Graham Duncan @GrahamDuncanNYC Twitter profile

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

What's Going on Here, with this Human?

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Last Seen Profiles

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

6 years

The Playing Field: here's a post where I describe the five stages of investing mastery that I've observed over the course of meeting investment managers over the last decade:

The Playing Field

Over the last decade, I’ve interviewed and assessed more than 5,000 investment managers. One of the most important things I’ve learned in…

medium.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

"It's hard when you’ve been playing in Vegas at the $25 table to go back down to the $5 table. It’s just not as emotionally interesting.” - John Arnold on why he shut down rather than run a smaller fund That dynamic probably applies across different fields / games.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

28 days

A highlight at the @SohnConf this week for me was one of the best investors I've met ( @danielgross ) interviewing one of the leading AI researchers ( @EricSteinb ) for 20 minutes. They discuss the path to AGI through first building AI software engineer bots and how there will be a…

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

@naval Ayelet Waldman’s therapist has a good robot scenario to find these - which of your various obligations would you assign to a robot, and which would you reserve for yourself?

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Drafting a post on this, free association in the interim: 1/ Do a case on buying a restaurant & to make it as realistic as possible, the candidate is going to fork over their own $ for it During a 10 min discussion does the candidate ever arrive at “why is the seller selling?”

Brett Berson

@brettberson

3 years

How do you interview for commercial instincts?

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

1 year

“Hardly anyone you know, including yourself, is prepared to live in actual “moving” history. It will panic many of us, disorient the rest of us, & cause great upheavals in our fortunes, both good and bad” - Tyler Cowen We kick off virtual Sohn on May 9th with @sama & @Patrickc …

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

11 days

They quickly get to the key issue within a handful of questions, it feels like being attacked by a shark if you're on the receiving end of it - the speed and precision are unexpected. A former partner of David Boies described to me how you'd meet with him on an initial case &…

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@datepsych

12 days

What are some signs a person is high IQ - what are some “hard to fake” signs where you can look at someone and say “probably a member of a group that is higher IQ than average?”

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

I've written before about five distinct levels to the investing game (apprentice, expert, professional, master, steward) and this interview made me appreciate how Hohn is increasingly a level 5 "steward" of the system itself (like Buffett, John Arnold)

The Playing Field - Graham Duncan Blog

Over the last decade, I’ve interviewed and assessed more than 5,000 investment managers. One of the most important things I’ve learned in that process is what separates the great investors from the...

grahamduncan.blog

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Rare to encounter people who are a “10” both on intensity & a “10” on humility (in my experience there is most often a trade off b/w the two), @bgurley seems unusually high on both in the way he answers a series of rapid high-signal-low-noise questions from @patrick_oshag .

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

5 years

My conversation with the great @bgurley on: - increasing returns in the internet era - marketplace businesses - user generated content - usage yield on world's assets - why today's VC landscape is without precedent - crafting a career So fun

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

On 7/23 pulling together a small grp of commercial, creative investors < 40 yrs old for an off-the-record discussion on mis-priced assets in the public & private markets. @patrick_oshag will also interview Dan Sundheim on lessons learned. To request a spot

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

6 years

Djokovic: “I can carry on playing at this level because I like hitting the tennis ball.” FT interviewer: Are there players who don’t? Djokovic: “Oh yes. There are people out there who don’t have the right motivation. I can see it. But I don’t judge." #therestiscommentary

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag What skill or mindset of yours do you find the most difficult to transfer to even the most talented members of your team?

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Some people veer more toward free association & prose as they develop mastery and age, others distill down to dense poetry. Chris Hohn is in the capitalist poetry camp, not a wasted word in this 30 min interview on investing, philanthropy & climate.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Josh Waitzkin at 33 min mark in @tferriss interview: "most people in high stress decision making industries are always operating at a simmering 6 instead of undulation between a 10 and a 2...most people don't know what their "10" is."

Tim Ferriss

@tferriss

5 years

"Josh Waitzkin — How to Cram 2 Months of Learning into 1 Day" Listen or watch my interview with Josh here:

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

11 months

An adjacent lens that I think about a lot: “if how I speak to my kids when they’re misbehaving will become their adult inner voice / inner critic, then how do I correct their behavior in the most loving way possible? What voice & tone do I want imprinted in their heads forever?”

