#AXXAers a short(ie #shortsqeeze hopefully) #update on one of $AXXA’s #VC companies:
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Travelogue: Ibadan-Hills, Bottoms, Masquerades & Research

More than 15 years ago, I met an Italian who had lodged at KS Motel at Total Gardens, Ibadan.

He was in Ibadan for the first time and he was very fascinated with the city when I informed him that Rome and Ibadan shared a very unique similarity: both of them are built on seven hills. He asked me to take him round Ibadan which I did.

The seven hills are Oke Padre, Oke Ado, Oke Bola, Oke Mapo, Oke Are, Oke Sapati and Oke Mokola. But Ibadan is not just a city of hills. It is also a city of 'bottoms'. Loosely translated, 'idi' means bottom or the backside.

Several people have attached sexual innuendoes to the names. However, the actual translation indicates that some of the 'idis' indicate how the settlers converged at a point thereby leading to how they arrived at the names given.

Go round the city and you can locate Idi-Arere, Idi-Ose, Idi-Ishin, Idi-Ape, Idi-Ayunre, Idi-Obi and Idi-Ito.

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Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, I'll help you work out how much money you need to retire.

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The goal is simple.

You want to accumulate a *large* portfolio of assets.

How large?

Well, you should be able to quit your job. And you and your family should be able to live comfortably for decades -- just off of the income generated by this portfolio.

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This is the crux of the "FIRE" movement.

FIRE stands for "Financially Independent, Retired Early".

The basic philosophy is: keep your spending needs low. Save a large portion of your income. Invest these savings. With luck, you'll be able to retire early.

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FIRE advocates have a rule they love to cite: the 4% rule.

The 4% rule says: your annual expenses in retirement should not exceed 4% of your portfolio.

You can use this rule to calculate how large a portfolio you need to accumulate before you can quit your job and retire.

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For example, suppose you and your family need $40K/year to live comfortably in retirement.

Then you need to accumulate a portfolio that's at least $1M.

Another way to say this is: your portfolio should be at least 25 times your annual expenses in retirement.

My Chads, institutions and retail are entering the DeFi space at unprecedented volume. One of the key primitives in DeFi will be the securitization and tranching of DeFi and is still massively undervalued. Enter https://t.co/Gx4H3hIzNg ( $SFI ).

Don't worry, let me ELI5.

1/ Alright so securitization and tranching, that's a mouthful. 👅💦

Let's take a step back. If you look at any financial activity within DeFi, whether it is yield farming, lending or liquidity providing, there are risks involved.

2/ As an honest farmer / liquidity provider, the rewards are yield, and the risk is losing your funds due to e.g. smart contract risk and (potentially) IL.

As an honest lender, the rewards are interest, and risk is default of the borrower.

3/ 99% of the current retail participants don't use portfolio risk management in their DeFi activities. We farm a bit, IL a bit, loan and borrow a bit and hope we make gains at the end of the day. For institutions, portfolio management is much different.

4/ The problem for institutions to enter such DeFi activities as yield farming, liquidity providing and lending/borrowing, is that it's inherently risky and not quantifiable with variable rewards. We early adopters don't mind this risk, but this prevents adoption by institutions.

Anyone have any opinions on how self-insured employers consider innovative healthcare offerings to pass on to their employees?

As I understand it, by shouldering the financial risk, self-insured employers can curate a list of more relevant benefits ... (1/10)

... thereby avoiding paying out lofty insurance premiums for services that its employees don't use or want. There seems to be a long list of intangible benefits having to do with talent acquisition and retention, but I'd like to understand the cost equations more fully. (2/10)

In the context of multi-cancer screening, I'm skeptical that it could be cost-saving for small or medium-sized employers (<500 employees). Assuming a representative sample of the population, there are simply too few cancers and too many false positives w/ expensive ... (3/10)

... diagnostic follow-ups to bend the unit-economics in the right direction. Indeed, for larger self-insured employers, maybe on the order of thousands of employees, the dynamics may change. Each true positive is a chance to save on treatment cost and (possibly) to ... (4/10)

... extend life. However, employers won't likely be able to distinguish between true life-extension and lead-time bias without prospective, randomized studies, which are due out in the 2024-25 timeframe. Still, these likely will include interim endpoints only. (5/10)

Terry Smith is often referred to as "the English Warren Buffett".

He runs Fundsmith which has a fund size of £27.9bn.

Despite the size, Fundsmith did a CAGR of 18.4%.

In his book Investing for Growth, he explains his investing philosophy.

Here's a breakdown:

1. Fundsmith's winning formula

Find companies that focus on delivering value.

Not those who are looking to pacify Wall Street with short-term results.

2. Avoiding "cheap" companies?

Low multiples are not a reason to buy a company.

A ship will continue to sink if it has a hole in it.

"A stock may have a low valuation but an even lower intrinsic value. Buying such a stock is not a recipe for investment success."

3. Getting quality right

For long-term investors, getting the quality of the business is more important than the valuation.

“An investor could have paid 281 times earnings for L’Oréal, 156 times for Colgate, and 147 times for Brown-Forman and still beat the market.”

4. "Unprofitable" companies could be good investments

Many of the best companies don't show earnings today.

But that's because they're heavily reinvesting for the future.

It's just that the earnings hasn't show up.