BC FINANCE
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

Thread on how easy it is to get tricked into haemorrhaging money from your bank account after an online purchase – and why financial regulators seem to be behind the curve on this.🧵💸💻

Forgive the personal story, but I think it's relevant...1/

 I’m pretty careful with my money online - regularly checking my pension, combing my online bank statement for suspicious transactions, pruning unwanted subscriptions etc...2/
I’d describe this as financial hygiene – and would advise everyone to do it.

Yet it’s not always enough.

While looking through a list of transactions on my online account before Xmas I noticed a £15 payment to something called "WLY*https://t.co/tSHitonwoT" ...3/
By chance I knew for certain I’d not bought anything on that particular day, so I investigated further.

I downloaded my entire statement for the year and discovered I’d made a payment to this entity for the
same amount every month for 14 months, so £210 in total...4/
I did an online search & found a club called Complete Savings (@completesave), that offers cashback on online purchases in return for £15 a month membership fees.

This is not, to put it mildly, the kind of scheme I would ever knowingly sign up to....5/
I phoned the company and they told me that I’d “joined” when I’d booked some rail tickets on the Trainline website @thetrainline in November 2019.

I’d zero recollection of doing so....6/
It turns out that this is a long-running ruse by Complete Savings and its parent company Webloyalty @WebloyaltyUK

See here:
https://t.co/LisluqZuZt

And here https://t.co/7YNCySY0fS: 7/
The headline offer on a retailer’s website is for the opportunity to get cash back after an online transaction, but the monthly charge and the indefinite club membership is in the small print...8/
Here’s the form Complete Savings's complaints department sent to me, saying I must have filled it in, so judge for yourself whether what's going on is adequately signposted (bearing in mind that you’re funneled to it via the secure payment zone of another firm's website)...9?
It’s all legal.

But is it ethical?

And should well-known retailers like Trainline be partnering with an organisation like this?...10/
Bear in mind Webloyalty’s own US parent company, Affinion, paid $30m to numerous American states in 2013 to settle a probe into its sales and billing practices...11/
https://t.co/Xd0ZnsLNFi
Bear in mind too that in 2009 a number of UK retailers such as B&Q and Asda severed partnerships with Webloyalty after complaints from customers that were similar to mine (they never thought they were signing up to an expensive monthly club)...12/
https://t.co/JRq6JmpJ5H
After successfully securing a commitment from Webloyalty to refund all my money, I contacted Trainline to tell them what happened and ask whether they too would sever ties with this company and stop it using their website to pick up new unwitting “members”...13/
There are, I was told, no plans to do review the partnership.

Readers can draw their own conclusions about whether Trainline is a safe space online....14/
Complete Savings refused to tell me which other online retailers it has partnerships with, but the many furious reviews of the service on Trustpilot suggests major companies such as Morrisons and WHSmith...15/

https://t.co/8tmC5K5nHz

https://t.co/BHvg1uzgHy
Are there any larger lessons here?

I believe there are.

Why, despite my keeping a regular eye on my online account, didn’t I spot the payments on my bank statement sooner?...16/
The answer is that there’s been an explosion of relatively small contactless transactions on my account this year due to the retreat from cash by retailers during the pandemic.

Identifying a relatively small outgoing nowadays is much harder in the morass of payments data...17/
If contactless is the future, as seems probable, this threatens to make it harder for people to be alert to unexpected withdrawals....18/
Also - and very importantly - an increasing number of firms take regular payments from accounts not through direct debits or standing orders but through “continuous payment authorities”...19/
https://t.co/QmGEhrV1sg
These are NOT listed alongside a customer's ordinary direct debits and standing orders by their banks making them much harder for even an assiduous statement reader (like me) to monitor...20/
This is a vulnerability that, it seems to me, financial regulators need to be alive to.

But who regulates Complete Savings/Webloyalty/Affinion? 21/
Not the Financial Conduct Authority @TheFCA , which told me :

"Subscription/cashback services for retailers would fall outside our remit and this means that our rules don’t apply to these firms and their business falls outside our jurisdiction"...22/
So I imagine many of you will be breaking out the world’s smallest violin at this point.🎻

Perhaps you think if I did not immediately notice £15 leaving my account each month I’m well-off enough not to have anything useful to say to people who are financially struggling...23/
And I’ll happily take all that on the chin.

But I honestly don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that if it can happen to me it can happen to anyone....24/
And if you’re still murmuring “caveat emptor” to yourself, just imagine your granny venturing online to buy train tickets or do some online shopping in a world populated by companies like Webloyalty.

More here for @IndyVoices:
https://t.co/O3PepQhfM5

ENDS/

More from Finance

10-K Diver
10-K Diver
@10kdiver
1/

Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, I'll help you work out how much money you need to retire.

2/

The goal is simple.

You want to accumulate a *large* portfolio of assets.

How large?

Well, you should be able to quit your job. And you and your family should be able to live comfortably for decades -- just off of the income generated by this portfolio.

3/

This is the crux of the "FIRE" movement.

