Last week Nvidia released its quarterly earnings to much fanfare (including this Nvidia earnings watch party in NYC). However, despite beating Wall Street's expectations yet again, the stock declined as much as 5% in after-hours trading.  For some context, Nvidia became the 2nd most valuable company in the world (at ~$3 trillion) because of the AI revolution. Following the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the demand for AI/LLMs (large language models) exploded. This meant more data centers and more computing power. The backbone of all of this additional compute comes from GPUs (graphi ..read more

A few weeks ago I tweeted the following, which caused a bit of controversy on Twitter/X: Hot take: Maxing out your 401(k) when you are younger is almost always the wrong choice. The extra 0.5% per year isn't worth locking up your wealth until old age. While I won't rehash the argument in full (which is nuanced and can be found here), this tweet led to some fruitful discussions about taxation. In particular, one commenter noted that my argument on maxing out a 401(k) wasn't taking into account the difference between marginal and effective tax rates. So, I want to explore this argument a bit fur ..read more

Do you know your net worth? How often do you check it? If you have found it difficult to track your net worth over time or you don't track it at all, then this post is for you. Historically, I used to track my net worth with aggregator websites like Mint and Personal Capital. I could link all of my accounts and the data was recorded automatically. It was great. Unfortunately, after a decade of using them I found that they all had a fatal flaw—they would always break eventually. A bank might change its API and the connection would stop working. Or I would need to re-authenticate my accounts eve ..read more

Do you like the idea of early retirement, but you don't want to have to save every penny? Do you seek financial independence, but you don't want to permanently leave the workforce? Then Coast FIRE might just be right for you. FIRE, which is short for "Financial Independence, Retire Early" was a movement created for those that wanted to escape the Rat Race and live life on their own terms. Unfortunately many versions of the FIRE movement either require high income, extremely low spending, or some mixture of both. More importantly, once you reach FIRE there is an expectation that you will no lon ..read more

The S&P 500 is now roughly 8.5% off its all-time highs last month, foreign stocks are getting hammered, and the crypto markets saw over $1 billion in liquidations over the past weekend. What is causing this selloff? There is no single culprit, but a mix of weakening economic data, Warren Buffett selling half his Apple stock, and the Japanese Central Bank raising interest rates are to blame. The VIX, a measure of market volatility, traded above 65, which is the third highest reading after March 2020 and the 2008 financial crisis. Betting markets are now pricing in an 18% chance that the Fed ..read more

I’ve spent a lot of time trying different diets. I’ve experimented with high fat, low carb, meat and fruit only, and much more. And while I enjoyed seeing how different diets affected my mood, energy, and body composition, I learned a much bigger lesson along the way: If what you do isn’t sustainable, then it doesn’t matter if it works. The problem with most diets is that the word “diet” seems temporary in nature. Diets are pitched as something that you can do for now and then afterwards you can go back to eating whatever you want. This is fine if you’re a professional bodybuilder getting read ..read more

My favorite scene in the movie Arbitrage (spoiler alert) is where Richard Gere's character, Robert Miller, negotiates the sale of his business to a rival, James Mayfield. Miller, who has become increasingly frustrated with the lengthy negotiation process, tells Mayfield that the deal is off and he is leaving. As he starts to walk away, Mayfield offers him $400 million for his business. Miller counters with $550 million. Mayfield comes back with $475 million. Then Miller makes a final offer of $525 million and tells Mayfield that the deal is off if he doesn't take it. Mayfield accepts. Miller w ..read more

I was scrolling YouTube last week when the following video caught my eye: As soon as I saw it I thought, "Wait, haven't I seen this before?" I searched "impossible curl" on YouTube and I was right. Will Tennyson had done a similar video with the same title nearly two years prior: But here's where it got weird. In the search results, there was another video by the channel "Browney" with the exact same title as Tennyson's but published 15 months after Tennyson's original video: I know that content creators tend to post about similar topics, but this was too alike. What the hell is going on? I ..read more

Though the rate of inflation has decreased over the past two years from a high of 9%, many consumers are still worried about rising prices. This is especially true for retirees, who don't have the ability to earn more money and offset an increased cost of living. But how much does inflation actually impact retirees? Is it better to have high inflation earlier or later in retirement? And, most importantly, what can retirees do to ensure they don't run out of money as they face rising prices? I will answer all of these questions and more as I explore the impact of inflation on retirees. I plan o ..read more

A few weeks ago I ran the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge in NYC with 19 of my fellow coworkers. It’s a 3.5 mile race (slightly longer than a 5k) through Central Park in the early evening. The last time I ran it was in San Francisco when I was 23 years old and weighed 145lbs. Back then I finished it in under 22 minutes (06:15 mile pace) and was in the top 100 finishers. This year I weigh closer to 190lbs and hoped to finish around 24:30 (a 7:00 mile pace). In the months prior to the race I had achieved this time more than once during my training. Unfortunately, on race day I wasn’t even close ..read more