Comments by "Magic Beans" (@Magic_beans_) on "Patrick Boyle" channel.

  1.  @stoneneils  He says it in the “Cosmos” TV show and wrote it in “Broca’s Brain.” He was referring to this kind of stuff too. The sentence before that is “The fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses.” Even in the 70s there were hucksters claiming that the mockery and debunking only showed how scared The Establishment were of their revolutionary idea.
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  2. 2:45 Tangentially related, but WWI is also when the US became primarily monolingual. Prior to the war Americans learned foreign languages at about the same rate as Europeans, and German-language newspapers were common throughout the country and especially in the Midwest. When war broke out, foreign languages became suspicious, German most of all. Public life was to be conducted in English only, and in some places laws even prohibited teaching German. Those laws didn’t last long, but they were enough to break the chain of transmission, the tradition of kids learning from their grandparents. Following the war there was a cultural shift where the US grew more insular. Part of that shift was defensive: we didn’t want to get dragged into war again. I assume Europe felt the same way considering how far they went to appease the next guy. I also think for us there was an experience akin to realizing one’s parents have flaws. If Europe could do that for five years, who are they to tell us what it means to be civilized?
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  3. I’m glad he mentioned reinventing busses and trains. Aside from sidestepping regulations, one of the biggest driving forces behind startups seems to be wrapping themselves in a little cocoon: “What if there was a vehicle with all the limitations of a train, but also it could only carry twenty people?”
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  4.  @DeltaNovum Yep, that’s classic narcissist logic, the chain of causality ends right before it gets to them. If those companies tank Twitter it’ll be for no reason at all. Certainly not because he ruined its credibility, let trolls run wild, and proposed paywalling the ability to create content for the site.
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  5. Folks with ADHD often report skipping meals because they were too focused on something else. I remember junior year of college I researched and wrote a 20-page paper on Lyndon Johnson in one sitting. Or there are those who aren’t organized enough to have food in the house and the mental wherewithal to cook. Something like Soylent that’s prepackaged or Huel that’s just powder and water can be really helpful. (It’s still not a technology though; Slim-Fast has been available as a powder or ready-to-drink since the 80s.)
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  6. There’s one that I drink that’s basically oat flour, protein powder, powdered oil, and a multivitamin. Much as I like it, I recognize that all they’ve invented is a moderately better form of gruel.
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  7. Wait, I thought this was a channel about wood nymphs.
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  8.  @michaelchomiczewski7937  At the same time, highlighting her background in physics shows how public policy is often based on making voters feel safer, even if that feeling has no relation to actual danger.
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  9.  @fabiolean  Fairbanks, Alaska makes me hopeful in this regard. It gets stupid cold in the winter (-40° is common) so it’s pretty standard for cars there to have plug-in engine block heaters (keeps the fluids flowing, reduces wear on the engine). To accommodate this, many offices and even grocery stores built electric outlets into their parking lots.
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  10. Contingency-based compensation. If they lose they get nothing, if they win they get something like 1/3 of the judgment.
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  11. A period of time that’s vacant from obligations. What would you even call that?
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  12.  @x--.  Likewise, those players like stability. That 80-year-old Senator is a known quantity, and he can cultivate his son or wife as a successor, giving the other players comfort that the good times won’t suddenly stop.
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  13. The deeper you get into speculation — altcoins, NFTs, MOASS — the more you see that embraced by the rank and file. The conversation shifts away from democracy and equity toward a future that’s just as hierarchical and unequal, but this time they get to be on top.
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  14. Wait just a minute, are you suggesting that someone went on JRE and spouted a bunch of nonsense, and Rogan accepted it without question?
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  15. 18:00 The way I heard it, requiring disclosure of top officer pay also contributed to the rocketing of that pay. Regulators thought it would have a “name and shame” effect, but what really happened was execs could see their peers’ pay and demanded more.
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  16. I know some folks like that. Regulation is a pain, it’s government overreach, it increases costs. Then their industry gets deregulated and in that one instance they care about consumer protection and ensuring a quality product.
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  17. 12:50 It was explained, as a teaser rate to draw in initial “depositors” (but not legally depositors so that when this whole thing evaporates we’re not liable). Trouble is I don’t think people got the memo. The Plain Bagel, in his “Investing TikToks Part 4” showcase, shares someone who said they were going to finance a house with income from Anchor. They seemingly expect Anchor to continue paying 19% for 30-plus years.
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  18. So you’re saying it’ll create lots of jobs? #accentuatethepositive #orelse
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  19. Right, but I don’t think that’s what he’s talking about. I think he’s responding to TED-talk types saying, “Automation’s going to replace half of existing jobs, but don’t worry, UBI will fix it.” That would help some things, like the economic consequences of half of the country being unemployed. It doesn’t fix the unemployment itself though. And as many of us learned in 2020, there is such a thing as too much leisure time.
