gatnom
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Posts posted by gatnom
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2 hours ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:
My issue of this is obviously the "extreme" position definition. It's vague and not at all quantifiable in the sense that we could understand it.
For example, the market has soared and following airline bailouts, bank bailouts and even auto industry bailouts we saw market hikes in those sectors influenced significantly by stock buy backs. Those buy backs are an artificial inflation of company/market value, given that they were basically funds taken from profits or government assistance and repurposed as shares in your own company. This reinvestment following bailouts should not be allowed, and additionally I believe most profit should be reinvested in company growth/employees and etc. The market right now is running at all-time highs in the midst of of a pandemic where an estimated 30% of small businesses have gone bankrupt. While the market itself has never been a direct reflection of GDP/business growth, it has mirrored financial progress enough so that it didn't feel out of sync entirely as it does now. THe issue has a lot to do with the easy access to money, the marrying of investment and non-investment banks, and the complete lack of oversight over not only those mergers but the continued actions in the world of securities. Additionally, these buy backs are toxic. My main point is I'd argue the market has been in an extreme position for months - influenced heavily by market insiders working directly with banking execs and QE with easy access/low cost funding. I see it often, and it's unfair and to me it feels illegal. Defining volatility and extreme positions always sides with the "experts" who are more-so insider trading money movers; using many avenues to exploit market moves for their profit and at the demise of people and companies everywhere.
Even the GME thing was heavily influenced - moreso than by reddit - by other funds seeing an opportunity to capitalize off a completely idiotic position taken (the short % of float was simply a greedy play with far too much risk for any fund investing that much and controlling money from places like retirement funds) who helped bury a fellow fund allowing Cohen and Citadel to come in and "bail them out" (Who's shocked the person running Melvin is a former Cohen disciple, not me). I'm pretty sure Cohen has lost a boat load as well on this, but now he'll get it all back reinvesting in Melvin and getting a stake for well below the funds market value. In general, this boys club of insider moves, legalized manipulation via the media, and front loading of trade data has turned the entire market "extreme."
In the Robinhood case, it's actually pretty simple. Suppose the two of us are trading on their platform, and you buy 100 shares of GME and I sell 100 shares of GME. Then, from a clearing perspective, I have the shares and you have the money, so the net position within Robinhood's account is zero. Now, if you're the "democratized finance" platform and 9 out of every 10 clients is taking the same position on the same stock, you're not netting out near zero; you've got a large position one direction or the other. I will admit the rest of the risk calculation is opaque and somewhat arbitrary, but that is the crux of it.
You're preaching to the choir as far as your complaints about the market are concerned. I hate the way the fed and government continue to pump the markets and then act flabbergasted when income inequality skyrockets. I'd argue that it has felt out of sync for basically a decade now, but at this point we're just speculating.
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3 hours ago, Texsox said:
I've been thinking a lot about that recently. What should the government's role be in protecting people from doing stupid things with their money? I remember my dad basically gave away a car in a deal on a leased vehicle. I was livid, they really took advantage of him. He didn't understand how leases work, he just saw the monthly price and thought it was a good deal. We have folks in Texas who out of 200+ choices in electric companies and each of those with multiple plans these folks picked a variable rate plan that may bankrupt them. Whose fault is it? Let the buyer beware is how most of our laws are written. It seems like the folks that can least afford to squander any assets are the ones always getting taken. That just seems unfair to me.
It's really a problem with no solution. I typically have pretty libertarian views, so I am generally in favor of letting people sink or swim on their abilities. Ideally, clearly predatory behavior would actually get punished in our society, but these things get murky quickly.
I guess I would settle for not giving the people who destroy our economy the next time a stack of get out of jail free cards and a blank check.
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On 2/25/2021 at 10:33 AM, Look at Ray Ray Run said:
This is fair BUT the implication from the post - as I understood it - was this was related to investors themselves (not the brokerage) extended on margin with the brokerage. Additionally, I'm not sure I would use the term margin call regarding a broker and a clearinghouse as the broker is not an investor per se.
Given that it takes two days for them to clear the trades with the CH, and the volatility of GME, the clearinghouse upped the collateral requirements (also something I find shady) to reduce the overall risk.
My problem is 100% not with them allowing traders to sell out of their positions. My complaint is entirely regarding manipulating the market by ONLY allowing you to sell out of a position. That should be 100% illegal. If trading is halted on the buy side, a promotion of sell-only by a brokerage should 10000% be illegal and classified as market manipulation.
Additionally, as I said further down in my post it's flat out embarrassing that Robinhood ran into this capital issue in the first place. They'll be out of business (imo) soon enough.
