Editor: One of the reasons I started The Physician Philosopher was <a href="https://thephysicianphilosopher.com/disability-insurance/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">I was duped by an insurance salesman </a>because I was an easy target as a future physician who didn&#8217;t know any better and this cost me dearly. Knowledge is power &#8211; so read this Saturday Selection by Dr. Leif Dahleen, <a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/physicians-scammed/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">originally posted on Physician on Fire</a>, so you can avoid future scams. 



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Recently, I wrote up a detailed history of a few historical and more recent investment scams while sharing the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/investment-scams/">Top 5 Ways to Spot (and Avoid) Investment Scams</a>.



The timing was not coincidental. I suddenly became very interested in the topic when yet another scam was uncovered. This one defrauded physicians predominantly, if not exclusively, and much of the recruitment of investors took place via a physicians-only Facebook group. I run&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/physiciansonfire/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a physicians-only Facebook group</a>. Yikes!



I read all of the information I could get my hands on regarding this particular scam and wrote the “public service announcement” to help readers discern between what is likely a legitimate investment opportunity and what might not be.



Today, we’ll apply the lessons learned from prior scams to the one perpetrated by a couple of Wall Street veterans and one bold and perhaps unsuspecting surgeon.



<h1>Physicians Scammed out of Tens of Millions of Dollars</h1>



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="https://www.physicianonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/physicians-scammed.webp" alt="physicians-scammed" class="wp-image-24089" title="Physicians Scammed out of Tens of Millions of Dollars 2" /></figure></div>



Let’s take a closer look at the investment scam that victimized dozens of physicians, 150 investors in total, to the tune of $33 Million.



All of the information below is gleaned from&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2020/comp24737.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the SEC Complaint against Michael Ackerman</a>, one of three co-founders of Q3 Trading Club and Q3 I LP, and&nbsp;<a href="http://sirf-online.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Ackerman-Indictment-.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the affidavit from Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent John Rodriguez.</a>



Note that there are two unnamed Founding Partners, and that Founding Partner 1 was a surgeon who initially used a personal bank account as a landing spot for investments in this scheme.



What was the premise?



Ackerman (or co-founders) “told potential investors he developed and used a proprietary trading algorithm (the “Algorithm”) that allowed him to take advantage of the volatility of cryptocurrencies when trading investor funds and earn profits while minimizing risks.”



That’s got all the buzzwords. Proprietary. Algorithm. “Forex” isn’t there, but we’ve got “cryptocurrencies” which is just as good, if not better! Here’s an example of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/11/us/cryptocurrency-ponzi-scheme-nj.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">a brazen Ponzi scheme that focused on cryptocurrency</a>&nbsp;more than 20 times the size of the one we’re discussing today.



Ackerman and pals reported consistent profits of 15% a month.



15% a month.



<a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/double-your-money-with-the-rule-of-72/">The Rule of 72</a>&nbsp;tells us that at a return of 15% a month, investor’s money would double in less than 5 months. In 5 years, that would be more than 12 doublings.



Plugging the numbers into&nbsp;<a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/calculators/compound/">a compound interest calculator</a>&nbsp;(I used&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thecalculatorsite.com/finance/calculators/compoundinterestcalculator.php" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">this one</a>), we see that a single $220,000 investment would grow to $964,479,724.04 in five years. That’s just shy of a billion dollars.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="https://www.physicianonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/964mil.webp" alt="964 million" class="wp-image-18039" title="Physicians Scammed out of Tens of Millions of Dollars 3" /></figure></div>



Why did I use $220,000? That’s $33 Million divided by 150, or the approximate average amount collected from each investor. Now, the plan was for the three founders to keep half of the proceeds and let the investor keep the other half.



So they’d each get a half-a-billion dollars if the good times were to roll for five years. Note that if the founders were splitting their shares equally among the three of them, they’d each get half from 70-some investors, or maybe $35 billion apiece. In the first five years. That’d buy a nice fishing boat or two.



If our savvy investors with the proprietary cryptocurrency volatility trading algorithm kept up 15% monthly returns for 10 years, the total pot of $33 Million collected would have grown to $634,241,685,063,547.25. Yes, 634 trillion dollars. Trillion!



