Collaborative Fund

https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/archive/ - not just one individual but a few. Entrepreneurship, finance, tech.

"Every investor is making bets on the future. It’s only called speculation when you disagree with someone else’s bet.

In hindsight there was as much speculation in the 1990s that Kodak and Sears would keep their market share as there was that eToys and Pets.com would gain market share. Both were bets on the future. Both were wrong. It happens.

Of course there’s a speculation spectrum. But let’s not pretend that others speculate while you only deal with certainties."

https://cryptohayes.medium.com/ - Arthur Hayes blog. Crypto trading mostly.

"I am an arbitrage trader at heart. In May 2013 brimming with my experience as a delta one trader, I entered the crypto capital markets. The first trade I ever put on was buying Bitcoin from Mt. Gox, depositing them on ICBIT, then selling BTC/USD June 2013 inverse futures contracts at a premium. My first trade captured a premium of 200% per annum (PA). When the futures expired, and my PNL matched my spreadsheet calculations exactly, I thought to myself, holy shit, “Bitcoin is LIT!”"

I worked in the news industry for about 5 years, and, once I left the 24/7 cycle, I sort of instinctively understood the half-life of information and began to stop paying attention to the news. I was later pleasantly surprised to see this concept formalized in a few places, notably from Morgan Housel[1], Nassim Taleb[2] and Samuel Arbesman[3]. These men’s writing really crystallized what I had learned from experience but didn’t have a framework to explain.

It is of course a privilege to ignore the news completely. I don’t advocate totally unplugging. But once you better understand the material value of information, you can make better decisions about what to consume.

[1]http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowledge/

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_effect

[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life_of_knowledge

I have been following Morgan Housel's (the OP) writings for a while. He has written some excellent essays. In terms of explaining important ideas, they come close to "PG-Level" (Paul Graham) in writing. If you are interested in reading more from Morgan, I recommend the following:

1. The greatest story ever told: "Capitalism’s success is built on a belief – a story – that, given the right incentives, people can work together to solve problems. It’s worked magnificently. It’s the greatest story ever told."

http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-greatest-story-ever-told/

2. The Reasonable Formation of Unreasonable Things
"Few things have as much impact on your lifetime investment returns as the decisions you make during bubbles."

http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-reasonable-formation-of-unreasonable-things/

Reminds me of

3. Rich man in the car paradox.

When you see someone driving a nice car, you rarely think, “Wow, the guy driving that car is cool.” Instead, you think, “Wow, if I had that car people would think I’m cool.” Subconscious or not, this is how people think.

The paradox of wealth is that people tend to want it to signal to others that they should be liked and admired. But in reality those other people bypass admiring you, not because they don’t think wealth is admirable, but because they use your wealth solely as a benchmark for their own desire to be liked and admired.

http://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-psychology-of-money/

I didn't know about MMM, thanks for that. I've learned about this phenomenon on a different website [1] and amazed by it. Small investments over a long period makes a huge difference but still, you need a long enough period or put huge amounts at the right time of the market. S&P 500 has worst performance of -3% over 10 year period. It gets better after 15 years and so on. Investing and hoping to retire early during this window is certainly not going to work.

I think everybody who works 9-5 should read the story about Grace Groner in [1]. It was a real eye opener for me.

[1] https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/the-psychology-of-money/

Ditto.

This reminds me of write-up by Morgan Housel: long-term knowledge vs expiring knowledge[0].
To optimize that trade-off, I generally try to review, on a weekly basis, what I consume from the internet-verse. This has helped me in some ways. Not sure if it's gonna work or not for other people... Plus, moving the scale towards consuming long-forms is also helping me out. (I guess it depends on what type of bubble you are wrapping yourself into. For instance, only visiting specific sub-reddit and LW topics intentionally has been advantageous to me...)...

[0] - https://www.collaborativefund.com/blog/expiring-vs-lt-knowledge/