Vulcan

As a kid I was way too competitive in musical chairs, and still am. Fat Tailed.

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

This is it.
Everything learned spending millions on longevity.

From: Your Immortal Unc and Auntie.
To: Our Immortal nieces and nephews.

0. Sleep is the world's most powerful drug.
1. Be in your bed for 8 hours
2. Same bedtime every night, any time before midnight
3. Don’t eat right before bed
4. Calm foods for dinner
5. No screens 1 hour before bed
6. Avoid added sugar (be aware it’s in everything)
7. Avoid all things in an American convenience store
8. Avoid fried foods
9. Shoes off at the door
10. Eat whole foods, particularly veggies fruits nuts legumes berries
11. Walk a little after meals or air squats
12. Get your heart rate high routinely
13. Lift heavy things
14. Stretch daily
15. Water pik, floss, brush, tongue scrape, morning and night
16. Make an effort to drink water
17. Get sunlight when you wake up (UV is low)
18. Protect skin in midday sun
19. Stand up straight
20. See at least one friend once a week
21. Avoid plastic where you can (in all things)
22. Circulate air in rooms
23. When stressed, breathe, learn to calm your body
24. Go to the dentist
25. Avoid sitting for long times
26. Protect your hearing, the world is too loud
27. Alcohol is bad for you
28. Finish coffee before noon
29. Avoid bright lights after sunset
30. If obese, look into a GLP
31. Sleep in a cold room
32. Texting while driving is dangerous
33. Turn off all notifications
34. Limit social media use
35. Don’t smoke anything
36. If you struggle to sleep, read a physical book before bed
37. 1 hour before bed have a calm wind down routine: bath, read, light walk, listen to music
38. The body is a clock and loves routine. Have a daily morning and evening schedule.
39. Avoid long distance travel where you can
40. Baby steps first: incorporate new things slowly
41. Do less… most things don’t work.

Bonus points if you get your blood checked.

Start here, it will change your life.

[pnorm @paleonormie]

the future is just an endless churn of adapting your consumption habits to whatever venture-capital-backed seller is currently selling at a loss to capture market share

[The Icahnist @TheIcahnist]

The New Marc Rich?

> be german oil trader

>obsessed with dallas since childhood
>see jr ewing drinking champagne and trading oil
>decide "yeah that’s gonna be me"

> go to kazakhstan young
> just making contacts and smoking cigarettes in -40C oil fields

> buy crude in cash from sketchy producers
> truck it to refinery in rusted soviet cars
> love the dirt, chaos, sulphur, danger

>2022
>russia invades ukraine
>entire western oil industry panics
>sanctions everywhere

> big firms like bp and shell exit
> oil still needed though

> market becomes giant gray zone

enter 27-year-old me

> start brokering fuel oil cargos through dubai
> some russian, some “blended”

>paperwork says legal
>lawyers say legal
>good enough

>first cargo

>+ $1,000,000

> nice

> at one point accidentally stuck with $100m cargo nobody wants
> ship sitting off fujairah burning cash every day

>hire nuclear-tier lawyers

>force buyer to accept shipment

>survive

>keep trading

>tiny company
>like 3–5 people

>move billions in oil

>banks not needed because russian suppliers selling on open credit

>2022–2025

> trade ~$2B worth of oil

> personal profit > $250M

> turn 30

own €7m villa above cannes
> renovating it for €14m

> parents get their own €5m villa

> throw birthday at la guéríte

> 300 bottles of cristal carried in with sparklers

> restaurant installs plaque calling me

> "legend of la guéríte"

> buy picassos
> plan to buy caravaggio

> trade entire business from iphone

> spend mornings running in forest screaming into phone at counterparties

> life good

[litquidity @litcapital]

lmfaaaaaooooooooo

[PiQ @PiQMarkets]

Many people are finding out that being long in a bull market does not make you great trader.

Lots of lessons are being taught right now.

[Josh Billinson @jbillinson]

we sella the parmesan to willing buyers atta the fair market price

[Michael Spyker @ShaleTier7]

My steak too juicy, my lobster too buttery, my pillow too cold, my banking applicants too autistic

[Quantіan @quantian1]

I would interview someone with a listed interest in “olive oil” almost irrespective of the rest of their resume, that’s the kind of hyper autism that will absolutely mint at the right firm

[Anthony Bonato @Anthony_Bonato]

I'm generally not a fan of footnotes in math papers, but this one is a classic

[TBU @TBU12345678]

about 1x per quarter I have this existential crisis that I’ve dedicated my life to some weird combo of basic arithmetic and poker instead of doing something meaningful. then either earnings or bonus season rolls around and i forget that it ever happened…such is public equities!

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Hohn’s story is wild.

In 2008, he lost 43% and watched his fund collapse from $19 billion to under $5 billion. Investors fled. He publicly swore off activism after getting humiliated in a railroad proxy fight.

17 years later, he just posted the largest single-year hedge fund profit in history.

