third world capital

L/O financials analyst, prev sellside model monkey

[Just Another Pod Guy @TMTLongShort]

Your occasional reminder that the hyperscalers have a 6-12 month forward view on scaling laws and model capabilities that you as a lowly analyst do not.

Be humble. Idc how many subs you have on substack or how much you made during the GFC.

You are at an intellectual disadvantage.

[Patrick OShaughnessy @patrick_oshag]

Get on the plane!

I loved Dan's description of what makes a great analyst today relative to 20 years ago.

It reminded me of @citrini analyst #3, who flew to the Strait of Hormuz during the war.

Being physically present is still one of the most underrated advantages for generating alpha.

"The great analyst 20 years ago was someone who could build a model fast and crack a complicated restructuring.

When I was at Jefferies, Drexel Burnham went bankrupt with a four-inch disclosure statement that nobody could crack.

I spent a whole weekend studying it. That ended up being one of the best claims trades in the history of bankruptcies.

Today, I think it's a junior Gavin Baker. Somebody who understands a company or an industry and the nuances of a technology.

I had an analyst. Casey's General Stores was one of the best performing stocks. It looked like a tech stock.

It was because they weren't a convenience store chain. They were a pizza chain masquerading as convenience stores.

So I had an analyst who went to Texas and ate pizza. That kind of analyst today is what is different."

[cephalopodshop @macrocephalopod]

Here’s the honest read. Here’s the real consideration. This is the genuine tradeoff. Here’s the honest answer. Here’s the key insight. This is the crux of the question. It’s worth flagging this. It’s not one or the other. Here’s what’s actually happening.

Shut the fuck up.

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

@macrocephalopod I got a 570mm since it comes in 40mm (I have smaller wrists)—am also assuming implicitly that it’ll be on updated firmware for longer than the 265 since the model is more recent. Build quality is also a touch nicer from when I tried them

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

@LSXYZ9 I thought dad-core shoes were drip again? 💀💀

[Blueprintsmb @blueprintsmb22]

Long post but the TLDR is choose your reference points carefully.

I grew up comfortable in Kansas with a father who owned a small business pulling $40k a year. I felt rich until I went to Brown. Then I felt like the poor. There were students that had BMWs parked on different parts of campus so they wouldn't have to walk far to get access to a car.

I needed to make money to pay back my parents for college so I went to Wall Street. After Morgan Stanley, I worked for a single manager hedge fund managing $1.5Bn (alot of money back in the day) in SF that had just received an anchor investment from Yale University.

My boss was making more money than ever and was spending it. He would vacation with Lance Armstrong and Cindy Crawford. He became close with Wes Edens at Fortress. We made investments in Fortress portfolio companies. My boss took board seats on some of these investments. My boss spent alot of time frustrated he was not on the same level as Edens.

My boss was also close with Charles Schwab and we also invested in SCHW. Charles would let my boss and the firm stay at Stock Farm in Montana to host events for our LPs and management of some of our portfolio companies. It was the first time I ever flew private. I met Don Valentine of Sequoia who was an LP in our fund. We ran into Huey Lewis in the men's locker room before playing some golf. It was a world I never knew really existed growing up in Kansas.

We were also investors in Herbalife and would complain to the CEO at the time Michael Johnson (ex Disney) that he was massively overpaid and that the compensation structure of the company needed better alignment for shareholders (based on hitting key KPIs, etc). He would say he impressions mattered in his industry and living in LA was expensive.

When 2008-9 happened, our fund got decimated as we basically were a long only. Heavy exposure to Fortress names with massive leverage was no bueno. My boss had board seats which meant we were restricted. Yale pulled their entire investment. While the world was burning down, my boss in his fancy office in the Transamerica building told me that I was lucky "to not have any money to lose" while the world was burning down lol. I get what he was saying now as we saw clients that had amassed generational wealth in tech or owning boring businesses in Louisiana lose half of their net worth in 12 months. People were scared.

I would move back to NYC and end up working for 3 billionaires at different points during my career as a journeyman buysider. I did well enough at points to have direct contact with some of them. I saw the same dynamic - always someone doing better. Always frustrated. Not that happy.

I stayed in this world just trying to stay alive with some good years and years I got paid nothing when performance was poor. I was fine staying on this never ending hamster wheel until 1) I got married 2) we had a daughter 3) my dad's cancer diagnosis got more grim and I did more self reflection on what game of life I was playing.

