Category: Uncategorized

I saw this a few days ago: Net worth surged 37% in pandemic era for the typical family, Fed finds — the most on record. Net worth is a measure of household assets after accounting for liabilities. After accounting for inflation, median net worth jumped to $192,900, a 37% increase from 2019-22, the Fed found.… Continue reading Americans are insanely wealthy

Stocks stage major recovery, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq up a record eight session in a row. What a perfect V-shaped recovery for the Nasdaq as shown below. You cannot ask for a more symmetrical recovery, exactly as I said would happen 2 weeks ago, having bought  the dips like on Meta and SVIX… Continue reading Big Tech and the future: A mini-manifesto. 

I’m sure many have seen the below barchart in the context of debate about IQ vs success, as evidence of how high-IQ does not matter that much for career success or income given the considerable IQ overlap between high-paying and low-paying professions: I’ve seen this posted many times over the years on blogs, Quora, and… Continue reading Old studies about income/wealth and job success vs. IQ are unconvincing

Item #1: Taleb is fanning the flames of crisis again. He wants another World War or a nuclear war so he can say ‘I told so you so’ for having predicted a black swan, or something like that. The fundamental difference today between the left and right is the latter is on the side of… Continue reading The daily view 11/6/2023 Taleb, Republican Aristocracy, Wokeness, and Philosophy

Item #1: Bitcoin is lagging tech again. As shown below, QQQ, in blue, is up an astonishing 4%–one of its biggest weeks ever for the year–, while Bitcoin is flat: So I’m back to being always right again. I was right about tech recovering, having added to the dip on Meta and SVIX last week.… Continue reading The daily view 11/3/2023: Stocks surge and Bitcoin falls, IQ circularity, Ozempic, South Korea schools

Growth Is Up. So What’s Up With the Economy? I don’t think we should minimize that strength. America’s economic performance since the end of the pandemic has substantially outpaced the rest of the developed world and has also very substantially bested the performance of the Chinese economy. Inflation is still elevated, but is well below… Continue reading Why Americans are incredulous about the strong economy

In 2022 as Substack was gaining popularity as the hottest new blogging platform, I had amassed of list over thirty blogs I was following. I would refresh the blogs daily, but this proved cumbersome and I would sometimes lose track of certain blogs if they hadn’t been updated in a while. I could use the… Continue reading Why Substack’s subscription model does Not scale well, and is losing ground to Twitter

Item 1: It looks like I was wrong about Bitcoin, with the price having surged to $34,000…or am i? It’s just a deadcat bounce, and I remain short. I am down on my latest short at $28.5k, but not a problem. Temporary losses are an inevitable part of trading. According to this excellent article, the… Continue reading The daily view: 10/27/2023: No Bitcoin ETF, Low-trust Societies, Meta/tech Earnings

From Richard Hanania’s post Against Idealism, this passage stood out: No one in the 1960s ever said “You know, I just read Marcuse and, given his influence in intellectual circles, I can predict that in future decades we’ll have a country where you can’t have standardized tests in hiring and corporations will praise dead black… Continue reading Cognitive Screening is Legal, the last holdout of wokeness

Speculation that GLP-1 weight loss drugs will hurt food companies’ sales is way premature. I discuss this in an earlier blog post, but to expound: These drugs are expensive, can have bad side effects, and success is highly variable. Some people lose a lot of weight (like going from 270lbs to 170lbs), and others much… Continue reading Food companies have little to fear from new weight loss drugs, and why I am NOT investing in Eli Lilly