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I'm curious if anyone has run the numbers and looked at what the interest payments of this bond over the past 400 years would have amounted to had they been inv

I'm curious if anyone has run the numbers and looked at what the interest payments of this bond over the past 400 years would have amounted to had they been invested in some theoretical basket of typical assets that were available at the time. It sounds like a pittance now but 400 years of a compounding pittance could be a lot of money. Edit: with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million.

PepperdineG 2y ago
> with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million. Reminds of Futurama with billionaire Philip J Fry after unintentionally leaving 93 cents in the bank for 1000 years.
- dgfitz 2y ago
  I asked a bot to do the math for me (if anyone was as curious as I was): 93 cents would turn into approximately $17.88 trillion with compound interest of 3% over 1000 years. 93 cents would turn into approximately $4.28 billion with compound interest of 2% over 1000 years. 93 cents would turn into approximately $19,482.22 with compound interest of 1% over 1000 years.
  - scubbo 2y ago
    Is a bot really necessary in order to calculate 0.93*(1 + n%)^1000?
    - dotancohen 2y ago
      Not if you know the formula. I suspect that GP didn't.
      - dgfitz 2y ago
        I had a tab open and asked a question. It was simpler than running the calculation 3 times. I do in fact understand basic math. Merry Christmas!
        dotancohen 2y ago
        Happy Hanukkah!
    - antihipocrat 2y ago
      The bot does the trivial things well, still need a brain to actually apply these trivial things to solve complex problems - much like a calculator
      - scubbo 2y ago
        > The bot does the trivial things well Clearly not, since all the answers were incorrect; two of them by an order of magnitude: * 0.93((1.03)^1000) is 6.393E12, not 1.788E13 * 0.93((1.02)^1000) is 3.7E8, not 4.28E9 * 0.93*((1.01)^1000) is 19,492, not 19,482 ...on a whim, I just tried asking ChatGPT "What would 93 cents accumulate to over 1000 years with 3% compound interest?", and the answer (179.74) was staggeringly wrong because it thought that 1.03^1000 was approximately 193.48. How timely that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484937 was posted today.
        dgfitz 2y ago
        To be fair, I qualified the whole thing with “I asked a bot” so I can say I learned a valuable lesson as to the value of LLMs. I doubt anyone reading this will believe me, today is the second day I have ever tried using an LLM. Talk about a backfire.
        scubbo 2y ago
        Personally, I can say that I just gained a whole _ton_ of respect for you for your ability to learn a lesson, to admit that you made a mistake, and not to double-down on insistence that LLMs are Good, Actually. I hope my message didn't come across at too unpleasantly confrontational - I'm not annoyed at _you_, but rather at the over-reliance of these hallucination machines in our industry which is supposed to prize hard data and accuracy. I'm glad I was able to help someone gain a bit of reasonable skepticism for them! All the very best to you and yours for this holiday season!
      - Pooge 2y ago
        I like the Compound Interest Calculator on Investor.gov.[1] [1]: https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      Is this a rhetorical question? The answer is clearly yes. I never studied organic chemistry.
paxys 2y ago
The issue would be finding an asset (or group of assets) that 1) held value and 2) you could maintain ownership over continuously for 400 years. Cities, kingdoms, countries, currencies, corporations, banks, markets all rise and go extinct over much shorter periods.
- rtkwe 2y ago
  Monetary calculations in general are tough over that long of a timespan in general much less when you have to factor in the likelihood your theoretical investment would have survived the bakers dozen of financial/governmental crises.
NoboruWataya 2y ago
> with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million. Calculating the total return given an annual average rate of return is the easy part here. The idea that you can easily invest in a diversified basket of assets and receive a fairly safe x% a year is a relatively recent one. I'm not sure what assets you could invest in 400 years that would even be guaranteed to exist today.
- wbl 2y ago
  The Hudson's Bay Company is almost old enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company
- WorkerBee28474 2y ago
  Japanese construction firms
nico 2y ago
> with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million 400 years -> 280M That gives you a perspective on how insane a billion dollars is. Also wild that any single individual can own that much (and some a lot more!)
- WorkerBee28474 2y ago
  > Also wild that any single individual can own that much (and some a lot more!) Nobody owns a billion dollars except governments. "Billionaires" usually have ownership of business interests that could theoretically be sold for a billion dollars, but that they generally do not want to sell (because they would rather own and often run the business.).
  - xuki 2y ago
    LOL Bezos sold a few Bs of Amazon every other week recently. I’m sure all the top billionaires could get a billion in cash easily if they ever need to.
  - philjohn 2y ago
    Why sell when you can take out loans against your stock holdings?
IAmGraydon 2y ago
Cool. Now take the 1,200 Gilder and invest it in that same investment vehicle at 4% and wait 400 years. It's worth $7,807,589,396.13

