Liberty

https://video-api-secure.wsj.com/api-video/player/iframe.html?guid=0DF26270-8D40-40F0-B9F3-61893BEFBCFA&playerid=twittercard Had not seen that one before. It's from the All Things D 7 conference.

Thoughts this was interesting: http://scottgrannis.blogspot.ca/2015/09/job-openings-surge.html

Some brokers sell your order data to HFT firms for them to execute. They can sometimes see your orders before they hit the public markets, or they sniff it in one exchange and race you to other exchanges and move the price on you before there's a fill. Or they use weird order types that were never meant to be executed (get cancelled) to sniff out the price and raise it on you. It's not that simple. BTW, One broker that has publicly said that it isn't selling any customer data to HFTs is Interactive Brokers.

Hour long interview: Short version:

What's the goal? If it is to improve human civilization, then I'm pretty sure that even most silicon valley types working in social-media app companies would agree that their talents would be better used working on other things. Same with all the physicists and mathematicians working for HFT and writing derivatives on Wall Street; in aggregate all their work is probably a net loss for society, and their talents would be more useful elsewhere... But if the primary goal t is to make money, then they may be right, it's probably easier to make money that way. But those are different things, and it's not about being smarter or not; it's about looking at what direction they are driving in and where that leads. (and yes, social-media is changing the world for the better in many way -- all I'm saying is that other fields that could also make a big difference are under-developed in comparison because they are harder problems, which is what makes Elon Musk special, he does the hard stuff). Second in a row post by Liberty that I agree with. Did I get transported to a parallel universe while sleeping? :) Probably should buy a lottery ticket today. If I jackpot, we split. 8) I've always written stuff like this, welcome to the past six thousand posts ;)

https://www.canadianinsider.com

There are two books with almost the same title that I almost always confuse, so apologies if this is the wrong one, but I think Billion Dollar Lessons is worth a read: http://www.amazon.ca/Billion-Dollar-Lessons-Inexcusable-Business/dp/1591842891/ I don't remember it too vividly because I read it a while ago, but I gave it a good grade on my list of books I read, so I must've liked it at the time :)

What's the goal? If it is to improve human civilization, then I'm pretty sure that even most silicon valley types working in social-media app companies would agree that their talents would be better used working on other things. Same with all the physicists and mathematicians working for HFT and writing derivatives on Wall Street; in aggregate all their work is probably a net loss for society, and their talents would be more useful elsewhere... But if the primary goal t is to make money, then they may be right, it's probably easier to make money that way. But those are different things, and it's not about being smarter or not; it's about looking at what direction they are driving in and where that leads. (and yes, social-media is changing the world for the better in many way -- all I'm saying is that other fields that could also make a big difference are under-developed in comparison because they are harder problems, which is what makes Elon Musk special, he does the hard stuff).

Out of curiosity, what is your source for saying she has Aspergers? I don't remember seeing that anywhere.

Sounds like you're having one of those years. I've had them, and it sucks. What you have to wonder is: Are you having bad luck despite a good investing process, or do you need to rethink your approach? Personally, I ended up rethinking my approach.

What's a better way of putting it? Jurgis is right. "Silicon Valley" is very broad and includes many things. But if you mean if the aggregate market capitalization of silicon valley companies in bubble territory, then your answer is no. The industry is also very different from 2000 when profits were hard to find; nowadays, silicon valley is bringing in tens and tens of billions of free cash flow every year and most of the big players are selling for relatively low multiples.

I just had a look at TTM. Yes.

Is there enough news about the company at this point to warrant multiple threads?

Thought this was good:

Thanks Jawn!

The market will do whatever causes the most confusion to the most people.

http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2015/08/cheaper-oil-does-not-spell-doom.html "oil prices in real terms are only slightly below their long-term average"

That's a good one. Very smart author. This recent post is fun (not claiming any predictive power, just putting things in perspective): http://www.philosophicaleconomics.com/2015/08/the-trajectory-of-a-crash/ I like that one too.

Ackman is late to the party compared to Sequoia. Not sure when they first bought, but it was years ago.

http://www.sequoiafund.com/Reports/Transcript15.pdf

I've started reading this book recently: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51DozrQ0NdL._SX332_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg http://www.amazon.ca/Man-Moon-Voyages-Apollo-Astronauts/dp/014311235X It's crazy how little I knew about what we've already done... I'm super impressed by the whole Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects and how they could do all that with 1950s-1960s technology. I've also re-watched the film Apollo 13 this weekend for the first time since the 1990s, and it's quite excellent. Very inspiring, and they apparently went to great lenghts to make it realistic (even filmed the weightless scenes inside an airplane doing parabolas - over 600 of them - to have the real thing), having NASA as consultants and basing a lot of it on the real radio transcripts, etc.

http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/08/how-and-why-spacex-will-colonize-mars.html

Some perspective on the yuan: http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2015/08/chinas-currency-move-not-big-deal.html

Like Mike Burry did, yes? :P Every now and then life is subject to random error. :P To be fair, while Burry is brilliant, his early investors didn't know at the time that they were signing up for a big macro bet when they invested with him, they thought they were getting something else, so without the hindsight of knowing that the bet worked out in the end, it's pretty easy to understand that they were nervous and some wanted to get their money out. If I had put my money with him for his value-based stock picking abilities and learned that he was buying vast quantities of credit default swaps and side-pocketing the money, I might have gotten nervous too. I don't know.

http://imgur.com/a/69Fta