Search found 3747 matches

by peter71
Tue Jan 26, 2021 9:07 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Advice for a mid-30s humanities graduate student
Replies: 127
Views: 11844

Re: Advice for a mid-30s humanities graduate student

I'd maybe try and do some academic administrative support work at your PhD granting school...If it's working with students you like best, we have tons of assistant deans who teach one class but mostly help kids with all manner of problems, and I'm sure that if you'd worked as an assistant to the assistant dean as a grad student you'd have an inside track while also getting Social Security credits...We also have tons of honors programs in which they want both the teaching and admin done by NTT but relatively secure and reasonably compensated people...Or maybe your school has a humanities research center or museum/collection that employs non-librarians, then there's the study abroad program, the international students program, the teaching su...
by peter71
Thu Nov 19, 2020 6:39 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Utilitarians or effective altruists on Bogleheads?
Replies: 44
Views: 3582

Re: Utilitarians or effective altruists on Bogleheads?

I never post anymore but yes, thanks for asking!
by peter71
Tue Jan 03, 2012 1:51 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

saurabhec wrote:
peter71 wrote:DMcMahon,

If you want another example, my 30-something brother is a property-tax lawyer and gets huge money to, as he puts it, "have our paralegals bury those poor dumb municipal lawyers in so much BS that they just have to give in and reduce our [corporate] clients' taxes." So there's another lucrative private sector job to be proud of. :D

Pete
It's more honest work than is done by college professors who provide mediocre irrelevant impractical and overpriced education that saddles their wards with mountains of student debt that they struggle with in the face of low paying jobs.
You win Saurahbecc! I''ll stick to academia from now on and the forum is all yours.
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 7:28 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

Hi Jenny,

Nope. But I'm happy to let it go!

Take care,
Pete
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 7:06 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

Brick,

What I like about indexing is that it's almost an anti-strategy.

I'll admit to a bias against planning -- or at least "plans" (I think Eisenhower is famous for preferring the former) and so that's why I'm skeptical of ESP. As discussed above, If we can measure and plan for everything, we should do so, but I suspect that financial planners already have the basics like debt and basic job security covered and the original remainder is pretty tough to do well.

But mainly I just don't like being marketed to (least of all after an asset has had a great run) and that's why I'm a bit suspicious of the Bodie/TIPS onslaught.

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 6:47 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

DMcMahon,

If you want another example, my 30-something brother is a property-tax lawyer and gets huge money to, as he puts it, "have our paralegals bury those poor dumb municipal lawyers in so much BS that they just have to give in and reduce our [corporate] clients' taxes." So there's another lucrative private sector job to be proud of. :D

Pete
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 6:02 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

Jenny,

Bob is the one invoking academia, and I'd be absolutely delighted if we could all swear off so doing . . . also "science says X . . . " while we're at it.

As for your question about LTCM in particular, LTCM'er Merton is actually one of Bodie's co-authors/buddies.

Pete
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:44 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

I don't doubt that the professors selling ESPlanner think it's spectacular, I just doubt how far the fascination with it has reached beyond BU.

Here's the results of a Google Scholar search -- which makes it look pretty dated and BU-centric.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en ... =&as_vis=0

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:19 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

Hi Bob,

What exactly are your qualifications to speak about what's mainstream in Economics? Are you currently an active (i.e., non-emeritus) faculty member at a major research university? (I'm a political scientist at a major research university and while I know dozens of economists I've never known one to have an opinion on or even an interest in Lifecycle Finance.)