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  20. One important lesson for modern investors to take away is that conditions can be positive for an industry, but that doesn’t make any particular company a sure thing. Even if electric cars are the way of the future, that doesn’t guarantee Workhorse or Rivian will survive. Who knows, even Tesla could get shaken out. More surprising things have happened.
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  21. It’s all related. The constant “work or starve” financial pressure pushes people to take the first or highest-paying job they can find rather than do something they find meaningful.
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  22. 15:10 “too smart or too well informed to be tricked” - I see this all the time in smaller ways. People think they’re beings of pure rationality, but really they’re just low enough in emotional intelligence that they don’t realize how their emotions are being played upon and how those emotions are influencing them.
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  23. ⁠​⁠​⁠​⁠ @SeanBeatsMapson  I suspect that’s part of it, the way Western cultures assign blame (as opposed to honor-shame cultures which have their own pros and cons). If you got suckered that implies that you are a sucker. Folks don’t want to acknowledge that, so they hunker down into their opinion, dismissing the criticism as FUD and critics as haters. [Since I’m using terms that are popular in the crypto space I’ll go ahead and clarify: I’m not saying crypto is a scam, just that scams happen in the crypto market. Swap out some words and this could be about politics or MLMs.]
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  24. It’s a good thing we don’t fall for stuff like this anymore.
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  25. Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are just funds that can be bought and sold on an exchange like stocks. They’re different from mutual funds mostly because an ETF’s price constantly updates and they can be traded during the day. The price of a mutual funds only updates once a day after hours and they do their buys and sells at that time. Either type of fund can be actively managed (meaning a few specific people decide what to buy and sell) or passively managed (meaning the fund mimics an index).
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  26. I like meal replacements too. I lost 16 kilos swapping two meals a day with Huel, and like you I saved a bunch of money because it was easier than buying tacos. It’s just silly to try and sell it as a technology . You can get most of the way there with oat flour, milk, and a multivitamin. (“Well what about enjoyment?” critics often say. I enjoy meals with my family or on vacation. Most days I don’t care; I’m only eating because that’s what it takes to keep this meat suit running.)
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  27. 5:00 Regarding the 1,000 share limit - Investing had much more of a hurdle to entry back then. It was typical to trade in “round lots” of 100 shares. Some brokers even required it, they wouldn’t deal in smaller “odd lots” because of the higher fees involved. If they took the request, you the investor would pay more in commissions to buy 50 shares than you would to buy 100. That round-lot requirement might mean each blue-chip position in your portfolio was thousands of dollars; in 1990 you’d need about $6,000 to get your first stake in Coke or IBM. This is also why stock splits were more common than they are now. You wouldn’t have seen someone trading at $1,000/share like Booking or Chipotle do today, because it could make them more difficult to invest in.
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  28. 0:30 Wow, he looks just like Tom Cruise!
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  29. 19:45 I’m gonna tell my kids these were the Power Rangers.
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  30.  @federicoytbe That’s true, the gains that people miss out on by waiting for a crash are more than what they’d lose in the actual crash. But the teacher’s story also illustrates how our panicky monkey brains lead us astray. More than a few people pull their money out of the market during the crash, and they don’t get back in until the rally is well underway.
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  31.  @factorfitness3713 Buffett has repeatedly said he doesn’t invest in companies he doesn’t understand. That’s one thing that annoys me about the crypto community, they’ll mock people for not investing because they don’t understand the tech, but that’s the correct response. Sure, learn more if you’re on the fence, but there’s plenty of time for that. If someone had invested in Microsoft in 2015, twenty years after Windows became a household name, they’d be up 500% or more.
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  32. That’s the point of this video, it’s not about Wood or ARK. Peter Lynch had a legendary run as the manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund. He averaged 29% annual returns over his 13 years, double the S&P’s growth rate during that span. He only had two calendar years with negative returns, 1984 and 1987 (and you can hardly blame him for 1987). Even so, the median investor in the Magellan Fund during that period lost money. They didn’t just lag the market, they had negative returns in one of the most impressive actively-managed funds ever. How? Exactly what Patrick talks about, buying when the market is hottest and bailing when it cools off.
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  33. Prompt engineering is super important. It’s getting attention now as more companies roll out AI assistants, but already in organizations that depend on Decision Support Systems there are employees whose whole job is to help users ask good questions.
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  34. ⁠​⁠ @saeedhossain6099 Rich Dad, Poor Dad literally recommends insider trading. He says to ask rich friends for stock tips based on non-public information because “That’s what friends are for.”
