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Business & Money

I’ve noticed that it’s much harder for people to be mean/rude face-to-face, versus over the phone or email. I imagine that is because there’s less humanity when you can’t see the other person. Putting a snarky comment in an email or yelling at someone over the phone doesn’t take much courage. But to look someone in the eyes (especially if you have respect for that person) and say really mean things is hard to do.

The reason I put this in the business & money section is because the idea recently made itself apparent in a business setting. I was on a Zoom call, and the other person was being extremely rude and confrontational for seemingly no reason. Now I don’t want to make assumptions about what might be going on in that person’s life (perhaps a recently lost loved one, rocky marriage, etc), but that still wouldn’t justify speaking to someone the way that I was being spoken to.

So I thought, I’ll turn on my webcam so the person can see my face. So I turned it on, smiled, and reiterated my previous question and the reason as to why I was asking. The other person’s tone and demeanor changed almost immediately.

Fascinating!

Human Progress

The control of information flow has taken on a drastically different appearance of late.

At one time, things were fairly straightforward. A handful of broadcast networks and media companies had a firm grip on the megaphone and popular opinion. If you could control the printing press and the teleprompter, then you basically had a monopoly on information.

And if you wanted to censor or control that flow, simply go to the choke point and apply pressure.

But things look different these days. We still have a few powerful companies controlling the flow of information, both those companies don’t produce any of the content found on their platforms. Instead, they claim to be open and agnostic to all information sources, allowing them to abdicate all responsibility for whatever rises to the top.

And, as a result, censorship has taken on a far more complex form. It shows up as coordinated campaigns of misinformation fueled by content farms and Macedonian teenagers. And due to human nature and our love for all things scandalous, misinformation gets more attention than valid and true information sources. It’s a huge problem when it’s difficult to determine the veracity of information due to the fact that all information sources get the same treatment. If we want a knowledgeable and informed public, it seems obvious that the organizations that control the flow of information should go to great lengths to provide simple and workable tools to distinguish falsehood from truth.

A simple guise of free speech is not enough. Yes, people should be able to say and write whatever they want to say and write, but that is not an end, in and of itself. Instead, free speech is merely a means to other more important ends. Free speech is about encouraging open, honest, and rational debate. It’s about holding people and organizations accountable for their actions. It’s about preserving civil liberties and affording citizens freedom of expression. To protect free speech for its own sake is to not understand what is intended to bring about.

Philosophy

Elevator etiquette is so strange to me. If I had to write the manual based on my observations of other people, it would contain things like:

1. Do not make eye contact (staring at a phone is highly recommended).

2. Greetings and salutations are not permitted (exceptions for when a dog or baby is present).

3. Always press the “door close” button when you get on (despite the fact the door will close on its own within a couple seconds).

And what’s funny is that these rules are the same whether you’re at a hotel or at your apartment building where you see many of the same people every day.

I like to make eye contact and say “hello” when I get on elevators. When others get off, I say “good evening” or “have a nice day.” After I get on, I don’t press the “door close” button. I’m not important enough to the point that a second or two has a large impact on my day.

Why do so many of us let concentrated urban dwelling strip of us our humanity and decency?

My Latest Discovery

Bill and Melinda Gates recently released their annual letter. This year they chose to focus on answering 10 hard questions they’ve received on their website. I think number 5 was my favorite:“Does saving kids’ lives lead to overpopulation?” The answer is so counterintuitive.

“When more children live past the age of 5, and when mothers can decide if and when to have children, population sizes don’t go up. They go down. Parents have fewer children when they’re confident those children will survive into adulthood. Big families are in some ways an insurance policy against the tragic likelihood of losing a son or a daughter.”

Business & Money: two horses

Here’s a thought experiment:
You own two horses.
One is winning every race and seems to get stronger by the day. You were super lucky to acquire him via a deal with an old friend.
The second horse you have raised from a baby, but he’s very slow and always finishes near the back of the pack.
It’s important to note that horses are expensive and time-consuming to train and maintain.
Given limited time and financial resources, what do you do? Continue trying to train both, or let the slow one chill in a field with some yummy grass while pouring all of your time and energy into the fast one?
Ok, stupid question with an obvious answer. But in life, when emotions and egos are involved, sometimes things are less clear.
I say this because I’ve decided to spend a little less time thinking about what personal project I will work on next. Not because the entrepreneurial voice inside of me is any quieter of late, but because I’m already on a winning team. In the last 2 years at work, we’ve brought in an additional $32 million of capital, grown in size by 500%, closed a ton of deals, and established ourselves as a serious player in our market.
I hope that doesn’t sound pompous because that is the opposite of the point I’m trying to make. Rather, the point is that I believe my thinking has been a little off. The chances of success for a startup at our stage is 100,000,000% higher than trying to build something from scratch. So given my goals and limited time/resources, it makes far more sense right now to double down on the winner and save other opportunities for some time down the road.

