This chart is the clearest representation of the immense damage that emanated from the GFC on the US economy.

In the ~60 years following WWII, US real GDP seemed to grow at ~3% trend like clockwork.

2008 marked the end of this trend, with growth downshifting to ~2% since. 1/

The scars from such long periods of low growth and balance sheet repair ran deep, with tragic consequences.

A generation of consumers became more risk averse, business investment & productivity slumped, and a large cohort of workers witnessed real declines in nominal incomes. 2/

Most economists now seem resigned to the idea that this is the new era of slow growth is likely to continue.

The Fed's own estimate of R* now sits at 2.5%, down nearly 200 bps from its estimate in 2012. 3/

But what if, just like after WWII, a surge in productivity enhancing gov't infrastructure spending and increased risk appetite on behalf of consumers/businesses raises R*?

I don't think this is as far fetched as conventional wisdom makes it out to be. 4/

Behaviorally, exogenous crises such as what we experienced in 2020 can increase generational risk taking.

Think of the difference between someone who lived through the great depression versus someone who survived WWII. The latter was far more risk seeking than the former. 5/

21 stocks for 2021: Day 9 - Redfin $RDFN

The Bull Case: Redfin calls itself “A Technology-Powered Real Estate Company” whose mission is to “redefine real estate in the consumer’s favor”.
[1/9]

Bull Case Continued: They invented map-based real estate search and have the most visited brokerage website, which translates to low marketing costs. Redfin has a high net promoter score and better repeat business than their competitors.
[2/9]

Bull Case Continued: They have full time agents who are rewarded based on customer satisfaction instead of commission which means their incentives are better aligned with the customer.
[3/9]

Bull Case Continued: Redfin can claim to save customers money (reduced listing fees) and time (more on-time closings) along with offering a complete solution (brokerage, mortgage, title insurance).
[4/9]

Bull Case Continued: Redfin isn’t just an iBuying play. They are prepared for the future of real estate no matter what form it takes: Brokerage, Concierge, Now, Direct. Impressive leadership from CEO Glenn Kelman (CEO for 15+ years).
[5/9]

1) This year has been difficult for many investors, whether you are a novice or an experienced risk taker.

It would be useful to revisit today's money masters and see how they dealt with gut-wrenching loss.

It always helps renew my ambition. THREAD 👇

2) Paul Tudor Jones lost $10,000 when he was 22, and when he was 25 he lost about $50,000, which was all he had to his name.

3) In 1979, PTJ's fourth year in the business, he lost over 60% of the equity in his clients’ accounts on a single cotton trade that went horribly wrong.

“I am not cut out for this business," he said. "I don’t think I can hack it much longer.”

4) Relating the episode to Jack Schwager in Market Wizards, he revealed:

"It was a cathartic experience for me, in the sense that I went to the edge, questioned my very ability as a trader, and decided that I was not going to quit. I was determined to come back and fight."

5) That was when he first decided that he had to learn discipline and money management.

As Richard Dennis used to say to new traders, “When you start, you ought to be as bad a trader as you are ever going to be.”

A former CIA math genius built a quantitative trading fund that earned more than $100 BILLION for investors.

At 66% return/yr, his track record destroys that of Warren Buffet, George Soros, Carl Icahn, and every investor who ever lived.

The Smartest Billionaire in Finance:

1/28
If you'd have put $100 into Jim Simons' Medallion Fund in 1988, it would be $400M+ today.

By contrast,

$100 in the S&P 500 in 1988, would be $2,000 in 2022. (roughly)

Let that sink in.

2/28
Jim Simons's Medallion fund has had unreasonably high annual returns of 66% across 30 years.

For comparison, Buffet clocked in at about 20%/yr.

Many funds don't make that in a lifetime.

3/28
Even during the financial crisis of 2008, it made a net return of 82.38%.

They make so much money for their investors that they charge 44% in management fees.

The industry standard is 20%.

4/28
It uses math calculations to decide the bulk of its trades, & none of the market trends apply to how it performs.

It wins by finding order in chaos.

The fund is managed by Renaissance Technologies, the parent company founded by the mathematical genius Jim Simons.

1/x ‘Twas the night before Christmas & all through the market not an order was stirring not even for $TGT.
The bonuses were entered into payroll with care,
In hopes that next year would bring a similar fare;
The Bulls were nestled all snug in their beds;

2/x While visions of $TSLA danced in their heads;
& Biden in his Covid mask, & Powell with his still flowing money tap,
Had just settled their brains for a long winter's nap,
When out on the screen there arose such a clatter,
All sprang from their beds to see what was the matter.

3/x Away to their monitors they flew like a flash,
Tore open their Bloombergs & threw up the dash(board).
The S. Claus rally in markets, that all of us know,
Paired w/vaccine reopening, Gave a bid to the market, leaving old prices below,
When what to their wondering👀 did appear?

4/x But a Georgia runoff rushing up to them with complacency, not fear...
With once reliable Vanna flows no longer lively & quick,
They knew in a moment the markets might get quite sick...
Unexpected, 2 Georgia Dem peaches into Congress they came,

5/x Whistling & shouting they called for more fiscal, ‘CARES Too’ its new name:
"Now, Healthcare! Now, Infrastructure! Now Green Energy & Protectionism!
On, Labor rights! on, Minimum Wage! on, Basic Income & Populism!
To middle class households, To the poorest of them all!

