It’s time for T+2 to go. (1/9)

Last week we saw the impact the two-day trade settlement period has on investors and ultimately the entire American financial system. Clearinghouse deposit requirements skyrocketed overnight. (2/9)

People were unable to buy some securities they wanted. Investors were angry and concerned, an unintended byproduct of the antiquated settlement process. (3/9)

The 2-day period to settle trades exposes investors and the industry to unnecessary risk and is ripe for change. (4/9)

Investors are left waiting for their trades to clear, and the clearing brokers have their proprietary cash locked up, until the settlement is final days after the trade. (5/9)

It has been instructive to look back at our tweets re' the pandemic from early in 2020. So here are the questions we have today as we start in 2021. Feel free to add to the list. Let us see how these age a year from now:
1/n👇

1. Getting the world vaccinated -
How can we get the vaccine to everyone? First, we must make enough, then overcome the hesitancy, solve the problems of logistics of distribution and administration. We are struggling in all these areas.
2/n 👇

2. The dosing regimen-
Is it better to give 1 dose of 2-dose regimen to more people vs. give both doses to few?
Data from both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines that if you look at the cases after 12 days of 1st shot to the second shot, the efficacy may be in 80-90% range
3/n 👇

3. Vaccine prioritization:
Should we first give the vx to younger HCWs to keep hospitals open or to all the elderly who are likely to be sicker and the reasons hospitals will be overwhelmed?
Israel is doing a fantastic job getting all the elderly vaccinated first.
4/n 👇

4. Variant strains:
RNA virus tend to mutate. Vx are targeting the Spike protein of the Sars-Cov-2. Will there be enough mutation at critical points to make the virus resistant to the Vx?
This will require regular sequencing/monitoring. Besides the UK, who will do this?
5/n 👇

When Biodun Fatoyinbo's case went viral, Timi Adigun of Mine Teenage Ministry told his church members not to be talebearers or speak against a man of God.

Little did anyone know that he himself had been sexually abusing and harassing his female teenage members for years!

Timi Adigun runs a teenage ministry whose MAJOR core value is sexual purity. They run a yearly VIRGINITY day. If anyone should be caught in such a scandal, it should NOT be Timi Adigun. Not him.

"Oh, maybe it is not true".

Yes, maybe it is untrue but he and his wife suddenly shut down their church, The Ark, when news broke out. It may not be true but they cancelled all events till further notice.

May not be true but he has started another church lowkey in another name

It may not be true but comments are restricted on IG and people are getting blocked for asking questions.

May not be true but members are getting encouraged not to be "talebearers".

If you know anyone who was actively a member of the teenage ministry (whether teenagers or adults), please check in with them. I have spoken with a number of them in the last two months and those people are extremely hurt and broken. Too hurt.

@ukcynic01 Yes, you are right on the number.... they, including Regeneron, pay this Murray guy now for instance to make sure not to utter a word about niacin

https://t.co/d58DAM88q1

Conspiracy theories attempt to explain events as the secretive plots of powerful people. While conspiracy theories are not typically supported by evidence,
this doesn’t stop them from blossoming. Conspiracy theories damage society in a number of ways. /1 (THREAD) #TTP

One little push-pull I'm running into is that I'm selecting quality securities that appreciate; the "Active Satellite", but I'm sizing positions smaller for risk mgmt. Desire to increase size is there, but it has to be balanced into the overall picture & the portfolio as a WHOLE.

Generally, a normal #ActII #Center investing portfolio is tailored to the individual, but there are some broad principles that I've applied across portfolios. "Passive Plus" generally has a Passive Core & Active Satellite construction with a broad diversified asset allocation.

The Passive Core is usually around 75-80% of the portfolio consisting of low-cost tax efficient index ETF's covering most equity asset classes (Large Core, Large Value, Mid Core, Mid Value, Small Core, Small Value, EM, Int'l LG/SM) w/exposure to ALL at ALL TIMES.

One caveat to the "Passive Core" is that I use (held passively) a very small number of actively managed mutual funds within that 80% of the portfolio. These are GROWTH funds that worth the small extra expense & I have one manager for US Large and Small US Growth & Int'l Large

This part of the portfolio is truly "Core". It doesn't move. It doesn't get sold aside from rebalancing. It didn't get sold in the depths of March. There is a possibility these positions will be in place for decades. The asset quilt changes every year, so we are exposed to ALL

@HenningStrandin @davidpapineau I mean, like I said, I basically do agree ‘the problem of induction is a pseudo-problem, because we don't reason inductively in science’. I think attempts justify induction are a dead end, and it’s to Popper’s credit that he took that seriously & worked on alternatives

@davidpapineau (And it’s not like Popper didn’t write a whole bunch on auxiliary hypotheses and ad-hoc falsification as well...most of people’s concerns like this he raised himself and discussed, whether or not you agree with his resolutions)

@davidpapineau My general position is that all attempts to define scientific method ultimately fail, but Popper is generally more interesting and useful than most. Confirmation/inductive logics are among the most naive and, aesthetically, are gross 🤮

@davidpapineau Here’s the naive view of a well-known Bayesian statistician on induction and deduction, who believe Popper was basically correct. There’s certainly some naive philosophy bits, but the important thing to me is that it’s *interesting*:

@davidpapineau In terms of the screenshot of what I wrote, here’s the basic idea. You can tell me if it’s Popper or Bacon or whatever:

1/ More thoughts on impasse over organizing Senate/committees. McConnell demands Democrats commit that they won't "go nuclear" to ban legislative filibusters. Schumer says no. The organizing resolution can be filibustered, hence McC's potential leverage. So what's going on here?

2/ Democrats are highly unlikely to make such a commitment, even if McC sees the ploy as a clever way to split the Democrats. Even if Dems *did* agree, both parties know it's not a credible commitment. The last time the party leaders shook hands on such an agreement (2011)...

