Some things and ideas: February 2024
My monthly post with random thoughts on articles or market stuff that caught my attention in the last month (as well as some fantasy book recommendations and some other monthly recurring reminders!).
My monthly overview (Monthly recurring piece)
I consider YAVB my “empire” with four core pieces: this blog / substack (the free side), the premium side of this blog, my podcast (also on Spotify, iTunes, or YouTube), and my twitter account. You can see my 2024 vision and goals for the empire here. If you like the blog / free site, I'd encourage you to check out the pod, follow me on twitter, and maybe even subscribe to the premium site!
A bonus note: I get asked from lots of people about how to break into the finance industry. I detailed it more here, but my top advice would be to go out and start a substack (substack recently gave me a referral code if you start one; if you use that, awesome! But I’ve been recommending starting a substack long before they offered referrals!). If you do launch a substack, please let me know so I can try to be helpful.
I lost a decent bit of weight (follow up)
I mentioned last month that I’d lost a decent bit of weight through largely cutting out sugars and eating ~12 Factor meals a week / that I’d become a huge Factor evangelist. Just wanted to do a quick follow up with two updates:
The weight loss continues. I’m now down from 216 at the start of the year to 198 pounds as of yesterday afternoon (I was 203 at the end of January). I wasn’t quite as strict on diet this month (I was a mini-cookie monster this month), so pretty happy with those results.
Do I have before and after shirtless photos? Yes. Did I wonder if it would be weird to put them on the blog? Also yes.
I had a few readers email me that they subscribed to Factor on my rec; the good news is the reviews have been quite positive, which made me feel like I wasn’t completely crazy / hadn’t joined a cult (well, maybe I have…. but it’s good to know it’s working for other people too!)
I cannot believe how big Taylor Swift is
Look, I’m a Swifty. When she released an album exclusive to Apple Music, I cancelled Spotify and signed up for Apple for ~2 years just to get my T-Swift fill. So I say this from a place of love / admiration…. I simply cannot believe how big she is.
The Eras tour grossed over $1B, the movie did >$250m, and Disney just bought the streaming rights for >$75m. Those are just insane numbers; I joked on Twitter that the next time we have a crisis, the Fed can skip quantative easing and interest rate cuts and instead just subsidize a new T-Swift tour + album.
T-Bills Without Tax BIlls? This Fund Says It Cracked the Code
Perhaps nothing set my corner of the world ablaze like the bloomberg piece on BOXX (and the accompanying Matt Levine article). Nothing on this blog is investing advice (remember the disclaimer!), but I’m really impressed by the BOXX product / potential tax arb; 100/100 well done….
Again, while reminding nothing on this blog is investment advice, I do see two issues with the BOXX product: one in terms of execution, and one in terms of long term longevity.
Let’s start with execution: if you’re looking for a safe place to park your money and get advantaged tax treatment, BOXX seems to hit that box squarely. But where BOXX goes really parabolic is on an arbitrage play: borrow money (thus paying interest income which results in a deduction at higher ordinary income rates) in order to invest in this and get long term tax treatment (which is generally lower). The issue there is twofold: first, you’re going to have a negative spread between the rates you can borrow at and the risk free rate BOXX pays (i.e. your margin cost is higher than your income). Second, something about borrowing margin to invest in a risk free product for a tax arb screams “blow up” risk to me.
Again, not investing advice, not tax advice, etc. I personally haven’t touched BOXX and don’t plan to; I just find the whole thing fascinating.
On longevity of the product: I cannot imagine the IRS is going to be cool allowing this to exist when you’re getting Bloomberg running broadly followed articles loudly touting the arb. The IRS is either going to change the rules unilaterally, or congress is going to make a quick change to eliminate this loophole (I’d have to imagine rich guys arb’ing tax structures in their PAs is about the easiest group for both parties to come together to hit).
But my gosh do I respect the fund / admire the creativity here.
Companies that go bad and claiming fraud
I was listening to my friend Bill Brewster’s most recent podcast. I’m sure I’m not doing the convo justice, but about an hour in they start talking about what I’ll call loosely controversial investments and investments that went wrong, and it kind of triggered something for me. Just about every time I see a stock that goes down a lot or that files for bankruptcy, I’ll see someone who was long it throw out fraud accusations.
Look, sometimes that’s the case…. but let me hop on a pedestal real quick and give some advice: in general, if you have a stock that really goes against you, you’d be better served being made at yourself for making the investment and spending a lot of time thinking through what you got wrong and how you can improve going forward than you will be getting made at the stock or the company or whoever brought it to you.