634 trillion dollars. Enough to pay off&nbsp;<a href="https://www.npr.org/2019/02/13/694199256/u-s-national-debt-hits-22-trillion-a-new-record-thats-predicted-to-fall?t=1581603524962" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">our national debt</a>&nbsp;nearly 30 times over.



<div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter"><img src="https://www.physicianonfire.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/634_trillion.webp" alt="" class="wp-image-18040" title="Physicians Scammed out of Tens of Millions of Dollars 4" /></figure></div>



Pigs get fat; hogs get slaughtered.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wall-Street-Michael-Douglas/dp/B0039LYGK2/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=wall+street&amp;qid=1582574958&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=ph0c43-20&amp;linkId=9f93ac8477933763acee7ef64e5d0b27&amp;language=en_US" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Gordon Gekko said “Greed is good,”</a>&nbsp;but this is simply egregious.



Now, it’s not like the investors would have gotten all of that 634 trillion. If divided among the 150 or so of them, they’d only have about 4 trillion each, but remember that half of the profits were designed to stay with the company, so now the investors are down to a mere 2 trillion dollars apiece.



And then there were the licensing fees for the incredible algorithm. The surgeon and the other unnamed co-founder took at least $4 million of the $33 Million collected in purported licensing fees. You know, it was proprietary and all, so obviously quite valuable.



<h2>It Was One Big Investment Scam</h2>



According to the SEC, Ackerman, his cofounders, and the algorithm never actually made much money, if any.



From the official Complaint,



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“The reports Ackerman sent Founding Partner 1 and Founding Partner 2 were false. In truth, from November 2017 until December 2019 the monthly account balance averaged only about $1.7 million. During that time, the monthly account balance was never higher than about $5.815 million.Nonetheless, by December 2019, Ackerman was reporting an account balance to Founding Partner 1 and Founding Partner 2 of about $310 million. In truth, however, the account only held about $428,162 in mid-December 2019.”</blockquote>



Where did the money go? In addition to the $4 million or more siphoned off to the unnamed cofounders,



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“Ackerman misappropriated about $7.5 million of investor funds for his personal use. Ackerman used these investor funds to, among other things, purchase and renovate a new home, pay more than $600,000 for personal security services, purchase more than $100,000 worth of jewelry at Tiffany &amp; Co., and purchase three cars.”</blockquote>



Could anyone have seen this coming? Let’s analyze this investment opportunity through the lens of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/investment-scams/">The Top 5 Ways to Spot an Investment Scam</a>.



<h2>#1 Returns are Promised to be Outstanding</h2>



634 trillion dollars. Need I say more?



No, but I will. A 15% gain doesn’t sound that exciting. Tesla had a nearly 100% gain in January of 2020. Consistent, repeated 15% monthly gains, however, will soon give you enough money to send you to the moon and back.



Maybe Mars, even, but I’ve seen&nbsp;<a href="https://smile.amazon.com/Martian-Michael-Pe%C3%B1a/dp/B018HIZ65U/ref=as_li_ss_tl?keywords=mars+matt+damon&amp;qid=1582575103&amp;sr=8-1&amp;linkCode=ll1&amp;tag=ph0c43-20&amp;linkId=e587ff26cc59308248b9e8018e389238&amp;language=en_US" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">that Matt Damon movie</a>. No thank you.



<h2>#2 Investment is Touted as Low-Risk or No-Risk</h2>



Investors were told that safeguards were in place so that Ackerman could not access investors’ money without the knowledge and consent of the unnamed cofounders. This was apparently false.



Getting it in writing doesn’t necessarily make it true.



Also, recall that the algorithm was designed to “take advantage of the volatility of cryptocurrencies when trading investor funds and earn profits while minimizing risks.”



Right.



From the HSI affidavit, the surgeon told potential investors the following:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“I founded this company with two other financial analysts both of who worked on the floor of NYSE, one of which is an ex-hedge fund manager. We use very complex algorithms that trade in and out of coins thousands of times a day. On average we make about 0.5% daily on invested income. This comes out to roughly 15% total profit monthly. Profits are continuously reinvested, thus compounding continuously.These returns have been consistent since August 2017. Algorithms are managed 24/7 by our chief trading officer, Michael Ackerman. Currently we have over $236M Assets Under Management. Distribution is simple: 50% return on your profit at end of each fiscal year. The General Partners- myself and the other two founders take 50% of all profit. There are a few costs of operations (minor salaries, an office , licensing fees and other costs). At the end of year you get all of your initial investment back plus 50 % of what your investment made. It’s been a winning strategy that has been tested through every peak and trough of this market over the last two years without failing.”</blockquote>



Did you hear that? Two years of steady returns through every peak and trough.



