Capitalogix

Another Way You're Being Judged - Weekly Reading - June 30th, 2017

You know people look at the car you drive, and the watch you wear ... but, what does the wine you drink say about you? There is often a little truth in humor. Here is a wine list I saw while in Bali, Indonesia last week.

Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week. Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits. Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading. Thanks.

Lighter Links:

Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamist Terror. (WeeklyStandard) In 10 Years, Your IPhone Won’t Be a Phone Anymore. (WSJ) 25 IPhone Secrets and Stories We're Only Learning 10 Years Later.(Inc) Powerlessness and the Politics of Blame. (NEH) Floating Masses of Deadly Fire Ants. (Washington Post) Why It’s No Longer Possible for Any Country to Win a War. (Time) How to Use Your Amazon Echo as a Personal Fitness Trainer. (CNet) Turns Out, the Purpose of Diarrhea is Way More Complicated Than We Thought. (SA) How to Deal with North Korea. (The Atlantic) What Makes a Great Wine Great? (3QuarksDaily) It's So Hot in Phoenix, They Can't Fly Planes. (USAToday) Artificial Intelligence is Getting Better at Predicting When You'll Die.(IBT) In Search of Fear. (LaphamsQuarterly) Here’s Why Your Innovation Strategy Will Fail. (DigitalTonto) NASA’s Scientists Formed a Club to Dream up Uses for AI like Self-replicating Robots and Harpooning Comets. (Quartz) Powerball and Mega Millions Players May Fall Victim to Illinois Budget Crisis. (Money) Coconut Oil is Not a Magical Health Food after All. (Mashable) Facebook is about to Look like a Hallmark Store Exploded. (Mashable) Gartner Puts AWS, Microsoft Azure Top of Its Magic Quadrant for Cloud Services. (ZDNet)

Market-Related Links

Just 10 Stocks are Having an Incredible Impact on the Market this Year. (CNBC) The 10th Anniversary Of the iPhone: Is Apple Trying to Do Too Much? (WSJ) The Prospects for the World’s Biggest IPO. (Economist) Can We Blame the Mafia on Lemons? (AtlasObscura) How Effective is Economic Theory? (NationalAffairs) 31 Hottest FinTech Startups Defining the New York FinTech Industry.(LTP) The Most Misleading Charts of 2015, Fixed. (Quartz) Amazon, Explained in One Chart. (Flipboard) These 6 Charts Explain the World's Looming Demographic Crisis.(BizInsider) How the World's Currencies Got Their Names. (WEForum) Black Swans and Game Theory: a Post. (Bloomberg) These Economies are Getting More Miserable this Year. (Bloomberg) A 'Game Changer' Technology on Wall Street Could Shake up Stock Trading. (Insider) Blockchain Raises $40 Million from Lakestar and Google's Venture Arm. (BI) Amazon’s New Customer. (Stratechery) London Currency Trader is Taking on World's Biggest Stock Market.(Bloomberg) How Monsanto Protects Crops with Artificial Intelligence. (ReadWrite) What We Can Learn from Robo Advisors. (WealthManagement) An Easy Way to Invest in the 'Asian Century'. (BizInsider) The World’s Finances are Looking Quite Frightening Right Now – Here’s How You Can Understand What’s Happening. (Independent)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. Click Here To Join My Mailing List

Conditioning Yourself To Take The Best Next Step

Is How You Do Something ... How You Do Everything?

I think so.  To make the point, let me start with a brief story. 

I was at the gym and getting pretty close to the end of my workout.

Frankly, I was at a point where being done was way more attractive than the option of doing additional exercise.

Over time, I've developed many habits and beliefs that focus on finding best next step -or a way to do just a little bit more. So this time, I used reverse-counting to help me finish that workout strong.

I started with 10 push-ups. I know I can do 10 push-ups, even at the end of a hard workout. Without putting my knees down, I can rest in plank position for a moment or two ... then I do nine more push-ups. That has to be easier than 10, right? Then eight more ... seven ... six. You get the point.

Each set is a little bit harder than the one before; but mentally I'm prepared for it, and can convince myself that I'm so much closer to the goal.

So I get to three, and sweat is dripping off my nose, my arms are shaking, and my hips want to sway. Somehow knowing that there's only two more sets, then only one more, allows me to finish.

That story could have been about creating profitable trading systems, developing a new database, or recovering from a set-back.  It's about finding a way, regardless of external circumstances.