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Mon Jan 02, 2012 4:10 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real return
Replies: 230
Views: 23200

Re: Bodie: Plan your retirement portfolio for zero real retu

dmcmahon wrote:
frose2 wrote:if you live in America and realistically want to retire, you must work for the government.
The truth of this statement has yet to fully penetrate the collective conciousness.
Brilliant. My multi-millionaire CFO uncle was just about to retire, but I'll let him know he'd better get a job as a government secretary first. :roll:
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 10:43 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Definition of Risk from "Risk Less and Prosper"
Replies: 7
Views: 2283

Re: Definition of Risk from "Risk Less and Prosper"

Bob, As you may know there's no shortage of dogmatic charlatans asserting that it's just "a fact of life" that experimental economics/neuroeconomics has struck a death blow to expected utility theory . . . not so much people at the center of the field, to be sure, but people on the periphery in various ways (including people in my own field of political science). Happily, it's getting harder and harder to get published merely for confidently spouting dogma across the social sciences: not coincidentally, semantic debates which might once have been found in peer-reviewed journals are now relegated to forums like this one, while academics (and particularly younger academics) focus on operationalizing concepts in multiple ways so as t...
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 9:35 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Definition of Risk from "Risk Less and Prosper"
Replies: 7
Views: 2283

Re: Definition of Risk from "Risk Less and Prosper"

Hi Bob,

Why not take your crusade against Knightian uncertainty to the Wikipedia page devoted to it, complete with cites to all the major economists who discredited the definition beginning in the 40's?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightian_uncertainty

I only skimmed the rest of your post, but per your last question see here (for starters) re the distinction between a "theoretical definition" and an "operational definition".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operational_definition

I can also re-link to the top 5 selling econ textbooks and their diverse definitions of risk if you like . . .

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 12:06 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Chisey,

Agreed that it's a little off, but moneychimp puts the SD at 18.9 rather than 16-18, so some of those 8 outsized years might drop out?

http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/rand ... orizon.htm

Of course, arguably the entire enterprise of trying to forecast based on any past distributions alone is crazy given changes in the system (though I think that cuts both ways in that, while it's often and correctly noted that markets can behave irrationally due to human emotions like panic and euphoria, humans and the computers they program to trade for them can also (perhaps stubbornly, perhaps wrongly!) decide that a market that's moved 3 or 4 SD's in a year is "due for a reversal."

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 11:41 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Greg,

So the practical take-home of right-skewness is that investors in the S&P should assume there's a significantly better chance of outsized positive returns than would be suggested by the normal curve (which suggests that a return of over 67.23% for the S&P 500 next year is a highly improbable "3 SD" event (specifically, one with only a 0.15% chance of happening). Do you think investors would benefit by estimating the chances of such a spectacular year differently?

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 11:00 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Again Chisey,

So how can a long term index investor profit from thinking about distributions other than the normal distribution? This seems to me a classic case in which intellectual effort DOESN'T pay off, in that, e.g., the possibility that the S&P could theoretically increase more than 100% in a year but can only lose 100% is well, pretty theoretical.

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 10:36 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Chisey,

I teach stats to social scientists and I can assure you I'm part of the problem in the sense that I just don't teach students much beyond normal distribution and the fact that it often doesn't hold (plus I also cover skewness and kurtosis). Thinking back to what I was myself taught in Prob Stats 101 in the math department, I can't recall even being taught about skewness and kurtosis (though with the popularization of black swan talk and power law talk by Taleb and Gladwell I suspect those concepts are now covered).