<h2>#3 The Investment Found You</h2>



According to the document, many of the investors were recruited by the surgeon cofounder via a specific physician-only Facebook group. The group named in the SEC Complaint is not a personal finance or investing group.



If he managed to find investors who weren’t looking for one, that is the definition of the investment finding you.



I happen to know the surgeon was also lurking in my&nbsp;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/physiciansonfire/?ref=bookmarks" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Physicians on FIRE group</a>. It is a group focused on personal finance and investing with nearly 20,000 physician members. I sincerely hope none of our members were duped by this Q3 outfit, but I cannot control what goes in via private messaging among members. Any public mention of any “strategy” like the one from Q3 as outlined by the SEC would have been promptly deleted by me or one of our moderators. I believe the same to be true of the group named by the SEC.



<h2>#4 Insufficient Documentation</h2>



“Each month from no later than March 2018 until at least December 2019 Ackerman reported to Founding Partner 1 and Founding Partner 2 that monthly trading profits were at least 15%. Ackerman sometimes modified screenshots of the Q3 Trading Account statement balances as reflected on the online trading platform to provide support for these representations.



The reports Ackerman sent Founding Partner 1 and Founding Partner 2 were false.



Screenshots are not account statements. Accounting should be independently verified by an accredited accounting firm, and an established brokerage firm should be acting as a custodian to clear and settle trades. Such forgery would not have been possible if this had been set up.



Apparently, there were at least some of the expected investing documents. Per the SEC Complaint: “Ackerman and his partners marketed the Q3 I investment through the distribution to potential investors of a private placement memorandum (the “PPM”), a limited partnership agreement, and a subscription agreement.”



Seeing something in writing, or on your computer screen or phone, does not make it true. In this alleged scam, documents existed, but they contained information that was falsified or untrue.



<h2>#5 The Investment is Too Complex to Comprehend</h2>



Cryptocurrency, and the blockchain technology upon which it relies, is not a simple topic. This supposed algorithm not only utilized in cryptocurrency, but purportedly took advantage of volatility in cryptocurrency trading.



Also, the precious algorithm used “proprietary high velocity trading software in a methodically risk mitigating fashion.” They claimed that their “strategem” focused on a “correlated capital forfeiture ratio.” That all sounds so sophisticated, doesn’t it?



The SEC does state that the surgeon was willing to explain the algorithm to willing potential investors, and that they had previously “successfully traded various cryptocurrencies through various crypto exchanges using proprietary algorithmically driven software for other pooled investment groups.”



Obviously, I never heard the actual pitch, but if I had, I doubt I’d be able to both fully comprehend it and explain it to a 5th grader. Just reading all those buzzwords makes me long for the simplicity of a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/three-fund-portfolio-numerous-accounts/">three fund portfolio</a>.



Once again, the investment doesn’t pass the sniff test here.



Allegedly, at most, $10 million of the $33 million dollars was actually invested in cryptocurrencies, and little, if any profits were realized. The rest of the money was either diverted to the cofounders for personal use or presumably lost.



<h2>Who Are the Victims?</h2>



Apparently, most of the victims are physicians who were contacted directly or indirectly by a surgeon promising amazing returns from a company he co-founded. These victims are busy professionals with little or no formal financial education who trusted a colleague.



The SEC refers to those who prey on people in their professional networks or social circles as guilty of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/affinity.htm" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">affinity fraud</a>. He’s one of us; he’d never screw us over, would he?



It’s not clear that this particular surgeon is guilty of intentionally defrauding his online buddies. In my opinion, he is most certainly guilty of a profound naivete and great hubris. To not only launch this company, but also believe everything he was told about the wondrous algorithm, and to collect millions from friends and family without recognizing it could be a fraud is, frankly, atrocious.



On the other hand, he did reportedly invest and lose a significant amount of money himself, and it appears that he and the other co-founder were the first to realize that the house of cards had fallen. That’s when they got ahold of the SEC, and I assume it is why they are unnamed co-founders and presumably valuable cooperating witnesses.



