The Vampire Squid

Women in Finance! One of the topics that I have been wanting to cover for a long time on TVS, and finally had the opportunity to do so with Valerie Wong. Today’s episode focuses a lot on the cultural biases that dominate the workspace, things that are useful for both males and females to be aware of. Valerie shares many solutions and tips on how to navigate these processes being a woman working in a still mostly male-centric industry and how we can go about improving the experience for women. I found many of the insights Valerie shared to be very helpful and hope you do too. Please enjoy!

* Could you share some of your experiences or challenges that you have faced being a woman in finance?

* Cultural biases that dominate the workforce

* Being a Latina in finance

* How can people become more ware of these biases that may be conscious or unconscious?

* Would you mind sharing any specific work place examples of times of how you overcame these cultural biases?

* Traits that were commonly associated with being feminine are now important in the workplace

* Empathy, reciprocity, vulnerability, humility, inclusiveness, generosity, patience

* What are the three pieces of advice that you would leave my listeners with?

* Network, Advocates, and Sponsors

* There is no one perfect path to success

* Happiness comes from within

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

I’m very excited for this week’s episode with Valerie Wong, who is the president of Latinos in Finance and an employee of MSCI. We talk about two very important topics including being international and breaking into the United States for a finance role, as well as being a woman in finance. Valerie is originally from Panama and of Asian ethnic descent so very qualified to talk about both subjects very well! This week’s episode focuses more on the international portion (starting around 9 minutes in) and next week’s episode will focus on Valerie’s experience as a woman in finance!

* Please give us a quick background on where you’re from and how you got to where you are today.

* What was the initial interest for studying accounting in college?

* What do you do at MSCI

* What are the major competitors of MSCI like the Dow Jones and S&P

* What were the key drivers that allowed you to break into the US and what were the initial motivations to come to the United States to work in finance? (9:07 minutes)

* Do you have any advice for international students that want to come to the US, and what are some of the most common ways that people do come to the US?

* Do you see that there are many jobs opportunities in the US for international students interested in finance?

* What was the adjustment from Panama to the United States like? Were there any customs that were challenging at first?

* Tell me more about how you got involved in Latinos in Finance and became the president?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

Today’s episode is on trading precious metals, specifically gold and silver! I’ve always been interested in learning about what drives the prices of gold and silver and how to add it to my portfolio. This episode was extremely informative for me and hope it is for you as well. I had the pleasure of interviewing Peter Hug from Kitco, who has been trading since the 70’s!

* What is your background, and how long have you been trading precious metals?

* Is it correct to think of gold and silver as hedges to the equities market, when stocks go up, gold goes down and vice versa?

* How does one begin to learn or gain experience in trading precious metals?

* What are the main drivers and levers of precious metals like gold and silver?

* Precious metals are primarily driven by US factors

* How should a 25 year old think about investing in gold, what percent of the portfolio should it make up of the total?

* Is gold a good long-term investment or is it better suited for hedging?

* Are you able to short gold?

* What do you forecast will happen to gold for the next 3-5 years?

* How will the Trump administration impact gold?

* Tell me more about Kitco and what you do there?

* What’s one piece of advice that you would leave my listeners with?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

Today is Part II of the episode with Scott Tindle, co-founder of Finimize! This episode dives a bit deeper into how Finimize is performing in addition to learning more about what people have the most difficulty understanding in terms of concepts in finance. I definitely learned a lot doing this episode, and hope that you all enjoy!

* How many users do you currently have and what’s the open rate of the emails?

* What are the most difficult concepts for people not in finance to understand?

* Concepts to understand

* How big is your team at Finimize?

* Do you plan on expanding into different languages?

* What was the most difficult part of starting Finimize?

* How do other firms fake user growth by using click farms?

* What is one piece of advice that you would like to leave our listeners with?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

*If you have experience with mobile graphic design, please reach out to me [email protected]*

Please welcome a special guest for this week, Scott Tindle, who is the co-founder of Finimize, an easy to understand newsletter of financial news that I have been using for the last year! We discuss Scott’s background and inspiration to quit his job in selling mortgage backed securities and ultimately start Finimize. I hope you guys enjoy!

* Give me a brief background and what inspired you to make the decisions you have.

* Was the housing crisis and mortgage backed security bubble different in Europe compared to the US?

* Why made you quit your job at Barclays after 7  years to do something entrepreneurial?

* Do you use Tinder in London?

*  Why did you start Finimize, and what is the ultimate goal of the company?

* How do you source your content, I’ve been curious how media companies do this?

*  Do people have different Finimize for the their respective country?

* How do you guys make money?

* Finimize my life (FML) – Digital personal, financial guidance

* How does FML work, is it similar to a robo-advisor?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

I’m very excited about today’s episode because it is on two of the most fascinating emerging technologies out there, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. Today, we have on Jacob Mullins from Shasta Ventures who focuses on these types of emerging technologies and we get to hear his take on the landscape and how it is developing. Super cool episode and I hope that you all enjoy!

Jacob Mullins

* What does it mean to have Presence in Virtual Reality?

* How Nausea may be caused by the LACK of senses being tricked

* Do you think VR will always be a headset and earset, or what is the next step in the technology?

* What do you think of Elon Musk’s comments that we are more likely than not living in a virtual reality?

* What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence in terms of will it be good or bad for human kind?

