BC FINANCE
Saved by @tradrdoc

Our intuitions often leads us astray. A good reminder: study counterintuitive math and economic results.

Here are 9 of them 🧵

 The Birthday Paradox

In a room of 23 people, there's a >50% chance that 2 people share the same birthday.

This type of probabilistic thinking does *not* come naturally to many people.
The Coastline Paradox

Fractal geometry is also confounding:

The coastline of a landmass does not have a well-defined measurement. As the unit of measurement gets smaller (eg. from KMs to cm), the length increases without limit.
Winner's Curse

In an auction, the winning bid will usually exceed the intrinsic worth of an item leading to a significant overpay (and negative net profit for the winner).
Braess's Paradox

Removing an extra road can make everyone's commute time faster.

Why? The existence of a "fast" road leads to congestion because everyone uses it. If you remove the shortcut, traffic flows better.
Market for Lemons

If a seller has slightly more info than a buyer (eg used cars), it can lead to market failure:

◻️Buyer will pay price below market (b/c they can't confirm quality)
◻️High-quality sellers leave market b/c can't get good price
◻️Only low-quality sellers remain
The Potato Paradox

If you take 100lbs of potatoes which are 99% water by weight and you let it dry so that they are 98% water, their new weight is 50lbs.
The Pizza Paradox

One 18-inch pizza has more "pizza" than two 12-inch pizzas (still trying to process this fact).
Littlewood's Law of Miracles

An example of the law of large numbers: A person can expect to experience events with odds of one in a million at the rate of about once per month.

(Similarly: in a world with ~8B people, a one-in-billion event will happen 8x a month)
Queuing Paradox

If bank customers take on average 10 minutes to serve and they arrive randomly at a rate of 5.8 per hour...then the waiting time for

◻️one teller is *5 hours*
◻️two tellers is *3 minutes*

Waiting time is reduced by 93x by adding a second teller.
PS. I write interesting threads like this 1-2x a week. Follow @TrungTPhan to catch them in your feed.

Also check out my weekly Saturday newsletter:https://t.co/jGZs8brnVR
Sources

Here's the breakdown of the queueing theory: https://t.co/2vunn5mMTz

Check this awesome article for dozens more counterintuitive math, science + physics facts: https://t.co/8sejjm6AkH
VERY counterintuitive fact: Gabriel's Horn is a geometric figure with:

◻️ *infinite* surface area
◻️ *finite* volume
Deep dive on the Birthday Paradox https://t.co/3AAXUUVGP9

More from Trung Phan 🇨🇦

Trung Phan \U0001f1e8\U0001f1e6
Trung Phan 🇨🇦...
@TrungTPhan
For decades, Jeff Bezos shunned ads.

But now, Amazon’s ad business is huge: it’s on a $30B+ annual run rate (more than 2x the combined sales of Twitter, Snap and Pinterest).

Here’s how it happened 🧵


1/ Amazon doesn’t break out its ad business separately in financial filings. However, most analyst believe ads make up the majority of its “Other” revenue segment.

This figure has exploded from $1B in 2015 to a current annual run rate of ~$32B.


2/ In 2009, Bezos said “ads are the price you pay for a crappy product”.

But the business is so lucrative that Amazon’s interface has been swamped with ads:

◻️ First 3-7 search results (left in red)
◻️ Most of the product page (right in blue)


3/ Prior to the rise of ads, Amazon set out to build the ultimate organic customer recommendations engine.

The approach was codified in a famed 2003 research paper: “Amazon Recommendations: Item-to-Item Collaborative Filtering.”


4/ In recent years, Amazon organic recommendations:

◻️"Customers who bought this also bought this"
◻️"Customers who viewed also viewed"

Have been replaced w/ ads:

◻️ "Sponsored products related to"
◻️ "Brands related to this category"
TECH
Trung Phan \U0001f1e8\U0001f1e6
Trung Phan 🇨🇦...
@TrungTPhan
The most memorable interview I did this year was w/ Stanley Druckenmiller, who famously made $1B shorting the British Pound.

