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10hr ago
The options are only used for leveraged ETFs which you are correct have very high slippage. I would guess far higher than DI. But DI trades more than an etf like SPY. The main index ETFs just hold the individual stocks and only trade with index inclusions/exclusions. DI trades any time the portfolio has losses so more trading.
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18hr ago
The only useful thing bitcoin ever created was NVDIA. NVDIA chips enabled AI’s linear algebra equations to work.
NVDIA has had 3 stages
- Video games
- Bitcoin
- AI
The use case in the prior use case funded the research to make the chips useful in the next use case. For an investor though I think it’s hard to hold long term. If you saw the prior cycle and the market fully priced in Video Game usage why would you also realize bitcoin is going to explode and these chips are super useful?
I also think NVDIA is an example where research funding creates things that eventually have other applications. NASA research once did this for a lot of things that found civilian uses that may not have been immediately known.
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18hr ago
I bought 5%. Not sure how long I will stay in it. I owned no bonds before. I could see 6-7% being a better entry. Unlike other FI they also provide a great hedge to equities. Trump will probably keep the economy stimulated enough to prevent a deflationary shock but if it did occur 5% 30’s would provide nice capital gains if stocks crashed. 2% yield on TIPs is also nice. Less of a hedge but the real yield would also likely fall in a stock crash.
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18hr ago
His current tax deal with the IRS excludes them from auditing Trump. So he has tax deals available to no one else.
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18hr ago
I kind of hate direct indexing. It’s the kind of wealth management product that is very smart when it’s bespoke but I think has a lot of risks when commoditized when scaled. When JPM or whoever has a few hundred billion doing it by algorithm it feels like something Jane St could like reverse engineer the JPM algorithm and front run it. Which would cause a very real slippage issue. Indexing itself has this issue. Hedge funds do game out index inclusion/exclusion and bid up or sell off before those dates.
For direct indexing the private banker would sell you: Tax Alpha - added fee - portfolio complexity = profit. The real equation is probably Tax Alpha - added fee - portfolio complexity - added slippage
Added slippage increases as AUM of DI increases.
Indexing itself has developed a slippage costs of inclusion/exclusion that has increased last 5-10 years. Though I think pure indexing is mostly good because SPY diversification means less trading and regular taxation events and generally low fees.
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18hr ago
I only see 50 bps which isn’t bad. But it’s a big issue with precious metals for the long-term. There is no cash flow. FWIW I bought a bunch of silver physically and had it stolen in the last bull run. So the expense does provide a service.
I believe in evolution and genetics. Human populations evolved in certain environments and selected for population groups best fitted to their environment. This even occurs over small time frames. There are literally American genes now. https://x.com/levelsio/status/2058242736436781113?s=46 DRD7-4R gene “wanderlust gene” is higher in Americans than their source populations. Overall genetics control for a lot of IQ, Athletic, and personality traits. It probably would be fair to say modern immigrants to America have higher “wanderlust gene” too though immigration is easier today. But overall there are genetic profiles that better fit with American culture. We should only bring these people in.
But overall even if people are a genetic fit they also need to want to culturally assimilate with the American culture. For this I would criticize Vivek because he still doesn’t get American culture. Though he does seem to try so I probably wouldn’t exclude him from emigrate but I don’t like him as a politician. I wouldn’t be opposed to Indian immigration but we have probably done too many too fast and allowed ethnic enclaves and favoritism to develop and need to pause it for a while. Italians definitely took a long time to assimilate. And thus we paused Italian immigration for decades.
South Africans like Musks are probably very high quality immigrants. Genetically very similar which would include a similar selection effect for the wanderlusts gene.
This isn’t just a race thing. Orthodox Jews fit with America in a lot of ways, but some of them do build enclaves and use a lot of government services which is bad. There are a few examples where they take over entire towns, have low median income (use welfare), but also have good things like non-existent social disorder/crime. Like an urban version of Amish. So wanting to be one culture I think is very important in immigrant groups.
Many would fine these to be repugnant conclusions but it does seem like genetics have a huge effect on a countries gdp and culture. You can’t just be a creedal nation. The people in a country matter a lot.
And we should probably favor immigrants that benefit the native population. Citadel head of hft is a Chinese math Olympiad guy who’s very smart. But that’s a zero sum game and doesn’t have spillover effects for the rest of the economy. He really just took a seat that would have went to another American but his algorithms are slightly faster but creates no real excess value. I’d favor visas for people that do things that expand real economic output. I’d still let him in but would only approve visas for like doing battery tech research at Tesla.
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1d ago
I get your point. But the specific reference here has been litigated before here. Haitians were debated in depth during the election all over the internet and I assume here when the election occurred and the “their eating the cats” comments by Trump.
