winjitsu

I'd take the same trade too. Only points out the massive return asymmetry in the companies he's peddling.

Here's a market topping interview if I've ever seen one: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-02-12/the-king-of-spacs-wants-you-to-know-he-s-the-next-warren-buffett?srnd=premium

Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke. A poker book but makes you think hard about position sizing with randomness and uncertainty. Man For All Markets: Thorp's book and how he uses Kelly Criterion. Buffett's investments in AMEX or Li Lu in BYD: -> Knowing when to plunge. As an inverse case, see Mark Sellers in Contango Oil and Gas -> when plunging goes wrong.

Nah. This is a generational thing. Boomers made ZIRP asset bubbles while generating a massive debt-fuel deficit to shore up their cushy pensions and 401ks. Considering the average Robinhood user is a millennial with an account size of $6,000, this really is sticking it to the man.

Looked at the stock chart. Remember laughing at Chamath's "2025 Ebitda prediction". This is insane.

My dumb guesses: 1. Would a Biden AG keep on the anti-trust pressure started by Barr? (not sure -- though legislation seems a better avenue but with split congress will be hard and case seems shaky) 2. Will FCC reverse course, back to net-neutrality? (probably)

Gregmal where did you bet on? Could not find a platform, though this could be based on state. In the late part of the night, I was seeing odds of 3-1 Trump on Betfair which was insane considering the commentary on the news on the mail in ballots. They've since reversed course, but clearly a missed trade opportunity

They have a nice asset in Wyoming, which is cost-advantaged relative to synthetic production, and cost-advantaged relative to other trona miners. However, I don't trust management. Didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out they inflating annual production through deca rehydration, and eventually production would drop off significantly. The manner in which they disclosed this made them appear either dishonest or incompetent. Happy to chat more about this one on a dedicated thread for CINR. Read the same VIC pitch and I'm in too. Lets start one :)

What are you looking for. A prime broker (holding funds + trading)? Or capital introductions (raising money)? All the big banks do both, but you need a certain amount of assets.

SOGO merger arb by Tencent Buyout price @ 9 cash, currently trading at 8.86, expected closing Q4. Looking at 1.6% return in ~ 3 months for a well financed buyer.

Could be painful this quarter w/ PS5 + XSX releases, but I like the trade :)

Same question came to my mind :)

If you're curious about how VCs think about their investments, one of the most famous funds has just shared some of their original investment memos, including Shopify, Pinterest, Yelp, Twitch etc etc https://www.bvp.com/memos

Netflix knows when you stop watching a video too. But Netflix isn't a good example to use. In addition to the different content length, Netflix has an issue where their catalog is shrinking as third party content makers pull their libraries to start competing services (https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-movie-catalog-size-has-gone-down-since-2010-2018-2). Your dissatisfaction with their Recommendations / Personalization may have to do more with how little they have to recommend, versus say Youtube, Instagram, Spotify, which all have millions of content creators.

I'll disagree and say that the algorithms aren't that important. Personalization (which is the correct word for this field btw) is mostly Baynesian + Machine Learning/Deep Learning, usually some ensemble model with XGBoost etc etc. These are well known in the field -- there's really is no "secret algorithm." What's proprietary is user data and the size of the user base. That should come with the sale.

Hard to say how good Himalaya is. BYD was a huge position for Li Liu back during last financial crisis (like 70% iirc), and he made a killing. But the stock price hasn't moved beyond the high water mark set back in 2011.

Parsad, I have a ton of respect for you. Both Casinos and Gamblers are subject to variance and gambler's ruin, no doubt there. From a purely mathematical point of view, the strategy in the you outlined still has a negative EV since Roulette is designed with a house advantage. Each spin is memoryless, so even if the preceding 100 spins were red, the probability of the next spin being red/black is still 48.60% and green 2.70%, which is the error in your statement. Any winnings you have are due to variance (and I suspect, as we are human, due to a biased memory). I'm not doubting you made money, but as your number of bets increases, your winning % approaches the true probability, and you will lose money. In real life however, there may be some tricks? In Thorpe's autobiography, he tried to create a machine to calculate final ball position based on starting position and velocity. There may be table defects as well. If you find such a table, I suggest you abandon the double down strategy, choose a consistent bet size to minimize risk of gamblers ruin, and ride out the winnings :) Edit: I'll throw in a little more. Changing bet size works only if the odds are shifting. When counting cards, you have someone bet a low amount until the count in the deck is high (signalling a higher player edge), then you signal someone to come over to bet with a much higher amount. In roulette, the odds do not change, so there is no advantage to any type of double down strategy.

I can assure you with 50/50 odds, mathematically your EV is 0. Blackjack without counting and perfect play is like 49.5 / 50.5, so you still have a negative EV, no matter how you "double down" or choose to take your profit.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/04/the-man-who-broke-atlantic-city/308900/ It's possible to gain a slight edge if offered loss rebates.

Wow we're pretty similar! I got back from an 18 month trip / break in March, and also moved from finance into tech. Look forward to swapping stories (and cool to see you using substack!). Probably my biggest take-away from traveling was exactly this: I met several people with 1/100 of the assets/salaries of us here in the west, but they were 100x happier. Puts our first-world problems in perspective and frankly how unnecessarily we grind so hard and become so unhappy.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/03/mortgage-demand-from-homebuyers-spikes-18percent.html Some stats to back up what people have been seeing anecdotally: [*]"Mortgage applications to purchase a home rose 5% for the week and were a stunning 18% higher than a year ago" [*]"As the coronavirus outbreak was surging six weeks ago, applications by homebuyers were down 35% annually" It seems like pent up demand and limited supply. Summer is the hot season for residential RE so I think it's a bit too early to tell what the net impact of COVID is. Personally, I know of at least two cases where the market drop has spooked property owners so they're listing their extra units this summer once restrictions are lifted to lock in the gains from the past decade. Still its hard for me to believe that markets will drop unless we start to see a uptick in foreclosures. RE bottom linked with peak foreclosures in 2011. In that regard, we are sided against governments to extend eviction moratoriums, extend unemployment $600 bonus, extend mortgage maturities, create another tranche of bailout funds (which apparently Airbnb hosts have been applying for?), keep rates low etc...

https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/867856602/millions-of-americans-skipping-payments-as-tidal-wave-of-defaults-and-evictions- Perhaps we won't see the foreclosure / lower priced real estate event if lenders just tack on payments to the end of the term.

I know you're playing devils advocate, but I have to add in a few points: [*]This assumes that once you win the market, you can raise rates / make an economic return on your service. Often times when raising price, companies realizes demand and their desired price point wasn't there to begin with. Given the blow-back already at food delivery services from restaurants on their prices, it seems unlikely they can take more on that end. On the customer side, seeing a $10-$15 order end up as $25+ after delivery fees and tips makes it unlikely they have a lot of room to move prices in that direction either. [*]The prevailing thesis in VC in the past few years, led by Softbank, was the notion of Capital-as-a-Moat. The more money a company has, the faster they can aggressively grow and win and dominate their markets, thus VCs with the biggest checkbooks were in positions to fund and choose market winners. Ask Masa how that has been working out for him :)

To add on, Asian countries (with the exception of Japan) are a lot younger than Western countries as well.

Great investor -- medium / large cap concentrated value. Has been crushing it for a very long time. Use to run Chieftain Capital with another partner, but they split in 2009.