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

1 year

One of our best conversations ever @SohnConf yesterday: @patrickc interviewing @sama - self-recommending.

Sohn 2023 | Patrick Collison in conversation Sam Altman

At the 2023 Sohn Investment Conference on May 9, 2023, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison spoke with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about the future of AI and more. Introduc...

www.youtube.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Two recent podcasts that pair well: @SamHarrisOrg w David Whyte (18m45s) describes the "conversational nature of reality” as you try to hear what the world desires you to do & @tferriss w Michael Lewis (30m30s) opts to listen to the world's invitation to leave WallSt & write

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Teams who’ve worked with Waitzkin often adopt a habit of asking “what’s the MIQ” - the most important question - about a given investment or situation, a way he teaches of continually recalibrating to true north, he covers it briefly in this clip from a great @tferriss interview

Tim Ferriss

@tferriss

5 years

"Josh Waitzkin on How to Structure Your Day for Peak Performance"

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

Decision making as taste: “I sketch what comes down the runway, but I don’t sketch every one of the 5000 products. But I say ‘yes, no, yes, no, I hate it, I love it’…all those decisions, my saying ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for the last seven years is what has made Gucci Gucci” - Tom Ford

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Love the observation by the frmr Bank of England Gov in the book Radical Uncertainty (h/t @rabois ) that the most important question in most decisions is "what is going on here?" Good investors often implicitly frame a thesis that way, it's the balcony view of the playing field.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

A wise investing friend suggests relating to a crisis (at a company or an economy) as a shark that is hunting you - everything happens faster than you imagine You have to grok the new rate of change to regain situational awareness The current tempo of COVID-19 feels like that

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Which people do you observe as unusually strong “attractors” / gravitational forces for other high quality, positive players in their field? Exhibit A: listen to @chetanp - you can hear him smiling w/ delight & wonder as he talks about the nuance of enterprise software

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

4 years

My conversation with @chetanp on all things software investing (and building) - how to build with users - avoiding spreadsheet driven mindset - history of software - product, sales, recruiting - open source - investing opportunities A must listen

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

This 👇 “Asked where his preternatural confidence comes from, Tepper merely shrugs. ‘I was never afraid to go back to Pittsburgh and work in the steel mills,’ he says.” The best investors I’ve met have this flavor of fearlessness. Their identity is not defined by their money.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 months

@matthuang @collision There’s an unusual “open minded with a very strong point of view” / paradoxical tone in this exchange: “Charlie: [00:36:20] You don't have to agree. I can handle it if you like crypto. I don't like it, but I can handle it.” I wish we could dial that tone up more broadly.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Interesting how well this framework of what it means to become “more senior” in @nikocanner new essay applies to investment management stages Kegan says fastest way to develop mental complexity is to hang with people one stage ahead of you, maybe same applies through this lens

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Jack Clark’s definition of mental toughness is: “the ability to focus on the next most important thing” right after you screw up It’s the same triage ability you see in the most commercial investors. Or SEALs - Jocko’s “prioritize and execute” mantra. Fun interview

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

3 years

My conversation with Jack Clark, the John Wooden of Rugby His teams have won 28 championships, including 12 in a row We discuss leadership, merit, constant performance improvement, toughness, & selflessness Grateful for everything. Entitled to nothing

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@BillGates continuing to play the high signal / measured / systems thinking / expert role on COVID (that @RayDalio did on GFC in 2008) in this great new Reddit AMA: h/t @ReformedBroker

From the Coronavirus community on Reddit: I’m Bill Gates, co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates...

Explore this post and more from the Coronavirus community

www.reddit.com

Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@balajis Interesting how @BillGates is playing the measured & credible system expert role that @RayDalio did in 2008 Dalio referred to the “d-process” (vs “depression”) to calm overly excited people down Gates using “once in a century pandemic” frame to wake overly chill people up

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

9 months

For Julia, in the Deep Water is a great poem for anyone dropping a kid at school in the coming weeks

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

7 days

@david_perell “When a system is far from equilibrium small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the entire system to a higher order.” - Chemist and Nobel Laureate, Illya Prigogine

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

The Last Dance is riveting because you’re watching Jordan & co move from a mindset of “I’m great and you’re not” to “we’re great and you’re not” to “life is great” @PhilJackson11 describes these stages (from @davelogan1 ) in his memoir Eleven Rings & highlights Bulls 1995-1998

