Dalal.Holdings

Lol. Taleb is for nerds. Gambling is just entertainment. There is nothing worthwhile an investor could learn from Thorp. Only math geeks care about exponential growth, tail events, and probabilities! You keep doing you!

So much for that "herd immunity in NY" thesis: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-30/berlin-protest-turns-violent-u-s-cases-pick-up-virus-update Let me guess, when they said "herd immunity in NY", they just meant NYC... This is what happens when you get overconfident in a widely uncertain situation with large downside...now there's a risk this just continues on and on in the USA.

LOL. Love hearing from our modern Nostradamus--can't really predict the future, and rewrites the past to make it seem he was right all along. Can't trust our Nostradamus for a reliable report of the past nor the future, now that's special! Good thing we have folks like this in charge of our pandemic response in the USA--and with the results to show for it too!

Doubling down on broken analyses and mischaracterizing the opposing people's positions to make yourself feel better about repeatedly being wrong. A surefire recipe for a lifetime of investment success! Nothing in this forum surprises me anymore! "Often wrong, never in doubt!"

It's situations like these where Munger's inversion rule works like a charm. If these advantages existed for gamblers, the gains would have long ago been had, casinos bankrupted, and the advantage "arbitraged away"... Ed Thorp/Claude Shannon worked hard on developing methods for projecting the physics of the roulette ball for a reason (building the world's first wearable computer in the process)...if there were lower hanging fruit they would have grasped for those. The fact that they didn't tells you about the viability of Martingale, etc. So yeah, always invert. Here Thorp discusses his Roulette strategies and Martingale as well: http://www.edwardothorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/SystemsForRoulette_l.pdf

This from the guy who said this less than a mo ago: We've gone from the US having herd immunity to a select few states (supposedly)...it's ok, the only downside when you throw out precaution and make bold claims with an asymmetric situation like this is that more people will die... Honestly between this thread, endless Trump defense/false equivalence in the politics section, the Martingale gambling claims (and Pabrai's questionable claims to add to that), moving the goalposts by TSLAQ'ers, folks convinced that SpaceX is nothing impressive, SHLD/FNMA/VRX, etc etc, nothing on this forum surprises me anymore. On a general scale, I am happy such thinking exists among my fellow investors. It sucks in a democracy when such thinking exists among fellow citizens/leaders (especially when you have a virus that kills). On a personal scale, I hope you don't often become so confident in your abilities to predict the future, Muscleman and learn from your mistakes...but the first part of that is acknowledging you made a mistake in the first place.

The thing about Martingale is that many people confuse p(6 reds in a row) with p(next spin is red). The memoryless aspect/fact that each spin is independent is crucial to understand...and you are not betting on p(7 reds in a row), you are only betting on each spin which is independent from the last... For example, if you pick up a coin that has been flipped by someone else before you without you knowing it, does what that person flipped before you affect what result you will achieve? The answer is an obvious no, even if they happened to flip 8 heads in a row (the chances that the next flip is heads by you is still an unchanged 50%). Now if there is some situation where what happens in the past affects future outcomes (like playing with limited number of decks and counting cards), then you may be able to extract some sort of advantage.

Congrats on living in such a shithole country. I'd leave and seek refuge immediately. ::) My country is great. We are just being run by someone who is the opposite and we have results that match that fact. More people voted for his opponent than him too. Don’t worry, this situation will be rectified shortly.

This one is called “so much winning” !

Now compare USA to other countries and look at normalized deaths...

... covid one-third death rate of flu in Texas. so hard to understand? Saw that Texas has tragically passed 11,000 covid deaths. Reminded me of this b.s. that you and Abby were spreading a month ago. TX deaths now about 2% of confirmed cases with widespread testing. Abby’s “analysis” had glaring flaws that are apparent after taking a 2 second look (derp dividing by #tests tells you nothing), but that won’t filter it out from being posted on CoBF!

Lol...

For some reason USA continues to be exception to everywhere else and folks want to believe it’s “not fair” to compare to just about every other country...it never spread much from northern Italy (Lombardy) to southern Italy nor did it spread much outside of Wuhan to rest of China. Almost like when certain countries had certain regions hit, they strapped down and got through it without significant spread to other regions and now life is returning to some semblance of normal. Compare to USA... Almost like calling it a hoax, dragging your feet, not caring because “mostly blue states are hit anyway”, and politicizing mask wearing was a terrible, irrational way to approach the pandemic and needlessly dragged it on, allowed it to take hold in other areas, and led to many more deaths in the USA...

“Shocking” news from Lombardy too! https://www.velonews.com/news/road/il-lombardia-2020-remco-versus-the-rest/ It’s almost like if you manage the pandemic competently, you could return back to close to normal life even if you were among the hardest hit areas instead of holding out for mythical “herd immunity” or a rushed vaccine all the way in August 2020. Sorry, America!

You think that’s bad? I heard Chicago has more crime than a desert in Iraq.

