Thoughts about the markets, automated trading algorithms, artificial intelligence, and lots of other stuff
Andy Samberg channels White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, in this bleep-ridden skit.
The premise is that the White House Chief of Staff offers his apologies for some recent comments.
It made me laugh out loud and wonder what politics would be like if people actually said what they were thinking.
Here is a link if you want to read a transcript.
Andy Samberg channels White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, in this bleep-ridden skit.
The premise is that the White House Chief of Staff offers his apologies for some recent comments.
It made me laugh out loud and wonder what politics would be like if people actually said what they were thinking.
Here is a link if you want to read a transcript.
Here is Apple's launch video. They do know how to innovate and market, don't they?
Yes, it is stuff that does the stuff their other stuff does. Yet, somehow it is generating great Buzz.
Are you planning to buy one? I'm planning to resist … for now.
Here is Apple's launch video. They do know how to innovate and market, don't they?
Yes, it is stuff that does the stuff their other stuff does. Yet, somehow it is generating great Buzz.
Are you planning to buy one? I'm planning to resist … for now.
This video provides a peek into the science of human motivation.
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business
does.
And what's alarming here is that our business operating system —
think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses,
how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources — it's built
entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks.
That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st
century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn't
work, often doesn't work, and often does harm.
Here is the direct link to the video on Ted's site.
Here is an excerpt from the talk.
Too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. And if we really want to get out of this economic mess, and if we really want high performance on those definitional tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things. To entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach.
And the good news about all of this is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they're interesting, because they are part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.
This video provides a peek into the science of human motivation.
There is a mismatch between what science knows and what business
does.
And what's alarming here is that our business operating system —
think of the set of assumptions and protocols beneath our businesses,
how we motivate people, how we apply our human resources — it's built
entirely around these extrinsic motivators, around carrots and sticks.
That's actually fine for many kinds of 20th century tasks. But for 21st
century tasks, that mechanistic, reward-and-punishment approach doesn't
work, often doesn't work, and often does harm.
Here is the direct link to the video on Ted's site.
Here is an excerpt from the talk.
Too many organizations are making their decisions, their policies about talent and people, based on assumptions that are outdated, unexamined, and rooted more in folklore than in science. And if we really want to get out of this economic mess, and if we really want high performance on those definitional tasks of the 21st century, the solution is not to do more of the wrong things. To entice people with a sweeter carrot, or threaten them with a sharper stick. We need a whole new approach.
And the good news about all of this is that the scientists who've been studying motivation have given us this new approach. It's an approach built much more around intrinsic motivation. Around the desire to do things because they matter, because we like it, because they're interesting, because they are part of something important. And to my mind, that new operating system for our businesses revolves around three elements: autonomy, mastery and purpose.
These are the building blocks of an entirely new operating system for our businesses.
We Do Live In Interesting Times.
The markets pulled-back a little last week. To be fair, the correction was small in comparison to the size of the rally since last March. In many cases where the recent trend has been bullish for so long, people use this type of weakness to add to positions. So, an oversold-rally would make sense here.
However, some traders have doubts about the health of the market.
There is a fear that things may not be what they seem. For example, the GDP number came in higher than expected, but still resulted in selling. OK, GDP didn't tell us useful things (this time) because the better than expected number was the result of accounting and statistics, rather than real economic growth. Traders saw through that, and also see that there are still troubling data points coming in … like that Durable Goods Orders and Weekly Unemployment Claims were both weaker than
expected; and Consumer Spending continues to decline. Still, the Markets sold "good news" again last week. And even
though the moves weren't violent or extended, I take that as a bearish
indicator.
Is It Possible That the Market is Still in a Down-Trend?
Right now, the issue is whether price can get back above the down-trend line (marked by the red arrow) that started in October of 2007.
Is that down-trend line really valid? It will be if price fails to rally here.
As you examine the markets, it is easy to become near-sighted. By that I mean that it is easy to look at the ups and the downs, and to assign a cause based on what's happening in America (for example, the crisis of faith in Bernanke, Geithner, or even a jobless recovery). However, it is harder to believe that any of those issues is the real cause after you look at the next chart (or collection of charts).