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Dec 30, 2011 10:06 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Most people who hear the term "standard deviation" would naturally assume a Gaussian (Normal) distribution. What makes you think that? Other distributions have standard deviations, most of them finite. Because it is by far the most common context. The association of "standard deviation" and "normal distribution" is deeply ingrained. The commonest use of standard deviation is to make at rough estimates of the probability of various departures from the mean, which assumes a normal distribution. Maybe it shouldn't be that way, but it is --just as surely as the word "stocks" in current parlance is always taken to mean "common stocks." For example, when you hear that the founders of LTCM called ...
by peter71
Thu Dec 29, 2011 10:02 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Lady Geek, MVO = Mean-variance optimization. I'm using it as shorthand for "designing portfolios by looking at a portfolio's mean and standard deviation over a relatively short period." By the way, as far as I know Bobcat and other Bodie fans on here at least started out having a different beef with defining risk as SD than the one being expressed here. Namely, it seems people here are saying "risk should refer to bad things rather than good things" (and I'm sympathetic to that, though in part as stocks tend to go up over time downward semideviation and volatility are highly correlated so I think it's kind of moot. Anyway, I think the Bodie/bobcat/Norstad critique has typically focused on the "relatively short pe...
by peter71
Thu Dec 29, 2011 9:39 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Dick, It's a complicated question of the sort that makes social science so difficult: namely, to what extent is the MVO advisor industry (for which I have no particular love) an important cause of investor "fleecing." I'm skeptical that it's played a big role, and we can't ever really run the counterfactual of what a world without MVO and/or without Markowitz selling out would have looked like, but a good null hypothesis is that fleecing of various sorts has always existed . . . Some additional thoughts: 1) You're certainly correct that the ABSOLUTE amount of fleecing has increased as AUM have increased, but social scientists rightly or wrongly often prefer proportional measures, e.g., "fleecing as a proportion of assets u...
by peter71
Thu Dec 29, 2011 7:59 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Hi Dick, I don't think there's any shortage of academics selling their services and models to un-Bogle-esque financial enterprises, but I suspect they're mostly selling the sort of stuff you read about at Wilmott.com rather than MVO stuff. In any case, there's a lot of economic problems in the world, and many that are getting worse, but I take heart in the fact that the "fleecing" of retail investors (as measured by fund fees and advising fees) seems to be a problem that's gotten less bad over the past 50 years. I suspect Markowitz, Sharpe etc. would argue that their simplistic risk = SD models actually deserve CREDIT for some of those fee reductions (given that their implication that people should diversify maximally undermined t...
by peter71
Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:58 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk vs uncertainty
Replies: 142
Views: 12315

Re: Risk vs uncertainty

Dick, Please take some time to review an introductory textbook on social science research methods. The bottom line is that there's absolutely nothing conspiratorial about the way in which academics have, at times, attempted to represent a complex semantic concept -- "risk" -- with a measurable operational definition -- "return-rate standard deviation." That's what academics do with all concepts -- see, e.g., research on much more complicated concepts like "happiness." It's perfectly coherent to say either: a) I think simple operational definition A should be replaced by simple operational definition B OR b) I think the entire enterprise of trying to quantitatively analyze the social world should be abandoned Bu...
by peter71
Fri Dec 23, 2011 6:50 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Is Home Bias necessarily bad?
Replies: 51
Views: 6955

Re: Is Home Bias necessarily bad?

My advice is based on SCIENCE, peer reviewed research that shows ... I'm sorry but macro economics is not a science. In science, we come up with a hypothesis based on logic and past experience and then test it in a double blind trial with a control group. In economics and investing research, we come up with a hypothesis based on logic and past experience. That's it. There are no controlled trials to validate a hypothesis. While you're right to be suspicious of anyone who writes "SCIENCE" in all caps, neither science nor social science is limited to "experimental human subjects research." Though research on finance is particularly tricky, there are many situations in which logic plus good old-fashioned multivariate regre...
by peter71
Tue Dec 20, 2011 9:17 am
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Do you prefer to buy investment books or borrow them?
Replies: 16
Views: 2067

Re: Do you prefer to buy investment books or borrow them?

Between blogs and freely available academic articles, I think you can actually get a better (if drier) investment education on the internet than you can from books.

The good thing and the bad thing about books (other than self-published books) is that a publisher needs to be convinced that they're not too deathly boring to sell.

So although overstatement and abuses of data are pervasive in investment writing, I think that "you don't get what you pay for" is as good a rule in investment writing as it is in investing itself.

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Sat Dec 17, 2011 4:12 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Why would anyone buy hedge funds?
Replies: 37
Views: 3660

Re: Why would anyone buy hedge funds?

