771–780 of 906 posts
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Okay kids, story time. After the crash of 2008, I spent some time working with Dick Fuld. Yes, the former head of Lehman Brothers. Yes, the one people describe as “disgraced,” among other terms. Here’s the irony, though — Dick was one of the only people I encountered at that level of business/finance who wasn’t a scumbag. Unlike so many virtue-signaling Silicon Valley darlings, the guy behind the curtain was an honor…
The problem with a conscience is that it gives you a tell, that others without one can use against you when they're in need of a scapegoat. As someone once told me when I lamented that I don't talk to a certain person more often, they stopped me and pointed out that the phone system works in both directions. There are two people not talking to each other, not just me. Dick participated, he could have blown the whistl…
We should encourage conscientious people to play more poker, I guess.
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The problem is that when hedge funds get in trouble they do not go to jail, are not prohibited from doing business and the penalties (fines) are ineffectively weak. Given the track record of holding the powerful accountable is terrible, I don’t think this is directed at hedge funds but is a warning to the little people.
It’s common for hedge funds (and more importantly, the people who run them) to be prohibited from doing business. “Barred from the securities industry” is the term typically used if you’re looking for examples.
But why does this sort of thing seem to be the norm? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.A.C._Capital_Advisors
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> link to papers No, I can't. Can you link to papers that show flossing is effective? Probably not, but the mechanism is so obvious that essentially all dentists will tell you to floss. Further, mask-wearing was already a well-established practice in medical settings to prevent the spread of respiratory disease from practitioners to patients. > believe that they can continue their normal day to day life so long as th…
> Further, mask-wearing was already a well-established practice in medical settings to prevent the spread of respiratory disease from practitioners to patients We don't see much benefit there, either. See the "clean surgery" papers.
As more platforms like ploygon.io, alpaca.markets emerge as well as more DeFi stuff gaining tractions, I really hope in the next 10 years regulations, etc, in the financial space would leave more rooms for smaller players to thrive.
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Can you link to the papers that were available in March 2020 that showed that masks are effective? Use any definition of "mask" and "effective" you want, but preferably effective should include some concept of "prevents spread of respiratory disease". Covid is a serious illness. Far too many people have been told, and believe, that they can continue their normal day to day life so long as they put mask on. This is un…
There's been ongoing debate about the effectiveness of masks to prevent the spread of the influenza virus for years now. There were a lot of studies after the H1N1 pandemic since mask wearing was "recommended" but to my knowledge no state or federal mask mandate was put in place. Here's a paper from 2010 after the H1N1 pandemic. Face masks to prevent transmission of influenza virus: a systematic review https://www.ca…
There seems to be something different about the US population than, say, the Taiwanese population regarding mask usage. I don't have a good explanation for it, because I think blaming "culture" is lazy research.
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" Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. " " Be kind. Don't be snarky. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you know more than others, that's wonderful. Please share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. None of what you wrote here helps anyone learn—it just puts others down, makes you sound supercilious, and makes the community worse. A comment like this stuck at th…
It's a humorous injunction that could be gainfully posted at the top of most controversial threads. Nothing wrong with warning people against bias and groupthink. Especially when the matter is deeply technical and outside of most participants'expertise.
Generic warnings about "bias and groupthink" have no helpful effect anyway, let alone snarky putdowns of others. Apart from adding off-topic noise, they polarize the audience into a "like and agree" tribe and a "dislike and disagree" tribe. Then the two go after each other in increasingly nasty and unthoughtful ways.
If you actually want to reach people you have to do it differently. If you (I don't mean you personally, but all of us) don't actually want to reach people, but just to vent bile, that's not what this site is for, and there are other places to do it.
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So maybe I can help a little with the above: - prior the 1980s, when you bought a stock a physical stock certificate was passed back and forth between your broker and the broker selling the stock - as you can imagine, as trading volumes increased this became unmanageable. In fact, at one point, the exchanges would close every Wednesday just to give people time to catch up on all of the exchange of certificates - ever…
Thanks for the background info. Why can't the database be updated ~instantly though? Is it just because of legacy systems that handle settlement in periodic (daily?) batches? Also, couldn't a broker eliminate this risk by just making assets "unavailable to trade" until they've been settled? Granted, I understand why brokers wouldn't want to do that under normal circumstances, but it seems like something they should b…
The legacy systems reason is a big one. There are banks with mainframes built in the 80's as part of the critical infrastructure. Another reason is that everyone doesn't communicate directly with the main clearing house. e.g. brokers clear with other brokers who then clear with the clearing house etc.
> To me, "Your cash can't be spent yet because the TSLA sale you just made hasn't settled" would seem a lot more understandable than "We're halting GME purchases".
There have been interesting solutions to disputes. e.g. I think it was NYMEX that had a rule for floor traders along the lines of "If Trader A and Trader B have a clearing issue, NEITHER of them gets to trade till it is taken care of." Given that these traders traded with each other multiple times a day coupled with they were making no money during this dispute, both parties were incentivized to come to an agreement.
Okay kids, story time. After the crash of 2008, I spent some time working with Dick Fuld. Yes, the former head of Lehman Brothers. Yes, the one people describe as “disgraced,” among other terms. Here’s the irony, though — Dick was one of the only people I encountered at that level of business/finance who wasn’t a scumbag. Unlike so many virtue-signaling Silicon Valley darlings, the guy behind the curtain was an honor…
This "wild new phenomenon" is just boring old market manipulation. The only thing new about it is that the perpetrator is a subreddit instead of a licensed broker/dealer or other regulated entity. The appropriate thing to do is for the SEC to subpoena Reddit and RobinHood, correlate trades with posts to prove intent to manipulate the price (which IS illegal), and charge every individual with market manipulation. Just…
Okay kids, story time. After the crash of 2008, I spent some time working with Dick Fuld. Yes, the former head of Lehman Brothers. Yes, the one people describe as “disgraced,” among other terms. Here’s the irony, though — Dick was one of the only people I encountered at that level of business/finance who wasn’t a scumbag. Unlike so many virtue-signaling Silicon Valley darlings, the guy behind the curtain was an honor…
Of course, I'd like to both as you personally and additionally air out a sentiment of the ease of access being delivered to retail investors. What was once prohibitive has now been given to the individual. Do you have any sentiments that you're willing to share on that notion?
As an additional thought; personally, I can't believe the behavior of some of the brokers that have come to light recently. RobinHood who, as they said in a tweet in 2016 "let the people invest" and now, in 2021 we see how true they maintain their values by restricting the very same people they sought to empower by disallowing trading on their platform. It is despicable.