Liberty

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/technology/mit-college-artificial-intelligence.html

I'm done with the Michael Lewis book. A surprisingly large fraction of it is about the importance and value of data and data science, both to make our society function better and keep people safe. It was a fun, short one. Recommended. Of course, people who haven't read the book immediately come out to try to discredit it because it might conflict with their ideology. It's all interviews with people who are or were there. Lewis almost does no editorializing, and a very small fraction of it is about Trump, btw. If there are things that make Trump look bad in it, it's because he did the things described, not because of some bias.

I started listening to the audiobook of this. Good so far. Pretty short (about 5 hours). At 2x it's very easy to follow and basically just as long as a long podcast. Lewis is one of the best at documenting the people behind the big events, and this is no exception so far.

1-hour podcast interview with biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey, mostly about biomedical research into aging: http://mindandmachine.libsyn.com/life-extension-human-longevity-with-dr-aubrey-dr-grey

If I had to guess, I'd say it's because he's writing about mostly events that took place a long time ago, and about two people, one of which is dead. He's usually writing about more current things that he can follow in real time and with people he can talk to (mostly).

People have been predicting mediocre forward returns (the new normal of low returns) since around 2011. I think it's very hard to predict the future, but it makes people feel conservative and like they're being safe when they predict mediocre returns. In reality, who knows what will happen?

It's something that comes up over and over again in different situations, and I think it's based on some human cognitive biases. When benefits are spread out over many kind of invisible people but downsides are concentrated on a few visible people, most people will go with what is visible and easy to create a narrative around. You see this all the time with farmers. Free trade helps everybody who's buying food, but it hurts farmers. It's easy to create a narrative around those poor farmers, but harder to create one around millions of people having access to slightly cheaper/better/more varied food.

Some counterpoints: http://scottgrannis.blogspot.com/2018/10/just-another-panic-attack.html

18 mins. May 2018. (sorry if repost, hadn't seen it posted before)

2018 Q3 letter is out. David Poppe is retiring, they added a bit to FB position and trimmed a few other things: https://www.sequoiafund.com/Download.aspx?ID=b8a058d0-8cb2-4663-ab6c-c8e1652174e0&Name=Q3_2018_-_Investor_Letter

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/trumps-dairy-fight-with-canada-gets-only-70-million-more-than-tpp.html

Yeah, doesn't look like in practice much will change. Cars will be a bit more expensive, cheese won't really get cheaper up North because of a low-single digit change in quotas. At a glance, looks like there are more restrictions on trade overall, not fewer.

Finally got around to reading it this week. Excellent book about fascinating people and important ideas. I find it always worth it to refresh my memory about these biases and heuristics, and I learned new things about T and K's lives. It's still worth reading the primary sources, though, but it's a nice addition.

http://www.joelstevens.net/ (or was that smiley supposed to be a wink and you already knew that and were being ironic?)

Good read, thanks for writing and posting, Joel!

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/27/this-guy-doesnt-know-anything-the-inside-story-of-trumps-shambolic-transition-team

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-china-systematically-pries-technology-from-u-s-companies-1537972066 Good piece on some of the tactics used in China to get IP.

Crypto traders (those who still have any money left) looking for a new exciting ride to jump into...

Do I have to read a book to find that out about Trump? And wait a minute there is another person who thinks in those terms about Trade, and trade deficit is like living on credit card - Warren Buffett. Buffett re-iterated this in a recent CNBC interview: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/07/full-transcript-billionaire-investor-warren-buffett-speaks-with-cnbcs-becky-quick-on-squawk-box-today.html WARREN BUFFETT: I think it was in 2003, Joe, I wrote an article for Fortune actually about the trade deficit. I was worried about it getting too large then. Because, again, it was getting to be 3% or so of GDP. It-- wasn't specific to China at all. But it was just a question of how wise it is to let the trade deficit grow larger and larger. Because when you run-- when you are in effect buying more from other countries than they're buying from you, you are handing them investment funds. I mean, it's the nature. You give 'em little pieces of paper, and they can convert that into buying-- they can buy government bonds. They can buy buildings here. And-- Japanese bought Pebble Beach in the 1980s when they were running a big-- surplus. I mean, so you are giving up claim checks on our country essentially in exchange for having more consumption now than you're producing in this country. And so I do think that there's levels of trade deficit that bother me. I had some system that did not make it country specific. But I think-- the world has gotten better and better. And there's no question that-- that countries may try and take advantage in this or that. And-- we've actually been guilty of that sometimes in the past, too. I don't think leaders in other countries, whether China or 100 other countries, are not smart enough-- to realize that it's in the interest to keep promoting trade. The more we trade over time. And-- we don't want it to be a question of where we important 20% of our GDP and we export nothing. Now, we could all quick working, and we could hand little pieces of paper to the rest of the world, and they could keep sending us food. And they can send us autos. And they can send us all kinds of things. But eventually they have claims on all our wealth. So-- we do want to have policies where the overall trade deficit does not get out of hand in relation to GDP. And I've been arguing that for a long, long time. (Emphasis in bold added) I think you have to be sure, because a lot of people think he's just using rhetoric to negotiate but he actually understands the benefits of trade and wants more free trade, while the behind the scene discussions he's had show that he doesn't and he thinks that trade is a zero sum game and hurts the US. But anyway, the book is about a lot more than that, so even if that was obvious to you, it can still be worth reading. People read a CNBC piece somewhere and think they got all that was to get out of it, but that's stupid, that's like taking any book that you really like and thinking that reading a summary somewhere is equivalent to reading the book. Buffett and Trump aren't saying the same thing. They're not even in the same universe in their thinking about finance and economics.

