apostate

Sure, you seem intent on making a point that has nothing to do with OP's assertion or my observation, so go for it. (That's a strawman fallacy, right?)

Wasn't my point at all, see my other responses.

I was not highlighting the author's background to appeal to authority. I was pointing out that what OP dismissed as "coder philosophy drivel" (likely from skimming the title and nothing else) was written by someone who has nothing to do with that field.

In fact, by doing that, OP made an anti-appeal-to-authority. You seem to be interested in logical fallacies.. could you help me out and tell me if that one has a specific name?

I wasn't making a value judgement on the piece (or the author's credentials). My point was that someone took the time to share something with the world and you dismissed it after making (incorrect) assumptions about their background. You'll miss out on a lot of good stuff if you've already cast judgement before you finish reading the title.

In any case, it's a <3min read and it does offer a few non-BS pieces of advice that may be useful to some.

The author has a PhD in psychology, fwiw.

Confirmed, thanks!

The HNLAUNCH promo code is showing as invalid for me.

It looks like it is using the "Tufte" style, named after Edward Tufte, who is very famous for his writing on data visualization. More examples: https://rstudio.github.io/tufte/

I'm not sure that's quite the same (no clue if the garden leave terminology is used in the parts of Europe you refer to). https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/gardening-leave.asp

Gotcha; never been subject to gardening leave myself, but I always assumed it exists for the same purpose as a noncompete, i.e. to provide a 'cooling off' period to lessen the competitive impact that the exiting employee can have by switching to another firm. I assumed that since it's been around a while in finance that the "paid noncompete" idea became a negotiated part of the comp.

This is common in the financial industry above a certain level; it's called "garden leave".

Depends on how you look at it I guess. The history of the Chinese empire had periods of relative stability, separated by periods of rebellion, civil war, and strife, sometimes hundreds of years long. There were even periods where the empire was ruled by outsiders.

At the end of any given dynasty, it would be hard to say whether the empire is truly crumbling, or merely transitioning to a new dynasty. Who knows, maybe 1,000 years from now communism and the period of strife in the 20th century will just be seen as an unstable period preceding a dynastic transition.

Since the IRS has custody of other people's sensitive data, they should be held to a different standard than the carefree homeowner in your example.

If I pay my bank for a safe deposit box, good security is part of what I am paying for. If it can be shown that they were lax/careless/negligent in the event of a theft, then I certainly would lay blame with both the bank and the thief for loss of my assets.

This is even more the case for a government with vast resources.

Your use of disclaimers shows that you are well versed in compliance matters when it comes to dispensing investment advice ;)

I think if an ignorant person wishes to trade stocks, the lack of a platform like this won't stop them. Retail brokers like Etrade and Scottrade got the pennystock crowds long ago.

Mentioned in another reply, I would hope ETFs are available on a platform like this, since they trade like stocks. Hopefully that would allow more people to put small amounts of savings into index funds. That being said, Robinhood wouldn't be very innovative on that front, since many brokers offer the more popular index-based ETFs without fees anyway.

We are probably in the same camp; I just wasn't sure if GP was comparing casinos with 'stock trading' or the equity asset class in general, which, if one subscribes to the 'boring' methods of index fund investing, are hard to beat over a 5+ year time window.

I would hope ETFs are available on this platform, since they trade like stocks.

Are you suggesting that it is a bad idea for laypeople to participate equity markets?

Wow, this is a long read but definitely worth it. I have never read anything by Pettis, but I am thinking about picking up The Great Rebalancing if it explores similar stuff more deeply. It doesn't always come naturally to look at country economies as a bunch of open systems all operating in a closed system, but this read will certainly encourage that kind of thinking.

From the guidelines:

What to Submit

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

P/E approaches infinity as you near "break even", so for a company like AMZN with both massive revenues and expenses, P/E is not useful when the two are almost equal. You must dig further and look at things like cash flow, revenue (not earnings) growth, operating margin (not profit margin), etc. These things give a much clearer picture than an odd-looking P/E. If a company with high P/E had operating margins that ware closer to profit margins (not triple, like AMZN) I would be a bit more concerned.

If capital expenditures are reduced just a bit, or if margins are improved slightly, the E part of the fraction will jump and P/E will fall massively.

All of that being said, there are still plenty of things that could go wrong for AMZN.

A couple of things that one would guess, but are neat none the less: Food prep is the only one without a dip during the lunch hour (they are preparing what everyone else is eating). Also, protective services has the fattest tails (most late shift workers).

I tend to agree with that sentiment.

I suppose I was just thinking about the city I live in. Here, the meter prints out a receipt that the driver leaves on the dash of the car. People often will give the receipt to someone else when they are leaving their spot. Of course this practice is illegal, but I don't think it should be if the spot was paid for. Of course, it would be douchey if people started selling these tickets for high prices (that would be seeking rent from a public good), but I would have no problem buying a ticket off of a guy who wants to get his remaining three bucks back.

