Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 28th, 2017

Talent is great,  but you can have a lot of success without it ...

 

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

Lighter Links:

• What is an Impact Filter? (StrategicCoach)
• Morning Routines and Strategies. (Tim)
• Why Some Smart People Make Foolish Decisions. (Digest)
• How Wellness' Became an Epidemic. (TheCut)
• Trump Reportedly Asked Legal Team about His Power to Pardon Aides, Family, Even Himself. (Slate)

Trading Links:

• Apple is Once Again the Most Profitable Company'. (iPhoneHacks)
• The Trump Administration Can't Stop China from Becoming an AI Superpower. (Wired)
• AI Could Revolutionize War as Much as Nukes. (Wired)
• Era of Biological Annihilation' is Underway, Scientists Warn. (New York Times)
• Gold and Silver are down 8% and 21% over the Trailing Year. Blame Bitcoin? (Fool)

The Experience Economy: Man Vs. Food Edition

I recently drove several hours (to the middle of nowhere) in order to try the Burger you see below.  And, yes, I know you don't have to capitalize the word "burger" ... But, in this case, it deserved it!  Take a look.

 

 

If you are curious, the restaurant is Big Jud's in Rexburg, Idaho.  And the monstrosity is Big Jud.  No, sorry, it is their "Man Versus Food Burger" (which was featured on the TV show Man V. Food).

It's got 4 pounds of meat and all the accouterments ... It's the type of burger that makes  you say "Holy Cow!"  Even the knife they give you to eat it with is scary. 

Obviously, it is not the type of burger you eat because you're hungry ... you eat it because you want the experience.

The idea of an Experience Economy isn't new.  

Rich people know it makes sense to spend money on experiences.  

And smart businesses know that it makes sense to avoid competing on a commodity, and to create something unique. For example, think about Cowboys Stadium (Click to read about the Experience).

Even millennials are spending more on experiences than on physical products.

Something to think about ... How would your business be different if you prioritized the experience?  

Just another way to win.

A Man Walks Into A Bar ... Weekly Links - July 28th, 2017

A Man Walks Into A Bar ... He gets a concussion. An NFL player gets hit by a car 30+ times a game ... You do the math. A neuropathologist analyzed 111 dead NFL players' brains (donated to her). 110 had Chronic Traumatic Encephelopathy (CTE).

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:

Why Every Leader Needs a Healthy Obsession with Technology.(SingularityHub) 10X Your Results, One Tiny Action at a Time (The Power of Incremental Progress). (Medium) In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium. (Quanta Magazine) Learning from the Feynman Technique. (Evernote) Swedish Train to Be Named Trainy McTrainface. (Neatorama) The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence. (New York Times) Are You a Carboholic? Why Cutting Carbs is So Tough. (New York Times) Your Brain Doesn't Contain Memories. It is Memories. (Wired) Growing up as an Untouchable. (LitHub) So this is What American Greatness Really Looks Like?(TheDailyBeast) Hotels Train Workers in the Personal Touch. (New York Times) Here's What Happens inside Amazon When One of Its AWS Hosting Services Goes Down. (BusinessInsider) When You Should (And Shouldn't) Share Your Location Using a Smartphone. (New York Times) Drinking More Coffee is Associated with a Longer Life, New Studies Show. (ScienceAlert) Pandora Uses Machine Learning to Make Sense of 80 Billion Thumb Votes. (VentureBeat) Pentagon Tiling Proof Solves Century-Old Math Problem. (Quanta Magazine) Find Your Birthday Hidden in Pi. (Time) With Alexa Integration and Mapping, IRobot Aims to Make Roomba the Center of the Smart Home. (TechCrunch) A Mathematician Gave Us the Easiest Explanation of Pi and Why It's So Important. (BusinessInsider) Hackers Don't Have to Be Human Anymore. this Bot Battle Proves It.(Wired)

Market-Related Links

Commodity Investors Embrace Algorithmic Trading. (QuantNews) Wall Street's 'Fear Gauge' is on Track to Log Its 3rd Lowest Close in Its History. (FoxBusiness) The Fed Has a $4.5 Trillion Problem. Could It Become Yours? (Time) What Causes a Stock Market Crash - and are We Headed for Another?(Telegraph) The Next Bubble: India? (DailySpeculations) On Claude Shannon's Deliberate Depth. (CalNewport) Conor McGregor Was on Welfare in 2013. Next Month He'll Make $150 Million Fighting Floyd Mayweather. (CNW) Chart Spotlight: Value Line Geometric Index Breaks Out.(SeeItMarket) The Power of Self-Service Data Analytics in Financial Services.(TheFinancialBrand) Hedge Fund Uses Algae to Reap 21% Return. (Bloomberg) Trend-Following: Types of Moving Averages. (AlphaArchitect) Four Ways to Improve Back-end Performance for MultiDimensional Analysis. (DSC) Are You Ready to Consider that Capitalism is the Real Problem? (FastCompany) Inside the Decades-long Quest to Bring down Financial Information Giant Bloomberg. (BusinessInsider) Why China May Never Democratize. (Bloomberg) Quant Vs Traditional Investors, and How Alphas Become Betas, with Leigh Drogen [Invest like the Best, EP.41]. (Investorfieldguide) Hidden Trigger for Another (Flash) Crash. (ValueWalk) The 5 Biggest Stock Market Crashes in History Have 'Striking' Similarities. (BusinessInsider) Roku is Planning an IPO for this Year. (TechCrunch) Time Running out for Active Managers, Who Must Adapt or Die'.(MarketWatch)

