DIRS.INFO The most relevant business & tech news

☆ A real-estate investor who's built a 311-unit portfolio over the last 26 years lays out how new investors can scale up and maximize cash flow in today's market as strategies like home-flipping and BRR
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

A much better strategy to scale up in today's market is house hacking, Curry said. When Anne Curry started to build her 311-unit portfolio in the late 1990s, she turned to hard money lenders. Curry also said it offers investors to maximize cash flow and the chance to scale up. "Buy something that your mortgage payment is such where you could rent it out for that much, or maybe a little more," she said. The total mortgage payment for the property is about $3,000 per month she said, and he's able to charge $1,800 for the one unit and $900 for the bedroom.

☆ Zillow's chief economist explains why the party is over for short-term real-estate investing tactics like house-flipping — and says long-term strategies designed to generate cash flow are an investor'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

You know, long run mortgage rates are expected to be around five-and-a-half, six." Economists at other real-estate firms share similar views to Olsen's in respect to mortgage rates, at least for the rest of 2023. Plus, when mortgage rates eventually fall, one can refinance into a lower rate, improving an investor's positive cash flow. In the meantime, there's a way that buyers can get around high mortgage rates, Olsen said. Many sellers are offering concessions, like paying for repairs and helping pay for a rate buydown.

☆ Peace, love, and Hitler: How Lex Fridman's podcast became a safe space for the anti-woke tech elite
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Julia Black | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +26 min

Seemingly overnight, episodes of Fridman's podcast began racking up millions of views. YouTube/Lex FridmanIn his podcast, Fridman asks world-renowned scientists, historians, artists, and engineers a series of wide-eyed questions ("Who is God? But recently, "The Lex Fridman Podcast" has become a haven for a growing — and powerful — sector looking to dismantle years of "wokeness" and cancel culture. Twitter"The Lex Fridman Podcast" offered a rare opportunity to listen to four-hour conversations with luminaries of tech and science. Bhaskar Sunkara, the founder and publisher of the socialist magazine Jacobin who appeared on Fridman's podcast in December, praised Fridman's interviewing style.

The deal represents a doubling down by Ovintiv on the Permian, where exploration in many areas still promises lucrative returns. Ovintiv will pay cash and also use some of its stock as currency for the deal, the sources said. If the negotiations conclude successfully, a deal could be announced as early as this week, the sources said, cautioning that no deal is certain. The deal will boost the percentage of Ovintiv's production coming from oil, at a time of low natural gas prices. The deal comes as EnCap is attempting to raise a new fund focused on investments in oil and gas production, its first since 2017, sources told Reuters in November.

☆ AI experts disown Musk-backed campaign citing their research
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-31 | by ( Martin Coulter | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

Civil society groups in the U.S. and EU have since pressed lawmakers to rein in OpenAI's research. Among the research cited was "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots", a well-known paper co-authored by Margaret Mitchell, who previously oversaw ethical AI research at Google. Her research argued the present-day use of AI systems could influence decision-making in relation to climate change, nuclear war, and other existential threats. Asked to comment on the criticism, FLI's Tegmark said both short-term and long-term risks of AI should be taken seriously. Twitter will soon launch a new fee structure for access to its research data, potentially hindering research on the subject.

☆ Bank fears will likely lead to even more market volatility in the week ahead
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-24 | by ( Patti Domm | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

Market turbulence could reign supreme once again in the week ahead, as investors worry about the potential for more trouble rippling through the banking system. The broader market was initially under pressure Friday as investors became jittery about Deutsche Bank . "The market is saying: 'You, the Fed, do not appreciate the slowdown that is going to hit us,'" Chandler said. "The market is going to do a lot better and it held onto its gains despite all the things that rocked the market. He added that market concern about banks has risen, and there is concern credit tightening will hurt the economy.

☆ Interest rate decision: What to expect from the Fed meeting
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Christine Romans | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

Among the choices, the Fed could continue its aggressive rate-hike campaign to cool inflation that is running at triple the central bank’s target of 2%. Warren — already a critic of the Fed’s inflation fight — leveled further blistering criticism of the Republican Fed chief. In addition to achieving price stability and financial stability, the Fed’s broader mandate includes supervision of individual financial institutions, Leer says, and “that’s where the failure lies. “The Fed needs to secure both price stability and financial stability, something that it has failed to so recently,” he told CNN. And this Fed chief inherited an unprecedented economy.

