HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

stupandaus

1,175 karma · joined January 20, 2011

Blog: nathanguo.com
submissionscomments
stupandaus··on Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company
yes, there are many factors that can influence a valuation. and in different price ranges, different factors will have different weights. since the price is not $0 today and is relatively close to the potential transaction price, the % likelihood of a transaction has much more influence.
stupandaus··on Twitter board adopts poison pill after Musk’s $43B bid to buy company
this is incorrect. the price going up is a reflection of the market's believe about the % likelihood of a deal.

for example at market close of $45.08, the market is betting there is a $45.08/$54.20 = 83% chance that this transaction goes through.

there are certainly individual stockholders who are buying because they like his involvement, but that is tiny compared to people buying and selling a very near-term bet

stupandaus··on After a year of ‘rampant’ cheating, elite bridge tries to clean up
Not sure if you are misremembering the Phil Ivey edge sorting case [1] or if you are thinking of another story. Notable in this case that the casinos won in the end.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Ivey#Edge-sorting_litigat...

stupandaus··on Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]
The US' unemployment rate was much, much lower than many western European unemployment rates prior to coronavirus, so it doesn't make sense to compare the absolute number here - instead you should be comparing relative figures. The US' unemployment rate has tripled in the past 2 weeks based on this analysis.
stupandaus··on Additional 6.6M File for Initial Unemployment Benefits [pdf]
Building on my analysis from last week:

1. This week's 6.6M new jobless claims represents ~4% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.

2. This is incremental to the 3.3M new jobless claims filed week ending 3/21, totaling ~10M total jobless claims in the past 2 weeks.

3. The US unemployment rate was ~3.5% as of EOM February [1], so cumulatively that means we've hit ~10% unemployment as of EOW 3/28 (~10M incremental jobless claims = ~6%). That number is likely low and continuing to increase, as new jobless claims do not account for gig workers and many state unemployment sites have been inundated by these claims resulting in site crashes and people unable to file claims. In addition, layoffs have almost certainly continued between 3/28 and today.

4. The consensus estimate for this week's jobless claims was ~3.76M jobless claims, and the 6.6M actual claims blow the consensus estimate out of the water. That said, some analysts such as Goldman Sachs had estimated ~5.5M joblesss claims. Goldman Sachs estimates that unemployment will peak at ~15%. [2]

[1] https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/31/coronavirus-update-goldman-s...

stupandaus··on US weekly jobless claims total 6.6M, vs. 3.1M expected
Building on my analysis from last week: 1. This week's 6.6M jobless claims represents ~4% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.

2. This is incremental to the 3.3M jobless claims filed week ending 3/21, totaling ~10M total jobless claims in the past 2 weeks

3. The US unemployment rate was ~3.5% as of EOM February, so cumulatively that means we've hit ~10% unemployment as of EOW 3/28 and that number is likely low (not accounting for gig workers) and almost certainly worsening this week.

[1] https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

stupandaus··on 3.28M file for U.S. jobless benefits
A few things to note:

1. These figures are only new claims as of 3/21, so the numbers will get worse.

2. This is ~2% of the estimated ~160-165M US Workforce.

3. This is nearly 5x (!) the prior record of 671K new jobless claims from 1982, and redefines the scale for jobless claims. [1]

4. This does not account for the countless gig workers that are part of the modern economy that likely did not file for unemployment since they were not covered prior to the passing of the senate bill last night.

This goes to show just how sharp of an impact the coronavirus pandemic has had relative to past recessions. Even the '08 Financial Crisis took MONTHS to unravel.

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ICSA

stupandaus··on Tracking Sex: Implications of widespread data leakage and tracking on porn sites
This is a line in "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels" (Guy Ritchie film)! Was this a scam in the real world as well??
stupandaus··on We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts
The writer made a pretty common finance misunderstanding mistake here:

"That may change soon: Spotify bought Gimlet Media, a premium podcast studio, and Anchor, a podcast hosting platform, for $340 million earlier this month. That's a lot of money for an industry that was sized at just $314 million in 2017."