For the ones brave enough to report their returns, on average, they lag the market. Can you site the source of this assertion? What market? Over what time period? Nick http://whitecoatinvestor.com/the-death-of-alpha-among-hedge-funds/ The WSJ graph in that article seems to me to answer your original question in that it shows that, until recently, hedge funds significantly outperformed an ex-post style-optimized hypothetical fund. Moreover, I'm not sure it's correct that the data that informs the graph is pre-fee. Hedge Fund Research will in any case give you data net of all fees. https://www.hedgefundresearch.com/index.php?fuse=indices-faq&1324159212 In any case, this is how an efficient market is supposed to work. For a time HF's do a...
by peter71
Fri Dec 16, 2011 4:25 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Cap Weighted Indexing?
Replies: 12
Views: 1636

Re: Cap Weighted Indexing?

Kenyan: I could just as easily say, "of course mid-caps outperformed large caps . . . "large caps" is just a made up category based on arbitrary cutoff points that refers to the largest companies in the S&P 500, and "mid caps" is just an arbitrary category that tends to refer to the remainder." The CRSP "deciles 1-10" approach is a well-known example of thinking of the market in terms of proportions rather than absolute market-cap cutoffs. The point is there's nothing inherently more real about a "mid cap" premium than a "CRSP 4-6" premium or an "ordinal rank 101-500 premium" . . . it's just that one has been popularized more than the others. Landy: I'm not sure we're...
by peter71
Thu Dec 15, 2011 11:32 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Cap Weighted Indexing?
Replies: 12
Views: 1636

Re: Cap Weighted Indexing?

Equal-weighting is actually pretty strategy-free too (particularly as opposed to trying to mirror "factors" derived from some B-School profs' equations. One means you put 5% of your money in Apple because Apple is 5% of the market (and almost nothing on the 500th largest company); another means you put 0.2% of your money on each of the 500 biggest companies. It's been argued here before and will be argued here again, but truth be told it probably won't much matter either way. Best, Pete P.S. An EW index is perfectly consistent with the academic def of "index," and this too has been argued before. P.P.S. I hate to even bring up past performance, but Arnott was of course off by a mile (and needed to sell something others w...
by peter71
Fri Dec 09, 2011 5:13 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: What's the most overrated book you've read?
Replies: 193
Views: 14574

Re: What's the most overrated book you've read?

My dad's an English prof and he told me to read Ulysses with a guide.

http://www.amazon.com/New-Bloomsday-Boo ... 0415138582

Even though I loved THE DEAD and had a course on Irish lit in college, I'd agree with all the haters if I hadn't done so. And I still wouldn't exactly rave about it, but it was something to do. As for FINNEGAN'S WAKE . . . at least it makes for a good Irish pub name.

Oh, per the original question, I hated EVERYTHING IS ILLUMINATED. But I did it as a book on tape (which I can admit to having finished Ulysses :D ) Thumbs up on THE CORRECTIONS.

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Tue Nov 29, 2011 11:12 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Griftopia
Replies: 16
Views: 2067

Re: Griftopia

Hi Protagonist, I think part of the problem is that many of Taibbi's "factual" claims are tough to pin down. Consider the following opening to one of his Rolling Stone articles: "The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates." Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-american-bubble-machin...
by peter71
Thu Nov 17, 2011 12:09 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Many Americans say they will have to work until they're 80
Replies: 101
Views: 10300

Re: Many Americans say they will have to work until they're

This survey targeted the "middle class" in a weird way that itself capped investable assets! So even as these things go I'd be particularly hesitant to read too much into this study. "To target the middle class, the survey included only respondents who fell within specified income and wealth brackets. Those age 25 to 29 had 2010 household income of $25,000 to $99,999 and household investable assets of $99,999 or less . Those age 30 to 75 had 2010 household income of $50,000 to $99,999 or household investable assets of $25,000 to $99,999. The lower limits for 20-somethings were used to reflect the early stage of their careers." Wikipedia puts median US personal income at $32,148, so were it actually the case that the medi...
by peter71
Thu Nov 17, 2011 10:16 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Investors got it wrong again in October
Replies: 66
Views: 6120

