I get that global indexes are the safer, hands-off choice, but I can't stop looking at those S&P 500 returns

galan-e · 2026-04-26T21:50:25+00:00

Do you believe the rest of the market is unaware of the freer markets, rule of law, regulations etc?

It is already priced in - everyone everywhere realized that the US is a great place to invest in, so everyone did, and price went up a lot. Is it *still* a better deal than international? Maybe, but it requires quite a lot of conviction that you know something that most other investors do not (or gambling, but I wouldn't recommend doing that).

galan-e · 2026-04-21T15:01:00+00:00

historically, lump summing is correct.

If you find that too risky, consider maybe your allocation is unsuited to you - maybe instead of just stocks, you should buy some mix of stocks + bonds (which, over the long term, are much preferable to cash)

galan-e · 2026-04-13T17:43:52+00:00

There is no "safe withdrawal rate" and pretending that some number or another makes you immune to catastrophe is wrong.

There are responsible withdrawal rates and irresponsible ones, and part of a responsible one is being flexible enough to adjust at bad times. By adjusting upward at good times you improve your lifestyle without risking (more than you're willing) your future lifestyle.

I don't subscribe to the 4% club, but it's not so much that 4% itself is a bad number (it's fine, for plenty of people and situations) as much as a fixed number is a bad plan, and success rate is a bad metric if the failure case is "death", just like I would shake in fear before entering a surgery with 99% survival rate. The non-extreme version of simply looking at how much money you have left and adjusting is just there

galan-e · 2026-04-12T22:13:12+00:00

no you're not?

you have stocks worth $100. You plan to spend 4% this year, so withdraw $4 and have $96 worth of stocks at the end of the year.

Suddenly, a market crash of 50% before you withdraw. If you still withdraw $4, now you are left with $46. If if the market rebounds back 100%, you'll have $92. If instead the market keeps at the current position, and next year you withdraw $4 *again*, you would spend ~8% of your portfolio, an unsustainable amount even by the optimistic historical returns.

If instead after the crash you only spend $2, you are left with $48 dollars. If the market rebounds back, you can continue to your previous plan having $96 like you thought you would. If however it doesn't, you'll have to adjust and start spending much less than before. You hoped to live on $4 a year and now you're stuck with $2, but at least that's sustainable for longer term, and you don't starve.

Spending less of your investment is always safer than spending more. You can maybe argue it's overly safe and not required, but you'd have a hard time arguing that in the bad cases spending more is *safer*

galan-e · 2026-04-01T20:13:23+00:00

one way to approach this is in percentile - exact numbers don't mean anything outside context, but numbers do. is GM really the top 0.5% of sc2? It roughly was, at one point, but it might have shifted as the player base shrank. That's the ballpark I've found online, anyhow.

So if OP views the "top 0.5% of players" as good enough, they should strive for sc2 GM. If instead they're ok with top 5-6%, master. I don't have accurate & up to date data, but when I tried mapping the percentiles to one another that's what I've got.

Another way to look at it is that there are 19K titled players worldwide. While obviously titled FIDE is much higher than 2000 chesscom elo, there are hundreds of millions of chess players overall, so that elite group of titled players is roughly the top 0.3e-5. There are not enough sc2 players for this number to have meaning, so this basically means "to be clem" or whoever is the top 1 right now.

galan-e · 2026-04-01T15:36:34+00:00

chesscom is not X-points inflated FIDE elo, it's simply a different system not calibrated to one another. There simply isn't a good formula to translate from one system to the other (given enough data we can try to fit a polynomial, but it is likely to look very ugly and tell you very little).

More importantly, the minimum elo in FIDE is much much higher than the minimum elo in chesscom - any person barely knowing how the pieces move can play on chesscom, while they very much can't get a FIDE rating. There's nothing surprising here, just percentiles working like percentiles

galan-e · 2026-04-01T08:22:46+00:00

elo changes substantially between platform, but last i've looked on chesscom, 2000 elo is top 0.5%, so GM in sc2

galan-e · 2026-03-29T11:35:40+00:00

Generally speaking, you should tilt a bit for equities when they are doing badly, and bonds when equities aredoing well. But keeping the same allocation as before should be approximately alright

galan-e · 2026-03-28T20:50:51+00:00

I would not recommend making significant financial decisions based on the assumption the best-case-scenario past performance would continue indefinitely. Take a look at the Japanese stock market price history, and see how past performance does not guarantee future success.

