Q: "You're up 2-0…Are you not happy?"
Kobe: "What's there to be happy about?"
Q: "You're up 2-0"
Kobe: "Job's not finished.
Job finished?
I don't think so."
On this weekend in 2009
My net worth is somewhere around $5 million, and I can't always tell if it's made me free or just well-funded and quietly adrift. No W2 salary coming in. Three kids under four by July. I earned some of this, but the biggest pieces I didn't.
When I was 21, a junior in college, I inherited about $400,000 my grandfather built. I didn't earn a dollar of it. Later I did earn real money, a startup I worked for got acquired, and I had a genuine windfall from the exit, plus years of salary I actually saved. So I'm not going to play the trust-fund kid or the bootstrapper. The truth is messier than either.
I'm a finance major. I love this stuff, genuinely. So I did what finance majors do, I spent a decade certain I could beat the market, selling boring index funds to pick individual stocks instead. For years my account went sideways. For one long stretch it went down, below where I started. I was outsmarting myself in slow motion and calling it conviction.
Then one of the bets worked. Nvidia. I'd bought a tiny position early, back when it was just a barely more than GPUs for gaming computers. I held it through two separate stretches where it dropped enough to erase several hundred thousand on paper. The holding took some nerve. The pick was mostly luck, even if I try to rationalize the narrative i bought into (future in AI, self-driving cars, etc).
That one position is the reason a few hundred grand became a few million. And here's the line I haven't been able to say out loud until now: strip Nvidia out, and my stock-picking would have left me poorer than if I'd done nothing at all. I didn't beat the market. One lottery ticket paid for a decade of being wrong.
So most of what I have came from three things, an inheritance, an exit I was lucky to be part of, and a single stock. Almost none of it from the thing I'm proudest of: the small business I quit my career to build, which is only now hitting its stride. Funny how that works.
So that's where I'm starting from: comfortable, lucky, a little scared, and about to be responsible for three small kids on income from a business that finally works but doesn't yet cover the life around it. Brave or stupid, I genuinely don't know yet.
MerryMart approves delisting 6 years after IPO
MerryMart Consumer Corp., the supermarket chain of Edgar "Injap" Sia II, is moving toward a stock market exit after its board approved a planned delisting ahead of a July 7 shareholders’ meeting.
DoubleDragon plans to acquire the company through a tender offer consisting of 50 percent cash and 50 percent DoubleDragon shares as it consolidates the two businesses under one group.
Management says the combination will strengthen synergies between the Injap Group and Jollibee Group while positioning the merged entity for further expansion in the Philippines and overseas.
The retailer debuted on the Philippine Stock Exchange on June 15, 2020 at P1 per share. Its stock last closed at P0.435.
BREAKING: The proposed US-Iran peace deal includes a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, per NYT.
The program is being called an international "investment fund," which the US would facilitate in the final deal.
This comes as Iran demands "reparations" to end the war.
‘SAYANG, ANG GANDA PA NAMAN NG DEBATE’
WATCH: Senator Robin Padilla said it was unfortunate that minority senators walked out in the middle of the debate over a motion seeking to allow the remote participation of senators in sessions.
Asked about Senator Erwin Tulfo’s remark that the proposed amendment in Senate rules was being railroaded for the benefit of senators who could end up in jail, Padilla replied: “’Wag naman kayo ganyan magsalita.” | @eimorpsantos
High passing rate is only a recent anomaly (c. 2016?). Ask any old lawyer and any of those who passed the ~20% passing rate exams of the past and no one with sense agrees with the current setup. It’s like mass migration into western countries. We know what the latter is for. The question is, why do our authorities allow it in the bar?
CAYETANO'S "POKÉMONIFICATION" OF PH POLITICS
LOOK: Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano on Saturday, May 23, used a Pokémon-inspired analogy to explain the political and economic situation, saying this was how he would explain national issues to the youth.
He said the country has moved from “Mega Dream” and “Perfect Order” to “Ascended Heroes” and “Chaos Rising.”
Cayetano said politics has turned into factional conflict where people side with their allies regardless of who is right or wrong, while warning that chaos is also fueled by forces seeking to preserve the status quo and block reforms.
📸 Alan Peter Cayetano/Facebook
Has the BSP just signaled 63.5 as its next “Maginot Line” — a tacit FX target amid a widening BoP deficit as the savings gap, oil shock, and slowing growth compound the economy’s dollar shortage?
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