aspiringsensei

Exactly - if you need proof that equity of tech companies is a different investment than equity of staid, ordinary companies, look at the capital structure of successful tech companies.

Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple...No Debt.

The existence of large cash cushions on these balance sheets is insurance against a rainy day, and changes the risk profile. If these companies had been levered during the 03-07 expansion, they would have exploded in value.

They didn't, because it makes no sense to lever a tech company to the hilt, even if you believe it makes sense to lever a manufacturing company to high heaven. Cashflows are too variable and too prone to disruption.

It takes a special kind of tech co to go public, and many (i'm lookin' at you pets.com) weren't that kind.

And as I think about it, the reason for that might actually be that portfolio turnover mitigates concentration risk if it is not excessive.

> Another would be to give some government commission the power to look at those tweaks.

This is probably a good move. Why don't we give government regulators oversight of google, because as we've seen with the SEC and the Minerals Management Service, government regulation usually prevents fraudulent or dangerous business action.

The government has done good things - i'm lookin' at you, seatbelts and civil rights - but those were typically grass-roots movements and not blue-ribbon commissions.

I would way rather have google blindly manipulate their own search data for personal profit than have to deal with the likely outcome of governmental meddling in said data.

Seems pretty intuitive right? I wish I could take credit for it...my dad suggested it.

Sadly "that" likely describes far more than HFT. I've been wondering for a while if performance was inversely correlated with portfolio turnover in actively managed portfolios.

Without having proved it out, I am almost certain it is.

IMO it is way easier to eat healthy in NYC than in any other place on the planet (and i've been to several).

NYC is technically not "America" though, so i'm not sure if I've raised a point of contention or simply bragged about how my city is teh awesum.

I find that writing jokes is a great way to show girls that I am not a superior mating candidate.

Thanks for the tl:dr there. I was kind of hoping for a conclusion beyond "IDK."

What I'd like to know is: when did asking students to perform tasks easy to cheat on become ok?

I find cheating reprehensible and am a conscientious objector, but when professors and teachers gave me busywork I came up with my own solution.

I didn't do it.

I got good grades in high school - never had less than a 3.4 or so at a well regarded high school - but in some classes I simply wouldn't do 50% of the work. Instead, I would go up to the teachers and say "I don't understand why you're asking me to do this."

Most of the time...possibly as a function of small class sizes...they gave me other assignments.

Students have to understand that a lot of teachers aren't sure what's best. Good ones will acknowledge that. Great ones will let you just play around with the material.

So I've got approximately ten months to get my income up to $100k in order to be attractive to women.

No, a fresh scented one.

I wish I had that kind of flexible work schedule.

It probably would in Arizona, but anywhere else it would just be a sensationalized Fox News headline:

'Internet hackers organize illegals to take american jobs.'

This is an excellent reason why all published works should include a diverse collection of very ephemeral metadata.

If you'd like to sock away a bunch of extra tax-deferred cash, variable annuities (low cost ones from vanguard/tiaa-cref) can be OK options....Assuming you're genuinely saving for retirement at 65, the present value of a tax deferral over the next 43 years is pretty big.

I wonder: Is Amazon now trying to compete with Fedex? What's the benefit to them of building out a shipping network on top of their distribution network?

I'm sure there's some margin that could be potentially captured - and it might be neat to be dealing just with amazon - but why not focus on stuff that doesn't involve becoming a competitor to established shipping services. In my view, the US Postal services are already kind of underpriced....

What do you guys think this means for the company? Would firing Steve Ballmer do anything for their feudal management structure?

This is a company with billions in cash, smart employees and profitable projects. It's sad that they can't get together and be seen as anything but the gang that sells software to my dad.

Whither Research in Motion?

It seems to me like Blackberry Messenger is the only thing keeping that company alive from a consumer perspective. I hear all the time "I would buy an I phone, but I love BBM so much!"

Do you have a source on that? I'm sure this is a "lmgtfy" kind of thing, but I'm not an app developer so I'm not sure the particular jargon to Google.

Has there been a good writeup of what HFT "Is" at any point?

What is your impression of them as a pernicious/positive force? Are they essentially market making?

This is the kind of stuff I really should have an opinion about, but I haven't found anything to lean on in the public domain.

Thanks for you response - I didn't think about that at all. Unfortunately most textbook purchasers don't have the ability to "avoid" bad texts....

I wonder if there were a way to rewire the textbook market so that teachers assigned different kinds of things...in other words, so that the teacher assigned a student to read a credible source of information regarding geometric identities rather than section 23.6 of a stated text.

Imagine how much more interesting learning would be if students all came to the classroom having reasoned through the knowledge differently? It would be really neat to set up a system that was basically a "hacker news" for whatever piece of information...educators could comment on in-class efficacy & kids could comment on comprehensiveness.

You'd need to charge for it (Unless you could source the books for free) but this is interesting conceptually.

> total rewrite of a lot of papers, including a lot of mathematical books.

Somebody at the textbook publishers is smacking their lips at the prospect of selling an entirely new edition with an incredibly minor change.

My mother was down on the floor of the NYSE the other month, and she got the opportunity to corner a trader who she noticed was relying heavily on algorithms.

She asked "What's the difference between a good trader and a good algorithm?" The trader said "nothing.If you're buying 1000 shares, it's probably better to simply put in a market order. A large hedge fund seeking to buy many hundreds of thousands - where the difference between paying 8.30 and 8.31 a share matters - algorithms can actually be helpful."

The issue here is the definition of "trader." For this guy, trader is a person who executes large trades for an investment manager. A trading decision is not the same as an investment decision, and in that vein many trader's motivations are simply to buy a desired quantity of a financial instrument as cheaply as possible.

If you're buying 1000 shares, it's probably better to simply put in a market order. A large hedge fund seeking to buy many hundreds of thousands - where the difference between paying 8.30 and 8.31 a share matters - algorithms can actually be helpful. If you're buying 1000 shares, it's probably better to simply put in a market order. A large hedge fund seeking to buy many hundreds of thousands - where the difference between paying 8.30 and 8.31 a share matters - algorithms can actually be helpful.

Humans are probably better computers for figuring out which stocks to buy and sell to my mind, but there's certainly a place for algorithms if they are not too high-minded.

This is a very valid way to put this, and it helped me. Thank you.