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

"Life's single lesson: there is more accident to it than any man can admit to in a lifetime and stay sane." Fausto Majistral, in Thomas Pynchon's V (h/t @mkonnikova The Biggest Bluff)

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Here’s a lucid & zen 6 mins on the question of "what's going on here?” from the mountain top of 96 yr old Munger’s mind. He sweeps effortlessly back & forward in time & embraces the paradox of nuclear bombs -> peace & an evil dictator loving his dog:

Redlands Forum: Charlie Munger

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Follow us on Social Media!Twitter:...

www.youtube.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

1 month

2 wks from today pls come to @SohnConf with @CNBC - April 3rd at Jazz at Lincoln Center (& pls retweet this for amplification)! We have an incredible line up - AI w/ @danielgross + Magic AI @EricSteinb & @adamdangelo , Elliot's @jessecohn4 , Greenlight's @davidein , Ribbit's…

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag I recently reread @nikocanner ‘s essay on the internal logic of a business and love his point about the risk of succumbing to the “default logic” of an asset class or the professional norms for a given role. Plus his highlights of Valve emp. handbook

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

What's the most realistic account of a business deal you've ever read in a novel?

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Recommend this podcast. Grantham's emphasis on how he's allowing himself to remain uncertain right now (unlike 2008 & other crises he's lived thru) reminds me of Paul Pearsall's idea of "openture" (vs closure) -"Living a more awe-filled life wasn't about seeking happiness...1/

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

4 years

My conversation with GMO founder Jeremy Grantham. We discuss: - why this crisis, the 4th major one of his career, is so different than the others (Japan '89, Tech '00, GFC '08) - "its different this time" - FAANG - Oil, metal, + food stocks

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@brianmwang Your kid is on an LSD trip for the 1st year, wide open to all sensory inputs. Be a good guide, control set & setting, monitor noise levels (no barking dogs but no white noise machines), ground them when they get scared.Success after 1 yr/5yrs = they think the universe is friendly

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

5 / The commercial instinct is primarily about prioritization in making $ (not being right) and urgency - you could call it triage ability - so you want to constantly scan for evidence of ability to prioritize and a subtle impatience / no-nonsense / “what are we doing here” vibe

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

Good nuance to add to the theme of life as a game: Much of the world is “Martian tennis.” You can see the players on a court with balls & rackets, but nobody has shared the rules. It is up to you to derive them & they are subject to change without notice. - David Epstein, Range

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag @nikocanner I notice it in interviews - when people speak entirely in a jargon that holds them in the default logic of their field. See the “diplomat” stage of this adult development scale (the Global Leadership Profile). Interesting to think of applying it to entire business systems.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

@patrick_oshag Love this one of his: “A man is never happy, but spends his whole life in striving after something that he thinks will make him so; he seldom attains his goal, and when he does, it is only to be disappointed; he is mostly shipwrecked in the end...

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Is it a good time to invest Charlie? "You have a game you can't win anyway, we're all going to die..I'm continuously invested in American equities & I've been down 50% three times. You just roll w/ it. Sometimes it's going for you & some against. It's all part of the same game."

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

8/ Schroeder said Buffett sees the essence of a business model, as if you see an animal & he sees its DNA. He isn't interested in whether it's furry, all he sees is whether it can run & how well it will reproduce, the 2 key elements that determine whether its species will survive

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag I've been doing a variant of this on reference calls: I ask the reference giver "when [the candidate's] name shows up on your caller ID, what does your brain anticipate is about to happen?" It shifts the mood of the reference call quite a bit, takes it off script, more fun.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

On my theme of everyone’s genius is right next to their dysfunction, some supporting evidence/poetry from Packer’s study of Richard Holbrooke h/t @bencasnocha (note I added the random line breaks for fun)

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

The “best possible time to be alive” mood is such a great framework to channel anxiety. The book “Radical Uncertainty” has it too: “We reassert the distinction between risk & uncertainty, & suggest that if we control risk we can not only manage but positively enjoy uncertainty”

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Zygmunt Bauman describes an ability to master and practice the "art of liquid life”: an “acceptance of disorientation, immunity to vertigo and adaptation to a state of dizziness, tolerance for an absence of itinerary and direction, and for an indefinite duration of travel.” 1/

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

@m2jr I vote for The Advantage by @patricklencioni I think Alan Mulally (who ran Boeing then turned around Ford) was one of the best CEOs. He said that he was going to write a mgmt principles book, then he read The Advantage & saw it was already all there.

