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Founders

#92 Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon

Founders

David Senra

History, Entrepreneurship, Business, Technology

4.82.4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2019

⏱️ 90 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What I learned from reading Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone. ---- Claude Shannon was as close to a sure thing as existed [2:53] The beginning of information theory [7:11] Project X [9:09] introduction to Ed Thorpe [15:05] using math and physics to beat Las Vegas [18:03] Ed Thorp and Claude Shannon meet [20:45] testing Thorpe’s Blackjack theory [26:00] The core of John Kelly’s philosophy of risk can be stated without math. It is that even unlikely events must come to pass eventually. Therefore, anyone who accepts small risks of losing everything will lose everything, sooner or later. The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails. [28:23] I’d be a bum in the street with a tin cup if the markets were efficient. —Warren Buffett [44:30] how Claude Shannon begins studying the stock market [46:45] Claude Shannon and Henry Singleton [48:16] why and how Ed Thorp started investing in stocks [49:49] Thorp starts a hedge fund and starts working remotely [52:49] Ed Thorp meets Warren Buffett [54:20] An acid test of Princeton/Newport’s market neutrality came in the Black Monday crash of October 19, 1987. The Dow Jones index lost 23 percent of its value in a single day. Princeton/Newport’s $ 600 million portfolio shed only about $ 2 million in the crash. Princeton Newport’s return for the year was an astonishing 34 percent. [59:36] the implosion of Long Term Capital Management [1:07:00] The thing you should do is the opposite of what you feel you should do. –Jim Clayton [1:09:10] A quote from 1738: A man who risks his entire fortune acts like a simpleton, however great may be the possible gain. — Daniel Bernoulli [1:13:00] Claude Shannon: A smart investor should understand where he has an edge and invest only in those opportunities. The methods Claude Shannon used to invest [1:17:10] ---- Founders Notes gives you the ability to tap into the collective knowledge of history's greatest entrepreneurs on demand. Use it to supplement the decisions you make in your work.  Get access to Founders Notes here.  ---- “I have listened to every episode released and look forward to every episode that comes out. The only criticism I would have is that after each podcast I usually want to buy the book because I am interested so my poor wallet suffers. ” — Gareth Be like Gareth. Buy a book: All the books featured on Founders Podcast

Transcript

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0:00.0

All the way back in 2019 I received a message that changed the direction of this podcast forever.

0:04.6

It was from Tristan who is one of the co-founders of Reed Wise.

0:08.0

He said, hey, I love the podcast and he told me about the Reed Wise product.

0:12.4

I responded, thanks Tristan, love the idea behind Reed Wise. and he told me about the Reed-Wise product.

0:12.5

I responded, thanks Tristan, love the idea behind Reed-Wise,

0:15.2

I will definitely check it out.

0:16.3

I had no idea that I would become a super user of his product.

0:20.8

And so over the years, I've added my highlights and notes for over 300

0:23.7

books I have over 20,000 highlights and notes for the books that I read for the

0:28.3

podcast and because I can search every single thing I've ever done I use ReedWise every day. I never

0:36.1

close the browser tab. The tab on ReedWise is always open because as I'm

0:40.5

reading, as I'm thinking, as I'm researching researching I'm constantly going in

0:44.7

and re-reading all my notes and highlights.

0:47.3

And you might already know this because every other podcast I go on I talk about

0:49.5

Reedwise, I tweet about it, I post about it

0:51.6

constantly, I've been saying for years it is the best

0:53.9

app that I pay for. And because I go around shouting about how great it is from the mountaintops,

0:58.8

I get a bunch of messages. Nearly every day people have asked me, hey is there a possibility that I can actually get access to your readwise?

1:05.6

And this happened so much for so long. And I thought it was like a superpower of mine.

1:09.3

So I was like, no, no, no, no. And then I started thinking, it was like, well, why is everybody

1:12.3

want this? Like like why do they keep

1:13.7

asking for this and I thought about it's like well if you think about this is like has anybody else in the world

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