My goodness, a blast from the past. Such a glorious time to be a programmer... every single business needed a database to do their simple little daily chores, the coding was insanely easy (just a bunch of CRUD process), and the difference it made to the customers was night/day... hence, you could charge thru the roof.
I wrote a simple little CRUD app in FoxPro, for the Canadian real estate appraisal market, which took about a part-time month to create, and first year, sold 300 licenses at $299 a pop.
"Adam Mosseri has warned that users who switch off Instagram’s recommendation system end up with a worse experience, telling an Australian press briefing that engagement can fall by as much as 50% and that satisfaction scores fall off a cliff." - Well, isn't this just that we fear from technology... that the makers of their social media applications feel that their products are simply there to create our experiences?
Well, I have news for you. Social media creates nothing. It lives by getting us to not act... to sit in a mind-numbing silent purgatory, voyeuristically watching the fictitious 3rd-person accounts of the subjective experience of others... as the synchronisation of our genetic inner core with the paths we take in the social realm becoming less and less harmonious... since because of social media we take less paths... since you know... we don't act.
So if the addiction from the behavioural algorithms is all you have to engage with your users, why aren't you classed as drug suppliers?
The nature of employment has changed and there is no going back.
"These findings challenge assumptions that remote work undermines connection and retention. Instead, they suggest that remote work can support well-being and that well-being, not proximity, is a key factor in employee retention."
What is interesting to me here is the conflict between well-being and corporate interests. It is high time that well-being is being mentioned and considered as the definitive measure of employee retention.
Yes, financial planners will be one of the first industries to totally revamp itself because of AI. $2,000 for some SoA which is 99% boiler-plate? No thanks.
I spent years in this industry, and the advice from these 'experts' is demonstrably poor.
This already happened 10-20 years ago when personal finance got big on the Internet, it’s just taking a long time to play out.
It was never about ROI anyway, just preservation of capital and peace of mind - makes a lot of sense in the analog/less automated financial world of yore when non-professionals were writing checks or wiring money to people over the phone, and checking stock prices in the paper.
There will also never be a way to pay $10/mo for Gecko+ and trade your way to a lambo with it, because whatever advantage an amateur investor might have is purely from their niche knowledge/information/heterodox beliefs, though I give it about 6-18 months until we’re hearing all about it because it’s a timeless siren song.
This is spot on and has been my experience. The tax-efficiency and lot-selection work it can provide is easily more valuable than a human advisor charging $2,000 for boilerplate. However, I know my P&L best and it has to ride shotgun while I am making the final decisions and I should know the overall strategy — should i be 80/20, have this much tech concentration, will 8% hold, tax implications in my state etc.
Lol. You don't even need AI for that 99% boiler plate. Save 6-12 months of expenses in cash, DCA the rest into total market stock index funds. But people still pay expensive advisors to get worse results.
The problem with giving financial advice to people is that many struggle to pay their rent. Telling them to invest in index funds from an ivory tower is laughably misguided of the realistic situation they live in.
After they pay their rent and feed themselves, they may have a little left over which they will simply spend on basic pleasures, or simply rack up debt to get by.
The financial advice ignores the fact that we have people like Musk with a net worth of 600M while the rest struggle to afford necessities.
The wealth inequality gap is simply too much to ignore and I worry that it will reach a breaking point.
> This isn't a wealth inequality issue, it's a "you're overspending" issue.
Just so that I understand your position, you think the reason a cashier at McDonald struggles is because he is overspending on his rent? and not due to wealth inequality which causes low wages ?
I can assure you, in most places you will not be fined or put in prison for not having a home. In most places the local council, or charities will help provide you shelter even if only on a temporary basis.
Many people go through a “homeless” period of not having a permanent address. Couch surfing. Motels etc.
It’s not fun. It’s very stressful. Our systems have a positive feedback loop against financial instability.
However there is another category of homeless which is a person pushing a shopping cart on the side of the road. And this is an exteme level of dysfunction and despair.
I saw a tweet that summarized this issue as “you’re as likely to become a CEO or NBA player as you are to become homeless.” Meaning that it’s a track of genetics and behavior resulting in dysfunction several standard deviations away from normal.
If you took an average person and then forced them to stop paying rent or anything more expensive than their current rent (so no motels)—the scenario being discussed here—which category of homeless would they likely end up in?
What are you talking about? What is “rent”? You can rent an individual room. You can rent a double-wide trailer. You can move to Kentucky. You can work 40 hours (guaranteed 40-50k year).
> stop responding to all incentives and deliberately go against the grain of every system and form of aid.
Saves money by not renting? This sounds like an Upper class 20 year old activity. Are they not renting a trailer so they can put $200/month in Tesla?