How Can The Economies Of This
Many Countries React the Same?
A quick glance around the globe shows remarkably similar performance in many markets.
It brings up two questions:
To get a closer look for yourself, here is a link to the charts. That brings up a third question: What's really causing the markets to behave so similarly?
HBR Shows that Countries Did Deal With the Crisis Differently.
The economic crisis will influence business long into recovery. This Harvard Business Review visualization puts various bailout and stimulus programs in perspective. Calculating these interventions as percentages of GDP helps identify which economies will be stressed and which will have the resources to bounce back.
Is This Time Different?
Lots of people are reading Reinhart & Rogoff's book, This Time is Different. It examines the trend towards public debt that balloons in
response to financial crises. Here is an excerpt from PIMCO's summary of the book:
These examples tend to confirm that banking crises are
followed by a de-leveraging of the private sector accompanied by a substitution
and escalation of government debt, which in turn slows economic growth and
(perhaps) lowers returns on investment and financial assets.
Business Posts Moving the Markets that I Found Interesting This Week:
Lighter Ideas and Fun Links that I Found Interesting This Week
We Do Live In Interesting Times.
The markets pulled-back a little last week. To be fair, the correction was small in comparison to the size of the rally since last March. In many cases where the recent trend has been bullish for so long, people use this type of weakness to add to positions. So, an oversold-rally would make sense here.
However, some traders have doubts about the health of the market.
There is a fear that things may not be what they seem. For example, the GDP number came in higher than expected, but still resulted in selling. OK, GDP didn't tell us useful things (this time) because the better than expected number was the result of accounting and statistics, rather than real economic growth. Traders saw through that, and also see that there are still troubling data points coming in … like that Durable Goods Orders and Weekly Unemployment Claims were both weaker than
expected; and Consumer Spending continues to decline. Still, the Markets sold "good news" again last week. And even
though the moves weren't violent or extended, I take that as a bearish
indicator.
Is It Possible That the Market is Still in a Down-Trend?
Right now, the issue is whether price can get back above the down-trend line (marked by the red arrow) that started in October of 2007.
Is that down-trend line really valid? It will be if price fails to rally here.
As you examine the markets, it is easy to become near-sighted. By that I mean that it is easy to look at the ups and the downs, and to assign a cause based on what's happening in America (for example, the crisis of faith in Bernanke, Geithner, or even a jobless recovery). However, it is harder to believe that any of those issues is the real cause after you look at the next chart (or collection of charts).
How Can The Economies Of This
Many Countries React the Same?
A quick glance around the globe shows remarkably similar performance in many markets.
It brings up two questions:
To get a closer look for yourself, here is a link to the charts. That brings up a third question: What's really causing the markets to behave so similarly?
HBR Shows that Countries Did Deal With the Crisis Differently.
The economic crisis will influence business long into recovery. This Harvard Business Review visualization puts various bailout and stimulus programs in perspective. Calculating these interventions as percentages of GDP helps identify which economies will be stressed and which will have the resources to bounce back.
Is This Time Different?
Lots of people are reading Reinhart & Rogoff's book, This Time is Different. It examines the trend towards public debt that balloons in
response to financial crises. Here is an excerpt from PIMCO's summary of the book:
These examples tend to confirm that banking crises are
followed by a de-leveraging of the private sector accompanied by a substitution
and escalation of government debt, which in turn slows economic growth and
(perhaps) lowers returns on investment and financial assets.
Business Posts Moving the Markets that I Found Interesting This Week:
Lighter Ideas and Fun Links that I Found Interesting This Week
Some technology is innovative and impressive, but doesn't serve a business need. For example, you keep hearing about Cloud Computing. Yet, how likely is it that you're going to
allow your business to put a bunch of your proprietary data out on the net
anytime soon?
I'm not saying bad things about clouds, I'm just saying that there are a number of other recent advances that are interesting and perhaps more relevant. Some of these advances promise to save time and money while
making the computer environment safer and more robust. An example is the class of solutions that take advantage of shared resources (like database clustering and virtualizing
servers and desktops).
