Putting some reflections on this year down before I go on my annual pilgrimage to the wilderness.

1/ This year has been a good, professionally. I went from a 3 to a ~5 Sharpe. Some past investments paid out. I can talk about Crypto again at Xmas. But I have a bad feeling. Why?

2/ I followed the advice I wrote in my Michael Platt thread and started treating strategies like PMs, letting their profits run. My Casino strategy, which bets the market is mostly gamblers, now commands 95% of my capital. It's been up 25 out of the last 27 days. Is that good? No

3/ It means, at a high level - Reddit, herd behavior and severe gambling in derivatives have seized control of our capital markets. Robinhood democratized finance, but democracy without education is simply mob rule. I always enjoyed the James Madison quote:

4/ "A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it is but a prologue to Farce or Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."

5/ This quote equally applies to the democratization of investing. The powers of reflexivity and capital allocation can be powerful. Arming Elon Musk with $100 billion could be rational as he's the only person with an ambitious enough vision for humanity to deploy that $. But...

6/ The vast majority of companies glutted with capital are run by cynics, looking to cash out at the expense of the common man. They are selling false hopes and dreams, that when they crash, will have a generational chilling effect on the stock market and hope for the future.

7/ The thing that makes me so sick about the situation is the Friday e-mail from Robinhood, outlining they're building their "most popular feature request" -- namely allowing people to buy options the day of expiry. This made it clear their priority is enabling gambling addicts.

8/ I feel this personally, because investing to me has always been about personal empowerment. About freedom. About not having someone's boot on you while you're trying to make a living. About funding the future. About beauty and human progress.

9/ When I was 10, my father invented a fabulous technology to improve cancer treatment. He got shares in a hot tech company. He pledged them as collateral to start a hedge fund and lost everything we owned as well as many of our family friends. That was my intro to Wall Street.

10/ I want to live in a world where investing makes wonders, not ruins families. Where 10 year olds don't lose all their friends because of call options. Where repo men don't show up to their schools and take their parents' cars.

We can do better.

11/ Free markets are a privilege - not a right. As I reflect, with tech stocks on the moon during a pandemic, my goal in 2021 is to figure out how to help avert mob rule in this so-called democratization of finance.

Good luck trading and see you all in the New Year.