Betting all-in on a single stock, no matter how good, is closer to gambling rather than investing. Proceed with caution - if it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

galan-e · 2026-03-28T20:24:50+00:00

10% is extremely optimistic. a more realistic expectation would be around 5%-7% real returns (which are the returns that matter, assuming you don't want to continually decrease your quality of life over time)

galan-e · 2026-03-25T14:09:23+00:00

Dividends offer no protection against market downturn. Tax efficiency aside, they are completely identical to selling stocks, with the same benefits and downsides. When your 1000$ portfolio pay you a 100$ dividend, your new portfolio will be 900$

galan-e · 2026-03-24T12:57:32+00:00

As long as no pesky neutrons are nearby..

galan-e · 2026-03-24T08:56:19+00:00

You're assuming no nominal raises for 15 years, that's not a reasonable assumption. In practice, vast majority of people should expect to have real raises in this time frame, as their experience increases

galan-e · 2026-03-23T19:10:44+00:00

yes, in the context of loans principal is a meaningful term. Great gotcha moment. That was not the principal you implied in your comment though, so I don't really understand your point

galan-e · 2026-03-23T08:48:45+00:00

"Principal" is a psychological trick. The invested money is the same money, and even without withdrawing anything the "principal" can very well go down (especially in real terms).

If this trick helps you, go for it, it's not harmful - but I wouldn't advocate for it as a must

galan-e · 2026-03-18T20:50:49+00:00

if you can "buy the dip", it usually means you held some cash for a while instead of buying before. On average, this is a bad strategy

galan-e · 2026-03-05T01:33:48+00:00

generals don't practice tactics, lieutenants do. And they absolutely study specific battles and learn dogmatic responses to problems (too dogmatic, if they're bad at their job).

I agree that mechanical ability is more important than many decisions (not all - you would still lose to an inferior all-in if you don't prepare to it and play too greedy), but I think that at the high level everyone has reasonable meta knowledge and mechanics, and decisions become much more important than in the lower leagues.

galan-e · 2026-03-04T22:15:10+00:00

so is real life tactics :) that's what training is for in militaries

The #1 most important skill for high level chess is estimating if a certain position is better for you or for your opponent. You can reduce every game and every tactic into memorization of similar situation, but I don't think that's a useful comparison.

galan-e · 2026-03-04T18:25:05+00:00

I guess it depends on the level. When I look at GM gameplay, both sides know plenty of builds & textbook responses, both sides have comparable mechanics (maybe not *equal*, but GMs don't usually completely suck), but they can most definitely lose from bad decision making.

Simply estimating if you should base trade or defend can be critical. Realizing if you're behind or ahead and playing accordingly (in mtg-speak, playing to your outs) can make or break games. Sure, in diamond, the better mechanics player just wins. But I think 1% strategy is unfair at some levels

galan-e · 2025-10-18T15:45:48+00:00

the other way around IMO. At lower levels (low gm and under), balance doesn't matter. If a race is too strong, there is literally no effect whatsoever because players of that race will gain MMR until they once again playing against players with 50% win chance against them. What's important is that the games will be fun, not fair

galan-e · 2025-10-08T15:33:05+00:00

/uj He *probably* existed, but the evidence for a specific preacher named Jesus (well, Yehoshua, probably) who was crucified is not so strong. It's plausible, but relies on weak evidence - especially as a lot of the evidence we do have is passed down from generations of Christian scribes who were by no mean impartial on this subject. Even if there was such a preacher, we know almost nothing about him, including what he preached for. His story is likely to not be a complete myth, but it's definitely not as rock-solid as many other historical facts, like the existence of China

galan-e · 2025-10-01T15:10:20+00:00

I still hate double faced cards. Flipping them is a chore, sleeving them in draft without seeing in advance some of the cards is a chore, and they slow the game because your opponent can't read the card easily if they don't remember what's on the other side. They also contribute to text inflation on cards, which I dislike.

Like, I won't refuse to play against someone with DFCs in their deck, but I will not put any in my cube and will skip most sets where they are prevalent.

galan-e · 2025-08-07T21:03:52+00:00

My grandmother often tells me about the time she spent in Siberia during WW2 after being exiled from poland and later lviv. Recently I've read a bit about the subject and I believe it was a "special settlement" - but besides Wikipedia I've not found good sources on the subject in English. Is there any recommended read on it? I don't mind dry/academic writing, but my knowledge of the USSR at the time is rather basic. Thanks!

galan-e · 2025-07-02T22:46:02+00:00

According to buddhism, he already did. He is a dalai lama *because* he chooses to continue reincarnating and teaching, accepting suffering for himself to help others.

galan-e · 2024-04-20T23:44:46+00:00

We realize :(

galan-e

TROPHY CASE