The trading legend's track record includes a 30-year stretch returning 30%+ a year (without a single down year).

Here are 8 investing lessons🧵

1/ Make concentrated bets in high conviction plays


2/ Concentrated bets can sometimes *reduce* risk


3/ Use a multi-disciplinary approach to investing


4/ Know when to sell (he never uses a stop loss)
FINANCE
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Trung Phan \U0001f1e8\U0001f1e6
Trung Phan 🇨🇦...
@TrungTPhan
The Wall Street Bets due diligence on Wendy’s is gold.

The catalysts are:
◻️ The release of a new summer salad
◻️ The @Wendys Twitter account, which has mastered “meta pragmatic roasting” (which is effective with younger people)
◻️ The fact it literally sells chicken tendies


OP:

Here’s a more fundamentals-driven analysis of Wendy’s

https://t.co/A2k19S9M7J


😂😂😂


Further Wendy’s analysis from @CliffordAsness !!
PUMP DUMP
Trung Phan \U0001f1e8\U0001f1e6
Trung Phan 🇨🇦...
@TrungTPhan
“I spend too much at Starbucks” is a legendary meme.

It's also not an accident: the coffee retailer -- worth $120B -- uses many psychological hacks in its store and menu designs to get you to drop more cash.

Here are 11 of them 🧵


1/ Starbucks is all about positioning

The chain has higher prices vs competitors. But that's the point.

People typically assign higher value/quality to higher prices. Known as "irrational value assessment", this makes Starbucks an everyday luxury that people will pay for.


2/ Premium brand = premium customer base

By setting its prices higher, Starbucks attracts clientele that are relatively price insensitive.

Starbucks frequently raises its prices with little negative effect to its bottom line.


3/ "More than coffee"

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz created the premium feel by emphasizing experience:

◻️Positioned SBUX as a "third place" (b/t home, work)
◻️Brought bean grinding in-store (for aroma)
◻️Banned auto espresso machines (it took away from the barista craft)


4/ Lighting and visual cues

The Starbucks operations is about "flow", efficiently moving people around the store+ getting them to spend.

To form lines, it directs people to well-lit areas (usually the merchandise, which provides the added benefit of nudging products for sale).
BUSINESS MENTAL MODELS
Trung Phan \U0001f1e8\U0001f1e6
Trung Phan 🇨🇦...
@TrungTPhan
A Netflix user will browse the app for 90 seconds and leave if they find nothing.

Thumbnail artwork is actually NFLX's most effective lever to influence a viewer's choice. A user will look at one for only 1.8 seconds, so NFLX spends huge to optimize them.

Here's a breakdown🧵


1/ Spoiler alert: humans are visual animals.

Our eyes move 3-4x per second to process information and we can analyze an image in as little as 13 milliseconds.


2/ In 2014, Netflix consumer research showed that thumbnail artwork:

◻️ is "the biggest influencer...to watch content"
◻️ is the focus of 82% of browsing time

A user looks at one for only 1.8 seconds. If they can't find Netflix content in 90 seconds, they'll leave the app.


3/ Consequently, Netflix uses an elaborate thumbnail selection process for each of its 200m+ users.

The process is called aestethic visual analysis (AVA), which starts by pulling all the frames from a video.

For reference: a 1hr episode of "Stranger Things" has 86k frames.


4/ In a process known as "Frame Annotation", each frame is tagged with metadata identifying key variables:

◻️ Saliency
◻️ Frame #
◻️ Brightness / Contrast
◻️ Nudity probability
◻️ Face / skin tone
ALL , MARKETING INSIGHTS

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Subhadip Nandy
Subhadip Nandy
@SubhadipNandy16
Two year back thread on MFI, someone liked this so came up in notifications . Rather than running around 100s of indicators, I have made this my go to indicator under any circumstances and have been using this for years


This thread actually had some great answers , one can learn a lot about the thought processes of different traders from the answers. Please go thru them
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MagaFarley
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@MagaFarley
THREAD:

What if I can prove @KLoeffler has direct financial ties to China, doing just a simple open source dive into her recent past?

