Books

  • Hedge Funds: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

    Hedge Funds – and active managers in general – have been under fire for several years. Almost 50% of Hedge Funds saw a decline in assets under management (AUM) in 2018.

    On the surface, it makes sense … during a long-term bull market, indexes and other passive options like ETFs become en vogue. During a bear market, active management offers more opportunities to outperform the market. 

    Hedge funds are designed to, you guessed it, hedge risk. So, when investors see less risk in indexes, the demand for active management declines. Especially when performance declines as well. 

    Screen Shot 2019-12-06 at 4.30.47 PM

    via Bloomberg

    When something monumental changes the past is left behind and you begin a new future. When electricity was created, no one was going to make candles the primary form of lighting. After the introduction of the car, horses & buggies were never going to be the #1 mode of transportation, and we're also seeing that with the adoption of AI & automation. 

    Most changes aren't monumental.

    I have a fundamental belief that things go in and out of phase and that what's once old is often new again. You see it with fashion, music, phones – etc. First phones got bigger in order to do more, then smaller for convenience, and then larger again so that old dudes like me can read the text. 

    I believe it's the same with active management – the techniques may have gone out of phase – but active management still offers the potential outperformance. The trend mirrors the stock market; bulls turn to bears when buyers run out – so as outflows from funds continue to peak, and funds continue to close, it seems reasonable that there will come a time when demand rises again. 

    At that point, "active management" will give way to "Active Switching™" (which goes beyond stock picking to choose the markets, techniques, time frames, risk levels, allocation strategies, etc. using a variety of techniques, data sources, and real-time contextual clues).

    This is part of what's covered in my upcoming book, "Next On Wall Street: Understanding AI's Inevitable Impact on Trading."

    Looking forward to launching that book in early 2020.

  • Investing In Your Future

    I think about investments a lot … which makes sense given my profession. 

    Yet, there are three key investments I think are more important than any monetary investment you can make. 

    The first is in yourself – in your physical and mental health. I recently spent a whole month introducing my approach. 

    Physical and mental health was a major topic at last weekend's Genius Network Annual Event in Arizona.  I enjoyed listening to speakers like Peter Diamandis, Andrew Weil, Christopher Voss, and Dave Asprey – which brings me to key investment #2.

    Find Your Genius Network

    "You are the averrage of the five people you spend the most time with." – Jim Rohn

    I have always believed that you can predict a lot about your future, based on the quality of the people you spend the present with. That is why I think participation in quality peer groups is critical. Peer groups help us set higher standards for our behavior, help us aim higher in our aspirations, and they help us stay better focused and committed to big-picture goals.

    I belong to several executive and business leader peer groups like Genius Network,  EO or Strategic Coach—groups that double as advisory boards, counselor’s offices, and idea factories. They allow me to see, hear, and discuss things I don't normally think about, talk about, or even notice.  Peer groups bring blind spots to my attention and keep me fully connected to trends that are transforming industry on a global scale.

    I've gained partners, life-long friends, and ideas that will last a lifetime. I've also started taking my son, Zach, to these events so he can get a headstart. 

    75446810_10162373783270065_9179722954240425984_n

    Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, met my son and proclaimed "The book reader!" 

    Good memory. 

    Which brings me to my third key investment – and the one I'm most proud of. 

    Spread The Wealth

    It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well. -Rene Descartes

    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 "game" for them to earn video games. Some parents try to limit the amount of time their kids spend watching TV or playing video games.  Instead, my kids earned their games by reading books. Here is a photo from way back then.

    IMG_2849

    Paid With Play.

    Here's how it worked. Every 10 books earned them a video game, and every 100 books earned them a video game console. 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 (does anyone remember CompUSA?) for them to choose whatever game (or console) their heart desired.

    How Can You Encourage a Jump to the Next Level?

    “Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it.” – Jim Rohn

    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's a great way to learn about your kids.

    I used the bookstore 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 – and once you love reading, you'll eventually branch out on your own.

    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?