Here’s what happened in between:

From 2003 to 2007, Chris Hohn was the golden boy of activist investing. He ran TCI like a wrecking ball. Bought 1% of ABN Amro and sent a scathing letter demanding breakup. Triggered a $100 billion bidding war at the peak of the market. Forced out the CEO of Deutsche Börse after killing their London Stock Exchange bid. German politicians called him a “locust.” He didn’t care. Assets soared 30-fold in five years.

Then 2008 hit.

TCI lost 43%. His CSX railroad battle turned into a public disaster when the stock dropped 50% after he won four board seats. He declared defeat, sold his shares, and told the press he was done with activism. By 2012, assets had collapsed to $4.9 billion. Most of his team quit.

What most people don’t know is what Hohn did next.

He looked at his portfolio and realized he’d been playing the wrong game. Special situations. Distressed plays. Banks. He’d strayed from concentration into complexity.

So he rebuilt TCI around a single thesis: own monopolies.

Not “companies with moats.” Actual monopolies. His test: can they price above inflation? If competition can compress margins, he walks. Airlines grow 5% annually and make no money. Airports grow 5% annually and print cash. He wants the airports.

The result is a 10-stock portfolio where GE Aerospace represents 23% of a $50 billion fund. Five holdings account for 73%. Portfolio turnover sits at 21%. Average holding period rivals some marriages.

Griffin’s $16 billion record in 2022 came from running hundreds of strategies across thousands of positions with 2,900 employees. Hohn’s $18.9 billion came from sitting in credit rating agencies and aerospace duopolies for a decade with a team of 8.

Same destination. Opposite paths.
Citadel wins by being everywhere during chaos. TCI wins by being nowhere except inside tollbooths.

The real lesson here: Hohn turned a 43% drawdown and near-total investor exodus into the highest annual profit any hedge fund has ever generated. He did it by becoming the opposite of what made him famous. Less activism, more patience. Fewer stocks, longer holds. No banks, no airlines, just monopolies that can raise prices faster than inflation.

Sometimes the real alpha comes from nearly losing everything.

[Vulcan @VulcanFinance]

@zoomertea Try the above - if you don’t have the wire rack then make sure to pre heat and can put on baking paper too

If you think meat is too wet then add breadcrumbs - for some reason I make sausage rolls when I have leftover Shokupan

[Vulcan @VulcanFinance]

@zoomertea Pastries you can bake them blind (use like beans/sugar/rice). Sausage rolls shouldn’t be going soggy - make sure meat isn’t too wet, use wire rack/perf baking tray and make sure you’ve got the heat right in over - once again could also blind bake them

[Kevin Carpenter @kejca]

Charlie Munger: "I have a pile on my desk that solves most of my problems. It's called the Too Hard Pile. And I just keep shifting things to the Too Hard Pile."

"Every once in a while, an easy decision comes along and I make it. That's my system. Everything goes to the Too Hard Pile — except for a few easy decisions which I make promptly."

[Your Accountant @TJiMTS]

100k salary is now higher take home than 110k salary with 10k salary sacrifice

I can't believe someone concocted this idea and it got approved

[Vulcan @VulcanFinance]

@SirClmnt @_Unknown_D_ Probably not as much as you’d think but still a factor. Construction halting so less completions. Less developments. Pricing high. More attractive markets for overseas. Uncertainty coming up to the budget.
Some interesting info to build on some of this:

https://t.co/fN7KWvlH2Z

[John Wang @j0hnwang]

> be Justin Sun
> spawn in China in 1990
> graduate from Peking Uni (harder to get into than Harvard), then UPenn
> found Peiwo, China’s largest live chat app with 10M users
> become Jack Ma’s golden boy protégé
> CCP: “this guy's promoting aural porn” → permaban
> at 23, join Ripple as C-Suite to lead its China business

> 2017: launch Tron with $70M ICO
> China bans ICOs hours later
> fuck it flee to US, get accused of plagiarizing Tron’s whitepaper
> hatersmad.exe
> 2018: acquire the largest piracy software, BitTorrent and slap a token on it (BTT)
> 2019: drop $4.57M for Warren Buffett charity lunch

> 2021: gain diplomatic immunity from US DOJ by becoming Ambassador of Grenada to the WTO
> “Your username is now: ‘His Excellency’”
> 2023: sued by SEC for wash-trading and celebrity shill
> stake $500M in ETH, becoming largest individual staker on the planet
> 2024: self-anoint as “Prime Minister” of fake country ‘Liberland’
> spend $6.2M on banana duct-taped to wall just to eat it onstage

> 2025: SEC drops case after Trump’s inauguration
> ape $20M into $TRUMP, #1 holder, private dinner with Trump in 2025
> yolo $75M into $WLFI, Trump’s DeFi project
> hit a clean 10x on $WLFI, up $700M day-one (??)
> pay $28m to go to space on Bezos’ Blue Origin rocketship
> now 50% of all USDT supply on Tron
> gigasend TRX to #8 largest crypto at $30B market cap
> career arc reads like shitpost but it's just insane lore

[Vulcan @VulcanFinance]

@nextgcon @itsolelehmann

[Giuliano @Giuliano_Mana]

Lee Kuan Yew is the most exceptional leader I've read about.

Long thread with how LKY took Singapore from third world to first: