Thunderbird Alumn, Emmy winner, Director of the VBC (non profit), musician, photography enthusiast
Joined March 2009
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Nelson Ramirez retweeted
Goldman Sachs uses this exact formula to decide if a company is worth $14,000,000.
Most of their analysts learned it from one free MIT lecture.
A Goldman recruiter once told a candidate: "If you can't derive an annuity price in under two minutes, we don't continue the interview." Starting offer for those who could: $250,000.
The formula fits on one line. MIT teaches it in 80 minutes. For free.
This is MIT 6.042J. Mathematics for Computer Science. The lecture Wall Street forgot to take down.
The professor opens with a simple question: $50,000 a year for 20 years, or $1,000,000 today?
Most people pick the million. Most people are right.
Then he shows you exactly why - with math you can verify yourself in 30 seconds.
Then the formula.
Every annuity - student loans, home mortgages, lottery payouts - is secretly just a geometric series. One formula prices all of them. He derives it live on the board using nothing but algebra.
Then Wall Street.
He explains how slight differences in interest rate assumptions - the p in the formula - let banks make money off the same instrument. Two banks, same contract, different p. One wins. He explains how that confusion caused the 2008 subprime collapse. The entire global recession. Traced back to one variable.
Then the company valuation.
A company adding $50,000 more in profit every year forever - what do you pay for it today? He plugs into the formula. Answer: $14,700,000. That is how acquisitions get priced on Wall Street.
Watch the moment he describes how people made hundreds of billions during the financial crisis while everyone else lost - "money went from one place to another." He says it casually. The room goes quiet.
A quant analyst at Bridgewater told me this was the first lecture that made financial modeling feel like arithmetic. Starting salary: $350,000. Bonus year: $900,000.
Bookmark this and watch later - after this lecture every loan, lottery, or acquisition price you see will feel like a solved equation.
MIT 6.042J Lecture 12 | Mathematics for Computer Science | Fall 2010
Nelson Ramirez retweeted
A billionaire sat in a room for 42 minutes and listed every psychological trick that makes people lose money. for free. the finance industry has spent thirty years pretending this recording does not exist.
he didn't sell a course. he didn't write a newsletter. he sat in a chair at 96 years old and explained why brilliant people do the dumbest things with their money. then he explained why they will keep doing it.
MBA programs charge $200,000 to teach behavioral finance. he covered 25 biases in one sitting. some of them are still not in any curriculum. he gave the entire framework away on camera.
the part nobody talks about: he called crypto antisocial. he said index funds will crush most managers. he said private equity is full of wretched excess. he said all of this in a room full of people who manage money for a living. nobody argued.
a hedge fund analyst at a top firm told me this is the first thing they send to anyone who joins the desk. not a book. not a model. a 42-minute video of a 96-year-old man explaining why you will be wrong and how to recognize it before it costs you everything.
40 million people have heard his name. almost none of them have watched him explain the 25 ways their own brain is working against them.
the lecture is free. he died the following year. it is in the video.
2:14am. Something failed. I was asleep.
By 8 it was scoped, patched, and written up. Not just fixed. Written up, with the log excerpt, what it touched, and the one decision he wanted me to sign off before it stayed in.
I have been building agentic systems long enough to be suspicious of exactly this. The output usually works and has no taste, and you find out three weeks later what it quietly assumed.
What made this different was that it did not close the loop by itself. It did the work and left the judgement to me.
Order of operations matters more than capability. Same inputs, wrong sequence, completely different outcome. This one got the sequence right: act, then ask.
@viktor_com
Nelson Ramirez retweeted
Rafa y una verdad incómoda: en el éxito no hay magia. Es la disciplina de dar tu máximo, sea un 100% o un 50%. La industria te vende el humo de los atajos comprables, pero el secreto esta en lo único que no se compra: la capacidad de bancarse la frustración y no rendirse jamás.
surprised to learn watching all the late shows next day actually hurt the financial case. I have never cared about what network was it on, for me it has always been the @jimmyfallon show, the @jimmykimmel show and the @StephenAtHome . So may be it’s time for them to be just that
Nelson Ramirez retweeted
URGENTE Por un gravísimo fallo de seguridad de @caixabank, mi identidad fue usurpada presencialmente en una agencia sin yo saberlo. Resultado: estafa a mi cuenta que el banco no quiere asumir. Mis ahorros de años de trabajo, desaparecidos.
@BancoDeEspana
@ColectivoRonda
It’s not difficult to imagine services like @AppleTV or @PrimeVideo using AI to generate personalized TV content based on the music we are listening in @AppleMusic or @amazonmusic . Say: “How the Musical Mamma Mia was created” shows up on my feed (guess now you know)
Nelson Ramirez retweeted
Jensen Huang, $NVDA, CEO: “Resilience matters in success. I don’t know how to teach it to you, except for: I hope suffering happens to you .. because .. greatness comes from character. And character isn’t formed out of smart people. It’s formed out of people who suffered.
I m a fan of the @PivotPod and I’ve heard @profgalloway say that AI is like Ozempic for corporations. My feeling is that the message should aim at companies to fuel their talent with AI tools so they can do a lot more instead of the thought of replacing 30% of them to save costs
It would have been better to call it a Q&A with @davechappelle to promote the @netflix special than to see what we saw today at the #seminolehardrocklive , if you have nothing to say, just stay home Sr , we would have watched the special anyway
Use your @SpiritAirlines credits, don’t let them expire, they only lasts three months. Our family went through chemo and we couldn’t travel for over six months, and just like that $950 when to profit the airline. No need to say, they lost 4 customers today
Estabamos oyendo el gran varón de @williecolon y mi hija (16 años) me dice (en inglés ): That sounds like “in the heights” dad. Una mezcla de generaciones e influencias en una frase. @Lin_Manuel @intheheights
Espero que todos estén pasando una feliz navidad, les comparto un pequeño regalo de nuestra parte, Noche de Paz - Claudio corsi y Nelson Ramirez a piano y guitarra youtu.be/bpTmFQRHLSQ via @YouTube @CLAUDIOCORSI #nochedepaz #musicadenavidad #silentnight
Nelson Ramirez retweeted
LIVE: Argentines welcome their team after winning the World Cup teapawt.net/i/broadcasts/1YqxoAOpW…