3/ the agreement didn't stick. McConnell and the GOP's concerted effort to block judicial and executive nominees encouraged Reid and Democrats to nuke most nomination filibusters in 2013-- in a Congress that was covered by the 2011 agreement. Granted, that agreement was informal

4/ in the sense that it wasn't written into either the organizing resolution or one of the "standing orders" Senate agreed to in 2011. (Here, I highly recommend @ProfStevenSmith The Senate Syndrome. If we weren't in a pandemic, I'd pull out my hard copy to pinpoint the chapters!)

5/ Of course, even if agreement had been formalized beyond the 🤝, that wouldn't have stopped the Dems in 2011 (minor nuke of the cloture rule) or 2013 (major 💣of cloture rule) or the GOP in 2017-- once the party felt it could shoulder the political costs of bending the rules.

@JerryDyerFresno 9/ The staffs and management at Naomi House for women, the homeless shelter @PoverelloHouse were incredibly abusive. They constantly threatened vulnerable, mostly mentally ill women, with the sts for "disobeying" some new made-up rule(s). What jerks! -Michaela cc: @SoniaMDLR

@PoverelloHouse @SoniaMDLR @fresnoland @NAMICommunicate @FresnoNAMI @FresnoCountyCA @namicalifornia @ACLU_NorCal

The Pandemic has got me thinking. On TV, people of the future are always very comfortable with data. They collect it. They analyze it. They adjust their strategies in real time. Not in days or hours or minutes but often literally in SECONDS.🧵👇

They run simulations of different outcomes. The simulations aren't always right but they seem to put them in the ballpark of what's reasonable. People take the simulations and data seriously. They factor them into their planning.

Even when the future government is evil, it's still smart. Even when the future government is rigid and uncreative in how it responds to stuff, it's responses are still logically related to the assumptions it has made, the data it has collected and the analyses it has performed.

Unfortunately, our civilization is NOT THAT. We collect data but usually haphazardly and in ways that make it hard to draw any conclusions. It often takes a long time for us to make sense of data. Politicians often throw out the numbers completely.

We don't seem to care what the probability of various outcomes are. We don't seem to use probabilities when making decisions. Perhaps, you're thinking about the election predictions and about how they were close but not quite right.

Beirut is a city of a thousand aftermaths. Four months on from the explosion, we looked at the story of one, The Orient Queen, Lebanon's only cruise liner. it was 500m from the explosion in the port.

we received this picture just after the blast, and enquires from the companies at the port for a high resolution copy, as they were still looking for lost staff members.

‘From China with Love’: profile of a #volunteer. Kiki was born in China, an hour’s drive from Hong Kong. In 2016 she visited the UK for first time and was lost late at night one evening in London, not knowing how to get back to her accommodation. #volunteeringstory

Along came the man who (though she didn’t know it yet) was the love of her life, Dean, who helped her find her way. Exchanging numbers and staying in touch turned into a long-distance relationship and an eventual decision to move to the UK permanently, which she did in March 2020

... just in time to 'enjoy' the first lockdown! Arriving in Reading determined to plunge herself into British culture, Kiki searched @eventbrite for interesting social possibilities. She booked herself on one of the last local events that were able to go ahead face to face...

– a Reading #RecruitmentCharter Launch event on 12 March.

To keep herself busy in lockdown Kiki offered free virtual Mandarin lessons, and was interviewed by @BBCBerkshire for their series of ‘Making a Difference’ community features.

At the beginning of summer Kiki and Dean got the green light from the council to have a marriage ceremony – attended by 6 people in person and by her family back in #China via livestream through a phone on a tripod. #wedding

Now that we lost our power, it's time for healing.

Of course, if we were in your position, we would crush you. That's what would make your capitulation so healing.

Yes, we are acting in bad faith. But if you acted in good faith, that would help us a lot, I mean, help the country heal.

We definitely haven't learned our lesson, but if you give us a break, maybe we will.

Admittedly, we have acted very badly. But do you want to sink down to our level? You are better than that, America.

POV: Midoriya is confronted about being a villain and goes on defense.

~~~

They’re in Izuku’s hideout. It’s just his; he doesn’t want it to have any connections with the League so he can keep them safe. They were his family, after all.

Izuku’s cornered, his heart surprisingly calm, with Kacchan and Shouto having herded him into the hallway’s corner.

he can’t help but laugh.

What faulty thinking on their part.

He’s always had the upper hand. Always a hidden ace up his sleeve, that which only he knew of. He ruled over them, and probably always will. They were smart: but were they intelligent? Were they genius? Surely not. And Izuku was right.

The collar of his shirt brushed against his neck enough to snap him out of his thoughts. Kacchan was trying to interrogate him on why he became a villain.

1) *IMPORTANT LINK AT END OF THIS THREAD*
(and no, I've never posted a tweet like this before.)

What times we are in. And how few understand or grasp the utter profundity of the moment.

2) Yet despite how it's looking from this current perspective, and after some turbulent months ahead (likely an understatement), the dawning of a true planetary renaissance WILL become apparent to even the most at-present comatose sleeper.

3) The evil is being uprooted and is being defeated.

That is my conviction as has been since April 2020.

About eight months ago I took a whole new look at Présídent Ťrůmp and what he has been doing – and re-orientated what I thought my opinion of him was.

4) When he first entered the pŕesidency, I had looked at and heard about his tweets, and thought, “Gosh. Can you believe it. This is the Pŕĕsidenţ of the Uníted Státés. How very unstatesmanlike to be tweeting stuff like this”.

5) But about eight months ago, I thought, "Why has every single article that has been written about him in the British media since he started running for office been – without exception – negative, negative, negative?".