Human Progress: advanced trading for all

Historically, advanced trading techniques have been reserved for sophisticated investors, money managers, and the like. But technology is changing that. Specifically, the team at Robinhood is doing great work to democratize investing for the average person.
They’ve recently launched Robinhood Gold which adds a number of advanced features. While trades will always be free, for a flat $10 per month you can get:
1) Trading on margin (margin works just like a credit card where you are buying something with borrowed money). Robinhood will lend you money to buy stocks. If you see an opportunity unfolding, but you don’t have extra cash in our account, you can trade on margin. And the great part is, anyone can sign up for Robinhood Gold for the same $10 per month regardless of the size of your account or your investing experience. With most traditional brokerages, applying for a margin account sucks. There’s usually a long application process which asks about your annual income, net worth, investing experience, and a bunch of other things. Like I said, it sucks. Of course, the amount you can borrow is proportional to your account balance.
2) Instant settlement – when you sell stocks or deposit cash into your account, you no longer have to wait for the funds to settle (~3 business days). You can trade immediately.
3) Extended hours – instead of only trading between the normal market hours of 9:30am – 4:00pm EST, you can now trade 9:00am – 6pm EST. This is great if you like to trade on special announcements and events like quarterly earnings. With earnings releases, which usually happen after market close, prices often move much more during after-hours than they do during the day. Now you can take advantage.
It’s really exciting when technology makes things accessible where they otherwise wouldn’t be.

Philosophy: not so fast

For every yin, there is a yang.

Just a moment ago I was celebrating the benefits of having a brokerage account in your pocket. And that is surely a good thing. But not ALL good.
If you think about the relentless progression of technology, the goal is always to make things easier. There was a time when you had to take a check to a bank to deposit it. Now you simply pull out your phone, snap a picture, and voila. Check deposited. Just get back from a trip? No longer do you have to drop the film off at the store, wait a few days, pick up the pictures, and mail them to loved ones. Just upload the photos to Facebook along the way and your friends and loved ones can experience everything with you as it happens.
In the aforementioned examples, easier is a good thing. I can’t think of a reason I would want to waste time and energy driving to a retail bank location or developing film.
But going back to a mobile brokerage, I’m not so sure. If you are just getting started with investing, the last thing you should be doing is trading in and out of positions on a regular basis. First off, it doesn’t make sense for tax purposes. You pay far higher taxes for short-term positions. Secondly, when access too easy, emotions will lead you to do stupid things. You’ll be inclined to sell stocks that are underperforming and buy more when you’re in the green. I’ve been guilty of both. Thirdly, you can’t do any real research in the app. Key statistics, ratios, earnings, research, financial statements, none of it is accessible. In other words, the app makes in incredibly easy to do all of the things you shouldn’t do while making it impossible to do the things you should do.
And you can’t even blame people for making bad decisions. We have all of these psychological bugs as human beings that so often lead us astray. A mobile brokerage provides an excellent opportunity for our fundamental limitations as humans to run amuck.
And you can see these examples all around us. Social media is probably the most obvious. You have all of these incredible benefits that the technology has bestowed upon us like constant connectivity to loved ones, excellent content discovery, etc. But there’s also this dark underbelly that facilities the spread of misinformation, harassment, privacy infringement, and a boat load of mindless time wasting.
We really need to figure out a better way to ensure that our technologies are being leveraged in ways that add optimal value while also protecting us against our own weaknesses as human beings.

My Latest Discovery: shitty push notifications

In my declining use of Facebook over the years, I’ve discovered just how psychologically nefarious that company is.
When I was a regular user, the push notifications were pretty relevant. So and so tagged me in a photo. So and so commented on my post. I had all of these ongoing conversations and threads related to how I was engaging on the platform.
Now that I rarely post (outside of giving you guys a heads up about new issues of VIC – I know, that’s pretty meta), the notifications are utterly ridiculous. Here’s a sampling from this week:
“Do you know so and so?” Why am I being notified with a question asking if I know a random person, with whom I happen to have 2 mutual connections?
“So and so is interested in an event near you.” Ugh, ok…
“So and so just posted for the first time in a long time.” IDGAF! I didn’t even engage with that person when I was a regular user.
“So and so commented on so and so’s photo.” Are you kidding me? I commented on a photo from an old friend last year, so now you will notify me when anyone else (regardless of if I know that person) comments on that photo?
The funny thing is, I think I have more notifications now then I did when I was opening the app all the time. They’re trying so hard to get me to waste time scrolling through my feed so they can sell my attention to advertisers. And once you log in, they’ve mastered the game of attention. You get mini hits of dopamine as you scroll through the endless vacation photos, baby pictures, and cat videos.
Lucky for me, given I own a chunk of FB stock, most don’t have the discipline to look away.