simo7

7 ms·

61.
by simo7 9y ago
If it helps read here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_money Unfortunately this "nonsense" is the explanation that any economist would give you. Maybe you can be the first one to propose a revolutionary al
62.
by simo7 9y ago
> why would anyone make a loan if they didn't stand to gain anything? Exactly. That's precisely the question. If you lend money 1) you bear the risk of not seeing you're money back 2) you're not able to spend that mon
63.
by simo7 9y ago
It is to say that money is in principle something only quantitatively different from a loan. In fact, you can see money as a credit towards an extremely trustworthy debtor. So trustworthy that everybody will accept that credit on its face
64.
by simo7 9y ago
It's a cheque that never gets cashed.
65.
by simo7 9y ago
> As long as the real return on cash (around -2% when interest rates are zero) is higher than market safe return on investment (which can be lower than -2%) it can cause a gridlock in the investment market. That way holding cash is bette
66.
by simo7 9y ago
> Yes deflation is worst but low inflation can be terrible in some situations. Agreed. But not because of what you are implying: "...people transfer their savings to cash, the world switches from producing real stuff...". That
67.
by simo7 9y ago
I'm precisely referring to inflation. See the example I'm making here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16459396
68.
by simo7 9y ago
Low inflation is usually desirable, just think that achieving 2% inflation annually is the main mandate for the European Central Bank. That's because even at 1%-2% inflation a year is difficult to spark the so-called thesaurisation phe
69.
by simo7 9y ago
Actually according to Buffet even _constant_ inflation can be very bad if the business is capital intensive with high fixed-costs. See my point here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16458373
70.
by simo7 9y ago
In a context of _constant_ high inflation that's not true: the interest rates will already be discounting the future inflation. You have a positive gain of that type in case inflation grows more than expected. Enough to offset the nega
71.
by simo7 9y ago
There is an important aspect which is not well remarked in the article: high fixed-costs businesses are the ones that really suffer inflation. If every time you want to expand you need to make significant investments (and there will always
72.
by simo7 9y ago
Well maybe that's one of the first "application", but it's a well know fact that Mafia's rise was fostered by the Italian unification. Southern Italy was for the most part a feudal system controlled by a traditional
73.
by simo7 9y ago
Bubbles can last very long though, to a certain extent gold itself has been in a bubble for decades. The real advantage of bitcoin is a bit of a paradox. Precisely because it has no value (and it's unsuitable as a currency) it can work
74.
by simo7 9y ago
Bitcoin is fiat money with (almost) constant supply . This is the real problem, not it being fiat money. This is what makes it a terrible currency for trade and a great one for speculation!
75.
by simo7 9y ago
> I think you have an outdated view of what a stock really is. Yeah many people tend to believe that "everything has changed" every once in a while. There are records of claims like that since the mid 17th century and continous
76.
by simo7 9y ago
It happens all the times, take a share buyback for instance. A company uses its cash reserves (generated by operating profits or assets sales) to purchase back some of its own shares. As the same 1 share entitles you to a bigger percentage
77.
by simo7 9y ago
There is still a HUGE difference between the two. Owning a stock entitles you to a share of current/future assets/profits of the business. Even in the case the business is not making money you can still hope for future profits or
78.
by simo7 9y ago
Plus the formula is more geared towards diversyfing across different assets.
79.
by simo7 9y ago
"Bitcoin investing" sounds a bit like an oxymoron to me (more like speculating). Anyway, dollar-cost-averaging looks like a great strategy if you are very bullish on a asset which also happens to be quite volatile.
80.
by simo7 9y ago
Well correlation has not direction of causality, but I get your point. Although not sure why you see it that way, seems easier to explain the other way around to me.
81.
by simo7 9y ago
Strong doesn't mean it's the only explanation, probably different factors at play like in most things. For instance for Germany (and maybe Austria?) major factor could be aversion to nationalism?
82.
by simo7 9y ago
I think a strong pattern here is: the more cultural/social homogeneity the more willingness to fight a war for your country. See Italy, Spain, Belgium for instance: people from different area of those countries really feel belonging to
83.
by simo7 9y ago
If you look at the history of Fiat/Chrysler in the last years is a history of resurgence from troubled waters, probably not the right company to be the innovator in a money-loosing field at this point in time. So I don't think the
84.
by simo7 9y ago
"Show me country & city as rows, year as a column, sum the amount of population for country/city combination, show the YoY as a column and the subtotal for city". Really? That's 3 clicks a way with a well-designed UI
85.
by simo7 9y ago
I doubt it. NLP interfaces in reporting work for simple things, when you want to start doing more advanced things they become incredibly verbose and inconsistent. That's where a well designed UI really shines...and will continue to do
86.
by simo7 9y ago
> the government doesn't want thousands of taxi drivers without a job. I don't know, I find this quite unfair to say to be honest. Once you make an agreement, as non-sensical as it can be, you should hold your end up. Especiall
87.
by simo7 9y ago
Thanks for the explanation, there are 2 things I don't quite understand though. What is the advantage of building a replica of the S&P500 with individual stocks rather than having it done with an index fund? Isn't the second o
88.
by simo7 9y ago
So you're basically saying the model should identify which human stock pickers to follow for each sector? If it's so easy why not to identify directly which stocks to invest in? If you can predict which investors will perform well
89.
by simo7 9y ago
Algorithms look at the very same things humans look at. They will try to time the market and speculate as much as now or even more.
90.
by simo7 9y ago
Exactly, how can algorithm investing be truly passive investing? There's a lot of confusion in the article.

More ›