TedTobiason

CFO at Vimo, opinions are my own

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@wquist @Camp4 No one told Kobe about the off-season. But then again, Shaq was all about the off-season, which often continued from him about a quarter into the regular season as he played himself into shape. ;)

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

Something pawsitive.

[Harvey Bracken-Smith @harveybsmith_]

"Ninety percent of people should stop trying to beat the market. Go live your life."

Aswath Damodaran (@aswathdamodaran) is Professor of Finance at NYU Stern, the Kerschner Family Chair in Finance Education, and the Dean of Valuation. He still teaches after more than 40 years because almost everything he writes is him working through his own uncertainty.

"The Fed is the Wizard of Oz. 'The Fed did it' became the excuse for underperformance."

We discussed:
- The first class he walked into as a TA in 1981, and why he is still in the room
- Valuation is a craft: learn it on simple companies first, not on Nvidia
- How he values AI businesses, SpaceX, and the Mag 7
US debt, inflation, and who actually gets hurt
- Why market timing almost never beats buying and holding
- Why your age is a bigger edge than your stock picks
Easy returns, bad habits, and why he does not sit in cash
- Why he calls himself incredibly selfish
- No gurus, no bucket list, and the one thing to take away

Highlights:
00:00 Intro
00:29 The first class in 1981 and why he still teaches 07:42 How to value AI companies, SpaceX and the Mag 7
14:50 US debt, inflation and who actually gets hurt 25:22 The Fed as the Wizard of Oz 29:06 Why 90 percent of people should just buy the index
47:30 Easy returns, bad habits and why he does not sit in cash
53:37 No gurus, no bucket list, and the one thing to take away

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@JoePompliano Experienced international travelers are very familiar with this strategy; stay on your home time zone and minimize time on the ground overseas. Airline pilots operate this way habitually.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@ThatGuy68289349 We could not ask for a better neighbor than Canada. The only reasonable time to dislike Canada is when we are playing them in hockey… and that ends with the final buzzer.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@DanielLurie Fantastic. For best results this should have public KPIs, quarterly public reporting and full transparency on how much is being spent, for what purpose and what results. Beware of people/orgs that say the results of their efforts cannot be measured.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@Noahpinion This is an opportunity to put in KPIs, public reporting and transparency. Anyone should be able to see where every dollar is going and what it has managed to accomplish. People/orgs doing a good job love to be measured and have the results published. The inverse is also true.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@TMZ The article is ambiguous about whether he was the john or the prostitute.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

@Noahpinion 1)Love SF, 2) It’s arguably the most important city in America/possibly the world (imo), 3) Love the city’s rebound, and 4) I also believe it should be more spectacular and functional than all other cities.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

17/
One of the great advantages of having 50 states pursuing different policies is that we get to find out.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

1/
We’re in the early innings of a fascinating natural experiment. Some states and cities are welcoming data centers, while others are banning or significantly impeding their development. In a few years, we should be able to look back and ask: who got this right?
The nice thing is that we can define the scorecard now, before we know the results.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

16/
I fully support the right of cities and states to decline or impede data-center development. Different communities have different priorities, and local governments should be free to make those tradeoffs.
But I suspect that, ten years from now, many of the places that aggressively discouraged data-center investment will regret that decision.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

15/
Communities could discover that billion-dollar facilities generate surprisingly few permanent jobs or economic spillovers. And poorly planned projects in water- or power-constrained regions could create genuine shortages.
Those are empirical questions—which is what makes the next several years so interesting.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

14/
Falling prices can be the consequence of collapsing demand just as rising prices can be the consequence of increasing prosperity.
There are certainly ways the skeptics could turn out to be right. Utilities could socialize enormous infrastructure costs. Governments could give away more in tax incentives than they receive in incremental revenue.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

13/
Costs may rise faster in those locations as well. But that isn’t necessarily evidence that something has gone wrong. It is useful to think about the reverse case. When the major factory in a town closes, housing prices and rents often fall. Nobody celebrates the decline in the cost of living as evidence that the town has become more prosperous.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

12/
I expect successful data-center markets will ultimately experience higher wages, greater investment, more business formation and stronger economic growth. I also expect many of them to become more attractive places to live, with better services, infrastructure, restaurants and other amenities.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

11/
The water story is similar. Modern facilities can recirculate much of their cooling water, use alternative cooling technologies and, where practical, substitute reclaimed or non-potable water for drinking water. The right question isn’t whether a data center uses water—it obviously does—but whether its incremental consumption creates meaningful scarcity relative to the available local supply.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

10/
That could accelerate investment in renewables, storage, natural gas, nuclear and emerging technologies such as advanced geothermal. Rather than simply consuming a fixed supply of electricity, data centers may help cause the supply to expand.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

9/
More interestingly, I suspect the surge in electricity demand will ultimately be a catalyst for energy innovation and investment. If AI creates a large, predictable and well-capitalized new source of electricity demand, it improves the economics of building new generation and transmission.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

8/
I’m firmly in the optimist camp.
I think the energy and water challenges are real but largely addressable, particularly for new facilities. Data-center developers have enormous incentives to secure reliable long-term supplies of both electricity and water before committing billions of dollars of capital.

[TedTobiason @TedTobiason]

7/
• The concentration of technical infrastructure and workers attracts complementary businesses and contributes to higher wages, productivity and economic growth.
• Over time, prosperous data-center markets experience improvements in amenities and services—schools, infrastructure, restaurants, entertainment and culture.