Epicurean Dealmaker

If you're a fan of elegant prose, I can't recommend Epicurian Dealmaker[1] enough. Sadly, the blog hasn't been written to in 8-ish years now. But I suspect that most of the information is still probably reasonably accurate. --- 1. https://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2013/02/table-of-contents.html

I would recommend two articles by the same author as well-written, approachable discussions of how public markets work in this respect: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2013/09/go-ask-alice.html?m=1 http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2011/05/jane-you-ignorant-slut.…

>At least in finance you can get to a number where you can finally say 'fuck it', and go do what you really want to do... I recently quit my job. I was working for a large investment bank. Many people talk about leaving to do what they really want to do, something interesting that they can be proud of. Very, very few actually do it. Turns out no amount of money is ever 'enough'. Turns out adjusting your lifestyle from 400k$ to 100k$ is not so easy. This golden cage phenomenon is well described here: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/can-buy-me-love.html

The Epicurean Dealmaker wrote a fantastic post a while back, and I will endorse but not repeat his entirely correct explanation of why IPOs are supposed to price at a discount; just go read it. http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2013/09/go-ask-alice.html

Would you care to elaborate on how exactly this "scam" works? The job of the underwriter is to guarantee that a certain amount of stock is sold at the point of IPO. They are paid to canvas their clients and market the IPO. That is what they do. I would strongly recommend you try and understand how IPOs work and how capital is raised before you bring out the pitchforks. If you are curious, I would recommend reading the blog post below which will explains, probably better than I ever could. http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2011/05/jane-you-ignorant-slut.… [EDIT]: Let me just add - yes, the underwriters may offer the stock to their clients at a rate that may be lower to where the market goes when the shares start trading. The underwriter's clients may decide to take profit in the first few days if the price shoots up. The stock price will be volatile either way. So if you are considering buying Facebook stock, and are prepared to hold for a while, buying at the time of opening may be OK. If you are afraid of short term volatility, wait until the price settles down.

There is a method behind this madness (... or rather title inflation). This webpage explains it pretty well (it is a bit tongue in cheek but it is Friday). https://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2013/03/curriculum-vitae.html

There is never justification for abusive treatment of others at work, but there are business reasons for the prevalence of overnight and weekend work by junior bankers. This post has an insider’s perspective explaining how the daily flow of the business in corporate finance and M&A requires a lot of the work done by junior bankers to be completed at night or on weekends: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-fine-disregard-for-ru…

Check out the 'Lindy Effect.' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Effect Also read about 'Chesterton's Fence.' http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/03/chesterton-fence.html

And a counterpoint: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2015/03/uncle-warren-explains-i… Accept no one's argument at face value, especially when it's coming from a man who has spent the last 50 years exploiting market inefficiencies.

The Epicurean Dealmaker's thoughts (he's an MD for some big shot bank): http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2014/07/you-go-first.html

I have two examples where I'm of the opinion my title was clearly better suited for HN. Goodwill Hunting (http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.nl/2012/11/goodwill-hunting.html) which I changed to something like "An investment bankers take on the Autonomy take over. This blog is well written and I've read every post on it but in most cases the subject of a post will only become clear when reading the post. Thus it is a bad title for use on a news aggregator. GNU Typist (http://www.gnu.org/software/gtypist/) which I changed to "GNU Typist: Universal typing tutor" which is a variation on the first sentence of the page. My title clearly describes what one can expect, is not overly long or linkbaity. Interested in the opinion of other HN'ers on my edits.

Your comment reminded me of Chesterton's Fence http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/03/chesterton-fence.html It has been written about a few hundred times in various blogs. Basically, if you don't see a reason, before you make changes think harder until you do.

Good lord, this article is inane. For a rebuttal (and many, many clarifications) please see: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/11/goodwill-hunting.html

http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/03/chesterton-fence.html This paradox rests on the most elementary common sense. The gate or fence did not grow there. It was not set up by somnambulists who built it in their sleep. It is highly improbable that it was put there by escaped lunatics who were for some reason loose in the street. Some person had some reason for thinking it would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we really cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.

Unfortunately the human factor is exactly the problem with these types of systems. I don't think humans can ever be considered to be safe stewards of anything where a seemingly remote cascade event can wipe out life on the planet. Look at the disaster of Long-Term Capital Management from the financial industry as an example, where a presumed ten sigma event almost wiped out the whole western financial system. http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.fi/2007/05/110000000000000000000000… These nuclear reactors are built with the same underlying principles and risk-management profiles. There's always the element of human error; you can't over-engineer something you did not foresee. In addition to that you have the enormous profit incentives from running nuclear power. These incentives can overwhelm the incentives for safety, or lead to disregard of warnings where profit potential would be compromised if warnings were attended to. It's human, therefore it's hard to ever sleep completely sound knowing that these constructions are running on the planet. Fukushima didn't just happen because one mistake was made either. It happened because a long string of mistakes and disregard of safety happened. Want to bet it doesn't happen again? It's hard to bet against human nature... http://carnegieendowment.org/files/fukushima.pdf

This kind of article doesn't address the issue known as Chesterton's fence [1]. If so-called "low power" poses are so bad for you, why have they survived evolution? Why do we have such strong ingrained impulses to assume them in the first place? "Experts" need to give a very, very convincing answer to this question before urging us to abandon such poses. Anecdotally, I've often been with groups of engineers where everyone was assuming "low power" poses. The discussion seemed to flow more constructively in such circumstances; it was as though everyone admitted that they didn't know the right answers. They felt free to submit very rough ideas because everybody else was just as ignorant and not in a position to shoot them down. Enter a "confident" program manager, however, and the group quickly devolved into silence and/or banalities; everyone felt reluctant to express opinions that they didn't feel completely certain about. [1] http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2012/03/chesterton-fence.html

I got into this debate with some finance friends this weekend. This essay I've seen linked gives a rebuttal: http://epicureandealmaker.blogspot.com/2009/05/you-realithe-of-courth-… "Think about it. The political stakes for the Obama Administration in the Chrysler fiasco are monumental... This leads to my second point. The negotiations over carving up claims to Chrysler Corporation prior to bankruptcy were just that: negotiations. Notwithstanding whatever principles of Truth, Justice, and the American Way the Chrysler non-Tarp lenders would have us believe undergird their positions, they were simply one party among many to a very complicated negotiation over the proper distribution of value of a very large and troubled company. Yes, there are general principles and precedents concerning the division of spoils in a corporate bankruptcy which normally guide such processes. Yes, many of these have been laid down over decades of contested and uncontested bankruptcies prosecuted through our court system. That being said, none of these precedents are Holy Writ. The parties to the Chrysler negotiation tried to agree to a prepackaged division of spoils which they could present to a bankruptcy judge and thereby speed the company's restructuring. They failed. Did someone—the government, the UAW, the non-Tarp secured lenders—overreach? Maybe. Does it matter who? Not in the least. A pre-agreed deal was not struck, so the distribution of claims to Chrysler will…