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.

The most common problem faced by day-traders and it's easy solution which is extremely difficult to implement.
A thread.
( uses concepts I have discussed many times before in separate threads)

Problem : I have a good system, I understand charts and/or price action, but I simply can't make money. I hold my losses too long or ( this is most common) I get out of profitable positions too fast and cannot sit for the whole move

At many firms at NASDAQ, day-traders are seen as elite sportspersons playing in a difficult taxing game. That's why, they have regular sessions with sports psychologists. They are advised to follow the basic routine of sportspersons.
Train ---- Play tournaments --- Rest

The cycle repeats

We retail day-traders here neither rest nor train.

Rest = taking time off markets
Train = trading in markets in training mode

Understanding REST is easy, simply take time off markets and spend time with family or do something you love

A small thread on intraday support resistance logics over time

The most common is Pivot , support and resistances calculated from the previous day's data

https://t.co/ILMjMay1zc

They can be calculated for daily, weekly, monthly etc.

Camarilla levels are also quite popular. This seemed to be the next best thing after the original pivots at one point of

Over the years, many other technicians have tried to devise other methods to devise intraday support resistance points. In almost all cases, the previous days OHLC were used in some variation, in some cases today's OPEN was also used as an input

I have gone through almost all of the formulas. Some work on some days, some days it doesn't.
What struck me was that in each of the cases , we were using the OHLC and doing some maths with a multiplier/divider which WE/the trader thought fits the price action of the markets

This is the same as choosing a time period of an indicator and hope the market follows my choice of time frame to give me good trades. Like say a crossover of a 5/13 moving average, or a 14 period RSI or whatever.

Ten MF mistakes I recommend you avoid...

1. Too much love

A fund does well. You fall in love with the fund house. You have a large mid and small cap scheme from them. They all tank together! Diversify. And remember being good at one thing doesn’t make you good at the other.

2. One for all

Applying the same metrics to judge different asset classes. What matters to equity funds doesn’t matter to debt funds. Arb funds are fully hedged - the individual stocks don’t matter, they do in equities. Understand what matters for each asset class.

3. Perils of passive

Assuming all passive funds are good because they are cheap. There are terrible passive funds out there too. They track bad indices. Or they track good ones but have a lot of tracking error. Passive requires its own set of research.

4. Apples and kiwis 🍎 🥝

We have categories in MF but sadly all funds in a category are not comparable. Just because a website compares them doesn’t mean you should look beneath. BAF categories have funds that are static, dynamic bond funds have rolldowns. Just an example.

This is value investor, Allan Mecham.

He dropped out of college at age 22 to start his fund, Arlington Value.

From 2008-2016, they did a CAGR of 30% over 8.5 years!

And in his fund letters, he shared his best frameworks for investing in companies.

Here's a breakdown of each:

1. Adopt a mindset for longevity

He focuses on variables that affect a business' durability.

Stuff like valuation doesn't matter if the business quality is misjudged.

Since a company's value is determined by its future cash flows...

Hence evaluating its future is key

2. Stay within your circle of competence

Allan is aware that his CoC is tiny!

Thus, he rarely buys companies that he:

• Hasn't researched
• Hasn't followed for at least a few years.

Because the best way to study a business is to observe its execution overtime.

3. Embrace volatility as a gift

Public markets offer you amazing deals you will never get in the private markets!

It's all about being patient.

The underlying value of a business is much more stable than the stock.

So you can buy great businesses that are mispriced!

4. Avoid noise and news

More information can give you a false sense of confidence.

It can create an illusion of "knowledge", and make you think many things are important.

The key is to know what are the 3-5 main variables in the company, and focus on those.

Ignore the rest.

12 charts every investor should know:

1. History of the stock market in one chart

2. The Psychology of a Market Cycle

3. "Experts" will always give you smart reasons to sell in the short term, but you will regret it in the long term

4. Largest companies by market cap (1960-2022)

5. Compounding is the 8th wonder of the world

Newbie traders after learning F&O, look for paper trading platforms to practise. It's like the itch to swim after you learn swimming but end up in a baby pool. Experience of an adult pool vs a baby pool is different, likewise with the real markets & paper trading 🧵 (1/11)

Agreed, without experience, loading your trading account to the tilt and trading can be disastrous 🌋, but that does not mean you will have to paper trade forever. No matter how much you paper trade, you will never get the experience of trading (2/11)

When I talk about trading, I’m not just talking about experiencing the P&L rush. IMHO, experiencing the P&L and how it can vary in real-time is the last thing. There are multiple other things that you need to get comfortable with before diving into full-fledged trading 🏊‍♂️(3/11)

Stuff like placing limit/market order, GTT, AMO. Practising how SL-L for long & short positions works, trailing stops, figuring how margins work, M2M, T+1, T+2 settlements - the list is endless😩 with several moving parts. No paper trading platform gives you the real deal (4/11)

Here is a hack, though - instead of paper trading, try and place an actual trade on a low-value futures contract. My favourite is USD INR 💱, it costs just under 2K per contract, but gives you the whole trading experience (5/11)

1/x Since I promised a few investors outside Sweden/Nordics to look deeper into $CDON, with my negative customer biases aside, here's a short thread;

Let's first go through the negatives

2/x I really understand the excitement when you put on the "local dominant marketplace"-glasses and start comparing CDON multiples to the likes of $AMZN, $MELI, $SE or whatever. But with boots on the ground I can assure you, that they are *nothing* of the sort. At least yet.

