You guys are missing the point. Have you ever communicated with someone using google translate? Have you ever sat through a post-fight UFC interview where the guy was answering questions through an interpreter? The translation isn’t the hard part, the hard part is seamless integration into a free-flowing conversation.
Someone who wants to live in Italy for a summer will be much better served by grinding Duolingo for a few weeks than by finding the perfect AI app.
I want specifically meaning not the US either. But looking globally, the ambassador type tends to have languages rather than pure political appointee. That was more the point I’m making. I.e. that when you have the resources for full translation on everything, people still choose to learn a language.
Of course. In other countries they can choose someone with languages who is also a political appointee…
And when everyone is using the same AI app instead of learning the language, the ones who can speak it well will likely become far more appreciated.
Machine translation. Good enough for most purposes, but not for all.
https://x.com/CliffordSosis/status/1840555001489358935?t=aeL5BNJ1pYWQMbGG3uBuCQ&s=19
US isn’t completely idiotic about these appointents.
The real important ones seem to be all knowledge (including language) with a hint of political favor.
Something like Denmark is just the spoils of victory. You might find someone whose grandmother was Danish. But no one GAF. Nothing significant is gonna happen there and they all speak English anyway. If something important did happen, they would surely get someone with some real skill doing all the actual work.
I have an idea for an ETF. How do I share this without Blackrock immediately stealing it and cutting me out?
You don’t.
I guess you can’t copyright an idea for an etf huh
crap
you can’t just not say lol
I’m almost done with the google spreadsheet, I will debut it tomorrow unless Powell talks
well, never mind then
it looks like someone thought of something very similar, which launched in 2017…and was liquidated in 2019. The ticker was FANZ
I thought about an etf of just the (public) corporations that bought stadium naming rights for NHL, NBA, NFL, MLS, MLB venues. FANZ was kinda similar but I guess in included companies which were “official plumbing & plumbing accessories of the National Football League” as well.
So not only did someone already think of it, it already failed.
I knew I couldn’t make a etf stupid Stupid STUPID YOURE SO STUPID
If you don’t mind talking through the idea a bit, what was your rationale for why it would be a good etf? Is there some commonality amongst those companies that might make them a good investment? Or was it more that you thought that type of etf could be successfully packaged and sold to retail investors?
I don’t really think it would be a good etf, given how many companies seem to shell out millions and millions for naming rights only to fold a few years later. Most of those companies, at least the public ones, aren’t exactly known for great returns. I just thought it would be a cool thought experiment, tbh
Big visible ad buys which can be informed by a decision maker’s attitude to a sports team instead of ROI seems like an inherently worse than average bet.
Companies which make more of those bets than average seems like a company which has poor decision making processes.
So a reverse ETF would be reasonable. But our thesis needs to be stronger than “these companies make poor decisions” it needs to extend to “these companies make poor decisions in a way that hasn’t already been priced”
FWIW my company regularly looked at sports sponsorship and the ROI was always terrible compared to other places we could spend, so we always said no.
Not sure if this is real as these are the only sources. But holy hell if it is.
This item is part of Stockwatch’s value added news feed and is only available to Stockwatch subscribers.
Here is a sample of this item:
by Mike Caswell
RBC Dominion Securities Inc. is facing a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of British Columbia from Christopher DeVocht, a Vancouver Island man who lost his entire $415-million portfolio. Mr. DeVocht claims that RBC provided him with inadequate advice as he carried out risky trades and his account suffered sharp declines. Among other things, the firm set him up with a margin account and substantial loans that amplified his risks, he says.
The allegations are contained in a notice of claim that Mr. DeVocht filed at the Vancouver courthouse on Tuesday, Oct. 1. The notice identifies Mr. DeVocht as a resident of Sooke, B.C., who had worked as a carpenter until he started suffering from health problems in 2019. Mr. DeVocht says that he began investing in his early 20s, trading derivatives, largely in Tesla Inc.
The case arises in part from the value of Mr. DeVocht’s portfolio which, as set out in the lawsuit, grew enormously. At the end of 2019, he had an $88,000 portfolio, which had grown to $26-million by mid-2020, when he was 30 years old, the suit states. The substantial gains arose almost entirely from trades in shares and options in Tesla (which more than doubled during that period, reaching a $1,119 (U.S.) high).
Here’s the rest that goes to the subscribers:
https://x.com/cejaykim/status/1842009269857669582
This is supposedly the guy suing:
https://x.com/UnModded_Human/status/1838783283683082261
He seems a lot more concerned with his low vitamin-A diet than the $415M he may or may not have just lost.
Matt Levine:
If you are an ordinary retail investor and you make hundreds of millions of dollars day-trading Tesla Inc. options, and you go to a financial adviser and are like “my entire account is hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of Tesla call options, any advice,” what will the adviser say? I am not a financial adviser and this is not financial advice, but if I was a financial adviser and someone came to me and opened up a duffel bag full of Tesla call options and said “help me figure out what to do with these,” I would yelp in panic, sell everything and put it in Treasury bills. And then when I calmed down a bit I’d figure out a diversified asset allocation plan for the money. And then later I’d work on optimizing taxes, and estate planning, and maybe charitable contributions.
But first things first! Get the heck out of the Tesla options! The point of day-trading the Tesla options was to get you hundreds of millions of dollars, but now you have hundreds of millions of dollars, and you don’t need to day-trade the Tesla options anymore! Oh, what, you want to? You love day-trading Tesla options? Fine fine fine, go ahead, take ten million dollars and use it to day-trade Tesla options, and if you parlay that into hundreds of millions more dollars then that’s gravy. But you are too rich to have 100% of your net worth in Tesla options. The roulette wheel landed on your number 30 times in a row, you gotta stop!
On Friday, Bloomberg’s Zeke Faux and Christine Dobby reported on a lawsuit filed by a Canadian carpenter who allegedly made hundreds of millions of dollars day-trading Tesla options and went to Royal Bank of Canada to ask them what to do about it, and they were allegedly like “have you considered putting 200% of your net worth into Tesla options?”
Levine has a way with words that resonates perfectly with me. His ability to mix very serious and complex discussions with utter silliness is perfect. This was my favorite part of yesterday’s newsletter:
One thing that has always puzzled me about retail financial advice is that people like to ask you about your risk tolerance, like that’s a thing that you could know. But I suppose if you walk into a financial adviser’s office and are like “I have $300 million and it’s all in Tesla options,” she will pull up her new client intake form, and there will be a field for “what is the client’s risk tolerance on a scale of 1 to 10,” and she will write “eight thousand,” and the advice will proceed on that basis.
Semi-related: Bloomberg’s “Five Things to Start Your Day” newsletter is ending this Friday, and will only be available (in an expanded format) to Bloomberg subscribers going forward. If Levine’s column did that, I wonder if that would push me over the edge to actually subscribing to Bloomberg. Almost certainly a better use of money than my NYT subscription.
Levine is an excellent writer/analyst, but his knowledge of law and finance is elite. He generally is able to figure out why weird seeming things more or less make sense. His newsletter (free via email) is one of the best regular columns I’ve ever seen.
