Musings
Some additional musings
A snippet from a conversation between me and a friend.
Him: I think you would really enjoy being a hard ass prick of a lawyer. It would be a profession where growing up would be distinct disadvantage. You could make everything about “taking things too far”. I like you better as a hopped up crazy creative entrepreneur.
Me: I would be. I would love to be a ADA, A US or Trial Lawyer. I love calling people on their bullshit and catching them lying. it’s also great strategy. i would just never want to actually got to 3 years of school nor do i want to do any legal research and i’d be bored of being a lawyer in about 2 years i think.
for now, i’ll stick to being a crazy over the top entrepreneur and see where it takes me. This way i can be crazy and actually help people instead of screw people.
A quote from my little sister: ” LIVE LIFE, Don’t Just live it. ”
Relaxation is the key to success. If you can be truly relaxed you can accomplish anything.
I have learned The Art of War. If you are truly a great positive manipulator then you never actually negotiate because you can set the tone and create the bands of negotiation and always come out ahead. Tactics are useless in the face of great strategy. A great strategist will have you check mated before you fired your first salvo.
The key to poker is relaxation - being able to feel the hand and read the hand. Many people think they can read people and find tells. Yes, they can find the tells of suckers but not of fellow rounders. Thus the only way to beat a rounder is to feel the hand, play intelligent and go with your gut because the second you think you’ve read him - he has beaten you. Yes it comes down to luck and feel and not math and skill.
The cover of MIT Tech Review this month sald something about 200 of the smartest people on wall street stuck in a room to solve the problem of subprime. To me that means there was really one person pulling the strings (who got them in the room) and 200 suckers.
The stock market is a sham. Here is why? You will never be able to access the earnings you are so dearly valuing - thus the P/E or growth rate doesn’t mean anything. Say Google earns $20billion dollars. What are the odds that they give a dividend to you the shareholder for all of it? About zero. Say they do give a dividend, it will not be 100% of cash flow. Therefore, what are you really investing in? Nothing but paper. So what does the P/E matter? You are investing in the fact that a bigger idiot than you is out there to pay more (Hope) or that someone will acquire the company for cash (luck) so you really are investing in a magic trick. This is true of any public company. The concept of liquidity is a farce. If in fact the market is tight - there is no liquidity - in fact i would rather be private because then my bankers won’t try to call in my debt nor will my investors revolt. Yes public valuations are great but they are full of shit. There is no way to justify any public valuation - if the p/e is 1 or 100000. And then of course there are people trading that actually can “skin” the market. So then what is a derivative - it is essentially a second generation of nothing. If you are an individual investor, save your money and buy a dvd of Seinfeld instead - at least then you can laugh about nothing instead of invest in it.
The stock market is like gambling on sports, unless you are on the inside, you always lose in the long run. Unless you tag along (on a good mutual fund), you have a good poker gut or you can spot trends (the best investment strategy i think - pure herd / momentum trading). If you choose to invest, it should be knowing you are investing in hope & luck. Fundamentals do not exist in public companies.
I love private equity. You take cash flow, layer debt and buy private companies using either debt or public valuation of private money. The PE guys that buy private companies as platforms and roll up are sharp as tacks. I personally think the Idea of huge LBO’s are dumb because there’s so much competition, I can’t see how it’s anything but a big bet. The guys that start small and build big i think can’t lose. After all they are underpaying, not overpaying for private (and not public) assets.
