Earlier in the Pandemic – in June – I had a Zoom meeting with Matthew Piepenburg of Signals Matter. Even though it was a private discussion, there was so much value in our discussion we decided to share parts of it here.
While Matt's understanding of markets is based on Macro/Value investing, we use advanced AI and quantitative methods for our approach.
As you might expect, there are a lot of differences in how we view the world, decision making, and the current market environment. Nonetheless, we share a lot of common beliefs as well.
Our talk explores a number of interesting areas and concepts. I encourage you to watch it below.
To summarize a couple of the key points, markets are not the economy, and normal market dynamics have been out the window for a long time. In addition, part of why you're seeing increased volatility and noise is that there are so many interventions and artificial inputs to our market system.
While Matt and I may approach the world with very different lenses, we both believe in "timeless wisdom".
Ask yourself, What was true yesterday, today, and will stay true tomorrow?
That is part of the reason we focus on emerging technologies and constant innovation … they remain relevant.
Something we can both agree on is that if you don't know what your edge is … you don't have one.
Hope you enjoyed the video.
Let me know what other topics you'd like to hear more about.
In this talk, he mentions a lot of interesting stats, but notice how many are focused on the change (or rate of change) within a relatively small window of the available data.
Also, notice how he crafts a story around the direction of the numbers rather than acknowledging or contextualizing the numbers themselves. This isn't inherently bad – but it's something to be aware of when interpreting what it means to you.
When making decisions, the direction and intensity of movement are important, but so are more objective measures.
Stories can help make us comfortable with a temporarily bad situation, but if you get lost in the story and aren't cognizant of the bad situation, it can be harder to correct.
In trading, traders often tell themselves stories about why a movement happened, but markets and economies are more complicated than any heuristic. Those stories can be helpful retroactively – but they're rarely a powerful predictor.
Economics and trading both have hard sciences behind them. You can look at technical indicators, you can look at historical events, and you can build algorithms with advanced technology that look for the patterns you miss. But it's what you do with those inputs that matters.
Mark Perry wrote an article about why "it’s really hard to ‘beat the market’ over time." In it, he states that over the 15-year investment horizon, 92.43% of large-cap managers, 95.13% of mid-cap managers, and 97.70% of small-cap managers failed to outperform on a relative basis. Stated differently, over those 15 years (from June 30, 2003 to June 30, 2018), only one in 13 large-cap managers, only one in 21 mid-cap managers, and one in 43 small-cap managers were able to outperform their benchmark index.
It’s hard to admit to yourself that you aren't better than average. Nonetheless, over any period of time, this is true for half of us. This "truth" is especially hard to accept for people who have achieved a lot in their lives and have the money to invest.
The trick is to find a way to separate "luck" from "skill" … or to avoid being fooled by randomness.
We live in interesting times! The signal-to-noise ratio is already tough to deal with … and I suspect that we are in a period where we have to expect even more noise.
I've written a couple of posts on Economics that might help. Here are a few of the more popular ones, if you are interested.
We make decisions all the time. To make that easier, we use shortcuts to make processing more efficient, more effective, and more certain.
At least it feels that way to us.
Mental heuristics are great – they do often save us time or effort. And, for many people, they enable better decision making. But, as with any generalization, there are exceptions that can be dangerous.
That's where cognitive biases come in; we have biases toward how we remember things, how we view ourselves, how we make decisions, and what we make things mean.
We're all victims to them, to some extent. But hopefully, by understanding them and becoming aware of them, we can limit their impact.
I also know a lot of people that think they're smarter than they are (even the smart ones … or, perhaps, especially the smart ones).
It's common. So common, in fact, that there's a name for it. The Dunning-Kruger Effect.
Have you ever met someone who's so confident about what they think that they believe they know more than an expert in a field? That's the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's defined as a cognitive bias where a lack of self-awareness prevents someone from accurately assessing their own skills.
Here's a graph that shows the general path a person takes on their journey towards mastery of a subject.
The funny thing about the above image… it's actually not a literal part of the paper on the Dunning-Kruger Effect. But it's now so commonplace that people report that chart as fact. A fitting example of the effect.
In our daily lives, it can often be funny or frustrating to see the "victims" of this effect, but I'd warn you that we all have times where we're prone to this; and it's a sign of ignorance, not stupidity.
This is a problem with all groups and all people. Even if you already know about the cognitive bias resulting from the Dunning-Kruger Effect, you're not immune.
It should be a reminder to reflect inward – not cast aspersions outward.
Two different ways that people get it wrong, first is to think about other people and it’s not about me. The second is thinking that incompetent people are the most confident people in the room, that’s not necessarily true.
Usually, that shows up in our data, but they are usually less confident than the really competent people but not that much… – David Dunning
To close out, even this article on the Dunning-Kruger presents a simplification of its findings. The U-shape in the graph isn't seen in the paper, the connection that lack of ability precludes meta-cognitive ability on a task is intuitive, but not the only potential takeaway from the paper.
Regardless, I think it's clear we are all victims of an amalgam of different cognitive biases.
We judge ourselves situationally, and assume "the best". Meanwhile, we often assume "the worst" of others.
Early voting has started, but, if all goes to plan, we'll know who will be the President on November 3rd.
The fears of fake news and the growing echo chambers around candidates (and policies) mean it can be tough to truly make an educated decision. The reality is, most of our news sources are tinted by the lens of their ideology – which is okay. That means they're appealing to their targeted audience.
That being said, it may also be worth looking at the same news story from a comparative news source from the other spectrum – or even better, a primary source when it comes to science/economics.
Here's a chart that shows where news sources rank. You can click the image to go to an interactive version with more details. And, if you're curious about their methods, click here.
RealClearPolitics – Aggregates news from various sources, as well as writing their own opinion pieces. Also has a good visual on the current state of the presidential, senate, and house races.
Brittanica ProCon – Tracks the stated positions of politicians on various issues. Can be sorted by candidate, and by issue. It also has a quiz you can take to assess which candidate you actually resonate with.
Politifact & FactCheck – Both sites fact check presidential statements, party statements, and more. We know politicians often lie by omission, or focus only on the specific stats that are relevant to their point. Fact-checking helps you gain a more holistic picture.
As a last warning on believing anything you hear, most polls I've seen put Biden in the lead … but if you remember 2016, you know the polls are working on incomplete information. Clinton had a lead on most polls and lost to President Trump.
It's election season! Early voting is now open in most places.
Regardless of your preference, it doesn't count if you don't vote.
Gandhi once said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world." This wasn't exactly what he meant … nevertheless, one of the ways you can impact the world is by impacting who gets chosen to represent us in government.
2020 has shown how important choosing the right leader is for the country and each of us.
I have friends on both sides of the political spectrum, and I hear complaints from both sides. The one thing we all can agree upon is that not enough people (who claim to care) actually get out and vote.
It is one thing to whine about the status quo … It is quite another to get up, get out, and do something about it.
Combat fake news and media sensationalism by doing some research choosing candidates you think will leave us better than they found us.
If you're not sure where your polling location is, check here.
It's an interactive video that uses your webcam to walk you through the various assessments on BMI, emotion, beauty, etc. At the end, it'll give you your life expectancy, and then your "normal score".
It's not the most complex use of AI, but it provides interesting insights, and is becoming increasingly prevalent.
Governments, police stations, retail stores, etc. all use this technology to track individuals, and if you remember one of my previous articles – there are plenty of cameras to go around.
If you did the demo, were you surprised by the results?
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David Fitzsimmons via 