Re: Investors got it wrong again in October

Hi Larry, On TFB's study, the methods are definitely tricky and as TFB himself posted upthread I'll let him jump in if he wants to. On Barber and Odean, we've had some previous threads on their work. I think they control for some of the problems TFB is talking about but because they have to use brokerage and/or (IIRC) specifically Taiwanese brokerage data to get the sort of individual-level info that allows them to introduce those controls it raises the question of whether their sample of "traders" can represent "individual investors" more generally . . . plus IIRC they're also looking at least in part at the late 90's. Anyway, only time will tell . . . I'd certainly concede that, if indeed investor learning has happened...
by peter71
Wed Nov 16, 2011 9:37 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Cheapest practice you've "heard" of......
Replies: 38
Views: 4702

Re: Cheapest practice you've "heard" of......

I saw a TV show about someone who halved and respooled two-ply toilet paper. Re rubber bands, I've never lived in a house where they weren't all stored on doorknobs. The thinking there isn't so much money saving but reduced time spent storing them, finding them and re-storing them in the centralized rubber band storage area. I have to admit I'm also a little intrigued by the Clark Howard razor thing on space saving grounds. Right now, my wife and I each store 10 packs of fairly cheap razors right in the shower caddy (taking up a lot of space and making throwing out each used one kind of a pain) but there's also towels right there so if we could just buy one fancy one and quickly wipe it off after use . . . I'm guessing it'd work better for ...
by peter71
Wed Nov 16, 2011 7:06 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Investors got it wrong again in October
Replies: 66
Views: 6120

Re: Investors got it wrong again in October

Hi Larry, The ICI fund flows data is also tricky (I had several exchanges with SmallHi on this years ago and my critique of the way he was using it is similar to Renditt's critique of how you're using it) but I thought we were now focused on investor returns: As I posted upthread, I think TFB's blog post on this is the most persuasive analysis I've seen, and he explains the period-dependence of the data without reference to investor learning. Even so, I certainly agree with you about CGM Focus Fund, and I think there's a style of "invest in whatever fund I saw advertised during the football game" that was much more widespread in the late 90's, but lived on through the mid-2000's with a few rare funds like CGM Focus -- I can still ...
by peter71
Wed Nov 16, 2011 5:47 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Investors got it wrong again in October
Replies: 66
Views: 6120

Re: Investors got it wrong again in October

Lots of previous threads on here on the M* "investor returns" methodology (as Larry knows), and the bottom line is that the figures are very period-dependent (with older data that includes the late 90's tending to make investors look worse). I believe the 3 biggest stock mutual funds are VTSMX, Fidelity Contrafund, and American Funds Growth, and as you can see they generally show investors doing pretty well over the past 1, 3, 5 and 10 years, but less well over the past 15 years . . . http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?p=investor_returns_page&t=VTSMX http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/performance-return.action?p=investor_returns_page&t=FCNTX http://performance.morningstar.com/fund/perfor...
by peter71
Mon Nov 14, 2011 9:48 pm
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Investors got it wrong again in October
Replies: 66
Views: 6120

Re: Investors got it wrong again in October

Hi Renditt,

Thanks for looking into the data on outflows.

As for investor returns, this post from The Finance Buff seems like a fair-minded estimate of the behavior gap as at most 0.27% per annum:

http://thefinancebuff.com/dalbar-study- ... iming.html

Not nothing (as DIY'er's like me would wish) but also not nearly as much as advisors would like to have people believe.