FIRE stands for "Financially Independent, Retired Early".

The basic philosophy is: keep your spending needs low. Save a large portion of your income. Invest these savings. With luck, you'll be able to retire early.

4/

FIRE advocates have a rule they love to cite: the 4% rule.

The 4% rule says: your annual expenses in retirement should not exceed 4% of your portfolio.

You can use this rule to calculate how large a portfolio you need to accumulate before you can quit your job and retire.


5/

For example, suppose you and your family need $40K/year to live comfortably in retirement.

Then you need to accumulate a portfolio that's at least $1M.

Another way to say this is: your portfolio should be at least 25 times your annual expenses in retirement.
ALL , FINANCE
Mostly Borrowed Ideas
Mostly Borrowed Ideas
@borrowed_ideas
1/ Thread: $GOOG 4Q'20 Update

For the first time, GOOG segmented its cloud revenues/income separately, and overall revenue was >20% in 4Q which led to +7% after-hours reaction yesterday.

Here are my notes from earnings/press release.

2/ In the last quarter, here is the segment-wise growth:

Search +17.4%
YouTube ads +46.0%
Google Network Members +22.9%
Cloud +46.6%

Cloud more than doubled in the last two years.
Other bets losses $4.5 Bn in 2020 (vs $4.8 Bn in 2019)


3/ Operating margin in Q4 ~28%
FCF margin in Q4 ~30%

One of the big takeaways was the core business was even MORE profitable than most investors thought since cloud had -42.9% operating margin.

$GOOG's search business is a good comp for Fed in terms of "printing" money. JK.

4/ "you can track takeout and delivery orders when you book or order from Google Maps"

"More than 0.5 million channels livestreamed on YouTube for the first time in 2020"

"videos in our new Shorts player are receiving 3.5 billion daily views."

5/ Google Pay app is now used by >150 mn people in 30 countries.

Cloud backlog $30 Bn now (from $19 Bn in Q3)

# of Deals >$250 Mn became >3x

Waymo is providing hundreds of fully AV rides per week

Retail searches >3x YoY

Cloud operating losses flat YoY
FINANCE
Advertisement
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
Thomas Chua
Thomas Chua
@SteadyCompound
Buffett's letters taught me more about investing than any business school ever could.

Even after investing for 14 years, I uncover new insights every time I reread his letters.

Recently, I reread his letters from 1977 to 2020 for a third time.

Here are my key insights:


1. Moat is NEVER stagnant

A company's competitive position either grows stronger or weaker each day.

Widening the moat must always take precedence over short-term targets.


2. Commodity businesses

A business without moat will have its returns competed away.

Regardless of improvement, your competitors will quickly copy your advantage away.

Where returns on capital is dismal, reinvestment will only destroy value.


3. The flywheel effect

Buffett was preaching about the flywheel effect before it became cool.

Back then, newspapers were similar to today's platform businesses like Amazon, Meta, and App Store.

More readers beget more advertisers beget more readers.


4. Operating leverage

Companies with high fixed costs and low variable costs will see earnings rise faster than revenue.

However, it cuts both ways.

It becomes a disaster when revenue is declining.

Check out my article on how operating leverage works: https://t.co/Nv747oBAK0
FINANCE
Bartek Kiepuszewski
Bartek Kiepuszewski
@bkiepuszewski
1/ If, after reading https://t.co/IzzATArtZl you are still confused how Alpha Homora and IronBank were hacked, here's how the hack was conceived

2/ Normally when you borrow funds from AH bank, your debtShare and totalDebt increases. Specifically if you want to borrow x tokens, your debt share will be calculated as:

share = x * totalShare / totalDebt

and it is added to totalShare

3/ All these numbers are very big integers (as token precisions are 18 digits) and the calculation is correct, but when totalShare = 1 (think 1 wei) and x < totalDebt, new debt share will be 0 (integer division)

4/ So if you manage to have AH bank with totalShare = 1, and some totalDebt you can repeatedly borrow less than the totalDebt (ideally totalDebt - 1) effectively doubling totalDebt in each iteration. You can do it as many times as you want, while totalShare will remain 1

5/ Eventually Iron Bank that supplies funds to AH will run out of funds, so when amounts get big enough (you are doubling each time), also make sure to replenish it with flash loan
FINANCE

You May Also Like

Suhail
Suhail
@Suhail
1/ The first 18 months of starting a company is often life or death. I must've made 5 different companies that each failed within 9 mo. 😭 Each time the company failed I figured out what I could do better. Eventually startup #6 got to $40K/mo by month 18. Here’s what I learned...

2/ Stay focused! Ignore things that are a waste of time: meetups & conferences, meetings with no clear agenda, fundraising if you're not fundraising, reading lots of tech media articles, etc. Every week should feel like significant progress in the first year.

3/ Your first 5 hires will be the difference between life or death. Choose carefully. Be picky. Many of the things we do at the company still are a result of those early hires' legacy. Have fun as a tight knit team. It will change & evolve as you get bigger so enjoy this moment.

