Today I started a new website: Knightly Notes. I plan to use the website as a Wiki for myself. It will contain contents for major openings that I'm learning.
The goal is not only helping kids to learn chess, it's also for myself. I aim to reach 2000 within this year. I think this is highly achieveable. I already have a lot of experience in the sport. There are several building blocks fundamentally: opening theory, middle game strategy, tactics, end game theory. If I learn it bit by bit, the improvement should be very solid.
At this very moment, I want to enhance my opening theory. Sicilian Defense and Queen's Gambit are both complex lines. It can lead to many different variations. Through the blitz games, I played during the past year, I have encountered numerous different difficult situations that I have no idea why I'm stuck there. It means my opening repertoire has serious lacking.
There is no need for kids to spend too much time preparing the openings. They should better off learning more about tactics and how to calcuate the middle games. In that regards, I find Grand Knight Academy is a very nice place for the kids chess education. The weekly topic and assignments provide nice guidance for the kids.
I think it's a nice idea to start a new project called Vex IQ for fun. I want to use Vex IQ to teach kids how to program, how to make fun projects and eventually demonstrate advanced programming techniques. Robotics can be a great way to introduce coding and AI. Autonomous driving and operation needs to have smart brains that kids can learn to code.
For this project, I need to think of a way to introduce some fun projects. I will have some brainstorm time with kids today about how to build this website.
This week I'm working on AI technology and plan to study several aspects:
LLM technology
Agentic AI system
Robotics and AI
Besides, I plan to study the neocloud businesses.
Today I for the first time traded several stock index options. I should have tried long ago. It's great that I can follow someone else who has more experience in the field. So I can learn bit by bit how to get into the market. This time, I want to learn quickly, but at the same time, take advantage of the market overall trend and boost our portfolio return with additional exposure using the options as a tool.
Overall exposure should be about 5-10% of our overall portfolio. But how to think of the exposure, return and the overall share of position within our overall stock market exposure? I need to think about it.
At the same time, the market is booming. Our overall financial assets exceeds xxx today for the first time this week. This is a milestone. I remember 10 years ago I was managing at the level of about xx. I was just joining the Leveraged Finance team, and just started to trade individual stocks. 10 years later, size of the assets under management has grown 10 times. Should we aim for similar level of growth in the next 10 years? How to achieve that with a solid strategy and manageable level of risk exposure?
At the same time, the market is at rather greedy mode. So it is not a very good time to add on additional leverage. I have the confidence in the companies that I invest in, but I don't have a lot of confidence in the other sectors of the economy. So maybe it's a better idea to play safe and not betting too much on options.
I watched some games this week and used Stockfish and engine to help my games. It worked. Today I was playing against a young player and I could immediately see what's the strategic direction that I should aim for.
In the past few days I was playing Sveshnikov Sicilian, and it was a tough one. There isn't much of an advantage for black and it's a bit hard to defend. It's a imperfect defense that you need to keep on edge all the time. It's a bit tough for me. After all, this is what Sicilian Defense is about - this is not a positional game that gives you time to prepare. It's a game to seek opportunities and to surprise your opponents.
We had dinner at the Thai restaurant for lunch and spent some time on the waterfront in Seattle. Also played basketball at the school's yard and went to Sophie's house to have a look at their new house. Overall it's a rather happy day.
Today I'm studying Rossolimo Sicilian. We also went to Sophie's house for a housewarming party. They also took us to Phantom Lake. It's was amazing we have a place to play water that is so closeby. I believe we will come back later often.
Rossolimo Sicilian is hard to play for Black. I haven't finished the theory yet, but I feel it's very complex. There is a fixed line for this system. Every game could be very different. That's very hard for the Black. If White is just playing according to general principle, they are fine. And for Black, it's like gambling.
I stayed very late last night playing chess. I should have studied more of the theory. Instead, I was playing chess for almost the whole night.
I should have brought the family to Mountain Rainier, but instead I'm sick and staying home for most of the weekends in the past month. It's a pity that I haven't taken good care of myself and the family.