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business (J-B Lencioni Series)

www.amazon.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

@utotranslucence SBF estimates the $2.5 trillion crypto asset mkt cap consists of $400-500BN of “actual legitimate fiat inflows” that have then risen in value 5x-ish (from great podcast w @patrick_oshag ). That’s the most credible answer on “where it all comes from” that I’ve found.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Very concise / high signal 60 secs of @rtnarch answering @wolfejosh 's question @SohnConf earlier today on what happens with COVID vaccines & therapeutics and the timeline through year end.

Bob Nelsen On COVID-19 Vaccines and Therapies

This is "Bob Nelsen On COVID-19 Vaccines and Therapies" by The Sohn Investment Conference on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who…

vimeo.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

6 years

Just setting up my Twitter. #myfirstTweet

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

“You know, all the mystics - no matter what their theology - are unanimous on one thing: that all is well, all is well. Though everything is a mess, all is well. Strange paradox to be sure.” - Anthony Mello

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

“Reality is a cloud of possibility, not a point.” - Amos Tversky I was recently skimming The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis and hit a rich vein of Tversky quotes (from him and about him) that capture his unusual way of being in the world:

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

“Love isn’t a thing, after all, but an endless series of single acts” - Richard Ford

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Love this description of the actor who plays “Wags” on Billions learning to say “delicious” after an embarrassingly bad audition (from a GQ profile a year ago). He transformed a finite game (goal is to win) into an infinite game (goal is to keep playing).

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

George Saunders on his friend and writing mentor Tobias Wolff. May we all find friends who cause the windows in our mind to fly open.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

This guy Ric Elias is a beautiful human. The rest is commentary. Good listen anytime you want to zoom out & think about your values, the infinite game, parenting, leadership. @PeterAttiaMD well done @RicElias 🙏 Start at 10 min.

#79 - Ric Elias: Earning the gift of life

Listen to this episode from The Peter Attia Drive on Spotify. In this episode, Ric Elias, founder of Red Ventures, opens up about the fateful day he knew for certain that he was going to die as a...

open.spotify.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

28 days

@awilkinson @SohnConf @danielgross @EricSteinb Yes -

Eric Steinberger and Daniel Gross on the future of AI at Sohn 2024

Fireside discussion from the Sohn Investment Conference 2024, featuring Eric Steinberger, Founder of Magic.dev, in conversation with investor Daniel Gross, w...

www.youtube.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

3/ Limited use of jargon is a good sign. Jargon is a sign that the understanding is still nascent. “I don't know what's the matter with people: they don't learn by understanding, they learn by some other way — by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!”-Richard Feynman

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Great hack to avoid distracted driving from @PeterAttiaMD newsletter: imagine someone on the road is trying to kill you, they woke up with goal of killing you in your car by doing something stupid. Catch is you don’t know who it is, but he’s out there. How are you going to drive?

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Interesting theory post epic Wimbledon final that Djokovic’s neuroticism is his superpower:“he knows how to capitalize on a match’s moments of crisis because he is in a perpetual state of micro-crisis”: h/t @MilesKruppa

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

“My favorite phrase from a top tracker in Africa means “we will find it” & he will keep muttering it when he loses a track & struggles to find the next one” Amazingly consistent w/ Snyder frame of hope as the belief one can find many “pathways to a goal”

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

5 years

A summary of what I've learned on the podcast from last year--I wouldn't change any of these lessons after another 50 guests. Trail Magic:

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Shatner is like Charlie Munger, 90+ barrel aged mix of profundity & absurdity w no filter “I don’t have any secret potions. I ride a lot of horses & I’m into the bewilderment of the world, so I open my heart & head into the curiosity of how things work”

‘Take it easy, nothing matters in the end’: William Shatner at 90, on love, loss and Leonard Nimoy

His career has taken him from Shakespeare to Star Trek – and soon he will be swimming with sharks on TV. He discusses longevity, tragedy, friendship and success

www.theguardian.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

One takeaway for me from @tferriss Tribe of Mentors is that I now take the @PaulStamets Host Defense “comprehensive immunity” mushroom supplement whenever I’m starting to get sick. Knock on wood: I’m 9 and 0 on avoiding my kids’ & coworkers’ colds. Recommend trying it.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

@_ram_ @MaxTheComrade @dsundheim Ram we plan to post it to the Sohn YouTube channel by Monday, I’ll stick a link here too

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Great @chetanp line: “our job as an early stage investor is to see the present very very clearly and not predict the future.” Like Gibson’s “the future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed” Go @patrick_oshag on relentlessly seeking that unevenly distributed truth

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Love Clare Graves' idea of people as musical instruments where the range of notes they can play is based on the tensions they have learned to hold. I aspire to stay awake to hidden genius. Would I have noticed violinist Joshua Bell on the metro platform?

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

“The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.” - Amos Tversky

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

2/ Have a candidate read a three page legal document (i.e. the explanation of who qualifies as an accredited investor) and see if they can convey the gist vs regurgitating irrelevant detail from the document

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Love @nikocanner observation that firms are always at risk of succumbing to the “default logic” of their asset class or industry. It’s why the best hedge fund mgrs are reluctant to hire people trained in other containers & who bring default logic w/ them -

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 years

Good paragraph: “On the last day of the world,” Merwin, once wrote, “I would want to plant a tree.” Husbandry is rooted in the Norse word bua, meaning “to dwell.” That is what is required in being a husband—to dwell, to make a home, in the flow of existence.

kortina

@kortina

5 years

“There Is No Time in the Garden” - The American Scholar via @instapaper

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

1 year

@patrick_oshag Already Free by Bruce Tift I like his 4 stages of dissolving self-absorption: Absorption in content Awareness of content Awareness of awareness Absorption in awareness h/t @tferriss

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

“The opposite of ‘anesthetic’, we might recall, is ‘aesthetic’...beauty, in all its myriad forms, can only be created in opposition to numbness. That, at least for me, serves as a quiet manifesto for our times.”

Love in the Time of Numbness; or, Doctor Chekhov, Writer

Chekhov’s quest to inoculate himself against ennui offers lessons for writers working in our current climate of desensitization.

www.newyorker.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

@TaylorPearsonMe I nominate "tension" to add to your great list. "Magnus Carlsen is unique in the way he enjoys tension. Most people feel a desperate urge to release it. You can learn to love chaos so the tension isn't grinding on you. You get stronger as the tension builds." - Josh Waitzkin

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

“The Japanese have a word which summarizes all the best in Japanese life, yet it has no explanation and cannot be translated. It is the word shibui, and the best approximation to its meaning is 'acerbic good taste.'" -James Michener in his novel Iberia

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

7/ motive of the man who shot it & the name of the horse upon which he rode & a thousand other things that have no bearing at all upon his present suffering”- Buddhist parable The commercial / triage instinct is the surgeon not the victim - pre-conceptual commonsense

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

My candidate: Lay of the Land by Richard Ford. The narrator Frank Bascomb is with his friend Mike, who wants to partner with a real estate developer named Benivalle to buy land in NJ for condos. Mike wants Frank to vet Benivalle and the deal. Every syllable is perfect.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

4/ “How did you make money in high school?” Not necessary but sometimes high signal. Buffett and John Arnold with baseball cards, Micky Malka selling candy bars at camp, etc.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

I just reread Eleven Rings, when you put @bgurley podcast w/ @patrick_oshag together w/ this one, their shared vibe reminds me of Phil Jackson’s description of Chicago Bulls circa 1995 w/ a mood of “innocent wonder” & the strong belief that “life is great”

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

“Selfishness beats altruism within groups. Altruistic groups beat selfish groups. Everything else is commentary.” - E.O. Wilson

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

I wonder if podcasts/airpods are up due in part to the @michaelpollan observation in "How to Change Your Mind" that platitudes are truths drained of all emotion. A credible voice often dials the emotional fidelity back up, converting platitudes on a page into truth in the ears.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag The Way of Effortless Mindfulness by @LochKelly1 (h/t @SamHarrisOrg & @wakingup app) For me, this prompt by Loch is a useful way to shift from local “problem solving mind” to what he calls a “glimpse” of “awake awareness”: “What is here, now, if there is no problem to solve?”

