Viewing profile — jplewicke

Someone actually tried to follow this advice starting in September 2007: https://www.bogleheads.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5934 . Needless to say, it did not work out well for them …

It's actually completely normal for a small group of stocks to account for most of the index gains -- see https://www.aqr.com/cliffs-perspective/still-not-crazy-after... .

I think that there's a common thread that underlies the development of intelligence in both humans and Portia spiders. We both evolved in an environment where we were at a sensory …

One of the better proposals to fix whatever market structure issues we have is to move to "frequent batch auctions", in which a micro-auction would occur every 30 seconds or minute…

That chart understates the cumulative return of McDonalds by 20%, since it is just a graph of price appreciation and does not include the effect of reinvesting dividends. The prope…

I found this book helpful: The HIPAA Roadmap for Business Associates ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1484067010/ref=oh_aui_searc... ). It goes through some of the basics of HIPA…

Saying that we're due for another pandemic is quite simply the gambler's fallacy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler's_fallacy . The odds of a pandemic may well be higher than re…

They don't -- they are re-emitted in random directions that are statistically related to the original direction: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scattering .

The article doesn't get much better, but there may be a kernel of truth to the rug store angle. There's a profile of the rug store owner/prolific angel investor at http://www.forbe…

On the other hand, there's a very good reason why HFT liquidity has evaporated in previous crashes (such as the 2010 Flash Crash) -- the exchanges broke trades in an unpredictable …

Luckily, it looks like Mr. Money Mustache is already in touch with Ken from Popehat: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/03/11/mmm-receives-legal... .

I don't have a dog in this fight, but Ripple Labs did set things up so they would start off with all the network currency, and still own the majority of it: http://en.wikipedia.org…

Ripple is actually a generalized network flow problem, in which the flow through an edge can be multiplied by an exchange rate when converting between currencies. As a result, regu…

It's still necessary to consider the total number of shares. Let's say you've been issued 500,000 options with a $0.10 strike price, and the company is currently valued at $4 milli…

On the face of it, this is quite clearly illegal discrimination on the basis of the prospective employee's country of origin: http://www.justice.gov/crt/legalinfo/natorigin.htm If …

One minor nit -- money market funds are no longer explicitly federally backed. There was a temporary guarantee program, but it expired in September 2009: http://www.ici.org/pressro…

That works well for getting just your money back. If you're upset about the whole thing and want to shut it down or get their business practices changed, a class action lawsuit is …

Paypal is just an intermediary between merchants and whatever payment methods customers use to pay Paypal, such as debit/credit cards and bank transfers. And guess what? The modern…

A lot of employment lawyers will take cases on in exchange for a portion of the damages if you have a valid case. Almost every employment lawyer will listen to you enough to figure…

They're not metal detectors -- they're RFID scanners that sound an alarm if someone tries to steal something. A lot of products have an RFID chip attached that must be deactivated …

Part of it is that as the total value of the company rises as the company matures and it removes various sources of risk. The dollar value of 1% of the company could easily rise fr…

I would like to see his response to this article by Phillip Greenspun that argues that the real reason why American airlines have a better track record than Korean ones is that Ame…

Using the rope isn't even needed for most trees. When you learn how to fell a tree with an axe or saw, you'll learn that you can alter where you make your first cut to account for …

The point is to give the defendant a proportionately strong incentive to show up at the trial. The judge has authority to set bail at a level that makes it likely they'll actually …