But I suppose you are right, there is no "good way" to get something between price gouging anarchy and outright banning of the practice.

Perhaps regulating a cap is better than banning the practice outright. If the max price is equal to the minutes left on the meter * fare per minute, the seller will never get back more than they put in. They will just be selling back the unused minutes, which can be useful if someone puts a few hours on the meter because they don't know how long they will need it. This would prevent scalping, and if parking is considered a public good, it will bring the minutes paid for / minutes used ratio closer to 1, which should be the goal. I understand that it's probably not the goal of the app creators, but it is a reasonable compromise. Of course, this type of efficiency means more social benefit and lower revenues for the city, so that's not likely to happen.

Interesting insights into a market that I have little experience with. Thanks!

While I agree with your sentiment about property values, your statement "nothing can continue to rise in price over inflation indefinitely" is not true, unless I'm misunderstanding something.

It is possible for an asset class to have greater returns than inflation (in fact, most do), but with increased risk. While this increased risk does mean 'corrections' will happen, returns for most asset classes (especially equity) are significantly higher than inflation in the long run. A world in which no asset class could outpace inflation would require zero economic growth.

Never been to Atlanta, however I couldn't help but think of this in the context of how impossible I've heard it is to walk anywhere in that city :)

Home is where the heart is. Most long commuters I know do it because they have a significant other at home, and that seemed to be the case with many of the subjects in the article.

There are far fewer cases in the developed world of a long commute resulting from a disparity between rents at home vs near the job site. It's not unheard of however, as evidenced by the one guy who lived 3 hours outside the city and commuted in because the cost of renting in London is the same as travel (and presumably cost of living would provide additional savings, even at such a high opportunity cost).

My situation is a bit odd because I have a good job in the suburbs but I enjoy living in the city with my SO, so I reverse commute. It is cheaper and less crowded, but it still takes time, and combined with study, side projects, and enjoying life, it makes for long days, and I feel it beginning to wear me down after two years so I may look for other work. I feel like a wimp compared to the people in the article however however, as my commute is a mere 3 hours round trip.

I'm glad to see someone advocating sensible retirement planning here. Though the post had a few good points about how to perceive wealth vs. money, I cringed at the notion that most stocks are "buy and pray" investments. Stocks have a better risk/return profile than just about any other asset class with a given 10+ year time window over the last century, assuming proper diversification. I should also point out that stocks, by definition, are ownership.

That being said, it is important to further diversify within a stock portfolio by having a good mix US, European, Emerging Market, small/mid/large cap, etc. As one nears retirement, risk can be reduced along with return by shifting into bonds. Again diversification is useful here. Have a good mix of both corporate and government, high quality, high yield, floating rate, inflation protected, etc.

Of course, developing a skill is a way to increase your wealth, as defined by the article, but diversified equity and fixed income holdings are a way to protect that wealth for a time when those skills are no longer relevant, whether it is by the slow erosion of time or a sudden unfortunate event.

One thing that I don't see mentioned often enough in discussions about China's US debt holdings is how much they actually hold. It's less than 10% of the total US debt, and about a quarter of all foreign-held debt. [1]

They are still the biggest foreign owner of US debt, but the majority of treasuries are owned by US entities (households, corporations, state and local governments, the social security trust, and government agencies that purchase treasuries when they have excess revenue). Of course I would count the Fed's massive holding of treasuries as separate from all of this, and there is plenty to worry about with our debt situation. My point is that China is far from "owning" the US.

[1] http://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/ti...

Mindfulness meditation[1] is an old but very effective way of training the mind to recognize distractions. I agree with the article that the opportunities for distraction are at an all-time high, but the human brain has not changed much in the last few millenia, and the problem of being distracted is almost certainly as old as the first time a person desired to contemplate something. To someone who wishes to devote a significant portion of their day to contemplation (e.g. a Buddhist monk), any distraction can be a setback, and the so-called "monkey mind"[2] is awfully persistent.

Being able to recognize that you are being pulled away from your object of focus is the essential first step to reduce both the frequency and length of distractions. This is one of the goals of mindfulness meditation. Personally, I have found that the simple act of being able to catch myself in the midst of a distraction has improved my ability to focus.

After spending time practicing mindfulness, I have developed a wonderful skill of being able to "switch off" a racing mind and pull myself back down to the task at hand (or to simply pull myself out of an anxious state of mind and into a pleasant one). Importantly, practicing this during 15 minutes of daily meditation has enabled me to do this during any of the other ~1000 waking minutes of each day. The first time I noticed myself do this "automatically" outside of meditation, I was amazed that I was able to cultivate such a skill.

If you are interested in a good primer on mindfulness and how to actually go about meditation, I recommend Mindfulness in Plain English.[3] I recommend it whenever the subject comes up and I'm sure very few people read it, but it had enough of an effect on me that I would not want others to miss out.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_of_breathing

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_monkey

[3] http://www.urbandharma.org/pdf/mindfulness_in_plain_english....