For us, one of the biggest changes in information technology, recently, has been the increasing use of virtualization.
What is Virtualization?
Several years ago, I needed to purchase a big and powerful computer to run certain in-depth tests. Yet, only a small percent of the tests we run require a machine that big. Some of our other testing took a long time, but didn't require many of the computer's resources. In both cases, we were dramatically under-using the machine a majority of the time.
With virtualization, you can take a big powerful machine and divide it into smaller less powerful machines when you need to.
That means you can use all of the machine's capacity for one purpose some of the time. While other times, you can load a configuration optimized for a different type of test, which lets you create more virtual machines.
So, if you are running a test that might take one computer 24 hours to run (but didn't use much of the computer's processing power), you could use virtualization to split the computer into four virtual computers. The result is that it might only take you six or seven hours to complete the same task.
That is a simple example, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what is possible.
There are two main players in this space, Microsoft and VMware.
Virtual PCs Move to the Desktop.
That same technology has moved to the desktop.
For example, Windows 7 comes with Microsoft's Virtual PC. This makes it easy for you to create a clone of the computer (running inside your computer) but that doesn't affect the primary operating system.
You can use a different operating system in the Virtual PC. So, even
though you might use Windows 7, you could setup the Virtual PC to run
with Windows XP or even Linux (for compatibility or testing reasons).
Another use of a Virtual PC is as a "sandbox" that lets you install and try software that you wouldn't otherwise try on your main computer.
For example, Microsoft just came-out with a beta version of its Office 2010 product. I asked some of our IT staff if I should install it on my PC to try. When they stopped laughing at me, the answer was "absolutely not", because it might hang, damage something or create the need to re-install the computer. A Virtual PC, however, is a great place to try something like that without risking your primary work environment.
Give it a try.
Resources:
Some technology is innovative and impressive, but doesn't serve a business need. For example, you keep hearing about Cloud Computing. Yet, how likely is it that you're going to
allow your business to put a bunch of your proprietary data out on the net
anytime soon?
I'm not saying bad things about clouds, I'm just saying that there are a number of other recent advances that are interesting and perhaps more relevant. Some of these advances promise to save time and money while
making the computer environment safer and more robust. An example is the class of solutions that take advantage of shared resources (like database clustering and virtualizing
servers and desktops).
For us, one of the biggest changes in information technology, recently, has been the increasing use of virtualization.
What is Virtualization?
Several years ago, I needed to purchase a big and powerful computer to run certain in-depth tests. Yet, only a small percent of the tests we run require a machine that big. Some of our other testing took a long time, but didn't require many of the computer's resources. In both cases, we were dramatically under-using the machine a majority of the time.
With virtualization, you can take a big powerful machine and divide it into smaller less powerful machines when you need to.
That means you can use all of the machine's capacity for one purpose some of the time. While other times, you can load a configuration optimized for a different type of test, which lets you create more virtual machines.
So, if you are running a test that might take one computer 24 hours to run (but didn't use much of the computer's processing power), you could use virtualization to split the computer into four virtual computers. The result is that it might only take you six or seven hours to complete the same task.
That is a simple example, but hopefully it gives you an idea of what is possible.
There are two main players in this space, Microsoft and VMware.
Virtual PCs Move to the Desktop.
That same technology has moved to the desktop.
For example, Windows 7 comes with Microsoft's Virtual PC. This makes it easy for you to create a clone of the computer (running inside your computer) but that doesn't affect the primary operating system.
You can use a different operating system in the Virtual PC. So, even
though you might use Windows 7, you could setup the Virtual PC to run
with Windows XP or even Linux (for compatibility or testing reasons).
Another use of a Virtual PC is as a "sandbox" that lets you install and try software that you wouldn't otherwise try on your main computer.
For example, Microsoft just came-out with a beta version of its Office 2010 product. I asked some of our IT staff if I should install it on my PC to try. When they stopped laughing at me, the answer was "absolutely not", because it might hang, damage something or create the need to re-install the computer. A Virtual PC, however, is a great place to try something like that without risking your primary work environment.
Give it a try.
Resources: