Capitalogix

Some Down Time – Replacing Head With Heart

I was at the Jersey Shore for my birthday this weekend. Over 30 people showed up to surprise me. It was heartwarming, fun, and genuinely surprising.

My wife, Jennifer, arranged it all without me knowing (or even suspecting).

Here's one picture from the festivities. 

We didn't go to the casinos, amusement parks, or to see shows. We did, however, eat good food, go to the beach and spend time together.  I wasn't focused on my business or deadlines. 

It was a heart-focused (rather than head-focused) time for us.

We are often so good at what we're good at that we forget to focus on the other stuff.

Thanks for the reminder.  I'm passing it on!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 29th, 2018

We often focus on the big changes in technology's evolution ... but, sometimes, the smaller details can be as (if not more) interesting. 

Phone companies used to use approximately 1200 cables to handle the traffic of around 600 buildings. 

Below is an image of one of those bundles being cut - and replaced - with 48 fiber optic cables. 

Sometimes, less is more.

Pretty cool. 

 

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

Lighter Links

• Scientists Discover the First Large Body of Liquid Water on Mars. (Wired)
• Barack Obama Says He's "Surprised by How Much Money" He Has. (CNW)
• Richard Branson Shares a Letter with His Teenage Self.(CelebrityNetWorth)
• Introverts: Use this Flowchart to See If You *Actually* Have to Hug Someone. (Well&Good)
• Apple's Self-driving Car System Could Change How It Drives by Detecting Passenger Stress Levels. (AppleInsider)

 

 

Trading Links

• Amazon Will Likely Pass Apple to Be the First $1 Trillion Company, Investors Say. (CNBC)
• CEOs are Starting to Bank Billion-Dollar Bonuses with IPOs. (Bloomberg)
• Venezuela's Inflation Rate May Hit 1,000,000 Percent. Yes, 1 Million. (WashPost)
• Iran is Planning to Launch Its Own Cryptocurrency in Order to Bust U.S. Sanctions. (Fortune)
• Which State Has the Highest Percentage of Millionaires? Bet You Can't Guess. (Hint: Not New York or California). (Inc)

Largest Single-Day Market Cap Loss in History

Facebook has been under fire for a while now - misuse of data, privacy issues and more. 

This Thursday, following a horrible quarterly report with lower-than-expected revenue and low daily active users,  Facebook posted the largest single-day loss in market value by any company in U.S. history. They had peaked at about $630 billion. 

Mark Zuckerberg himself lost approximately 17 billion. 

via CNBC

Looking at the list of the largest "losers" there are plenty of winning companies in their ranks, but, Facebook expects their revenue growth rate to continue to slow. 

Do you think Facebook will still be a major player in the next 5 years?

Is Biohacking the New Key to Trading?

Last week, I was in Alaska at Steamboat Bay for a CEO retreat. 

One of the other attendees was Dave Asprey - CEO of Bulletproof, author of Headstrong, and a biohacking thought-leader.

Very few people understand what we do at Capitalogix; even fewer understand it well enough to paint a vivid picture ... yet, that's exactly what Dave did ... almost instantly.

I asked him to retell it on video - to try and capture his take.   To set your expectations,  his take is different than you might imagine ... It's got ancient bacteria, futuristic algorithms, and a little genius.

Kind of cool ... Check it out.  

"It takes a lot of computer power, and it takes a lot of algorithms, and it takes a lot of environmental sensors ... that's why we can walk around, breathe, and think." 
    ~    Dave Asprey

Markets are an environment just like the environment we live in. Our algorithms can learn and evolve based on markets in a similar way to how humans evolved and adapted to their environments.

To summarize:  In the beginning, there was an algorithm ... and it was good.  

And, it's just the beginning.