Finding a Way to Do Just a Little Bit More.

There are many times that it seems easier to do nothing, or to give up. That's just not my nature. It's not in my "nurture" either.

My father used to say that the secret to success was getting up. What he meant was that if someone knocked you down 10 times, then the secret to success was getting up 11 times. And if someone knocked you down another time, then the secret was to get up 12 times. There's a lot of truth in that.

I laugh when I think of all the little things I do that condition me to take the best next step. Here are a few examples of small things that help define that mindset.

• I never stop reading until I finish a chapter.
• Also, when I play a strategy game on my iPhone, I never stop until I win.
• And, when I play a strategy game that I'm good at, I never stop until I achieve a certain score. 

It doesn't matter if I'm frustrated or tired.  I find a way.  Each of these things, in its own small way, helps condition me to know that I can do anything I commit to do.  Ultimately, what that means is that regardless of what happens, my outcome depends most on what I choose to do.

Sometimes these habits seem silly, quirky, or even a little bit OCD to me. Yet, they serve me.

Many benefits come from knowing that the game's not over until you say it is ... or until you win.

Moreover, it's comforting to know that there's always a best next step, or at least a different perspective that will create new opportunities and possibilities.

I tend to take that perspective in business as well. We focus on the progress we're making, and what that makes possible, rather than how far we are from the ultimate goal. Why? Because as we continue to make progress, the things we shoot for are bigger and farther away. Focusing there would always show a shortfall. Obstacles and set-backs become the raw material for new growth, ideas and strategies.  The trick is getting back up, isn't it?

Sometimes the best advice is simple. Nike got it right in their ad ... Just Do It.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 24th, 2017

McDonald's hit an all-time high after announcing that kiosks would be replacing cashiers ...

 

That plus this 400-burger-per-hour robot means teenagers have even less of a chance to land a job in retail. 

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

Lighter Links:

• 7 Questions that Lead to an 'Aha' Moment, According to Research. (Inc)
• Google’s New Chip is a Stepping Stone to Quantum Computing Supremacy. (TechReview)
• 27 Quotes to Change How You Think about Problems. (Flipboard)
• Even AI Creators Don't Understand How Complex AI Works. (BigThink)
• Elon Musk Lays out Plans to Meld Brains and Computers. (Wall Street Journal)

Trading Links:

• What Some Very Smart Hedge Fund Managers are Saying about this Market. (Flip)
• Brick-and-Mortar Stores are Shuttering at a Record Pace. (Wall Street Journal)
• 3 Reasons FinTech is Thriving. (Forbes)
• McKinsey: Mounting Dry Powder is Nothing to Worry About. (Institutional Investor)
• Hedge Fund Assets Rise Again with Quants Leading the Way. (ValueWalk)

Getting Close To The Seat of Power - Weekly Links - June 23rd, 2017

I am in Indonesia this week. Saw this - and it made me smile. Kind of a crappy way to feel special!

,

Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week. Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits. Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading. Thanks.

 

Lighter Links: Trump Says He 'Very Seldom' Regrets Any Tweets. (Bloom) Astronaut: NASA Discovery Sparks My Dream of Intelligent Life beyond Earth. (CNN) What ‘Personal Space’ Looks Like Around the World. (Washington Post) A New Parchment Declaration of Independence Surfaces. Head-Scratching Ensues. (NYT) Who are the New Jihadis? (TheGuardian) What Does It Mean to Be Human? (MosaicScience) Can You Believe that Sad Songs Actually Make Us Happy? See What Science Explains! (LifeHack) 10 of History’s Most Iconic Things that Never Existed. (ListVerse) 'Irresistible' by Design: It's No Accident You Can't Stop Looking at the Screen. (NPR) Scientists: “We Have Detected the Existence of a Fundamentally New State of Matter”. (Futurism) For 79 Years, This Harvard Study Has Searched for the Key to Happiness. (WashingtonPost) Sleep is the New Status Symbol. (New York Times) The Best Exercise for Aging Muscles. (NYT) The Boundaries of Artificial Emotional Intelligence. (Get To Next) Find Your Passion Through Taking Action. (Medium) The Six Main Arcs in Storytelling, As Identified by an A.I. (The Atlantic) Neil DeGrasse Tyson Says this is His Most Important Message Ever.(BigThink) The Angry Itch. (PsychCentral) Environmental 'Memories' Passed on for 14 Generations.(ScienceDaily)

 

