of course that’s your contention. you’re a tech generalist & you’re trying to get up to speed on semiconductors. you just got done reading an overview about the industry. chip war probably. you’re going to be talking about the risks of concentrating semi manufacturing in taiwan and how we need to reshore the supply chain. you’re going to be convinced of that until next month until you learn more about how texas instruments passed over morris chang for ceo & how instrumental he was in making taiwan semi into the manufacturing powerhouse it is today

there have been posts going around claiming that Nvidia is a fraud & is cooking its books. the thesis seems to stem from the large increase in revenue last quarter without a corresponding increase in the costs. on the surface it may look weird but let’s check it out for ourselves nvidia’s revenue increased dramatically in the 2nd quarter this year compared to last year. this was largely due to an increase in data center revenue from customers placing orders for H100s. a product that commands a high price point and nvidia earns very high margins by selling

thread of book reviews/summaries: How the World Really Works by Vaclav Smil

https://twitter.com/netcapgirl/status/1589685449014267904?s=46&t=z4KJ4diSJg8QdmrZ7Z7rHQ

reading this rn, good history of the vc industry. when viewed through the lens of financial innovations, venture capital has definitely been amongst the most impactful. theres arguably nothing more important for standard of living increases than commercializing new science & tech and VC in its purest form would appear to be the most effective & efficient vehicle to do this. almost as a bonus, the best vintages at the top funds easily beat the s&p during their lifetime. this is obv an idealistic view on the industry at large but i’m sort of talking about

reading this rn, rly interesting so far. it discusses what the author calls a “balance sheet recession” which happened in japan for ~15 years in the ‘90s-early ‘00s. the main point the author argues is that traditional economics assumes firms always maximize profits & so after an asset bubble pops, central banks need to utilize monetary policy to restart the economy - the author argues this doesn’t explain what happened in japan because most corporations focused on debt repayment vs profit maximization & the lack of borrowing made it necessary for the gov

“i’m going to learn about investing” journey

phase 1: intelligent investor

> ben graham & warren buffet, value investing, some peter lynch stuff, maybe even some greenblatt & klarman if you’re adventurous

“ok i’ll buy good companies at fair prices, what else is out there?” phase 2: computers & math for investing

> david shaw & jim simons, “the man who solved the market”

depending on your proficiency w math, this may be heaven for you & you’ll dedicate your life to generating quantifiable alpha. this is a very noble pursuit but its competitive

what’s a dcf?

there’s probably already a million threads on this but oh well

sophieconomics 101 - valuing a business

a dcf is a discounted cash flow model that we’ll use to get a sense of what we should pay for an asset today based on the cash it will earn in the future big picture - were going to calculate free cash flow available to the business this year & use data + our best judgment to project cash flows for the next 5-10 yrs and then discount the value of those cash flows back to today (because we’d rather have $1 today than $1 next year)