Thoughts of the Day – GenY finance, Daily fantasy ‘expert’-testing, other questions

Every day I receive a post from James Altucher @jaltucher – he’s an author of one of USA Today’s “12 Best Business Books of All-Time” Choose Yourself, which describes at length the power of one’s self, as well as a successful (and that does not mean he hasn’t failed) entrepreneur, hedge fund manager, asset manager, columnist, as well as podcast producer. His valuable insights, podcasts and publications enlighten us to choose yourself and your passions to create revenue streams aplenty. He simply asks a lot of questions of many people to see what has driven them, and in turn, learn for himself.

In my recent conversations, I have noticed that this is a skill that is falling out of favor very easily of many people – and more so, whether they’re just more of who I come into contact with, but Gen Y and Millennials. So, in light of my observations, I would like to go over what I observed/questioned today.

1. I read a Forbes article Retirement for Millennials that talked about the paradox of millennials being one of the most technology-savvy and entrepreneurial in attitude but somehow resulted in having conservative portfolios for retirement. All of this despite a time horizon stretching beyond 30-40 years. Media / internet seems to drive thought processes now and regurgitation of these get passed in conversation – if there were more questions asked among peers or elders, there may be more to base opinions on instead of the mass agreement that has become more relevant (if I bring up ‘retirement’ or ‘portfolio’, 90%+ of people will quote news from the most recent week, usually involving $AAPL or $TSLA or S&P500). Guess what doesn’t matter in a long-term investment? Daily volatility swings, ebs and flows of mo-mo stocks or even the S&P directly. Yet somehow, this is all that is spoken of. This needs to change.
2. People do not read enough now, and if you don’t include school assignments, maybe none at all. Of course, there are exceptions and those are the people who read a ton! We only live one life – our own – so, one way to feel and attach to other experiences is through reading. Allow your mind to wander and pick up another book! Then ask questions of others who have read it or of yourself, reflect.
3. I asked a question on Twitter but I don’t know if I will get my answer. I think I can program a simple app that will take a previous date for a sport and retrofit a lineup in DFS to check the score. I’m thinking of checking expert picks much like what DailyOverlay has done, but hopefully with lineups that I could select. (I don’t want to enter lineups, but i’m curious to see if there are higher-skilled people in ‘late’ MLB starts versus the whole slate of games or if it’s simply a matter of one or two bad plays that kill a lineups because there are fewer games/players).
4. Having said #3, I skipped the MLB plays today and instead chose to put in a few lineups on DraftKings for PGA, using one of the ‘better-performing’ experts. We’ll see how it goes! Shout-out to Stephen Mariarty (@oreo_jenkins) for doing most of the stat-narrowing for me so I could fine-tune and pick/choose – let’s hope his run continues!
5. More questions – why don’t people ask more of them? I have people I can ask questions of for my trading (swing, value, asymmetrical trades, long-term, retirement) through Scutify – social financial mostly. Then I have the people that trained me and I learned from over the last year at the financial firm in advising. I have other teachers that I bounce ideas around with the tutoring company I work for. I ask a lot of friends and new contacts questions about their lives, dreams, hopes, and histories. And then I ponder thoughts from reading and normal conversations/curiosities. Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing the answers to these and discussions that arise from the questions, but I have noticed in my newer contacts and some friends that I do not receive many inquiries back. Either people are just that busy or there are too many other things that prevent a train of logical thought. Why?
6. In training and working out, I wish there was a one-size-fits-all method that provided exactly what I wanted, even in the case of me not knowing what that is. Too often change belittles my theory of efficiency, but my patience wears thinner. Results come but boredom sets in before I know if it’s the consistency of a work-out regiment or if it’s consistency of appearing at the gym in general. Maybe I can stick with this circuit-style hit-everything every other day regime for more than 4 weeks and see results. Before anyone says anything, I eat relatively clean – (could totally get ruined these next few weekends and definitely last with football starting).

That is ‘all’ for this evening. Tomorrow will hopefully produce a string of ideas that will be more concrete. For now, good night.