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  35.  @bigboot6139 Mathematically, it mainly comes down to your interest rate on the mortgage and what you can earn in the market, both after any tax effects. I’ll use myself as an example: my mortgage charges a fixed 5% and isn’t big enough to provide any tax benefit. My investments have historically grown 10% per year and I’d pay 15% tax on capital gains, so I’m effectively earning (.10 * (1 - .15)) = 8.5%. That means that by letting my investments ride rather than paying the mortgage down earlier, I’m netting about 3.5% on that invested balance. (On average, it’ll vary wildly by year and the future could be different from the past.) There are intangibles to consider though. Owning the house free and clear may not be the most mathematically ideal choice, but it would sure help me sleep better at night. Not having a mortgage would also lower my income needs, so it’s still an important contributor to financial independence and retirement planning.
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  36. Reminds me of a cutting edge tech firm out of the Midwest that I just invested with.
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  37. I see it the other way around: mining provides a profit motive to build renewables, which of course is how anything gets done anymore. But also that profit motive depends on us caring enough about crypto to keep the price propped up for however many years.
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  38. Exactly, that’s what Mr. Boyle cautions us about with the caviar example. Some of this is effect rather than cause. People who have money can invest it, creating a second stream of income. People who can outsource chores have time to volunteer. That said, volunteering can be good for your career, especially the way executives do. They’re not scooping litter boxes at the animal shelter, they’re on committees with other executives.
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  39. They don’t even need to be limited to their own money. ARK Investments charges 0.75% of assets per year, so for every billion dollars they can get people to invest they collect $7,500,000 in fees. If an investment manager can demonstrate better than average performance for even a short while, like ARK did in 2020-2021, investors will flock to them and their cut will multiply. Why are they instead selling YouTube courses for $500 each? (Their answer is usually something about standing up for the little guy, but if they cared about that they’d charge a percentage too, so any rich people who want in have to pay more.)
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  40. Totally, that’s why Wirecard, WeWork, and arguably Tesla insist on being valued as tech companies rather than something more boring and concrete. They can be valued on lines of business they haven’t even started yet.
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  41. 9:30 There’s a scene in The Big Short that’s basically about this. Larry Fields comes into Dr. Burry’s office to talk about the huge premiums he’s paying on his swaps. Burry defends his decision by saying “I may be early but I’m not wrong,” and Fields responds that early is just as bad. That’s typically how leveraged positions work: you can’t just be right, you have to be right enough soon enough.
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  42. Say what you want about the person who invented parks, but I had a highly reactive dog who couldn’t be around anybody but me. Public spaces were a whirlwind of threats and it was just a matter of time until she would have hurt somebody and gotten taken away. Renting out a private space was how she got her exercise.
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  43. Exactly why they wanted to be seen as a tech company. With old-economy businesses there’s an identifiable point where you should be breaking even. For these “disruptive” companies you just keep throwing money at it until it somehow becomes profitable.
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  44. According to the SEC, only three of the Seven are tech companies. - Amazon is Consumer Discretionary because of their retail operations, - Meta and Alphabet are Communications Services because of advertising, and - Tesla’s an Industrial like other automakers.
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  45. Maybe the feds are different, but from what I’ve seen of state and local government there wasn’t all that much that could objectively be called waste. It’s more about values and hypotheticals: Does this program really help people? Does this job deserve that salary? Do the fraud-fighting measures cost more than the fraud they prevent? And so forth.
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  46. Hedge funds are a great example of this. They have a reputation of being super aggressive and pursuing growth at all costs, but for the most part they’re defensive investments. A market-neutral fund’s benchmark typically isn’t the S&P, it’s Treasury bills.
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  47. 4:07 Tangent, but this also relates to the psychology behind false confessions to crimes. If the suspect has never had reason to mistrust the justice system, they may confess to a crime just to get out of the interrogation room. In research and case studies confessors have reported that they believed that something else would kick in, the truth would come out, and it would set them free. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. When someone confesses, both police and juries believe it. Unless someone really pushes them to, they don’t consider whether the confession is forced or inconsistent, or how their story may contradict other facts of the case. We’re social creatures, so when someone tells us themselves what happened, especially when it’s unflattering, why not believe it?
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  48. 2:46 So they sell your data and you get a cut? Revolutionary!
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  49. 2:33 Isn’t that what inexperienced investors have always done? Warren Buffett has said that about his own beginnings, where he saw a stock as a thing that went up and down rather than anything to do with a company.
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  50. I had a dog who was incredibly anxious and reactive. She couldn’t be around other people, dogs, basically anybody but me. A public park wouldn’t cut it; she needed a private space to play. Without rentable yards and similar play spaces, it would have been really difficult to give her the exercise she needed.
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