4/ Growth may be flat for the first 9 months. It's gonna be okay. Almost every company has experienced this: Airbnb had to sell cereal in-between, Slack failed as a gaming company first, Tesla sold only 147 cars after 6 years! You probably won't be an overnight success either.

5/ In the beginning, do customer support yourself. You will learn a lot about why your product sucks. I did 5,000+ support tickets when it was the two of us. Delight customers & fix things fast while you learn. It will help you build an amazing intuition about your customers.
STARTUPS
Shaan Puri
Shaan Puri
@ShaanVP
If you're a college student who wants to pay off all your loans... here's an idea for you:

It takes ~$5k to start and will make ~$30k a year of profit

It won't get you rich, it'll pay for college.

(..and will teach them more about business than they’ll learn in school)

The idea isn’t sexy. But it works:

**Plastic Moving Bin Rentals**

Everyone knows moving sucks. The worst part is being stuck with 400 cardboard boxes at the end of your move.

Instead - @benmlevy told me about Gorilla Bins. They dropoff plastic moving bins, & pickem up later.


Let’s break it down. Our goal is to pay for college (~$30k profit per year).

To do that, I think we’ll need $50k in revenue.

The avg move (a 2 bedroom apartment) is $180

To hit our goal, we need do ~5.5 moves per week

COSTS?

How many bins do we need to buy up front?

5.5 moves a week x 50 bins = you need 275 bins. Let’s round up to 300 to be safe.

Ok let’s hop over to @uline to see how much these bins cost

Bingo. Bins cost about $15 a piece.

$15 x 300 bins = $4,500 initial startup costs.

Time to beg your parents or a rich aunt to lend you money to get the biz rolling (...or just take $5k of student loan money and invest it here…)
FINANCE
Advertisement
WORLD OF SANATAN DHARMA
WORLD OF SANATAN DHARM...
@world_sanatan
UNTOLD STORY OF QUEEN BHAVASHANKARI OF BENGAL - A 🧵u must read

Know the role of Naga Sadhus

PART-1

One of the most underrated empires to ever grace India is the kingdom of Bhurshut from central Bengal.

1/


A medieval powerhouse this kingdom stood firm against the Pathan invasion from Orissa twice, and with each time devastating the enemy forces.

Along with this, we also have to note that this was the time when the empire was under the reign of a widowed queen named Bhavashankari.

She wasn’t even born in a royal family and yet she achieved what most of the kings couldn’t do

This begs the question, why does no one remember this great kingdom?

3/

Bhurshut empire thrived from 15th century till late 18th century as an independent kingdom while acting as tributary state with full autonomy.

4/

What’s even more puzzling is that no one knows about the great queen Bhavanshakari who thrashed the Pathans single handedly without the aid of their allies.

5/
ALL
Maurice Casey
Maurice Casey
@MauriceJCasey
I am reading through reams of late-1920s communist poetry and easily my favourite title so far is: "To a Lady who Rejected a Poem about Spring as a Petit-Bourgeois Deviation"

The last lines:
"So here's my hat into the air,
Three cheers for your amazing hair,
For coal mines, and for turbines, too,
For steel, the Comintern and you!"

A not exactly graceful (though possibly satirical) title: "Lines Disassociating Myself from Yessenin and Supporting the Otherwise Unfounded Legend that I am a Foremost Proletarian Writer"

An excerpt:
"Goodbye verses of Yessenin
Goodbye literary slop-
You are not the line of Lenin
You are not the line of WAPP

Never shall I moan a
simple lyric from the heart
I'll devote my new corona
to the proletarian art"

The poet was Joseph Freeman, who published much of his revolutionary verse in the New Masses, a stylish journal of the interwar American literary Left.
CULTURE
Suchi Sharma
Suchi Sharma
@Suchi_sharma_
#THREAD
1.Meenakshi Amman Temple(472ft High)also called as Meenakshi Sundareswarar is a famous Hindu temple located on the southern bank of Vaigai River in temple city of Madurai, #TamilNadu.It is dedicated to Parvati(Meenakshi)& her consort Shiva(Sundareswarar). @LostTemple7


2.Madurai Meenakshi Sundareswarar temple was built by King Kulasekara Pandya (1190-1216 CE).This popular temple visits over 15000 visitors daily & around 25000 on #Friday !Friday sees the most number of devotees visit the temple with the number going as high as +25,000.


3.Meenakshi Temple also hosts an annual festival called Meenakshi Thirukalayanam that is held in April. A celestial wedding of the god and goddess marks the end of the festival. About 1 million devotees visit the temple during this festival.


4.the temple has been tagged as one of the seven wonders of India along with stunning Architecture.The temple is built using Dravidian South Indian style of architecture, and is one of the most impressive temple structures in South India.


5.The principle deity here is MEENAKSHI, a form of Goddess Parvati. The idol of the goddess is carved in emerald hued stone. The Meenakshi idol has 3 breasts as Meenakshi was born with three breasts and was blessed that the 3rd breast would vanish once meets right man of her life
HISTORY