2/ The same false assumptions that underestimates stock-market risk, mis-price options, builds bad portfolios, and generally misconstrue the financial world are also built into the standard risk software used by the world's banks. The method is called Value at Risk." Mandelbrot
3/ "You have outlying phenomena you can't anticipate on the basis of previous experience." George Soros
"The precision that goes into saying this is two standard deviation or three and therefore we can afford to take this much risk and all that, it's totally crazy." Buffett
4/ "The defect of VaR alone is that it doesn't full account for the worst 5% of expected cases. But these extreme events are where ruin is found." Thorp
"The key hazard of quantative risk management is the illusion of control." Marks
"Beware of geeks bearing formulas." Buffett
5/ "A lot of the modern risk-management techniques created a totally false illusion of safety. The idea that by quantifying risk using a tool like Value at Risk that you can therefore control it is one of the slightly more ridiculous things to have come along in years." J Montier
7/ Wait!!!! Elon invites Vlad of RobinHood into extra time on a Clubhouse session tonight and he reveals that the early morning capital call for $3B from the clearinghouse was based on an opaque formula based in part on VaR and discretionary factors? What could possibly go wrong?
8/ Negotiations that followed the $3B capital call resulted in haircuts on that demand from the clearing house because, you know, the amount was discretionary and because VaR is a pretend system that doesn't map to reality as has been previously explained in this thread! Got it?
9/ Everyone knows that there's an important part of the financial system in place which relies on VaR, which ignores key financial risks, which has no circuit breakers, which can result in massive capital calls being made in brokers suddenly and without warning?
10/ It would seem like this problem could use some transparency and, you know, a margin of safety. The financial system is sort of important.
"In engineering, people have a big margin of safety. But in the financial world, people don’t give a damn about safety." Charlie Munger
11/ If financial system don't have a margin of safety about capital calls, the business better have one. So:
"(Dow Jones) - Robinhood Markets raised another $2.4B from shareholders."
"Cash is the equivalent of financial Valium. It keeps you cool, calm and collected.” Berkowitz
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1/ I was going to write about this "Elon does Live Clubhouse (Featuring Vlad)" event last night, but Casey made several key points before I could, so he preempted me in a good way. platformer.news/p/clubhouses-m… "Because you’re on a phone mediocre audio quality doesn’t grate as much."
2/ Casey: "Mainstream tech coverage in recent years has become, in the sharp framing of Ben Thompson, dominated by rational skeptics; A16z spotted a gap in the market, and now seeks to fill it with rational optimism."
This is upsetting to people who sell "sharp spicy takes."
3/ I love a sharp spicy take too, but I like a mixed diet that includes rational optimism. What I love even more as a writer is more people like Casey showing that writers have alternative ways to make a living from their work. That helps even staff journalists get a higher wage.
1/ When Hardcore Software drops Monday people will ask me: What Is your favorite part of the Microsoft story? How young were you then?
In the summer of 1980 when IBM arrived in Seattle to license languages and an OS and to get help on creating their PC, I was this young:
2/ My favorite part of the book was 1993-4 when the Information Highway was caught and then obliterated by the Internet. There's a section in the book on Tiger servers and why they failed to become commercial, the Cornell trip, the Internet retreat etc. …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com
3/ No one knows how Bill Gates' Think Weeks were actually structured better than Steven. I was always asked to supply reading material and a memo on what was happening and would happen on public networks since by then I was working at a startup funded by Bill and Craig McCaw.
1/ This is an important article. Please read it and retweet as a favor to me.
"As more and more people compete for short supplies of the life-saving Covid-19 vaccine, some of the oldest and most infirm Americans are struggling just to enter the contest."bloomberg.com/news/articles/…
2/ "The problem has worsened as states open shots to people 65 and older, putting the oldest in competition for rapidly disappearing slots with seniors who are more computer-savvy and mobile."
Not every 90 year old at home has someone to help them.
This is a solvable problem.
3/ People's lives can be saved by fixing this problem.
If you have navigated this problem on the Internet for yourself or another person imagine having to do this yourself if you were 90 or older living at home with no one to help you. Imagine how terrified you might be.
1/ As the author of seven books I am interested in the future of books and ways authors can earn a living writing them. The stronger the incentives are to write books, the great more books will be written. Charlie Munger: “Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.”
2/ The ability of authors and other creators to generate income from their work is undergoing huge changes. Many authors and publishers have reached the conclusion that paid subscriptions are the business model that can best assure their financial future. Authors gain control!
3/ The monetary cost of creating tweet was approximately zero. As a volunteer my revenue is also zero since I have no paywall or business model. We need to find new ways to enable creators to earn an attractive living from their work. @stevesi's approach here is a way to do that.
"Microsoft could never have scaled the way it did had BillG managed via a centralized hub-and-spoke system, with everything bottlenecked through him." …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/subscribe
2/ "In many ways, this was BillG’s product leadership gift to Microsoft—a deeply empowered organization that also had deep product conversations at the top and across the whole organization."
3/ "Even in the early ’90s, at the height of the deepest and most challenging technology strategy questions, [BillG] never devoted the bulk of his time to micromanaging product development.”
I will wrote more about this terrific and fun to read book by @stevesi tomorrow.