THREAD: 15 of the most useful razors and rules I've found.

Rules of thumb that simplify decisions.

Bezos' Razors:

• If unsure what action to take, let your 80-year-old self make it.

• If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.

Skinner's Law:

• If procrastinating on an item, you only have 2 options:

1. Make the pain of not doing it greater than the pain of doing it.

2. Make the pleasure of doing it greater than the pleasure of not doing it.

Luck Razor:

• If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line.

I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix.

In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision I've ever made.

Bragging Razor:

• If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume it’s half what they claim.

• If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume it’s double what they claim.

The map is not the terrain.

An "Aquarium" needs cleaning in my opinion, but who am I, a mere monkey, to give advice?
Astonished at what @bellingcat discovered about GRU & FSB operations
Skripal https://t.co/PzH3a7JZvy
Navalny https://t.co/eZi63UhWw1
FSB https://t.co/sViYk9RwmB
GRU https://t.co/MY5d5gw2OG

A great post by Ilya Yahin on

Every time Putin talks about “our special services,” his signature smirk appears on his face, and in his words there is poorly concealed bragging
"Of course, we knew everything in advance"
"Yes, we are looking"
"Mercader has already been sent"
“World-class professionals”

Putin clearly loves all these spy games. He is very proud of the special services and therefore endlessly increases budget funding for them.
This is his top priority.
The elderly dictator cannot understand one thing:

there are no effective special services in a state that is completely corroded by corruption. You won't have honest professionals at your fingertips if your son-in-law buys shares of a state company for $ 100, the real value of which exceeds $ 380 million.

There’s rumour about confidential negotiations btn the Biden admin and the German gov. Their goal: to find a way out of the mess in which the whole transatlantic community finds itself because of Merkel’s support for Putin’s pipeline—Nord Stream 2

2/ The preferred solution for the Biden team would be to deny Putin the ability to exercise energy blackmail against Central Europe and Ukraine, while at the same time foregoing sanctions against Germany.

3/ Early in his career, Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony @SecBlinken had analyzed the decision of the Reagan administration not to levy sanctions against West Europeans for building the Siberian pipeline with the Soviets.

4/ See for example:

5/ Reagan decided to take a step back, calculating that the unity of the West was more important than the gas pipeline. Not even Lady Thatcher supported Reagan’s policy.

THREAD: The story of the week in finance is how a group of retail traders at @wallstreetbets, with assists from @ElonMusk and @Chamath, took down the establishment short sellers at GameStop.

A thread on the underlying mechanics of the $GME saga...

1/ First, for those unfamiliar with the business, GameStop is a videogame and merchandise retailer.

It has >5,000 stores, primarily in malls, across North America, Europe, and Australia.

The business has struggled to modernize, hurting its financial and stock performance.

2/ For a variety of business reasons, a bull (i.e. optimistic) case regarding its future performance has formed.

It really came to the forefront after RC Ventures, an entity managed by Chewy founder @ryancohen, disclosed a large position and assumed three board seats.

3/ @ryancohen summarized his case, stating:

"We are excited to bring our customer-obsessed mindset and technology experience to GameStop and its strategic assets...expanding the ways in which it delights customers and by becoming the ultimate destination for gamers."

4/ At the time of that statement on January 11, $GME stock was trading at about ~$20 per share.

Since then, the stock has surged to ~$200 per share and captured the public imagination.

But how did it happen?

There are two dynamics at play: a short squeeze and a gamma squeeze.

I spoke to 5 global enterprises about remote work last week

Here’s what they told me about their plans for the future

[ a thread ] 💻🏠🌎

💰 Office space: All of them have $Billion real estate portfolios

All of them plan to cut it by atleast 50% and as much as 70%

📍 Talent Access: The thing they are most interested in is access to talent

Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they’ll hire the best person on the planet

📈 Efficiency: Their concern about remote work post-pandemic was that productivity would slip

It’s increased. They now know remote work works

🤔 Remote Dilemma: A big concern is losing their best people through not giving their teams what they want

Each company plans to let people work from home 60-100% of the time

Red Bull is a weird and fascinating company.

- $7.4 billion in 2020 revenue
- 43% energy drink market
- Makes nothing

Nope, not even the drinks they sell. Instead, they focus 100% on marketing.

Here's what's going on

1/

Before Red Bull there was Krating Daeng (KD).

Founded by pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Chaleo Yoovidhya, KD was created to serve Thailand's country's working class.

Yoovidhya chose the gaur, a member of the bovine family from the region, as the brand's symbol.

2/

Dietrich Mateschitz was a toothpaste marketer. On a business trip to Thailand he discovered KD and fell in love with the drink.

With Yoovidhya, he decided to bring it to Europe. He made changes:

- Name became "Red Bull"
- Added bubbles
- Used a thin can
- Targeted elites

3/

The deal Mateschitz and Yoovidhya struck outsourced production of the drink to the Thai entrepreneur's pharmaceutical company.

