@lhamtil The Worst Hand in Poker is the Second Best Hand

Trailing profit margins for US Large & Small-Mid are 26% & 33% above the average of just the last 10 years. 2023 estimates as of 2 weeks ago had them going even higher, as deficit shrinks, Fed raises rates, economy slows, etc. Out of step.

I don't think folks grasp how bonkers 2022 Federal tax receipts are! It's not 'one-time capital gains'. Here's 25-yr table. (FY ends 9/30) Note: yellow means decline (= recession). 2022 TTM, receipts are up 21%! 2022 YTD (8 mos), receipts are up 37%!! Recession? No way!

These Chinese lockdowns over Omnicron are gonna exacerbate supply chain/inflation issues.

People are usually off the mark when it comes to assessing how much and in what direction public attitudes toward contentious issues have changed. https://t.co/0bzqJrq3a0

Because of the O-1 visa for immigrants of extraordinary ability, @alexeyguzey is here in the US building new institutions of science rather than conscripted in the Russian military. We should make it possible for more Alexeys to come here.

Horizon Kinetics letter: "what seems to be the intrinsic character of the economy and markets – moderate to low inflation and interest rates, rising earnings, the odd tech or real estate bubble – is pretty much all a 45-year-old has ever personally known" https://t.co/La3L4uztNz

I've seen a number of tweets about the trillions of baby boomer wealth to transfer. I did a little more research on this topic for an article I'm authoring: 76.4M baby boomers 12M own businesses (Cal. BizBroker Assn)

One thing it took me quite a while to understand is how few bits of information it's possible to reliably convey to a large number of people. When I was at MS, I remember initially being surprised at how unnuanced their communication was, but it really makes sense in hindsight.

Zara tries to place its stores next to Gucci stores, hoping that the status of the aspirational brand will rub off on it. This paper suggests this strategy works more broadly: middle-brow fashion brands can raise their prices if their ads appear next to high-end ones in Vogue.

“Over time, I started listening less and maybe with a little less tolerance of other people’s opinions, maybe because of getting a little bit more overconfident in my own, which is sometimes what happens when you get built up.” - Bob Iger on why he stepped down. Impressive.

Charlie Munger said "show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome." A great way to learn this lessons: look at poorly-designed rules (AKA bad incentives) that had unintended consequences. Here are 10 examples 🧵

"A 2016 study found that purchasing even a single meal with a value of $20 for a physician can be enough to change the way that he prescribes."

Sorry - one more excerpt on investor psychology,e.g. when your neighbors are getting rich faster than you

Oof. Israel arguably has the most rigorous COVID data collection globally; it's reporting vaccine protection against infection plummeting to just 16% within 6-8 months (still holding up against hospitalization). If the US follows that track, the winter wave is going to be brutal

If you’re worried about a housing bubble, the percentage of incomes that Americans are spending on servicing mortgage debt is *less than half* of what it was at the peak of the housing/credit bubble:

This is both awful and shows how much progress we previously made in a short period of time. https://t.co/ngCaVv8Cim