look at it, even if the author of the article isn't. Take a few zero's off, it is like someone who makes $100K/year ending up with over $20M. How often does that happen?

I'm in favor of selling California to Mexico. I'm in favor of spinning off a bunch of states. The US should break into 4. The 2 coasts can each be the liberal leftist socialists paradises that they want to be. The middle can go to the conservatives. And give the libertarians New Hampshire. The notion that 320+ million people spread over most of one of the Earth's continents will all have the same culture and want the same type of government is absurd. It’s Time For The United States To Divorce Before Things Get Dangerous Heyyy, what about Florida? Too hot and humid. Whoever wants it.

Where are all the other self-made multi-billionaires who made most of their money from the stock market rather than their companies or from taking fees on OPM? The base rate says that it's very hard and very rare. It's not like there wasn't a cohort of millionaires in the 70s and 80s who invested in the stock market. Yet it seems very rare to hear about some who became billionaires (not from their companies doing really well or from gathering lots of AUM and taking fees) and held on to multi-hundred-baggers. Not saying there aren't others, but to downplay it as something "not hard" is delusional. The only thing I took issue with it is the click-bate headline. He was a multi-millionaire inventor and successful entrepreneur that became a billionaire through investing. That is admirable and not easy to do (based on the obvious fact that not many multi-millionaires are able to do it). The title makes it sound like a middle class guy became a billionaire through investing the stock market, but that just isn't what happened. It's a good story, it is unfortunate that the author chose to embellish it unnecessarily.

Thanks for the article. I found it interesting that he mentioned "his friend" Daniel Suarez and only mentioned his latest book (which was good, but not about AR), but not his best work "Daemon" published in 2006 which prominently features AR. "Daemon" and its sequel "FreedomTM" were far ahead of their time and really got me excited about the possibilities of this technology back then. Suarez also wrote about killer autonomous drones in "Kill Decision" in 2012, which is also excellent.

I'm in favor of selling California to Mexico. I'm in favor of spinning off a bunch of states. The US should break into 4. The 2 coasts can each be the liberal leftist socialists paradises that they want to be. The middle can go to the conservatives. And give the libertarians New Hampshire. The notion that 320+ million people spread over most of one of the Earth's continents will all have the same culture and want the same type of government is absurd. It’s Time For The United States To Divorce Before Things Get Dangerous

Yes the headline is misleading and clickbatish. Calling him "An optometrist" makes it sound like he makes a few hundred grand per year, not 8 figures. It should be "Successful Inventor Who Beat The Odds To Become A Billionaire" It doesn't sound as amazing, but it is still a good story, because his investing performance is still excellent. And anyone who invested in both the Apple IPO and Microsoft IPO and held until now would have done pretty damn well even with modest amounts.

He's had "steady" $10M per year income for a lot of years. If 30 years then that is "$300 M", let's say he invested $8M/year that is $240 M. The article says that he turned $5M into $800M in Heiko alone, add in that other $235M with no returns at all and he is a Billionaire. And he did get returns on that other money because he owns a lot of Apple and Microsoft, etc. It sounds like he did well even without the Heiko, but that was his big hit.

There can be no serious talk about cutting spending and doing something about the debt unless military spending cuts are #1 on the list. Military spending is out of control and needs to be slashed massively.

Exactly. It is a store of value. The mistake people are making, even here on a value investing board of all places, is equating price with value. As someone once said, price is what you pay, value is what you get. In the long term the value of Bitcoin will be obvious and its price will reflect that.

There is a bunch of minesweeper apps on the apple app store.

Why are you taking personal that someone cites the drawdown since peak? Why do you feel you have to defend it and attack others and invent hypothetical situations that didn't happen? Isn't drawdown-from-peak a valid way to look at a big crash? Why always have to shift the context to one that makes it sound like it's up a lot rather than down a lot? If you made lots of money good for you. That's your reward. You are in a very very very small minority of people. Almost all the attention and money went into crypto way above the current level, and many bought on credit because of FOMO and lost more than they put in. It was similar with the dot-com bubble, by the time everybody was jumping in and the big bucks came in, it was a lot nearer the top than the bottom. Because past results has nothing to do with the future of the asset class. Technology and the internet didn't die because there was a crash in 2000-2001. Lots of people lost a lot of money then too. What's the point of pointing out that at $6 per share Amazon.com was down over 90% from the top? What good is such an observation? Yes there was a bubble and it popped more than a year ago. Like all such bubbles a lot of people lost money. People lost a lot of money in the housing crash and people will lose a lot of money in the coming Canadian housing crash. That doesn't mean houses will never be valuable again. Such is the way markets go sometimes.