You're right, I didn't word that very well. But, it is my understanding that somewhere down the line Robinhood itself is runs on margined trading (Citadel, order flow, etc.) with the clearinghouse. Since they were probably crazy long due to the fact that all of their traders were buying and not selling, they are basically unable to take on a longer position without being able to come up with that money, and thus they are not allowed to have anybody buy more shares.
I want to point out that at this point, the system is actually working as intended: clearing is essentially an insurance fund to manage counterparty risk. Due to the volatility and extreme position, capital requirements went up to collateralize. This all makes sense and is generically a good thing. It is also worth noting that Robinhood may have been required to collateralize >100% of their position, though I have no idea if that is true in this case.
I don't necessarily disagree with your main point that the system is designed to keep the "little guy" out as much as possible. That's basically what the SEC is constantly enforcing: the flipside of gatekeeping is protecting people from doing stupid things with their money. This is a separate issue than how the clearing process manages risk, though. Should it take three days to clear these trades? Probably not (I don't know enough about how it works to be definitive), but that seems more of a technology issue than a regulations/SEC problem. I would agree with you that the system should be more open, which would technically also loosen the protections on common citizens.
In the end, I will admit that I'm mostly in the commodities space, so my understanding can be completely wrong here. If ss2k5 or whoever knows more than I do here, I am totally open to being corrected.
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12 hours ago, Look at Ray Ray Run said:
1. The brokerages that shut down did not due so far margin reasons. They did so because of clearinghouse issues and a demanded escalation of collateral that places like Robin Hood couldn't afford - which is incredibly embarrassing and unacceptable in the first place. Now, I also think there were other issues here and the fact that Citadel and Cohen were even hovering around leads me to believe it wasn't just Clearinghouse issues but that no doubt was the primary driver. I also have issues with a brokerage preventing you from using your money for whatever you like - the forced sales on that day should also be 100% illegal for any traders/trades not being made on margin. If you want to shut down margin trading, fine, but pushing people out of positions by being in sell only mode is manipulation in it's own sense.
This is a margin call. Robinhood (the broker) got margin called by the clearinghouse. Since they are not allowed to use customer funds as collateral, they disallowed new positions from being taken. It would be insane if they didn't allow traders to sell out of their positions.
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22 minutes ago, bmags said:
Yep, that's where the GM report came from.
The Samsung report is good (and good for TX pretty sweet plan) but I think what is still unclear to me is whether they are actually going to succeed in being able to manufacture these newer miniaturized chips that really only TSM has shown an ability to specialize in. That's how TSM took the Apple chips away from samsung.
I found this from when Samsung opened up the plant
"A single extreme ultraviolet lithography machine from ASML Holding NV costs $172 million, and Samsung is setting up dozens of them in Hwaseong in an effort to be first with the technology. Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung are both expected to reach 5-nanometer production processes with extreme ultraviolet lithography in the new year -- by contrast, a human hair is about 60,000 nanometers thick. When those two companies reach the 5-nanometer level on semiconductors, they'll have only each other to compete with in a market that's only set to expand."
So it is super capital intensive, and clearly very difficult to do. But it is good, apparently US has already pushed for more physical manufacturing of it to be done here, though TSM I guess is trying to toe the line so they don't get cut out of China businesses.
It does seem unlikely that the true flagship manufacturing of Samsung and TSMC would ever come stateside, short of geopolitical instability forcing it to. It is worth noting that the types of chips that come off of these processes don't necessarily need the latest and greatest. FPGAs are kind of a canonical example; they use a 28nm process I believe.
AMD completely fell behind a decade ago (and split off their manufacturing to the still-behind GlobalFoundries). Intel was actually so far ahead 5 years ago that it still manages to be competitive despite its manufacturing having stalled out. A key piece here is that both were (and in Intel's case, still are) vertically integrated such that their primary focus isn't on just manufacturing but both the manufacturing and design. It doesn't seem inconceivable that an American company can enter this race and catch up, but as you note, it is incredibly capital intensive and difficult.
Because of chip embargoes, China is already moving towards creating their own manufacturing supply lines.
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On 2/9/2021 at 10:24 AM, bmags said:
Now that we have some daylight for getting through one catastrophic event, the other we should really try to hedge against has to be this unbelievable reliance on taiwan semiconductor to provide nearly everyone with their semiconductors right? I mean you have climate events that have happened before, easily realistic geopolitical events that could cause huge issues for manufacturing of cars and tech that nearly every industry uses.
