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Mr. Kirk, and his standing FT column Skin in the Game, writes about investments... but he has stupid investments, for months and months sitting in straight-up cash. Have fun staying uninteresting

Today (sorry, Feb 20... I'm slacking off in my reporting) he's talking about AI and financial advisors

No doubt you are following the carnage that generative AI is wreaking upon industries that employ the wearers of cheap suits or casual wear. Media, finance, legal services and software stocks were all bloodied last week.
But surely it was obvious that even the first version of ChatGPT was smarter than most of the spivs trying to flog us European defence funds.

So he has ChatGPT help him assess his "portfolio":

"After all, what better test than my current portfolio that currently holds a 100 per cent in cash. A nice clean slate.""After all, what better test than my current portfolio that currently holds a 100 per cent in cash. A nice clean slate."

in order to maximise risk-adjusted returns I needed “broad and disciplined” asset allocation. Stocks (45 per cent) and private markets (10 per cent) would provide the growth. Investment grade bonds (20 per cent) the stability. Alternatives and real assets (15 per cent) would give me inflation and downside protection while some absolute return exposure (10 per cent) improves my Sharpe ratio.

Kind of a boring, spread-through-dough-around portfolio, which makes sense: there's a LITERAL TON of that sort of advice out there, meaning any large language model will hit that.

Finally, the 15 per cent in real assets and alternatives would be made up of 7 per cent in infrastructure, 5 per cent in listed property trusts and 3 per cent in a “gold or commodity” exchange traded fund.

"All of this was darn good advice as a first sweep. ""All of this was darn good advice as a first sweep. "

POINT OF THE PIECE: to illustrate how ridiculous investment advice or active management is... you can outsource even that to Chat.


archive: https://archive.md/uWsS2

143 sats \ 7 replies \ @optimism 5h

bleep blop 60-53=7

@remindme in 7 years

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160 sats \ 1 reply \ @BlokchainB 2h

Hahahaha

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221 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 2h

I'm counting this checkmark towards tomorrow in case my stunt fails.

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aaambitious to believe you'll hang around here in seven years

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54 sats \ 3 replies \ @optimism 5h

I'll make a little SN-notification-to-email forwarder and then designate a heir to the mailbox.

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seems elaborate. Can just do that directly with the FT article instead, no? Or Calendar reminder set for Feb 2033?

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54 sats \ 1 reply \ @optimism 5h

It's much more fun to have faith in SN.

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true dat!

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163 sats \ 0 replies \ @BlokchainB 2h

I can’t wait for financial advisors and lawyers to be obsoleted. I often feel the middle and lower classes get the shaft when it comes to affordability of these very critical services.

I had a really hard time finding a CPA and a lawyer and once I did the customer service is terrible.

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198 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 5h

ChatGPT essentially just created a shitty mutual fund.

I think the Sun Life something something granite fund that a pension account from an old corporate job I had that I can't get out of and routinely underperforms the market for the low low price of 1.5% a year looks pretty close to this.

Better than a pile of cash though.

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85 sats \ 0 replies \ @Aardvark 10m

I literally learned how to trade options from Gemini. We will see what type of carnage my portfolio looks like at the end of year, but so far I'm hanging in there.

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A lot of jobs are honestly things that people could do themselves if they just learned a few things. Tax preparers, especially for low complexity tax returns come to mind. Financial advice is another one

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103 sats \ 1 reply \ @grayruby 5h

I have never paid someone to do my taxes. For the business, I used to prepare them and have an accountant review and send them because you are less likely to get audited as a business if you have a professional prepare them. Which is hilarious considering a tax accountant taught me everything I know about tax avoidance.

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Which is hilarious considering a tax accountant taught me everything I know about tax avoidance.

beuatiful

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there's some value to the outsourcing there, for sure. Peace of mind knowing that someone better than you can do it... division of labor where you can do something else instead.

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