Jurgis

I'm not gonna defend the results. However, what in your (and author's) opinion should have been done? The simple answer is not having exams at all. Would that have worked better for poor kids? Colleges would have been forced to use the same (or similar) info for their admissions that the computer used for exam: "an array of student information, including teacher-estimated grades and past performance by students in each school". There is also a conclusion by author: "Algorithms should not be used to assign student grades." This is bullcrap. First of all, they already are with pretty much zero opposition: https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/scores/how/ (yeah, human is in the loop, but still) Second, the answer is to improve algorithms rather than discard them. Author also is wrong on a number of other counts: they don't agree with "Computers make neutral decisions" - yeah, computers can have bias, but human graders definitely have bias - and are susceptible to fatigue, misunderstandings, and even fraud. I'd guess that's one of the reasons why ETS uses algorithmic scorer in addition to human one. Author tries to score a lot of points with claims: "Algorithms can’t monitor or detect hate speech, ... they can’t predict crime, they can’t determine which job applicants are more suited than others, they can’t do effective facial recognition" - except that algorithms can do all of these and they do all of these and they are getting better in doing all of these. Yeah, you can prohibit using AI for facial recognition by law, but it does not mean that algorithms are or won't be better in recognizing people than people are. Anyway, it sucks to be caught in this, but the way to go is to improve algorithms rather than giving up and going back to warm and fuzzy human-graded default.

I think it's a great time to buy multi-million dollar house with 80%+ mortgage. But I won't do it. ::) I agree with what thepupil said: You do you.

There was a thread or two in the past. I am interested in talking about Angel investment opportunities. However, there are issues: - For a lot of Angel investment opportunities, information is not openly available. It's possible to share info between friends, but it's harder to post information on public forum. There can be multiple parties upset about it. - As you may have seen on CoBF it's difficult to talk about companies managed by people who read/post on CoBF. This is an issue talking about Angel investment opportunities. From my experience even in non-recorded public meetings people usually tip-toe around the negatives of startup companies - nobody wants to offend and nobody wants to be kicked out of future contacts, allocations, board seats, etc. This is again magnified by posting on public forum. Jeff Bezos does not care what we say about Amazon on CoBF. Joe StartupCEO might care a lot. - Unlike public companies, the opportunities to invest into a startup are only open to qualified investors and only for certain amount of time. So there might not be much interest in companies that are not raising money currently. And for companies raising money currently, see my points above. - Edit: Point above is exacerbated for foreign investors. Not sure if you're in US or Canada, but cross-border angel investing AFAIK is even harder to discuss and accomplish. Anyway, I'm willing to try somehow, feel free to start thread(s), feel free to PM me if you want to talk in private. BTW, there's an Angel investing event on Wednesday that netnet posted about: https://www.cornerofberkshireandfairfax.ca/forum/events/life-science-investor-meeting-sept-2-and-sept-9/ You can ask netnet if it's OK to talk about the companies that present afterwards. (I may have to miss part of the event :( )

So he basically says that indexing and growth investing works. 8)

Apple ad is complete FUD and one of the reasons I don't buy Apple products. Apple ads were fake news before there were fake news. Credit card numbers being overshared? Please. Apple privacy solution for not sharing CC numbers? Buy through Apple app store and pay 30% more. Good job! Typical Apple milking their fanboyz. #FreeFortnite

I marked "I plan to get whatever vaccine is available first". Basically though, the vaccine will not be made available to everyone immediately. I am not going to office and I am not an essential worker, so I will wait until people on the front lines and people who want/need to be vaccinated first get vaccinated. By that time likely there will be evidence which vaccine(s) are safe and effective. So I'd say I'm gonna get vaccine late late this year or next year.

If you want to analyze this, you perhaps should figure out who their customers would be: people comfortable with tech? people uncomfortable with tech? etc. You should realize that they are entering area where a lot of companies tried and are still trying. Oh look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuro (But then you could argue that Nuro is valued at 2.7B by Sh1tBank and NowRx is raising at 65M pre money...) ::) If it's "idea is easy to come up with", then you are betting on execution. How good is the team and how well they can execute? "Nationwide" has the same issues Uber/Lyft have: there's really no benefit of offering service nationwide. Customer from LA does not care about service availability in NYC. And the cost issues are similar to what Uber/Lyft have: they have to have delivery transportation and drivers. They can outsource that to Uber/Lyft or whatever platform(s) other delivery services use, but that does not reduce costs. On the positive side Uber/Lyft could acquire them. ::) It is somewhat natural extension to UberEats. Anyway, yeah, if they manage to grow and they market themselves well, they could go to huge valuation. Yet OTOH if they raise a lot (even at higher valuations), then you gonna be diluted. And you cannot sell until they either IPO or are trading on "private" markets. So even if they raise at 2B or whatever, it's still not a real gain. Your exit is either a sale or IPO or active "private" market if you're not restricted to sell on such. Just ignore my thoughts though. You don't want to end up "I passed on 200x bagger next-Amazon because Jurgis was so negative". 8)

I took a look. It has a lot of data and it looks pretty good. Still, I won't pay for TIKR since M* for free is good enough for me. ::) Just MO though.