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Sun Nov 13, 2011 7:38 am
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Median net worth in US by age
Replies: 84
Views: 13266

Re: Median net worth in US by age

While I alluded to the same problem with the low end stats upthread, the change in seniors' wealth over time is a positive 42%. So even if the young had dropped 5% rather than 68% there'd be a story here:

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2124/age-ga ... wealth-gap
by peter71
Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:21 am
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Median net worth in US by age
Replies: 84
Views: 13266

Re: Median net worth in US by age

The many posts to the effect of, "people always accumulate assets as they age" seem to be missing the point. Here's how Bloomberg Businessweek explains things. While people typically accumulate assets as they age, this wealth gap is now more than double what it was in 2005 and nearly five times the 10-to-1 disparity a quarter-century ago, after adjusting for inflation. http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9QRMR800.htm That's not to say one can't debate how meaningful the drop on the low end really is (i.e., "$2000 isn't really that different from $10,000 . . .") but that doesn't change the fact that the study basically controls for the "eternal verities" of saving by age that many have mentioned . . . ...
by peter71
Tue Nov 08, 2011 6:08 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Best/Cheapest way to access the internet-no WiFi or smartpho
Replies: 22
Views: 2488

Re: Best/Cheapest way to access the internet-no WiFi or smar

thanks boglebrit! will check out kinstant. in the meantime i'm trying a first post from the kindle ...i do think i have the mobile gmail and a restart usually fixes things but it does freeze on me,
by peter71
Tue Nov 08, 2011 5:32 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Best/Cheapest way to access the internet-no WiFi or smartpho
Replies: 22
Views: 2488

Re: Best/Cheapest way to access the internet-no WiFi or smar

I haven't yet made up my mind about my Kindle Keyboard 3G's browser . . . for everything BUT gmail, I'm finding that it's working better than I expected . . . but for gmail it's spotty, particularly (it seems) with 3G, even in locations where gmail on my flip phone is fine . . .
by peter71
Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:56 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Ultimatum Game - Your vote
Replies: 75
Views: 5553

Re: Ultimatum Game - Your vote

While it's been awhile since I've studied this I did have to study it back in grad school and IIRC there's been considerable research on varying the size of the stakes -- though of course not up to the millions:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en ... =&as_vis=0

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Oct 28, 2011 7:29 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: "Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong"
Replies: 33
Views: 3403

Re: "Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong"

At least the short version of the article seems pretty muddled (I didn't read the long version). Is it just me or does the Paul Wilmott quote emerge out of nowhere, without him ever being introduced and after primarily discussing geophysical models? Finance is trickier than other branches of social science because arbitrage opportunities disappear once known. Other branches of economics and other quantitative social sciences are pretty much like epidemiology. These disciplines tend to produce findings of the sort, "controlling for all known confounders, it looks like smoking is highly associated with lung cancer, but of course we can't be absolutely sure we haven't failed to control for some unknown confounder." Many smart (and no...
by peter71
Sun Oct 23, 2011 8:05 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Article from The NY Times Magazine (10/23/11)
Replies: 15
Views: 3744

Re: Article from The NY Times Magazine (10/23/11)

It's also worth noting that the "Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth" paper was published 11 years ago, looking back at a very different seven year period than the one we've just experienced.

See here for a thoughtful longer term estimate of the dumb money effect as 0.27% per year or less:

http://thefinancebuff.com/dalbar-study- ... iming.html

Best,
Pete
by peter71
Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:13 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Girlfriend is an heiress, who should pay?
Replies: 197
Views: 20835

Re: Girlfriend is an heiress, who should pay?

Hi HSV, Agreed (and having now looked at it I think the Chronicle data suggests the same), but I think another tricky thing about applying Pareto principles to academic salaries is that it's more like the military than it is like other civilian jobs . . . i.e., even if you're a world-historical young star that all the ivies want to hire on the tenure track, you're still going to start out as an "Assistant Professor" just as a star young officer in the military is still going to start out as a Lieutenant rather than a General . . . and while rapidity of promotion will vary to an extent, there's a standard 7-years at each rank calendar at which things are typically supposed to go . . . and that's all for the "commissioned offic...
by peter71
Fri Oct 21, 2011 4:27 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: Girlfriend is an heiress, who should pay?
Replies: 197
Views: 20835

Re: Girlfriend is an heiress, who should pay?

