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I think my Feb 2023 article America’s Threats are Always on the Horizon, Hypothetical aged well. In early to mid 2023 everyone assumed that the next crisis would involve at least one of the following: -Nuclear war or a world war involving Ukraine, Russia, and or neighboring countries -AI-apocalypse due to unstoppable GPU clusters -Trade… Continue reading Looking for crisis in the wrong place

From Reuters, Elon Musk’s X is a black hole of value: Put it all together, and X isn’t just worth less than Musk paid for it, but likely less than its debt. Assume that the company’s revenue last year was $4.7 billion, based on results before it was taken private. If advertising has dropped by… Continue reading The situation at Twitter isn’t as bad as the media hype would suggest

Item #1: Bitcoin surged to $28,500 on Monday on hopes an ETF will be approved. Here we go again. If history is any guide, all Bitcoin ETFs will be rejected still. The SEC has until January 10, 2024 to decide on the Ark Bitcoin ETF, which it almost certainly will reject. Three months is an… Continue reading The Daily View: 10/18/2023: Meta, Bitcoin, and more

I saw this going viral. The war on ad-blockers is in full-swing: Puts on Google? This makes me want to buy calls. AI is important, but as I said, the future is more advertising and increasingly pervasive advertising, not AI, VR, or blockchain. Most of FAANG-tech’s resources or priorities are about: -thwarting ad-blocking (detecting when… Continue reading Ads are everything, not AI

One would assume that the unfolding crisis in Gaza would engender more division in the US. But historically, crisis in the Middle East has tended to have a unifying effect, if presidential approval ratings are used as a proxy for unity. A higher approval rating generally means a more united nation. However this is only… Continue reading Middle East conflicts are good for unity

In a series of tweets over the past week, until the crisis in Gaza abruptly shifted priorities, Richard Hanania claims he could produce work of the same quality as Shakespeare, generating predicable rebuke from his followers. The appeal to authority fallacy is invoked: This seems like an appeal to authority. It’s superior based on it… Continue reading The appeal to authority: when it works and doesn’t

Bitcoin keeps falling like I said it would, having dropped below $27k, on its way to $20k and lower: This proves yet again that Bitcoin is useless as a hedge against crisis, this time crisis in the Middle East. In September the SEC put all Bitcoin ETF approvals on hold until 2024, again like I… Continue reading The daily view 10/10/2023: Bitcoin Falls, and Crisis in the Middle East

Similar to how Renaissance Technologies pioneered quant trading and made a lot of money by going against conventional wisdom, that being the dominance of ‘buy and hold’ investing, so did I. The majority of people who short Bitcoin lose money, and one would assume that a Bitcoin shorting strategy would fail spectacularly when Bitcoin is… Continue reading The One-Man Renaissance Technologies, and why shorting Bitcoin is easier than shorting stocks

From Taleb The problem with pple like SBF is knowing a tiny bit of statistics to parrot abt it, but not understanding processes (that is, dynamics across time).Shakespeare has survived nearly half a millennium of filtering by time. To Jane Street: He would have flunked my job interview. https://t.co/igQqqf9nPB — Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) October… Continue reading Shakespeare , SBF and Survival

I saw this going viral: Walmart says users of weight loss drugs are buying less food, and a related Elon tweet: Amazing that Ozempic is actually affecting @Walmart food sales! While no drug is without side effects, health problems associated with obesity almost certainly exceed the risks of GLP-1 agonists. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October… Continue reading Does Mounjaro and Ozempic threaten food sales? unlikely