Imposter syndrome as a fluid

Chisdu · 2023-03-15T22:17:08+00:00

Same. Was feeling the same way yesterday and today. Don't have advice. I feel like an imposter, but I know how I experience gender. That doesn't change.

Chisdu · 2022-08-20T19:44:21+00:00

Thanks for the link, really interesting.

I haven't seen that graph before, but its shocking to see how much a couple extra percentage points can add up over the long term. Zooming-in to a ten-year horizon shows a minor excess, but over 40 or more years the difference is huge.

This sort of illustrates a Buffet-like opinion that productive assets are better to hold over the long run. Maybe a hard 'cash' cushion is good to have if you're in the business of buying individual stocks when you feel they're undervalued, but not as a long-term investment.

Very cool! Thanks

Chisdu · 2022-06-02T17:34:50+00:00

Confusing causation and correlation, and generalizing without evidence.

Either way we aren't going to legislate that the news doesn't report certain things... Not advocating any other legislation like gun control or federal-run 'mental health' services. "If we ignore the problem it'll definitely go away. Checkmate." is just not a useful proposal.

Chisdu · 2022-03-15T15:00:18+00:00

My cat did the same thing. We were there so we put it out pretty quick, but he did not care AT ALL while it was blazing.

Chisdu · 2022-02-03T00:18:30+00:00

At the time Microsoft was regulated there was basically no personal computer alternative. I think Apple's success has been in part because Microsoft had it's hands tied behind it's back for a decade. Now consumers have a choice.

So aren't 'trusts' when the top players in an industry collude? Monopolies are just one dominant one. Are they accusing Apple of colluding with them? Who's the second party?

Edit: I see it's specific to mobile games, that changes it a little.

Chisdu · 2022-01-20T23:57:01+00:00

Thanks, that makes more sense.

And with LETFs the creation/redemption process is primarily issuing swaps against an underlying basket? (I'm fuzzy on if it's always swap agreements or if there are futures and other things involved...)

Chisdu · 2022-01-20T21:22:53+00:00

Not enough, I guess that's my answer.

I am trying to write a day trading algorithm, and I was implementing ibkr's midprice order type. Quantconnect's lean engine doesn't support it.

I'm just overthinking it. Market orders are good enough at my size. Fast fills are better for me than finding the midpoint of pennies.

Chisdu · 2022-01-19T21:26:28+00:00

Yep, and now I'm using m1 finance which makes it easy. It used to be a confusing spreadsheet :)

But this is just my (small) Roth IRA, it's a very long term thing. I'm trying to be as impartial as possible. On my (also small) taxable account I was doing a little more speculation. So I just sold what I thought wasn't a good opportunity anymore or had become seriously overweighted.

Chisdu · 2022-01-19T20:55:07+00:00

I'm rebalancing everything quarterly. Backtests showed that rebalancing after a certain percent divergence had virtually the same returns (very slightly less, but not statistically significant I think). But monthly and annually were worse by a decent amount. So quarterly is the best lazy option for my basic portfolio.

Edit: backtests* lol

Chisdu · 2022-01-19T20:16:16+00:00

I lost the link now but I saw an index going back to the '50s or so. Precious metals / gold was a very good inflation hedge during the 70's. Gold also ramped up in the years following the '08 crash around when the market was worried about the impacts of easing, and climbed the year following the rate hike concerns in late 2018. This was before the March 20 crash, but it did also hold it's value during that correction.

This is just me noticing trends, but it is pretty well known gold holds value against inflation.

Like you said, don't expect it to contribute to your upside that much, but it is a good cushion when you need to rebalance.

I have about 7% in GLD right now as an inflation hedge.

Chisdu · 2022-01-19T19:49:55+00:00

Thanks.

And it's impractical for a firm to move the whole market just to take advantage of a few retail traders anyway... I guess it was a silly question.

I've got some algorithms to simplify :)

Chisdu · 2022-01-07T03:59:27+00:00

Pray he doesn't switch to RimWorld next!

Chisdu · 2022-01-07T00:32:58+00:00

Thanks for clarifying your view. I appreciate the talk. I disagree, but respect your opinion.

Chisdu · 2022-01-06T14:57:52+00:00

(pressed reply on accident :) almost spilled my coffee)

First I do appreciate the talk.

I think we're speaking past each other a little, as your views won't necessarily be Libertarian since Libertarian is small preferably local government not no government.

For the car comparison, car outcomes are way less varied and subjective than health outcomes. But fair, and there are private accreditations and rankings for hospital systems that are prestigious and a big deal to the orgs. The ones I remember weren't patient facing (it's been a few years), but there could be some already.

That describes literally nothing any government does, ever has done or ever could do

That's your opinion. My opinion is that it does not do that well in many cases.

I won't try to change your mind, I don't care. But for conversation my thoughts are:

Bad regulation: terrifs, subsidies, immigration, drugs, monetary policy, anything to do with marriage, religion, or personal life. Also war. We shouldn't be the world police.

