Category: Uncategorized

I have thought a lot about this scenario: If somebody who essentially relied on a coin toss before every trade makes a great return and told me to follow his method, would I take the advice and implement it? Using a coin toss as an investing strategy doesn’t sound very logical or robust, does it? But does how a strategy sounds really matter when there is a return to back it up? If somebody else had a lower return using a more sophisticated method, would you still opt for the higher level of sophistication or for a coin toss?

I have never been a great believer in cryptocurrency or Bitcoin in particular. But in 2020, I had an inkling that as Bitcoin was trading around $4,000 per coin, it was a great entry price and I would make a significant profit. Yet, I didn’t act on it because trading without knowing the fundamentals of the asset isn’t my thing. Needless to say, that mistake cost me a lot. If investing in cryptocurrency yields a great returns, does it really matter whether you understand Bitcoin and why its price goes up or down? If somebody in November 2020 bought, say, 5 Bitcoins at $4,000 by simply tossing a coin, how could I criticize that method when my return is so much lower?

I have seen a lot of people try to be clever, diligent and sophisticated in picking stocks with multiples, DCF and all the fancy ratios. However, if a higher level of sophistication is required for a successful portfolio, why do we keep hearing experts say that it’s better to invest in indexes? In an experiment cited by this episode of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, some professional stock pickers were pitted against a cat. The result? The pros had a 3.5% return, dwarfed by 11% return of the cat! I have my own personal example on this too. I usually invest time in understanding a company before purchasing the stock. However, one of my most profitable trades is MongoDB, which came from a friend’s tip and for which I didn’t do much due diligence before taking a position. I was thinking: well, I trust my developer friend and let’s use this as an opportunity to see what return I’d have with virtually little study into the company. Over the same period of time, my position on PayPal, which I spent a lot of time studying and even wrote about, hasn’t delivered as high a return as my random bet on MongoDB. But then you may ask: well, in the long term, PayPal is a better bet than MongoDB. And that’s what makes investing so challenging.

To me, investing is a combination of art and science, and it’s more of the former than of the latter. There are a lot of questions that aren’t easy to answer. How could you tell if your investing method works? What is the comparison yardstick? If you take inspiration from somebody else, how can you know that the borrowed method would work? If your investing horizon is long-term, how far in the future is that long term? Do you have the temperamental and psychological make-up to resist your temptation and urges? If a position is ruined by a force majeure, will you still have confidence in your ability and strategy? Will you give yourself a pass because the failure is caused by an unexpected event? Or should you get some blame for failing to apply some risk margin to your decision-making?

I think about those questions quite often and while I don’t have concrete answers, it doesn’t bother me. It’s part of the game and the difficulty as well as the uncertainty are what make it so exciting. I am sure there are thousands, if not millions, of investors out there that have a better return than I do. That’s fine. As long as I learn more about myself, improve during this investing journey and receive a sense of fulfillment, even though I can’t put a number on it, that is enough.

You Could Have Today. Instead You Choose Tomorrow. A great post by Ryan Holiday on living in the moment.

The Design of Apple’s Credit Card. An in-depth look on the design of Apple Card. I personally cannot wait to experience the card

South Korea once recycled 2% of its food waste. Now it recycles 95%. An interesting read on how South Korea is tackling the food waste problem, a problem that America is facing as well.

5-star phonies: Inside the fake Amazon review complex.

The Rough Stuff: Understanding Aggressive Consensual Sex. An interesting study on rough behavior in the bedroom.

Lyft vs Uber: A Tale of Two S-1’s. A look at the unit economics of the two ride-sharing companies.

How the Paradox of the Term ‘Original Series’ Explains the Video Industry (Netflix Misunderstandings, Pt. 4). If you are interested in media, technology and strategy, follow Matthew Ball. He is just awesome.

15 months of fresh hell inside Facebook. A fantastic write-up on how Facebook dealt with a barrage of scandals

The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen. A very solid post on how to create an effective sales deck. Particularly in B2B world, a sales deck is an important component of a sales process. Of course, it’s not always a break-or-make factor, but presenting a professionally crafted deck with powerful messages is certainly very helpful in landing a deal.

How Rippling Raised a $45M Series A — Without a Pitch Deck. What I like about this is that the company took a refreshing approach by using a memo instead of a pitch deck. Don’t get me wrong. There is a great deal of effort and time needed to craft a great pitch deck. Yet, as a fan of writing, I appreciate Rippling’s fresh approach.

Amazon – 2018 Letter to Shareholders. This kind of letters reveals quite a bit of information on a company.

Uber S-1. This one is quite dense. I may write something about it in next week or so. But if you are interested in the ride-hailing company, it will be a good weekend read

Disney Investor Day. A lengthy yet informative presentation by Disney on its brands and of course, the highly anticipated Disney+. I think they did a good job announcing the service. The price is just $7/month or $70/year and the service will be available in the US in November 2019. Disney+ gives users access to an incredible library of content from Marvel, Lucas Film, Pixar, Disney and National Geographic. A few original content will be available within the first year as well, including a few Marvel series. I think Disney+ will be a tough competitor to Netflix because it has great content, brand and a marketing expertise that is as legendary as the brand. Additionally, it has different income sources such as parks, hotels or merchandise that can help Disney fund the first few years of Disney+ to sign up users, a luxury that Netflix doesn’t have. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily a zero-sum game. Plus, execution matters. Disney may have a lot of things going on for them, but if they don’t capitalize on that, it won’t matter.

I decided to take on the challenge of making a Tableau dashboard on which data on national park visits can be found. The intention is to show that Tableau has some cool features that allow the communication of complex data in an easy-to-digest way. Others have done a phenomenal job visualizing the data. See here for some inspiration. My dashboard covers a lot more ground, but lacks the aesthetics and creative flair that others possess.

Data can be found here:

A few notes on how to use the dashboard:

• You can choose which park type to look at. Once you click on a value, the map will change accordingly and so will the table next to it that shows specifically the parks belonging to that category
• Next the parks’ names, there are values shown as “abc”. Hover your mouse over them to get the specific values for each park
• You can choose aggregating methods (Sum, Max, Min…)
• You can choose to look at either Recreational or Non-recreational visitors
• Of course, there is a slider that allows you to choose specific time frame
• You may want to use a laptop to look at the dashboard. My experience of using a phone didn’t go very well

https://public.tableau.com/views/NationalPark_0/ParkTypeDB?:embed=y&:display_count=yes&publish=yes 

Enjoy! Hopefully you’ll find it useful