It looks like every symptom on Google search leads to cancer.

So, when you have a symptom that Google screams CANCER, should you be afraid?

Before I answer that for you, let's talk about Occam's Razor and how you can use it to simplify your life.

Let's dive in. 👇👇👇

1/ In the early 1900s, two physicists studied space and time and arrived at a similar conclusion: things tend to go a little bonkers within the space-time continuum.

Ex: The closer we get to moving at the speed of light, the more we slow down.

2/ Both the scientists arrived at the same results through their equations & derivations. But both had different explanations.

One suggested that the phenomenon was due to the changes that took place within "the ether". Another didn't refer to the ether at all.

3/ The latter won the Nobel prize and the world reveres him as a genius.

The former was the physicist named Lorentz.

The latter was Einstein.

This was the Einstein-Lorentz Relativity priority dispute that we are talking about.

4/ Lorentz's explanation wasn't given preference because according to science, the ether doesn't exist. When that's introduced into the equation, it makes things complicated.

Einstein used no references to the ether, and his simpler explanation rooted in scientific method won.

1) The Larger Impact of the GameStop Investor Wars

"The fundamental issue currently being fought over is who gets to have a role in determining financial value, access and

Subjectivity in risk management --

I would like to briefly talk about risk mgmt in this thread (something that is not talked about much anywhere else)

The whole question of risk management is far from an objective subject.

1/11

One need at least one subjective piece of the puzzle to put it together, and that is an individual’s acceptance to risk.

Now that is subjective, meaning there is no rule that says how risk averse you should be. That is an integral part of your emotional makeup 😊

2/11

The problem is, human nature does not operate to maximize gain, but rather to maximize the chance of gain, i.e., maximize the # of winning trades & minimize the # of losing trades.

The result is, not only is risk controlled, but profitability is also controlled 😆

3/11

In other words, playing it safe can be just as bad as taking too much risk, because you are not optimizing your winning trades nor the days with extended ranges.

Sure, it's possible to develop trading idea based on tick charts(scalping) that will on average be profitable

4/11

However, the average profits on individual trades from such methodologies are microscopic, and the trades they generate are so many that it not reasonable to scale up these strategies.

Dont even get me started on costs and slippages here 😊

5/11

1) Let's talk about my favourite video platform Bilibili. What is it, what it isn't and and how it makes money. It's been called the Chinese YouTube that that framing lacks imaginary.

The $bili stock also 5x in 2020 - who knew weebs could be so lucrative

2) Grossly simplified, it's the Chinese equivalent of Youtube. Except it's not. It's like if Youtube, Twitch, Steam, Patreon, TokyoPop and Netflix had a CRISPR-baby, and that baby was a weeb, but that weeb is also super down with Chinese Gen Z

3) Bilibili was founded in 2010 by avid Anime, Gaming and Comics (AGC) fan Yi Xu from a frustration that the mainstay Chinese anime platform kept crashing with no consistent access to his beloved vocaloid Miku

4) Serial entrepreneur Rui Chen went from an angel investor to CEO, having obtained Yi Xu's trust by correctly identified the origin of Bilibili as from the anime "A Certain Scientific Railgun". Anime knowledge is life.

5) Currently it's the biggest mainstream portal for the Chinese Gen Z with user-generated video sharing, live streaming, mobile gaming, online comics and event ticketing. It’s also diversified its content coverage with coverage on beauty, e-sports, pop culture and many others.

Individual decisions will always supercede to those of masses.

One of the theories which justifies why ITC struggles to have a big rally as other stocks have.

FMCG stocks' analysis from a different
view

Thread:

It is always easy to convince 10 people that you have something valuable to offer than to convince the same thing to 1000 people.

The same thing happens with ITC too.

The total number of shares outstanding of various FMCG companies are as follows

PGHH : 3.2 Crores
Nestle : 9.6 Crores
Marico: 129 Crores
Dabur : 177 Crores
HUL : 216 Crores

And just have a guess at what might be the number for ITC.

ITC has 1229 Crore Shares outstanding!!!!

Obviously some portion is held by promoters and FII/DIIs and some portion is not available for trading on a daily basis because it has some lock-in period.

When does a rally happens in a stock?

When every investor is just trying to buy the shares and the supply is too low.

This is what happened in Ruchi Soya when the free float was so less that even a small demand caused the upper circuit in the stock.

