The most important step in becoming successful

Monday, January 31, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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 Focus +Stay at it long enough = success

“The most important step in becoming successful in anything is to first become interested in it." — Sir William Osler

"You make your own luck if you stay at it long enough."
@naval

How to save the earth

Friday, January 28, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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Charles C. Mann, The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World

Great book without a solution or a receipt.

If you are a Prophet you think earth is finite and the only way to save the earth/us is less, less people, less food , less meat, less pressure on the envoirment. Everything will be expensive, The poor will never have access to what we have. The only way to save us is to go back and make less pressure on the world. Circular economy etc...

The wizards believe technology will save the day. The best thing for nature is progress and technology is to make more with less. In the rich countries we have more trees, parks gardens and we don't need to cut trees. We recycle the trash etc Carbon emissions are going down ... We have clean rivers. 

I am a Wizard by nature, but I see the point of Prophets, if you improve agriculture yields and make food cheap like Norman Borlaug (Nobel Prize winner) did in Mexico in the 60's food prices go down and population increases big time. After some years we need to make more otherwise we will have shortages again. And the Wizards solution is not without costs, we need to fertilize, we need to use the resources big time.

Apparently the world is going on the Prophets way , renewables and the ESG agenda will make everything more expensive, people will do less, travel less, the house would be cooler, the vegetables more bio and expensive , the car will have less autonomy, there is going to be less wasted food, we will have shortages of power, etc...The poor will be much worse. To have children would be a big decision.

The best thing of the book that I did not know is that forests capture 30% of current carbon emissions that are stuck in the wood until there is a fire or decomposition of a tree. If we planted big areas with trees we would solve the Carbon problem. Just like that. Yes this is a wizard solution. I am a Wizard.

The most beautiful thing in the world

Wednesday, January 26, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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Someone told me in order to do something good in life you have to have an objective a goal. I thought hard and the think that  what I want more is to be in contact with nature , wildlife and plants.  It's not much but I feel much better in a garden than in a museum. Perhaps a classical concert ( Rach 3) might be at par with a garden.

I love my job and I would like to work until the end. never retire, but I would like to be in contact with nature as much as possible everyday. Today I walked my dog at 5 am in a big forest in Monsanto/Lisbon. 

Our office s in the best garden of Lisbon. Check 

LFO - Picture

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself. — Wallace Stevens

Mozambique

Tuesday, January 25, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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I spent 5 days on the beach in Mozambique 

the people are very polite and nice. The country is very poor

It's the 4th time I am in South Africa (Kruger)& Mozambique. It's obvious I like the weather and the people otherwise why go....

I don't know a lot about why Mozambique is so poor but I noticed 5 things

1.They make the life of the tourist difficult. You fight hard to get a visa, you pay USD 100 and they kept my passport in their consulate for 1 month!

2.The airport police ask if I have euros and questions like this , implying that you cannot leave the country with euros in your pocket. I don't like to lie and it's always a problem. Not this time.

3.They don't accept foreign workers on the basis that they are going to steel their jobs. Some countries try to attract the best and brightest and some countries don't want Smart people.

4.No property rights, they gave you a lease of 50 years but even that is not clear 

5.In a previous experience I was stopped on the road and the officer wanted money ! 

There are thing to do in Mozambique, agriculture is possible everything grows with sun & rain. Difficult to ship your produce but possible. If you produce for the local market it's feasible, if you produce something that you don't need to sell fast (cotton etc...) it's better   but the shipping of anything is a mess. 

why go there?

you can fish with your hands and the beach and sea are empty of tourists. The food is really great. The boat arrives and you  can see what you are going to have for lunch. Wine very very expensive that is where the government makes money making life expensive to their citizens.

If you think you have the right to own something without publicity

Tuesday, January 11, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

 If you live in a country with a Government that might one day size your assets for" the greater good" put some money in Bitcoin

If you live in a country like Argentina put everything in Bitcoin but not in the other Crypto, just bitcoin

If you think you have the right to own something without anyone knowing Bitcoin will do, art , real estate and bank accounts no.