    To end the game, as they entered their teenage years, I upped the ante a little. 500 books meant they got a laptop of their choice and had beaten the system. Both boys cashed in … and probably felt like they were taking advantage of their dad. I got what I wanted, though; my boys love reading, and I was able to teach them two key ideals.

    1. The secret to growth is to constantly challenge yourself
    2. You can accomplish anything you put your mind to … one step at a time.

    That is an investment that pays dividends for a long time.

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – August 25th, 2019

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

     

    Lighter Links:

     

    Trading Links:

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – July 14th, 2019

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

     

    Lighter Links:

    Trading Links:

  • Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast: A Letter From Our COO

    Culture is the character and personality of your organization. It's what makes your business unique and is the sum of its values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviors, and attitudes.  - ERC website

    Recently, one of the initial investors in Capitalogix became our chief operating officer. He's a man I respect a lot – and who has been a good friend since 2003. His name is Drew Blanchard. He spent 30 years at Accenture and rose into their lofty leadership ranks. 

    As you might guess, he learned a few things.  Here are some of his thoughts about culture.

    RE: Transforming Culture

    There are thousands of articles on culture. Most of the themes are similar and I believe many of them can be and are very effective. Linked below are a few articles that I find valuable and their common themes:

    Links:

    Themes:

    • Culture always wins.
    • Culture eats strategy for breakfast.
    • Culture is a set of demonstrated beliefs and behaviors manifesting as attitudes and actions that determine customer satisfaction, and ultimately profitability. 
    • Culture takes time to develop and must be reinforced to become the very fabric of a company.
    • The best organizations in the world are fueled by their culture. It is who they are, not what they do.
    • The most profitable companies put their employees and customers first, resulting in superior profits. HIGHLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEE + HIGHLY SATISFIED CUSTOMER = HIGH REWARD SHAREHOLDERS

    There are entire teams within some of the largest consulting houses in the world specifically created to help organizations transform their cultures with the intent of increasing company performance at all levels and result in a sustainable competitive advantage.

    I believe mastering the following steps will give you the biggest bang for your buck and the fastest return on investing in a winning culture.

     

    1. Have a compelling mission, vision and strategy that capture the employees' mind, heart and soul that they can make personal and inclusive is at the very core of what makes a great culture – “I matter and what I do is both important and appreciated by both my company and my customers/clients.” Make sure they understand where they fit into the greater plan
    2. Define the core values that make the strategy real and set the minimum standards for what is acceptable at the company as THE MUST HAVE WAY OF BEING.
    3. Combine the previous two steps with daily action so culture becomes a part of their everyday realities.

     

    Culture is the result of who you are as a company, fueled by the vision and mission of the company as it relates to the employees, the customers, and then the shareholders.

    So, why listen to a guy like me? What experience do I have that might be relevant? How could I help, and would it matter? All this really depends on you and your management team’s level of desire to create a high-performance culture at the core of your company with the passion and accountability to accept nothing less!  

     

    My Past

     

    I spent 30 years working for a company that posted double-digit growth annually, from $10M to $35B in that timeframe. There were two halves of the business model – short term, higher margin work of about 90 days on average and long-term annuity work of 24 months or more with lower, more predictable margins.

    Here’s an Accenture Timeline for context.

    In the early part of the company’s development, our Mission was, “Helping our client change to be more successful!” Early on, our core values focused on the behaviors of the employees. The expected turnover was high due to perform or leave. The core values were: Integrity, Stewardship, Think Straight, Talk Straight, and Exceed Client Expectations. When we reached $10B we asked ourselves, what would have to happen to double in size and capture market share while maintaining what is already working? The answer was to upgrade the mission and values, focus on results over capabilities, and change the dynamic of performance standards from an individual deliverable to a team deliverable … the new Mission statement? “High Performance. Delivered.”

    “High Performance. Delivered.”

    Note the simplicity and the standard in three words. The first is High Performance with a period making it a complete standard. The second is linked to the results in that they are Delivered with a period as an expectation and no exceptions.

