Pubjitsu Guy

Nearly wrote the bus off 😭😭

🚨The Devil thought he had "Checkmate" on this man in a painting in the Lourve Museum, France🇫🇷, BUT a Chess Master had one more move... "I looked at the devil laughing and I looked at the man in desperation." But he said, "I noticed something on the chess board." He said, "Either they're gonna have to change the painting or they're gonna have to change the name." And the guy said, "Well, why are they gonna have to do that?" He said, "Well, you know I'm a world champion chess player." And he said, "When I observed the board, I found out the King still has one more move."

Taiichi Ohno built Toyota’s production system. His training method was a literally chalk circle on the factory floor. He’d put a new manager inside it and tell them to stand there and watch! 8 hours No phone No notebook Just watch After an hour they’d come back saying they’d figured out the problem. Ohno would send them back. “Keep watching.” By hour 3 they’d notice the worker reaching awkwardly for a part. By hour 7, the pause before every weld because the operator was waiting on the guy behind him. None of that shows up in a report. Reports compress 8 hours into just a number. The number says output is 94% of target. It doesn’t say why the guy is standing on his tiptoes. Most executives have never watched their own operation for 8+ hours. They’ve read a 1000+ dashboards. Those are not the same thing. By the time it reaches you, it’s just a bar chart. On a bar chart, everything looks pretty fine. The only way out is to go sit in the circle. Sit there until you notice something that isn’t in the summary or bullet points. Because the summary is always wrong in exactly the places that matter.

Moving Averages

The uniqueness of 6,174, also known as Kaprekar's constant [🎞️ Numberphile]

Jack Bogle on Why He's Skeptical of ETFs Vanguard founder Jack Bogle explains his nuanced view on index funds vs. ETFs: Jack Bogle, the man who created the index fund, clarifies that his concerns aren't with broad index investing itself. His issue is with how ETFs tempt investors to behave badly and how the industry has weaponized the ETF structure for gimmicks. He starts by noting just how dominant index funds have become: “The dominance of index funds, which accounts for 28% of the market, is partly due to ETFs representing more than half of that share." But here's where he draws the line: “I have nothing against broad ETFs per se, but rather the narrow, managed ones and the way people misuse the broad versions." On broad ETFs vs. traditional index funds: they're the same thing Bogle makes clear that structurally, there's no meaningful difference between a Vanguard S&P 500 ETF and what he calls a "TIFF" (Traditional Index Fund), a term he coined to distinguish them: "They both own exactly the same portfolio and are part of the same portfolio, meaning their returns will be identical. Both types cost around five or six basis points at the Admiral class level." He explains Vanguard's pricing: Below roughly $10,000 invested, you'll pay 10 to 12 basis points, but once you cross the Admiral threshold, "the funds are identical." So what's the real problem with ETFs? Behavior. The ability to trade intraday creates temptation: "My slight bias against ETFs stems from the temptation to trade in the middle of the day when trouble arises." He points out how pointless this reactive trading is: "Getting out in the middle of the day is often a reaction to market volatility, such as the market dropping 300 points and then recovering in the second half of the day. This 'bouncing around' is meaningless in the long run." What he actually endorses: Bogle is clear that broad market index funds, whether structured as ETFs or traditional funds, all serve investors well: "Broad market index funds, including the S&P 500, total bond market, total US stock market, international, and even emerging market funds, are all acceptable 'total market funds'." Where the industry lost the plot: His sharpest criticism is reserved for what the ETF industry has become: "The industry has become a marketing business focused on 'crazy' or 'stupid' ideas that no one else has thought of." He offers specific examples: An emerging cancer ETF" he once criticized in the Wall Street Journal, today's "cloud computing" ETFs, and leveraged products offering 100%, 200%, or even 300% exposure, letting investors bet on the market going up or down by three times. His verdict on these: "The sense behind these types of investments is beyond my comprehension."

Haunting testimony from an old man who survived the Assyrian Genocide. “The foxes and animals were eating their bones.” Murdered Christians received a burial if they were lucky. What was buried: the crimes of the Ottoman Empire.