From the affidavit, a message from the surgeon and co-founder to their supposed co-investors after visiting Michael Ackerman in December of 2019:



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">“We gained access to his computer and discovered what appeared to be a very large discrepancy between the assets Michael had been reporting to us and the balance in the trading account we expected to house the assets . Michael assured us that the assets were moved to a more secure account but he refused to provide us access to that account. Last Friday morning he sent a screenshot showing the correct amount of assets in a trading account. We have been unable to verify the accuracy of this screenshot . We are taking steps to investigate the discrepancy and have alerted the SEC office in Miami, Florida. In addition, we have directed Michael to cease all trading. We will provide a further update when we have more definitive information to report.”</blockquote>



Those who believed him and took a chance are the real victims here. If money was stolen from you, I am sorry. As&nbsp;<a href="https://www.physicianonfire.com/retired-from-medicine/">someone who decided to leave medicine</a>&nbsp;when I could easily afford to do so, I can relate to the desire for financial freedom. Double your money a handful of times, and you could start living a whole new life.



Unfortunately, what was proposed sounded too good to be true. And it was.



For further reading on this evolving scandal, see The Southern Investigate Reporting Foundation’s article,&nbsp;<a href="http://sirf-online.org/2020/02/14/q3-i-lpthe-cryptic-doctors-of-persuasion/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Q3 I LP: The Cryptic Doctors of Persuasion</a>&nbsp;for additional details not found in the SEC complaint or affidavit.







The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://thephysicianphilosopher.com/physicians-scammed-out-of-tens-of-millions-of-dollars/">Physicians Scammed out of Tens of Millions of Dollars</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://thephysicianphilosopher.com">The Physician Philosopher</a>.

Physicians Scammed out of Tens of Millions of Dollars

A podcast listener asks:
Location: Seattle, WA
Based on my current savings for a downpayment, $300,000, I am pre-approved for a $1.5 million home purchase, but was hoping to stay closer to $1.2 million. My wife and I looked at houses in our preferred budget, and everything went $200k to $300k over. I have a co-worker who has now put in 5 offers, some escalating $500k over, and has not won a house. It has been demoralizing...

What’s a First-Time Homebuyer To Do Right Now?

The &#8220;Ovarian Lottery&#8221; is a short thought experiment popularized by Warren Buffett.



The idea is borrowed from John Rawls, a Harvard philosopher and author of A Theory of Justice. There are also earlier references like &#8220;Ovarian Roulette&#8221; from Dr. Reginald Lourie in the 1960s.



In The Snowball by Alice Schroeder (<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://amzn.to/3e9cxxd" target="_blank">Amazon</a>), Warren Buffett is quoted as saying:



&#8220;When I was a kid, I got all kinds of good things. I had the advantage of a home where people talked about interesting things, and I had intelligent parents and I went to decent schools. I don’t think I could have been raised with a better pair of parents. That was enormously important. I didn’t get money from my parents, and I really didn’t want it. But I was born at the right time and place. I won the &#8216;Ovarian Lottery.&#8217;&#8220;



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<figure class="wp-block-image alignfull size-large"><img width="1024" height="512" src="https://www.sloww.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Sloww-Ovarian-Lottery-Warren-Buffett-1024x512.jpg" alt="Ovarian Lottery Warren Buffett" class="wp-image-44582" /></figure>



<h2>The Ovarian Lottery — A Thought Experiment from Warren Buffett</h2>



I&#8217;ve found a few different versions Warren Buffett has shared over the years. The remainder of this post outlines two of them.



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<h3>The Ovarian Lottery from Warren Buffett&#8217;s Annual Meeting in 19971</h3>



For this version, you can actually listen to Warren Buffett tell the story (beginning around the 4:15 mark in the video). The full transcript is also available below the video.







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&#8220;Imagine that you were going to be born 24 hours from now. And you’d been granted this extraordinary power. You were given the right to determine the rules — the economic rules — of the society that you were going to enter. And those rules were going to prevail for your lifetime, and your children’s lifetime, and your grandchildren’s lifetime.



Now, you’ve got this ability in this 24-hour period to make this decision as to the structure, but — as in most of these genie-type questions — there’s one hooker.