REUTERS/Marton MonusBUDAPEST, March 20 (Reuters) - After the lights dim in Budapest's magnificent Opera House, Ukrainian ballerina Ganna Muromtseva flutters high with undulating arms in the lead role of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake ballet. Muromtseva was at the peak of her career at the National Opera of Ukraine when the war rewrote all her plans. Her mother plans a visit to see her in Swan Lake at the end of March, which gives her emotional strength. Though the Hungarian State Opera has hired her for another year and she is happy with her new opportunity, Muromtseva would naturally like to return home one day. "I am waiting for this day, that one day I can dance on Kyiv stage again, but for now I have a contract here."

☆ A day trader who returned 380% in 2022 explains why he's keeping his portfolio entirely in cash right now — and how shorting crypto in the face of a recession could lead to another big windfall
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Lisa Kailai Han | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Mark Szemeszki returned 380% last year by getting into the oil trade and by shorting bitcoin. On a recent podcast, Szemeszki shared the macroeconomic indicators he tracks for his trades. He also explained why he's currently 100% in cash — but why shorting altcoins could soon make sense. But whenever an occasion arises where this correlation inverts, he'll short altcoins as their prices begin to relatively increase. "I always try to position it so even though in the short term I may not be right, in the long term I will be right eventually," he explained.

☆ Benchmark's Bill Gurley calls Silicon Valley Bank's collapse 'a black swan event' at SXSW, and casts aside criticism of the move to secure its depositors
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Benchmark's general partner Bill Gurley defended the decision to cover SVB's depositors. The venture capital veteran spoke briefly about the bank after interviewing Tim Ferriss at SXSW. Gurley called Silicon Valley Bank's collapse a "black swan event." Gurley retweeted US Senator Mitt Romney Sunday night after federal regulators announced that depositors in Silicon Valley Bank would have full access to their cash. Bill Gurley shared his thoughts at the end of a conversation with Tim Ferriss at SXSW.

☆ A CIO shares the strategy behind 'The Big Short' garage hedge fund that flipped $110,000 to over $80 million — and explains how to use the same approach in today's stock market to make extremely cheap
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Laila Maidan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Universa Investments, a "black swan" hedge fund specializing in market shocks, sensationalized this approach after it made headlines in the first quarter of 2020 for a 4,144% return when the stock market plunged. So what we do for investors is our fund serves as protection against that sort of exogenous event, that sort of crash," Sidial said. In short, it's a bet against the odds in exchange for lofty returns, or what's known as convex payouts. However, if there's a market crash, the volatility on the VIX generally outperforms more than any other underlying securities in the US equities market, he noted. For example,Cambria Tail Risk ETF (TAIL) was up 27% from mid-feb to mid-march 2020 during the stock market crash brought about by the pandemic.

Analysts have gradually raised their forecasts for where the key rate will end this year, to 7.5% from 7.13% in the previous poll. "High budget spending is the key issue," said Anton Tabakh, Chief Economist at RA Expert, who expected the upsurge in inflation at the beginning of the year due to higher budget spending to be contained. "But at the same time, there will be a preventative rate increase and, accordingly, we see the key rate at 7.5% in December, from 8%-8.25% in the middle of the year." Tabakh also said that all risks were higher and the level of uncertainty elevated. Inflation expectations, an indicator to which the central bank pays close attention ahead of meetings, rose to 12.2% in February.

☆ Peacetime Would Be a Black Swan Event For Energy
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Carol Ryan | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

The “Russia question,” what role the country’s fossil fuels might play in peacetime, may not be the most pressing issue for energy bosses and the investors backing them. The year since Russia invaded Ukraine has been a roller coaster for energy markets. Oil prices have been volatile, with the global Brent benchmark peaking at $133 a barrel in March before falling back around $80 today—below where they traded on the first day of the war. That is nothing compared with natural gas. After Moscow cut pipeline supplies to Europe, the region’s benchmark TTF day-ahead gas price hit a level equivalent to almost $580 a barrel of oil in late August.