The twitter posts reference compare a capital and most populous city in all of Scandinavia (Stockholm) to the average for all of NY State, much of which is very rural and sparsely populated. New Jersey, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and Delaware all rank as more densely populated that NY State. This particular brand of false equivalency has been brought up before in this thread and seems to be a typical tactic for those who aren't really searching for the truth, but are pushing a political agenda. So you might want to be on the look out for it before. Stockholm and in fact all of Scandanavia are likely on average more homogeneous, and better educated than the USA. Plus they as a region have done very well at remaining cohesive by fighting disinformation and fake news, in fact I suspect these tweets would find a less receptive audience there than in the USA. Here is at least one relevant article regarding Finland, but there are many I could have chosen instead including more academic articles relevant to Sweden: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/28/fact-from-fiction-finlands-new-lessons-in-combating-fake-news The real secret to Stockholm is likely education level, cohesiveness, and a pro-social culture. With a conscientious population, there is less need to threaten or cajole, especially if they see it as personal interests aligning with self-interest, which should be the case all around the world. Evidence that they acted individually without national mandate can be seen in the data indicating a decline in mobility in Sweden which indicates they achieved similar or better social distancing without dictates. As I have been saying since February, it's a "complex, adaptive system". Human beings have agency and that complicates policy decisions and analysis. Stockholm syndrome could be useful to study for anyone who feels they are repeatedly fall prey to bad information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_syndrome LOL, call em out!

I shit on US? Oh no, brother, you have completely misunderstood. I am here in the hope that the glorious rays of wisdom of The Greatest President Trumph and his disciples could delighten us all. A single word of this genius and the country will stand still in amazement and awe as you surely do. How could I miss the opportunity to be present in such momentous times and places and hear from such devoted followers of the Most Beautiful Leader? All Hail El Presidente! Atta boy! You’ve finally seen the light like the evangelicals! All hail Saint Donald!

To summarize: March/April Orthopa: "Contact tracing is a waste of time! Everyone's already infected." (There are single digit deaths in America.) New Zealand/Taiwan/S.Korea/British Columbia: Do lots of testing and contact tracing America: Minimal tests Trump: "There's no problem (and if there were, it would be a Blue State problem, so that's actually a good thing!)" August New Zealand/Taiwan/S.Korea/British Columbia: The virus has been mostly contained. A tiny number of people have died. America: Millions infected. 200,000 people die. Trump: "We should do less testing. That's what I diagnose to be the main problem here." Orthopa: "There's too many people infected! Contact tracing is impossible, because while almost every other country has used it successfully, America hasn't! And Canadians are paranoid scared bitches! And asymptomatic people can pass on the virus! So there's no reason to test." RichardGibbons: "Should I say that infectious asymptomatic people might suggest one should do more testing, not less? … … Nah." Orthopa: "Dick." Please stop holding orthopa accountable for all the claims he’s made on here that were patently false! Where’s his savior Gregmal to come to the rescue and claim instead the opposite—that he was right all along??? Up is down. 2 + 2 = 7.

Hold on there just a minute. You make accusations of cherry picking the data then you do exactly that. Instead of comparing population density of the U.S., you use NYC. And you do that because the comparison between the two countries doesn’t support your argument. NZ population density: 15 people /sqK US population density: 36 people /sqK NOT 38,424 / sqK Pretty dishonest trying to compare the country to NYC. How about sticking to the facts for a change. Your right, my fault. The US is extremely homogeneous and no way the population density of NYC contributed in a negative fashion to death counts, GDP loss, and the spread of the virus through out the country. Thanks!!! This is a hilarious interaction. Orthopa: "I'll spin some numbers while simultaneously accusing someone else of spinning!" <Gregmal predictably validates the approach by accusing some nebulous left of spin> Orthopa: "Haha! I'm brilliant! Nobody realizes what I did!" cwericb: "Umm, dude, you know you're basically comparing a country to a city? Can you at least pretend to honestly analyse the situation?" Orthopa: "Darn.... Umm, can't admit fault, gotta go on the offence! Well, um, New York City has lots of people which is bad in a pandemic, and that's completely the point that I was trying to make in my other post! And you're just stupid for not seeing it, and deserve lots of abuse!" Bravo. The thread is now more entertaining than informative. "NYC was so botched due to failed leadership as evidenced by huge number of cases"...but at the same time: "the only reason NZ has low cases because it has such low pop density!" (don't tell these folks about the densities in TX/FL vs NY/NJ...) "NY covid deaths are so high and show how badly libs failed" ...but at the same time: "the NY covid deaths were not real, but faked on the death certificates" Dude. Making two contradictory wrong claims at the same time is a sign of truly stable genius. Trump is proud of his children. Jurgis, question for you and other Europeans who constantly shit on the US. You live in the US right? Why? If this place is such a shithole why dont you head on back to Eastern Europe? Why are you here exactly, work, love, forced? Criticizing the President is "shitting on America"? Wonder why so many R's stuck around in the U.S. from 2008 to 2016 then... Oh, I forgot the Golden Rule: D in the WH: Criticizing POTUS = "patriotic" R in the WH: Criticizing POTUS = "un-American"

Truth. Let’s see if we get four more years of this, we will surely reach new, great heights!