* What are the potential theories of what could happen when we reach the Singularity or general intelligence?

* What are your thoughts on the depiction of AI in movies like Ex-Machina and Her?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

We have a great interview for you guys today with Jacob Mullins from Shasta Ventures! Jacob has a strong entrepreneurial background and has founded multiple companies before he joined and rejoined Shasta Ventures where he now focuses on emerging technologies and trends. In this interview, we cover Jacob’s entrepreneurial pursuits like founding a CPG company, being the 2nd employee of VentureBeat, and starting ExitRound (a marketplace for M&A). Hope you all enjoy!

Jacob Mullins

* What is your background and how did you end up at Shasta Ventures?

* Talk a little about your entrepreneurial background when you were in college selling plant supplements

* What were the major challenges that you found working on a CPG startup company?

* CPG space is one of the most competitive markets out there

* Merging his company into a public shell (reverse IPO)

* Working at Microsoft and VentureBeat and leaving the CPG space

* Starting ExitRound – a marketplace for buyers and sellers of companies

* A dating site for buyers and sellers to find each other 🙂

* 80% of M&A deals coming under $100mm, which bankers don’t focus on

* What was it like being the 2nd employee of VentureBeat?

* Being the first business manager focusing on building revenue for the blog

* The competitiveness of the technology blogging space

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

We continue our conversation with Aswath Damodaran where we dive into the technology industry, great books to get read if you want to learn about finance, and Aswath’s thoughts on the market. I hope you enjoy!

* What are your thoughts on growth stocks particularly in the technology industry?

* Even though it feels like that now, all companies at one point were like tech companies

* Tech companies can just do it much more quickly – they live in dog years

* What do you think of companies valuing themselves off of users or clicks?

* What are your thoughts on technology companies potentially never making money?

* Have you considered going into the hedge fund industry?

*  What are some of the biggest things that you learned from your students?

* What should students be reading to better understand finance?

* Read the Wall Street Journal

* Stocks for the Long Run – Jeremy Siegel

* Security Analysis – Ben Graham

*  The education of a speculator

* Do you think we are currently in a bubble?

* What are your thoughts on dcf vs. comps?

* What are other ways to calculate intrinsic value?

* Is there an advantage to playing the pricing game vs. the valuation game?

* What are your hobbies outside of teaching and valuation?

* Do you think there is a lack of transparency in finance today?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

Wow, I had to bring on an incredibly special guest for the 40th episode of The Vampire Squid! Today’s episode, we have Aswath Damodaran, who I’m sure many of you know well in finance. He is considered the go-to expert for valuation and has taught at NYU for over 30 years. His blogs Musings on Markets is well recognized among all those who work in finance, and I’m thrilled that he was willing to appear on TVS. This episode is JAM PACKED with views that challenged many of my prior beliefs in finance. I hope you all enjoy…

* What is your background and how did you initially get interested in finance?

* Sex, Stock, and Salvation

* The study of money

* What are the biggest misconceptions of finance for those who haven’t learned it before?

* Everything is about finance (i.e. Superbowl, World Cup, and Lady Gaga)

* The louder it talks, the more it changes the game

* Is there anything out there that isn’t driven by finance?

* There’s some things driven by altruism, but most in money and finance

* Given the negative perception of finance, how do you help bridge that gap?

* Not my job

* People don’t like bankers, lawyers, athletes, who do people even like these days?

* How have your goals changed since the beginning of teaching to now?

* I don’t have any goals except to teach

* Life is incremental, it adds up and I live life semester to semester

* You don’t need big goals to succeed, small things today will take care of big things later

* My job is learning, and learning never ends

* Is valuation an art or a science? 

* Neither, it’s a craft

* People who say it’s an art want a license to teach anything they want

* People who say it’s a science just want to use formulas

* What do you think about market valuations vs. fair value?

* Markets don’t value companies, they price them

* To invest you need faith

* Most investors are not investors, they are traders (even a lot of Portfolio Managers)

* The Stock market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent

* Which investors do you admire?

*  Bill Ackman, Carl Icahn, Warren Buffet all have qualities that I like, but they also have faults

* Buying a “How to invest like Warren Buffet” book is a waste of time, figure out your strengths

* What faults do you see in Warren Buffet?

* He can be hypocritical when he speaks about corporate governance

* He is very consistent and knows his strengths and weaknesses

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid

Welcome back to Part II of the episode with Patrick Curtis, founder of Wall Street Oasis. In this episode, we dive into Patrick’s experiences in Buenos Aires, his favorite wall street oasis stories, how he deals with “fake news”, and much more. We got some exciting guests about to come on to the podcast so stay tuned!!

* Why did you decide to move to Buenos Aires?

* How was it running WSO when living in South America?

* What were some of your favorite stories on Wall Street Oasis?

* Where are you going to take Wall Street Oasis now?

* What was the original motivation for starting Wall Street Oasis?

* How do you prevent “fake news” on W  all Street Oasis?

* How do you like California vs. New York?

* What do you think about the current sentiment around finance / culture?

As always, please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions. Email me directly at alan@the vampiresquid.com or on the contact form. Also, please subscribe to my facebook page for live updates facebook.com/thevampiresquid. Also follow me on Quora at https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Li-1. To support us check us out at Patreon https://www.patreon.com/thevampiresquid