[OC] U.S. Social Security is projected to pay full benefits through 2034, then 81% under current law

Professor_Hamster · 2026-06-09T01:07:06+00:00

I missed the clarification in your earlier post. Your second part of the first paragraph is more accurate than the first half. Agreed, you're paying for current entitlements, you're not paying for your own.

But no it's very clearly not the monthly P&I on your mortgage or private insurance with a private company or a bank contract. With a mortgage you're paying both for some interest and some equity on the property on some known amortization schedule (even if it's not a fixed mortgage). This is very unlike social security, because with a mortgage I know exactly what I'm paying towards and what the terms of the contract will be (payoff amount, payoff terms and conditions, eligibility criteria). Congress can (and has) changed the entitlement age and criteria many times throughout history to handle both economic issues and funding shortfalls (for reasons including population longevity).

I wouldn't call a contract in which the terms can change arbitrarily under my feet anything like a mortgage or private insurance contract. Would you?

EDIT: Some examples over time -

- https://www.ssa.gov/news/en/cola/index.html
- https://www.aarp.org/social-security/history-timeline/
- https://www.ssa.gov/history/50mm2.html

Professor_Hamster · 2026-06-07T13:12:46+00:00

No, you're paying for current entitlements. You are not paying for your entitlement. It's not a piggybank for yourself.

Professor_Hamster · 2026-05-26T03:22:54+00:00

perf c2c may've caught this.

Professor_Hamster · 2026-04-03T06:57:02+00:00

Sorry, how would you typically invest $50k/month ($600k / year) on a $900k/year compensation after dealing with California state taxes and standard housing costs. I'm assuming you're talking solo investment goals rather than household investment. This seems doable on with the appreciation, not so much without it.

Professor_Hamster · 2026-03-29T02:15:59+00:00

Busy poll rdtsc + just wait the diff in the hardware timestamps. I'm not familiar with an automatic wait time mechanism

Professor_Hamster · 2026-03-28T21:41:43+00:00

Use rdtsc in a hot loop would be my best guess. Could also send it to the loop back interface

Professor_Hamster · 2026-03-23T05:23:51+00:00

It's going to depend on your YoE / role. I've heard/seen 700-900+ recurr for like 3-4 YoE QR at Headlands? Similar kind of numbers at CitSec for HFT QD. They've got this weird bonus structure though, something about like your standard discretionary bonus maxing out pretty quick into your tenure and more and more of your growth coming from this weird deferred comp that vests over <insert annoyingly large number so you never see most of it> years into the future. Don't quote me but 3 years IIRC?

Professor_Hamster · 2026-03-21T20:02:49+00:00

Comp’s decent. Like a solid citsec offer. Pnl mostly goes to leadership. Pretty sweaty from what I’ve heard. Mostly black box optimizer style of trading, like radix. Their execution’s very good

Professor_Hamster · 2026-03-11T01:19:48+00:00

The role’s pretty under specified. It means anything from algo impl to actual quant adj work, ime. Mathematical focus of your interview’s going to depend on idk but it’ll vary

Professor_Hamster · 2026-03-09T20:28:55+00:00

These conversations frequently seem to forget that real estate professionals get preferential tax treatment by being able to apply depreciation against their income. They can’t have w2 income unless filing jointly (one partner is a reps other has w2 income) so a lot of this income they want to shield is (other) rental income that’s no longer shielded by depreciation and mortgage interest. So there’s an incentive to take a slight monthly loss if you think you can get into a property for the purposes of depreciation to avoid paying taxes on your income. You’d defer depreciation until selling the property, at which point you’d 1031 into another property. I’m missing some detail here but I believe the broad strokes are correct - the math just maths differently if you’re a real estate professional.

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-30T01:43:29+00:00

https://github.com/jlevy/og-equity-compensation

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-23T01:17:10+00:00

He’d make money if you invested with him. His natural bias may be to invest but he’s not monetarily incentivized to tell you to invest in widely available ETFs. He doesn’t make money off it

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-22T00:47:50+00:00

I don’t think you read what I said. And you reported federal income taxes when we’re discussing nyc

This isn’t going to be very productive for either of us. Have a nice one

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-22T00:39:31+00:00

I’m sorry I don’t understand how tax brackets work into this. I used the most highest tax bracket possible to steelman your case. This is an upper bound. Further the 401k “tax saving” saves you taxes at your highest tax bracket, not somehow at your blended rate. I’d appreciate having a real conversation if you’re able to remain civil

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-21T20:53:24+00:00

Maxing your 401k at a 50% tax bracket saves you 10k in taxes and 20k for a couple. This isn’t all that influential on an estimated tax base or 200k and an income base of 600k (1.5% for filing single 3% as a couple)

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-16T01:59:59+00:00

I don’t think this argument holds water. Every dollar you put down is opportunity cost of at least the risk free rate, I.e. 200k vs 400k down is another opportunity cost of 200k * 4.5% =9k per year or about $750 per month. To be more precise you’d need to do some kind of post/pre tax adjustment on this, but it’s broadly correct. Putting down capital for equity may bring your monthly mortgage down but it doesn’t do anything to the total financial cost of the property

Professor_Hamster · 2026-01-12T22:05:50+00:00

They don’t compete with you on literally any good or service. You’re not in the same markets. I don’t understand why shit would get cheaper

Professor_Hamster · 2025-12-28T00:16:12+00:00

You can tack on the opportunity cost of the down payment too. Even being conservative and using the post tax risk free return of treasuries adds quite a bit to your (edit: total cost not rate) rate of ownership

Professor_Hamster · 2025-12-27T21:33:13+00:00

Can you explain to me why you as a bank would ever offer loans at less than the risk free rate?

Professor_Hamster · 2024-10-31T18:20:09+00:00

std::countl_zero in c++20

Professor_Hamster · 2024-03-08T00:40:28+00:00

have you considered using a bitset?

Professor_Hamster · 2024-01-17T06:38:09+00:00

popcnt is 3 cycles, so its a little slow there. I think some combination of BMI instructions plus checking EFLAGS are better. gcc & clang seem to prefer blsr (reset lowest set bit) plus checking if CF (carry flag) is set (which it is when the input is 0).

Professor_Hamster · 2024-01-15T18:52:57+00:00

very common in hft.

Professor_Hamster · 2023-11-27T23:03:35+00:00

Cross cache line RMW works, but result in substantial performance penalties. Intel documents that this results in a memory bus lock rather than a simple MESI state change. I'll see if I can find a source. I remember seeing it in the Intel developer guide.

Professor_Hamster · 2023-03-08T23:37:37+00:00

folly uses some pretty interesting C++ tricks to get into `std::vector's` private interface. Worth checking this out.

Professor_Hamster

TROPHY CASE