Some people deserve the Metaverse

That explains yoga mats

I don't think it would suit retirees, of whom there are many)

Well they are gonna have to do it for the sake of glorious nation of Nippon if they don't want immigrants

USA ships them to Mexico in exchange for cheap labor

When I read "social life of some dumb animal", I immediately thought of a rental Lambo and some TikTok stories

Windows stole my Windoze mindshare

You make it sound like they do it out of the kindness of their hearts when they allegedly do it out of anxiety and self doubt

He's not short the index, he's long the puts. Different convexity profile.

I need some ELI5 help here. Does that mean he bet on a big, fast downward move as opposed to a slow, small downward move?

Not in general, depends on interest rates & others' bets for or against.

Shorting means selling without owning (borrowing) the underlying stock, and paying a borrow fee for as long as you hold the position.

Buying (being 'long') a put means paying money up front (the premium) for the option to sell a stock (doesn't matter if you own it or not at the moment) before a certain expiry date.

Typically you would be more likely to hold a short position longer than you'd roll over options, as far as I understand. But it's not clear cut and generalisable because the fee structure is different.

Also buying puts you have no risk if the stock rises - you're out the premium but you were anyway. If you sold short, it's getting more and more expensive to cover if you want to give up on the bet (and borrow fee probaby rising too, so also increasingly expensive to hold).

The VIX index, a mean-reverting proxy for risk aversion on the S&P500, is currently relatively low. This makes buying options, both puts or calls, relatively cheap. Usually volatility is negatively correlated to spot price of the underlying instrument (in this case the S&P500), but if the market remains flat and there's a significant spike in volatility, the position can still be P&L positive.

As for the convexity, assuming the puts he's buying are out of the money, his total position increases in $ value as it becomes in the money and vice versa. The opposite is true with an outright short.

Short equity = fixed upside, unlimited downside, does not “spend money”, just need collateral.

Puts = fixed upside, fixed downside, spend money/does not need additional collateral.

The option version of an equity short is something like buy ATM out and sell ATM call.

Of the two possible ways to bet against the market we are discussing Burry chose the one with less immediate downside if you have to wait to be right. But there isn't much difference.

Losing less money when it goes up is always good.

Yeah. Not much different.

is a result of comp sci, no?

Sure, but ChatGPT is magnifying developer productivity so demand for IT people will continue to decrease. Plus outsourcing. This is also consistent with the theme that more people are being pushed into the trades. Remove other technical options and you get more people learning to weld instead.

Voilà. It's almost as if democracy with universal suffrage is only a good idea under rather specific demographic conditions.

Religion is older than democracy and will likely outlive it

> Religion is older than democracy and will likely outlive it

Hard to say. I think religious indoctrination is harder to maintain over time in the face of technology. Eventually it will run out of shadow and won’t have enough compelling answers for life’s questions.

This is only true if the technology isn’t being used to reinforce religious belief.

What modern equivalent is trying to answer life's real questions? Advertising? Big tech? Consumerism? Capitalism? I'm not religious but I have to admit at least they focus on what's important rather than buying stuff.

Meditation and yoga. But they do not encourage breeding

Also ex-athlete slash Master Practitioner of Cognitive Hypnotherapy and Clinical Hypnosis and not the other way around