Hey All, On Salary.com they may be talking $80,000 for a "Full Professor," which begins to sound close, though the vast majority of tenure-track and tenured profs under 45 are going to be "Assistant" or "Associate" Profs . . . Anyway, one angle that hasn't yet been mentioned is impressing this woman with your financial acumen . . . a first possibility is basic Bogleheadism (particularly if her fam is getting ripped off by advisors) . . . a second possibility would be to do what some other academics do with the TIAA Real Estate Account . . . (for which you can do a search on here) . . . As your gf isn't going to meet that many dudes in academia for whom the "he's using me for my money" thing isn't a fe...
by peter71
Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:12 pm
Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
Topic: Clothing for -40 F windchill factor
Replies: 26
Views: 3430

Re: Clothing for -40 F windchill factor

when I was that age I shoveled snow at night in Minneapolis and so the temps were similar . . . main thing I'd add is to have a ski mask and maybe even goggles if he's on the back of a truck . . . I can remember my eye sockets getting cold as the only uncovered thing. All of that said it should be fine, and if sunny and he's moving really no big deal. If crouching in snow or something though (and probably anyway) snow pants would also be good.
by peter71
Fri Oct 14, 2011 9:01 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Defining Risk
Replies: 13
Views: 1410

Hi Bob, Thx for the fuller cites . . . to me it sounds like they're saying that it's only in "some situations" that upside deviations are undesirable (and that they're stopping short of condemning "what people normally consider" when considering risk) but no doubt B&M do want students to consider a broader definition as well. Insofar as they (and you) are doing that in an ecumenical spirit, I'm all for it, but I also realize not everyone is ecumenical on these matters . . . anyone who teaches intro courses with boldfaced textbook terms and exams that include terminology has to make decisions about which definitions are sufficiently fixed such that students are forced to learn the correct definition and reproduce it o...
by peter71
Fri Oct 14, 2011 5:58 pm
Forum: Personal Investments
Topic: Defining Risk
Replies: 13
Views: 1410

great reply. Can you recommend any books that do a good job of covering a wide variety of risks? Risk for Dummies ? Thanks for the very informative reply. I'm not sure I have a finger tip on the best book for that subject exactly. I can say the eye-openers for me in general would be The Four Pillars of Investing by Bernstein The entire series of all the books written by Larry Swedroe All About Asset Allocation by Ferri A Random Walk Down Wallstreet by Malkiel Jim Otar's book here: http://www.retirementoptimizer.com/ The latter is especially helpful because it is an exhaustive and quantitative assessment of the risk of running out of money in retirement. That might be the single most relevant concept of risk for a retiree and that risk is N...
by peter71
Thu Oct 13, 2011 9:47 pm
Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
Topic: I am not the 99%
Replies: 15
Views: 2366

jenny345 wrote:He is just a bit short, ~$330K per year, from being in the top 1%.
Exactly. Plenty of hardworking minimum wage-earning college students aspire to be in the 1%, but my first reaction was, "actually still a ways to go! maybe time to invest in a few more math classes !" :D
by peter71
Wed Oct 12, 2011 9:06 am
Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
Topic: Risk - A Primer
Replies: 33
Views: 6028

While there's very little at stake here, I guess I object to the idea that "risk as understood in economics" is any more fixed than it is in the four top-selling econ textbooks I linked to above. It would at a minimum be nice to have at least a couple of academic economists on the forum weigh in and say, "the intro textbooks are being overly informal, the vast majority of economists use the term "risk" not as do the intro textbooks, but precisely as Bob (and his selection of subfield textbooks and non-textbooks) suggests . . ."

Best,
Pete