Ideas

  • Companies With The Most Patents in 2021

    Intellectual Property is an important asset class in exponential industries.

    Why?  Because I.P. is both a property right (that increases the owner's tangible and intangible value) and a form of protection.

    They say good fences make good neighbors.  But you are also more willing to work to build an asset if you know that your right to use and profit from it is protected.

    As a result of that thinking, Capitalogix has numerous patents – and we're developing a patent strategy that goes far into the future.  So, it's a topic that's front of mind for me.

    Consequently, this visualization of which companies got the most patents last year caught my eye.  In 2021, the U.S. granted over 327,000 patents.  Here is who got them.

     

    DS-Top-25-Companies-with-the-Most-New-Patents-in-2021-main-Apr20Raul Amoros via VisualCapitalist

    While IBM isn't the public-facing industry leader they once were, they've been topping the list for most patents for the past three decades.  Their patents this past year cover everything from climate change to energies, high-performance computing, and A.I.. 

    What ideas and processes do you have that are worth patenting?  And, what processes are worth not patenting – to keep from prying eyes?

    Food for thought … Onwards!

  • Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast

    Recently I had a chance to talk with Josh Elledge on his Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast. We talked about AI's inevitable influence on trading as well as my experience as an entrepreneur. 

    Getson Wide

    Despite mis-spelling Capital Logix … it's Capitalogix … the conversation we had is worth a listen. 

    Check it out.  

  • Happy Father’s Day 2022

    For Father's Day, my youngest son took me to see Top Gun 2 in DFX.  It's been a while since I've been in a movie theatre, and this was a movie worth doing the right way.  It lived up to the hype. 

    He also took me to brunch and invited his girlfriend – a rare occasion that I hope becomes more common.

    It's been ten years since he started working with me at Capitalogix. Here's his first professional pic and his most recent.  Time flies while you are getting older!

    B5AF31D4-F28F-4149-8F13-9E20CA46BCDB

    As a father, having great kids is a double blessing.  On one hand, it's nice to be proud of who your kids are and the things they do.  On the other hand, it's also nice to feel proud of the small part you played in helping them become who they are.  It's also my first Father's Day as a grandfather.   After decades of messing with my kids, now I get to mess with a new generation! 

    Of course, I also look back … and spent some time thinking about my father and his terrific influence on so many lives.  

    IMG_2766

    My Dad was incredibly loving.  Yet, he was also incredibly demanding.

    For example, after winning the State Championship in the shot put, I watched him run down from the stands.  I figured he was coming down to celebrate.  Instead, he looked deeply into my eyes and asked whether I was disappointed that I did not throw a personal best that day?  I replied: "But Dad, I won." He smiled and recognized that winning was important too … then he reminded me that the other throwers were not the real competition.  In life, to be and do your best, the competition is really with yourself; and we both knew I could do better.

    My Dad believed in setting high standards.  He explained that most people's lives are defined by their minimum standards.  Why?  Because once those standards get met, it is easy to get distracted by other things and meeting the minimum standards for them as well.

    Here is something else worth sharing; it was one of his favorite sayings.  "The difference between good and great is infinitesimal."  This applies to many things.  For example, people who are good take advantage of opportunities; people who are great create them.  The point is to set a higher standard and to have a better life.

    Well, that should explain a little of the dysfunction …  but, if you can't mess up your own kids, whose kids can you mess up?

    Hopefully, you had a happy Father's Day weekend. 

  • Visualizing Oil Prices in Response to Economic Events

    In the past, I've talked about where America gets its oil, and how data is more than just "the new oil". 

    During the worst of the pandemic, oil prices dropped almost 40%. They've now risen 216% from that pandemic low. With gas prices skyrocketing, it's probably time to look at historical oil prices.

    Visual Capitalist put together a simple infographic. 

    Historical_Oil_Pricesvia visualcapitalist

    So why are prices so high? Unfortunately, large portions of the world's oil reserves are in regions prone to political conflict.

    Currently, the Russia-Ukraine conflict is leading to supply uncertainty and rising prices.

    Meanwhile, oil companies are bringing in record profits. 

    Oil prices are a complicated topic because supply and demand aren't particularly responsive to price changes in the short term. Regardless of price, people need to drive. And, regardless of demand, it takes time and money to drill new oil wells. 

    As a result, you can see mismatches, like today, where uncertainty has raised prices, but oil companies are doing tremendously well. 

    The question now becomes … where does it end? Does it take a resolution to the current conflict? Or, will prices reach a ceiling and fall back down based on other factors?

  • Dall-E …. Not Wall-E: AI-Generated Art

    Neural networks creating images from text isn't new.  I wrote about it in 2019 when AI self-portraits were going viral. 