Market-Related Links: Hedge Fund Industry AUM Hits $3.07T, up 7.3% in Last 12 Months. (FinAlternatives) Investment Portfolio Evaluation by Fuzzy Approach. (SSRN) Do Stock Markets React to Soccer Games? a Meta-Regression Analysis. (SSRN) Number of People Collecting Unemployment Checks Hits 17-Year Low, Jobless Claims Show. (MarketWatch) Alarm Bells Start Ringing for U.K. Economy. (Bloomberg) How the Passive Investing Mania Undermined Its Most Basic Assumption. (TheFelderReport) Best Buy up 50% in Last Year to All-Time High. (24/7 Wall St) Hedge Fund Flows Rebound after Miserable 2016. (Institutional Investor) Cyclically Adaptive Trading (CAT). (TraderFeed) Broken Assumptions of Governance. (Medium) New Technology is Built on a ‘Stack.’ is that the Best Way to Understand Everything Else, Too? (NYT) DARPA's Latest Idea Could Put Today's Turing-era Computers at Risk.(ComputerWorld) The Doomsday Clock: What's Considered When Setting It?(TheBulletin) Why America’s Airports Suck. (Institutional Investor) Millennials Differ from Other Generations in Almost Every Regard. Here's the Data. (USAToday) How Spotify is Finally Gaining Leverage over Record Labels.(TechCrunch) This Man Wants to Stop You from Making Bad Decisions. (Fortune) Build a Better Monster : Morality, Machine Learning, and Mass Surveillance. (IdleWords) MSNBC Anchor Admits "Our Job" is to "Control Exactly What People Think". (ZeroHedge)

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

The Best Humor Is Based On Truth - Weekly Links - June 16th, 2017

Here is a peek at what I've been reading lately. These are the links I saved this week. Hope you find some interesting and enjoyable tidbits. Let me know if you read something I'd like ... Or if there are other sources I should add to my weekly reading. Thanks.

Lighter Links:

Artificial Intelligence Has to Deal with Its Transparency Problems.(TNW) It’s this Easy to Look inside an Algorithm. (FastCoD) Ten Authentic Leadership Practices. (Forbes) How to Train Your Brain to Go Positive instead of Negative. (Forbes) Putin’s Paradise. (City-journal) Remembering Manuel Noriega and His Capture. (WOTR) How Much Mormonism Has Changed. (BCC) Trump’s Meddlesome Priest. (New York Times) Oldest Fossils of Homo Sapiens Found in Morocco, Altering History of Our Species. (NYT) How the D-Day Invasion Was Planned. (PopularMechanics) The New IMac Pro is Apple’s Most Bonkers Computer Ever. (Wired) Google’s AlphaGo Beats the World’s Best Go Player — Again.(WashPost) Football 3.0 is Coming. This is What It Will Look Like. (SBNation) An Excavation of One of the World’s Greatest Art Collections.(FiveThirtyEight) Turns Out, a Horrifying Number of People Use Their Phones While Driving. (Wired) The 9-Minute Strength Workout. (New York Times) Science Asks: is Your Dog Just Playing You? (Forbes) Interactive Map Reveals Who Has the Most Powerful Passport.(Telegraph) Would Your Company Pass this Stringent Good Workplace Audit?(FastCompany) First Class Vs. Last Class? Airlines Bolster Premium Cabin, Skimp on Economy. (WSJ)

Market-Related Links

17 Fintech Businesses that Could One Day Be Worth over $1 Billion.(Business Insider) Alternative Finance and the Rise of the Fintech Unicorn. (Forbes) The Most Dangerous Narratives are Usually the Smartest. (PragCap) ‘Alt’ Data in Emerging Markets. (MarketsMedia) Can a Man Responsible for $5 Trillion Convince You He’s Not Powerful?(Bloomberg) Craft Beer — So Hot Right Now. (Pudding) US Retailers are on Pace to Close More Stores in 2017 than in the 2008 Great Recession. (Quartz) Apple Hires Rocket Scientists as It Tries to Catch up in Driverless Cars.(WSJ) Bad Intelligence behind the Wheel. (Wall Street Journal) Glimpse the Store of the Future. (Bloomberg) Fintech Lures MBAs Away from Banking and Consulting. (FT) Bloomberg Weed Index. (Ritholtz) Is this the End of Venture Capital as We Know It? (VentureBeat) Companies of the Future: No CEO, No Boss, Managed by Blockchain.(VB) Netflix to Raise $1 Billion through Debt Offering to Fund New Content & ‘Strategic Transactions’. (VB) “The Real Corruption is the Ownership of Congress by the Rich”.(Posner) Watch this Larry Page-backed Flying Car Take to the Sky above a Lake. (TechCrunch) The Death of the Smartphone is Closer Than You Think. Here's What Comes Next. (ZDNet) How Hedge Fund Billionaire James Simons is Changing Math Education.(Forbes) BAML: the '$1 Trillion Flow that Conquers All' Explains Everything Happening in Markets. (Business Insider)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. - Howard

