mmstacks

Seek ye first joy, and riches shall be added unto thee.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Looks like you're putting up money.
Really you're putting up people and time.

Looking back, that's been true these years: the right people tend to go a bit further.

People are the deepest margin of safety.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Something clicked: most of investing is seeing through to the person.

Thinking of how Fan always bet on Musk —
aside from companies like Moutai or Coke,
how many people would you stake your net worth on?

Every day is investing.

Charlie Munger: three career rules —
Don't sell anything you wouldn't buy.
Don't work for anyone you don't admire.
Work with people who share your values.

Find the ones who last.
People are a simplifying dimension.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Renaissance history is wild too.

Renaissance: rebirth.

The strangest part: eight hundred years ago they knew that a thousand years before them, their place had a brilliant culture.
They caught fire for that age — and burned that fire into their own —
same as the Islamic Golden Age: heroes and geniuses all clustered in one moment.

Mu Xin on the first law of inspiration: you never know when it comes, and after it leaves it never comes again.
Golden ages, Axial ages — same.
History is all accident. Zoom out: so is the present.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Maybe at 30, Buffett was already the investor the world would later worship.
It just took another 60 years for the crowd to notice.

Everyone has their own Longchang — the place where the real change already happened.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Knowing a truth and living it are different.

The difference: living it is extremely hard.
Temptation and payoff right in front of you — endless reasons too.
Some barriers aren't about knowing. They're about doing.
Knowing and doing as one is not easy.

When you learn a truth, your eyes lock on the "get" side.
When you actually execute, the first move is often on the "give up" side.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

- $NVDA has fallen alongside Jensen Huang.

- After the midterm results, this happened quickly.

- Jensen's first affair: $NVDA at the $170–$180 price level.

- Jensen's second affair: $NVDA at the $150–$160 price level.

- Jensen's resignation: NVDA fell to $150, followed by a quick recovery to $165–$170.

- Ant's IPO involving NVDA failed; I believe there are political consequences factored into it.

- So, $Ant may be someone's "all-in" position, though the name "Ant" isn't great.

- After #Jensen left NVDA, the U.S. banned more chips from going to Asia. I don't believe this works.

- We can't compare AI to nuclear technology, because AI is a human knowledge tool, whereas nuclear is a weapon.

Two conclusions:

- After the Ant IPO, we will see a lot of SOTA models emerge.
- AI makes chips less important.

One question:

- Where will $Ant go, with the #Democrats adding so much into this company?

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Best takeaway from a book on gambling theory — one formula:

Casino expected profit = casino edge × total bets

The house edge isn't huge — roulette ~2.7% — but total bets are a black hole.
The casino isn't afraid of you winning. It's afraid of you not showing up.

Gambling and business are the same math:
Do more of a negative-edge trade, lose more.

People think "edge" means how often you win. It's really long-run expectation.
Someone who actually gets it said his win rate is about 50.3%.

Only rule for beating the house: only do positive-edge things.

NFA

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Hideyuki Fujisawa wrote: the great Way has no gate.

However others make money, you might only make it your way.
P&L is a process of finding yourself.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Smart people are best at taking the long way around.
Call it the winding path to the quiet place.

The great Way is flat and easy —
yet people love the side roads.
— Laozi

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

I copied a passage on "don't be greedy for victory":

The first rule of the Ten Precepts of Go is "don't be greedy for victory."
Literal meaning: the more you cling to winning, the less you get it.
The author put it first because he saw early that it goes deeper than the words. It governs the other nine — a life guide with universal weight.

Here "victory" is already past the board. It means the goals people chase across every layer of society.
"Greedy for victory" is obsession with hitting the goal.
"Don't be greedy for victory" pulls us off the narrow board-illusion and shows: cling too hard to the target, and you get nothing.

Of course life aims to win. Obsess over the goal, though, and you get restless, tunnel-visioned, rigid.
The rule is not "give up wanting to win." It's: stay cool, dodge the bait, know yourself, and then you can actually perform.

Sun Tzu: winning a hundred battles is not the highest good; subduing the enemy without fighting is.
Avoiding head-on clash, using their weakness to pin them down, growing yourself, taking the max gain — that is the highest form of success.

As a kid I heard these four-character go sayings until my ears felt nailed shut. I didn't yet see them as more than go rules — as life pointers — until later. Pros live in a world where "take the title, take the prize" is the highest virtue. Vague ideas outside win/loss don't even get a glance.

That's why go may be the one contest where only amateurs can reach the highest spiritual level.
For pros chasing cash through go, the game is a living. Win/loss = prize money. They can't escape that cage.
Pure amateurs can ride above win/loss, imagine a wider world, create more.

Grandpa and Dad weren't strong players, but they enjoyed go more than the pros — because they were free of win/loss.
That's what go should be: skill high or low, win or lose, enjoy it with a calm mind.
That is the realm of "don't be greedy for victory."

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Vision is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Maybe taking a little first makes sense — what if it actually works?
If enough people think that way, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
— Satoshi

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

In the attention game: if you can make content good enough,
leave the rest to time.

But making good content is extreme pain. Every inch forward hurts.

What's the hardest part of investing? Definitely not "just buy it."

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Sometimes seeing really is believing.

Hearing someone say it a hundred times ≠ seeing it once yourself.
Seeing takes luck. Insight costs life.

The expensive things aren't priced in money — that's why money can't buy them.

I'm the only reader of everything I write.
Bad expectations ruin every happiness — call it desire.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Today at the gym I noticed I clearly prefer anaerobic training over cardio.

I think this has a lot to do with constitution.

Trading is the same. The key is finding the way you actually like to make money, not forcing yourself to like the "correct" way.

You definitely have a constitution. It may not show up in the complicated parts of trading; even simpler things carry it.

That constitution decides what you should and shouldn't do. That's what matters most.

"He who knows others is wise; he who knows himself is enlightened." Self-knowledge is the point.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Every insight costs a piece of your life.

Talking about it does nothing.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

The hard part isn't what you want.
It's what you believe.

The secret to happiness: lower your expectations.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

@LeahChilders4 Congrats

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

The perfect trade is the most "correct" trade.
Long term, it's the most wrong one.

In the history of life, only the imperfect survive.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Most people believe in miracles.
They just don't believe in God — and don't understand God either.

I once told a friend:
In crypto, most people actually believe in money.
Money is the miracle. What God is — they don't care.

Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
Nothing summarizes it better than that.

[mmstacks @marmot_stacks]

Time is the base layer of everything.

Strong love and hate — both can be left to time.

What's hard, I think: decide where you're going, close your eyes, and wake up there.