Yes, objectively Airpods Pro audio quality is not good if you're comparing it to a high-end IEM setup that uses multiple driver types, balanced armatures, electrostatics, etc. Also the tuning on the 3 vs. the 2 is worse.

Airpods Pro have great audio quality considering they are wireless bluetooth earbuds. Remove that qualifier, and if you're sitting at a desk all day and wired becomes an option, you can get far better sound quality/longevity for a fraction of the price.

Yes, beta is the overwhelming source of returns. I was referring to factors in the sense of the University of Chicago research on market inefficiencies (where momentum is the strongest factor for inefficiency).

If you buy a “factor-weighted” etf the idea is it’s tilting you into those “factors” away from pure beta like buying whole market.

PE you could argue is largely just leverage plus an illiquidity factor play, since if PE just returned beta (which these days it might!) you’d be smarter to buy the S&P500 with equivalent leverage and not pay crazy fees.

It is absolutely possible (and even likely!) that a bad PE fund was the cause of the issue you're talking about. But there is also a media hysteria around PE, and a lack of understanding among the general public of what it is.

It's just as likely the business that was acquired was already failing or unsustainable to begin with (hence why the owner wanted out at low multiples). LBO funds don't acquire promising businesses at 5-10X revenue like tech companies do, they usually buy businesses at low multiples that are past their prime or failing in an attempt to revitalize them (with debt, since you can't raise capital by selling equity in a failing business).

Obviously this will not always work out great, given the trajectory of target companies was already not great to begin with. Momentum is the strongest factor in all markets.

The problem is, Private Equity has become a conspiratorial catchall boogieman and scapegoat for every problem under the sun, so it's hard for me to assess without further details of the situation.

So yes, PE funds are probably overvalued right now and there are a lot of PE funds getting rich off management fees while not providing promised returns...but this comment is so wrong I don't know where to begin.

First, VC stands for venture capital, which is a subset of private equity that does zero LBOs and doesn't even acquire any businesses. VC funds buy equity in startups, and take on zero debt to do so. You have your boogiemen totally confused.

Second, the entire point of a PE fund that uses a leveraged buyout strategy is that they need to sell the acquired firm at a profit to make any returns to the fund. LBO funds don't 'cashflow' businesses, and saddling a business with a bunch of debt is antithetical to that purpose anyways.

Third, this is not "risk free revenue." It's a high risk strategy to use the debt to increase the value of the business by improving operations enough that you can sell it for a profit to the fund. If you saddle a company with debt and DON'T increase the value of the business beyond the debt you took on, the PE fund will not be in business for fund 2.

The risk-free revenue while the fund is alive comes from the management fees that investors in the fund pay (usually 2%, which is way too high IMO, but has nothing to do with the debt or the acquired businesses).

Please do not write confident sounding comments about things you don't understand, it spread misinformation and makes the internet a worse place.

The point is that we don't need an equivalent number of nodes (agents) as we needed people.

The computer flattened the coordination dependencies of that room full of people by doing all the calculations by itself. As they get smarter, you can theoretically assume 1 agent could eventually run the entire US federal government.

In the historical [human] computer example; if 15,000 calculations needed to be done, a CPU doesn't need to wait on Bob to come back from lunch to do the next 20 calculations...and doesn't need to wait on Alice to combine his work with the 20 calculations done by Jane...and doesn't need Bill to wait for everybody to be done to double check Jane's work.

The CPU does all 15,000 calculations instantly, by itself. This will be similar with AI agents.