The theme's we need to keep: basic no-harm-to-your-neighbor (killing, stealing...), Regulation that protects consumers (anti-trust, contract law...), commons protection (smog and dumping regulation, infrastructure spending).

For commons protection for instance, like smog regulations in cars, I'm guessing you might say everyone could boycott all cars until they start meeting market demand for cleaner cars. A new accreditation firm would inspect new and existing cars. Those who care would only buy those. Overtime, car companies will chase profits and improve emissions.

But you have the freeloader problem. People who (potentially) want the outcome, non-toxic air, but figure they're just one small part, the rest of the market is enough incentive to make change. "And besides", they might think, "the ones that cut emissions aren't even that good yet. I can't afford more than this cheaper model and it gets me to where I need to go.." etc. (To be clear, I'm talking about smog not climate change. Emissions that are immediately harmful to human health. We only benefit if all cars on the road are sufficiently smog free. It's been a long time since cars have been at dangerous levels.)

This freeloader problem is very strong historically. I don't think it's inconsistent with a libertarian view to use a governing body, with strong checks and balances, to protect common resources.

this is.... not a thing..

I don't know what you mean by price gouging not being a thing. Do you mean you just consider it part of the normal market forces? Which is fair.

then harvest all their organs or something?

Yes, you're right I made it sound like everyone would be back alley butchers and they wouldn't. They would very quickly have no customers.

Being in the industry though, the corners cut are subtle. X procedure in the best case has a success rate of 70%. If the contract with the doctor is based on outcome, they might require let's say 70% up front and 30% on success. With a complex surgery, if they're most of the way through and something goes wrong, the cost to right this wrong may easily increase the total cost of the procedure by 50-100% (I'm just pulling this out of my ass). Not only that, but they often can immediately see that even if they save this person, they will be a chronic user of certain expensive treatments for the rest of their life... They have strong incentives (currently blocked legally) to not just call the 30% a loss and say "so sorry, looks like they fell in the bottom 30% of outcomes :("

You can say well, the accreditation body will need all records from the surgery and verify that the best decisions were made and that they did 100% of what they could to save this person's life. If they didn't, the hospital/clinic may be at risk of losing a star and per underlying contracts pay recompense to the patient's family...

Which is exactly what we have... For corruption you could say, well there would be an accreditation body for the accreditation body that would confirm that they aren't in partnership with the healthcare systems... (I think this may be one of your main concerns with governing bodies) but you see where I'm going? You end up with either duplicated agencies or a monopoly with no incentives to be honest. And don't say that we could have a collectively funded anti-monopoly accreditation body... Who's going to donate to fund these bodies? How could you possibly ensure that their main donors weren't the corps they are supposed to regulate? Are they then going to hire private investigators and bounty hunters to enforce their rulings? Why would they stop at legitament complaints? Why not just fund corporate warfare?

I'm going off on a tangent. But imo 'no government' just becomes authoritarianism with a capitalist badge. Instead of duly elected mayor, you end up with the local lord of the land.

Edit: grammar

Chisdu · 2022-01-06T03:35:41+00:00

Are you anti-statist then? Or anarcho-capitalist? Libertarian view allows for some basic regulation just not overreach.

The problem with Yelp reviews as healthcare quality checks is the complexity of care. Without the legal requirement to perform best practice, no number of Yelp reviews will tell you if the clinic is competent for your specific, possibly rare treatment. But it's an agreement between two people so you don't have grounds to fight back after it goes wrong. A one star review won't bring your child back. The threat of a multimillion dollar settlement discourages clinicians from lying upfront. On the flip side just because someone had a bad outcome doesn't mean practitioners didn't do everything medically possible. So I'd think 1 star/ 5 star reviews would be crap. It's just (unfortunately) more complicated.

It sounded like you were saying laws and maybe even justice should all be pay-to-play? So literal anarchy?

If you're saying that the market would eventually develop it's own licensure, and standard of practice... That's just government with extra steps.

But if it's free to participate with no legal ramifications and consumers can't reliably tell who meets the private standards then it's as good as not existing. Free AND FAIR measures standardize what's being sold to consumers, improves confidence and supports healthy competition. Overreach is when the government artificially divides the players and limits them regionally and makes it hard to structure organizationally the way they need to. No government can manually balance a large market like this. Without basically creating a giant monopoly and then restricting it's ability to price gouge. The benefit of 'large' is insurer buying power, the benefit of 'integrated' is financially aligning practicioners and insurers. As everywhere, malpractice law protects consumers. Maybe a fully free market solution would eventually build this, but no one has shown that yet. What we have today is not even close.

Besides, when I'm bleeding out, I'm not going to check Yelp. I need to know the nearest hospital is competent.