PepperdineG 2y ago

> with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million. Reminds of Futurama with billionaire Philip J Fry after unintentionally leaving 93 cents in the bank for 1000 years.

dgfitz 2y ago
I asked a bot to do the math for me (if anyone was as curious as I was): 93 cents would turn into approximately $17.88 trillion with compound interest of 3% over 1000 years. 93 cents would turn into approximately $4.28 billion with compound interest of 2% over 1000 years. 93 cents would turn into approximately $19,482.22 with compound interest of 1% over 1000 years.
- scubbo 2y ago
  Is a bot really necessary in order to calculate 0.93*(1 + n%)^1000?
  - dotancohen 2y ago
    Not if you know the formula. I suspect that GP didn't.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      I had a tab open and asked a question. It was simpler than running the calculation 3 times. I do in fact understand basic math. Merry Christmas!
      - dotancohen 2y ago
        Happy Hanukkah!
  - antihipocrat 2y ago
    The bot does the trivial things well, still need a brain to actually apply these trivial things to solve complex problems - much like a calculator
    - scubbo 2y ago
      > The bot does the trivial things well Clearly not, since all the answers were incorrect; two of them by an order of magnitude: * 0.93((1.03)^1000) is 6.393E12, not 1.788E13 * 0.93((1.02)^1000) is 3.7E8, not 4.28E9 * 0.93*((1.01)^1000) is 19,492, not 19,482 ...on a whim, I just tried asking ChatGPT "What would 93 cents accumulate to over 1000 years with 3% compound interest?", and the answer (179.74) was staggeringly wrong because it thought that 1.03^1000 was approximately 193.48. How timely that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484937 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42484937 was posted today.
      - dgfitz 2y ago
        To be fair, I qualified the whole thing with “I asked a bot” so I can say I learned a valuable lesson as to the value of LLMs. I doubt anyone reading this will believe me, today is the second day I have ever tried using an LLM. Talk about a backfire.
        scubbo 2y ago
        Personally, I can say that I just gained a whole _ton_ of respect for you for your ability to learn a lesson, to admit that you made a mistake, and not to double-down on insistence that LLMs are Good, Actually. I hope my message didn't come across at too unpleasantly confrontational - I'm not annoyed at _you_, but rather at the over-reliance of these hallucination machines in our industry which is supposed to prize hard data and accuracy. I'm glad I was able to help someone gain a bit of reasonable skepticism for them! All the very best to you and yours for this holiday season!
    - Pooge 2y ago
      I like the Compound Interest Calculator on Investor.gov.[1] [1]: https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calcula...
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    Is this a rhetorical question? The answer is clearly yes. I never studied organic chemistry.

paxys 2y ago

The issue would be finding an asset (or group of assets) that 1) held value and 2) you could maintain ownership over continuously for 400 years. Cities, kingdoms, countries, currencies, corporations, banks, markets all rise and go extinct over much shorter periods.

rtkwe 2y ago
Monetary calculations in general are tough over that long of a timespan in general much less when you have to factor in the likelihood your theoretical investment would have survived the bakers dozen of financial/governmental crises.

NoboruWataya 2y ago

> with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million. Calculating the total return given an annual average rate of return is the easy part here. The idea that you can easily invest in a diversified basket of assets and receive a fairly safe x% a year is a relatively recent one. I'm not sure what assets you could invest in 400 years that would even be guaranteed to exist today.

wbl 2y ago
The Hudson's Bay Company is almost old enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson%27s_Bay_Company
WorkerBee28474 2y ago
Japanese construction firms

nico 2y ago

> with an annual contribution of €13.61 and a real rate of return of 3%, 400 years of annual compounding would be over €7 million. With a rate of 4% it would be €280 million 400 years -> 280M That gives you a perspective on how insane a billion dollars is. Also wild that any single individual can own that much (and some a lot more!)

WorkerBee28474 2y ago
> Also wild that any single individual can own that much (and some a lot more!) Nobody owns a billion dollars except governments. "Billionaires" usually have ownership of business interests that could theoretically be sold for a billion dollars, but that they generally do not want to sell (because they would rather own and often run the business.).
- xuki 2y ago
  LOL Bezos sold a few Bs of Amazon every other week recently. I’m sure all the top billionaires could get a billion in cash easily if they ever need to.
- philjohn 2y ago
  Why sell when you can take out loans against your stock holdings?

IAmGraydon 2y ago

Cool. Now take the 1,200 Gilder and invest it in that same investment vehicle at 4% and wait 400 years. It's worth $7,807,589,396.13