A Father's Day Investment Guaranteed to Pay Dividends

My kids are getting older.  In fact, they're officially both adults.  So Father's Day looks a little different than it used to.

As I look back, there is an investment I made that paid-off in a big way, and I want to share it with you.

Like many parents, I wanted to teach my children that, to a large extent, they control what happens to them. One of the first ways I did that was to set up a "compensation system" for them to earn video games.

Some parents try to limit the amount of time their kids spend watching TV or playing video games. I tried something different.  Instead, my kids earned their games by reading books.  Here is a photo from way back then.

Paid With Play.

Here's how it worked. When they were younger, 10 books was enough to earn a small game. When they finished a book, it was their right, and my obligation, to take them to the bookstore for us to pick up the next book together. Likewise, when they finished the requisite number of books, it was their right, and my obligation, to take them to the computer store or game store for them to choose any game they wanted.

When they finished hundred books, they got a bonus of earning the next game system. That meant if they had a Nintendo, they could now also get a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360.

How Can You Encourage a Jump to the Next Level?

There came a point when I wanted one of my sons to start reading grown-up books. He was comfortable reading a certain type of book, and didn't want to read the kind of books that I read.  So, I created a bonus system that counted a particular book as three books.  I didn't force him; I just let the easier path to a reward "whisper" in his ear what to read. Once he finished that, he never went back to teen fiction.

It Is a Great Way to Learn About Your Kids.

I also used the bookstore visits to get a sense of how the boys were doing. For example, I might say "I notice that you read five books in that series, maybe you'd like this book".  Or, "That sure is a lot of science fiction; what was the last biography you read?"  For the most part, though, I didn't care what they read.  The key was to get them to want to choose certain books for their own reasons.  Ultimately, their preference meant they were learning to love reading.

It Puts Them In Control of Their Destiny and Rewards.

My younger son likes competition. He also broke or misplaced many things. So, in order to earn back the Game Boy unit that he lost, I challenged him to read five books in five days. These weren't easy books either. It was designed to stretch him, and also to teach him that he could read a book a night. The bet was that he either finished all the books in the allocated time, or none of them counted towards games or Game Boys. On the other hand, if he read a book a night for two weeks, not only would he get to have his Game Boy back, the books would count towards a game too. It worked like a charm, and we were both happy.

So, Who Got the Better Bargain?

As they started to get into their teenage years, I needed to up the ante a little. So, 500 books meant they got a laptop of their choice. Both boys cashed in, and probably felt like they were taking advantage of their dad.

I got what I wanted, though; both my boys love reading, and know that they can accomplish anything they put their minds to … one step at a time.

 

 

That's an investment that will pay dividends for a long time.

Happy Father's Day. 

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 17th, 2017

The new normal.

 

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• Putin Implies the U.S. is ‘Stupid’, Talks about NATO ‘Falling Apart’. (ValueWalk)
• Anti-Semitic Incidents Rose a Whopping 86% in the First 3 Months of 2017. (Apple)
• Beyond Alt: Understanding the New Far Right. (NYMag)
• Malcolm Gladwell on Why We Shouldn’t Value Speed Over Power. (Heleo)
• Learning to Distinguish “Fear” from “Fear of Fear” is Key to Leading a Happy Life. (Quartz)

Trading Links:

• Puerto Rico Votes in Favor of Statehood. (TheHill)
• Trump Tweets and the Efficient Market Hypothesis. (SSRN)
• Tony Robbins: What I Learned from the World's Greatest Investors. (Time)
• The World's Highest-Paid Musicians of 2016 - Pg.1. (Forbes)
• For Aramco Insiders, Prince’s $2 Trillion IPO Valuation Doesn’t Add Up. (WSJ)

JIM ROGERS: "The Worst Crash In Our Lifetime Is Coming"

Jim Rogers knows a thing or two about markets.  He is a successful investor and businessman (and was a co-founder of the Quantum Funds).