    The values were upgraded to: Best People, Best Clients, Stewardship, Integrity, Teamwork and Innovation. Note that the shareholders are not even mentioned.

    We invested in management training as we took on a new workforce – the middle market, not the gifted and driven as in the prior model. It was now up or out. In this Grow or Go model we wanted our best talent to expand and run our long-term business in a role that may last a decade. Our intent was to never leave a client or have a client want to leave us.

    This was made possible by two absolute requirements – the first was leadership; putting people first over leaders’ bonuses, and at times taking lower pay to serve clients and grow the business. The second was living the values through how we worked, lived and served clients. No exceptions. If you gave lip service to the mission and/or values as a leader you were asked to leave and as an employee, if you violated our mission and/or values, you were terminated.

    Each Managing Director was required to have a leadership presentation on their personal form of living the mission and values. They also had to share it with developing leaders. 

     

    My Present and Future

     

    Howard has done an exceptional job of placing culture at the center of Capitalogix as an engine for innovation and sustainable growth. Our mission statement? “Create Wealth That Matters”

    It is again, impressive in its simplicity.  It implies that we’re not selfish in our endeavor for our own wealth. It means we want to do good by our employees, our shareholders, investors, and our community. It means we want to be a good corporate citizen and a lasting company.

    Capitalogix values are also paramount in our day to business, and even play a role in the hiring process.  It does not matter how gifted a person is, if they do not embody our beliefs, the organization will eventually suffer. We live our values day in and day out. We hire by them, we fire by them, and they’re a part of our employees’ identity as Capitalogix family members. 

    Core Values

    Find A Way: There is always a best next step; it’s our mission to find it. An answer is not the answer.

    Create Breakthroughs: “10x better” is often easier to achieve than “10% better.” It’s about seeing things differently, then making it a reality.

    See The Bigger Picture: Scale matters and edges compound, so we always focus on how today’s work fits into tomorrow’s vision.

    Raise The Standard: How you do one thing is how you do everything. We strive to continuously improve ourselves professionally and personally. We’re comfortable being uncomfortable.

    Learn And Grow: Standing still is moving backward. We pride ourselves on self-evaluation and self-education so that we are better than we were yesterday.

    Our business may be unique, but the success equation remains the same: 


    HIGHLY ENGAGED EMPLOYEE + HIGHLY SATISFIED CUSTOMER = HIGH REWARD FOR SHAREHOLDERS

     

    Here’s what I want you to think about:

    • Does your mission espouse a calling greater than your own day-to-day activities?
    • Do your core values create the standard of performance that every employee would be proud of and hold others to deliver on with them?
    • Do you actively find ways to connect your employees to each other, and to a shared vision?
    • Is the company’s leadership visibly passionate about continuously transforming the company, and are they good examples of your mission/vision/values that they would be inspired to follow?

    A company’s mission, vision and core values when focused on the employee in a way that gives them purpose, pride and inspiration are unstoppable when it becomes the very fabric of the company the way leadership lives the brand promise.

    Always my best,

    Drew

  • Celebrating 30 Years of the Internet [Infographic]

    "The internet is becoming the town square for the global village of tomorrow" – Bill Gates

    We take the internet for granted.  Honestly, we take a lot for granted.

    Do you remember a time before cell phones, before the internet, before all these science fiction realities.  Even when the internet started … do you remember dial-up … or when you needed dial-up for each individual site?

    In March of 1989, Tim Berners-Lee published “Information Management: A Proposal” which outlined his vision for what would soon become the World Wide Web. March 12th is the official anniversary.

    In celebration of 30 years of the internet, here’s an infographic on the timeline. Click to see the full thing. 

     

    Edit_AppInstitute-30yearsofwww-infographic
     via AppInstitute

    Think of the impact of that one paper has on so many aspects of our life. 

     

    Information Gathering 

    I remember being in law school, going to the library and scanning through microfiche (or actual books) to study or do research.

    I remember reading encyclopedias (and photocopying relevant articles). 

    I remember paying for newsletters that were mailed to me (or paying extra for fax delivery).

    Having access to more data or faster delivery was a huge advantage.

    Today, you have all the information you could ever ask for at the tip of your fingers … Google and Wikipedia are just the tip of the iceberg.

    There is almost too much information now.  It is hard to separate the signal from the noise.  It seems like anyone can find justification for almost anything.  The result is lots of data, but too little knowledge.

    Part of what is needed is a way to help people make better decisions about what to trust, what it means, and what to use.

     

    Social Interaction

    People record every moment, every intimate detail of their lives online, contrasted by a fear of strangers and letting children roam. 

    While riding around the neighborhood on your bike to see if your friends could come out to play is by no means outlawed – it does seem passé. 

    Chat rooms, Facebook, Online multi-player … many people's key friendships are born and kept online. 

    I remember my son, 13 years old at the time,  sending 10,000+ texts a month and thinking it was a phase. I was wrong. 

    The internet has radically changed the structure of relationships – for better, or often worse. 

     

    Privacy ( … or the lack of it)

    One of the biggest changes is that we as individuals have become productized. We take advantage of all these free resources at the cost of being pixeled and cookied into oblivion. We've chosen convenience over safety. 

    Remember, if you’re not paying for a product – you are the product.

    Little bits of our private information, demographics, and psychographics are sold to advertisers to create smarter ads, new offers, and realistically we have very little control over that.

    It’s been proven time and time again that these giants like Google and Facebook will find ways to sneak your data to advertisers even when it’s “illegal” with a slap on the wrist.

    Data protection is a massive issue not only for corporations but for individuals. While many companies are trying to manage your privacy while still monetizing your data, there are just as many companies who couldn’t care less.

    The GPDR – while frustrating for many – is a step towards protecting individuals.

    Every action has a reaction, and every benefit has a cost. The internet is an amazing tool – but it can also be a weapon. 

     

    What will the next 30 years of the internet hold?

    "The Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room." — Eric Schmidt

    It has been 30 years since inception, and there's radical growth. 

    We’ve gone from bit speeds to megabyte speeds. We’ve gone from crappy-quality video taking hours to download to streaming HD quality video live.

    How do imagine that the internet will evolve?

    What influence do you think the Internet of Things will have?

    It’s hard to foresee how innovation and regulation will change the internet, but it’s clear there will be change.

    We live in exciting times!

  • Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading – March 17th, 2019

    The US grounded the Boeing 737 Max after similarities between two crashes. It's good they did, safety first, but it definitely caused some headaches coming back from Saskatchewan.  There's an interesting thought experiment here to understand the complexities that the airlines had to solve.

    Imagine a 737 holds 200 people and does 4 or 5 flights a day. American has 24 737s in its fleet. That means each day ~24,000 people are displaced on American Airlines alone. They're replacing those planes with smaller regional jets – meaning more flights, more small airports, and more delays. The logistical/supply chain dynamics are a nightmare. 

     

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

    Lighter Links:

     
     

    Trading Links:

  • The Oxford Comma: Still Important, Even If Oxford Doesn’t Think So

    Grammar isn't everyone's cup of tea … but it's something I spend a lot of time thinking about. 

    Should I use an ellipsis here or a dash? Is this an unnecessary parenthetical?

    Because of that,  the serial comma (commonly known as the Oxford comma) is surprisingly important to me. 

    If you don't know what an Oxford comma is, it is the comma before the word "and" at the end of a list. 

    I love it (and use it). I think it adds clarity in most situations, and while some lists make sense without it, it is helpful if not necessary in many lists.

    Like below: 

     

    7142017 stalin

    Who wants that?

    Use the Oxford Comma …  Save yourselves the imagery. 

    If you need a guide of when to use it, Check out this infographic … Click it to see the whole thing. 