☆ ChatGPT has investors scrambling to get on the AI bandwagon so much that obscure stocks are soaring just like big-name chip companies
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-08 | by ( Phil Rosen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

That's that for the latest Fed talk — but today, we're taking a closer look at the AI hype train passing through the stock market. And small-cap tech stocks with names that nod to bots like BigBear.ai and SoundHound AI have similarly notched gains so far this year. Tech stocks have come back with a "vengeance," Fundstrat's Mark Newton said. It's a necessary step for policymakers to take, the group said, even if it means declines in stock market returns. Wall Street's biggest firms are warning their clients not to trust the stock market rally.

The government declared a "level 4 alarm", calling for international assistance, and a three-month state of emergency in the most affected provinces. 'BLACK SWAN'Reconstruction costs are likely to run to many billions of dollars, straining an economy already hit by 58% inflation. The six-party opposition said only that the government should work "without discrimination" to address the disaster that hit regions including Kurdish communities and Syrian refugees. But Ugur Poyraz, Secretary General of centre-right nationalist IYI Party, said he had toured severely hit areas and as of Tuesday morning seen no sign of emergency rescue workers. "The response of Erdogan's government to this natural disaster might shape the attitude of the floating voter but the loyalties of most voters are already determined."

☆ James Abate's stock fund has nearly doubled its benchmark over 3 tumultuous years. Here's how he says investors should get ready for potential black swan events that could shape 2023.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Marley Jay | Lisa Kailai Han | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Kiplinger rates the fund as the best US large-company stock fund from 2020 to 2022. That's not the most encouraging backdrop for stocks, especially since Abate said investors will be less comfortable taking big risks. He added that while the beginning of 2023 has been the opposite of 2022, that's not going to last. For the first black swan, Abate pointed towards the escalation of the Russian-Ukraine crisis, including the recent increase in air defense activity, ground troops, and the shipment of armored vehicles, tanks, and fighter aircraft. As for the second black swan, Abate also highlighted the Japanese government's "unprecedented" and "unsustainable" buying of the yen to boost the currency against others like the dollar.

☆ A night with Wall Street's stars: Take a look at Insider's celebration of top investors, dealmakers, and traders
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-01 | by ( Michelle Abrego | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Hello 10 Things on Wall Street readers! As you might know, for the last few years Insider has been highlighting some of the most talented young people on Wall Street. Take a look at all the photos from Insider's celebration of Wall Street's rising stars here. A decade after the private-equity giant helped launch Athene Holdings, more private money managers are moving into insurance as they hunt for higher yields, the Wall Street Journal reports. Adam Berry, head of US loan trading is leaving Wall Street to join the Philadelphia Eagles, according to Bloomberg.

☆ Black Swan Manager Preps for Financial ‘Mega-Tinderbox-Timebomb’
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-31 | by ( Spencer Jakab | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

No risk, no reward. While Mark Spitznagel wouldn’t disagree, a letter from the star hedge-fund manager seen by The Wall Street Journal has some striking insights on both fronts. A protégé of “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb noted on the occasion of his fund’s 15-year anniversary that using it to hedge a standard stock portfolio would have enhanced long-run returns through its bets on extremely bearish events.

☆ Covid broke supply chains. Now on the mend, can they withstand another shock?
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-16 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +8 min

“Because of that, supply chains are not as brittle as they were three years ago,” he said. “There could be another huge black swan event in a month that throws everything upside down; but for right now, it seems like respondents are predicting steadiness in the supply chain.”If anything, the pandemic’s shock to the supply chain should be a wake-up call, said Jack Buffington, director of supply chain and sustainability at First Key Consulting and assistant professor of supply chain management at the University of Denver. “I would categorize it as ‘efficiently broken,’” said Buffington, whose own book about supply chains, “Reinventing the Supply Chain: A 21st Century Covenant with America,” had its release delayed due to supply chain issues. “All supply chains really are is supply and demand, and there’s been so much disruption in materials and consumer demand related to labor and inflation and geopolitics,” he said. The complexities related to a globalized supply chain, human systems aren’t capable of handling it.”He added: “Covid wasn’t the cause of the problems with the supply chain, it was a trigger to show how bad it was,” he said.

More than a decade later, those that heeded this advice went on to become game-changing tech behemoths, including CNBC Disruptor 50 companies Block , Pinterest , Slack, Twilio , and Cloudera. Seed rounds had a record deal value in 2022, and valuations continued to grow even as late-stage venture companies nearer to the public market suffered. Venture funds raised a record amount of money in 2022, with $162.8 billion closed across 769 funds, according to PitchBook and the NVCA. We've seen companies struggle as public companies and then skyrocket, so a lower value-IPO is not the end of the road." "But when you can generate new share in a difficult market, when the market does turn, they are in a perfect position to capture more market share and customers."

The jump was aided by Bridgewater China's raising of 2.7 billion yuan through a product launch in December, said the sources. Connecticut-based Bridgewater launched its first onshore China fund in 2018, and three years later its assets under management (AUM) in China exceeded 10 billion yuan, catapulting the firm past Winton and Man Group to become the biggest foreign hedge fund house in the country. By early November, Bridgewater's onshore China funds grew to roughly 19 billion yuan, Shanghai government data showed. The steady performance of Bridgewater's China funds - mainly targeting wealthy individuals - was highlighted in the hedge fund firm's sales pitch, which was seen by Reuters. Bridgewater's first China fund achieved an annualised return of 15.6% in the four years following its October 2018 launch.

☆ Stock sentiment is positive despite lousy headlines
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-09 | by ( Paul R. La Monica | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

New York CNN —It’s only early January, but so far in 2023 the pendulum on Wall Street has swung (to paraphrase Billy Joel) from sadness to euphoria. But why is there such optimism on Wall Street all of a sudden? But it also showed the pace of job growth is slowing — and that could be a precursor to an eventual recession. But Wall Street is a funny place: Good news is often viewed as a bad sign, and vice versa. As long as the Fed can get inflation under control, investors might not be too concerned by a recession anyway.

☆ Taiwan is planning a satellite internet service amid China invasion fears after seeing how much Elon Musk's Starlink has helped in Ukraine
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-06 | by ( Pete Syme | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Taiwan is courting investors to create its own satellite-based internet similar to Starlink, the FT reports. The move comes amid increasing tensions between mainland China and Taiwan. Taiwan's digital minister, Audrey Tang, told the FT: "We look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how Starlink has been used very successfully." Starlink is operated by Elon Musk's SpaceX, and provides internet coverage via a constellation of satellites. Taiwan's decision to look at creating satellite-based internet comes amid increasingly tense relations with neighboring China.

☆ Former Fed chair Alan Greenspan warned a US recession is on its way and slammed failed crypto exchange FTX in a recent Q&A. Here are the 10 best quotes.
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-04 | by ( George Glover | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Former Federal Reserve chair Alan Greenspan shared his outlook for 2023 in a recent investment commentary. He warned a US recession is now "the most likely outcome" – and slammed bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. Sign up for our newsletter to get the inside scoop on what traders are talking about — delivered daily to your inbox. Since retiring as Fed chair in 2006, Greenspan has worked as a private advisor and financial consultant. Read more: A war between China and Taiwan is the economic 'black swan' investors should be most worried about, ex-Fed chair Alan Greenspan warns

☆ The year that brought high-flying Silicon Valley back down to earth
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-30 | by ( Catherine Thorbecke | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +9 min

The tech industry, already dominant, only seemed destined to grow even bigger at the start of this year. The spread of the Omicron variant suggested a continued pandemic-fueled demand for digital goods and services, which had buoyed many tech companies. The result was a bloodbath unlike anything the tech industry has seen in the past decade. For years, Silicon Valley has held up its founders as visionaries who can see far into the future. “I do not think venture is cratering, or the tech industry is cratering as an industry.”But for now, at least, there appears to be no end in sight to the pain for Silicon Valley and those who work in it.

Search resuls for: "Black Swan"

25 mentions found