The level of discipline and focus to be that kind of super saver doesn’t sound like the origin story of a guy with a shopping cart.
Another aspect that gives ms pause is living in ann unmaintained apartment where you don’t have insurance etc is miserable. And that’s the reality of being poor. I’m not sure why we need to pretend we can all become homeless when the actual danger is already real and bleak.
I also haven't been a millionaire, but that doesn't mean i don't know how to earn money.
Sorry, your appeals to emotion aren't effective, and your arguments do not agree with reality.
There is no able bodied person in the US who is unable to save and invest enough of their income to have a decent life. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either lying or ignorant about reality.
Thank you for ignoring the request and not providing the simple link i requested.
Also, from your own link:
>Is It Illegal to Be Homeless
>No US law makes the status of being homeless a crime. You cannot face arrest simply for not having a permanent address or for being unable to afford rent.
Yes if you’re poor you are not in the market for a financial advisor. You’re also not in the market for a dentist or family doctor. These are services for middle class people.
The tricky part is which total market index funds? The S&P based ones are too AI focused, and don't give you the diversification they once did. You also don't want to invest in just one countries stock market. And bonds, should be a mix of maturity, governments (not just the US), corporate, etc.
Total market is total market. Investing in a “total market minus X” fund means you lose exposure to X (whatever that is) for good or bad. That’s your judgment call, but not really an edict. Same problem with “you can’t just invest with US stocks” - US stocks are global at this point, and have significant exposure to the international market. By investing in specific international funds you’re more or less saying “international minus the US”.
You can change your weighting if you want to, that’s your prerogative, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t lead to nearly as good of average returns.
It's more complicated than that. You probably don't want all your equity in stock, unless you're young and you're confident you can keep your strategy when the AI bubble crashes. And what do you do with the part that isn't in stock? bonds? what are they? which ones to buy? Even the 6-12 months of expenses in cash doesn't apply to all people.
That being said, I agree with the bad and expensive advisors, but I think financial planning is hard, and you really need to educate yourself.
DCA is not unreasonable advice given that most people's greatest enemy is themselves. DCA helps avoid the very emotionally upsetting feeling of you throwing money into a fund and it dropping 5% the next day. This emotional volatility can push people to make bad decisions (pull all their money out, try to time the market, stop investing, etc.). Scheduling your investment into smaller sums lets you diffuse the highs and lows in order to keep you steadfast.
That's not really DCA, at least how I understand it. DCA is something like "I have $520,000 in cash right now today sitting in checking, I'm going to buy $10,000 a week of VTSAX for the next 52 weeks" which on average is a bad strategy.
What you're describing is better analyzed as a continuing series of lump sum investments. You're investing as soon as you have cash available, not unnecessarily holding onto cash.
BTW, you are correct technically that if the expected return of the investment is positive, then you maximise the expected return by putting in everything now all at once. However, maybe you want to reduce the variance. Or you want to trade off return and risk. Or you want to minimise regret.
If you put all in at a certain price, and later the market moves down, you'll regret that you didn't buy cheaper, and think you timed it badly.
If, however, you commit to a strategy of putting in say 5% per month over the next months, then a) you just automate it, and don't think about it anymore, and b) you don't really have a reference price at which you bought (sure, you can determine your actual cost basis, but who does that...) and thus avoid regret when the market tanks. Plus you reduce variance (by reducing the variance of your cost basis).
> DCA is something like "I have $520,000 in cash right now today sitting in checking, I'm going to buy $10,000 a week of VTSAX for the next 52 weeks" which on average is a bad strategy.
Yeah for a start if you're really planning to buy $10 K of a world fund pick one with stock options. Sell a PUT secured by the $10 K with a 7 DTE. This is already guaranteed better returns (but still a bad strategy) than this dumb way of DCAing.
But when people say they DCA what they mean is basically: "I make $10 K net per month, I spent $6 K, I keep $1 K in cash and I invest the $3 K that are left". Which is actually not a bad strategy at all.
Financial planning is mostly a solved problem. For whatever goal and situation a person is looking for, there's already an optimal path that has been long proven.
The only times you need very custom advice is at very high levels of networth or ownership, as in "you want to sell stock but you have to physically find the buyers and negotiate deals because you can't just sell on the open market without disrupting the price"
If you’re a layman investor just dump all of your shit in index funds. Even if you’re smart and sophisticated, you’re still competing against the massive amount of fraudulent insider trading happening right now with zero enforcement and are trading at a disadvantage as a result
If you understand finance and aren’t specifically attempting to arb on that timescale, you actually want to participate in markets with those participants, because their presence gives you less variance/better price discovery on the scales that don’t factor into your decisions to buy and sell things.