He recently talked about his expectations for the next couple of years.  It's worth watching.

 

Jim predicts a crash within the next year (due to the bubble on many stocks popping). 

There are many things that could be the catalyst for the fall, but he predicts it will be not only the worst in your lifetime, but also in his lifetime (and he's pretty old!).

 

Blodget: Can anybody rescue us?

Rogers: They will try. What’s going to happen is they’re going to raise interest rates some more. Then when things start going really bad, people are going to call and say, "You must save me. It’s Western civilization. It’s going to collapse." And the Fed, who is made up of bureaucrats and politicians, will say, "Well, we better do something." And they’ll try, but it won’t work. It’ll cause some rallies, but it won’t work this time.

Blodget: And we are in a situation where Western civilization already seems to be possibly collapsing, even with the market going up all the time. Often when you do have a financial calamity, you get huge turmoil in the political system. What happens politically if that happens?

Rogers: Well, that’s why I moved to Asia. My children speak Mandarin because of what’s coming.

You’re going to see governments fail. You’re going to see countries fail, this time around. Iceland failed last time. Other countries fail. You’re going to see more of that.

You’re going to see parties disappear. You’re going to see institutions that have been around for a long time -- Lehman Brothers had been around over 150 years. Gone. Not even a memory for most people. You’re going to see a lot more of that next around, whether it’s museums or hospitals or universities or financial firms.

 

Scary stuff.

What do you think is going to happen?

If our current actions are leading us towards a crash, what will stop it?

How will Algo trading help or hurt the outcome for the masses (and the few)?

Postmodern Jukebox's Cool Cover of "Creep" [Music Video]

Creativity isn't limited to creation.  

Sometimes how you approach something changes it. 

For example, in music, there are some pretty famous covers that "beat" (or revitalize) the original. 

• Aretha Franklin's Respect (An Otis Redding song) is so familiar that it seems like it's the original.
• Disturbed's The Sound of Silence (A Simon&Garfunkel song) has a whopping 236 million views on YouTube.
• Johnny Cash's version of Hurt (A Nine Inch Nails song) has over 50 million views on YouTube.

If you want to stretch it ... how about a death metal version of Mary Poppins?

Some bands exist primarily to do covers.  Few do it like Postmodern Jukebox, which an avid following – and an abundance of talent.    

Here is one of their hits, a torch song inspired version of "Creep" by Radiohead.  Worth a listen.

 

As I was putting this together, I came across a different version of Creep played on a Gayageum (a traditional Korean instrument).  

Different ... but interesting.

There are many ways to approach almost everything.

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 9th, 2017

The Comey situation is nuanced ... No, confusing.

It doesn't matter which side you're on, there's stuff to support and stuff to oppose.

Nonetheless, the result is no longer in contention.  Trump won the first battle. Comey isn't the Director of the FBI. 

Comey may still be trying to win the war.  Last week, he testified in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

My favorite quote of the night was: ""The statue of justice has a blindfold on because you're not supposed to be peeking out to see if your patron is pleased with what you're doing."

Watching the selective belief in Comey's statements is interesting. Sometimes it seems that Liberals only hear how Trump mishandled Flynn ... while Conservatives only hear the lack of investigation into Trump's Russia ties. 

At the end of the day, Trump felt finally vindicated from the left's accusations.

So, is the situation nuanced ... or just plain confusing?

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

Lighter Links:

• Cavaliers Still Send Paychecks to Warriors Coach Mike Brown. (ESPN)
• Dalai Lama: Behind Our Anxiety, the Fear of Being Unneeded. (New York Times)
• Bill Gates Has Seven Predictions for the Future. (Futurism)
• SNL Just Came up with a Hilarious Version of Alexa Designed for Senior Citizens. (TechCrunch)
• TCU’s First Little Genius Graduates with Physics Degree at 14 Years Old. (DallasNews)

Trading Links:

• Former Mozilla CEO Raises $35M in under 30 Seconds for His Browser Startup Brave. (TechCrunch)
• The Hunger Bonds – A Modern Dilemma (Project-Syndicate)
• Meet the 9 Hedge Fund Managers Who Made the Most Money in 2016. (BusinessInsider)
• Dying Malls in the US Should Take Note of How China is Approaching Retail. (BI)
• Why Amazon is Eating the World. (TechCrunch)