You don’t know whether you’re going to be born black or white. You don’t know whether you’re going to be born male or female. You don’t know whether you’re going to be born bright or retarded. You don’t know whether you’re going to be born infirm or able-bodied. You don’t know whether you’re going to be born in the United States or Afghanistan.



In other words, you’re going to participate in 24 hours in what I call the ovarian lottery.



It’s the most important event in which you’ll ever participate. It’s going to determine way more than what school you go to, how hard you work, all kinds of things. You’re going to get one ball drawn out of a barrel that probably contains 5.7 billion balls now, and that’s you.



Now, what kind of a society are you going to construct with that in prospect?



You would try to figure out a system that is going to produce an abundant amount of goods, and where that abundance is going to increase at a rapid rate during your lifetime, and your children and your grandchildren, so they can live better than you do, in aggregate, and their grandchildren can live better. So you’d want some system that turned out what people wanted and needed, and you’d want something that turned them out in increasing quantities for as far as the eye can see.



But you would also want a system that, while it did that, treated the people that did not win the ovarian lottery in a way that you would want to be treated if you were in their position. Because a lot of people don’t win the lottery.



When (Charlie Munger and I) were born the odds were over 30-to-1 against being born in the United States. Just winning that portion of the lottery, enormous plus. We wouldn’t be worth a damn in Afghanistan. We’d be giving talks, nobody’d be listening. Terrible. That’s the worst of all worlds. So we won it that way. We won it partially in the era in which we were born by being born male.



When I was growing up, women could be teachers or secretaries or nurses, and that was about it. And 50 percent of the talent in the country was excluded from, in very large part, virtually all occupations.



We won it by being white. You know, no tribute to us, it just happened that way.



And we won it in another way by being wired in a certain way, which we had nothing to do with, that happens to enable us to be good at valuing businesses. And you know, is that the greatest talent in the world? No. It just happens to be something that pays off like crazy in this system.



Now, when you get through with that, you still want to have a system where the people that are born — like Bill Gates or Andy Grove or something — get to turn those talents to work in a way that really maximizes those talents. I mean, it would be a crime to have Bill or Andy or people like that, or Tom Murphy, working in some pedestrian occupation just because you had this great egalitarian instinct.



The trick, it seems to me, is to have some balance that causes the people who have the talents that can produce goods that people want in a market society, to turn them out in great quantity, and to keep wanting to do it all their lives, and at the same time takes the people that lost the lottery and makes sure that just because they, you know, on that one moment in time they got the wrong ticket, don’t live a life that’s dramatically worse than the people that were luckier.&#8220;



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<h3>The Ovarian Lottery from Warren Buffett&#8217;s Student Lecture in 19982</h3>



&#8220;Let&#8217;s just assume it was 24 hours before you were born and a genie came to you and he said, &#8216;&#8230;you look very promising and I have a big problem. I got to design the world in which you are going to live in. I have decided it is too tough; you design it.&#8217;



So you have twenty-four hours, you figure out what the social rules should be, the economic rules and the governmental rules and you and your kids and their kids will live under those rules.



You say, &#8216;I can design anything? There must be a catch?&#8217; 



The genie says there is a catch. You don&#8217;t know if you are going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able-bodied, bright or retarded. All you know is you are going to take one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion (balls). You are going to participate in the ovarian lottery. 



And that is going to be the most important thing in your life, because that is going to control whether you are born here or in Afghanistan or whether you are born with an IQ of 130 or an IQ of 70. It is going to determine a whole lot. 



What type of world are you going to design? I think it is a good way to look at social questions, because not knowing which ball you are going to get, you are going to want to design a system that is going to provide lots of goods and services because you want people on balance to live well. And you want it to produce more and more so your kids live better than you do and your grandchildren live better than their parents. But you also want a system that does produce lots of goods and services that does not leave behind a person who accidentally got the wrong ball and is not well wired for this particular system. 



I am ideally wired for the system I fell into here. I came out and got into something that enables me to allocate capital. Nothing so wonderful about that. If all of us were stranded on a desert island somewhere and we were never going to get off of it, the most valuable person there would be the one who could raise the most rice over time. I can say, &#8216;I can allocate capital!&#8217; You wouldn&#8217;t be very excited about that. So I have been born in the right place. 



