Top all-time · #13902
Druce Vertes
Personal blog · blog.streeteye.com/blogeconomicsai
Druce Vertes writes Druce.ai, a personal blog at blog.streeteye.com about economics and ai. Since 2012, 5 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “Why only millionaires should play Powerball”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-05, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Commenters cite this blog's post on the Kelly Criterion and bankroll as a reference for weighing risk in startup decisions. No comment judges the writing itself.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A Blog on AI, Tech, Markets and Random Stuff, by Druce Vertes
Most-linked posts?
- Why only millionaires should play Powerball2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-02-02
What Hacker News says?
Makes sense, it's like crowd-sourced life insurance. - http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2015/09/tontines-strange-name... But insurance companies love selling insanely high-priced annuity products, and US laws around insurance, securities registration, taxes make it hard/impossible. Regulation can be premature optimization / standardization. (or insurance company rent-seeking)
Comment linking /blog/2015/09/tontines-strange-name-great-idea/
on “Tontines may make sense despite their history of disrepute”Submitted Safe Retirement Spending Using TensorFlow as a story · 180 points
HN discussionI ran some numbers, and gold seemed to add value to most portfolios over the last 83 years, with modest real return and low correlation with other assets. (Of course, it was legally problematic to own in large quantity in the US for a large part of that period, although you could own jewelry etc.) The last 30 years of disinflation, stable growth were not a good time to own gold. http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2012/0…
Comment linking /blog/2012/01/are-long-term-asset-class-relationships-stable/
on “Warren Buffett: Why stocks beat gold and bonds”Submitted Optimal certainty-equivalent spending retirements with DataNitro as a story · 18 points
HN discussionPer the Kelly Criterion, unless you have a big bankroll, the minimum bet is an overbet, which turns it into a losing strategy. Suppose you have $100,000, and repeatedly bet .001% of your net worth on a single ticket in the lottery at 100,000,000:1 with a 2x EV (disregarding that you can’t bet more or less than the price of a ticket). You do it 2,000,000 times, and then you hit the jackpot – pretty lucky since the od…
Comment linking /blog/2011/11/why-only-millionaires-should-play-powerball/
on “I am a statistician and I buy lottery tickets”Submitted Is Silicon Valley Truly Libertarian? Is Politics Society's OS, Being Disrupted? as a story · 3 points
HN discussionDeferred annuities are, unfortunately a bit of a minefield for consumers - usually sold with high annual expenses, high commissions, and the insurance company takes the other side of the mortality bet: if people die earlier than expected the insurance company gets a windfall, if they die much later the insurance company takes a loss, and the annuity buyer is potentially exposed to credit risk if the insurance compan…
Comment linking /blog/2015/09/tontines-strange-name-great-idea/
on “Tontines may make sense despite their history of disrepute”Submitted Bitcoin is the Linux of payments. And its killer apps will be for US dollars. as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI did a little hack in this space a couple of years back, called it the 'Cat Food Calculator' - http://blog.streeteye.com/calculator/ The issue with OP's calculator is, one has to enter an assumption for the rate of return after taxes and fees. Also you can average 7% return in retirement, but you have a big market drop early in your retirement, you run out of money even if the market makes it up 10 years down the r…
Comment linking /calculator/
on “Show HN: Stochastic Retirement Simulator Weekend Project”Submitted Worst performances of stocks/bonds/bills over 1,5,10,20,30 year timeframes as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGamblers should not tell you to take any positive expected value wager. There's still the matter of the Kelly Criterion (ie. your bankroll) to consider [1]. The (rough) equivalent in startup world would be your risk appetite and/or financial stability. [1] http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2011/11/why-only-millionaires...
Comment linking /blog/2011/11/why-only-millionaires-should-play-powerball
on “Let an entrepreneur be”Submitted Why only millionaires should play Powerball as a story · 1 points
HN discussionCreator / submitter here - Some people have called StreetEYE 'HN for investors', but it's a little different. You can go to Bloomberg, Reuters, WSJ, FT and hit a page with the most-read stories, but now everyone shares everything on social networks and blogs, so we can try to make one page with the most popular news across all sites and blogs - find the top people who share news, and combine algorithmic, professiona…
Comment linking /blog/2013/10/the-streeteye-manifesto/
on “Show HN: StreetEYE, all the top financial market news in one click”(should have mentioned, I'm the author of TFA) and, motivated by you guys, posted parts 2 and 3 http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2014/01/optimal-certainty-equ... http://blog.streeteye.com/blog/2014/01/retirement-plans-that...
Comment linking /blog/2014/01/retirement-plans-that-maximize-certainty-equivalent-spending-part-3
on “Optimal certainty-equivalent spending retirements with DataNitro”