It’s pretty obvious...follow along:
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Goldstein
Goldstein
@MrGoldstein7
The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial institutions on the planet.

Devised and put in motion by 0.0001% of people, who honestly believe this world and society need somekind of reset. You might also be wondering what are we resetting from/to as this new firmware is desperately trying to upload itself by another tsunami of mainstreamed propaganda.

One of the most obvious reasons for pushed reset is the infinite expansion economic model reaching its limits and going bust, a fact admitted even by themselves.

However, the super wealthy apparently want to continue staying super wealthy and have no intention of abandoning their position at the top of the world.

Nature’s resources found on Earth are definitely limited in their absolute quantity thus excluding an idea of infinite extraction and wealth accumulation. But this is not their understanding of limited resources, you see.
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Shravan Venkataraman \U0001f525\U0001f680\U0001f4b0
Shravan Venkataraman 🔥...
@theBuoyantMan
** MEGA THREAD ON Cryptocurrencies/Blockchain**

I wanted to know the best resources to learn about cryptocurrencies and blockchain for someone with zero knowledge. I asked Twitter, and Twitter answered.

This thread is a compilation of the best resources I was recommended. 👇👇

Let's start with ** BOOKS **

The first thing you should do before you pick up any book:

Learn about Bitcoin & Ethereum by reading the respective whitepapers.

- [Bitcoin white paper](https://t.co/cErOaFn6QL) by Satoshi Nakamoto

- [Ethereum White paper] (https://t.co/0g5kYCGJGq) by Vitalik Buterin

Even if you are not tech savvy, you can get a good grasp about how blockchain functions from these papers.

1) *The Basics of Bitcoins and Blockchains: An Introduction to Cryptocurrencies and the Technology that Powers Them* by Antony Lewis

This book covers topics such as the history of Bitcoin, the Bitcoin blockchain, and Bitcoin buying, selling, and mining.

It also answers how payments are made and how transactions are kept secure.

Other cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency pricing are examined, answering how one puts a value on cryptocurrencies and digital tokens.
FINANCE
Dr Tony Goldstone \U0001f499
Dr Tony Goldstone 💙...
@goldstone_tony
Cont👇
26/ If you have paid AA tax between 1995-22 it is likely your charges will be lower in 1995 than in 2015 scheme. This is because the AA rules are particularly unfair to members of 2 schemes. If your AA charges go down during any of the remedy period, you can claim a refund

27/ It does not matter if you paid cash for AA or used scheme pays, if you overpaid these charges can be refunded. If you charges go up (unlikely unless you have “MHO” status) you may have to pay back tax. There is usually a statutory limit of 4 years for paying underpaid tax.

28/ This limit of 4 yrs of underpaid tax was referenced in the consultation document 👇, although the position is less clear in the full consultation response. We will need to see the final regulations to understand the implications.


29/ The consultation document also stated that members who choose reformed 2015 in retirement & incurred AA charges would be “compensated”. Again detail in is less clear in the full consultation response. We will need to see the final regulations to understand the implications.


30/An important area are “contingent decisions”. Many members took decisions i.e. “opting out” of the scheme based on the age discrimination. @theBMA argued certain cases should automatically be compensated vs having to prove this on a “case by case” basis
FINANCE

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Here we have a rare example of a GIF you can actually hear. TOMA. 💪


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Never give up. 💪 #GraciasFernando


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Aneesh Philomina Antony
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If u are looking to enter a scrip just before the breakout
what would u look for?
How would u identify scrips just before breakout?

Here are a few pointers
Carefully understand the them and use at ur own discretion
(All comments r compiled from a question i posed)

1/23

Price is testing the same resistance repeatedly since long.
But now in recent times it's forming multiple candles near the same resistance with low volume.
Observe it and see for opposite move.
As soon as u get a positive candle, get in to it.

2/23

1. Volume buildup (vol > when resistance point created) along with, increase in OI, increase in delivery % on HTF
2. On LTF, price stalling around breakout area for at least 1-2hr.
3. No major events.