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Albert Camus & Ron Burgundy are a wonderful cocktail to savor the existential absurdity of the first quarter. (From biotech investor Oleg Nodelman’s Q1 letter, shared with permission)

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Listening to Ralph Fiennes read Kipling’s poem “If” is a great palate cleanser during periods of rapid change:

If

Provided to YouTube by NAXOS of AmericaIf · Ralph FiennesFiennes, Ralph: Kipling℗ 2010 Orchid ClassicsReleased on: 2010-10-26Artist: Ralph FiennesComposer: R...

www.youtube.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

“Be guided by beauty...beauty is an aesthetic. There is beauty in things that work really well — the way a company is run, or the way a theorem comes out.” - Jim Simons

Quant pioneer James Simons on math, money, and philanthropy | MIT Sloan

He excelled in mathematics at MIT, then set his sights on Wall Street. How Jim Simons made billions, and what he’s doing with it.

mitsloan.mit.edu

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

5 months

@marketplunger1 Your kid will be on a psychedelic trip for the first year. Your job is to be a good guide - manage the set & setting so that it’s a good trip & the kid becomes securely attached. Most of the leverage is in supporting the mom such that her nervous system can regulate the baby’s.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

"Avoid getting into the business of manufacturing trombone oil" - Dan Burke advice to Bob Iger (from the awesome appendix to Iger's book). The most commercially effective people I've met are distinctively good at prioritizing where they put their energy.

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

but about feeling more intensely -higher highs, but also lower lows. "If you want to be happy all the time, awe is not for you, it's too upsetting & causes too much uncertainty." Being that alive -that immersed in experience - is exposing; it's openture"

Oliver Burkeman: This column will change your life

Oliver Burkeman: The word "awesome", it's fair to say, has become devalued through overuse

www.theguardian.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag @laurenoshag I always think of Christopher Hitchens talking about how becoming a parent is to really understand Yeats‘ phrase “terrible beauty” for the first time, to suddenly realize that “your heart is running around inside someone else’s body.”

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

Great podcast to hear what a Kegan level 5 self-transforming mind sounds like: “Human beings are constantly choosing too early in the conversation. The strategic mind throws up blacks & whites & binary questions...but the way forward is actually holding them both or betw things”

Patrick OShaughnessy

@patrick_oshag

4 years

The @SamHarrisOrg podcast with David Whyte is worth the price of his podcast subscription. Best I’ve heard this year. I also loved his book “The Three Marriages” He reads this poem early in the conversation:

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

Love this Mark Strand image of the good life appearing “on foot, unrecognized” From one of the five daily reminders of our impermanence from @WeCroakApp (“Don’t forget you’re going to die. Open for a quote...”)

0

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@tferriss 3 macro: David Tepper Zach Schreiber This anonymous guy: 3 stock pickers: Dan Sundheim Gabe Plotkin Chris Hohn 3 non-HF investors who I suspect would be high signal/low noise: John Arnold Micky Malka Julian Salisbury (runs Goldman prop)

About Me

If someone told me a year ago that I’d start a blog, I would’ve told them they were out of their minds. Recently, I felt the need to write things down in order to clarify things for mys…

tradingretrospectivesca.wordpress.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@patrick_oshag @eldsjal @kevin @mikeyk @patrickc

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

I see now why he’s a gravitational force - if I were starting an enterprise software co & I heard him speak, I would instinctively move heaven & earth to dial up his voice into my ear into the future - intuitively, you know that some of his energy & thinking may transfer to you

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

4 years

@balajis Interesting how @BillGates is playing the measured & credible system expert role that @RayDalio did in 2008 Dalio referred to the “d-process” (vs “depression”) to calm overly excited people down Gates using “once in a century pandemic” frame to wake overly chill people up

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

What Does “Becoming More Senior” Really Mean?

In shaping a career, few questions are as important as how to become more senior. As companies develop talent, the question of how to help people become more senior over time, to the fullest of their...

www.linkedin.com

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

3 years

6 / “A man is struck in the chest with a poison arrow, and a surgeon rushes to his side to begin the work of saving his life. But the man resists. He first wants to know the name of the fletcher who fashioned the arrow’s shaft and the type of wood from which it was cut and the…

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Graham Duncan

@GrahamDuncanNYC

2 years

“The big choices we make are practically random. The small choices probably tell us more about who we are. Which field we go into may depend on which high school teacher we happen to meet. Who we marry may depend on who happens to be around at the right time of life.

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