     


    Mauro Martino via YouTube

    Just like VR is getting a new lease on life, despite its age, AI-generated art is getting another 15-minutes of fame. 

    This past week, a new model called Dall-E Mini went viral.  It creates images based on the text prompts you give it – and it's surprisingly good.  You even can give Dall-E absurd prompts, and it will do its best to hybridize them (for example, a kangaroo made of cheese). 

    Unfortunately, like our current reality, Dall-E may not be able to produce cheap gas prices.  Nonetheless, it is fun to try.  Click the image to enter the concepts you want Dall-E to attempt to represent.

    My projectvia Dall-E mini

    While the images themselves aren't fantastic, the tool's goal is to understand and translate text into a coherent graphic response.  The capabilities of tools like this are growing exponentially (and reflect a massive improvement since I last talked about AI-generated images).

    Part of the improvement is organic (better hardware, software, algorithmic evolution, etc.), while another part comes from stacking.  For example, Dall-E's use of GPT-3 has vastly increased its ability to process language. 

    However, the algorithms still don't "understand" the meaning of the images the way we do … they are guessing based on what they've "seen" before.  That means it's biased by the data it was fed and can easily get stumped.  The Dall-E website's "Bias and Limitations" section acknowledges that it was trained on unfiltered internet data, which means it has a known, but unintended, bias to be offensive or stereotypical against minority groups. 

    It's not the first time, and it won't be the last, that an internet-trained AI will be offensive. 

    Currently, most AI is essentially a brute force application of math masquerading as intelligence and computer science.  Fortunately, it provides a lot of value even in that regard. 

    The uses continue to get more elegant and complex as time passes … but we're still coding the elegance. 

    An Elegant Use Of Brute Force_GapingVoid

     

    Onwards!

  • A Look At The Best Athletes

    There is a huge difference between good and great.

    Apparently, there is often a huge difference between the great and the greatest.

    In sports, there are many fantastic athletes whose names we will remember.  Then there are the athletes who stand apart from the rest … like Michael Phelps or Usain Bolt. 

    I recently stumbled upon a few charts highlighting the stratification between the top 1% and the #1. 

    Tom Brady

    Screen Shot 2022-06-03 at 4.16.30 PMvia NY Times

    To put that statistic in perspective, no other quarterback has even played in 35 postseason games …  but that is another measure of Tom Brady's greatness. 

    Jerry Rice

    9ykdftkjfe391sdbernard via Reddit

    Some prominent names are missing from this list – like Julio Jones or Megatron – but, clearly, Jerry's performance stands apart from other legends of the game.  For context, Julio Jones only had 61 TDs, which is relatively low on this chart, but averages 92 yards per game … which is so high that he'd be off the chart. 

    Wayne Gretzky

    GoalsAssistsvia NumberHound

    Wayne Gretzky is a sports legend, but this chart really puts it in perspective.  Leader by a large margin in both assists and goals.  He also has one of my favorite quotes –

    “A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

    Here's another interesting Wayne Gretzky stat: 

    Together, Wayne and Brent hold the NHL record for most combined points by two brothers – 2,857 for Wayne and 4 for Brent,[2] and are second overall in points scored by any number of brothers (behind the six brothers of the Sutter family who combined for 2,934 NHL points – 73 more than Wayne and Brent, although the Gretzkys' combined totals are greater than any five of the six Sutters.) – Wikipedia on Brent Gretzky

    Serena Williams 

    Chart_shows_just_how_much-82a81387685f09e2c50777f1027c79ebvia Yahoo!Sports

    What about Nature versus Nurture?

    Genetics and upbringing might play a part in greatness.  There are several great sibling combos like the Gretzkys, the Mannings, and the Williams sisters. 

    Both Venus and Serena are dominant athletes, but Serena is in the running for one of the most dominant athletes in any sport. 

    Have you seen any other crazy stats like these?  I'd love to see them. 

  • Don’t Touch That Dial

    History may not repeat itself exactly … but it often rhymes. News stories, however, seem to replicate.

    There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can deluge you with a thousand channels or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. – The Outer Limits (1963)

     

    via YouTube

    It almost feels like an episode of Black Mirror, watching these stations quote the same pre-determined diatribe on fake news and its danger to our democracy.

    The very message they are purportedly supporting, in the video above, directly contradicts their actions. 

    Most people realize this happens to some degree, but it seems different when presented like this.

    I believe I am reasonably aware and somewhat immune from propaganda. That probably isn't as true as I'd like to believe.

    Meanwhile, Sinclar Broadcast Group owns nearly 200 stations in 80 different markets and wants to buy more. That is a powerful platform to deliver mass messages and influence the zeitgeist of its audience.

    It used to be true that winners wrote history (think empires, wars, etc.). Now, the one that delivers the most broadcast narratives shapes the emotional and seemingly logical responses to what we perceive to be happening around us.

