Marginal Advice: Recent Episodes
Jordan M, Alex G
A "finance podcast" about interesting stories or happenings in the finance world or adjacent. Plus some other fun on the side.
Today on the podcast, we start with a very special guest and end with combining GPT-4 and Midjourney.
In between, we scratch the surface of how generative AI's developed over the past year and where it might go from here. Considering that all current AI is in the "worst version" it will ever be, concerns on misinformation and excitment on new possibilities will likely keep ramping up as humans (and Sam Altman) travel further down the path to artificial general intelligence. We play with GPT-4 in general and look at some convincing Midjourney images; it's a fun episode today!
It's been an eventful half a week for the banks. Don't start a bank run.
You've likely heard the talk about "The Second Biggest Bank Failure in History." While this is true, it's not as alarming as it sounds. Not only are more safeguards in place than in 2008, but the situation is a bit different. We go into why Silvergate and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed, how FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried are somehow connected to this too, and what you should do in response (spoiler: not much; you're good).
India's largest and most successful corporate entity is in hot water recently. Or hot air, given the Hindenburg.
Today we have a look over the Adani Conglomerate and its founder Gautam Adani. Its debt-driven business practices have propelled it to meteoric success in recent years in every area and sector you can think of. Problem is, a Wallstreet short-selling hedgefund Hindenburg Research alleges the Adani family owns more of their companies than is legal, and have been funneling billions into them from offshore related entities.
Following Hindenburg's claim of Adani pulling off "the largest corporate fraud in history", we have a look at how the politcally-connected [now former] world's 3rd richest man and his family may have been pulling strings behind the scenes to become India's flagship corporation.
What's the deal[ership] with car prices? Today we steer into a topic near and dear to Jordan's heart, cars (and their unfortunate pricing).
Spawning from 2020 supply shortages, new and used car prices have been driven up to absurd prices. Though supply chain issues have subsided, prices haven't followed suit. Which is why we're talking about it.
We'll go through some reasons some of these weird prices are happening. Plus, Jordan shares tales of used cars more expensive than new cars, paying $10,000 MORE for "The Chip Shortage Package," angry dealers, and more.
You may have eggsperienced a change in breakfast habits lately. With eggs peaking in the double digits in some stores and entirely sold out in others, people are asking some questions this morning.
We start out with some anecdotes, so for a bit of an overview here's why there's an egg shortage: As it turns out, there's several different answers that go as deep as you're willing to look. Egg consumption has been slightly up, chicken feed costs have been more than slightly up, and the big answer is that the chickens are sick — fifty millions chickens sick. But are the chickens the only sick things dragging up prices, or are some egg producers just as to blame? We take an in-depth look at all that and more on another very eggciting episode of the Marginal Advice Podcast! Have a look at the video version if you'd like: https://youtu.be/5OBwe23l7e8
Happy New Year! 2022 was a bit rocky economically, and today we're having a look at the some of the biggest companies and their out-of-the-ordinary losses over the year. Then for some perspective, we look backwards at some of the early 2000s Dotcom Bubble companies and their decline.
Timecodes if you want to skip around: 0:00 A Happy New Year in the '20s 0:52 Wasn't the Best Year for Equities 2:51 Meta Versus 2022 3:56 it is cold so we talk about jackets 5:52 Train Time 8:48 Back to Meta 12:45 Accept Cookies? Y/N 14:25 Metaman: Into the Metaverse 17:45 Trouble BTS at META 20:51 Tesla -69% 22:41 Why Tesla was Valued at a Trillion Dollars 32:49 WHERE IS THE ROADSTER 36:55 Apple is Bigger Than You Might Think 38:43 Dungeons and Dragons and Fees, Oh My 41:51 2002 42:52 The Worldcom Fraud 46:14 Cisco: The Apple of 2002 49:37 AOL 🏃 53:06 AIG, Too Big to Fail 55:46 Nortel and 1/3 of Canada's Stock Market 58:06 Yahoo! 1:01:58 bye jordan and alex
With only a pinprick, you can run hundreds of tests to find anything and everything you want to know about your blood. As an added bonus, it's also completely innacurate in every way.
Today we talk about Elizabeth Holmes and her biotech company Theranos that promised the world. Unfortunately for all involved, the only thing that came out of this company was a series of lies and tragedy. Despite hundreds of millions in venture capital funding, Theranos was unable produce a machine that worked as they promised and Founder Elizabeth Holmes deceived her way into billions. Now that the story seems to have closed with Holmes' recent sentencing, we take a look at some of the deception alongside other interesting behaviors she used to maneuver her way forward.
You may have seen Chiquita Banana invade a sovereign state, Teslas go exothermic, and an $8 investment result in $15 billion in pharmeceutical losses this past week. How did we get to these Tweets?
Events spanning the whole of 2022 have led us to this Twitter Blue climax of entertainment we see today. We go through the various steps in Musk's acquisition — purposeful or accidental — from buying up shares to carrying a sink through the front doors. Texts between Musk and the Twitter CEO, abandoned lawsuits, bots (eggs), lead to Tumblr's Important Checks, Developer versions of Twitter running publicly, a thousand Elon Musks. It's a slingshot of entertainment, and we're here to ride it with ya.
Egyptian curses, live physics demonstrations, shipping containers; we've got a boatload of content for ya today.
We take a peek into the world's largest movement of goods that people barely think about. Boats. BIG boats. Container shipping has revolutionized the way we transport items around the world, and boats as big as skyscrapers help us make bananas from four timezones away cheaper than an apple down the street.
We also discuss an event from last year that brought people's attention to this hidden global industry — the Ever Given's 2021 Week of Stuck in the Suez Canal.
How did it happen?
Why did it happen?
What was it carrying?
Find out on this week's episode of you get it.
It's the Inflation Conversation!
It rhymed. Had to type it somewhere.
Today we go into some of the causes of the price rises across the board and across the world, at least as best as we can reason. Though a complex subject with no concrete answer or direction point, we look at graphs and stories from the U.S. and abroad to get an idea of what this round of inflation is all about. Along the way we've got Costco's Everlasting Hot Dogs, flickery facecams, and a cute hotdog picture to wrap it up.
The haircut talks alluded to in the beginning don't happen, as a heads up. Was a hair bit cut from our memory.
You too can earn $–10,000,000,000 per day.
We walk through the Epic of Bill Hwang's life today. His job at a Las Vegas McDonald's, his financial roots with the original Tiger King, his bible-driven all-in trading strategy, and his multi-bank drifting adds up to the fastest individual gain and loss in financial history. Quite the story.
plus we got cameos from the three states of matter water air and spiders
Blowing your grandma's entire inheritence. Snorkeling away $700,000 dollars. Mortgaging your house for Gamestop. WallStreetBets is a magical place.
Starting off light with some heavy losses, our first episode reviews a few of the most monetarily or emotionally draining posts we could find on Reddit. We talk about how they may have reached this point, how you can try to avoid reaching this point, and general investment talk mixed with some hearty etc.