Real Vision

I’ve discovered a source of information that is about 10 layers under the boggleheads. The conclusions they talk about are conclusions I’ve come up with independently. In FIRE land there is a concept of tribe. People look at FIRE as their tribe. MMM is a tribal leader, as is WCI and JL Collins and all the rest. I’m at best on the perimeter of that. FIRE is not my tribe, but neither do I consider FIRE my foe. I’m an American and I wish my fellows well, success, and happiness.

I’ve spent some time trying to understand economic behavioralism. I’ve always been an efficient markets kind of guy, but the arbs and the robots have morphed the markets into something which has a market perspective and a meta-market perspective. The morphing agent is big data and the effect big data has on the human brain. You will do what your brain tells you to do and a huge portion of what you do is irrational and sub-cortical. If the data comes fast enough reaction becomes totally automatic based on fear responses or possibly pleasure responses.

You see this in video games. Massive data flows with complete manipulation of visceral responses with virtually no thought involved except which arsenal do you choose. The decision is not whether to kill “someone” but how to do it most effectively, and then let the emotional reactions have their way, actually their meta-way since no one really gets killed or do they? The way to shaping behavior is through practice.

FIRE is about shaping behavior and its about practice and practices. It’s also about meta-practice since much of FIRE is irrational and about the biochemistry it accesses. There are many systems based on this, multi-level marketing comes to mind as does Dave Ramsey as does High School and College and even Medical School. Clearly working 100 hours a week for a decade has its visceral consequence beyond the acquisition of a certain skill set.

The following video looks at some of how society has been structured in our country, not all that different from the promise of med school. When we buy a stock we become owners from our point of view. When we take a job we become stake holders in a corporate society. From the corporate point of view we are merely resources. From the political point of view we are the same merely resources. In corporate land we are the resources that propel profits, and from the political POV we are the resources that propel political power and tyranny. All of that has a meta- component.

To access the video you have to sign up for a free 2 week trial so be aware. The information on the site is extensive something like 1500 videos on all kinds of topics. I went ahead and joined @ 180/yr because this is my tribe. This is the level of analysis and challenge in which I choose to operate, even if it doesn’t affect my portfolio. I don’t operate a hedge fund but I want to know something of that level of operator since my portfolio is dependent on the market. I also don’t operate my portfolio on leverage but it turns out I am the leverage since it’s my capital that is at risk so in some respect I am levered. It makes me more committed to understand when to buy and when to sell and when to hold in a dynamic and ever more complex market environment. The mantra is buy low sell high. You don’t have to buy everything or sell everything however. You can buy some and sell some and take a profit to buy some more when it’s low and sell some more when its high, or not. For that I need a level of thought deeper than buy cheap index funds and take a nap.

The video is not an investing blueprint, but a commentary on history from a long time insider. A commentary with a much different narrative than what we get as retail marketeers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJQYBWUqdIE

7 Replies to “Real Vision”

  1. Real Vision content looks interesting. I like what I’ve heard on podcasts and YouTube from Raoul Pal. I’ve got too much on my plate to make a subscription worthwhile right now, but I look forward to continuing to read your analysis and the insights you take away.

    1. Much of what I have watched look at the same problems i see. I was unaware of this site and the youtube vids until a couple week ago. I lot of it is traders talking trading and I did that 20 and 30 years ago and have no real interest in that today, in fact I have to actively fight the urge to trade, but the same macro economics that subsume trading and the risk management of trading affects buy and hold types as well. Anything you want to know about has 20 videos from professionals explaining the evidence. It is time consuming though. It hasn’t really affected my portfolio except to confirm my concerns. I was already going to de-risk some anyway, but given my quant bent it did give me enough concentrated info to hopefully build a more robust portfolio, at least for the next several years. I think life is episodic and I’m starting to think portfolios are likewise episodic and the portfolio will need some fine tuning all along the way. The technology as it destructs and dominates is not a trivial influence.

  2. Gasem,

    Thanks for introducing us to this Real Vision resource.

    Are you a member of the Blacklist level or the Pro level?

    https://www.realvision.com/pricing

    Is it worth the price of admission ? Your take after almost 1 year of joining.

    Please advise.

    Thanks for all you are doing.

    1. Hey LTF

      Depends on what you are looking for. I am a plus member and get plenty of content. Pro and black members get actual direction. I also have some other accounts with some other vendors. I may drop the other vendors and upgrade to pro, haven’t decided.

        1. I subscribe to a guy called Chris McIntosh who is down in New Zealand or Australia. He’s a deep value investor right now largely in commodity plays since we are inflating and commodities are cheap. Very bright guy but he tends to invest in very illiquid things. The problem with illiquid things is transaction actually can make huge moves in the market, so you may own something like KOL and it trades only 3K shares per day so a $250K trade amounts to 100% of the market volume and you can better believe the volatility will eat your lunch. So to get out of a position takes 6 weeks of fortuitously placed small lot trades. If the market crashed you’d be financially dead way before you could flee to safety. The trade off is his trades may make a 10x (10 bagger) in a 10 year horizon so your get rich as hell with money you can’t access. To trade Chirs’s picks you really need true world class trading platform like Interactive Brokers, not something like FIDO and you need to be able to field money in different currency. The other person I follow is Lyn Alden. She’s smart as hell and has a published portfolio to model. Both of these people have youtube presence.

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