These are my Delicious links for October 17th through October 22nd:
- Domainr – Handy tool for coming up with Domain Names using non-standard TLDs.
- Powell Endorses Obama – The Caucus Blog – NYTimes.com – A recap of Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press, including video.
- More on the Soldier Kareem R. Khan – The Lede – Breaking News – New York Times Blog – Background information on Kareem Khan, the Muslim American soldier who was killed in Iraq and cited by Colin Powell in his endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press.
- WANTS FOR SALE – A really fun concept by a designer couple who wanted to do a creative project together with the goal of making a little extra spending cash. So, they decided they would paint the items they want to buy with that cash and sell each painting for the price of the item in question (e.g. “A Slice Of Pepperoni” went for $3). Essentially, they’re asking their respective patrons to each sponsor the purchase of an item — it’s an Amazon wishlist in painting form.
- Service: Online Only: The New Yorker – The photo of the mother of Kareem Khan, a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq, at her son’s grave in Arlington that Colin Powell cited during his endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press.
- National Journal Online – Word Of Mouth Fueled Obama’s Star Turn – Interesting account of the serendipitous fashion by which Obama was invited to keynote the 2005 Democratic National Convention, his springboard onto the national political stage.
- Andrew Lahde: The Hedge Fund Manager With a 1000% Return – Finance Blog – Felix Salmon – Market Movers – Portfolio.com – On the subject of Andrew Lahde, the anti-subprime hedge fund wunderkind who just made a splash with his fuck you letter of resignation from the financial world, here’s a snapshot back to 10 months before the US stock market collapsed in which he predicts “a deep recession.” Prescient guy. It kinda sucks that our system managed to so disenchant him that he’d rather say fuck off than try to help fix things.
- The Big Picture | Andrew Lahde: Goodbye! – The farewell letter of Andrew Lahde, the most notable hedge fund manager to profit from the collapse of the housing bubble (and the US economy). The most impressive thing about this letter is his willingness to call it quits on a high note and resist the temptation to parlay his recent successes into other opportunities. I admire his discipline and self-restraint. The least impressive thing about it is his unbridled vitriol, which I find gets in the way of the substance of his message, with which I mostly agree. I fear people who should take his content to heart will be too busy reacting to his incendiary rhetoric. Good luck Andrew!
- STOCK MARKET EXTREMES – This comprehensive study looks at stock market turbulence and how it can affect investment
performance. Professor Seyhun studied stock market returns and risk for all months from 1926 through 2004, and for all trading days from 1963 through 2004. His findings highlight the challenge of market timing, since a small number of months or days accounted for a large percentage of market gains and losses. For example:
• For the 1963-2004 timeframe, the index gained at a geometric average annual rate of 10.84%, for a cumulative return on $1.00 of $73.99 over 42 years. If the best 90 trading days, or 0.85% of the 10,573 trading days, are set aside, the annualized return tumbles to 3.20% and the cumulative gain falls to $2.70.
• In the 1963-2004 span, missing the best 0.6% of the days (a total of 60 days in all) created an exposure to 95% of the risk of continuous stock market investing. In this situation, the average annual return would have been 19% less than that of Treasury Bills. - Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy – “[W]hat matters is who you are, not when you do it. If you’re the right sort of person, you’ll win even in a bad economy. And if you’re not, a good economy won’t save you…if you’re worried about threats to the survival of your company, don’t look for them in the news. Look in the mirror.””Fortunately the way to make a startup recession-proof is to do exactly what you should do anyway: run it as cheaply as possible…The immediate cause of death in a startup is always running out of money. The cheaper your company is to operate, the harder it is to kill. Fortunately it has gotten very cheap to run a startup, and a recession will if anything make it cheaper still.”
“It’s hard to say whether [the] advantages [of a recession] like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn’t matter much either way. It’s the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now.”