    The result impacts elections, financial markets, buying choices, and countless other areas of our life. 

    We see and hear it every day about politics, wars, economic issues, and many other things we don't focus on enough to notice.

    As A.I., Bots, and social media grow, our ability to discern truth from 'truthiness' weakens. Especially with the growth of deepfakes. 

    What do you think about this?

  • A Brief Look At Bear Markets

    Main Street and Wall Street are often at odds.  Terms like "retail" and "professional" or "smart money" and "dumb money" highlight the difference in perspective and access to tools, processes, and even information.  

    The biggest disparities happen at turning points.  Today, many companies are posting record profits, but markets are volatile, gas is expensive, and inflation is high.  So, we're getting some mixed signals.

    It may be too soon to say we're in a recession, but we are experiencing a downturn. 

    Here is a comparison of recent market corrections showing each decline's intensity and duration.

     

    Ezgif.com-gif-maker (5)via Reddit (Dow Jones Market Data & the WSJ)

    While this chart is a week or two old, it shows some interesting data.  While there are a few shorter drops, most were longer and deeper than where we currently are. 

    Thus, we could have further to go … but it could also be a sign that we're responding better to market issues than in the past. 

    Ezgif.com-gif-maker (6)

    via Cascade Financial Strategies

    The blue areas represent past bull market durations and returns (total and annualized).  The red areas represent past bear markets.
     
    Note: this chart is from 2018 – Nonetheless, it is a good reminder of the bigger picture.
    I remain optimistic about the future state of our economy.  That doesn't mean there won't be pain.  Still, I believe that technology continues to increase the size of our potential pie and the capabilities we can leverage as a catalyst to recovery. 
     
    As a bonus, if you want to see a flashback to the Great Recession, here are two pieces of my market commentary from the time.  It's interesting to look back and see how my writing has changed. 

    How are you feeling about the markets and our economy?

  • Origin Story: Warren Buffet

    Warren Buffett is a legend for many reasons.  Foremost among them might be that he's one of the few investors who clearly has an edge … and has for a long time. 

    From 1976 to 2017, his Sharpe ratio (excess return relative to risk) was approximately double the overall market.  He even did well in 2021.  Berkshire Hathaway now has almost a trillion in assets (up from $700 billion in 2019) – and is still performing well. 

    While many people consider Buffett to be an investor, I also consider him to be an entrepreneur.

    At the age of six, he started selling gum door to door.  Obviously, selling gum wasn't the key to his path to riches.  So, how did he make his first million?  Here's a video that explains it.

     

    via Coolnimation

    He made his first million at age 30 (in 1960).  For context, a million dollars in 1960 would be worth about $8.5 million today.

    Buffet has always been honest about his bread-and-butter "trick" …  he buys quality companies at a discount and holds on to them.

    It is fascinating to recognize how much the world has changed – and yet how much it has stayed the same.

    For extra viewing: Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger, and Bill Gates recently did a full 2-hour interview with CNBC.  You can watch it here.

  • Are We Alone In The Universe?

    Information Is Beautiful has an interactive data visualization to help you decide if we're alone in the Universe. 

    As usual, for them, it is well done, fun, and informative. 

    For the slightly geeky amongst us, the model lets you adjust the estimate by playing with two equations: the Drake equation and the Seager equation.

    The Drake equation estimates how many detectable extraterrestrial civilizations exist in our galaxy and then in the Universe based on factors like habitable planets, change of life, and then intelligent life, and then the amount of time a civilization sends signals into space. 

    The Seager equation is a modern take on the equation focusing on bio-signatures of life that we can currently detect – for example, the number of observable stars/planets, what % have life, and then % chance of detectable bio-signature gas. 

    6a00e5502e47b28833026bdead6236200c-600wi

    via Information Is Beautiful

    For both equations, Information Is Beautiful lets you look at various default options – but also to play with your own choices to adjust the outcomes. 

    For example, the skeptical default answer for Drake's equation shows 0.0000062 communicating civilizations in our galaxy (which is still 924,000 in the Universe).  The equivalent for Seager's equation shows 0.0009000 planets with detectable life in our "galactic neighborhood" and 135,000,000 planets in our Universe. 

    Even with the "lowest possible" selection chosen, Drake's equation still shows 42 communicating civilizations (Douglas Adams, anyone?) in the Universe.

    6a00e5502e47b288330263e980107a200b-600wi

    via Information Is Beautiful

    One of the most interesting numbers (and potentially significant numbers for me) is the length of time a civilization sends signals into space.  Conservative numbers are 420 years, but optimistic numbers are 10,000+. 

    If any aliens are reading this … don't worry; I won't tell.  But, we will find out if you voted in the last election.