Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading - March 25th, 2017

Let's play "Caption This Picture."

 

Found it under the headline "Aides Wrestle Drill From Trump's Hands As He Tries To Remove Obama Listening Device From Skull."  What would you caption it?

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

  

Lighter Links:

• ‘Homo Sapiens as We Know Them Will Disappear in a Century or So’. (Yuval Noah Harari)
• A Stunning Video of Mars that Took Three Months to Stitch Together—by Hand. (Wired)
• Stephen Hawking is Going to Space. (TheNextWeb)
• Darth Vader’s Suit Would Cost $18.3 Million in Real Life. (Dailyinfographic)
• How to Tell a Good Story, as Explained by George Saunders, Ira Glass, Ken Burns, Scott Simon, Catherine Burns & Others. (OpenCulture)

 

Trading Links:

• Steve Cohen is Trying to Teach Computers to Think like Top Traders. (Bloomberg)
• John Oliver on the Federal Budget. (Ritholtz)
• Measuring the Cost of Living Worldwide. (Economist)
• Are Bonds Flashing a Warning Sign for Stocks? (SeeItMarket)
• Quants are Eating Away at Wall Street's Edge. (QuantNews)

A Tale as Old As Time ...

I watched Beauty and the Beast this weekend, with my youngest.

 

via filmschoolrejects

 

He's not so young anymore, and it feels like these two toddlers aren't either.   If you haven't seen this yet, watch ... It's a fascinating and funny time-lapse.

 

 

Two toddlers escaped their cribs and held a party in their bedroom. 

By the way, Beauty and the Beast was pretty good.  It's a faithful representation of the original cartoon, and a reminder that while children get older and technology changes, some things don't.

What's The Largest Religion In Your State? (Outside of Christianity)

Spoiler alert. Christianity is the largest religion in the USA, but there's variety in the second largest across the  US.

This chart is a little dated, but it's interesting regardless:

via ASARB

 

What I found most interesting, was South Carolina's second largest religion being Baha'i (followed by my surprise that Judaism was the second most popular religion in Tennessee). 

Could you have guessed your state's result?

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 18th, 2017

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting. 

 

Lighter Links:

• The Fundamental Differences between Leadership and Management. (Forbes)
• The 10,000-Hour Rule is Wrong and Perpetuates a Cruel Myth. (BI)
• The Anatomy of Charisma. (Nautilus)
• Persuasion: An Introduction. (NakedCapitalism)
• Improve Your Life and Revitalize Your Body with a Healthy Dose of Sarcasm and Humor. (Bulletproof)

 

Trading Links:

• Market Strategist Jeff Saut on Being Wrong and Still Making Money. (MarketFolly)
• Hedges are "Pricing a World Almost Free of Risk" Says BofA: Here's How to Trade It. (ZH)
• The Continuing Evolution of Volatility Trading. (RCM Alternatives)
• Trump Wants Faster Growth. the Fed Isn’t So Sure. (New York Times)
• The Trump Slump? Tourists Say They're Scared to Visit the United States. (LATimes)

March Madness: The Last Perfect Bracket Busted After Just 40 Games

March Madness is in full swing, and it feels like everyone (and their mom) has filled a bracket.  But how do they do it?

More importantly, how do the people that are successful do it?

The video, below, highlights the "Bracket Busters" of 2015.

 

via FiveThirtyEight

 

So, who were they?  A 13-year-old who used a mix of guesswork and preferences, a 47-year-old English woman who used algorithms and data science (despite not knowing the game), and a 70-year-old bookie who had his finger on the pulse of the betting world.  

Proof that different factors can lead us to believe we have control over something with odds at 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. For those who don't wanna do the math that's 9.2 quintillion. 

That's not to say that different factors don't provide an edge. Knowing the history of the teams, their ranks, how they performed historically in the playoffs, all provide important information, to humans and machines that try to make the perfect bracket.

The way people fill out their brackets often mimics the way investors pick trades or allocate assets. Some use gut feel, some base their decisions on rank and past performance, and some use predictive models.

Just as an FYI, this March Madness, the last perfect bracket busted after just 40 games.  This includes reporting on tens of millions of brackets from NCAA.com, Bleacher Report, CBS, ESPN, Fox Sports and Yahoo.

People aren't as good at prediction as they predict they are.

Something to think about. 

I've Been Going to the Gym Again ...

I've been going to the gym again ... and a lot of what I see there doesn't look like exercise. 

On the other hand, you have guys like this, doing 20 different types of push-ups: 

 

 

I used to do that.

But, I can do anything I commit to do.

So, I can do that.

Time to do that.

What's The Most Common Password?

A week ago, we talked about security (or the lack of it).

Saw this, and thought it was related:

via imgur

Is your password up there? Might want to change it. 

I've started using phrases for my password. They're harder for computers to guess, but easier for you to remember. This comic by former NASA scientist, Randall Munroe sums it up: 

 

via xkcd

Thinking about security is important, doing something is even more so. 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading - March 11th, 2017

 Joke plays out in real life. Lawyer's pants catch fire during Florida arson trial.

 

via OutsideTheBeltway

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• 11 Ways to Restate Problems to Get Better Solutions. (IdeaSandbox)
• Are We Ready for Cyborgs?  The Tech is On Its Way. (SingularityHub)
• The Dawn of New Consciousness: AI, Robots, and Religion. (CoreSpirit)
• Infographic: The Oxford Comma Debate. (PR Daily)
• Is Consciousness an Illusion? (NYBooks)

Trading Links:

• IBM Thinks It’s Ready to Turn Quantum Computing into an Actual Business. (Flipboard)
• The Rise, Fall and Rise of Steven Cohen. (Economist)
• Jim Bianco Warns "Inflation is Going to Be a Game Changer". (ZeroHedge)
• How the Rest of the World Paved the Way for a March Fed Hike. (Bloomberg)
• Americans May Lose Visa-Free Travel to Europe. (FTG)

Unicorns Are Becoming Less Mythical

Recently, we talked about billionaires and how they made their money. Today, I want to talk about companies that are valued at over $1 billion dollars. 

In tech finance, a "Unicorn" is the moniker applied to private startups when they cross the supposedly mythical $1 Billion valuation level. 

Well, fairy tales are coming true more often.  

The number of Unicorns doubled in 2015 ... and not just in number – but in value as well.

 

via CBInsights

The chart, which only shows the 185 Unicorns that are still private companies, highlights the increasing Unicorn density since 2014.

Currently, Uber is the most valuable Unicorn, with a $66 Billion Dollar valuation.

What do you think it means?  

Are these companies a sign of a strong market, a bubble, or both?

What Do You Really Have to Fear?

I recently attended a cybersecurity roundtable with Congressman Pete Sessions.

 

 

The message was disturbing ... But, you already knew that; didn't you?

First, check out this interactive attack map.

 

 

It's scary ... it shows the attacks happening now, their types, and their targets ... in real time.

Perhaps scarier, however, was the discussion on privacy.  One of the messages was not to be so worried about privacy ... You don't have any.  

Your data is already out there;  what you need to worry about is whether someone intends to use it. 

The question isn't whether your data has been compromised, it's whether you've been targeted. 

Just a warning.