SAC
Braces for Big Exodus. The hedge-fund group has been bracing for client
withdrawals of at least $1 billion this year—nearly 17% of its AUM. (Wall
Street Journal)
What a great speech … short, simple, and to the point. Hope you get something from it.
After you watch the video, here is the transcript.
Life is tough, that's a given.
When you stand up, you're gonna be shoved back down.
When you're down, you're gonna be stepped on.
My advice to you doesn't come with a lot of bells and whistles. It's no
secret, you'll fall down, you stumble, you get pushed, you land square
on your face. And every time that happens, you get back on your feet.
You get up just as fast as you can, no matter how many times you need to
do it.
Remember this, success has been and continues to be defined as getting
up one more time than you've been knocked down.
If experience has taught me anything, it's that nothing is free and
living ain't easy.
Life is hard, real hard, incredibly hard. You fail
more often than you win, nobody is handing you anything.
It's up to you to puff up your chest, stretch your neck and overcome all
that is difficult, the nasty, the mean, the unfair.
You want more than what you've now, PROVE IT!
You want beat the very best out there that is, get out there and earn
it!
Once you decide that, you'll know where it is you want to be, then you
won't stop pushing forward until you get there! That's how winners are
made.
At the end of the day, success is what we all want.
We all want to win, and the race will be won. There is no question about
that.
So come on, get out on top, run faster, dream bigger, live better
than you ever have before. This is in you. You can do this. Do it for
yourself. Prove it to yourself!
Last week I got an insightful lesson from someone I'd never heard of before. His name is Itay Talgam, and he used to conduct the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra.
He was the keynote presenter on the opening night of a business conference … and somewhat surprisingly his message was about leadership.
Some people take the word "conductor"
and assume it means "leader." However,
taken a different way, "conductor" might
mean "connector."
Neither is "right," but which would you consciously choose for it to mean for you, your business, or your trading?
To figure out what conductors do, we watched some videos of well-known conductors conducting their orchestras.
Some were the center of attention, some helped highlight the performers, while others focused on connecting the audience to the music.
Some were stiff, others almost danced with their orchestra and the audience.
Likewise, some were control freaks who micro-managed every nuance of a performance, while others simply let the orchestra play.
Some showed passion; others showed control.
Again, there are countless variations; and the point is that it was easy for each of us to choose what seemed right (and what didn't). Obviously, this works as a metaphor for business, interactions with people, or even how you trade and manage a portfolio.
If you were hiring a conductor, what would you be looking for, and how would you want them to engage ?
With that in mind (time for a little introspection), how do
you show-up, and what do you do? Are there other ways for you to perform your roles and duties that might get better results?
On a different topic, when you experience great classical music … who should get the credit?
Acceptable answers might include the conductor, the orchestra, the composer, even the audience.
Assuming that a conductor should get their fair share of the credit and blame for a performance, what do they do (or what could they do) to impact the results?
Obviously, the conductor is the focal point letting people know when to do the thing that they do. So there's clearly a communication and coordination component. Taken too far, and it strips some of the "magic" from the performers and the performance.
According to Talgam, the best conductors manage the process, while leaving the details to the performers. This allows them a fair bit of control, without the stifling effect on innovation or art.
From my perspective the same is true in trading. I don't want a portfolio manager to be the trading system … instead I want a dynamic and adaptive selection of the right systems at the right time.
One of the examples was that a flute player asked the conductor how they would know it was time for them to come in … The conductor's answer was "it's time to come in when you can no longer stand being out."
Leonard Bernstein
was shown as an example of a great conductor. After working with the Vienna Philharmonic for many years, some of the best performances occurred while he did apparently little.
Upon closer inspection, you could see that he was sending them cues using: facial expressions, the pace of his breathing, a nod of his head, the movement of his body, the direction of his gaze, and through countless
other little things.
Obviously, you can't rely on such things at the beginning, but once people really know what to do, one of the best things you can do is help them find opportunities to do what they do best, and then to get out of the way to let them do it.
Sitegeist
is a mobile application that helps you to learn more about your
surroundings in seconds.
There’s a lot of information about your neighborhood (or anyplace you choose). Drawing on publicly available information (such as the U.S.
Census, Yelp!, and others), this app digs it up,
divides it into categories (people, weather, history, housing, etc.),
and serves it up in easy to digest graphics.
The results are interesting, even though an app like this just scratches the surface of what's possible with access to
data.
Some of the data you'll learn about a location includes:
Age Distribution
Political Contributions
Average Rent
Popular Local Spots
Recommended Restaurants
How People Commute
Record Temperatures
Housing Units Over Time
Sitegeist was created by the Sunlight Foundation in consultation with design firm IDEO. It is the third in a series of National Data Apps.
Back in the 1970s, a now-forgotten writer claimed that 75 percent of the people who had ever been born were alive at that moment. This 'factoid' has been referenced many times, even though a bit of reflection would show how unlikely it is.
So, what might be a better estimate of the actual percentage? In this video, a Population Reference Bureau scholar explains how to get a reasonable guesstimate.
As we enter 2013, the world population has surpassed 7 billion people.
How can we get a sense of what it means … and who we are?
One way is by statistically representing the world population as 100 people. That way, complex issues become more comprehensible and help us get a stronger sense of the big picture.
26 would be children
There would be 74 adults,
8 of whom would be 65 and older
There would be:
60 Asians
15 Africans
14 people from the Americas
11 Europeans
33 Christians
22 Muslims
14 Hindus
7 Buddhists
12 people who practice other religions
12 people who would not be aligned with a religion
12 would speak Chinese
5 would speak Spanish
5 would speak English
3 would speak Arabic
3 would speak Hindi
3 would speak Bengali
3 would speak Portuguese
2 would speak Russian
2 would speak Japanese
62 would speak other languages
83 would be able to read and write; 17 would not
7 would have a college degree
22 would own or share a computer
77 people would have a place to shelter them from the wind and the rain, but 23 would not
1 would be dying of starvation
15 would be undernourished
21 would be overweight
87 would have access to safe drinking water
13 people would have no clean, safe water to drink
If you want more information on this …
The detailed research and source information can be
found here and the statistics provided by Donella Meadows in 1990 that originally inspired the 100 People Project can be viewed here. A different groups research is here. And the Snopes research is here.
Clever. Try your hand at reducing the deficit with this Wall Street Journal interactive.
Unless lawmakers can agree on measures to reduce the
deficit, standing legislation will do it for them. Under the "Fiscal
Cliff" scenario, the Congressional Budget Officeprojects
a deficit of $142 billion by 2020, or a $1.102 trillion deficit if some tax cuts are extended and other policies remain in effect.