I don't know if the USG should take an active interest in helping Intel, or using our relationship historically with TSM whatever it takes to manufacture more of their product here (TSM was started by American citizens), but this seems like a pretty realistic disaster. They are opening up an Arizona fab it looks like this year, but it seems to make sense to coax more here just to hedge against a bunch of US jobs being lost to something like that.
Does TSMC manufacture most of these chips for cars? I'm not horribly familiar with chip manufacturing supply lines, but it would make sense to me based on the kind of cars that are being halted (i.e. not self driving Teslas) that the chips which are missing are more on the lower end, meaning that they are probably capable of being manufactured by any number of outdated fabs.
As far as your supply lines comment goes, Samsung (the other cutting edge manufacturer) just announced today that they are opening a plant in the US in a couple of years. It seems somebody in the government is thinking the way you are. Intel is also still competitive and could regain its form, but one wonders if their architecture and manufacturing abilities have fallen too far behind.
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With the year coming to a close, I thought it might be interesting to check back in on that U of I testing data to see how it played out over the course of the semester. Aside from the initial wave associated with all the kids coming back onto campus to start the semester, it seems to have held up fairly well. The case positivity mainly stayed between ~0.3% to ~0.6% with some outliers on each side, and the total cases per day stayed generally well below 50 until the October surge that hit state/nationwide. Even then, it still stayed below 50 more often than not; there was just a notable uptick in positive cases.
I get that it's impossible to know for sure, but it doesn't seem glaringly obvious to me that the students would be any safer remote learning. Score one for the physicists and the epidemiologist they worked with?
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Job Thread
in SLaM
On 9/25/2020 at 11:00 PM, The Beast said:What do you do? What languages did you know and how did you get experience?
I am hoping that I will get the opportunity to learn on the job while getting paid because over the past few years I have just worked on data projects in school and at work without pay. I have felt like some people at my company have jerked me around. But they must not see that I am coachable or comprehend that not everyone is on an expert level when they get hired.
I want to do something where I can use skills as an actual analyst where I can get good with SQL and Python and help with data driven solutions. I am interested in getting rid of redundancies and waste in health care and insurance industries but I need a position where I can do that and implement solutions. I might go for an entirely different career in the future (one that won’t be automated) but I want to see where things take me for now.
My wife and I have saved quite a bit and while we will be living on one income while she’s on maternity leave, I would take the risk for option A. I reached out to my contact for opportunities in the new year since I could still take paid family leave and leave after that. I am intending on going through option B and showing that team’s boss that I understand his pain points, what he is trying to accomplish and propose solutions. That way he can see how I can help and he can see how I work.
I appreciate your suggestions for practicing Python through projects. I’ll see what I can before the baby arrives and continue to develop from there. Thanks again for your thoughts.
I'm a generalist software engineer. My current job uses Haskell primarily, but I have used lots of other languages like C/C++, Rust, C#, JavaScript, Python, SQL, etc. Once you learn a language or two you can kind of figure anything out. I learned the basics of programming in school, but otherwise every language except C/C++ and Java I learned on the job. Nowadays, there are plenty of free resources online to learn basically anything, so those would be just as good of a starting point as any traditional degree.
The main thing is just building your resume until you can get that first opportunity. It can be a tough process, but it's not too much different from looking for a job in any other field. Feel free to reach out on here if you have any questions. I am not exactly in the field you're looking for, but I may be of some help depending on the question.
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1 hour ago, StrangeSox said:
It's a U of I prof talking about the effectiveness and wisdom of the decisions and plans made that were within the control of the University. Should U of I gone ahead with their reopening plan if they knew 10%+ of the student body would become infected?
What percentage of the student population would have become infected had they stayed off campus?
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Job Thread
in SLaM
2 hours ago, The Beast said:Alright, so I’m curious what people think.
I finished my graduate program with my 2020 version of a MBA with a MS in Data Science in late May and I passed the day that I owed them anything for my graduate degree in late July. I consider myself lucky since I paid for only a fifth of my degree and the company paid the rest.
There are a few things going on right now. My wife is due in early November and I intend on staying and using my company’s paid family leave (along with staying for a yearly company bonus). I recently applied for an internal position as an analyst for a division I am not familiar with that would have required someone with polished SQL and Python skills, something I haven’t had lots of experience with except for helping with a few internal projects. I was told I didn’t get it because of lack of professional experience. The job I do now doesn’t give me that experience and is something I can do in my sleep, even though it does give me the possibility of doing overtime each day since one of our divisions is busy.
My job prospects at the company appear to be limited and no matter what I will always be virtual with a small office downtown but with the larger offices on the coasts. I also have tried to volunteer for projects and have done whatever work I can do to get experience, but I wouldn’t say that some divisions want to train to help others build experience and I didn’t get good feedback from one of the teams I volunteered for, saying I wasn’t good with pulling data when I was there to learn.
