Wealth

Keep It Simple Stupid: Don’t overcomplicate things, the essence of investing is to spend less than you make, save the difference, buy a diverse portfolio, and be patient – Morgan Housel

Don’t Panic: We may consider an action to be safer when it’s actually riskier. An example is taking action to ‘protect’ against volatility and ending up underperforming the market. “You don’t need to make a lot of great decisions in investing, you just have to not screw up when it matters most” – Morgan Housel

Valuations and IRRs: The valuation needs a large margin of safety. Wins have high IRR (Internal Rate of Return), losses have low IRR, but never negative IRRs. Looking for 25% or more gross IRR. – Yaron Naymark

You Can’t Invest in What You Don’t Understand: Sector and business competence is an essential skill to investing. Immerse yourself in information: look at earnings reports, 10-K reports, research reports, conference presentations, company Q&As, etc. – Yaron Naymark

Fractionalization of Art: An investor bought 20 pieces from Beeple and put them in virtual museums. Bundled everything, locked it in a smart contract, and sold 10 million shares. The shares went from $.36 to $25 at a high. Gave Beeple 2%. The standard is for the artist to keep 90% and when the art is flipped, the creator keeps 10% - Beeple

Can Doesn’t Mean Should: ‘Software eats the world‘ is a dangerous and “dumb” narrative for critical infrastructure. Just because we can hook all of our systems up to the internet, doesn’t mean we should. – Nicole Perlroth

Zero Day Hacks: “The one rule is like fight club, nobody talks about fight club. Nobody talks about the zero-day market on both sides…When you’re operating in the dark like that, it’s really easy to put aside your morals.” – Nicole Perlroth

Job Security: If you have any interest, become a hacker and apply yourself to defense. There is a large deficit in candidates for defense cybersecurity jobs. Nicole says offense has always been more appealing, but defense is equally as important; “it’s always been more fun to be a pirate than be in the coast guard.” 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity positions around the world – Nicole Perlroth
 
Health

The Paradox of Living Longer: Our brain ages slower than the rest of our body but because modern medicine has helped us live longer, more people are living with cognitive decline, Alzheimer’s and dementia – Dr. David Sinclair

We Don’t Cure Cancer Because the Answer is Boring: While the National Cancer Act of the 1970s saw great successes, it still failed to eradicate cancer. Harold Varmus argued that prevention is the way forward, citing that half of the cancers are related in some way to diet and lifestyle. However, prevention isn’t an intellectually stimulating topic that excites researchers and secures funding, even if more effective – Morgan Housel

EPA/DHA: Maintaining the right ratio of EPA:DHA can help improve memory and counteract depression (men target 1.6 grams, women about 1.3 grams) – Dr. David Sinclair

Horvath Aging Clock: The most accurate molecular measure of chronological age – applies to all cells with DNA, tissues, organs, prenatal samples, super-centenarians (100+ years of age) – Dr. David Sinclair

Why Wearables: Wearables and sensors will eventually collect thousands of data points per second and ultimately contribute to “lengthening our lives another decade beyond what we’re able to do with changes to lifestyle” – Dr. David Sinclair

5 Biomarkers Worth Measuring: (1) glucose; (2) heart function (3) inflammation as measured by, c-reactive protein (CRP), tumor necrosis factor (TNF) alpha, cortisol; (4) lactate; (5) blood oxygen – Dr. David Sinclair

Health Data Security: We’re going to hit a point where the volume of information from wearables is going to be overwhelming and we’ll need AI to help us make sense of everything – this raises a lot of data security issues. Questions will come up such as: who owns the data? Who is storing the data? Where is the data being stored? How will the information be HIPAA compliant? How will genetics play into this (i.e., my parents’ tests include information about me since we’re related)? What would happen with the detection of infectious diseases? – Dr. David Sinclair

How’s Your Posture? Posture is important (slouching is bad for health, and social well-being), but it’s a specific symptom of the overall misuse of your entire body – Dave Elitch

Smushed: Modern society is like a force that condenses our bodies, both metaphorically and literally. As soon as we start going to school we sit at cramped desks, then we get a day job, and we sit in chairs that are too soft. “Everything we do living in modern-day society turns our natural use into this habitual use which is unnatural.” – Dave Elitch

How is Meditation Supposed to Work? Checking in with yourself when you are opening the door, doing the dishes, etc.  Realizing there is no difference between sitting down to meditate in a dark room and living your life – it should be the same thing – Dave Elitch