kulkarnic

Joined 18 years ago

Karma
515
Submissions
153
Member since
Mar 4
Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Previously PhD student at Stanford. Working on HCI+education.
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Recent submissions

Comment · 4 months ago
Treasuries, MBS, most non-corporate bonds all trade in eighths or 64ths. Coupon rates are in eighths as well.

Commodities I think no longer do, but did until recently.

Comment · 5 years ago
Isn't the risk profile of a checking account "don't lose money"?
Comment · 5 years ago
Yes, that is what I meant. Thank you for expressing it more clearly!
Comment · 5 years ago
Passive investing isn't zero sum - it's positive sum. If you could buy a fraction of earnings from every business in the economy (i.e. both businesses that currently exist, and future businesses that are founded in the future), then you get a rate of return that is roughly the growth in GDP.

Concentrated portfolios are also positive-sum, and have returns higher than passive investing if you are smart or lucky.

Comment · 5 years ago
> When we first started investing, we approached it from two beliefs: 1) you are unlikely to grow a portfolio without a small percentage of it allocated to more active investments

I wish you all success, but this assumption goes against about a half-century of academic research. You might say "but it's crypto!" But the law of averages is brutal, and it is agnostic to whether we're in a crypto world or not -- if some fraction of market participants get an above-average return, mathematically, some must get a return that is below-average.

Comment · 7 years ago
Possibly -- you sell stock in fossil fuel companies, and reinvest in some other, hopefully more sustainable, company. It's not the divestment part that helps, it is the reinvestment.
Comment · 8 years ago
Yes, the story is inaccurate: the study was about how power, not luck, changes perceptions. But the message is still right. It's easy to be a jerk if you are powerful. (And it's easy to be negative when you're just commenting on the Internet.)

If you actually care about the facts, read the original researcher's essay: https://hbr.org/2016/10/dont-let-power-corrupt-you And if you want to still believe your success is the exclusive result of your hard work, read about Raj Chetty's work on just how much luck matters. http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2016/04/12/stanford-study-shed...

Edit: I got it wrong, the original study was four people as Lewis reports, not five as some commenters here believe. Lewis is also right about table manners, btw.

Comment · 10 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
Before you buy into the negativity of some comments on this thread, take a moment to pause. Andrew has achieved some truly remarkable feats. Why not accept what he has achieved is many standard deviations away from the average, and try and learn from what he thinks was useful?

To me, that the top comment right now is about how Baidu "cheated" on an AI benchmark says both that no one can have perfect oversight, but also that no matter your other achievements, someone will always point out a shortcoming.

Comment · 11 years ago
I just checked their site, and they act less like a hungry startup, and more like a don't-care near-monopoly.

Three examples:

- You can't see prices for many items without logging in. For a site that is geared towards price-conscious consumers, this is such a silly move. Alternatively, they consider login/registration as a worthwhile conversion (otherwise they could show you the price when you add something to cart.)

- Yet, their registration page doesn't let you create an account with Facebook, Google or anything else. If you care about conversions, act like you care!

- Their Help is an email address or a phone number. Seriously? No chat? No FAQ? Even Comcast has this figured out. If your LTCV is > $500, there is no reason to skimp on support when you don't have traction.

Comment · 11 years ago
I misphrased above. The index fund will pay out a dividend if the underlying stocks do. Fortunately for investors, Companies are paying dividends less and less frequently, preferring to do stock buybacks (which improve the stock value) instead. Dividends are also "qualified" if you've held the stock long enough, so you pay the lower capgains rate.
Comment · 11 years ago
Articles like this are evidence that people are still surprised that capital grows faster than labour. At least in fair capitalist society the surest way to become wealthy (statistically speaking) is to understand:

- The total wealth of the world is expected to keep increasing - Capital grows faster than labour - Taxes and disasters redistribute wealth

This is why investing in index funds that don't pay dividends is such a good idea.

Comment · 11 years ago
You only pay capital gains taxes when you realize gains, not every year.

Trump would pay 15% of $20B = ~$3B, so his net worth would be $17B. And this is assuming that his stock investments don't pay qualified dividends that are reinvested. So, yeah, he'd have much more than $12B.

Comment · 12 years ago
Yes, you can save yourself from the fallout (which decays exponentially with distance anyway). Unfortunately within around 15mi, you're still going to get pretty bad burns, unless you duck into your shelter immediately after the explosion. That's where the early warning systems are useful-- you get 6-8min with an ICBM strike.
Comment · 12 years ago

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