Posts

Book: 20250830 to 20251106, "Average is over" by Tyler Cowen

PART I: Welcome to the Hyper-Meritocracy 20250831 - 1: Work and Wages in iWorld Marriages, families, businesses, countries, cities, and regions all will see a greater split in material outcomes; namely, they will either rise to the top in terms of quality or make do with unimpressive results. p4 Well said. How about our health, including physical health and mental health? Technological progress slows down when there are too many people who have the right to say no, but software in general gets around a lot of the traditional veto points. p17 This is a real problem for self-driving cars, but is it a problem for humanoid robots in factories? It sounds a little silly, but making high earners feel better in just about every part of their lives will be a major source of job growth in the future. p23 A lot of wealthy people will like that. But that's dumb. Budda was wealthy, and didn't need anyone to make him feel better. 20250904 - 2: The Big Earners and the Big Losers It sounds a l...

Book: 20251007 to 20251102, "Same as Ever" by Morgan Housel

20251007 - Introduction Our characteristics will not change. At least to most of people. 20251007 - Hanging by a Thread "And then what?" p14 This is the critical part to tests the limits of our perception. 20251008 - Risk Is What You Don’t See The fact that you can't see it coming is exactly what makes it risky. p18 Black Swans. Only extra buffer can intimigate the problem, and only deep understanding of the world can make us choose the right position. Expectations and forecasts are two different things, and in a world where risk is what you don't see, the former is more valuable than the latter. p21 20251008 - Expectations and Reality "If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are." p23 Investor Charlie Munger once noted that the world isn't driven by greed; it's driven by envy. p24 20251008 - Wild Minds 2...

Book: 20250726 to 20250924, "Reminiscences of a Stock Operator" by Edwin Lefevre

20250726 - Chapter I - 3 This half fictional story is about  Jesse Lauriston Livermore,1877 - 1940. The price changes have pattern, but occasionally break the pattern, and the abnormality may last for quite long time. That make the stock traders go broke. 20250726 - Chapter II – 14 ......but the fact remains that in A.R. Fullerton's office the tape always talked ancient history to me. p14 It was full of cheating and violence back to early 20th century. Latency(information gap) caused by technology disadvantage is also a big obstacle for normal people. That information gap is much narrower now, which means modern society is more fair and more friendly to normal people. Unfortunately modern society also has more traps than before, such as all types of screen. 20250726 - Chapter III – 27 20250726 - Chapter IV – 35 When you know what not to do in order not to lose money, you begin to learn what to do in order to win. p44 I doubt it. In different situation, same strategy may stop workin...

Book: 20250617 to 20250917, "The Sovereign Individual" by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg

20250617 - Preface Yes this book missed China. It missed that the competition between democracy and dictatorship will not end so quickly, because dictatorship has its own advantages. Computers and internet will push both side to extreme. What will happen? What's the role of AI in information society. 20250621 - Chapter 1: The Transition of the Year 2000: The Fourth Stage of Human Society (In information societies,) It will prove difficult or impossible to preserve many contemporary institutions in the new millennium. p17 Government is getting bigger in the past 27 years, through money printing(unanchered government debt). Genius will be unleashed, freed from both the oppression of government and the drags of racial and ethnic prejudice. p18 Roughly correct. In the future, when most wealth can be earned anywhere, and even spent anywhere, governments that attempt to charge too much as the price of domicile will merely drive away their best customers. p21 Yes and No. Many governments ...

Book: 20250703 to 20250815, "The Innovator's Dilemma" by Clayton M. Christensen

Image
20250705 - Introduction Products based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use. p xix Not in early stage. How to recognize the potential of a new product? Based on physics? First, disruptive products are simpler and cheaper; they generally promise lower margins, not greater profits. Second, disruptive technologies typically are first commercialized in emerging or insignificant markets. And third, leading firms’ most profitable customers generally don’t want, and indeed initially can’t use, products based on disruptive technologies. By and large, a disruptive technology is initially embraced by the least profitable customers in a market. Hence, most companies with a practiced discipline of listening to their best customers and identifying new products that promise greater profitability and growth are rarely able to build a case for investing in disruptive technologies until it is too late.  p xxi While managers may ...

Book: 20250623 to 20250717, "What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars" by Jim Paul, Brendan Moynihan

20250623 - Forword Successful trading is not about discovering a great strategy for making money but rather a matter of learning how to lose. p viii 20250623 - PART ONE Reminiscences of a Trader - 1 Personalizing successes sets people up for disastrous failure. p3 There is no bad guy, although some people do bad things. It's same to say that there is no "successful people, only people won a number of times". 20250623 - From Hunger - 5 20250623 - To the Real World - 11 20250623 - Wood That I Would Trade - 32 20250623 - Spectacular Speculator - 40 Jim Paul was very smart and lucky, but not wise. Is his loss partly due to lack of knowledge of statistics? What I can learn from it? 1. I could be wrong. Quite possible. 2. Never all in. 3. I don't really know what's going on. Everything I know is my imagination. Some of them are right, and some of them are wrong. No matter how smart I am, no matter how many books I read. 20250630 - The Quest - 59 Learning how not to lose...

Book: 20250528 to 20250715, "Emergency" by Neil Strauss

20250528 - pt. 1. Orientation The political philosopher Francis Fukuyama......in his 1989 essay "The End of History." p29 What a joke. And with great power comes great fear of losing it. p36 Am I feared of losing, let's say, half of my asset? 20250530 - pt. 2. Five steps This is how hatred is created: two different groups, each insisting they're on the moral high ground. p53 We need an objective standards to measure it, such as median income. Rather than illusory justice or morality. Anything that improve median income, most likely to be right. "A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself; but the simple pass on, and are punished." p62 "It's a false sense of security" p68 The most common mistake, I reckon. "A lot of people didn't think things would get any worse, " she answered. "And by that point, it was harder for Jews to leave." p71 Wishful thinking. It's like share price. We never know how high or how lo...