The company I work for was using google products (gmail, google docs) and we were then acquired by a larger company that uses all Microsucks office products (outlook, office, skype, etc). It was a huge step backwards. Everyone I've talked to is frustrated with how much Microsoft products suck compared to what we were using before. At home I haven't used MS since Windows 3.11 for Workgroups. I've been using Linux and for the last 4 years an iMac. Luckily I'm an engineer and most of what I do at work is still done on Linux, the MS office products are just for meetings, email, presentations, etc which isn't a huge part of my job.

You're right, I misread the 4-deep quote, I thought you were the person I replied to replying to my reply. So you're saying that crypto was also a huge mistake? Because these two were huge mistakes, and them being down this much isn't just short term volatility and the chances of them bouncing back to their peaks anytime soon is pretty slim. Oh, were you trying to shame me or something? How about you share some of your huge mistakes instead? It's the best way to avoid them, by removing resistance in acknowledging them, so that we can do it faster the next time. btw, I lost about 20% of my initial investment in Valeant, but that was after it went up around 150% and then back down to that level, so it was quite a ride. I lost a higher % in FTP, but I'd have to look in my notes to know exactly how much. I certainly learned a lot about jockey vs horse and about commodity businesses in that one. But what if at the price you bought FTP you were still up 1500%-2000% right now when someone was posting "FTP -98% below all-time high"? I mean, yeah, sure. It would have been better for me to sell everything in December of 2017 and buy it all back now, but my unrealized gains are still pretty spectacular and I do think it will get back to those highs and beyond someday.

Long term value investor cites short term price fluctuations as indication of long term thesis success/failure I just poted numbers. I didn't make any comments. You did that. I just assumed you were letting the board know that crypto was on sale.

I agree. When I started watching it I was thinking that there was a 80% chance it was going to be stupid and I wouldn't get through 2 episodes. I'm glad I gave it a chance, it was a pretty good show. Like groundhog day only darker with a better story.

A good goat video for a laugh. (Not my goats, but funny). https://www.facebook.com/diplyhumor/videos/1826981080685833/

He's not a proponent of the many worlds theory of quantum mechanics. Maybe everything that can happen does happen. If you want something to happen that is possible to happen you just have to hope that this version of you ends up steering into one of the reality tunnels where it does. EDIT: And if it doesn't, you can take comfort in the fact that countless other versions of you are living in reality tunnels where it did.

Weather apparently doesn’t count. Now, I'm in a weak position for my argument that it's nice living here (Calgary) because I had to get my furnace serviced today to keep up with the -30 C weather. But, the weather here isn't as bad as people think. We have a significant portion of relatively warm days in the winter because of a weather pattern known as chinooks. Plus, it is one of the sunniest major cities, which I think is relatively more important to people's well-being (and livability) than temperature. But on the other hand its pretty freakin' cold right now. I will still never move. How many warm days do you need to have to psychologically make up for every -30 C day? I wouldn't move somewhere that -30 C (-22 F) was something that one could expect to happen from time to time. And if I did there would be nothing I could say or do to get my wife to come with me, she thinks southern New Hampshire is too cold.

In the Washington Post a few days ago: Harvard’s top astronomer says an alien ship may be among us — and he doesn’t care what his colleagues think

Both the Rosling and Pinker books are on my to-read list. Another book in the same vein which I have read is "Abundance: The future is better than you think" by Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler, which is excellent.

That's nuts. Don't hold your bitcoin at an exchange. These things will continue to happen until investment grade custodial services are available. There seems to be some progress on that this year. Fidelity May Formally Launch Its Crypto Custody Service in March

I know it's been said above in more words but in brief: Canada Secret Sauce = Enormous Housing Bubble.

A good book I recently finished on the topic of parenting (among other things) is : "The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure" by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt

Not everyone thinks that they are above average parents, but everyone does think they have above average kids. :)