Gates says that if I had been born three million years ago, I would have been some animal&#8217;s lunch. He says, &#8216;You can&#8217;t run very fast, you can&#8217;t climb trees, you can&#8217;t do anything.&#8217; You would just be chewed up the first day. You are lucky; you were born today. And I am. 



The question getting back, here is this barrel with 6.5 billion balls, everybody in the world, if you could put your ball back, and they took out at random 100 balls and you had to pick one of those, would you put your ball back in? Now those 100 balls you are going to get out, roughly 5 of them will be American, 95/5. So if you want to be in this country, you will only have 5 balls, half of them will be women and half men—I will let you decide how you will vote on that one. Half of them will below average in intelligence and half above average in intelligence. Do you want to put your ball in there? Most of you will not want to put your ball back to get 100. 



So what you are saying is: I am in the luckiest one percent of the world right now sitting in this room—the top one percent of the world. Well, that is the way I feel. I am lucky to be born where I was because it was 50 to 1 in the United States when I was born. I have been lucky with parents, lucky with all kinds of things and lucky to be wired in a way that in a market economy, pays off like crazy for me.&#8221;



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<h3>What are the morals of the story?</h3>



As of this writing, the global population of &#8220;lottery balls&#8221; is now somewhere around 7,800,000,000. Just by reading this, you&#8217;re in the 60% of the global population that has internet access. In some very real ways, you won the lottery. In other ways, you&#8217;ll probably feel you lost the lottery.



There&#8217;s an incredible amount of your life that you couldn&#8217;t control and therefore can&#8217;t take credit (or blame) for—much more than we realize on a daily basis. There&#8217;s also plenty of research out there that shows where you start in life has an incredibly overwhelming affect on where you end up in life. This is humbling and should be kept top of mind—in our relationship with ourselves and with others. 



It can shape everything about how you see the world moving forward:



&#8220;The Ovarian Lottery had come to shape all of his opinions about politics and philanthropy; Buffett’s ideal was a world in which winners were free to strive, but narrowed the gap by helping the losers.&#8221; — The Snowball by Alice Schroeder



What&#8217;s your reward for winning the ovarian lottery? You get to give back by helping those who didn&#8217;t. 



&#8220;A just society is based on principles everyone would agree to if impartial and if starting from an original position behind a &#8216;veil of ignorance&#8217; — not knowing who they would be or which side of an argument they would be on.&#8221; — Eric Rosenbaum paraphrasing John Rawls and Warren Buffett3



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You May Also Enjoy:



<ul><li>Browse <a href="https://www.sloww.co/simple-stories/">all short stories</a></li></ul>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.sloww.co/blind-men-elephant/">The Blind Men and The Elephant: A Short Story about Perspective</a></li></ul>



<ul><li><a href="https://www.sloww.co/the-egg-andy-weir/">10 Mind-Expanding Thoughts on “The Egg” by Andy Weir for its 10th Anniversary (Short Story Summary)</a></li></ul>



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Sources &amp; Footnotes:



<ol><li>https://buffett.cnbc.com/video/1997/05/05/morning-session&#8212;1997-berkshire-hathaway-annual-meeting.html?&amp;start=6601&amp;end=7219</li><li>http://tilsonfunds.com/BuffettUofFloridaspeech.pdf</li><li>https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/30/a-birthday-message-from-lucky-warren-buffett.html</li></ol>



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The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.sloww.co/ovarian-lottery/">The Ovarian Lottery — A Thought Experiment from Warren Buffett</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.sloww.co">Sloww</a>.

The Ovarian Lottery — A Thought Experiment from Warren Buffett

From 2010 to 2017, the outperformance of growth over value was driven almost entirely by fundamentals. Over the past few years, however, the lead widened almost entirely due to investor enthusiasm.
From Michael Cembalest and the team at J.P. Morgan
From 2010 to 2017, relative P/E multiples were stable even as growth outperformed value. This reflects a
growth stock rally that was driven by much faster earnings growth. In o...The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2021/04/16/fundamental-growth/">Fundamental Growth</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://theirrelevantinvestor.com">The Irrelevant Investor</a>.

Fundamental Growth

Five more days until I’m fully vaccinated (two weeks after my second shot). My husband gets his second shot on Wednesday. And our roommate got his one and done Johnson &amp; Johnson shot a week ago, so he’s fully vaccinated next Friday. 