Letter from the stock markets to the sceptics: "I may be high, but I'm not crazy." Caution, this thread may not age well, but I didn't really write it :).

~Thread from a twitter economist.

They world is in one of the biggest crisis since the 2nd world war, but the stock markets seem to be on a relentless upward move. They appear completely divorced from reality. Really? Probably not. Here are reasons why the markets may be euphoric, but aren't crazy or stupid.

a) Lot of liquidity provided by central banks to rescue failing businesses - globally. Central banks and governments buying all kinds of securities including junk bonds directly!

b) Much of the western world is in the arena of 0 or negative interest rates, and anything which moves (above 0 returns) looks tasty enough to be eaten (bought)

c) The Sensex is just around 10% up from its January levels - so not really frothy territory (if you were to ignore the epidemic)

So I thought the whole "paid newsletter" thing was dumb.

So naturally, I tried it out as an experiment.. The results were kinda nutty. The newsletter started bringing home $49k per month (!) -- Here's the backstory

"what was the newsletter about?"

Well - for the past year, I've been doing a podcast called My First Million. Gimmicky name, but whatever.

It's a pod where me and @theSamParr (and friends like @awilkinson @_jacksmith etc.) brainstorm business ideas based on trends we see

Anyways - the podcast has gotten pretty big. We do over 350k downloads/month.

People like listening to us shoot the shit, brainstorming ideas.

But as the nearest schmuck will tell you - ideas aren't shit without execution!

The problem is - execution is less sexy.

Usually when people talk about execution, it's in the past tense. We did X, and voila, we won.

They edit & cut out all the dead ends they hit, the stuff they tried that failed.

This gives people a f*cked up idea of what execution really is.

Still - there's demand for learning how to execute better.

The number one question I get in my DMs everyday is: "I love that idea from the pod, how would you approach it?"

There's no simple answer. So for months I just ignored them.

1/ Just realized this morning that it was 5 years ago today that I invested in @densityio ... it has truly been such a great career experience for me. Some notes ...

2/ Density is a privacy-first way to monitor how people or objects move around spaces. Today mostly office spaces. Plus warehouses, schools, retail outlets, government buildings

3/ Density is a software company that gives insights to property owners or occupants. To deliver value it required team to also build hardware. That has been a journey. VCs are scared of HW. It’s challenging but gives SW companies such great defensive moats.

4/ many of the great tech companies have used HW to great advantage. Apple, obvi. But Amazon (Fire, Kindle, Alexa/Echo, Ring). Google (Nest, cameras that built Streetview, Home, FitBit). Peloton. Roku. Just a few obvious ones. HW + SW is so powerful.

5/ Team pitched me on infrared devices. We weren’t convinced on accuracy but bet on team: Andrew, Garrett, Rob, Brian & others who I figured would iterate on solution. Plus, I had huge trust in seed investors @jtriest @Jason who voiced for them & @AvidanRoss who didn’t but liked

How to Avoid Big Losses In trading ?

1. Avoid Stocks Below 200 ema
2. Sell Stocks in Stage 4 Down Trend
3. Dont Trade Stocks that are moving in Circuits
4. Avoid News based Trading

A thread With examples🔖

Retweet to Educate Your Trading Friends !
1/n

A Study Shows that 90% of the winning Stocks stay above 200 ema before a big Advancing Phase

1. Simply Not Holding or Buying Stocks below 200 ema Saves a lot of time and Money.
2. You can looses opportunity Cost if you buy stocks below 200 ema.
3. TimeFrame: Daily 200 ema

2/n

B. Sell Stocks in Stage 4 Down Trend

1. Stocks Exhibiting this are in complete Bear Grip
2. The 30 week ema acts as reference for stage analysis
3. These Stocks can be short sold on pullback to 30wema
4. Happens after Topping Phase
5. TimeFrame : Weekly , 30 Week Ema

3/n

C. Dont Trade Stocks that are moving in Circuits

1. Mostly these stocks are Speculatve and Operator Driven.
2. You never know what is the top of the trend and may get Stuck with Huge Losses

Example : TTML , Alok , Ruchi etc
This is Pyramid Structure and news driven also
4/n

D. Avoid News based Trading
1. Whenever a postive News comes in Market People Jump in Buying the Stocks without thinking .
2. Most of the the times the news is factored in or gets factored after heavy buying
3. Your Money may get Stuck

Example : PnbBousing , AdaniPower
5/n

1/ I used to think that the biggest gains had to come from stocks that no one knew about

One of the harder lessons for me to internalize has been that oftentimes, unknown stocks stay unknown for a reason and you can still earn attractive returns from stocks everyone's bullish on

2/ While I’m not contrarian just for the sake of being contrarian, I do think it’s important to question everything.

When I started out, I would buy "quality" stocks like FB or TSLA without doing much research.

But an opinion being consensus doesn’t make it the truth.