At the moment the only opportunities I am considering rely on a personal connection and a relationship I have developed by volunteering for a project and showing what I can offer with the work I’m interested in.
Opportunity A: An analyst role working with healthcare data at a different company where I would have to learn a lot, take a step back with something that is more entry level but uses the skills I have learned and should pay similarly.
Opportunity B: A project management and data analysis position that works with sales data, works to develop sales tools, implements Salesforce in the long run and works in the division I like. This position depends on management’s willingness to give some of the data analysis work to this team instead of keeping it on one team (a team I didn’t get good feedback from). This position also depends on the budget.
I guess what I’m curious about is what some of you who have lived through kids would do with my situation. How would you take the feedback I have been given and what would you do to get the experience? For those who code, how else could I learn SQL and Python, especially without much direction? What option sounds better? Is there anything I could do to learn Salesforce since I haven’t used it before?
I’m seeking more money and more interesting work and recognize that there’s a COVID economy going on right now so I am grateful to have a job and options, but I feel stuck. I appreciate any thoughts.
It's all about finding the type of job you want and just getting lucky enough to get hired. One way or another, you will end up learning on the job when you're getting paid. For example, my current job I had basically used none of their languages or technologies and still got hired because they liked me as a candidate and felt they could teach me whatever I didn't learn myself. (I did have five years in the field in general, so it's not a totally fair example. But, by and large this is how it works for everybody)
Assuming the thing you really want is to move into a data science / programming position, the sooner you move into it the better. Taking a meandering kinda-sorta approach is only going to leave you feeling disappointed and probably like you still haven't learned "enough". If the pay, job security, added stress of switching careers, etc. is all good with you and your family (and the job responsibilities are what you're looking for), I would take opportunity A if I were you. But, there's a lot of details here that only you can answer. Opportunity B kind of sounds like they'd be jerking you around a bit, IMO.
If you decide to stick it out at your current spot and look for a better fit, the best thing you can do is pick a project that you're interested in that requires the skills that you need and just do it. It doesn't need to be useful, special, or even good in the end; you will learn some skills along the way that will help you get hired. Keep repeating this process and dedicating yourself to getting better, and you will get there eventually. If you don't know what to do or how to do it, just Google it; that's mostly what "professional experience" is anyways. Googling "personal data science projects in Python" (or whatever is more relevant to you) is honestly probably a decent way to get started.
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4 hours ago, StrangeSox said:
Welp RIP uiuc's plans, I guess. Is there any more arrogant group of professors than physicists?
edit: perfect encapsulation of physicists' reduction of reality to models
Economists, probably.
OT: love the Jorbs tweet. One of my favorite streamers.
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44 minutes ago, BrianAnderson said:
I'm saying that it's not truly BOGO. I'm saying the sale side price is inflated to cover the buy side. When someone is selling an asset, specifically one as large as a house -- in their minds are taking home $500k. Tt's easier to work in/cover 2.5% on the "buy" side because it's coming out of a bigger basket. It's not "free" for the buyer, it's psychology.
The shoe analogy is saying BOGO is just marketing for a ___% off. But "free" sounds better, so that's what companies do. They take a $100 shoe, price it at $160, then give you the other $100 shoe and say it's free. You pay $160 for the 2 pairs. It's not really free, it's a 20% discount.
I'm saying it's fudging numbers. No such thing as a free lunch.
Credit card fees are probably a better comparison. Credit card processing fees are generally passed down to the consumer by selling goods at a higher price.
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For what it's worth, my girlfriend works at a private (Catholic) school on the south side, and their plan has also been a clusterf***. They are back in person except for those students which opt into remote learning (few in the working class), and the teachers are responsible for both.
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10 minutes ago, Soxbadger said:
If we are comparing bitcoin to the US dollar in 1803 then they are both extremely risky. In 1803 the US dollar wasnt nearly as safe as it is now and my guess is that the British Sterling Pound was likely seen as the superior currency. If your saying that 50 years from now Bitcoin may be more useful than the US dollar, sure maybe. But that is a long time.
Betting 1% on bitcoin is no different than betting on Amazon, whoever. But that really isnt what a currency is supposed to be about. In my opinion the point of the US dollar is that I wake up tomorrow and my dollar is worth roughly the same amount of money. If youre saying that in 20-50 years bitcoin will be much more valuable, then its a more like commodity than a currency.
Bitcoin would act more like a currency if people used it more like a currency. At the moment, it is primarily seen as an investment vehicle, and it behaves accordingly.