I have not used tikr.com. Morningstar is free (for me) and covers pretty much all companies I look at. ::)

I wouldn't invest in this. IMO there's very little novelty, there is no moat, there's not much benefit for customers, there's huge competition and they are unlikely to become profitable soon (or at all). That's not to say they cannot be acquired or get a huge follow up rounds from someone (Softbank, cough, cough). ::)

FTSE says that management shares were erroneously included in June calculation but won't be included going forward.

It might work out, but looking at financials, they haven't grown for last 5 years pretty much. Unless you know the area well, the counterargument is that it's not attractive for growth/momo crowd and the valuation differential will persist. (Growth/momo crowd is not completely stupid. They don't necessarily invest in companies that don't grow.)

I feel like its also the way its packaged (e.g. very short videos, plus some other stuff). Making algorithms that figure out what content you will like based on what other content you have liked, and what other users like you have liked, is very doable by companies not named ByteDance. I guess you could argue it's just that much better than the algorithms determining what to put in front of people on YouTube, Netflix, Spotify, Facebook, etc, but I really don't think that is the case. I don't use Tik Tok. Perhaps I should. CCP needs more info about me. I don't use Spotify. Netflix recommendations are mediocre. Youtube recommendations are so so. If you watch 2-3 videos from a single author/person, recommendations get stuck on tons of other videos from the same source. If you watch variety of music videos, it does a bit better IMO suggesting related ones. I mostly gave up on Facebook algorithm. When I go to FB, I just go to the friends&family pages and go through their posts. I only go to my "timeline" or whatever it's called last and don't really spend time on it. IMO it's quite mediocre too.

Yeah, I'm sure it's robinhood retail traders who are the main moving force for the price of this $420bn market cap company. Apple too, I'm sure. Yes agree of course it isn’t just Robinhood folks moving this with their own tiny capital - but think we can both agree with the level of algorithmic trading, Trend following and momentum strategies out there.....that a wave of retail mania is amplified by institutional money such that it can feed on itself and get a Tesla situation Of course it's a hot stock, but the narrative about Elon Musk taking advantage of Robinhood traders is just pointless bitterness. Sometimes things you don't like will go up, sometimes things you like will go down. No need to find villains and blame day traders/algos/momo/market makers/the fed/etc. It all sounds too much like #BagholderQuotes No position , no bags, no guru, no method, no teacher......as Van the Man would say. Just tell me how many US listed billion dollar companies doing an equity capital raise go down the ATM route........it’s unusual....and you ultimately have to ask why and the obvious answer is institutional money wouldn't touch it at this price or the discount to market close required to get it done would be too great such that it would scare the horses. No? Well, Saudis confirmed financing at $420! Doh. 8)

That's also my approach to active investing. +1

Winning in casino is simple: go to Vegas and put all your money on red. If it doesn't stop on red, don't put the money there.

OT I don't buy Apple devices, but I saw a friend with iPad with screen full of ads in Safari. So I'm gonna be quite skeptical about Apple's fight for privacy.

Keep spreading the gospel, brother! 8)

My mortgage person told me that they locked me 2.75%.

Summary of copyrighted material from letters: Performance sucks. Nothing to see there there. I find it ridiculous that performance numbers are copyrighted material, but hey whatever floats their boats... ::)

Right, so the buyer pays $30B to Bytedance and $70B into Trumpy shush fund. It's the art of the deal!

Sam Zell should lead by example and go into a crowded office every day.

Dow is just f&*ked up index.

Jurgis, That's micro-aggression and discriminatory towards those of us ESL speakers. #quit_your_privilege :) Sorry, it's just my OCD & spectrum showing up. ::) Sorry, it's just my OCD & spectrum showing up. ::) Sorry, it's just my OCD & spectrum showing up. ::)

If investment manager misspells Buffett as Buffet, be very skeptical. ::)