Let me know what you think. Thanks.

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 23rd, 2017

Apparently, Trump has been asking lawyers if he's able to pardon himself from the Russia Investigation. No president has ever attempted it, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Clever.

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Recent Poll: Hillary Clinton Is Still Less Popular Than Trump. (Slate)
• I've Read over 100 Productivity Books and Summarized the 15 Most Important Tips. (LifeHack)
• Unraveling Death in Game of Thrones. (Visual.Ly)
• Could Congress Put Horsemeat Back on the Menu in America? (Washington Post)
• 50 Companies Leading the AI Revolution, Detailed. (KDNuggets)

Trading Links:

• Robotic Hogwash! Artificial Intelligence Will Not Take over Wall Street. (WSJ)
• Cryptocurrency Market Nears 50% Decline from All-Time High. (CoinDesk)
• Mark Zuckerberg's Net Worth Soars $3.5 Billion to Record High. (Forbes)
• Jeff Bezos: the 'Obsessive' Amazon Founder and World's next Richest Man. (TheGuardian)
• Tony Robbins: How to Suffer Less (And Invest Intelligently). (TimFerriss)

The Juice Is Loose! Weekly Links - July 21st, 2017

1995: "If that glove don't fit, you must acquit!" 2017: "If the case is old, you must be paroled!" OJ Simpson was granted parole, and will likely be free in October ... in related news the Browns are looking for a strong running back.  ... Fake news isn't limited to politics.

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:

5 Misconceptions Small Business Owners Have about Big Data.(Entrepreneur) The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time. (HBR) When Bad Things Happen in Slow Motion. (Nautilus) How to Find Great Business Class Fares with Google Flights.(FrequentMiler) Death of a Pig. (The Atlantic) Steroid Solidarity. (Vqronline) 26 Most Dangerous Cities in the World. (24/7 Wall St) The KKK is Not the Real Fear. (Slate) The Onion Struggles to Lampoon Trump. (NewYorker) Infinity and Beyond. (Aeon) Oxford Comma Helps Drivers Win Dispute about Overtime Pay.(TheGuardian) Hot Food, Fast: the Home Microwave Oven Turns 50.(SmithsonianMag) Breaking Faith. (The Atlantic) Into the Woods: How One Man Survived Alone in the Wilderness for 27 Years. (TheGuardian) Evolution Runs Faster on Short Timescales. (Quanta Magazine) Malcolm Gladwell Wants to Make the World Safe for Mediocrity.(Medium) Operation London Bridge: the Secret Plan for the Days after the Queen's Death. (TheGuardian) Will 90 Become the New 60? (Nautilus) The CIA's No Good, Very Bad, Totally Awful Tuesday. (LawFareBlog) How the CIA Forgot the Art of Spying. (Politico)

Market-Related Links

The Financial Industry Needs to Start Planning for the next 50 Years, Not the Next Five. (HBR) Quant Funds that Chase Trends are this Year's Biggest Losers.(Bloomberg) How to Think like an Economist (If, that Is, You Wish To...) (Bradford-Delong) Inflation Forecast. (CXOAdvisory) Building Modern Monopolies, with Alex Moazed [Invest like the Best, EP.25]. (Investorfieldguide) Jeremy Corbyn, Emmanuel Macron and the Age of Volatility.(NewStatesman) 2Q 2017 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. (ValueWalk) Quant Vs Traditional Investors, and How Alphas Become Betas [Podcast]. (ValueWalk) The Alternative to Alternative Data for Investment Managers.(ValueWalk) Elon Musk Says Artificial Intelligence is the Greatest Risk We Face as a Civilization'. (Fortune) Extracting the Signal from the Noise: 7 Tips for Interpreting Macroeconomic Data. (MilkenReview) Beating the Odds: JumpStarting Developing Countries.(MilkenReview) Gas Guzzlers' Gains in Fuel Efficiency Go Farther Than Fuel Sippers' Do. (Wall Street Journal) Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future. (WaitButWhy) Disentangling Cycles from Time. (MainStay) The Volatility of Bitcoin. (SSRN) The Absolute Dominance of the U.S. Economy, in One Chart.(MarketWatch) Legal Marijuana Market to Create Nearly 300,000 Jobs by 2020.(24/7 Wall St) The Older Population: Where the Money Is. (CFAInstitute) Why 90%+ of Active Stock Fund Managers Underperform the S&P 500. (ElliottWave)

Let me know what you think. Thanks. - Howard

AI Isn't Just Crawling Forward ... Now It's Learning To Walk

The pace of AI progress is awe inspiring.