3/ So owning the most popular stocks made me nervous. If a winner is so obvious then either it's priced in or maybe I'm missing something?

I preferred owning stocks that others weren’t aware of or were bearish on for the wrong reasons (more room for upside surprises).

4/ But there are degrees

Despite being widely popular, stocks like SHOP have been some of the best performers because they exceeded even the most bullish projections

And some stocks like TSLA are partly popular because they are great consumer products which is an important sign

5/ On the other hand, while the biggest winners can be found in micro-caps, many of which started out very undervalued with no analyst coverage, on average, they tend to underperform larger caps

Picking out the big winners earlier on is very difficult and there is no set formula

The battle all $XRP holders were waiting for. I’m sure lots of holders will be debating whether to sell off this news... a few

and @bgarlinghouse will have anticipated this decision by @SEC_News for years, in which time they’ve built out an extremely experienced exec team who are poised and ready for this legal battle to commence.

has led a great PR narrative over the last year, pressing hard for reg clarity in the US via media and threatening to up sticks and move @Ripple overseas. Have the SEC played into his plan to force regulatory clarity that may not have otherwise came quick enough?

has shareholders who will expect certain growth in certain timeframes. Has Brad dangled the right carrot to get their attention by talking about leaving the US? Will this suit get legal clarity for $XRP quicker than waiting for industry wide clarity?

If I can work that out, I’m sure he can.

This isn’t just a small startup, it’s a global company with extremely reputable board members, partners and investors, who will also add pressure to the SEC’s case. Take @yoshitaka_kitao in Japan for example.

Daily Bookmarks to GAVNet 01/18/2021

1) Let's talk about Tesla's China strategy. There's a few questions here - why did the Chinese government actively encourage them to set up in Shanghai? What's in it for Tesla? Why is Tesla continously discounting their cars?

Spoiler alert: $TSLA go brrr

2) Our story starts all the way back in 2013, when smog was so bad Beijing didn't see any blue sky for months. Policy pivots were in order, and new energy bills with specific support for electric vehicles (EV) were introduced.

3) Over the next few years subsidies from the government were handed out to any car companies that said they were going electric. A single EV could get up to $22k worth of subsidies (provided they could drive for 250 km).

Sales increased and the EV market steady grew

4) However at the end of 2017, there was no standout Chinese EV company. Far too much of the subsidies went to fraudsters and the Chinese EV market was lagging behind the EU market.

Chinese government hardened their resolve.

Similar to Baidu, complacency was a killer.

5) The aim was to have a thriving worldclass EV market in the long term.

Similar to how introducing Apple and Samsung brought up Xiaomi, One Plus and Oppo, they decided to introduce foreign competition from the best EV brand there was - Tesla.

Good Saturday Morning Chart Fans!!!

Let's see what the charts say (or at least what I think they might say!)

DJIA

Transports.

Utes. I am shocked they haven't broken yet with Bondaleros doing what they did.

SPX. Channel Check even with first 4 straight red since December.

1/18

Long thread ahead of $TSLA's first S&P week with some advice.

First off, to people only holding stock, my general advice is sit back, relax, and watch the show. Even before factoring in Tesla Energy and Autobidder, EVTOL jets, cooperation with The Boring Company, HVACs,

2/18

manufacturing as a service, electric boats, and various other potential lines of business, Tesla's long-term potential is enormous.

Tesla is basically untouchable in automotive, autonomy, and autonomous mobility as a service. Tesla will be a monster of a company 10-15 ...

3/18

years from now, selling and managing massive fleets of AEVs. If you're worried $TSLA might be becoming overvalued, perhaps so looking backwards, but it's still a hell of an investment looking far into the future.

I explained all this in this

4/18

For people who have no choice but to time the market during the next couple of weeks, either because they hold options, or because of a need to sell some shares (living expenses, big purchase, etc.), I have three pieces of advice.

5/18

My first piece of advice is to be aware of what outcomes are unacceptable to you, and to eliminate the possibility of them occurring entirely.

So I saw #ShareYourForexStory is trending and Oh boy, do I have a story. 2019 was my lowest year financially and I needed to make quick wins and gains before we starved(Had 2 kids already). There was this scheme in Ibadan that claimed to pay 40% ROI for 6 months...see ehn

I had stalled and watched my friends cash in returns and I felt like I was losing time. The same friends I told about it so we could research had made their money back by the third month while research was doing me...."gbogbo wa Lama je breakfast" abi? These ones were on Dinner

So I gathered money from selling my car and taking a loan cos with my calculations, I'd have returned their money by month 3 and still have 3 months of ROI to play with. I has asked what they were investing in, they said Forex, real estate and lending to bigger companies.

See ehn, *sobs* I sha *sobs* put all money inside o! The first month ended....shebi I should have collected my interest, as Mr Adu taught me Compound interest, I asked them to add it to my capital and I did same for the second month. I had started pricing cars and natives to wear

In fact, one week I had 4 tailors come measure me all the way in Ikorodu(Ogijo oooo) as my money was coming! My other friend....A Gen Z that just got inheritance money had put 30million naira in without telling me, babe has been collecting 10m a month without me knowing,