The kiddo won’t get his turn for a while yet, but the rest of our household is so close to being fully vaccinated. It’s wonderful. Washington state opened up to all residents 16+ yesterday, and Pfizer has requested authorization for the 12-15 age group. We’ve got a long way yet til we get back to “normal” (whatever that will look like now), but the future is starting to look brighter. 







<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-attachment-id="16639" data-permalink="https://treadlightlyretireearly.com/2021/04/16/fridays-frugal-five-covid-19-week-59/img_0238/#main" data-orig-file="https://i1.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0238.jpg?fit=3024%2C4032&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="3024,4032" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;1.8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;iPhone SE (2nd generation)&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1618233929&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;3.99&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;640&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.05&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}" data-image-title="img_0238" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i1.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0238.jpg?fit=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i1.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0238.jpg?fit=720%2C960&amp;ssl=1" width="720" height="960" src="https://i1.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0238.jpg?resize=720%2C960&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-16639" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption>The dogs like life the way it is now though</figcaption></figure>



<h2>Friday’s Frugal Five</h2>



1. Over the weekend I was able to help a friend set up a Roth IRA and begin to fund it. She had started talking to a financial advisor and was going to pay for the help, but to simply open an account with Vanguard, she really didn’t need them. After we set it up, she remarked at just how easy it was. 



We also went through some compound interest calculators and messed around with conservative returns over a 20+ year period. If it feels too late to “get started,” it’s not. Every day you get started now is a day that will set you up better for the future. 



2. I finally but the bullet and set up a 529 account for the kiddo. I’ve been waffling about this for about as long as he’s been alive, but I decided a small one has no real downsides. We don’t know what college will look like in more than a decade, but *some* amount of dedicated 529 funds seems wise. 



Washington doesn’t have a traditional 529 program, and the GET (Guaranteed Education Tuition) program is one we’ve actively decided to avoid after dealing with paying for part of my husband’s college with one funded for him. The program is wonky, and the rules continue to get worse. Instead, I opened a Nevada 529 account with the minimum $3,000 deposit. Now will I add more beyond that or keep other funds in more flexible locations? Time will tell. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-attachment-id="16638" data-permalink="https://treadlightlyretireearly.com/2021/04/16/fridays-frugal-five-covid-19-week-59/img_0080-2/#main" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0080.jpg?fit=3024%2C4032&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="3024,4032" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;1.8&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;iPhone SE (2nd generation)&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;1617889261&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;3.99&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;20&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0.0035211267605634&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}" data-image-title="img_0080" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0080.jpg?fit=225%2C300&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0080.jpg?fit=720%2C960&amp;ssl=1" width="720" height="960" src="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/img_0080.jpg?resize=720%2C960&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-16638" data-recalc-dims="1" /><figcaption>This kid. </figcaption></figure>



3. A payment got pulled from our bank account a day earlier than it should have, and it overdrew our account for a day, so we were charged a $35 NSF fee. 



Even a few months ago, I likely would have just grumbled and let it be because it would have felt like too much effort to fix. I’m starting to feel like I have more bandwidth though, so I took the time to chat with the bank and get it reversed. Instead of just then letting that $35 sit though, I moved it to my “found savings” account, because that’s really what it was at that point. 



4. My Bing account had grown again and I was able to cash out $15 worth of Amazon gift card rewards. While I may be attempting to quit Amazon as much as possible, we still buy some things that way, so the gift cards are still worth it. 



Just like with the returned NSF fee, I sent an equivalent $15 straight to savings. These may not be big numbers, but I find that because they’re small, the money just flows through our fingers unless I intentionally put it aside into savings. 



5. The chicken coop build continued to advance this week, and we now have the coop platform built and the nesting boxes in process. Lumber is EXPENSIVE right now, and I literally couldn’t be buying wood at a worse time. I want the coop done though, so I’m sucking it up and paying for materials. 



Some of the materials are coming from Second Use though, which makes me very happy. We have windows, hardware, and some other odds and ends that aren’t new, and they’re cheaper for it as well. 



