Below you'll find a list of all posts from June, 2020
This is the second post based on Michael Lewis’ excellent book, Flash Boys, which exposes how High Frequency Traders (HFTs) use technological advantages to obtain informational advantages that amount to learning about upcoming equity transactions fractions of a second before the rest of the market becomes aware of them. They employ these advantages to exploit less technologically sophisticated investors for …
School ended last week, and our family of four felt a sense of foreboding. We mourned the loss of the travel we’d planned and looked forward to for the past year. We slowly accepted the reality that we will now be sheltering in place with no playdates with friends in the immediate future. We are likely to be one another’s …
I buy my books later and cheaper. Waiting a few years means I score pristine hardcovers for a buck at a Friends of the Library book sale, which I savor and then donate back in a virtuous cycle of frugality and reading. This is how I came across Flash Boys by Michael Lewis, published 6 years ago and devoured on …
Being an emergency physician requires you to excel, among other areas, in one particularly important preschool skill: playing well with others. I deal with consultants from other specialties numerous times on a daily basis, often asking them to employ their unique talents at inopportune hours. One of emergency medicine’s kindred “plays well with others” specialties is radiology – in fact, …
The past few days have been disturbing. A brutal death caught on tape. Peaceful mass protests and organized civil unrest on an order of magnitude not seen in a generation, evolving in a few places into looting and rioting. An image in the Times of the LA Farmer’s Market was the gut punch – that’s where I used to take …
I’ve never been more fit. I’ve never spent more time sitting on my bum. By serendipity, my shifts this month and last were batched together, providing long stretches of time off. The upshot was that I have done some form of exercise (weights, cycling, walking the neighborhood) every single day for several weeks. I feel good about this turn of …
The gifts of the WCI Con 20 swag bag just keep on giving! Sheltering in place has provided ample reading time to sneak in some continuing financial education, currently on how achieve desired returns with reduced volatility. I’m currently reading Swedroe and Grogan’s 2018 edition of Reducing the Risk of Black Swans, which has the most lucid explanation of correlation …
Harry Sit is a self-taught financial savant who pens the popular blog The Finance Buff, which has been around since 2006 – a remarkable lifespan that easily qualifies him as the Galapagos tortoise of finance bloggers. I discovered his blog through Mike Piper’s Oblivious Investor blog, another excellent resource. Harry’s financial savvy is more compelling once you hear his back …
Lessons From Birdwatching This morning I was up just after dawn and tackling a local hill on my bicycle half an hour later. The sun had not yet crested the hill when I noticed a loud bird call followed by a thud coming from overhead. It was a scrappy mockingbird taking on a tough looking crow (a couple of conspicuously …