We are entering a golden age of innovation, disruption, and new possibilities.

Here is a small example.  It's not the first time computers have learned to walk, but Google's DeepMind taught itself to walk with no human interaction.

Here is a video.

 

 

With very little structure around their knowledge, it's interesting to see how they developed movement - and where it seems distinctly artificial. 

For a more instructional video, you can check out "Flexible Muscle-Based Locomotion for Bipedal Creatures" from 2013.  It shows the generational differences between their bots as well. 

AI is getting smarter, faster.  Soon it'll have knowledge that we don't understand. And that will still only be the beginning.

Cool stuff!

What Are The Top 100 Websites?

There are over 1 billion websites on the internet, and it is constantly growing.

In fact, Google only indexes about 16 percent of the surface Web – and misses all of the Deep Web. 

Not surprisingly, the most popular sites comprise the majority of internet usage. 

The list of the top 100 trafficked sites was somewhat surprising (and not just because there were only three porn sites that made the cut).  

Before looking, who do you think made the list?

Here is an infographic that shows who rules the Internet.

 

via Visual Capitalist

 

Leading the pack – Google, YouTube, and Facebook top the list (with Google, itself, getting an astonishing 28 billion visits per month) ...  For scale, that's over 500 times more visits than #100 site on this list.  

Pretty insane! 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 16th, 2017

Science, Art, or "PooPoo De Toro"...

  

 

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

Lighter Links:

• Ray Kurzweil: There's a Blueprint for the Master Algorithm in Our Brains (Futurism)
• Brain-training Games Don't Really Train Brains, a New Study Suggests. (WashPost)
• Why Men Don't Live as Long as Women. (Nautilus)
• What a Hunter-Gatherer Diet Does to the Body in Just Three Days. (CNN)
• Is Philosophy Simply Harder Than Science? (TLS)

Trading Links:

• Return of the Day Traders. (Forbes)
• The Unexpected Economic Consequences of Video Games. (Vox)
• Why Elon Musk's Early Adopters Take Risks. (Forbes)
• Nvidia Heads 50 Companies that Will Change the World. (Alphr)
• This is the Future of Investing, and You Probably Can't Afford It. (BizInsider)

Paul McCulley: "The Coming War between Trump & The Fed"

I just got back from an economic summit in Wyoming where I spent some time with Paul McCulley.  He is an economist and former managing director at PIMCO.   

 

He is the guy that coined the terms "Minsky moment" and "shadow banking system". 

Recently, he put together this explanatory cartoon about the relationship between Trump & The Fed.

Truth, Humor, and a Unique Perspective ... Worth a watch.

 

 

Ultimately, he is fairly bullish ... but cautious.  He says: "After eight good years on Wall Street, it's bound to end soon.  Don't be greedy."

When Will You Die? A Look At Cause of Death in Different Demographics

As I get older, I've noticed how much more often my mental perception of myself, and the physical realities are incongruent. 

I remember routinely being the youngest guy in the room. Obviously, that isn't true anymore (unless I'm at Denny's at 4pm).

I remember running around the park (without stopping).  And I certainly remember enjoying working out with my son.

Things that used to be easy (or at least routine) now cause me stress.

But age affects everyone - and while my 24-year-old can still eat like a pig and lift heavily, those days are behind me.  

I recently shared an article on "Conditioning Yourself To Take The Next Best Step," and I talked about getting back in shape ... the mentality it takes, and the habits I carried with me from my days as an athlete

One of the hardest lessons for me to learn has been that I can't work out how I used to ... or I injure myself.

It is not too far a leap to go from that – to thinking about mortality. 

This interactive graphic, below, shows how people of different ages die.  Click the image to try it yourself.

 

via FlowingData

You can see what average mortality looks like (by plugging in "0" as your age) ... or plug in your current age, sex, and race to see what's most likely to kill you (based on you having survived to now). 

Unsurprisingly, congenital issues stop having high mortality around 10, and circulatory/respiratory issues become more prevalent as you get older. 

Sure, this is based on averages - but it's interesting to see how locale and income play a role in your life expectancy. 

According to a Harvard-run study, people live longer in more educated and affluent areas even if they're less well-off, and that's taking even after taking into account labor market, social connectedness, and other factors. 

As well, the richest Americans live approximately 10-15 years longer than the other end of the spectrum as seen below. 

via Harvard Gazette

Live Long and Prosper! ... Or is it prosper and live long?