High-strength woven polyethylene sleeves braced with stakes create cylindrical columns. Contrary to the video, these are used in the USA, just not widely.
Words like “premium,” “best quality,” “world-class,” and “innovative” don’t sell anymore. They’re easy to write and impossible to verify.
The brands that win don’t make bigger claims. They offer better proof.
One of the greatest ads ever written for a luxury car didn’t call it “refined” or “luxurious.” It simply said:
“At 60 mph, the loudest sound in the car is the clock.”
That’s proof. You can picture it.
Instead of saying:
• “Fast” => “Saves you 2 hours every morning.”
• “Trusted” => “Chosen by 4,000 customers who keep coming back.”
• “Durable” => “Survived a two-storey drop onto concrete.”
Stop describing your product. Start proving what it does.
What’s the most meaningless marketing phrase you’ve seen lately?
The coding competition has started for the International STEM Olympiad Grand Finale in Rome, Italy.
It’s beautiful to see bright minds challenge themselves.
Next year we will have our children compete in the coding competition as well.
The man who hacked the stock market and the government still can’t explain how.
Meet Jim Simons.
And no, he wasn’t a Wall Street guy.
– Math undergrad at MIT
– PhD from Berkeley at 23
– Drove a motorcycle from Boston to Bogota between degrees because he was bored
– Did groundbreaking research in geometry that contributed to quantum field theory and string theory
– Got recruited by the NSA to break Soviet codes during the Cold War
– Taught at MIT and Harvard
– Got fired for writing a public letter opposing the Vietnam War
Then he looked at decades of market data and decided something nobody had proven yet.
That markets could be modeled mathematically. Completely. Systematically.
Unlike every other academic who said the same thing and went back to writing papers about it, Simons actually built it.
He founded Renaissance Technologies. Then launched the Medallion Fund in 1988.
Instead of hiring traders or analysts, he hired mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, and computer scientists. People who had never worked in finance in their lives. That was the point.
What followed is the most absurd performance record in the history of financial markets.
– 66% average annual returns before fees
– 39% after fees
– $100+ billion in trading profits over the fund’s lifetime
– Positive even in 2008, one of the worst years in modern market history
He eventually closed Medallion to outside investors entirely. It runs almost exclusively for current and former employees.
Nobody has ever replicated it. Nobody fully understands what’s inside it. The models are a black box that has never been reverse-engineered in over 35 years.
He ended up worth $31.4 billion and gave away billions more to science and math education.
The IRS came for him at one point over $6.8 billion in taxes he’d deferred by reclassifying trading income as long-term capital gains. He eventually paid.
He smoked two packs of cigarettes a day his entire adult life and made it to 86.
There has never been a cleaner case of turning pure intellectual ability into financial returns than Jim Simons.
Finance guys didn’t crack the market.
A geometer who used to break codes for the government did.
On another note, I’m about to reveal where I’m deploying capital next.
Many people will wish they followed me sooner.