I just think the instant rush to say “I lost money; it must have been fraud!” is really harmful to investors. It precludes you from looking yourself in the mirror and seeing what you did wrong, and it also fails to acknowledge that the stock market and business is a really competitive place, and sometimes things do go against you.
State of the markets (Monthly recurring piece)
The fear and greed indicator is tilting towards extreme greed….
On the one hand, that feels about right. Anything that touches AI, GLP-1, or crypto is just screaming higher every day right now.
On the other hand, it’s tough to reconcile “extreme greed” with some of the results and prices I’m seeing. I’m seeing all sorts of companies that trade for value multiples get slaughtered if there’s anything wrong in their earnings releases. Markets feel just completely unforgiving of anything that has any hair on it or isn’t a growth-y story, while being completely forgiving of all sorts of growth stories. Just a tale of two markets right now.
Nerd Corner (Monthly recurring piece)
There’s no hiding it; I’m a massive nerd. I read 3-4 fantasy books a month, my favorite pastime is playing board games with my wife and friends, and I was an eager supporter of the Brandon Sanderson Kickstarter (yes, I splurged and went for the hardcover books).
Anyway, I figured a few of you are nerds like me, so I started this segment to give recs of what I’m nerding out over currently, with the hope that you’ll either try it and enjoy it or recommend me similarly nerdy things that I’ll enjoy. This month’s recs:
I mentioned last month that I caved and read the first fourth wing book. I liked it…. but I got kind of bored halfway through the sequel. So I put that down and stared the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. I really liked it (I could not put the first two books down); it’s not going to be for everyone, but if you enjoyed the Cradle or Wandering Inn Series (both of which I highly recommend), I suspect you’ll enjoy Dungeon Crawler Carl.
PS- outside of my monthly recs, I constantly get asked what my favorite fantasy books are. So I’m just going to throw this list out monthly:
Anything Brandon Sanderson writes; he’s by far the best fantasy author out there. I’d probably start with Mistborn, though Tess and the Emerald Sea is basically a standalone book and might be my favorite book he’s written. The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England is also a standalone book and a very fun and fast read.
Kingkiller is probably the best series I’ve ever read; waiting for the third is agony.
Gentleman Bastards is right up there with Kingkiller; the mix of fun and world building is outstanding.
Red Rising series is more sci-fi, but my god is it good. I would literally stay up all night to read every book the day they came out (note: I’ve only read the first trilogy; I’m going to read the second when the last book comes out later this year).
If you’re looking for something a little more under the radar (most of the books above are widely regarded as some of the best fantasy books / series ever), the Licanius Trilogy was fantastic.
First Law trilogy is excellent. It can get a little brutal / graphic though; there are a bunch of sequels and spins, but I’ve never been able to finish them because one of them got so brutal I just put the book down and never picked it up again. But the first trilogy is really, really great.
The Cradle series probably isn’t as “good” as the books above, but I binged them and every fantasy fan I’ve recommended them to has said something along the line of “I read all ten books in two months after I opened the first one.”
I’ve also really enjoyed that author’s newest series, Last Horizon!
The Wandering Inn series isn’t for everyone, and the first ~150 pages of the first book need to get powered through…. but, if you can power through them, the world building here is incredible, and I’ve had so many friends get hooked by this series. If you like hard fantasy, I can near guarantee you’ll like it.
Other things that caught my eye (monthly recurring)
A Buffett Protege makes an offbeat bet: buy San Francissco Real Estate
Why three media giants made a hail mary bet on sports streaming
The cost of Biden’s tax credits is soaring
absolutely not an expert, but I do think something that scrapped a bunch of the EV subsidies while keeping some of the clean energy subsidies would make a lot of sense
How an unremarkable deal became a big threat to a small investment bank (RILY)
The curmudgeon of rivington street
Wild article that pairs will with the rent control article above
I spent a week Rescuing Food From the Trash. Here’s what I ate
Ok, this is not a reporter diving into trash cans to find food that could be eaten. It’s an app called too good to go; my wife has been using it for years and we’re pretty big fans. Basically, restaurants just sell for cheap food that they’d be about to throw away. Bakeries are the most popular things on the app, but they’ll normally just load you up with croissants…. not bad if you do it the night before and have a big breakfast the next day. The real hack is to find a pizza place; often you can get really good slices for ~$1/slice.
If you’re in any big city, it’s worth trying. I kind of like the sense of adventure / mystery.
I like the links for interesting reading - it's very much value additive!
We both used this thumbnail on this day. Great minds!