If you live in a country that the constitution might be suspended because of COVID or any scheme put some money in Bitcoin 

• Bitcoin can go to zero, everything can go to zero. Anything is possible, Bitcoin is no guarantee of anything just that you have something out of reach. Something unreachable. You can travel and the bitcoins travel with you. 

If the deck chairs are all in order, then ................

Monday, January 10, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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From Tom Perkins wonderful book Valley Boy

The tired cliché is alive and well in many Boardrooms, If the deck chairs are all in order, then all is well in the Titanic...........  Unfortunately, the compliance aspects of SOX can, if permitted, come to dominate everything that the board does. And at the end of the day compliance doesn't add to earnings per share and a rising stock price.

Compliance has nothing to do with progress or be of service. compliance is a starter, you have to do it. Compliance is destined to avoid serious wrongdoing. If you want to do well you have to do more than avoid serous wrongdoing. all the companies that think their mission is only to please the regulators are in bad shape. You have to stay clear of the regulator but your job is to create massive value for your clients.

We created a new website for our company , I hope you find it clean & simple . We would like to do more than having the chairs all in order in our boat. 

LFO - There is always a Bull market in the world

Concepts for 2022

Friday, January 07, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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 5 concepts for a great 2022:

The Taleb Surgeon Paradox

Wednesday, January 05, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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 The Taleb Surgeon Paradox

Some Ideas for 2022

Monday, January 03, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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Happy new year for everyone

I have a lot of ideas and I am going to just say some of them with no special order or organization.  I have explored these ideas in my Blog in the last 10 years.

1.we are not he voice inside our Head. If our body is well we are well. Yes we are our body our deep self is more linked with our body than our thoughts.

2.To try to control your destiny is stupid and brings stress.

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”
― Lao Tzu

3.Stay healthy some more years and I think in 10 years the life expectancy will go up 1 year in each year so we will live forever.

4.The beginning of Infinity is a very complicated book to read (at least for me) but it's clear that there is no end to our discoveries and findings. In fact it is also clear that progress and advances are getting faster & faster.

5.Don't watch news of read papers, it's useless,  today news will disappear tomorrow. You will have a much better life without news or TV.

6.The only thing that makes me worried a bit is the Triumph of Big Government. Never ever in the history of the world central planning and control improved the outcomes. Move to Switzerland of other country that is not bankrupt and respects individual freedom. (this contradicts point nº2 a bit)

7.What am I doing in this world? I don't know, I love my job and I would like to work until the last day  , besides that I want to be in contact with nature. Yes the best moments of my life is when I am riding my bicycle in the mountains, diving in sea or just walking my dog in the woods. I love to eat and drink of course and travel. I miss travel a lot.

8.I tried 4 days of just drinking and no eating. It's very good you will feel great. It's amazing the lack of inflammation in your body. Yes food is inflammatory.

9.Normally the rich people are people that did something good for a lot of people. Money is certainly linked to virtue. It could be luck or to be in the right place at the right time but if you were not of service you would not be rich.

10. If I had to fight for one thing it would be  free trade. The reason we are not poor is trade. without trade there is no specialization and without specialization we would be poor.

Happy new year , Covid hysteria  is ending , don't try to control your life . Be busy. Learning is free, music is free, photography is free very soon a lot of things will be free. The good old times were not good. Never complain just live. If your country becomes socialist just move if you can.  If taxes are way to high just move to a better place.

"A society that puts equality … ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom." – Milton Friedman

I guess Commodities will....

Monday, January 03, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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Real temperatures in the last 70 years have been stable around a mean. in the last few years we have been above the mean but nothing out of normal. When temperatures fall below the average we will have a big bull market in agriculture commodities. We can see in the third graph that commodities are the only asset that lost money since 2011. Of course the natural course of things is deflation (productivity etc...) but since energy is high and temperatures are probably going to surprise on the downside commodities (Agriculture) will have their day. It's coming 

Free Trade

Monday, January 03, 2022 Francisco 0 Comments

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In the book Sapiens , Hariri mentioned that we were poor when each person did everything, when you have a garden , you tend to your animals, you have a mill, and you build you own tool you are very poor. 

when you start trading and you only do one thing, your productivity goes trough the roof and society prospers.