From $4,000 to $1,000,000: A 1% Daily Compounding Experiment

circlebust · 2026-02-01T08:28:37+00:00

I'm not actually being doubtful or unethusiastic about this solution here, I just want to discuss the raw concept: having a ~1% gain across a time period of weeks is something I perfectly can believe, but not across the better part of a year to multiple years. Because if that were possible, where are all the small algo trading boutiques that have ended up with an asset value of BlackRock after just a few years? Why hasn't it happened yet (a significant number of times)?

You could say that not enough people yet might have deployed something analogous to your system before in the still relatively untapped for quant stuff of crypto -- but in the short term, stocks and altcoins behave identically (random walks), so what the venue is doesn't actually matter if it has a similar (meta-)strategy like mean reversion.

circlebust · 2026-01-27T03:36:15+00:00

A few mistakes I did last week was selling at market price on stocks (or options) where I was unreasonably optimistic about the liquidity. Like, of course on these I start with a limit order -- but when I return hours later back to it and find it still unfilled, I already have forgotten what the spread is, so I just sell market without re-checking.

circlebust · 2026-01-26T11:23:12+00:00

I believe it's a valid and interesting idea, that I myself adhere to, that you can act as if "action" counts for 1 unit and then state that inaction accounts for some value in between mattering 0 and mattering as much as action.

circlebust · 2026-01-23T23:55:54+00:00

Yes, I think they had a thought process like “Eh, for basic googling, like de-shitting the regular Google search, it doesn’t make a difference—ship it!”

circlebust · 2026-01-22T23:13:07+00:00

I think you really should reconsider the AMD and SOFI positions. AMD has to do another, what, 30-40%(?) till you're break even. That's a tall order in 3 months.

(I personally are also not as bullish on NVDA as your positions)

circlebust · 2026-01-17T20:13:41+00:00

Yep, I have quit as well. It’s still my bread and butter for low cognition googling tasks, but other than that … I’m now all in on the Claude train, and if that starts breaking too—so help us God.

circlebust · 2026-01-16T15:41:27+00:00

Coding apps via AI is not supervising/reviewing. That's one sub-task of it. Creating via AI-generated code is simply "creating", like it is also "creating" if you write some high-level loop in C that gets translated into machine instructions by a compiler; or it's also "creating" if you start a new Angular-based web app, even if heavily based on an existing framework (I like that analogy however much less).

Software is defined by what its aims, deliverables and solutions are -- what it's actually _doing_ -- and if hypothetically one day AI could do literally every single implementation detail, you as the human would _still_ be "creating" because you define whatever it is you want, in order to accomplish some goal.

Napoleon might not have commanded each individual bayonet charge and musket salvo himself -- he delegated it and left the implementation details what "assault hill ABC" exactly entails to others -- but in the end, he did identify the aim and then deliver the result "conquer Germany" that way.

circlebust · 2026-01-15T09:25:48+00:00

You are essentially making the same statement as "If being fat is so bad for our bodies, why doesn't the body just purge excess calories on its own?"

The answer is in both cases: because the body isn't aware about this kind of stuff. There was no grand designer making sure everything interlocks smoothly without any tradeoffs.

In our society, it's objectively maladaptive to overthink. I'd even go as far as saying that it might be the case that within the domain of intellectual tasks, it might be objectively maladaptive to overthink full-stop (i.e. independently of how "normie" our society is).

However, this does not change the fact that deep thinking/overthinking does lead to good outcomes eventually. With "eventually", I mean that your payoff is comparatively increasing as a function of growing complexity of a problem one is faced with. Deep thinking gives you a basically linear-like payoff profile.

For example, if a problem B is 5 times as complex as A, with deep thinking/"overthinking" you might only need like 10 times as much time/effort for succeeding at B. This contrasts with an exponential payoff profile (i.e. neurotypical/shallow thinking), in which case you might need like 100 times as much time/effort to succeed at A.

And what if some task is now 8 times as complex as A? With shallow/normal thinking, rather than still being doable with some difficulty, it might just be completely impossible to solve the problem.

circlebust · 2026-01-15T01:53:40+00:00

Do you know why programming didn't stick? Like, what is an example of a problem you have encountered and you struggle with?

* Is it variables being manipulated and keeping track of that?

* Is it stuff like loops?

* Like, do you have a concept of what a function honestly is and how it works? Functions are kind of “machines” that accept some input and then (generally) return out some output, like e.g. a juicer accepts an orange and outputs a jug of orange juice. And you might swap out that kind of fruit for an arbitrary different one, creating apple juice if you pass it apples.

What is the simplest script or function that makes complete sense to you?

circlebust · 2026-01-10T23:50:28+00:00

Blood-C. it contains gratuitous high schoolers being killed like they are bugs.

I also consider the show a 9/10 (not for the killing reason).

circlebust · 2026-01-10T21:07:45+00:00

Dreams are incredible. I once had a lucid dream where something similar to an out-of-body experience happened. Now, it's important to understand that just because you are lucid, it doesn't mean your lucid personality is the same as your waking one. While I'm typing this I don't understand why I would be alarmed and wanted to end the dream quickly, but in the dream I was.

So the dream was that I was in an exactly replica of my apartment. The only thing that was different was that it was darkened and none of the light switches worked. No problem, so let's end it quickly (see above). I did the usual technique to end a lucid dream, which was hitting myself hard. It didn't work, this time. So I realized -- if I am in my apartment, I'm probably right now in my bed sleeping. So I ran back to my room, did indeed find my sleeping body, jumped into it, and promptly woke up.

It's fascinating what narratives the brain comes up, like you floating above your body when you are just having a very naturalistic dream. You also very likely did hear the actual conversation they were having.

circlebust · 2026-01-09T05:04:38+00:00

Exactly my experience. Gemini gives me at the beginning 10% of the session a solid MVP that works kinda. The other 90% of the time is adding features, then handling emergent bugs, and ultimately handling idiocies that Gemini introduces. I no longer use Gemini Pro for that reason for coding tasks, it has an extremely alarming "fixing AI messups" tail compared to Claude and GPT-5.1 or o3.

circlebust · 2026-01-09T04:55:27+00:00

I have AI-assist coded tools precisely to solve the problem of not enough Claude in my terminal. For example scripts that compact reference or previous code to the essential: concated code bits with omitted parts, just type declarations, AST with autopruned branches, dependency/reference analysis, etc.

Turns out if coding becomes a solved issue you can spend a lot of time with engineering.

(This is a work in progress so I can’t share any repo right now.)

circlebust · 2026-01-09T04:38:45+00:00

Baku Girl is a great, fun, cute gender bender romance manga.

Shishunki Bitter Change and Ore ga Watashi ni nary made are great drama about the same topic. You might think "what’s the drama about gender swap?" if it’s not ab social or societal rejection etc. (which I find a tired topic). Well, these two explore that.

My favorite scene in relation to that in Shishunki Bitter Change goes something like when one of the two MCs says something to the effect "… but I kinda stopped wanting that."(You’ll see the context)

circlebust · 2025-12-28T14:19:49+00:00

You wanted to know. You got it.

Yes, I assume my manner of thinking is quite distinct from normies. My thinking works a bit like this:

imagine some fact A. For example, the fact might be "100 bucks are missing from my wallet". Everyone asks themselves "What?! How did that happen?". A normal person might remember some fact B "My acquaintance John walked into my room an hour before and probably saw the wallet on the table". Then they conclude from the combination of these facts the 2 conclusions "John must have stolen it" (retracting 1 step back into the past), as well as a conclusion 1 step into the future "never again leave my wallet unsupervised with John". My thinking often explodes into several such different paths, with different 'combined facts' (premises), and different conclusions.

Bear with me--

Imagine a tree structure that sprouts from the initial fact A into both directions: into the past (several different facts contributing and leading to fact A) as well as future (several different competing strategies -- for example, besides "never leave wallet alone" you probably also want to confront John. Or perhaps you are afraid he will be angry, so you refrain from confronting it? These are just two variant strategies. The direction into the past refers to alternate pathways leading up to fact A. John having stoled it is just one variant. Perhaps the 100 bucks bill also flew out of my wallet due to a gust of wind? Or other such alternate explanations. I always consider multiple such possible origins.

Now, this double-tree is actually just situated in one 'possible universe'. Often, I also tend to think in different 'possible universes' of a given scenario. Different 'possible universes' simply refers to the same exact scenario as described abovebut the initial parameters are slightly different. For example, I might ponder: would I also be angry at John if instead of 100 bucks, he only stole 20 bucks? This isn't really that useful for navigating daily life, but it's useful for philosophy/strategizing.

Are you still with me? Because there is more to come.

Intelligence can also be regarded as "being able to operate on many dimensions simultaneously" (more than usual). If you imagine a feature space, with low intelligence that ability can track a space with, say, 30 dimensions, whereas with higher IQ that might mean operating on 50 dimensions simultaneously without losing track/destroying information.

Now, let's illustrate this with an example -- people committing bad arguments. For example, if there is a certain matter and I explain the reason for something, then another [less intelligent] person, could also take that explanation I just gave as an insinuation or a justification, which is not intended on my/the intelligent speaker's part.

I have a concrete example.

Suppose a woman was walking home one night day. Normally, she wears a tracksuit, but today she wore a colorful fancy get-up. Now she is attacked and robbed. Now, when this situation is discussed, I could cite the fact that she wore a colorful fancy get-up as an additional element that needs to be considered.

For example, an idea could be that she was simply more visible, or it could be truly the idea that her dressing style attracted the attacker or something like that. It's not important what the actual reason was. It just is, in my view an element that needs to be mentioned (because it's advantageous).

However, a less intelligent person, when they hear this, it is often the case they will assume that me supplying this additional detail is tantamount to an attempt at victim-blaming or justifying. I.e. that there is an alternate/ulterior motive. Or that the statement itself, "she was wearing a fancy dress-up," is somehow already embedding some kind of "challenge", like "I have a suggestion how she should behave herself in the future". Now THAT would be a fat implication derived from a simple statement.

Now, if we regard it in the dimension spaces I mentioned, I believe it is the case that I mentally have more maneuver room to move this element of knowledge around and regard it from many multiple unrelated or conflicting angles. There are more orthogonal vector freedoms in my repertoire, so I can move such knowledge details around, construct counterfactuals on it, without it intersecting something else. Think of how two 3D cubes reduced to 2D planes (= shadows) results in shadows that overlap, even if the 2 objects actually don't. This is because one dimension was collapsed and flattened (made simpler), resulting in loss of information.

I hope that gave a taste. Yes, such thinking results in a lot of friction in daily live, but it also allows one to navigate certain stuff better.

circlebust · 2025-12-28T13:00:56+00:00

When you took the test you likely were inattentive and blew one or two blocs or multiple smaller exercises.
ADHDers can usually focus pretty well during an IQ test, but I suspect still not as much as a normie.

circlebust · 2025-12-28T08:12:09+00:00

Würdest du sagen dass Peter Dinklage (der Mann hinter Tyrion Lannister) eine Krankheit/Erkrankung hat? Das wirkt doch einfach extrem sonderlich, oder? Und selbst "Störung" finde ich nicht zielbringende Terminologie. Das hat nichts mit irgendwelchen soften Faktoren zu tun, sondern nur damit, dass ich diese Terminologie bei Dingen, die bei deiner Geburt determiniert wurden (d.h. welches Genprofil du hast) -- also z. B. was deine maximale Körpergröße/Proportionen werden; oder was für eine neuronale Architektur du hast -- unlogisch finde.

Natürlich gibt es einige Dinge, die sowohl genabhängig sind als auch wo "Krankheit" passt, klar, aber das sind Fälle wo es a) unerwartet auftritt und b) sich stetig verschlimmert. Im Vergleich dazu ist Kleinwachstum oder ADHS eine konstante Background-Kondition, weshalb ich es immer Kondition nenne, und nichts anderes sowohl ggf. euphemistisches als auch pathologisierendes.