Onwards!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 22nd, 2018

 

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

Lighter Links

• The Boston Dynamics Robots Can Now Hunt You in the Woods. (DailyDot)
• What Cyber-War Will Look Like. (Scholars-Stage)
• The Mistakes You Make in a Meeting's First Milliseconds. (Wall Street Journal)
• Does Intermittent Fasting Work? Here's What It Can (And Can't) Do for You. (Cheatsheet)
• 'Never Underestimate Human Stupidity,' Says Historian Whose Fans Include Bill Gates and Barack Obama. (CNBC)

 

Trading Links

• Coinbase Says It Has Green Light to List Coins Deemed Securities. (Bloomberg)
• CRISPR Stocks Plummet over Study Pointing to Potential Adverse Effects. (FastCompany)
• Warren Buffett Donates $3.4-Billion to Gates Foundation and His Family's Charities. (Globe&Mail)
• The 24 Rules for Success Left behind by a Legendary Wall Street Banker. (Time)
• Scientists Discovered a Quadrillion Diamonds Hidden Deep within the Earth. (Inverse)

The Sound of Silence [The Disturbed Music Video Version]

I spent last week with almost no Internet or cell service.  On one hand, I suffered some withdrawal symptoms.  On the other hand, it was nice to hear the sound of silence.

50 years ago, Simon & Garfunkel become folk-rock stars with their song, ‘Sound of Silence’.  I don't think that's what they meant.

Recently, someone else made it a hit ... a heavy metal rock band, Disturbed.

Here is the video.  Believe it or not, totally worth watching.

 

 

 

 

YouTube.

Surprisingly good.

[Update] What Happens in an Internet Minute (The Answer is "A Lot!")

"The Internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow." - Bill Gates

In our everyday lives, a minute doesn't seem like much. When looking at our population and their internet usage, that minute goes a lot further. 

In 2015, I wrote an article on this exact subject. It's interesting to see the difference between 2008 and 2015, and 2015 to today.  Here's an excerpt:

To put some perspective on this explosion of content and web traffic here are the facts on the growth of content and the internet.

Compared to 2008 here is what's happened with social networks:

• The number of people online has more than doubled from 1.4 billion to over 3 billion

• Facebook has gone from 80 million users to more than 1.4 billion

• Twitter had 2 million accounts and now it is 300 million and counting.

• The number of smartphones was 250 million in 2008 and today there are more than 2 billion. That is an 800% increase!

Let's compare that to 2018. 

 Cumulus Media via World Economic Forum

Today, there's an expected 4,156,932,140 people online and over 2,500,000,000 smartphone users. 

Not as big a shift as 2008 - 2015, but still impressive. 266,000 hours of Netflix is an impossible to fathom number - even in a minute scale. 

I'm curious to see what changes as our digital landscape continues to develop. 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 15th, 2018

France beat Croatia 4-2 to win their second world cup. It's their first in 20 years (since they hosted the event).  

Did you watch?

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

Lighter Links

• The 6 Ways to Grow a Company. (HBR)
• Google's DeepMind Developed an IQ Test for AI Models.(VentureBeat)
• Here are the 12 Tech Trends that Will Dominate Business in 2018. (TechRepublic)
• Organic Material Found on Mars. (CNet)
• Queen Elizabeth Says Bone Spurs Will Prevent Her from Meeting Trump. (NewYorker)

 

Trading Links

• Jeff Bezos is Now $50 Billion Richer Than Anyone Else on Earth. (Time)
• The U.S. Could Soon Reclaim the World's Oil Crown.(Fortune)
• Pimco Says Recession Possible in next Three to Five Years. (Etftrends)
• Shocking! IHOP Acknowledges It Faked IHOb Name Change. (Apnews)
• This California Town Will Give a $500 Monthly Stipend to Residents. (Money)

A Fish Tale

I'm in Alaska at Steamboat Bay. I'm at a CEO retreat. 

In my mind, the Four Seasons referred to a hotel chain rather than what happens in nature. 

It's great being out here. 

First time fishing in the ocean and I caught this King Salmon.

 

Pretty cool!

Trying VR For The First Time [Video]

At the F1 race I went to in Montreal recently, I also got to try a Virtual Reality F1 racing game.

It was better and more immersive than I thought it would be.

My body reacted to it like it was really happening to me.  Here's a video.

 

 

The result was pretty funny ... yes, I know I squealed.

There's a lot of exciting progress in VR and AR. What do you think is coming next?

For one take, check out this post on Hyper-Reality.