     

    7142017 oxford comma

    via PRDaily

  • The Pale Blue Dot: Life, Mankind, and the Universe

    In 1977, the Voyager 1 launched into space.   Just over a dozen years later, the Voyager 1 spacecraft had traveled farther than any spacecraft/probe/human-made anything had gone before.  It was approximately 6 billion kilometers away from earth.  At that point, the Voyager 1 was "told" by Carl Sagan to turn around and take one last photo of the Earth … a pale blue dot. 

    The resulting photo is impressive precisely because it shows so little in so much.

     

    Pale_Blue_Dot

    "Every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."  – Carl Sagan

    Earth is in the far right sunbeam –  a little below halfway down the image. This image (and the ability to send it back to earth) was the culmination of years of effort, the advancement of technology, and the dreams of mankind.

    The resulting speech from Carl Sagan is still profound, moving, and worth a listen. 

     

    Carl Sagan via YouTube
     

    Here's the transcript:

     

    Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

    The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

    Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

    The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

    It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

     

    Today, we have people living in space, posting videos from the ISS, and high-resolution images of space and galaxies near and far. 

    We take for granted the immense phase shift in technology. You have more computing power in your pocket than we first used to go to the moon. 

    As humans, we're wired to think locally and linearly. We evolved to live our lives in small groups, to fear outsiders, and to stay in a general region until we die. We're not wired to think about the billions and billions of individuals on our planet, or the rate of technological growth – or the minuteness of that all in regard to the expanse of space.  

    However, today's reality necessitates we think about the world, our impact, and what's now possible for us.

    We created better and faster ways to travel, we've created instantaneous communication networks across vast distances, and we've created megacities. Our tribes have gotten much bigger – and with that, our ability to enact massive change has grown as well. 

    Space was the first bastion of today's innovation, but today we can look toward A.I., medicine, epigenetics, and more. 

    It's hard to comprehend the scale of the universe and the scale of our potential … but that's what makes it worth exploring!

    Onwards!

  • A.I. in Film: A Retrospective

    AI has been around in science fiction for over 1oo years. As it becomes reality, it's amusing to look at different depictions and attempt to connect the dots. 

    AI first broke onto the film scene with Metropolis in 1927. "Maria" the evil robot disguising herself as a human played on many human fears; deception, lack of control, and perhaps most importantly being replaced.

    Maria represented a future that was bleak and set the foundation for AI in cinema. Since then, there have been approximately 100 movies starring AI.

    According to Enlighten Digital,  52% of movies portray AI positively, which means it's about 50/50, and there has been a 144% increase in AI movies since 2010 – so we're becoming more saturated with AI.

    According to a study by Cambridge, seeing more films portraying robots (whether positive or negative) is associated with more positive attitudes toward robots. This is in line with the theory that the more exposure one has with "out-group" members (i.e. robots, or people of other races) the more positive one's attitude toward them. 

     

    Robots-Agglomeration-Infographic_Edit(Click to view Full Size) via NovaStor 

    The depiction of AI has always been a reflection of its time … as our values, ambitions, and technology has changed, so has on-screen AI. 

    So what does today's AI look like?

    On HBO, we have Westworld. In movies, iRobot, Chappie, and Blade Runner 2049 … it's clear the promise and the peril of AI has continued to evolve.

    These movies all have different tones but there's a trope that remains common from that initial film in 1927 to films in 2018. 

    We're always imagining that next step. What's going to happen as AI becomes (in some ways) smarter than us? What's going to happen when our creations surpass our control? What's going to happen if the line between human and robot blurs?

    There are a lot of advancements in real-life, in respect to AI. As such, there is a lot of movement on AI ethics, and how to best limit or best enable AI. 

    In film, we gravitate toward two extremes – utopias and dystopias. In real life, we can recognize those extremes are unlikely … but the effect of AI is still profound. 

    We're expanding a technology with the ability to radically change our world – for better or worse – so it's important to keep a purpose-driven approach. We can't lose track of humanity in the pursuit of AI. 

    Metropolis's final title card (that first AI movie from 1927)  still rings true … "The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart"

     

    The Heartbeat of AI is Still Human_GapingVoid

    Onwards!