In my office, we use a lot of what seems like "futuristic" artificial intelligence approaches to understanding financial markets. Most of my team are technical or data-science specialists that develop and drive the systems that create our systems.
Pretty soon, we may start to question where using humans is still smart or cost-effective.
In the meantime, I'm fascinated by what is becoming possible … and how, even when the A.I. is little more than an elegant use of brute force, incredible results are becoming commonplace.
Recently, in an interview with Tom Bilyeu (co-founder of Quest Nutrition), he addresses the issue of Millennials – and why they seem lazy and unfocused.
Sinek points to four characteristics that help "create" this issue:
Parenting,
Technology,
Impatience, and
Environment.
Sinek suggests that this generation is a product of failed parenting strategies … being told they're special without effort, being told they can have anything they want, and being handed trophies for showing up.
Next, add technology to the mix.
Before millennials, interaction happened in person much more frequently … meaningful trust-based relationships were built with time and effort, and when you were at dinner with friends, or watching a movie, you were at a dinner with friends … not on your phone.
For added irritation, next add impatience (which is a byproduct of instant gratification).
Why wait for amusement when it's a text away? You've got Netflix making video rental a thing of the past, Tinder making dating as easy as "swiping right" and Amazon making it so you don’t have to checkout when you go to a store.
Is it any wonder that these kids have short attention spans?
Now, put those kids in an environment where they're forced to realize you can't rush success, and you can't force meaningful relationships.
It's a recipe that has often terminated without a happy ending.
I thought it would be fun to ask one of them, what they thought about it …
So I asked my son, Zachary. Here are his thoughts.
I was born in 1993. When I was in elementary school, I was already using a computer almost daily, and a lot of my education and entertainment was computer-centric.
As such, I am a textbook “Millennial.”
I use Snapchat too much, I relax by playing video games, and at times I can be unacceptably lazy.
Because of that, I found this interview with Simon Sinek particularly interesting.
I’ve been lucky. My dad did a good job of forcing me to work hard, and valued my efforts more than my results. So, while I'm constantly reminded that I'm lucky I'm not working 80 hour days (and being forced to get a haircut every week) I do feel as if I'm a step ahead of many of my peers.
I still find myself falling in to a lot of the "traps" Sinek describes – I'm reliant on social media; I'm frustrated when my effort doesn't transfer in to immediate impact; and I struggle to not take my phone out in social situations.
I do think the issue is bigger than millennials. It's not just our generation that takes their phones out at meetings and ignores who they're with for someone on their phone. If you pay attention I'll bet you'll notice you do it as well.
The difference, I think, is that millennials spent their formative years in this environment.
This does effect the way we see and interact with the world.
Will we ever measure up to your expectations?
Perhaps not … because our generations approach the world the world so differently.
Nonetheless, we are still capable of great things. We are still driven to create and pursue great things. It's just that we are playing a different game and keeping score a little differently.
Understanding that, in and of itself, can help to close the gap.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject, and any tips you might have for someone relatively new to the corporate world. You can e-mail me at [email protected].
You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand this quote from Einstein.
"When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."
It is about more than perception. Here is something that highlights the relative value of time.
The Value Of Time:
To understand the value of a year, talk to a student who has failed an important exam.
To understand the value of a month, talk to a mother who has given birth to a baby a month prematurely.
To understand the value of a week, talk to the publisher of a weekly newspaper.
To understand the value of an hour, talk to a couple in love who are separated and want only to be together again.
To understand the value of a minute, talk to someone who has just missed their train or plane flight.
To understand the value of a second, talk to someone who has lost a loved one in an accident.
And to understand the value of a millisecond, talk to someone who won the silver medal at the Olympic Games.
Time waits for no one. So it is important to remember to make the best use of the time you have.
That Doesn't Mean Time Is Scarce Or Has To Be A Constraint:
Time is often thought of as a constraint or a scarce resource. There are lots of phrases that highlight this type of thinking. For example: I don't have enough time; I'm running late; I'm up against a deadline; There are only 24-hours in a day; or, I’m going as fast as I can. As you might guess, that list goes on further. Yet, time does not have to be that way … it can be a tool instead.
So, I started to think about how I used time. Was I making the most of it … or taking it for granted? It didn’t take much introspection to notice a few of the ruts I fell into. I'm going to talk about one of them, here, because a small shift had a massive impact. The thing we changed was our pace.