Hold on there just a minute. You make accusations of cherry picking the data then you do exactly that. Instead of comparing population density of the U.S., you use NYC. And you do that because the comparison between the two countries doesn’t support your argument. NZ population density: 15 people /sqK US population density: 36 people /sqK NOT 38,424 / sqK Pretty dishonest trying to compare the country to NYC. How about sticking to the facts for a change. Your right, my fault. The US is extremely homogeneous and no way the population density of NYC contributed in a negative fashion to death counts, GDP loss, and the spread of the virus through out the country. Thanks!!! This is a hilarious interaction. Orthopa: "I'll spin some numbers while simultaneously accusing someone else of spinning!" <Gregmal predictably validates the approach by accusing some nebulous left of spin> Orthopa: "Haha! I'm brilliant! Nobody realizes what I did!" cwericb: "Umm, dude, you know you're basically comparing a country to a city? Can you at least pretend to honestly analyse the situation?" Orthopa: "Darn.... Umm, can't admit fault, gotta go on the offence! Well, um, New York City has lots of people which is bad in a pandemic, and that's completely the point that I was trying to make in my other post! And you're just stupid for not seeing it, and deserve lots of abuse!" Bravo. The thread is now more entertaining than informative. "NYC was so botched due to failed leadership as evidenced by huge number of cases"...but at the same time: "the only reason NZ has low cases because it has such low pop density!" (don't tell these folks about the densities in TX/FL vs NY/NJ...) "NY covid deaths are so high and show how badly libs failed" ...but at the same time: "the NY covid deaths were not real, but faked on the death certificates"

Truly a gem this clown is! Makes me LOL every time! Always posts about me wherever I go and can’t help but follow me even when I am not having a conversation with the clown or posting about a stock he is invested in. I get to live rent free in his head (not like the real estate is in high demand anyway!). As they say: “Have enemies; but make sure that they think about you much, much more than you think about them.” BAHAHAHAH

I never said you can’t know 2nd or 3rd order effects, it’s when there’s wide uncertainty that you ought to be conservative, that is all. And yes, it’s much easier to say the economic damage had been done when GDP change and unemployment are where they are and congress/fed are intervening to the extent they are...the damage is done. And you’re the one confident about a market crash, I have no idea where the market goes. In fact, it may go much higher esp if Trump is reelected (just don’t ask about USD or real returns). Geeze...... I don't know what else to say man..... Do you actually understand what I said above? "In the early stage of an asset bubble, you want to get in aggressively." ::) Like I said—if you can time short term market movements and know how long a bubble has to go before it pops with “high confidence”, you don’t need help from anyone on this forum. I admit that I myself do not know how to time bubbles or short term market movements. We’ll see you on the Forbes Billionaire list soon enough if you turn out to be in possession of this unique talent. Good luck!

I never said you can’t know 2nd or 3rd order effects, it’s when there’s wide uncertainty that you ought to be conservative, that is all. And yes, it’s much easier to say the economic damage had been done when GDP change and unemployment are where they are and congress/fed are intervening to the extent they are...the damage is done. And you’re the one confident about a market crash, I have no idea where the market goes. In fact, it may go much higher esp if Trump is reelected (just don’t ask about USD or real returns). You may be right about your “educated guesses”, but my estimate of the probability you are right is much lower than yours. After all, you need to test your hypothesis with real world data—it’s easy to come up with a guess, but you have to test it repeatedly. You seem to have very high confidence in certain things which don’t make much sense to me...like the anecdotal reports of a friend in the ER in SD with regards to how covid deaths in NY were tabulated...this is not a robust way to learn from the world and test your hypotheses. You seem to put large weight on an anecdote but almost no weight on real data—for example on excess deaths in NY which samwise is alluding to—excess deaths were much higher vs past years in NY/NJ/etc despite lockdowns, drop in auto accidents (just ask insurers), drop in people getting hit by cars due to lock downs, drop in crime during April-May, etc. So where did those excess deaths come from? Are they fabricated death certificates as samwise jokes (zombies)? Those who jump to quickly believe theories on gunshots being labeled as covid deaths tells me all I need to know about the robustness of their ability to interpret real world data. I’ve noted a stark change in the quality of discussion/data analysis on this thread and many objective folks have stopped posting altogether, so I will follow suit as it’s a waste of my time. Carry on with your theories about gunshots being labeled as covid deaths as apparently docs who were on front lines are less trustworthy than our POTUS to many folks which only validates how such people have obtained power throughout history...meanwhile, Fauci will continue to receive threats... Carry on! Edit—like I said, I use real world data to test hypotheses—I’ll leave it to you to figure out what this data says about your hypothesis of NY docs labeling gunshots and unrelated deaths as covid deaths: So do you trust your friend in the ER in SD or do you trust this chart? Good luck!