This is some Black Mirror stuff..

This is some scary dystopian stuff: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278 "China is building a digital dictatorship to exert control over its 1.4 billion citizens. For some, “social credit” will bring privileges — for others, punishment."

Don't rip it though. Then they'll all go "at least read the book first. It's got some real sources!" LOL Partisan hacks getting rich off Trump. Only joke is on the people paying for this nonsense. I have no interest in reading about Trump's small dick. If you can't tell the difference between a Pulitzer-winning journalist ("recipient of nearly every major American journalism award, including the Heywood Broun award (1972), Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Reporting (1972 and 1986), Sigma Delta Chi Award (1973), George Polk Award (1972), William Allen White Medal (2000), and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for Reporting on the Presidency (2002). In 2012, Colby College presented Woodward with the Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award for courageous journalism as well as an honorary doctorate. Also the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism") who broke Watergate and wrote about 7 presidents, known for his deep sourcing inside political organizations, and random hacks, the problem is with you, not with me. You guys act like you actually know how Trump is and it's everybody else who's mistaken. What are you basing that on? Oh, you've read his twitter? Seen him at a rally or on the news? What the FOX News pundits say? You watched the Apprentice? You realize that this is all the "I'm projecting some image" public relations stuff, right? The real him comes from people who've actually known him and worked with him behind closed doors over the years, from his actions, and those people don't paint a very flattering portrait (and it's not some conspiracy, since the portrait is pretty consistent coming from unrelated people from all sides of the aisle over many years, from his business days to his political days). I suppose that since he's the flag-bearer of "your side" you can ignore all that and just pretend he's how you want him to be, but that's just lying to yourself. And yes, I've been interested by various US presidents over time, as well as other historically-important figures, for positive and negative reasons. Maybe you guys would benefit from reading books and learning a few things (I suggest you start with Washington, Chernow has a good one) rather than just being partisan sheeps who whine about things you haven't read to people who never mentioned you. You guys are like Beavis and Butthead making sarcastic comments at the back of the class, not exactly adding value or coming off well.

https://virtualmarkets.ag.ny.gov/

New Mauboussin paper (Sept 13, 2018): https://www.bluemountaincapital.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/What-Does-an-EV-EBITDA-Multiple-Mean.pdf

I've finished the book. Quite clear that John Dowd also spoke to Woodward, tons of details there. The overarching feeling that I'm left with on trade is that all of Trump's instincts are the opposite of free-trade. He used to be counter-balanced mostly by Cohn and Porter and these guys, but they're gone and now there's just Miller and Navarro adding fuel to the fire. From things he's said and done, it's quite clear that he thinks trade accounts are actually profit & loss statements (as in, "we have a trade deficit with country X, we're losing money to them, they're stealing from us"). Doesn't understand how trade can be win-win because of comparative advantage, or that trade figures are basically revenue, and that if you import a bunch of low margin t-shirts and TVs and export a bunch of high-margin airplanes and softwares you can be making a lot more money per dollar even with a trade deficit, or that something "made in country x" doesn't mean that the value is staying there, ie. Apple products final assembly in China but most of the value going to the US, Japan, South-Korea, etc... His solution seems to be that the US should just make everything it needs and why do we need these other countries at all? Really superficial understanding of economics.