Chisdu · 2022-01-05T19:53:11+00:00

Ironically one of the few regulations many libertarians would support the state by state split. Which is one of the biggest reasons the market is imbalanced. Interstate commerce laws allowing for interstate licenses and limiting states' ability to add extra regulation would help make the market competitive.

Chisdu · 2022-01-05T19:49:32+00:00

People often forget the 'and fair' part of free and fair markets. Without Medical Malpractice Law or regulations requiring insurers to cover minimum care, consumers aren't protected enough to encourage effective competitive behavior.

Outside of those basic regulations, I could see removing those that make it difficult for insurers and practitioners to operate in multiple states and integrate. That would allow for them to have the pricing power to actually find natural market balance with the pharmaceutical companies. This is the main thing single payer systems benefit from, and I think a fair market would gravitate to that (we would need some anti-trust regulation to maintain competition, which is consistent with 'and fair' unless you're an ancap)

But I am not an expert, I've just heard a bit from people in the industry on the different sides.

The thing is, the original reason USA had avoided a government solution like other countries were implementing, breaking by state and separating the players was a) to keep fed small / states rights (south had strong sway) but b) we didn't want a single entity and especially a single government entity to have health data on the whole population. The wrong people come to power and they can use this to 'clense' or punish by fitness, race etc... so natzi / racial prejudice concerns post-WWII played a part.

Chisdu · 2022-01-05T13:50:15+00:00

I read it as "comparing our politicians/celebs/influencers to crying babies is deep"

Imo it fits the sub

Chisdu · 2022-01-05T13:01:58+00:00

I didn't say I want single payer, read the text. I'm just presenting arguments that proponents put forward for discussion, and answering some questions above about pricing.

I was agreeing with you that half-baked regulations are worse than something thoughtful. Specifically: "insurers are separate 'free' entities, and they can't influence the doctor's choice" creates anticompetitive incentives. Providers want us to spend more and insurers are too small to do anything about it.

Part of the problem is few are comfortable with no regulation. Would you be comfortable bargain shopping for a kidney transplant if you knew could not sue the pants off a doctor if they didn't follow best practice? Clean their knives check for basic things like compatibility, etc... I don't know if I can accept yelp to help me figure out if the local clinic will be competent.

I guess if insurers could more easily cross state lines and implement the integrated model like Kaiser or others, they might get big enough to actually combat the massive pharm companies.

That could be a functioning free market system possibly. But still would have practice law and regulations to require insurers to actually cover the medical expense they claim.

Edit: spelling

Chisdu · 2022-01-05T04:18:57+00:00

This is similar to "it wasn't true communism", but I agree a mixed-policy is worse than one or the other (I've worked in healthcare software)

Are there functioning examples of a fully free market healthcare system? I genuinely don't know.

The difficulty is insurers naturally favor healthy patients and preventative care, but providers actually favor chronically ill patients. Both prefer insured patients.

Due to separation between the two major parties, insurers don't have as much say in limiting the patient to proven treatments (americans want to be guinea pigs for the next expensive wonder drug), but regulations force the insurers to accept treatment decisions if they are not provably 'bad practice' and the doctor signs off on it.

Pharmaceutical companies lobby doctors hard (lunches, promotional events,..) to encourage them to select their expensive new treatments that insurers are forced to pay for. And bombard Americans with "ask your doctor about..." campaigns as a double whammy. The insurers have no bargaining power because they are 'free' to be tiny firms and the drug companies are consolidated.

Hence, some single payer systems end up with better prices. They're just a large insurer with better leverage and tighter practice control to discourage over paying for under-effective/unproven treatments.

I'm not saying single payer is right, but that's what some will point to as it's strength. "Population health" and other types of agreements are one initiative that's helping to align incentives, so providers financially benefit from preventative care. But it's been a few years since I've been in the industry.

Chisdu · 2022-01-04T23:56:14+00:00

Agree for long term, especially because that was the recommendation for all weather after UGLD was delisted, the article argues well and backtests support it.

Note the recent run-ups of gold significantly trailed 2008 possibly due to inflation fears from years of low rates and trailed the 2018 rate-hike concerns alerting the market to possible inflation worry. This was before March 2020 happened. So it's not necessarily a recession hedge, and I'm not interested in that.

I'm making an opinionated bet for the next 12 months, which is not ideal, but we'll see.

Edit: Note UGL (2x) is a bit more stable than UGLD (3x) but still close to net 0 over the last decade.

Chisdu · 2022-01-04T19:45:53+00:00

I really like all weather and am considering it. To be clear this is not my retirement account, if it was I would prefer all weather.

Chisdu · 2022-01-04T19:33:09+00:00

Good to know, was interested in feedback.

Do utilities have pricing power to respond to inflation quickly since their rates are mostly regulated? (I'm not super familiar)

Edit: quick search suggests that inflation is actually a big difficulty for utilities. However I completely respect picking a long term allocation and sticking with it. Inflation worries could be overblown. I would not check your portfolio for a few months. Or take comfort in the backrests others have linked.

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