Burying the lede

Instead of swinging for the fences, let's try an exercise at the end of the day trying for 3 big takeaways--things learned in class and everywhere else.

1. Practicing for interviews are like preparing for a class. They work well when you have a flexible schedule, some bullet points to hit on and return to, and one great overarching theme to be returning to again and again, the "hedgehog idea." Get out the big points first and return to them--don't bury the lede.
2. Calculating the alpha of a short position is a little tricky. For example, you own 1 share of GOOG short. On Monday, GOOG moves down $0.50, but your benchmark trades up $0.50. What's your alpha? Your alpha for the day is zero. You "benefit" 0.50 when GOOG's price declines, but the overall gains in the market wipe out your gains in the individual stock.
3. Cartels use violence and thugs, shock and awe tactics to discourage competition because of a lack of other economic deterrents. As opposed to a monopoly, which could be supported by governments or laws for strategic or economic purposes, cartels are usually put together by force and only remain together with continued use of force.

Fires and Roses

Fires and Roses is dedicated to thinking differently about subjects that otherwise seem familiar, pat, common, overdone, or cliche--uncovering the uncommon in the common. TS Eliot wrote:

Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of things shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

It doesn't have to be a fire, or a rose. Depending on your interpretation--on your vision--it can be one, or the other, or both at the same time. This kind of conceptual flexibility is a cornerstone of poetic vision and creative thinking.

We see fire-roses in the business world all the time. One could conceive of a 10-K as a kind of fire-rose. Different analysts see the same information, the exact same numbers, and draw completely different conclusions. They choose their ideas based on things that are important to them, the context in which things are observed, surrounding chatter, confirming their previous ideas, or refuting those of others.

Fires and Roses is an attempt to see things differently, in their complexity, and sometimes in their simplicity. Again as Eliot wrote in "Little Gidding" (1942), one could conceive of our mission as an understanding through refreshing, trying to see old things anew:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.