Ice77

BYSI

CRBP, TV

This will remain stop/start for awhile until the vaccine is developed, which may be 1-2 years away.

SECB PM

Fiction - Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan

This is largely because South Korea was VERY quick to contain the spread. Italy and the rest of the Western works have not been. Containment is likely no longer an option - now we're onto mitigation. South Korea aggressively tested the 20-29 age group which has a much higher proportion of asymptomatic spreaders. The testing by age group data between the two countries (SK vs Italy) is very stark in that age group. Instead of waiting for symptoms to test, you slow the spread at its root by testing and restricting the younger spreaders who are more asymptomatic and stay so longer for some reason (perhaps stronger immunity?).

Not what you are asking but i intend to "play" the game. Just bought "Plague Inc: Evolved". https://www.ndemiccreations.com/en/25-plague-inc-evolved Here's the game description from the makers: "Can you infect the world? Your pathogen has just infected 'Patient Zero'. Now you must bring about the end of human history by evolving a deadly, global Plague whilst adapting against everything humanity can do to defend itself. Plague Inc: Evolved is a unique mix of high strategy and terrifyingly realistic simulation which is now available on PC, Mac and Linux via Steam.Over 130 million players have been infected by Plague Inc. already.!"

Yes that was Jeff Arnold. Good show.

I read this book awhile back but keep thinking about it once in awhile when my mind turns very bearish. Definitely a very good book and a different one from the usual trope about the great depression which is mostly secondary research. This is a first person's account from someone who had good attention to detail and objectivity even in the face of extreme adversity.

Sal Daher's podcast on iOS

Interesting clinical candidate with an unmet need. It looks to me like they will need to raise cash with a secondary very soon though. It shouldn't be too difficult to raise money (they've already done some licensing deals - one with a Japanese major and they also got some funds from CF foundation). Their Ph 3 results for Lenabasum should most likely be great (their Ph2 data and recent hiring shows they are prepping for approval) - out in a few months. Stock is ripping. Up 60% since this above discussion. Funnily i discovered this stock from a podcast where a healthcare VC with a great track record was pounding the table on it like crazy.

2222.HK: I initially bought this at 20c a month or so back and then have been adding at 22-28c. Discovered accidentally when KKR bought a majority stake in one of their companies and i saw it in the paper. Just the residual 30% stake in that venture is worth more than the current market cap at that transacted value. Significant net cash plus their remaining biz which is growing well would be worth atleast twice that residual stake. I reckon NAV to be around ~50-60c.

This book is in a similar niche as two other personal productivity focused books that I've read before (Atomic Habits by James Clear and Slight Edge by Jeff Olson). The author makes the case that our biological hardwiring is more geared towards negativity, boredom and rumination (this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective) so we seek some form of opposing compensation which can sometimes be the main cause underlying distracting habits. Distraction, according to the author, is about pain management. The author highlights the work of a Stanford prof that underlay (& influenced) the addictive features of much of social media and modern communications: The Fogg Behavior Model. It states that MAT (Motivation, Ability, Trigger) are the three necessary ingredients to generate addiction (& as a corollary what we need to manage to counteract it). E.g. push notifications (trigger), mobile in our field of view (ability), likes/votes (motivation via dopamine etc) are standard means that social media uses to get us hooked. Disable one or more of these and your addiction will reduce considerably. The author introduces the concept of "surfing the urge". When an urge takes hold (e.g. smoke, drink, check mobile, watch tv etc), "noticing the sensations and riding them like a wave—neither pushing them away nor acting on them—helps us cope until the feelings subside". The author suggests a 10 minute rule with this. "When you get an urge, it is fine to give in, but not immediately. Wait 10 minutes. If you still want to perform the action after ten minutes of urge surfing, you’re free to do it, but that’s rarely still the case. The liminal moment has passed, and you’re able to do the thing you really wanted to do.”

The author is a physicist and a strong writer. The book has a meta framework that cuts across as varied situations/disciplines as species extinction events, forest fires, billionaire rich lists, earthquakes, market crashes, wars, scientific revolutions, sand piles, social networks etc. What's common among them? Their distributions are all governed by a new branch of physics: Non equilibrium statistical physics that builds upon chaos/complexity theory to show how power law (and some common organising principle) is pervasive across such diverse physical, biological, economic and social systems. Of interest is the concept of self organised criticality in these complex, interconnected systems. Once a system goes critical, small or large upheavals can happen anytime and in an unpredictable way. But their relative magnitude vs frequency still remains governed by the power laws.

I don't see a relevant thread on the subject so made one. Over the past year or so this market is beginning to make rapid strides and the ecosystem is starting to develop fast. Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook are all working on it as are a slew of private companies. It's the next major undertapped/untapped real estate on the human body. Apple may launch a product in 2020. B2B and B2C applications are both increasing rapidly and somewhat quietly. Some of them have their own app stores with one having more than 100 applications in there and approaching 9 figure B2B revenues. I was particularly struck by how useful it is in B2B settings: Telecom, Retail, Medicine, Translation, Security, Military, Sports etc sectors are all working with various companies to advance the ecosystem (you can find lots of videos on social media/YT). Some of the relevant companies are in the listed space, some private and some who are a mix of the two. I don't know if the eye wearables space is in 2006 Smartphone stage yet or 2000. But the next wave is not too far off, I suspect. And it may be significant. Looking for papers, reports, opinions, ideas about this space. So please share.

I came across him a few years back when diving across a rabbit hole. Ended up buying a 70 year old magazine issue that did a lengthy profile on him. Besides his 1929 exploits..he was a close friend of Howard Hughes (who frequently sought his financial advice), he bankrolled/seeded Conrad Hilton right at the inception and he almost took control of the Hearst publishing empire (the only major battle he lost). The legendary banker Sidney Weinberg (who led Goldman for 39 years) used to call him "50 percent Odlum" because "he gets everything for half price". Definitely an under explored character.

I think the traditional measures of value, those that rely more on numbers such as multiples, earnings and cashflow will be disrupted (are being disrupted) by algos and AI, whether in the garb of momentum or relative value, call it whatever. If its easy to calculate for you, it will be easy to calculate for the machines as well and they will get better at it with time, iteratively. The value investments that rest on deep qualitative insights - e.g. that Amazon's 1 millionth customer will be more valuable than the 10th customer, will continue to flourish. That tells me that early stage investing lends itself to less disruption as there just isn't enough reliable data or "value" data. While failure rate is much higher, the rewards for deep insights there represent an edge that isn't going to go away easily IMO. What is obvious to you, will be increasingly obvious to machines as well. What is less obvious to you, will also likely be less obvious to machines (though not necessarily). I'm not advocating people go down the early stage route - we are in the adverse part of that cycle. But if you are looking for areas where disruption is less likely it is those areas which have greater impact of power law (VC, Biotech/Healthcare, Early stage exploration etc). Either that is because of asymmetric information or lack of it or deep non qualitative insights.

The book is about FLOW - a state of body/mind where we achieve peak performance. Taking cue from experiences of extreme adventure athletes the book describes the science behind achieving the FLOW state. It is intriguing that as per the latest research on FLOW, most of our explicit brain circuitry - the left brain, the pre frontal cortex etc goes sort of offline when we are at our most effective and we rely much more on the implicit circuits, the instinct / intuition etc to solve problems that are usually just outside of our immediate capabilities.