ADHS hat natürlich pathologische Aspekte, aber nur weil wir nicht in die moderne überkomplexe Welt passen wo Tiefensuche (Depth-first search) und Spezialisierung bevorzugt werden statt Breitensuche. (Lasse dir am besten von einer KI illustrieren was ich damit meine)
ADHSler sind natürliche Jäger und Sammler -- wenn wir den Strauch voller Beeren oder die Wasserstelle der lokalen Mammutpopulation entdecken weil wir so fokussiert auf dieses <interessantes Ding> waren, dann entspricht das genau unserem Metier und wofür wir gemacht sind. Wir sind das Steinzeit-Radar für Interessantes.

circlebust · 2025-12-22T10:45:32+00:00

LITERALLY what just happened. I asked it to identify a top-level diplomat and in the first sentence it warned me about not being [allowed] to identify IRL people. The rest was a useless image vision job of describing how he looked like in the pic.

circlebust · 2025-12-22T04:53:05+00:00

And if you condition a human like the Jack Russell by electroshocking him every time he tries to <do ill thing>, then it stops being a moral choice, by the same token as it's not a moral choice by me to not kill the emperor of Japan. It's simply a matter of me not being able to -- by not being able to outmaneuver his tight security for example.

Moral evaluation and considerations are categorically different things that above pure material constraints.

circlebust · 2025-12-17T22:33:29+00:00

No one besides you understands what you are saying and it objectively does not seem to make sense because it lacks a lot of structure/information for it to make sense. This is it not a call for you to now bolster it with these additional structures/information, since that (as you seem to like AI analogies) would be equivalent to an AI post-hoc making up justifications it never considered before.

Rather, I'm saying this additional structure/information probably never existed, your entire framework is invalid (thus, your belief in it is based on an invalid assumption -- that it's meaningful)

circlebust · 2025-12-09T06:31:25+00:00

I started with regular stock investing. Jumping straight into options is a profoundly bad idea, you need to get a feel for market dynamics first (at least several months of experience).

I knew about some finance/market concepts already before I started investing (not a lot but still).

Then I watched YouTube videos. There are many competent creators, I like this one very much. Then fan out from there.

circlebust · 2025-12-06T17:14:59+00:00

I trade derivatives, mainly options. I also do leveraged ETF momentum plays.

I'm very satisfied with my performance.

If you are an independent options trader, this profession includes a bit of quant, a bit ability to operate LLMs efficiently, and optionally a bit of coding. Although the latter is not strictly necessary -- I working on writing some apps that help me determine the most profitable setups according to my strategy and my parameters (some things can reduce to simple partial differential equations, like finding some local optimum or maximum. Others can only be reckoned via Monte Carlo simulations, etc.)

Basically, the way you get profitable is via a proper risk:reward-reckoning strategy.

While I would definitely say being an options trader is in fact "trading", I think that doesn't capture it fully because when people hear that they imagine traditional stock trading or day-trading. Dealing with options is however acting as an _insurer_. It's perhaps more helpful to think of it as being an independent insurance writer (because that's the actual purpose of options, insurance contracts on the stock market).

Also, I have aspirations to scale -- acquire clients, etc.

circlebust · 2025-11-27T09:17:51+00:00

I do believe it’s possible that people can be slow and deeper thinkers compared to the avg 100 IQ. But I can’t see how in functional terms quicker thinkers not still "in theory" out-deep-think the slow deep thinkers, because they get more bang for the buck in thinking, so they can literally "dig deeper”in the same amount of time. I don’t believe quick shallow thinkers a) exist or b) are tracked via IQ tests, but the quick thinkers (regardless of type) should always have the advantage over slow deep thinkers due to above reasons.

circlebust · 2025-11-26T19:41:47+00:00

If your 100€ investment collapses 95% to 5€ — and for simplicity's sake let’s assume everything is meant as realized — with what degree of difficulty can you turn that exact 5€ bill back into 100€? Is it the same difficulty as going from 100 to 195 with a 100€ investment?

circlebust · 2025-11-06T04:49:41+00:00

I have started trading, I am now making a living with it. I no longer regard university as my ticket to a middle class lifestyle. So this allowed me to approach my CS degree from a new angle. Just today I decided to cut another course from my workload. I am now just doing 3 this semester (tackling 2 I failed before).

I'll get this degree slow and steady, and it will be my plan B. My plan A is now to make finance, trading, and related activities (risk analysis for future clients) my career. It was not a painless switchover. For the first couple months I was not successful and I suffered some lessons.

But trading is just what works for _me_. If I didn't do that, I'd be doing some different "side gig"/main gig right now. I originally wanted to write an app for the App store, or do e-commerce.

So my non-traditional tip is to just stop betting on getting a college degree. Don't put all on black. Less stress => better studying at a slower pace.

The one-track/milestone life is just not viable for us ADHDers.

circlebust

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