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3 hours ago, StrangeSox said:
Another week, another 1,400,000 new unemployment claims.
Democratic leadership is saying they're open to reducing unemployment benefits so people are incentivized to get back to work (to jobs that don't exist in the middle of a raging pandemic). Parts of the GOP are already coming out hard in favor of austerity (read: mass suffering).
Unemployment benefit boosts end today. In most states, eviction moratoriums end as well. Meanwhile, the obscenely wealthy continue to greatly increase their wealth as tens of millions of Americans are plunged into desperate poverty and a pandemic still rages.
This is not a healthy society or economy. Something will give.
A big part of my political beliefs is that the extent that the government and central banks contort themselves to have an ever inflating economy is not healthy, but I'm not quite sure how a deflating economy (thus causing the rich people pictured in the tweet to lose "money") is a benefit to much of anybody.
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On 7/2/2020 at 6:54 PM, bmags said:
Sorry. I was responding in that paragraph to your previous post about being angry that they didn’t unwind more during the good economy but didn’t quote it.
Hard to know exactly what you mean by "unwind more", but, as far as the balance sheet is concerned, any offloading of the treasuries from 2009-2014 was completely erased by the easing of the repo rate spike last September: graph.
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6 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:
One thing I've been pondering for the last day...with so many different guys signed for 5+ years or covering positions for 6+ with arbitration, how much do the White Sox need "Depth"?
If the Royals came away from this draft with 4 2-3 WAR players, that's a really good draft for the Royals. If the White Sox came away with that, they basically will have to trade a bunch of those guys because either they're going to be stuck on the bench or in the bullpen, and teams don't give up all that much in trades for guys who could be good but not great big leaguers, even if they have years of control.
What the White sox need is top flight guys, guys who can come in and take a spot at the top of the rotation or be traded for a guy like that. So maybe, because they have so many players already under control, swinging for the fences on every pick they can make is an especially correct move for them?
This draft definitely feels like a Rick Hahn "diversify my risk portfolio" move. When he had a bunch of top flight talent from trades, he drafted a bunch of meh depth pieces. Now that much of that talent is graduating, he seems to be after more upside risk.
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I don't get the consternation about investing the entire draft into 2 guys. In a good year, the Sox draft, what, 4 interesting guys plus a couple of college players we talk ourselves into liking because we're fans? It seems to me like we got the appropriate amount of players by cutting the slotted rounds in half...
I don't pay much attention to other teams, so maybe everybody else (without comp picks) drafted 5 rounds of worthwhile players?
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6 minutes ago, caulfield12 said:
Seems there must be something missing....only 2.4% over age 80 were discharged after going on ventilators? It can’t really be stating that 97.6% that went on ventilators in those age ranges died, can it?
I remember reading a couple months ago that the mortality rate of ventilators was around 80%. Can't recall where, though.
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3 minutes ago, Texsox said:
He's president of the US. He can be in a mess like this and his base LOVES him. LOVES him. They will fight tooth and nail for him. The loyalty he has created is beyond anything I've seen in my lifetime. He wasn't exaggerating when he said he could shoot someone.
I agree. The reality is that people are irrational by nature, and he plays this really well to his advantage. His critics feel great when they criticize him and his supporters. His supporters double down because they feel they and their leader are being unfairly attacked. Thus reinforcing the loop.
In essence, by making everything about him, he can move every issue from "how can we solve this problem" to "how can we signal that we are better politically than the other side." Good politics for sure. Good leadership? Well...
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1 hour ago, StrangeSox said:
contrast:
What's their net wealth increase since January 1?
Edit: This came off a bit more harsh than intended. I too wish the government had done a better job of helping those who actually needed it.
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2 minutes ago, Balta1701 said:
I don't think you can guess what the endgame will be until you get past the hump. If people keep ignoring these orders and it keeps spreading, things will get so bad in the next couple weeks that getting out of the whole we dug will be good enough for now.
I think my worry is that you see cases spike again every time the orders are lifted. In theory, staying in place for a sufficiently long time flattens the curve, but I don't know if things will be that simple to not overburden the system.
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There is definitely a distinct lack of "end game" right now. Herd immunity needs to come one way or another, and it seems unlikely that you'd be able to keep Americans cooped up until a vaccine is developed (12-18 months is the time frame that I've seen speculated). It's hard to imagine the government getting the testing thing together, so I have to imagine this will have to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. Hope I'm wrong.
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This may be a bit of a hot take, but I wonder how much people here would change their tunes on bitcoin if they weren't paid in USD.
Sox looking at building in South Loop
in Pale Hose Talk
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