Jurgis

Ah the fun of illiquid nanocap investing. You coulda grabbed the WELX shares yesterday and made 20% in one day... ;) 8)

No, we haven't. We have not gone through "a kind of thing" where AI does everything better than humans. You can argue that it won't happen (anytime soon). I think it will happen within 50 years or so. You are welcome to disagree. But you can't say that we have gone through it before.

Yeah, like AAPL, for example. 8) So according to your arguments it should be trivial to outperform market cap based index. Just buy the cheap stuff and don't buy expensive stuff. Can you explain then why pretty much nobody outperforms market cap based indexes for 5-10-15-20 years? Are you going to be the one who outperforms?

Oh really? Let's have an example: Company A: P/E 1, market cap 1B Company B: P/E 100, market cap 1M Market cap weighted index of A and B has "most expensive most and of the least expensive the least"? Seriously? I'm rather amazed on the number of false claims in this thread. Just not worth getting involved...

So how do you reconcile 1) with 2)? That's one of my big issues for the future. Of course, getting to 1) is even bigger issue perhaps. But, yeah, I agree with 1). Getting to 1) is gonna be bloody difficult (yeah, pun intended). Then - what do all these unemployed people on guaranteed income do for their lives? Eat/drink/inhale + watch movies/play video games? Is that a workable society? I don't know. Optimists will say culture/arts. But will we really have 90%+ doing culture/arts? What if computers do culture/arts better?

You are way overoptimistic (or should I say pessimistic?). 15-20 years in best case. But, yeah, once it happens, zero jobs for anyone. ;)

Might be a dump by someone. Looks like 6K shares into illiquid market, then 1.5+1.2K. Whether the seller knows something... who knows. That's always the risk with illiquid microcaps. These dumps might be buying opportunity - or time to sell... ::)

+1 to what fareastwarriors said

NYC: Hmm, in the past I've been able to get hotels in Manhattan in $1X0 range (not on holidays). Maybe things have changed.

Kelly's definitely applies to arb. That's what Thorp used it for. But it probably won't help you with this. Assuming 2.8% gain on approval, 95% chance of approval and 21% loss on cancellation, Kelly's tells you to leverage your bankroll 2.7x. :) Of course if the approval chance drops to 90%, then Kelly's becomes 70% of your bankroll. In general, if your loss outcome is not 100%, Kelly's is very aggressive.

I think this is somewhat tough situation. On one hand, like flesh says, some organizations succeed and do better than others due to the sales push tactics. This was probably one of the reasons WFC outperformed other banks. On the other hand, it sucks to be the ones forced to sell (never done it myself, but had relatives in retail where they had to push CCs and stuff), it sucks to be customer to whom unnecessary crap is pushed, it sucks to be person who's fired with black record, it sucks to be person who resorts to fraud, it sucks ultimately for WFC where 2M fake accounts brought very little business, but a huge losses in reputation/etc. There has to be balance. It is likely WFC overstepped. Whether they can work out a good solution for the future is one of the questions on how well they will do.

Cool quiz. I got 35, and "A first-generation upper-middle-class person with middle-class parents" essentially describes me. I got 12. The quiz might correctly describe how much I know or connect with general American culture. OTOH, obviously I'm not "A second-generation (or more) upper-middle-class person who has made a point of getting out a lot.". I came to USA with exactly zero dollars in the pocket. This doesn't mean that my goal in life is to spend it on American entertainment or lifestyle. And regarding empathy: most of the people I know back in Lithuania - including some relatives - live way below US poverty level. Anyway, was interesting. :)

IMO there's only one issue people really care out of three above: growing inequality. If this was solved - not easy, but if - the globalization and immigration backlash would go to the fringes at most. Same with racism and nationalism. People hate immigrants and foreign products mostly because they feel they are poor and immigrants take their jobs/wages/etc. This happens much less if society is prosperous. (And we could argue that Europe really needs immigrants with its aging and declining population, but try to tell this to Europeans right now...) Unfortunately, you might be right that situation won't improve and we will continue to have the demagogues running the racist, nationalist and possibly authoritarian tickets. We can only hope that Europe doesn't get too many of such elected. I'm more optimistic about US for now - situation here is IMO is better (even with Trump candidacy), the society more diverse, more multicultural and more accepting (even with the anti-Mexican and anti-Muslim rhetoric).

If you guys are talking cap gains taxes, you also should remember that for majority of Americans majority of investments would be held in tax deferred accounts, which pay no taxes. Very few Americans have enough money to save more than the 401(k)+IRA limit per year. Most don't save even that. Also, as we all know most investors don't outperform indexes. Even most CoBF investors don't outperform indexes. If we add cap gains taxes, I'd guess pretty much nobody outperforms indexes (which are naturally tax efficient to hold) - unless they buy and hold pretty much forever. So really if you have to invest in taxable account, just buy index fund or something that you can hold forever, whether cap gains are taxed at 15% or 25% or whatever. You'll likely end up winning.

Isn't that dangerous? I mean if car just dies on you in busy highway at 70mph middle or fast lane?

I think there is already a movie in the works starring Jennifer Lawerence In the movie Elizabeth Holmes will probably land a plane on Hudson while being attacked by snakes and FDA officials.

Nice post, ajc.

Internet pron? 8)

YES. ;D 8) ;D 8)

At this point, they might as well skip the 7 and go to the Note 8 next year. They are probably halfway through that development cycle already. It might be a good idea to re-brand it and not call it the "Note" any more. You may be quite right. :)

This is sad. Let's hope Samsung can work out a solution for some kind of Note 7 reboot.

What is really sad - and this applies not just to the current USA presidential campaign - is that in second decade of 21st century humans are still lying through the teeth to each other and also believing in outright lies that can be fact-checked easily. The pessimist in me thinks that even if people had a direct data feed into their brain and could check anything instantly, a lot of them would still choose to ignore the actual facts. How can we progress to evaluating theories and complex claims on validity if we can't even evaluate facts? To paraphrase Gandhi, "fact-based humans would be a great idea".

Good post, flesh. 8)

I'm somewhat amazed about people who earn 80-120K+ whining about low income. They are somewhere in the top 7-10% by income assuming 2 earners in household ( http://www.mybudget360.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/distribution-of-household-income-united-states1.png ). On one hand, I understand your explanation of this: they are riled about the 1%-ers or 0.1%-ers and the "exponential thing". On the other hand, even if we did something about income inequality, these people would likely not benefit at all. I.e. if 1%-ers or 0.1%-ers paid more taxes, and the bottom 10-25% got more earned income credits (or something like that), the 80-120K-ers would still be where they are. Would they still whine? Is that the human condition of not being happy whatever you have? (Yeah, we should move this to some other thread... 8) )

Ah, this talks about intergenerational mobility. So it does not capture immigrant earnings mobility. Makes sense and matches what I said.