<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img data-attachment-id="16640" data-permalink="https://treadlightlyretireearly.com/2021/04/16/fridays-frugal-five-covid-19-week-59/e675a4fc-a587-49a4-a650-ae4e3c487fa3/#main" data-orig-file="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/e675a4fc-a587-49a4-a650-ae4e3c487fa3.png?fit=1080%2C1920&amp;ssl=1" data-orig-size="1080,1920" data-comments-opened="1" data-image-meta="{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}" data-image-title="e675a4fc-a587-49a4-a650-ae4e3c487fa3" data-image-description="" data-medium-file="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/e675a4fc-a587-49a4-a650-ae4e3c487fa3.png?fit=169%2C300&amp;ssl=1" data-large-file="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/e675a4fc-a587-49a4-a650-ae4e3c487fa3.png?fit=576%2C1024&amp;ssl=1" width="576" height="1024" src="https://i2.wp.com/treadlightlyretireearly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/e675a4fc-a587-49a4-a650-ae4e3c487fa3.png?resize=576%2C1024&#038;ssl=1" alt="" class="wp-image-16640" data-recalc-dims="1" /></figure>



<h2>Exercise Update</h2>



We spent last weekend in Leavenworth, so Friday and Saturday were spent walking around the town. We stayed at the KOA, which is about a mile out of downtown, and well spaced out for Covid concerns. 



I went for a twenty minute run on Sunday when we got home, and then another forty minute one on Monday. Even with all that time on my feet, my heel still feels good and I’m so thankful for that. 



Tuesday was a weights workout with my local friend again. Wednesday and Thursday were longer walks, plus working on the coop and in the garden. 



Have you been able to be vaccinated yet? Has it changed your perspective of how things look right now?




The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://treadlightlyretireearly.com/2021/04/16/fridays-frugal-five-covid-19-week-59/">Friday’s Frugal Five (COVID-19 Week 59)</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://treadlightlyretireearly.com">Tread Lightly, Retire Early</a>.

Friday’s Frugal Five (COVID-19 Week 59)

Today’s Talk Your Book is presented by BlockFi:

Go to BlockFi.com/animalspirits to check out their interest rates and new bitcoin credit card. You can learn how BlockFi&#8217;s rates work by listening to today’s show with CEO Zac Prince. Also BlockFi is hiring.
We discuss:

What the Coinbase IPO means
Everyone thinks bitcoin is in a bubble
What is it like to be the CEO of a fast-growing fintech firm?
When will trad...

Talk Your Book: Crypto Update with Zac Prince

One key element of my family’s financial turnaround was the idea of a “money-free weekend.” Once every other weekend or so, my family would intentionally spend the time between getting off of work on Friday and returning to work on Monday not spending any money at all (outside of things like paying bills or buying [&#8230;]
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100 Free, Fun Things To Do This Weekend

The average American household spends more than $6,600 per year on food, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics&#8217; Consumer Expenditure Survey. That makes up roughly 10% of the median household income in America. This is particularly noteworthy from a personal finance perspective because food is one of the major household expenses for which frugal [&#8230;]
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.thesimpledollar.com/save-money/20-favorite-dirt-cheap-meals/">20 Cheap and Easy Meals That Cost Under $10</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.thesimpledollar.com">The Simple Dollar</a>.

20 Cheap and Easy Meals That Cost Under $10

Today’s Animal Spirits is brought to you by BlockFi

On today’s show we discuss:

95% of Bitcoin is controlled by 2.4% of accounts
Gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain
Crypto shadow banking explained
Packy McCormick explains BlockFi
Why I&#8217;m having trouble holding

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Every day #Bitcoin  stays around $60k, the total market cap grows by ~$54MM.
When Bitcoin&#039;s price is flat it’s market ca...The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2021/04/16/animal-spirits-the-biggest-week-for-crypto/">Animal Spirits: The Biggest Week For Crypto</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://theirrelevantinvestor.com">The Irrelevant Investor</a>.

Animal Spirits: The Biggest Week For Crypto

The average wedding and reception in 2019 (the most recent pre-COVID year for which data is available) was $28,000, according to The Knot Real Weddings Study. Given that the median American household income charts in around $69,000, (according to the Census Bureau), that means the average wedding devours nearly half a year’s worth of income. [&#8230;]
The post <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.thesimpledollar.com/save-money/eighteen-tips-for-a-frugal-not-cheap-wedding/">How To Plan a Frugal (Not Cheap) Wedding for Less Than $6,000</a> appeared first on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.thesimpledollar.com">The Simple Dollar</a>.