Ultimately I left to buy a small business which has been hard. I still have friends on the buyside and in tech that struggle with comparison. But the reference points I was around constantly in my W2 are no longer loud. I wake up early and turn on machines. Most of my team members never graduated high school. My customers are mostly salt of the earth sales people working for small distributors sprinkled with some big publicly traded companies. $4 gas is a huge problem to everybody I interact with during my day - my customers complain daily about it in their daily lives. I sometimes lend money to my team members when they need help. I have to fix problems every day as the business isn't big enough to support hiring a general manager right now. But I'm home for dinner every night. This works better for me and my family.

My life is simple now => bring in business to make sure the 10 team members can feed their families. Last year when tariffs and a big customer shutting down hurt business badly for 3 months, my accountant told me to start firing employees as my competitors were either shutting down or firing 25-33% of their entire staffs. Entire shifts were shut down. I fired no one. It didn't feel right. I just stopped paying myself.

This year things have turned around. Team members are making 25-33% more due to overtime. I have more purpose now as my life is simplified as I'm just focused on making sure my team can eat, we make good product for our customers and the business can continue to pay down debt.

This is a hard path. I wouldn't recommend it for many, but it works better for me at this point in my life. My mental health has never been better. My wife reminds me how big of an asshole I used to be in finance as I was always stressed about my exposure / frustrated I wasn't doing better. What changed? My reference points changed. I no longer live in NYC. I live in this myopic world where I spend my weeks talking to team members, customers and vendors. 4am until 4pm is spent living in this world. 4pm-8pm is spent with my family before I go to bed ahead of a 330am wake up.

I have no doubt if I stayed in finance and was living in the Upper West Side in NYC, I'd still be playing my own version of "why aren't I doing better."

It took having a child and thinking more about my Dad's mortality (he passed this October from cancer) to re-evaluate things. I wish I had been brave/smart enough to consider a pivot earlier in life.

https://t.co/kenM7z2Feh

[Bucket Shop Capital @bucketshopcap]

Good interview. Punchline for me is ppl doubting the multiyear run in semis/hw are going to be in pain. I agree w/ "the big bottleneck is the fact that there are so many bottlenecks" argument. It's clear we are going to keep grinding up IMO...

https://t.co/J3NEoaBWEd

[BuccoCapital Bloke @buccocapital]

Thought these were two helpful/interesting reads on the market

Basically everyone long AI stocks and short everything else because they have to be. Some try to rationalize it, some try to accept it, others do it out of disgust

But here we are

[Rock Solid @ShitpostRock2]

Bro saw the error in his ways

[dalibali @dalibali2]

That’s the sound of memory sucking demand out of all other asset classes

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

@bucketshopcap Aged wonderfully (we are in memory momo hell)

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

@breadcrumbsre He increased his stake in Google at the same time though?

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

it’s always in Florida

[WTF @mrwtffacts]

In Miami, two inmates on murder charges who never met face-to-face had a baby through an AIR DUCT.

Daisy (29) and Joan (23) fell in love via the vent between floors. He wrapped his semen in plastic, tied it to a rope made of torn bedsheets, and lowered it down.

She pulled it up and self-inseminated with a store-bought applicator.

In 2024, she gave birth to a baby girl with DNA confirming it’s their child.

The jail is currently investigation this shocking security lapse.

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

why are majority of the replies AI dawg wtf

[litquidity @litcapital]

Bro turned down $1 million and blew up his career instead lmaooo

[Velvet Milkman @velvetmilkman0]

POV you’re a junior banker at JP Morgan and your MD wants to have a performance chat

[Inglourious Capital @inglouriouscap]

Izzy Englander setting up Bobby Jain’s new office

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

@MikeFritzell feel like there’s one too many negative headlines over the next 24 months in the Philippines for it to be considered a buying opp, no? which stocks / sub sectors did you have in mind

[third world capital @thirdworldcap]

@DeepDishEnjoyer try 86

[Larry the Cat @Number10cat]

Lots of accounts on this site are financially rewarded for spreading lies and convincing you that everything is getting worse and you should be afraid. The good news is it's not: homicides in England and Wales are their lowest level in five decades and killings involving a knife are at their lowest recorded level