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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • I believe people overestimate the difference between “state pensions” and “capital markets pensions”.

    • State pensions: People pay taxes and retirees get money from taxes. How much is mostly determined by how well the country’s economy is doing.
    • Capital markets pensions: People buy shares and retirees get dividends or sell shares. How much is mostly determined by how well the economy is doing.

    The differences are more subtle. For example, the capital market is not constrained to the country but one can invest globally. However, the capital market is constrained to the economy of public companies whereas all companies pay taxes. With state pensions, is a little less determined by the economy as a state is more free to redistribute money than fund managers.


  • There is “wrong” and there is “different”.

    An investment strategy is “wrong”, if it just gives lower returns or higher risk. For example, more diversification gives you equivalent returns for less risk, thus not diversifying is wrong.

    An investment strategy is “different”, if it lowers financial returns in return for something else. For example, you want to intentionally lower risk or not invest in evil companies. There is nothing wrong about that. You can invest with your heart, just be aware of the lower returns.

    Donations can be considered a “different” investment where the financial returns are zero. In return you “save the world” a little.



























  • This makes it easier for many to try Mistral because many already use MS Foundry and you can easily switch models. In contrast, getting through the bureaucracy of negotiating a contract with yet another provider, Mistral, is harder.

    However, Mistral via MS is not as sovereign as Mistral directly even though Microsoft wants you to believe that:

    In a joint interview with Reuters, Microsoft President Brad Smith and Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch said the partnership aimed to deliver ​such sovereignty while allowing access to US software and security features.



  • Europe is certainly behind the Frontier Models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. China is close behind and we should be happy that they publish their models. Mistral does not seem to have the ambition/budget to challenge the state of the art.

    We do have some nice specialist model in Europe. We guess we have the data centers although they are unfortunately owned by US companies mostly.

    So, I’d say no we can not hold our own. We are second class. That is not catastrophic but also nothing to be proud of.