I don’t think it’s good to require every posts to be 15 paragraphs of citations. Maybe this is too old ago, but the specific arguments I would make here have been litigated before. What can you assume others know to allow for brevity.
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1d ago
Moving up internally is the same as always. It’s the specific ownership seats that are non-existent. You can still be Lloyd Blankenfien CEO of Goldman Sachs but you can’t be a K, K, or R in KKR. Because things have become institutionalized, scaled, and moated. Pure trading the last time you had a path like that was probably early 2000’s and then when banking got banned from prop trading it opened up a big path to scale as big competitors left the market. That window is likely dead now.
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1d ago
I literally said cultural and genetical assimilation. So no Haitians because their dumb and Viveks because he never assimilated.
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2d ago
The only person I can think of who just lucked into their position without heavy filtering today feels like JD Vance. Sure he got into Yale Law, but he sort of just wrote a book that was ok professionally. Then met a billionaire who turned him into the VP. US politics might be the only place I can think of where some of it just feels lucky.
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2d ago
You can still see in that industry the skillset change.
1970’s - some even no college made it. Still some truly smart people
2000’s - Big Ten Schools and above
2020’s - what was your placement on the IMO
Another way to look at it - 1970’s the best local talent in Chicago or NYC who just wandered into trading. 2000’s The best in recruited from the top schools in the region. 2020’s the best recruited Internationally. So yes it’s much harder today. Finance in general has gotten much more selective. PE is likely very similar.
Ownership seats are also basically non-existent now in PE or trading. If you started in PE in the 1980’s you have your name on the door. If you started post 2010 you work for a listed PE firm and only get a split of the fees. Which is a lot of money.
I didn’t agree to a jury. But if you truly had a random 12 person jury of people across the country immigration would be essentially zero.
20-25% of Americans are basically Stephen Miller types who want 0 immigration. So on a jury of 12 you will likely get one. Then you would have to dodge someone that doesn’t like you in particular. And probably 30% of the population want in general less immigration but more than Stephen Miller.
A truly random jury of 12 Americans would approve very few immigrants.
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2d ago
That wasn’t too subtle. But they already tried to be more like Harvard. Now because they don’t have the endowments of others they ran into financial difficulty and are massively boosting enrollment and basically prestige whoring. But it won’t be the quirky place it was. It will be the easiest place to buy a spot for a relatively smart kid going further which will likely end the days of not being fun.
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2d ago
A lot of the paths that made money in the older generation got institutionalized. For sales and trading type roles or even Ibanking you read a lot of old stories of a guy just met someone then is at major bank. (Epstein, Michael Lewis. High profile on this path. Many others). Now it’s institutionalized and still pays well but there are 5-10 highly profitable firms and to get in you need to be “math Olympiad winner” and the competition is against a global population. Plus you have to a great degree lost the ability to get equity in form because the competitive moats have increased a lot.
It does feel like the current career paths offer less stability and your career can end quickly even with fairly strong credentials. The exception is a huge explosion in government work which I would include health care in.
Probably some new routes are emerging and in 25 years we will see a bunch of rich people who just started doing something.
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2d ago
It’s like porn you know it when you see it. Culturally and genetically assimilated individuals.
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2d ago
No. He’s not American. Don’t make the but it’s the law. He will never be one of us. A piece of paper doesn’t make you an American.
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2d ago
Think it’s cope to say the right lacks hot girls. We’ve got Miami and all the sorority girls as reliable voters. And the middle of the road hotties who vote Dem swap to GOP once they’re pregnant. Females vote Dem more but it’s fairly even with the hotter ones and we don’t one the tatted up chicks.
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2d ago
I would him around there. Maybe even a little higher. His wife based on schools she attended indicates she’s likely 135. So I would assume she’s not marrying down more than 1 standard deviation. Other hot Stanford MBAs landed guys like Jobs.
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3d ago
If they really wanted to do an autopsy then they could just interview me. But then when I tell them all their ideas suck it’s not like their going to come out and say yes you are correct we will change.
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3d ago
I just disagree he could be truly average. Even with connections from birth you can flunk out. He’s got to be at a minimum a midtwit so something like 1200-1300 real SAT score intelligence. Top 10%.
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3d ago
Isn’t it just grift? Guy got paid. I also wouldn’t put honest self-reflection on paper. It’s better done behind closed doors.
Probably a cleaning lady or I thru a lot of parties so someone found my stash and took it. I didn’t regular check it so likely noticed 3+ months maybe a year after it happened.
I guess you could say I was dumb. If you’re holding physical you need to plan your own storage. My Opsec was bad.
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