winjitsu

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.

Actually believe its the Chinese-Originated Viral Infectious Disease #19, meaning there have been 18 before it.

Appreciate the data-points. RE bottomed in '11 from the '09 crash, so it will take time for prices to come down (as is the nature of large, less liquid investments). If corona virus causes a longer-term recession, maybe this may repeat for the asset class as a whole. If the recovery is quicker, perhaps it'll only be forced sellers that are over-levered.

Can't wait to jump in. Saw another note on people with multiple Airbnb properties all on mortgages that may have to default soon. Without a doubt Airbnb helped fuel part of the asset price run-up and can't wait to see the prices come back down to earth.

Price range / budget? What type of applications will you be using (large excel workbooks? Photoshop or video editing?) How large of screen? Do you need it to be portable / light weight? If you have a Costco membership and credit card, I highly recommend you purchase from them. The price is fair, and you get a free 4 year warranty. I previously bought a Dell laptop from their website directly and it died after 1.5 years, and the original warranty was only 1 year. The cost to fix it alone was ~1/3 of the laptop value. Learned my lesson.

Went on a REIT / RE deep dive several years ago. Here's what I learned: AFFO is a better proxy than FFO (depends what they take out, but generally AFO is like FCF), so a good metric to look at is AFFO / Dividend to see how much they are retaining vs paying out to share-holders. For valuation, good to look at Price / AFFO and Price / NAV. You can build out NAV based on cap rate / valuation on each building or some type of replacement cost assessment. Think in terms of a per sq. ft basis (rents, cost to build, maintenance costs, replacement cost) -- learn the industry & class & geography averages What are the tenants like (industry, creditworthiness). Some Canadian reits w/ O&G clients got crushed w/ the energy downturn. How long are leases for? Is there a lease re-rating story (i.e. some tenant got a long 20 year lease and absurdly low prices < 50% market, lease expires next year)? What are the manager's incentives (grow AUM recklessly w/ debt? how is voting power structured?)? Internally or externally managed? The Portnoy family stands out for being terrible and self-enriching. I spent a good bit of time w/ the egress of Northstar Financial their management team as well Take a look at a great RE write-up from a hedge fund here posted on LAACO: http://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/investment-ideas/laacz-la-athletic-co/?action=dlattach;attach=7008. Land and Buildings is another good HF w/ write-ups I'd actually suggest general RE investing books rather than REIT books like The Real Estate Game by Poorvu or Confessions of a Real Estate Entrepreneur

This is really good to know, thanks! I tried this last Spring / Summer 2017, but since they filed financials + and have the pending merger, not surprised that things have changed. AFAIK Fidelity hasn't changed their rules though regarding pink sheet stocks w/ no financials (which in many re-orgs will be the case).

CNTWW was the stock that prompted some broker soul-searching for me too. On fidelity, you can buy CNTWW but not CNTE. They won't let you buy microcaps with no financials, though their warrants are totally fair game. On IBKR, you can buy CNTE but not CNTWW. CNTWW trades on some grey sheets that IBKR does not have access to. I think my only solution is to have several brokerages accounts open (I have Schwab and Etrade as well) and to shuffle around money to whichever broker will allow me to execute.

selling OTM puts and buying calls on FB

Klarman stated in one of his letters that he had a couple interns (or was it new hires) that were HBS with prior banking experience. I have friends that made to solid funds through the traditional process: investment banking -> fund or banking -> mba -> fund, which is really all about luck on who's hiring and what recruiters you're in touch with. Edit: I'll add a few more. Todd Combs cold emailed Charlie Munger for a breakfast meeting Tracy Britt brought Buffett some corn? http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/warren-buffetts-assistant-is-better-than-you.html I've seen Li Lu's Himalaya recruiting on Columbia University's job board

Julian's old mantra was to long the 50 best stocks and short the 50 worst. I think they're more traditional L/S alpha seeking [think pair trades, relative value, alpha shorts etc.] From my time as an allocator, I heard several of the tiger cubs used to have a conference call to share names / pitches, so you see alot of similar investments between funds. Now that we're on the 4th+ generation, no sure if that's true anymore.

Just cross validation during bull market years? I've played around with it a bit but never been comfortable enough with the algo [even worst with NNs]. I'm very scared of blowing up with these over-fitted models that have only seen rising markets... I think the main criticism against these "paper" strategies is you have 1000s of academics looking for signals and the winners publish a paper. The signals they find basically are the result of survivor bias. Do you guys have slack? Maybe its time we start a CoBF slack group