That fundamental structure has remained in place today: Red Bull outsources production and focuses on distribution (marketing).

4/

Mateschitz noticed the rise of extreme sports starting in the 1990s. He thought Red Bull should be a part of it.

The years since have seen the company amass an insane empire across sports, media, and apparel.

#PolicybazaarIPO Long thread: There is monetary printing by RBI, there is lending by banks & finally there is the Indian IPO. “Foreign owned” company with ~1 Bn investment is selling “Indian” unicorn to “savvy” Indians for $ 6.2 Bn. Want to know how this printing works? Let’s go-

The basics: Rs 6017 Cr being raised by new shares (Rs 3750) & re-selling (Rs 2267). Face value Rs 2 offered at Rs ~1000 per share is one of a kind. Who decides the price? Examine the valuation ladder below.
With ~$ 150 Mn invested till 2017, we see $ 525 Mn rushes in after 2018

So, a company valued $1 Bn in 2018 & $ 1.5 Bn in 2019 by key investors like Tencent, suddenly “needs money” in March 2021. Falcon Edge “invests” all of $ 75 Mn in March at valuation of $ 2.65 Bn.
Enter IPO bankers a couple of months later & they value the company at $ 6.2 Bn

Why does PolicyBazaar need $ 75 Mn just 6 months before IPO & give away 2.5 times in returns? And it doesn’t even use that money as the B/S reflects appx Rs 1000 Cr in cash lying around.
What kind of a favor is that? Why do they need US investment bank for this just before IPO?

Notice 50% rise in shareholding of promotors here & a 1: 500 bonus share issue. After all, how do you print money & still keep share price at “reasonable” Rs 1000?
Without bonus issue in June 2021, each share would have costed Rs 50,000. Heard of circular valuation?

1/x The window we have been targeting for 2 months has officially opened... i Can not imagine a more textbook display of the power of Vanna at expiration as we saw on Friday. The capital building was overrun by an insurrection, but all that that meant was a bigger late day rally.

2/x that ended at ATH on the close. Between Gary the 🦍 & his RVol suppression & his hand off to late day Ivol compression & the Vanna index bid, the 🐻’s never had a chance... but Gary’s getting tired after 2 months battling complacency & Vanna’s 2 week vacation, 1 of her only

3/x 2 week departures of the year (a 5 week OpEx) is quickly approaching on 1/15 morning. That means she’ll be increasingly absent as she prepares for her trip. W/ a $59 1 week straddle & $50 1 day range on Friday, & another $30 overnight drop, it’s hard to see why you wouldn’t

4/x want to take a chance on a little long gamma at this juncture. Especially given the obvious warning signs coming from the steepening of the yield curve, underperformance of the Growth complex, complacency in sentiment & positioning, anecdotal signs of bubbles in BTC & TSLA,

5/x NTM the growing exuberance surrounding a fiscal stimulus deal near $2 Trillion. The wall of worry of 3 months ago is gone. The vaccine is being deployed, the election is resolved, fiscal stimulus was passed & w/2 Georgia 🍑 🍑, ever moar 🚁💰is on the way. But what happened

Time for #PapersThatMakeYouGoHmmm! A weekly summary of new ML papers from arXiv that make me think one or more of:

1. That looks useful!
2. That's an interesting approach!
3. A business could be built around this!
4. How did they do that?!

Integrating prediction in mean-variance portfolio

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance: A cognitive

The Gender Pay Gap Revisited with Big Data: Do Methodological Choices

Sustainable and Resilient Systems for Intergenerational

While many Amazon warehouse workers in Europe have unionized, its brutalized, underpaid, routinely maimed US workforce remains tragically unorganized, thanks to the US's weak labor laws that make forming a union far harder than at any time since the Gilded Age.

1/

But all that may be about to change: 6000 warehouse workers in #BHM1, the massive Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, AL, will vote next month on a push to unionize under the

Amazon, like other tech giants, is absolutely reliant on building and maintaining a competitive advantage by exploiting technology to drive wages ever downward while ducking responsibility for harming workers.

3/

Big Tech is pants-wettingly afraid of unionization, and that goes double for any solidarity between high-paid tech workers and misclassified/outsourced warehouse workers and other "unskilled" laborers.

4/

Amazon has gone so far as to hire the Pinkertons, renowned as some of history's most violent anti-worker terrorists, to bust unionization drives in its

Piper Alpha was an originally designed as an oil producing rig in the North Sea approximately 120 miles North East of Aberdeen, Scotland. It was a fixed leg platform in water depth of 475 Feet of water. The installation sat close to 275 Feet above water to the top of the derrick.

2) It started production in December 1976 for OPCAL joint venture. OPCAL being Occidental Petroleum Caledonia, Texaco Britain, Thomson PLC, and Texas Petroleum LTD. Occidental was the majority stakeholder at 36.5%

3) Occidental being majority stakeholder took control of technical and operational duties with running and operating the rig. When oil production started in 1976 it started with a flow of 250,000 BBL/day and eventually increasing this amount to 300,000 BBL/day.

4) 300,000 BBL/day would account for approximately 10% of the UK’s oil production at the time, so needless to say it was one of the most important rigs in the area. Any gas that was flowing would be flared or consumed by gas turbine generators

5) Around 1980 there was a decision to convert the rig to also process gas along with the oil. This was a major conversion, and if it would have been scoped in from the beginning, most likely construction of the rig would have been more accommodating for gas.

How Amazon makes money?

[ Amazon's business model decoded😃]

@dmuthuk @unseenvalue @FI_InvestIndia @Vivek_Investor @drprashantmish6 @caniravkaria

🧵👇

1/ A person named Jeffery earns 100 dollars per month and has an expenditure of 120 dollars monthly. He has a very good reputation in the society. So, he takes a loan of 1k dollars for a month and this 1k cash is invested in new business ventures.

2/ For the next month, he pays his liability back by taking a loan from another person for 1.5k dollars. The loan of 1k is paid back and the remaining 500 dollars are invested in another business venture.

3/ By the end of the month, he earns 150 dollars through his old and new business ventures but has a total expenditure of 200 dollars. He again is in a deficit of 50 dollars. To pay back his 1.5k dollar loan, he takes a loan for 2k dollars

4/ This cycle goes on and on. Jeffery keeps on taking bigger loans to repay the previous loan and the leftover extra loan is invested in bigger ventures which produce more expense than income.

SoFi was founded in 2011 by 4 students who met at Stanford

🎓 The goal was to decrease the student debt burden by giving out lower rates than federal standards

💸 SoFi’s rates ranged from 5.99% to 6.5%, undercutting federal and privates rates which ranged from 6.8% to 16%

By September 2012, SoFi was reported to have commit over $ 200m in loans

📈 This increased to $ 450m by April 2014 and its borrowers reportedly got on average $ 9,400 in savings by refinancing their

💸 Today, SoFi wants to help its customers with every “financial” step of their journey, providing:

· Student loans

· Medical loans

· Home loans

· Renters insurance (powered by $LMND)

· ETFs

· Stocks & cryptos

· Credit card

· Auto insurance (powered by $ROOT)

& more!

⏱ It has also understood that time-pressed and convenience-seeking young professionals value the following elements:

· Speed

· Choice

· Content

· Education

And $SOFI thus turned itself into a convenient, affordable, transparent and user-friendly financial platform

This means that SoFi’s wants to be a “one-stop-shop” for its users

💸 Enabling it to cross-sell its different products and reduce its Customer Acquisition Cost

1) Let's talk about how Alibaba has achieved the holy grail of big data - a holistic view of the consumer - through a plethora of product offerings and investment.

This is their overarching moat. And Amazon's got nothing on them.

2) To the outsider, Alibaba's product range is confusing af. It's all over the place and there seems to be no core competency they are focusing on.

A few divisions - Taobao (B2C marketplace), Tmall (High-end B2C marketplace), Alibaba (B2B marketplace, Cainiu(logistics)..

3) ...Elema (Food delivery), Autonavi (maps), Youku (streaming) and Feizhu(travel booking)

Also the promotional strategy is weird, In the lead-up to singles day, half the time they were promoting some cat rearing in-app mini game.

Wtf?

4) When we view Alibaba's strategy as working to create a full view of a consumer's life, including their preferences, social network and spending capacity (and ability). Then everything starts to make sense.

4) Whether a consumer buys on Tmall or Taobao tells Ali about their preferences and budget, delivery address for packages and food lets Ali know where they live and where they work (also cross-referenced with property data to infer wealth level + occupation).

Pratik Sinha founder of ALT news is trained comrade! He is working on Communist agenda!

Thread

How many fact check he has done about any left party?No he won’t do it!
He will do fact check of Congress and few other non Left parties just to tell the world that he is unbiased!

Mukul Sinha, father of Pratik Sinha was Comrade and her mother is also comrade. They were active member of left parties!

Mukul Sinha tried to pleased Musl!ms after 2002 Riots with his fake evidence for huge donation from Musl!m Countries.

Mukul Sinha contested Gujarat Assembly elections in 2007 from a Muslim-dominated seat Shahpur in Ahemdabad, but got just 255 (0.44%) votes, losing his deposit. 😂🤣

In 2012, Sinha contested as an independent candidate from Sabarmati in Ahemdabad, and lost again, securing just 1860 (1.23%) votes!🤣🤣

As per affidavit in 2007 he had total movable asset of Rs.23,82,309

But shockingly In 2012 he had huge hike in movable assets! He has Rs.1,08,65,799 movable assets as per affidavit.
(this information are available in affidavit. This is not privet information)