2021-02-01 Brian DeChesare
A low spin description of what has happened with GameStop’s stock.
https://www.mergersandinquisitions.com/gamestop-short-squeeze/
Category: Money
The Dow’s Return by Day of the Month
2021-01-12 Eddy Elfenbein
Nearly the entire gain of the Dow has come during the first six days of the month.
http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/2021/01/the-dows-return-by-day-of-the-month.html
Why has college gotten so expensive in the last 30 years? Probably because the government handed them a blank check in 1993.
2020-09-01 Andrew Ghobrial
the federal government pays the universities/colleges up front, and the student then owes the government that money.
This represented a large shift in the alignment of incentives. When the loans come from the federal gov, there’s much less pressure on schools to compete on price.
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
2008-10 Paul Graham
… investors tend to be less willing to invest in bad times. They shouldn’t be. Everyone knows you’re supposed to buy when times are bad and sell when times are good.
How Expedia Solved a $100 Million Customer Service Nightmare
2020-03-03 Dan Heath
When you spend years responding to problems, you can sometimes overlook the fact that you could be preventing them.
https://marker.medium.com/how-expedia-solved-a-100-million-customer-service-nightmare-d7aabc8d4025
Money Stuff: Playing the Game of Infinite Leverage
2019-05-11 Matt Levine
[A] Reddit user called MoonYachts who claims to have gotten 250x leverage, putting in $4,000 and turning it into a $1,000,000 stock position. You are not supposed to be able to do this; normal stock market games do not allow you to bet a million dollars by putting up only $4,000 of your own. (“We’re aware of the isolated situations and communicating directly with customers,” said a Robinhood spokesperson.)
Day Trading for a Living?
2019-08-22 Fernando Chague, Rodrigo De-Losso, Bruno Giovannetti
“We show that it is virtually impossible for an individual to day trade for a living, contrary to what course providers claim. We observe all individuals who began to day trade between 2013 and 2015 in the Brazilian equity futures market, the third in terms of volume in the world, and persisted for at least 300 days: 97% of them lost money, only 0.4% earned more than a bank teller (US$54 per day), and the top individual earned only US$310 per day with great risk (a standard deviation of US$2,560). Additionally, we find no evidence of learning by day trading.”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3423101
This looks like a power law distribution or the 80/20 rule: a few people make most of the profit. It’s like writing an ebook or running a YouTube channel.
The Eponymous Mr. Ponzi
2019-09-02 Michael Durbin
The little known story of an age-old scam.
A Recession Is Coming (Eventually). Here’s Where You’ll See It First.
2019-07-28 Ben Casselman
Economists don’t know when the decade-long expansion, now the longest in American history, will end. But here are the indicators they will be watching to figure it out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/28/business/economy/economy-recession.html
When “Bonds” Aren’t Bonds
2019-07-03 Cullen Roche
“many foreign bonds and junk bonds will actually add to permanent loss risk in a portfolio relative to other fixed income options like T-bonds.”
https://www.pragcap.com/when-bonds-arent-bonds/