Gimlet Media's $340M price tag reflects enterprise value which bakes in future cash flows, while the industry market size of $314M is reflective of estimated revenues in 2017. Apples and oranges.

stupandaus··on As McKinsey Sells Advice, Its Hedge Fund May Have a Stake in the Outcome
This comment fundamentally misunderstands what insider trading is. There is no such thing as "insider trading" in private equity - insider trading by necessity is gaining an unfair advantage via non-public information. Private equity and venture capital investors both get access to substantial non-public information and are allowed to buy and sell equity in the private markets with as much or as little non-public info as they want, because that is not disadvantaging other public investors lacking that information.
stupandaus··on Amazon Has Considered Buying Some Toys ‘R’ Us Stores
To answer your question, the debt holders take precedence over the equity holders like Bain Capital, and generally being an equity holder and having your equity stake wiped to $0 is not a good outcome for a private equity firm. Bain does have to pay off debts - that is what the liquidation of assets is being done for - to pay off debts to the debt holders. Bain doesn't get to keep those assets.
stupandaus··on Researchers Use CRISPR to Detect HPV and Zika
These are really great use cases. That said, the article is totally missing the fact that these labs are aggressively developing alternatives to the Cas9 protein to dance around the ongoing CRISPR patent battle...
stupandaus··on Apply HN: Hackinator – Allow hackers to invest in YC startups using code :-)
An enterprising guy named Ali Hamed is pursuing this model with coventure in NYC!
stupandaus··on Losing Money
The final results are public information via UTIMCO, so no backdoor calculations are necessary: https://www.scribd.com/doc/277150709/UTIMCO-PrivateMarkets

UTIMCO invested $22.25m and was returned $280m in cash with $33m still active in investments, resulting in a cash-on-cash return of 12.57x and a 66.7% IRR (after fees).

Overall fund size was $125m, so $1.57b cash-on-cash returns for the fund after fees, assuming no LP tiered returns

stupandaus··on From Wasteland to Fund-Maker: A Contrarian Bet in Nuclear Waste Cleanup
Really interesting take on energy, especially relative to over-concentration in cleantech that other investors bought into at the time
stupandaus··on Chinese Hell Money (2014)
There have been multiple waves of Chinese immigration to the US, with different concentrations of Mandarin vs. Cantonese speakers, education level, affluence, etc. Thus, there tends to be major differences between China Towns in different major cities.
stupandaus··on The Trading Game
I made $1.6148008835081285e+21 LOL

The right axis scaling leaks a lot of future info...

stupandaus··on 1985: “Oil Prices Will Go Up Forever”
Betfair if you put money in the UK.
stupandaus··on Why a Greece Deal Matters: A Visual Guide
The real reason the Greece deal matters, is the rest of the EU are looking at it as a proxy for what will happen to Spain and Italy next. These two make up a much larger proportion of the EU GDP, and are facing their own major debt crises.
stupandaus··on The Cold-Medicine Racket
What's the medical consensus on Cold-EEZE?
stupandaus··on How to Get a Quant Job in Finance
Brainteasers are somewhat common in consulting interviews (at the undergraduate level). The idea behind giving brainteasers is more to see how you would structure and break down a problem, and whether you can communicate your structure and solution effectively.
stupandaus··on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Anyone have recommendations for interesting entries?
stupandaus··on Spaced Repetition is Awesome
A bit off topic from your post, but I'm curious how far your Mandarin studies took you. Did you ever make any headway into Business Chinese and/or do you know of any good resources for that?

I'm a native bilingual Mandarin/English speaker, and worked abroad in Shanghai for a year or so, but am still lacking a lot of professional business vocabulary.

stupandaus··on Researcher’s death shocks Japan
While I do agree it is horrible, humans are definitely not the only mammals that commit suicide.
stupandaus··on Hacking Airline Lounges for Free Meals
The idea of having to go through security everyday for free meals sounds unpalatable.
stupandaus··on Arduino Yún – combining Arduino with Linux
For those curious, Yún means cloud (雲/云 in traditional/simplified Chinese).
stupandaus··on Management Consultants Can Save the World
They conveniently missed the fact that the consulting provided was operational consulting and not management (read: strategy) consulting.
stupandaus··on Stanford MBA price tag hits $185K: Highest in the world
Your analysis of the situation is a bit off. The vast majority of MBA students have worked some amount of time since graduating from their undergraduate institutions. Not only that, many were working in highly lucrative industries like investment banking/consulting. It's really not far-fetched that they purchased these cars prior to entry into the program.

Also your note that 2% pursue startup opportunities seems to be incorrect, given that the 2012 employment report showed 13% of students not seeking employment to start a new business.

stupandaus··on Meet the Obama campaign's $250 million fundraising platform
Reading this write-up after having read Nate Silver's post[1] today on how the Republican party has a harder time getting Silicon Valley talent leads to an interesting thought. Going forward the party that can successfully target the younger, smarter base will have a SUBSTANTIAL advantage in developing better systems. Assuming there is not some ceiling on how much better technology can impact efficiency, these systems will translate to exponentially more effective platforms for the party with the brightest youth.

[1]: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/11/28/in-silic...

stupandaus··on The Real Silicon Valley
I am utterly baffled by people expecting a show on television to be even close to reflecting reality.
Page 1 of 3Next →