1/15
By now you have undoubtedly seen the craziness going on in the stock market, with a selection of stocks surging hundreds if not thousands of percent in a matter of days or even hours, along with a whole bunch of financial jargon. So what exactly is going on? #velshi

2/15
One major term you have heard is "shorting" - which is just placing a bet that a stock will go down in price. #velshi

3/15
An investor can make money on this type of gamble by borrowing shares from a broker, w/o initially paying for them, selling them immediately & then later buying the shares at a lower price & returning them to the broker, keeping the difference in price as profit. #velshi

4/15
For example, an investor borrows 1 share of stock XYZ at $200 & sells it. The investor now has $200 at an initial cost of $0. However, the investor stills owes the broker that 1 share. #velshi

5/15
The gamble is that the price of the stock XYZ will go down - let's say to $100 a share. The investor can then buy the 1 share that it owes the broker at that lower $100 price. #velshi

here’s a slightly wonky thread that people who use post-nominal letters will not like: let’s talk about real-time learning in quant-driven strategies and how to do it in practice, because a lot us do this as a result of real-world constraints. its basically TA with a dress-code.

so lets say you found a nee factor, but data is limited becuse it is new-ish? how the hell do you implement it without waiting eons in market-time? first: in small size because distributions are unknown. second: you update the calibration parameters dynamically as you go.

sometimes i am asked why i favor matching assets with volatility estimators instead of betas:
1) volatilities are not stationary but they undergo relatively synchronized regime changes
2) exponentially weighted vols are more responsive to changes in current conditions

3) betas are not stable in shorter terms and identifying changes takes longer and in the short term you get measurement errors if your sample is driving your benchmark
4) honestly the numerical methods are just simpler and i’m a dumdum so it makes it easier for me

5) for long-only baskets of different assets it avoids painful assumptions which may be wrong about correlation, which is good when you know your sample is low quality
6) for long-short baskets of like assets it avoids painful assumptions about intercepts (and therefore betas)

1) There are several secrets to becoming a successful #investor and most are hiding in plain sight.

2) This many sound like a cliché, but it hides a simple truth: buy quality companies. When I started #investing, I didn't feel like I could identify quality, so I bought a subscription to @TheMotleyFool and let them do the heavy lifting.

3) I paid $199 per year each for @TheMotleyFool #StockAdvisor and #RuleBreakers subscriptions. They have paid for themselves MANY times over.

4) Another obvious strategy that FAR too many #investors ignore is that "winners keep winning." "That one got away from me, and now I'm waiting for a pullback" has probably lost investors more money than every pullback combined.

5) To put this into practice, I look at the recent list of @TheMotleyFool recommendations and see which #stocks have put up double- or triple-digits gains in recent months and then try to understand why. In many cases, I end up buying the stock, even after 30% 40% 50% gains.

A thread of my favourite investing compilations, resources and rabbitholes I like to dive into:

The goat of compilations @kgao1412

Clark Square Capital (@ClarkSquareCap) has a great site of speeches, interview, books and other resources

Highly underrated is @choctopcap's neocities site

My good mate Erick Mokaya (@ekmokaya) has a great @mjmauboussin resource list

So You Made Some Money On GameStop And Want To Learn More About The Stock Market?

Here Are 7 Investment Books Worth Reading

With stocks in the news, there's been a lot of talk about where to learn investing.

Many suggestions are terrible with comments promoting Forex scammers, overpriced courses, or dull academic books like "The Intelligent Investor."

Luckily, there are also plenty of fun and interesting books on finance. Many of which are written by legendary investors who consistently beat the market.

And, there are plenty of fantastic biographies, covering historical market events and old school traders.

Below are SEVEN titles worth reading.

The first book is my personal favorite, but none of the others are in any particular order.

DISCLAIMER: I'm Using Amazon Referral Links Below, But It Doesn't Influence The List. Also, You Can Get All These At Your Local Library.

1. ONE UP ON ALL STREET BY PETER LYNCH

Peter Lynch is the greatest investor of all-time, outperforming Warren Buffett.

This is a fantastic, easy-to-read look at how to successfully buy winning stocks and multiple your money.

You can get a sense for how much net stock @RobinhoodApp customers were buying from the size of capital RH just

The $1bn is to cover future possible activity, so it doesn't matter for looking backwards.

It does confirm that solvency concerns drove the restriction. You don't raise 1bn of equity to cover your tracks if nefarious, nor if the restrictions were a tap from regulators.

They drew $500-600m and presumably met their NSCC margin call with cushion. Say they posted $350m (guess - you don't draw $500m to post $62m and shut down trading methinks).

I did a quick guesstimate yesterday - 20m normal going to 200m on 4x VaR and 800m net unsettled buys of GME.

That ain't 350m. So either the size of GME buy and/or VaR multiple are ~2x that or DTCC demanded more than 10% margin on unsettled GME trades.

You can't get a tight range of what the net GME buy was outstanding without knowing more, but you can bound it - the net GME buy *10% < 500m so less than 5bn ... not v helpful frankly.

Yesterday, I contemplated life. I thought about how we make plans and wait for the stars to align before finally living. I thought about how we rarely enjoy the fruits of our labour because we learnt to manage while coming up. 🧵

Moving from a scarcity to a prosperity mindset is difficult. It's why we keep reserving things for visitors and keep waiting for vacations before resting. It's why we accept less than ideal love and learn to compromise the sacred.

So, yesterday I decided to do something about the restlessness in my spirit. Something symbolic.

I discovered I typically sleep on only one side of my bed. It's a habit I picked up because I prefer being near the door. I chose to sleep in the middle instead and to "spread out". To use my multiple pillows instead of one.

