Apex Money Posts

At least back in 1952 they did.

Wow. Talk about a really boring episode of Snowpiercer. 😀

Happy Friday! Here’s an astounding story that has nothing to do with money:

When a Deadly Winter Storm Trapped a Luxury Passenger Train Near the Donner Pass for Three Days [Smithsonian Magazine] – “By midday Monday, however, lights inside the train—limping along on battery power—dimmed and then blinkered out. When the steam generators’ water tanks ran dry, heat disappeared, too. Outside, the thermometer stood at 22 degrees Fahrenheit. “The cold didn’t take long to get into the cars,” passenger Howard Jones told the New York Times. “There wasn’t much else we could do outside of walk up and down to keep warm.”

It’s been amazing to see the meteoric rise of memecoins again. The latest has to be the pair of Trump and Melania coins that, over the weekend, reached billions in market capitalization.

I, for one, will not be participating but I will be watching as human greed is laid bare for all to see.

If you had any thoughts that the Dutch Tulip bulb mania of of the 17th century could never happen again… well, at least you could plant the bulbs and enjoy the flower. 😂

The Madcap Rise of Memecoin Factory Pump.Fun [Wired] – “Pump.Fun is the creation of three entrepreneurs in their early twenties: Noah Tweedale, Alon Cohen, and Dylan Kerler. The trio began as memecoin traders themselves, but grew tired of repeatedly falling victim to rug pulls—a type of scam whereby a coin issuer steals away with funds, leaving investors sitting on worthless tokens.

“Buying into memecoins was a very unsafe thing to do … Everything was designed to suck money out of people,” Tweedale told WIRED in an interview late last year. “The idea with Pump was to build something where everyone was on the same playing field.””

Agentic is such a funny word. It sounds real and fictional at the same time. You’d expect to read about Agentic in Homer’s Iliad or something similar.

But it’s the adjective to mean someone who “has agency,” which itself means someone who is exerting control over their life. They are exerting control over the direction and pace of their life, which is to mean they are living it rather than simply experiencing it.

Semantics aside, if you wish to have more agency in your life, this is a great article for you:

How to Be More Agentic [Every] – “I often hear agency described as an inherent trait: Either someone has it or they don’t—and if it’s the latter, too bad. They’re doomed to a life in the minor leagues. But this hasn’t been my experience. Over the years, as I’ve aged and made smarter friends, I’ve gradually grown dumber relative to my peers. I’ve compensated by dialing up my agency, which I think of as “manifest determination to make things happen.”

[…]

The idea of finding real edges, rather than eking out wins by grinding harder than everyone else, clicked for me when I started playing poker. I missed the mid-2000s poker boom by a decade, so by the time I started playing professionally, poker had gone from being a gold rush to a game with extraordinary competition. Pros spent nearly as much time studying as they did playing, using solvers—models that calculate the best possible strategies—to seek out tiny mathematical advantages. I noticed a massive edge that was almost entirely ignored: physical reads, or tells. (I know an example would make this more compelling, but I’m sorry, it’s like explaining a magic trick.)”

The author, Cate Hall, sounds like a fascinating person too.

This story is really sad.

French woman faces online mockery after being conned out of £700,000 by fake Brad Pitt – “The scammers were highly strategic in their approach. The impersonator sent her messages about luxurious gifts he had supposedly purchased for her. However, he claimed that his accounts were frozen due to an ongoing legal battle with his ex-wife, Angelina Jolie, and requested €9,000 to pay customs fees for the gifts.”

Sadly, the reason why these stories always seem outlandish is because scammers try so many scams on so many people. Eventually, one hits. And they need to be this ridiculous because they are trying to find the most gullible people.

99.9999999% of people would never believe they are talking to Brad Pitt. And even fewer would believe that THEY would need to send money to high flying movie star Brad Pitt. But that’s what happens.

So sad.

Banks have started notifying me that 1099-INTs are available… which means one thing – it’s tax season!

