Liberty

Niece piece about the dynamics of network effects powering platforms (Uber, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple, Didi, AirBNB, etc): https://hbr.org/2019/01/why-some-platforms-thrive-and-others-dont h/t @bluegrasscap

I don't own any, but I manage my wife's account, and she owns some.

Thanks for doing the math, Dynamic.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/01/almost-500000-in-ethereum-coin-stolen-by-forking-its-blockchain/

Nice piece on Julian Robertson and the crash of 1987: https://www.insecurityanalysis.com/writing/2018/12/18/a-test-of-conviction-julian-robertson-and-the-crash-of-1987

https://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/ethereum-plans-to-cut-its-absurd-energy-consumption-by-99-percent

Maybe people are just more honest now and sample bias has been reduced?

+7.53% without dividends (haven't bothered to look at those yet). Feels worse than the end-point because was up around 33% a few months ago, but that's how the market works... It goes up and down ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Li Liu on his birthday: https://www.facebook.com/groups/754138784714366/permalink/1869028093225424/

I don't think you have to be an expert here. To use the WB quote about being approximately correct: From a birds eye view the economy has been doing great under a low interest environment for what, 7 years? Therefore, time to start raising rates. That's my "approximately correct", 1000 ft view. Regarding the minutiae as to "well they should've done XYZ 6 months ago or whatnot", well just seems like noise...trying to figure out if the guy on the scale is 200 lbs or 205 lbs. Oh, I think you can have a 5-sec opinion like that. But to have an informed opinion on macro-economics, it's something you have to actively study for a while, and I haven't, and I don't think many here have.

How about not having an opinion because fed policy is outside my circle of competence? I'd guess it's outside of the circle of many others here, including some of those with the strongest opinions.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-02/trump-has-340-million-of-debt-linked-to-powell-s-rate-decisions

Have fun, but be careful!

We're not disagreeing.

Guess we should give the Fed a third mandate like Druck seems to imply (because Druck seems to believe that Mr. Market is the world’s best economist—Ben Graham would disagree): the Fed should maximize the S&P 500. Surely that will lead to great long term economic prosperity. I'm not sure if Ben Graham would disagree, actually. He still respected the market a lot (was actually incredibly conservative and insiste on huge margins of safety because he understood how hard this is). The market is often wrong, but that doesn't make it more wrong than any single random economist or group of economists. The choice isn't between a group that's right and a group that's wrong, but between who's less wrong... The hard part is more interpreting what the wisdom of the crowd is saying and getting the message through short term noise, rather than anything else, and even then you'll often be wrong (but more than any talking head on TV or at the fed? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ). As for your (I assume) sarcastic suggestion, I'd say that if the goal was to maximize the health of the market over long periods (10-20 years increments), that would be pretty close to just "make sure the economy is running well, not too hot, not too cold". If the goal was over the short term, that would indeed just encourage bubbles. Just guessing, though, as nobody can be sure about any of this, which is also part of what makes it so hard. It's those people with so much certainty that are the most dangerous...

Trump is a highly leveraged real-estate guy. Surprising to anyone he'd want forever zero interest rates? Druck said he's more about removing forward guidance on the fed, and he's be for raising interest rates in a couple months and has been for normalizing them in the past, so it's not like he's taking the same position as Trump.

Alternatively, it's probably not a good idea to get emotional on a 25bps interest rate change causing a 2% market move.

Another hour-long interview with Druckenmiller: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-12-18/druckenmiller-on-economy-stocks-bonds-trump-fed-full-interview-video

It's a form of CAC. Get them in, cross-sell them on other stuff, get the big customers to go over the limit or upgrade, gather assets now that rates aren't zero, etc. But also increasing competition forcing lower fees, like in the indexing world (some ETFs now have zero fees if you buy them through certain brokers, etc).

Interview with Woodward about the book: https://overcast.fm/+C_1833--s

Haven't people been saying this since basically 2011? Why this time? The recovery has been extremely slow and shallow, unlike traditional recoveries, and we've had a bunch of corrections and sector bear markets since (I was just noticing today that the DJ Diversified Industrials is down over 33% from peak) and international markets are already in bear declines, yet everybody seems to talk like it's been only up and to the right since 2009 so we must be getting close to some big thing... You could be right, but it seems hard to time the market like that. I'd rather own good companies that can benefit from dislocation and let them cleverly deploy capital if things go south, and otherwise keep creating value if they don't. But that's just what I'm comfortable with.

Wow, Bitcoin Cash went from a peak of $3500 less than a year ago to $79 now. It would need to be a 44-bagger to get back to its peak.

https://twitter.com/alex_macdonald/status/1072951898569752577

Episode two is out (stock discussed: DWDP and RCKY: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/scuttleblurb/id1443244539?mt=2&i=1000425486506