What I Am Reading:
How to Live an Asymmetric Life
Graham Weaver's narrative unfolds as a profound exploration of both investing and life, with a focus on the four essential principles that shape an asymmetric existence. Central to his message is the notion of writing one's own story – envisioning and pursuing dreams with unwavering determination. Living an asymmetric life, according to Weaver, means breaking free from fear and playing for the asymmetric upside in every aspect of existence
What I Am Watching:
The Most Misunderstood Concept in Physics
Entropy is the tendency of energy to disperse and create disorder, and is intricately linked to Earth's existence. This video vividly explains the vital role played by the sun, which provides Earth with an invaluable stream of high-quality low entropy energy that allows for structure and temperature variations, fostering the conditions for life to flourish. It's a captivating journey into the science behind our planet's sustainability.
What I Am Listening:
"The Formula" by Albert-László Barabási
Too often, accomplishment does not equal success. We did the work but didn't get the promotion; we played hard but weren't recognized; we had the idea but didn't get the credit. We convince ourselves that talent combined with a strong work ethic is the key to getting ahead, but also realize that combination often fails to yield results, without any deeper understanding as to why. Recognizing this striking disconnect, the author, along with a team of renowned researchers and some of the most advanced data-crunching systems on the planet, dedicated themselves to one goal: uncovering that ever-elusive link between performance and success.
A conversation with Renaissance Technologies CEO Peter Brown
In this special episode, Peter Brown, CEO of Renaissance Technologies, talks about his career and building the hedge fund company. He also recounts how the firm navigated market crises such as the “quant quake” and the Global Financial Crisis, and describes how computer models and algorithms have long played a role in Renaissance’s growth.
More…
What I Am Reading:
The Art of the Good Life: 52 Surprising Shortcuts to Happiness, Wealth, and Success
The Art of the Good Life is a toolkit designed for practical living. Here you'll find fifty-two happiness hacks -- from guilt-free shunning of technology to gleefully paying your parking tickets -- that are certain to optimize your happiness. These tips may not guarantee you a good life, but they'll give you a better chance (and that's all any of us can ask for).
Crazy Train
Semper Augustus Client Letter 2022
PROFITLESS PROSPERITY; INVESTING IN FLATION; AND – BERKSHIRE: GETTING BETTER ALL THE TIME
The Munger Operating System: How to Live a Life That Really Works
It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule so to speak: You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have. By and large the people who have this ethos win in life and they don’t win just money, not just honors. They win the respect, the deserved trust of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust.
What I Am Reading:
First Ever Recording of Dying Brain May Shed Light on Our Final Moments
“Scientists gain an accidental glimpse into an age-old question about what happens to the human brain as we die.”
After The Fact
“Everything has a price, and prices aren’t always clear. The price of exercise isn’t just the workout; it’s avoiding the post-workout urge to eat a ton of food. Same in finance. The price of building wealth isn’t just the trouble of earning money or dealing; it’s avoiding the post-income urge to spend what you’ve accumulated.”
What I Am Reading:
Bear Market Investing Strategies
“Harry Schultz has been identifying bear market warning signals and teaching people how to prepare a profitable survival portfolio in light of these signals for over thirty-five years through his highly acclaimed newsletter, The International Harry Schultz Letter, which reaches subscribers in over ninety countries. The 1960s' classic book Bear Markets has been fully updated and revised to reflect the unprecedented changes taking place in today's volatile economic environment-making it extremely relevant to the current financial market. This book provides the necessary tools for investors to construct a portfolio that will allow them to protect and grow their money under the most severe bear market conditions through technical analysis and models of numerous bear market variables. Bear Market Investing Strategies offers practical and approachable strategies that every investor needs today.”
How scientists want to make you young again
“Research labs are pursuing technology to “reprogram” aging bodies back to youth.”
Old Frugal Habits Die Hard: Why I Force Myself to Spend More
“Why enjoying your money is so damned hard!”
What I Am Reading:
You weren’t supposed to see that
“Widespread prosperity, it turns out, is incompatible with the American Dream. The only way our economy works is when there are winners and losers. If everyone’s a winner, the whole thing fails. That’s what we learned at the conclusion of our experiment. You weren’t supposed to see that. Now the genie is out of the bottle. For one brief shining moment, everyone had enough money to pay their bills and the financial freedom to choose their own way of life.
And it broke the fucking economy in half.”
We now know the big bang theory is (probably) not how the universe began
“The Big Bang still happened a very long time ago, but it wasn’t the beginning we once supposed it to be.”
Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective
“Why does modern life revolve around objectives? From how science is funded, to improving how children are educated -- and nearly everything in-between -- our society has become obsessed with a seductive illusion: that greatness results from doggedly measuring improvement in the relentless pursuit of an ambitious goal. In Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned, Stanley and Lehman begin with a surprising scientific discovery in artificial intelligence that leads ultimately to the conclusion that the objective obsession has gone too far. They make the case that great achievement can't be bottled up into mechanical metrics; that innovation is not driven by narrowly focused heroic effort; and that we would be wiser (and the outcomes better) if instead we whole-heartedly embraced serendipitous discovery and playful creativity.
Controversial at its heart, yet refreshingly provocative, this book challenges readers to consider life without a destination and discovery without a compass.”
What I Am Reading
The Power of the Marginal
“If you really want to score big, the place to focus is the margin of the margin: the territories only recently captured from the insiders. That's where you'll find the juiciest projects still undone, either because they seemed too risky, or simply because there were too few insiders to explore everything.”
The Tacit Knowledge Series
“Tacit knowledge is ‘knowledge that cannot be captured through words alone’.
This series explores how expertise is tacit, why the research around extracting tacit knowledge is more important than the literature on deliberate practice, and how to go about acquiring tacit knowledge in the pursuit of skill acquisition.”
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What makes an investment promising, from the perspective of a venture capitalist? As any VC will tell you, it's not so much the idea being invested in; rather, it’s the team behind the idea, and most specifically, the founder.
A Smart Bet
VC investment is very much like gambling. Even having the best team and idea does not guarantee any level of success. That’s why many VCs spread their bets across a number of different companies; the way the math works out, you only need one outsized win to more than make up for all of your losses (or mediocre wins). But how do you optimize your chances of getting that outsized win? How do you know what to look for in a startup?
Well, there are many immeasurable factors that go into the success of a company, and to be honest, luck is probably one of the most important. Other factors, however, are much more concrete. And over the years, I’ve found that finding businesses with great founders significantly increases my odds of success.
What I Am Reading:
GPT-3 Generates Hype in Closed Beta
Open AI’s language model can do things like write computer code from a simple description given to it by a human or generate a thought leadership essay on a particular topic (no matter how esoteric). This is the most exciting and incredible technology I have seen in decades. Some of the things I have seen people do with it are truly incredible!
What will happen to cryptocurrency in the 2020s - The Coinbase Blog
This article was written in January and we are now 8 months into 2020. It’s interesting to see how much of Brian Armstrog’s predictions actually came true as Bitcoin breaks the $10K barrier.
The Ability to Regulate Your Emotions is Quickly Becoming The Premier Skill of The 21st Century
When I am asked about what traits I am looking for in a founder the most important one for me is emotional fortitude. Excerpt: “When something happens, our brain’s automatic response is to be reactive. When our amygdala, the small part of our brain that regulates fight or flight is set off, we have to avoid taking the bait of our raw emotional reactions that make us want to overreact,” Kris says.