So basically if you’re larping as a trader you will consistently get your ass handed to you unless you are genuinely better than all the pros, but if you’re investing or optimizing for a specific risk profile/exposure/timeline you’re playing a different game.
Anyway the fact that it’s so hard to explain this stuff to individuals does strengthen the argument that most individuals are better off following the herd.
thats one of the areas where quants squeeze edge the other is more boring where they are essentially "market neutral" and they try to figure out how to make a few cents everyday knowing the downside is a global financial crisis.
their edge is basically political so that they get a bail out and thats what the quants will never see in their models.
not to get cynical further, just do what the GP says, buy index or figure out what the biggest movers are and buy those for more exposure
I think you're missing the point why younger people do that. Real wages have been deteriorating over the years. It's much more difficult to afford a house today than it was 50 years ago. People are perfectly aware that investing into index funds is the "correct" approach, however it does not solve anything for them. They're desperate and for them _to gamble_ seems like the only way to become decently rich allowing to escape the rats race, otherwise there is not much to live for, just slaving their days away. That's exactly what led to the recent situation of en masse margin calls in Korea.
Here in Europe I too have been working for years and I just don't feel like I'm earning actual money. Most of my income is eaten away by taxes and very basic living expenses. ETFs won't compound for me much if there is not a lot invested into them in the first place. This is exactly what led me to despite high electricity costs to buy 2x open source bitcoin lottery miners (NerdQaxe++) and just hope for the best.
Yes. You used to start at -1000 points and earn 5000 over your life. With investment and luck you could make that 10000 and end up at +9000.
Now you start at -9000 and earn 3000. With investment and luck you could make that 6000 and end up at -3000 so that's still a guaranteed loss. To have any hope of hitting the positives at all, you need to excessively gamble. Sure you could end up at -999999 (which is no worse than 0) but also +999999.
Yep, that's a nice illustration. Basically, if to continue steady leads to an inevitable loss, then _to gamble_ is actually a rational decision. You can see that in chess a lot: if someone is down a pawn, they have to take more risks if they need to win
Real wages are higher today than they ever have been. The whole story about median real wages falling is entirely a result of Simpson’s paradox as applied to women entering the workforce from 1970-2000. This sort of axe grinding is just excusing people’s bad decisions it isn’t grounded in reality.
By taking nominal wages and then normalizing them to some specified year’s dollars using a price index. Yes I know you believe that price indices are made up but if anything CPI overstates inflation slightly because it doesn’t properly account for substitution across goods categories (for example if the price of apples increases people will buy fewer apples and more oranges, but the CPI won’t update the weights on apples and oranges immediately). That is why the Fed uses PCE as its target index, because it more accurately adjusts for substitution elasticities.
I’m in Europe, and I have the same sentiment regarding salary. The difference is I’m more than happy with a simple life and experiences that don’t cost too much money. I have free healthcare, plenty of time for social or outdoor activities. Travels and material things are nice, but I feel like young people are forgetting it doesn’t get better than spending time with friends and family and laughing with them or enjoying nature. Whether you makes 50k a year or you are a billionaire it’s the same (not talking about genuinely poor people obviously). Driving a lambo is additional fun, but that’s hardly what makes a day interesting in itself for me, so sometimes I’m not sure what younger people obsessed with getting rich, at least in Europe, are chasing.
High functioning autists must have other traits which blend-in into their level of autism. Take a look at Steve Jobs... clearly autistic but had a drive and charisma in order for his level of autism to be (for lack of a better word) supercharged.
I dunno if Steve was autistic or no but there's a subtype of people who develop a "special interest" in reading, influencing and manipulating people and get quite good at it. They study people carefully - each encounter is a new way to find out how people tick, their motivations and levers. They tend to have unusually good memories of specific encounters and conversations. They can quickly and reliably size people up. You need many many encounters to build this kind of intuition up, so there are specific professions they cluster in that give them lots of practice, cops / detectives, sales, even retail - but you need lots of (ideally non-trivial) interactions to supply the intuition pump.
This is why we built nOne, a permission/consent layer underlying the engines/platforms/algorithms/etc.
This way OpenAI can check the permissions of the author of a particular body-of-work and then respect those permissions, so that the legality of their functionality/crawling is not questioned.
I am building nOne, the first subjective layer of the Internet, or more accurately, a permission layer underlying the engines/platforms/automation. Although it does pertain to AI, its more than that... it is a permission system for email, AI, and cognitive inputs (undisclosed automation, what you permit in your feeds, etc). It encompasses the entirety of the digital realm.
We have created a permission system within our social worlds... time to apply the same standards to the digital realm.
I wrote a simple little CRUD app in FoxPro, for the Canadian real estate appraisal market, which took about a part-time month to create, and first year, sold 300 licenses at $299 a pop.
Ahh, memories of a simpler time.
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