3/x Just looking at GMV/revenue, after >20y in business, an "everything store", CDON doesn't even come near other local niche players like $BHG (8bSEK) or $BOOZT (4bSEK) and other private companies. They are closer to $LYKO in size, who are only selling hair & beauty..

4/x Unfortunately the brand is very much on decline (especially among young ppl) since the website has been mistreated for years and years, so I think they have to work extremely hard on building trust + enhance customer experience to even have a change long term.

5/x Like I wrote yesterday we have a very divided (in a good way) eCommerce market in the Nordics, with lots of amazing niche players with top notch customer experience. To put it in words you understand, we are a more $SHOP like region with independent businesses.

THREAD AWS $AMZN
AMZN has 15Xed in 6 years (~$60bn->~$1tr). Along the way there have been many investor concerns, which have in hindsight been "can't see the forest for the trees" nitpicks: 1) AWS not profitable; 2) AWS price cuts; 3) Depr acctg; 4) Too much start up exposure.

First to establish valuation. I don’t think it is controversial to say that AWS is worth ~$1tr+ today annualizing nearly $50bn in revs this past Q, ~35% GAAP Op Margins growing ~30% in COVID times. In 2021, AWS will likely put up around ~$58BN in revenue (MSe).

While IaaS is not SaaS, applying even the lower end of Software universe multiples to this level of growth (not to mention profitability or any analysis of how great the business is) would get you to a $1trillion value: 16X EV/Sales ~$60bn in revs ~= $1tr.

And AWS is a lot more profitable than most software companies (today). On a P/E basis, this equates to ~60X 2021 GAAP EPS (assumes 20% Tax rate).
 
Looking back on it, it is funny to think about a few of the past AWS bear cases/worries:

1) AWS not profitable
AMZN first disclosed AWS financials on the 1Q15 print. Before AMZN disclosed AWS revs/EBIT, the consensus was the MORE unprofitable AWS was, the better it was for AMZN’s stock because it meant the retail business was even more profitable than people thought.

Next 10 years in FinTech.

The Fintech tsunami is happening, and there is no way back.

Long thread 🧵👇🏼

1) In 2030, the largest “bank” in the world will not-be-a-bank.🏦 Think- Square, Stripe, Affirm, AntFin, PayPal, etc. Many large asset categories are still untouched by Fintechs, and once that starts to happen, several new ~$100BN - $500BN 💰 companies will be created.

2) Major economies will have low or no-Cash 💵; primarily due to ‘digitization-of everything’, and CBDC. Major central banks will transition to a digital currency paradigm, where national currencies will compete on features (like software does) as well as economics.

3) Credit Bureaus will become redundant. The 'spending-to-income-habits' indicator will overtake credit score. In the new decade: How responsibly one spends the money will become a stronger indicator of creditworthiness than all bureau data scores.

4) Algorithms— built into MoneyOS — will automatically refinance debt to the lowest possible rate, triggering massive compression in profit pools for banks. These “Systems of Intelligence” companies will create massive value.

1/16
Was reading upon #Biases & learnt a lot. Thought of sharing a few pointers .
Simply put Bias is a disproportionate weight in favour of or against any idea/thing in all aspects of life.
Few types of Biases ( out of the many) with not so random images. :)
+

2/16
The #DunningKruger effect now is fairly well known , wherein people with limited knowledge overestimate their competence, whilst the actually knowledgeable question themselves often .
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge".
+

3/16
*#SelfServingBias*
A very interesting bias wherein we credit our successes to purely ourselves, but when things go awry we cite luck & external forces .
Rings any bells?
Basically a defence mechanism to protect our self esteem & eventually from personal responsibility.

4/16
* #ConfirmationBias *
We all favour ideas & beliefs that affirm to our existing ones' , rarely being open to contradictory opinions .
(Especially in markets !! 😬) Why?

Laziness? Mental block? Ego ?
No wonder, Birds of a feather flock together ... 😉

5/16
* #SunkCostBias *
As we know, sunk costs are irrecoverable , regardless of outcomes. (Eg Money expended towards R&D for a molecule which doesn't work out)
But this actually extends in any investment we make - Time,Money, Effort, Relationships ...😏
Interesting right?

Exclusive: Alleged RCMP mole accused of selling secrets to kingpin money launderer and terror-financier’s network | https://t.co/6oS5jHrnWQ https://t.co/evpm0Eh9S6 @CullenInquiryBC

1. I'll unpack a few points from this ongoing investigation by Global News into the Ortis case. The allegations against Ortis, from my investigation, are very international in scope, and could not be more relevant to the work of @CullenInquiryBC

2. If you have the impression that Ottawa has been asleep at the wheel with issues of transnational drug cartels using Canadian cities as giant money laundering vehicles, that would be partly correct, in my years of expertise. But the Ortis case alleges something else going on.

3. What my investigation shows, is the case against Cameron Ortis -- who was one of the most influential leaders in RCMP and top intel official -- is he was allegedly corrupt and compromised a Five Eyes probe of a global kingpin money launderer.

4. In order to understand the case, it can't be stressed enough how important the Altaf Khanani money laundering organization is to drug trafficking and terrorist attacks worldwide, according to the DEA.