3/23

Stock reaching breakout LVL with HL-HH
Contraction of price and volume near it especially near 20 days ma.
If there is any breach of the latest HL it should be followed by a bullish candle with good volume.
Left side of the chart has a rally with a very steep slope of ma.

4/23

Number of wide range green bars with high volumes.
If stock is at its ATH then it adds more conviction bcz there wont b supply after that point

Consolidation below the resistance, volume of the candles & strong bullish candle closing at near highs just below the resistance

5/23
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Pran Katariya
Pran Katariya
@KatariyaPran
The Straddle is my favorite trade these days. But more often than not, one needs to adjust to make a good return from it. There are many ways to do this depending on your view, psychology and imagination. Will discuss a few that I use

The Straddle is a delta neutral strategy and it is important to keep deltas in check during the course of the Trade and not let them run away from you. Of course Volatility is the elephant in the room- but not going there as that will require a separate discussion

The first and most common method is to go 'inverted.' That is to say to shift the untested side to generate additional Premium and increase the runway to Breakeven. So if you start with a Straddle at 700 and price goes to 740, you can move the PE up to say 720.

How much should you move the untested side? While again this is a matter of skill, experience and artistry, the rule of thumb is to cut deltas by half. Remember, prices will move and you have to allow sufficient room for them to fluctuate

The second method is to shift the entire Straddle in the direction of the move. So if you have a 700 Straddle and Price goes to 740, you can shift the Straddle to 720. If you time this right, it can generally be done at virtually no cost or minimal cost.
ALL , OPTION SELLING , STRADDLE OPTION SELLING
Brianne Kimmel \U0001f4ac
Brianne Kimmel 💬...
@briannekimmel
Shocking fact: Millennial men are less likely to work than any other age and gender demographic in America.

Today, there are 500,000 young men missing from the U.S. workforce.

Research suggests video games & improved leisure tech plays a role in the problem. 👇 Thread:

Following the 2007 to 2009 recession, 25 to 34 year old men exited high school with fewer middle-skill job opportunities than years prior.

During this time, we saw an increased number of men living with parents & choosing unemployment over lower paying jobs.

It's estimated that 24M millennials live w/ their parents.

1 in 4 living in their parents’ home neither go to school nor work.

What's more surprising? 9 in 10 who lived with their parents a year ago are still living there w/ no plans to leave.

Economists are calling millennial men a lost generation.

According to economist David Dorn:

“If you get to the point where you’re turning 30, you’ve never held a real job and you don’t have a college education, then it is very hard to recover at that point.”

Economists suggest this choosiness is a generational trait.

Forbes interview w/ a high school educated man:

"I’m very quick to get frustrated when people refuse to pay me what I’m worth."
“People feel that they have choice nowadays, and they
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\u0936\u094d\u0930\u0940\u092e\u093e\u0932\u0940 \u0939\u093f\u0924\u0947\u0936 \u0905\u0935\u0938\u094d\u0925\u0940
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@HiteshAwasthi89
Bhu Varaha Swamy Temple

Bhu Varaha Swamy temple is a Hindu temple, located at Srimushnam, in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Constructed in the Dravidian style of architecture...


the temple is dedicated to Varaha (Bhu Varaha Swamy), the boar-avatar of the god Vishnu and his consort Lakshmi as Ambujavalli Thayar.

The temple had contributions from Medieval Cholas of the 10th century with later expansions by Thanjavur Nayak king Achuthappa Nayak.


A granite wall surrounds the temple, enclosing all the shrines and the temple tanks. There is a seven-tieredrajagopuram, the temple’s gateway tower.

Six daily rituals and three yearly festivals are held at the temple, of which the Chariot festival....


celebrated during the Tamil month of Vaikasi (April–May), being the most prominent. The festival also symbolises Hindu-Muslim unity in the region – the flag of the chariot is provided by Muslims; they take offerings from the temple and present to Allah in the mosques.


Source & Pic credit : Anusri
ALL