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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17404 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 3, 2025

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The models aren't accounting for rare upsets. What happens to the market if there is only one factory in the world that makes some component we never have heard of but is super critical for hospitals, food production or airplanes and that factory burns? What happens to the market if there is a major war and the electrical grid relies on spare parts from few places? Bringing production home reduces the risk of extreme downturns so even if the median return is lower the average return is higher due to a smaller risk of extreme negative outcomes.

I recently saw somebody posting his L on some trading forum. He shorted chicken fastfood in Korea, because he thought that the fundamentals of demographic crisis will impact that industry negatively. Then apparently the Nvidia CEO dined in some chicken restaurant in Seoul and it created fried chicken fad, boosting shares of chicken restaurants. He lost everything as he was forced to sell on his margin call.

A black swan event for fried chicken.

Hilarious.

Miser, miser! Modo niger et ustus fortiter!

I definitely agree that this is a reason to not naively hope for raw "number go up." Other factors affect the overall resilience and robustness of the economy, and might go along with slightly worse numbers in the short term.

I'm certainly in favor of bringing production of certain critical infrastructure home, but have we done a good job of doing that over the last few years?

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