Rather than start the day in my study, I drank coffee on my balcony, as I gazed at the beautiful mango tree in this thread. I realised there are chairs I've never sat on in my home and so, I sat on them.

The insights of the Austrian School of Economics will prove invaluable to investors navigating the distorted global economy of 2021.

This 18-tweet thread walks you through the definitive guide "Austrian School for Investors" by @scholarium_at, @RonStoeferle and @MarkValek.👇

1/ The roots of the Austrian School can be traced back to its founder Carl Menger, whose 1871 book Principles of Economics provided a new foundation for economic theory and solved the age-old "Paradox of Value".

From Menger's work we can derive 4 pillars of Austrian Investing.

2/ 1: The Subjective Theory of Value recognises that value is not determined by any inherent property of a good, nor by the amount of labor necessary to produce it, but by the importance an acting individual places on it for the achievement of their desired ends.

3/ 2: The Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility recognises that as more units of a homogenous good are acquired, the utility derived from each additional unit declines.

This wide-ranging insight helps explain important economic phenomena such as the historical emergence of money.

4/ 3: Methodological Individualism is the principle that economic phenomena result from the actions of individuals.

Collective magnitudes like “the people” cannot act, & therefore cannot be treated as ultimate causes.

Austrians are cautious in their use of economic aggregates.

A surge of retail stock trading over the last year lit the fuse that sent shares of GameStop rocketing higher without a clear business reason, market watchers say, squeezing hedge funds that had bet against the retailer and other companies that were out of favor on Wall Street

What is going on? Here are some answers 👇

More individuals have invested in stocks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and experts cite a number of reasons, including lockdowns boosted savings, stimulus putting cash into people’s pockets and extremely low interest rates

Also, a proliferation of trading apps allowed anyone with a smartphone to buy or sell stocks for free. Retail investors’ participation in U.S. equity order flows increased to nearly 20% in 2020 from 15% in 2019, data from Swiss bank UBS showed

What has been the impact of this surge in retail trading?

Big U.S. technology companies were among the beneficiaries last year. Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google saw record inflows as their businesses benefited from lockdowns and their stocks soared

💵 With unprecedented stimulus and easy money policies from central banks, investors then shifted to smaller stocks, especially ones that got beaten down during the pandemic

How I Trade

Easy. I trade with the trend. Buy low sell high for up trends. Sell high, buy low during down trends. I don’t care about fundamentals. Often I don’t even know what sector the stock is in. Half my trades, don’t even know the name of the company.

I look at the setup. I look for skew. If a few other variables line up. I stalk it for an entry.

Then I use options to maximize my capital. I mitigate the risk with diversification.

How to spot the trend?

Let’s take a look at this chart. Now. Let’s trade it.

I have no idea how. There are no landmarks. It could be going up, or down, maybe sideways. If I have no clue where it’s going. How do I make a plan? Where do I enter? Where is the exit?

Elliott Waves Principle

Now this one. A simple fact. If you see a 1-2 setup. 3 is next. 3 runs fast and hard. Usually between 100% to 161.8% of 1. However if price break down below 2. This trade is invalid. We have to consider an alternative.

Can you manage a trade like this?

How long does it take to learn Elliott Waves?

Months probably years to be an expert in it.

Not that is not going to do you any good eh? Years to master something before making any money.

Robinhood sells your orders to Citadel. This controversial practice is known as "payment for order flow."

Like true scumbags, Citadel actually urged the SEC to ban this in 2004.

"Citadel Group urges the Commission to ban payment for order

"This practice distorts order routing decisions, is anti-competitive, and creates an obvious and substantial conflict of interest between broker-dealers and their customers."

"Broker-dealers accepting payment for order flow have a strong incentive to route orders based on the amount of order flow payments, which benefit these broker-dealers, rather than on the basis of execution quality, which benefits their customers."

"Furthermore, the parties making such payments (either voluntarily or through an exchange-mandated program) are forced to find other ways to recoup the amounts of such payments..."

"...whether through wider spreads or a reduction in other benefits that otherwise could, and should, be provided to customers."

Things I've learned trading for the past 4 years in no particular order while reflecting this Sunday on it all:

* It always goes higher than you expect it will.

* It always comes back down.

* It is very easy to make money in these markets. It is much harder to keep it.

* You will FOMO no matter how much you say you won't. Make sure you don't FOMO with everything and blow your account.

* You don't need some fancy indicator to be profitable. Get solid with a few (personally for me, Ichimoku and OBV are my favorites)

* Horizontal levels are more reliable than diagonal.

* Trade with friends. They'll tell you when you've fucked up and shame you for it.

* You can follow someone else's TA, but you better be able to tell if they're full of shit or not.

* Risk Management will ultimately lead to your success over time. Luck runs out.

* "As soon as you stop trying to get rich quick, you'll get rich quick."

* Beware of getting sucked into coin communities. They're full of hopium, bag hodlers, and outrageous price predictions. Echo chambers are dangerous.

* Always leave behind a small moon bag. Makes you feel better when it does another 10x.