A Change of Pace:
When I jog, the beginning and the end are the hardest for me. Yet, after I find that initial pace and I settle into a comfortable rhythm, the majority of the run is relatively painless. My mind and body switch to an nearly automatic mode and I have time to think about many things.
Work is similar in many respects. Once a team gets in a rhythm, work and progress are somewhat automatic. Breaking inertia is a challenge; but people recognize that it's a challenge. The more insidious problem is to fail to recognize that the work rhythm that's comfortable, and which produces progress, is still a rut. It doesn't stretch and challenge the team to strive for more. Yet, this stretching is what drives innovation. It's the thought we haven't had yet … and a new perspective that changes everything.
Changing your pace can be an incredible catalyst to make that happen for you. For example, imagine that we put together a new portfolio in two weeks, on a wholly new tech platform, with new markets, and using new techniques. Then we tested, re-balanced and rebuilt that portfolio in one week. What we did, or the time in which we did it, wasn’t important. The important part is that it caused the team to work at a radically different pace than before. It was a sprint.
Moreover, this sprint caused us to re-think what we do, and more importantly, how we do it. Many of the innovations and new distinctions that we discovered through this process will work their way into other areas of our work, and will act as a catalyst for us to re-evaluate the way we do things.
A Challenge For You:
I challenge you to consciously change the pace of something that you are already comfortable doing a certain way. The pace can be faster, or the pace can be slower … it doesn't matter. Then notice what comes up for you, and what new opportunities and possibilities you discover.
Time is a valuable resource. Take this opportunity to re-examine how you can best view and use time to make the most of it.
One of our advisors wrote back to see if they understood that approach.
The odds of flipping a coin and getting heads 25 times in a row is roughly 1-in-33 million. So if we have 33 million flippers and 100 get 25 heads in a row, statistically that is very improbable. We can deduce that group of 100 is a combination of some lucky flippers, but also that some have a "flipping edge." We may not be able to say which is which, but as a group our 100 will still consistently provide an edge in future flip-offs.
Well, that is correct. In fact, if we were developing coin-flipping agents that would be as far as we would be able to go. However, we are in luck because our problem has an extra dimension, which makes it possible to filter-out some of the "lucky" Bots from our trading systems.
Determining Which are the Best Systems.
There are several ways to determine whether a trading system has a persistent edge. For example, we can look at the market returns during the trading period and compare and contrast that with our trading results.
This is significant because many systems have either a long or short bias. That means even if a system does not have an edge, it would be more likely to turn a profit when its bias is in alignment with the market.
We try to correct that bias using some math and statistical magic, in order to determine whether the system has a predictive edge.
It Is a Lot Simpler Than It Sounds.
Imagine a system that picks trades based on a roulette spin. Instead of numbers or colors, the wheel is filled with "Go Long" and "Go Short" selections. As long as the choices are balanced, the system is random. But what if the roulette wheel had more opportunities for "long" selections than "short" selections?
This random system would appear to be "in-phase" whenever the market is in an uptrend. But does it have an edge?
One Way To Calculate Whether You Have An Edge.
Let's say that you test a particular trading system on hourly bars of the S&P 500 Index from January 2000 until today.
The first thing you need is the total net profit of the system for all its trades.
The second thing you need to calculate is the percent of time it spent long and short during the test period.
Third, you need to generate a reasonably large population of completely random entries and exits with the same percentage of long/short time as your back-tested results (this step can be done many times to create a range of results).
Fourth, use statistical inference to calculate the average profit of these purely random entry tests for that same test period.
Finally, subtract that amount from the total back-tested net profit from the first step.
According to the law of large numbers, in the case of the "roulette" system illustrated above, correcting for bias this way, the P&L of random systems would end up close to zero … while systems with real predictive power would be left with significant residual profits after the bias correction.
While, the math isn't difficult … the process is still challenging because it takes significant resources to crunch that many numbers for hundreds of thousands of Bots.
The good thing about RAM, CPU cycles and disk space is that they keep getting cheaper and more powerful.
In my office, we use a lot of what seems like "futuristic" artificial intelligence approaches to understanding financial markets. Most of my team are technical or data-science specialists that develop and drive the systems that create our systems. 
AI creating AI has many benefits.
In many senses time is relative. 