Overall life is wonderful that you got to play whatever interests you. I have more games that I can find time playing. I can also play soccer or basketball. I can play building robots or applications.
I should think of how to best studying chess and help the kids. It's better to understand the theory a bit more and practice a bit accordingly. There is no need to spend too much time on it.
I found it's hard to find good investment candidates in China market. I'm not very familiar. But at the same time, it's kind of easy to identify good names like CATL.
I spent a bit of time revising the estimates for T and S. It turns out that T's revenue growth could decelerate quite a bit next year compared to this year. But on an absolute basis, high teen revenue growth is already very good. FX rate is a wild card. So we should be satisfied with the results. ~22x forward PE is a very reasonable price for such strong growth. Betting on such a good company is actually a very wise decision.
I'm a bit tired toay. Actually I haven't fully recovered from the cold. I need to have more rest, during weekdays and weekends.
I decide to read the sci-fi book and sleep. No screen time any more!
Last night I was reading Ted Chiang's Understand. I was shocked that it's exactly how superintelligence is about. This is a new level of understanding patterns and everything in this world. The story basically touches many aspects of the superintelligence concept. The person was able to collect a large amount of data, find patterns from it, form strategies and ideas, and solve new and unknown problems. It also enter the phase of self-aware, where the highest level of understand is to know yourself, include body, emotion, logic thinking, and put everything together seamlessly.
Several projects this week:
IT consulting market: Capgemini, Accenture (T)
Enterprise AI application market, what are the major applications and experiments. (T)
Wolfspeed company value reassessment and Navitas Semiconductor (TH)
Oracle business performance and financial model (W)
Technology study: Robotics intelligence, but first, I want to dive into the concept of Superintelligence and AGI. What's the hype? Why do they say it's coming? (F)
For Chess study, I will set up the account for Kyle, and find some useful videos for him to watch.
I feel happy that K is growing to become a happy and capable kid. I was playing basketball with him last evening, after he has spent 6 hours in the soccer camp on a hot day. He was still energetic and running around, scoring consistently. K has improved a lot since we sent him to the basketball camp. At the same time, he is playing a lot of chess. Since I resume my study of chess, I have thought of new ways to help him. And it has been very effective.
I need to check if we need to book any tickets during the UK trip.
Today I redeemed Series I Savings Bond that I bought in May 2022. At the time, this is a sensible decision, but over time, it's become less a wise investment. I should have redeemed it way earlier.
At the same time, I should consider investing in education investment account to take advantage of the tax benefits. However, I just checked the rules on 529 plans and they don't allow making investment decisions by owners. How ridiculous.
I was looking at the China banking sector this morning and realized so much have happened in the sector. It's amazing to see the sentiment shift and now people are after the China banking stocks. I still believe the path forward is between two extremes. It's neither too bad or too hopeful.
I signed up the AI Newsletter service and it's amazing. This makes me wonder if I can find similar stuff for the overall financial market. Maybe I should ask AI for help and find these resources.
I briefly looked at Robinhood Markets today. I found the story amazing. It's a company with great story and rapid growth. I need to experience its products as well to get the feel. But overall I feel it's a promising business. At the same time, the current valuation is less than safe. It's generating 3 billion revenue in 2024 and now has a market cap of 87 billions. It's just too high expectations for its rapid growth to continue.
I am doing research on how to invest in crypto currency and compare the different ways of making investments in the market. It's clear that ChatGPT's deep research function has fundamentally changed my daily workflow. It's now an indispensable tool that better fits my everyday needs.
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I had lunch with colleagues today, and asked about one of our executives about his view on China economy and the capital market. I feel it's a lot of wishful thinking. Currently, I'm rather bearish about the outlook. There are warning signals left and right. The market is booming this year, and it might serve as a good time for exit. The overarching theme is deleveraging on the household level. Real estate bubble will burst sooner or later and destroy a lot of families' wealth. People just don't realize the combination of declining population and real estate bubble burst can lead to a very long period of misery for the economy. Let's see in five years time. It's wise to avoid investing into the market. Even leading technology companies can't escape the overall macroenvironment.