Chris Mamula puts together a very useful post for anyone looking to reduce their tax burden:

Tax Credits That Should Be On Your Radar [Can I Retire Yet?] – “Tax credits are often targeted to lower and middle income individuals and households. Many people who are able to save aggressively towards financial independence have too high of income to qualify for these credits in their accumulation years.

So these tax credits are not on our radar. No income years of early retirement or lower earning years of semi-retirement may enable you to benefit from these credits.”

Happy Friday and today we have a proper heist story for you – and it takes place in Australia so be sure to read it in an Australian accent, it’s more fun that way:

The After Dark Bandit [Atavist] – “The police couldn’t figure out how the perpetrator ripped off two banks at the same time. Until they discovered there wasn’t just one robber but a pair of them: identical twin brothers.”

Whenever there’s a story where it seems like the hero or villain is in two places at once, it’s always a twin! (I feel like Law & Order was famous for this)

The beauty of the internet is that you get to read stories that otherwise would’ve never been shared publicly.

Today is one of those days – written by one of the co-founders of Loom, it shares what happened to Vinay Hiremath after Loom was acquired by Atlassian and he became fantastically wealthy. It’s the only blog post on his website.

The reality is that money doesn’t solve the deep problems in our lives – it merely strips away everything else to reveal them more acutely. His story lays that to bare and I, for one, love that he published it for us to understand.

I am rich and have no idea what to do with my life [Vinay.sh] – “Life has been a haze this last year. After selling my company, I find myself in the totally un-relatable position of never having to work again. Everything feels like a side quest, but not in an inspiring way. I don’t have the same base desires driving me to make money or gain status. I have infinite freedom, yet I don’t know what to do with it, and, honestly, I’m not the most optimistic about life.”

This post of Japanese ideas can help you improve your quality of life without increasing the cost of it.

A lot of these are simple ideas. Almost too simple. But read this post slowly, over time, like you’re enjoying a cup of coffee or tea.

And maybe integrate a few into your life.

33 Ways To Improve Your Life, Japanese Style [Mr. Porter] -“21. Revel in being cheap. Cheap is not a dirty word in Japan – and it’s not a byword for bad quality either. “There’s a word in Japanese called puchipura, which means cheap cosmetics that are still high quality,” Miyake says. “It’s about adjusting your lifestyle to your budget, but still enjoying luxuries when you can.””

Rob Berger has a great Youtube channel, ideally for those who are closer to retirement than those at the beginning of their careers (as someone in the middle, I find a lot of value in the topics he covers), and here’s a good video for folks who are 5-10 years away from retirement.

13 Financial Steps To Take Five Years Before You Retire [Rob Berger]

It’s more than just a list of steps. They’re steps that that push you to think more about retirement and how you want to navigate it. For example, the first step is talking about retirement planning software like Boldin (formerly NewRetirement). But the step isn’t “use software,” but more discussing how to think about how you’ll navigate retirement and how a tool, in asking questions, pushes you to resolve those questions.

There are more tactical steps, like how are you creating a “retirement paycheck” out of your nest egg. All around good video for those nearing retirement and thinking about navigating that next stage. (could be useful for those IN retirement too I suppose)

I love investing with index funds – low cost, low thinking, diversified, safe.

What scares me a little is that the top ten holdings account for like 40% of the index. And it’s mostly technology.

I still invest in index funds but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

The challenge with this realization is that there is no alternative. Many actively managed funds hold the same assets!

Pot Kettle Black: Active Funds and the Index Concentration Argument [Morningstar] – “Indexing critics claim, among other things, that index funds are the tail wagging the dog. The way they tell it, investors pour money into index funds, the funds shovel those dollars into their top holdings, and the portfolio gets ever more concentrated. This, they say, makes index funds a kind of perpetual motion machine, distorting the value of its stock holdings.

Were this the case, though, you’d expect active managers to stand their ground, avoiding the stocks sitting atop index funds in favor of others. And yet when you lump all active large-cap funds together it looks an awful lot like … the index.”