What We’re Reading
A few good articles the Collab team came across this week …
Signals
Beware associating large funds with intellectual worth:
Person A’s $10 billion may have resulted from having a lot of success in a previous market era that no longer exists. Person A’s abilities, insights and edge may no longer be useful in today’s market era given increases in competition, increased use of technology and the leveled playing field of actionable information.
Person A’s $10 billion may have formerly been $15 billion before 50% of the total was either lost or redeemed away. Or it may have been $10 billion for a decade while the stock market doubled and then tripled. Is that $10 billion worth of opinion still as meaningful then?
Progress
Every day, the number of people around the world living in extreme poverty (less than about $2 a day) goes down by 217,000, according to calculations by Max Roser, an Oxford University economist who runs a website called Our World in Data. Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity. And 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water.
Intelligence
Dolphin trainers reward dolphins with fish when they catch birds to keep the pool clean. Enter arbitrage:
One day, when a gull flew into her pool, she grabbed it, waited for the trainers and then gave it to them. It was a large bird and so the trainers gave her lots of fish. This seemed to give Kelly a new idea. The next time she was fed, instead of eating the last fish, she took it to the bottom of the pool and hid it under the rock where she had been hiding the paper. When no trainers were present, she brought the fish to the surface and used it to lure the gulls, which she would catch to get even more fish. After mastering this lucrative strategy, she taught her calf, who taught other calves, and so gull-baiting has become a hot game among the dolphins.
Endurance
Cars people keep forever:
Nomads
The percentage of Americans with passports:
One shot
We get just one shot at making the journey from birth to retirement. Flirting with financial disaster is not advisable.
Have a nice weekend.