Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 8th, 2020

Perhaps funnier than spending $500M to only win American Samoa is this tweet with amazing math skills. 

She made her profile private after this mess, so I can't link it, but it also ended up on MSNBC - and not because they realized the math was bad. 

Pretty funny. 

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

Lighter Links:

• Don't Fear a Robot Apocalypse' Tomorrow's Digital Jobs Will Be More Satisfying and Higher-paid. (TheConversation)
• How Hard Will the Robots Make Us Work? (TheVerge)
• How Tesla Sets Itself Apart. (HBR)
• Take Back Your Time with Context Scheduling. (Entrepreneur)
• App Tells You Who's Collecting Your Data and Why. (Futurity)

 

 

 

Trading Links:

• Coronavirus: the Black Swan of 2020. (Medium)
• Smart Money Indicator Rebuttal. (AlphaArchitect)
• All-in...and Then All-out. (SentimenTrader)
• A Toilet Paper Run is like a Bank Run. the Economic Fixes are about the Same. (TheConversation)
• Fed Rate Cut Necessary for U.S. Markets to Function : Former Dallas Fed Advisor. (Bnnbloomberg)

I'm Begrudgingly Talking About Pornhub... Again.

I wish I could say that I'm surprised that one of the most popular articles I've written was about Pornhub ... Every month I get hundreds of views on that post without having linked to it, promoted it, or put ads behind it. 

The reality is that Pornhub does a lot right as a company. I'm going to clarify now, before we get into the real article, that I'm not advocating for Pornhub, or porn, or anything of that nature.  I am advocating for good business practices and for good case studies. 

Cool tech often gets adopted by porn and gambling before more mainstream uses. Porn was the launchpad for video streaming, mobile-enabled sites, VR, and (unfortunately) pop-up ad technologies. It is really popular.  Check out these statistics.

I'm a vocal proponent of tracking, analytics, and data being the new precious commodity.

Pornhub tracks data like its business depends on it, which it likely does.  A staggering 90% of all the world’s data (2.5 quintillion bytes per day) has been created in the past two years, last year, Porrnhub represented over 6597 petabytes of data of that (about 18,000 terabytes a day). 

In 2019, over 5,824,699,200 hours of porn was watched on their site. That's over 6300 centuries of video. 

via Pornhub Insights

Moreover, last year, it received 42 Billion views.... 10 billion more than last year.  That’s 1,332 people a second, or 115 million a day.  To put that in perspective, only 11 countries have populations greater than that.

Here are some additional facts about its use.

• Women typically spend 23 seconds longer on the site than men (and represent a third of users)
• The average time spent on the site is 10 minutes and 28 seconds (older demographics spend more time on the site than younger demographics) 
• Sunday is their most popular day

While I would not suggest going through the full report (there's a lot of information on different pornstars) if you're interested in what platforms people use, what search engines, time of stay based on region, the effect of "events" on viewership, and more, Pornhub's insights are ... robust. Here's a link to the full report. 

Dominance of the US

In light of recent fears, VisualCapitalist put together an infographic on the dominance of US companies in global sectors and industries. 

via VisualCapitalist

The calculations reflect the market cap of the S&P Global Broad Market Index which tracks more than 11,000 stocks across 50 markets. Not all-encompassing, but a good start.

To add some numbers to the chart, the US represents

• 73% of IT
• 65% of Health care
• 51% of Real Estate and
• 44% of Financials 

China is closing in fast on some of these sectors, but the U.S. is still the world leader.  

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - March 1st, 2020

 

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

Lighter Links:

 

• When that AI Company' Isn't Really an AI Company. (TechCrunch)
• The Catholic Church Proposes AI Regulations that Protect People'. (TheVerge)
• Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain. (Vice)
• Saudi Arabia: Riyadh Suspends Pilgrimage Visas Amid Coronavirus Concerns. (Worldview)
• Warren Buffett Says He Prefers Mike Bloomberg in the Democratic Presidential Race. (CNW)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Dow Loses 12% for Week on Coronavirus Panic; Fed Says It Will Act 'Appropriately'. (TheStreet)
• These are the Only 7 Stocks in the S&P 500 that Rose While the Market Plunged. (MarketWatch)
• Gold Prices Tumble Amid Reports of Margin Calls. (Investing)
• Nearly 40% of Europeans in Their Late 20S Still Live at Home. (Quartz)
• MIT Published a List of the 9 MegaTrends that Will Shape the World in 2030. Here's What They All Have in Common. (Inc)

Mountains Out of Molehills: Media Inflammation

The U.S. stock market had a rough week (like most markets around the world). The Dow Jones Industrial Average (the "Dow") had one of its worst weeks since the financial crisis in 2008, losing about 12%.

Still, the Dow is near its historical highs, and the fundamentals of our economy aren't in freefall (as one might guess with all the fearmongering). 

As I mentioned last week, many attribute the drop to the Coronavirus and its potential effect on trade, travel, industry, etc.  For example, several prominent news sources released (hopefully erroneous) articles stating that 38% of beer drinkers wouldn't drink Corona due to the Coronavirus.  Yup!

There are two key points I want to make. The first is that the media tends to make mountains out of molehills (because their job is to get you to pay attention to their news) and the second is that markets are random to you or me. 

Mountains Out of Molehills

It shouldn't come as a surprise to you that the media exacerbates situations. Whether it's a terrorist attack, a virus scare, or a bad trading day - the media posts headlines and teasers designed more to attract attention than to educate. 

The interactive graphic below shows the news cycle for things ranging from asteroids and vaccines to ebola and zika.  An interesting reminder.

(Click To View Interactive Infographic) via InformationIsBeautiful

The result is hysteria, fear and greed, or discretionary mistakes ... all things better avoided. 

Regardless, when it comes to trading, if you don't know what your edge is ... you don't have one.  And it's tough to find a "signal" in a sea of noise. 

via Gaping Void

Markets Are Random

Experienced traders have a saying: it isn't the news that matters ... what matters is the reaction to the news.  Consequently, part of the reason that markets seem random is that you or I can't predict the market's changes (accurately and reliably) based on the information we have.  In other words, if market profits were easily captured by being smart and well informed, professors wouldn't teach because they'd be on their yachts. 

This past week,  you could attribute the losses to fear of the Coronavirus ... but there are also fears around the 2020 election, the fact that stocks were already considered overvalued, fears of recession, and more.

You don't know how much was caused by program trading or bots reacting to bots – or by a host of less obvious potential causes or contributing factors, like businesses either liquidating or taking positions in the regular course of their business (meaning as bona fide purchasers rather than speculators).

The truth is no one knows for sure what caused the drop.

Nonetheless, one thing that you should know is that volatility and noise will increase.  It is almost inevitable.

Humans have a need for certainty and understanding. So when we don't know why something happens we find stories to fill in those gaps. But they're just that ... They're stories. We can theorize all day long about what's moving the market, but it makes no difference.

It's not what happens that matters, it is what you do that matters. 

Onwards!