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Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

nytimes.com

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Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#101

Post by whimsicalism »

Mvandenbergh wrote: post #56
eine_zwei wrote: post #53

Agree with all the praise. However, reading him long enough, I started to get annoyed with the blase approach to the Wall Street(tm) transgressions. I do not think it is a case of pandering to your audience. The following quote (about his time in Dealbreaker) captures it perfectly: >Part of the problem was that he couldn’t really access a contempt for Wall Street titans. He was of the place, and he found its workings…

On the other hand, is there a lack of writing about finance with lots of contempt and anger? Matt Taibbi may not be an insider in the way that Levine is but he (and others) often manage to be fairly well informed and they are certainly contemptuous and angry. I also wonder if to understand is not, in some inevitable sense, to forgive? Is it really possible to fully understand on an emotional level how a quant trader…

Matt Taibbi is not at the same level as Matt Levine. He is writer first, analyst second.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#102

Post by maverickJ »

Levine's articles are very educational and interesting at the same time.

He uses a style that sometimes takes an obscure and bland topic to become very interesting; Thereby making the reader interested in the topic.

That he has done this consistently over a period shows the mettle of the man.

Reading through his early career background leaves clues to his current success. It reminds me of how Jamie Dimon went about his early career in https://leveragethoughts.substack.com/p/early-career-tactics...

I can't wait to see what he writes about once he comes back from paternity leave.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#103

Post by whimsicalism »

misiti3780 wrote: post #99
curiousgal wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any recommended readings by him?

This is probably his most famous: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/the-grea...

Is this really that compelling? I find it with lots of rhetorical flourish, but lacking the analysis of how the rich really do enrich themselves.

> They did this by setting up what was, in reality, a two-tiered investment system — one for the insiders who knew the real numbers, and another for the lay investor who was invited to chase soaring prices the banks themselves knew were irrational

What does this mean? Why wouldn't the other banks short the post-IPO tech companies if they knew the "real prices" and make off with a killing.

And what even is a bubble? If you had invested in a tech ETF at the peak of the 2000s bubble, you would have still outperformed the market by 2020. So were the 2003 prices that far off?

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#104

Post by carapace »

swyx wrote: post #3

from this profile, Matt is very probably underpaid vs his earning potential (probably at least an order of magnitude) and should leave to substack or his own operation. but I respect that money really isn't everything.

He's IMO a perfect example of the intractability of the "fake news" problem. It's not that there aren't high quality news sources out there, like Matt Levine, it's that the market (in the form of folks willing to pay for it) isn't there.

(Maybe it's technology? Micropayments still aren't effectively a thing?)

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#105

Post by h1srf »

pratik661 wrote: post #60

One of the perks of working at Bloomberg is being able to read his (and Noah Smith’s) columns for free :D.

One of the perks of my employer paying ~$3k a month for my Bloomberg subscription as well.

That and the other few times a month I need to check some data.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#106

Post by gregdale »

eine_zwei wrote: post #53

Agree with all the praise. However, reading him long enough, I started to get annoyed with the blase approach to the Wall Street(tm) transgressions. I do not think it is a case of pandering to your audience. The following quote (about his time in Dealbreaker) captures it perfectly: >Part of the problem was that he couldn’t really access a contempt for Wall Street titans. He was of the place, and he found its workings…

It's a very finance culture approach, though, where the bounds of what's in and out are tested constantly by what (knowledgeable, ideally) participants, compliance departments, and regulators are willing to tolerate. Many banks were highly criticized after the financial crisis for selling "knowingly toxic" CDO/CLOs but on the other side of the trade were highly sophisticated buyers who wanted those securities.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#107

Post by ayewo »

o_class_star wrote: post #89
eine_zwei wrote: post #53

Agree with all the praise. However, reading him long enough, I started to get annoyed with the blase approach to the Wall Street(tm) transgressions. I do not think it is a case of pandering to your audience. The following quote (about his time in Dealbreaker) captures it perfectly: >Part of the problem was that he couldn’t really access a contempt for Wall Street titans. He was of the place, and he found its workings…

He's brilliant, and he explains complex concepts really well. I can't fault him for being a bit "over-neutral", for lack of a better way to put it. It's how economists are trained to express themselves and, more importantly, I don't think he'd ever get a fawning piece written about him by the fNYT if he took the approach of, say, a certain other gifted writer whose name cannot be spoken here.

Now I’m dead curious as to who you are referring to: “I don't think he'd ever get a fawning piece written about him by the fNYT if he took the approach of, say, a certain other gifted writer whose name cannot be spoken here.“

You are already using a throwaway, so mind revealing?

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#108

Post by lotsofpulp »

maverickJ wrote: post #102

Levine's articles are very educational and interesting at the same time. He uses a style that sometimes takes an obscure and bland topic to become very interesting; Thereby making the reader interested in the topic. That he has done this consistently over a period shows the mettle of the man. Reading through his early career background leaves clues to his current success. It reminds me of how Jamie Dimon went about h…

There’s a “how to draw an owl” meme at this part:

> When Dimon finished from Harvard Business School in 1982, he placed a call to Sanford Weill, then chairman of the executive committee of American Express, to ask for advice.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#109

Post by titanomachy »

smogcutter wrote: post #95
pandalicious wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's amazing, do you know why it works?

The dot after the TLD represents the root domain. From right to left, URLs read from least to most specific. Root -> TLD -> domain -> subdomain (eg www). The root domain is almost always left out, because it’s always the same and its presence is implied. But if you include it explicitly, it is a distinct URL. So idk how bloomberg.com works under the hood so I can’t specifically explain this case, but rules that match…

New to me and I've been programming web for quite a while. I've only ever seen that final "." in DNS records, it never occured to me that it would affect logic within the site.

Re: Matt Levine makes sense of Wall Street like none other

#110

Post by r00fus »

sails wrote: post #88
tc313 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An easy way to do this on iOS Safari is to “Show Reader View” after clicking on any Bloomberg article.

Hope they don't see this.

You can even set Safari to automatically go into reader mode for all websites (I do this, then whitelist the sites/webapps). 9 times out of 10 this is much more readable and is darkmode by default.
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