The Grind
Done right, investing is boring AF
Almost all popular movies ever made can be bucketed into a handful of categories. (tandfonline)
The same is true for investing strategies as well. Once you have figured out the broad strokes, the whole process of finding new strategies becomes a systematic grind through a search tree. You pick a branch, go depth-first, get bored, then go breadth-first for a bit, feel shallow, pick a branch and go depth-first. Rinse-repeat.
Along the way, you’ll find tools that make your life easier. You’ll find yourself turning code that you keep copy-pasting into libraries. Your research velocity increases.
Then you find that a lot things that are theoretically profitable are not practically feasible in Indian markets. Often, there is simply no liquidity.
The grind goes on.
If you are in it for the excitement, then you are probably doing it wrong.
Markets this Week
Major indices put in decent bear-market recoveries. The US Dollar continued its rise while major commodities are down more than 20% from their recent highs.
Links
The problem with nuclear power has always been the extreme left-tail outcome associated with it. Coal will certainly kill humanity over the next 100-years whereas a nuclear accident might kill you next week.
And its not just Germany. The French have lost it as well.
Meanwhile, Germany is rationing hot water, dimming its street lights and shutting down swimming pools as the impact of its energy crunch begins to spread from industry to offices, leisure centres and homes. (FT)
It’s not hopeless. Putin’s war and the ongoing threat to energy stability has revived interest in SMRs and more than half-a-dozen startups are working on making nuclear energy safer and more affordable. (siliconrepublic, balkangreenenergynews, cnbc, science, forbes, bloomberg, businessinsider)
South Korea will build four more nuclear reactors by 2030, and extend the life of 10 older units, as the new government backs atomic power as a key tool to zero out emissions. Atomic energy will provide more than 30% of the nation’s electricity generation by the end of the decade, up from 27.4% last year. (bloomberg)
Combined with China’s nuclear power ambitions, there is hope yet. (bloomberg)
~
Howard Marks gave an interview and he still has nothing new to say. If you have read his book, The Most Important Thing, you know everything he is going to say here:
~
Jim Chanos confirming most of my priors here:
~
Recession projections getting out of hand?
~
DTC is hard. Facebook, Google, Amazon and Shopify end up making most of the money out of it.
Extending the same arguments, most of the “creator economy” is ngmi and OnlyFans ends up making bank.
~
Japan had more than two decades of zero equity returns. Europe is about to crash that party.
~
Foreign investors have dumped a record $33bn of Indian shares since October last year, equivalent to 1 per cent of India’s market capitalisation. June’s $6.3bn monthly outflow of foreign investment was the biggest for Indian stocks since the pandemic erupted more than two years ago, and the ninth straight month of net foreign selling. (FT)
~
Were the gold bugs’ market manipulation theory correct all along? (bqprime)
