fiprofessor

5 ms·

1.
by fiprofessor 2y ago
But Berkshire Hathaway does do stock buybacks.
2.
by fiprofessor 2y ago
The earnings per share certainly increases. But this is (at least theoretically) offset by the fact that the firm's assets have decreased. For example, if the buyback was paid for with cash, then prior to the buyback, the shares repres
3.
by fiprofessor 2y ago
No, because the future cash flow per share is not reflected in the current market cap. Perhaps you are thinking of share price instead: there it is true that dividends reduce share price, while buybacks are share-price neutral at least theo
4.
by fiprofessor 2y ago
Who would invest in or create a company that would never pay a dividend and never bought back its stock? How would shareholders ever yield gains from their investment? Short of some entity buying all stock and taking the company private (to
5.
by fiprofessor 2y ago
Prior to the Bush era tax cuts, all dividends were taxed at the income rate, which I think explains the biggest motivation in the shift from dividends to buybacks in that era. Nowadays, as you say, there is no difference in tax rates for qu
6.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
I understand the cynicism, but the current text of the bill explicitly creates a separate trust which receives the revenue, and is restricted so that: "The fund shall be used exclusively for the purposes of subsidizing the cost of hig
7.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
This seems like the same article, but without the need to subscribe to read the whole article: https://jacobin.com/2024/02/tax-ivy-league-endowments-public... > Based on the size of these “rainy-day funds” alo
8.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
> And if you look at any graph of college costs vs wages over the past 40 years or so, they have simply skyrocketed. Absolutely, no debate there. The particular surprising claim in question though was about whether they have declined i
9.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
Point taken, but it's very common to adjust by CPI (or some other price index) when comparing prices over time. All attempts to track prices over time have some flaw. But not adjusting for inflation in a chart that goes back ~20 years
10.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
Well, it's not worth it to bring this optimization to the attention of the CEO. But it definitely exceeds the engineer's weekly cost by a lot, so if it only takes a week, it's potentially worth it (modulo opportunity costs fo
11.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
Yes, but sometimes switching to arithmetic/absolute thinking is the right thing to do. For example, suppose an engineer who is paid $200k per year can spend a week to implement an optimization that reduces costs by 0.1%. If that is 0.1
12.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
I think they will over time if PE deals start to implode or reveal themselves to be as bad as people claim. But the reaction will take a while to happen. With partnership-based models, it's not necessarily the case that most of the doc
13.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
> A PE takeover is the signal that you no longer need to hedge those shorts; the company, loaded with the debt used to purchase it, will soon go bankrupt, and you will be absolved of closing your short positions, for all practical purpo
14.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
> Honestly though, I think the good times are over for PE, as most of the industry (and finance in general) has been cushioned by a low interest rate world, and as debt starts to cost real money we're gonna see a _lot_ of these bet
15.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
> The gameplan is simple: lend your buddy the money to buy the business. Now you have a line to the person who has the most access to data about, if not control over, the direction of the business. Wherever it happens to go, you can be
16.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
> And then she was with Devon Welsh, a singer/songwriter whose father was an actor. And most famously has been the partner of Elon Musk. She's had probably a larger share of carefree living than most. No doubt she's had
17.
by fiprofessor 3y ago
Nice essay, but some of the contemporary examples in this paragraph about the independenlty wealthy are not really that compelling: I’m not saying wealthy people can’t make incredible artists. Without Marcel Duchamp’s monthly allowance fro
18.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
Even though Meta doesn't issue dividends, they did do massive share buybacks last year. That effectively returns cash on hand to investors, much as dividends do. (Of course, Meta's buybacks are also to offset stock based compensat
19.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
That makes sense to me. But, in light of that, the ones who do go to Jane Street are relatively more likely to be interested in their tech stack and OCaml, as opposed to wanting to "test themselves" in the "adversarial sett
20.
Risk over Time(danluu.com)
1 points by fiprofessor 4y ago|0 comments
21.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
> I think people go to high-technology finance because they want to test themselves against a harder class of problem in a more adversarial setting against people who feel the same. Maybe this is so at other finance firms, but my exper
22.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
It's wildly inaccurate to say that much of Alzheimer's research has been shown to be fabricated. The article you link to is about one person's work. Even though he is a very influential researcher, there must be at least th
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by fiprofessor 4y ago
It might better to link to directly to the FTC press release ( https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/08/... ) instead of the FTC "Consumer Alert" that is currently linked
24.
Highway Robbers of the Knowledge Economy(theracket.news)
2 points by fiprofessor 4y ago|0 comments
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by fiprofessor 4y ago
Should auto-manufacturers be liable for emissions produced by cars that have had their catalytic converters stolen? Should medicine manufacturers be liable if someone circumvents their tamper-proof seals and laces them with a poison? Should
26.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
But very few physical consumer goods are designed to be robust to adversarial or malicious use, and there is no standard of liability for such failures. On the other hand, often in these discussions, people advocate for such a standard
27.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
Yes, I agree that it's the fine distinctions at the upper end that are hard to make. But if we're going to eliminate 50% of the proposals, is that really going to reduce the amount of time people spend on them? It might reduce re
28.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
Do people really find the thing mentioned in the last paragraph that ironic? To be honest, I do not (except, maybe, if the scientists are economists who work in industrial organization, or something). Many natural scientists I know are deep
29.
by fiprofessor 4y ago
I see a lot of appeals to "fund people, not projects", but the main issue I have with it is that I think it strongly biases people to select "super stars" who have impressive credentials / come from high status orga
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by fiprofessor 4y ago
Great story. Reminds me of the book and movie October Sky , in which the protagonists, who are high school students, strive to learn calculus so that they can learn how to better build rockets.

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