Liberty

You know the photo is staged when she wears high heels on the factory floor. Was there any expectation that it wasn't staged? As in, a photographer sneaked in the high-security ITAR-compliant factory and just happened to catch in a candid moment the COO of SpaceX admiring some hardware on the factory floor? ;)

Interesting piece about full-flow staged combustion rocket engines: https://hackaday.com/2019/02/13/the-impossible-tech-behind-spacexs-new-engine/

It's beer ;D Essentially branded consumer discretionary purchases. They have decent brands (Molson, Coors) and an established distribution network. It's pretty cheap and was 10% off today. While the business may go thru ups-and-downs, especially in terms of management's execution (as we are seeing with other CPG's like Kraft-Heinz), I think product demand will remain relatively more steady (compared to say, Tide detergent). So it's basically, multiple is low, they have scale, brands should have staying power. Was just curious if there was more than met the eye to the thesis.

That's fair. What did happen, though, is that I did better than I would've otherwise done. Someone else might not have, though, but modifying what I actually did to change it to what you think someone else should've done does make it something other than "what actually happened".

I did the same. What attracted you guys to this business? Just curious, I don't know anything about it.

I thought this was an interesting piece: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-12/the-colgan-air-crash-helped-keep-90-million-flights-safe Some interesting discussion of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19145347

Gates Foundation 2019 letter: https://www.gatesnotes.com/2019-Annual-Letter

Comparing highly leveraged investments in an illiquid single asset that you can't easily sell is a fair comparison with an unlevered investment in the 500 biggest companies in the US (and mostly the world, since they have global sales) across multiple industries ??? Leverage cuts both ways. you can lose more than your whole equity if you lever up 4X... Lots of hindsight bias here. If the Canadian market had crashed during that period, there would be a lot less celebrating, especially because when you're this elevated, nothing says you'll bounce back anywhere close any time soon (took around 21 years after the last toronto RE crash). I mean, I know this time is different and it can't possibly happen again, but what if?

I'm re-reading this today because it's been a few years since I read it. I figured I'd bump it up in case others want to refresh their memories, or if some of you haven't read this classic yet. Here's a version with nicer formatting: http://stuff.maxolson.com/the-art-of-stock-picking.pdf

Not sure which region you are in, but this is hard to believe considering that the housing investment would have been most likely leveraged...plus the tax exemption you'd get for the principal residence. I'm near Ottawa. We'd have paid for most of the house with cash, so not much leverage involved.

https://podcastnotes.org/2018/04/29/why-we-sleep/

If you look at the Canadian housing market in USD, it had a pretty big correction since 2014. But the idea remains that Canadians haven't seen their incomes increase at anywhere near the rate that housing has increased, that the difference is made up of debt, and that the only way this debt can be serviced is because of very low interest rates. Something that can't go on will stop at some point. I've always said that I have no idea when it'll happen, and I'm quite happy not to have bought since I've both done better in the market than Canadian housing since, and since my assets have been in USD instead of CAD, so I've had a double dip. I've also learned a lot about what I want in a house (having two kids does change a few priorities) and what neighborhood is best, so if I had bought back then, I probably wouldn't be happy with it now anyway and selling and buying has huge friction and headaches that I'm glad to have avoided.

I saw that at the recommendation of a friend. I thought it had some flashes of a really good movie, some really good scenes and characters, but that overall it didn't quite gel together and wasn't entirely satisfying.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-06/inside-wisconsin-s-disastrous-4-5-billion-deal-with-foxconn Yikes.

My preferred approach is to mostly stay fully invested and sometimes switch from more expensive things to less expensive ones, or from things that have grown too large in the porfolio to new ideas when they are available at a good price

Have you read 'Thinking Fast and Slow' by Daniel Kahneman? And if you want more, you can go back to the original studies: https://www.amazon.com/Judgment-Under-Uncertainty-Heuristics-Biases/dp/0521284147 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0521627494/

https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/ I thought this was an interesting thought experiment. Obviously it's not what investing in practice is like, but I think it shows the challenge that those who prefer to sit on lots and lots of cash and then only invest during a big crash face. They'll look really cool during the recovery and claim insane CAGRs, but if you look at it over long periods, over the whole cycle, it becomes a lot harder, especially if your timing isn't perfect (and who can claim that?).

Might be useful: https://arbital.com/p/bayes_rule/?l=1zq

This is addressed in the book. But it's also not that simple. Just like growth mindset vs fixed mindset affects your actual behavior and decisions and creates a positive or negative loop, mindset about stress also affects these things and affects outcomes. If you think stress is scary and bad and you always try to avoid it, you'll try to avoid all kinds of activity and experiences (especially new ones or challenging ones) that might make you grow or bring you good things. And people who usually try to avoid this kind of stress aren't less stressed, they just avoid the things, so it's a double loss. If you're about to do something stressful and think "I'm just excited, my body's gearing up to help me do well, all this adrenaline is making my mind sharper, etc", you'll probably do better than if you're worrying about being too stressed to do well and think that to do well you have to not be stressed, which itself is putting pressure on you and making you more stressed, etc.. she also talks about stress responses aren't monolithic, there are various ones, and how you think about the situation will impact which one is triggered. If you think you can handle things, you'll more likely have a challenge response, which is healthy and helps performance more, while if you think you can't cope and can't handle it, you're more likely to have a threat response, which has more negative effects (ideal in a life or death situation, but not ideal to have frequently in day to day life). On the correlation/causation issue, there's studies cited in the book where they track people before and after the mindset intervention and show results. If it was just that people less affected by stress had that mindset, it wouldn't show results on those. It makes a lot of sense. I suggest you read the book.

Both the Rosling and Pinker books are on my to-read list. Another book in the same vein which I have read is "Abundance: The future is better than you think" by Peter H. Diamandis & Steven Kotler, which is excellent. I have that one too, but haven't read it yet.

The author did this talk in 2013. Might also be an intro to the concepts:

I haven't read it yet, it's in my pile, but I just want to second that Hans Rosling was a great human being. This book should probably be read along with Steven Pinker - Better Angels of Our Nature.

I'm only 1/3 through, but I can already say that many here could benefit from this book. It contains some counter-intuitive data and insights that are worth a look (even if taken with a dose of skepticism, still many useful ideas): https://www.amazon.com/Upside-Stress-Why-Good-You-ebook/dp/B00OI5PGWU

Scott Alexander review of Zero to One: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/01/31/book-review-zero-to-one/