Capitalogix

The New New - Something Interesting Is Happening

The game is changing.  That means what you have to do to win is changing too.

Take a look at this.  

  

 

One of the most important phrases I’ve learned to use in business is “… or something better."

Too many times, we have a specific idea of what we want - and how we want it.  Unfortunately, that focus can cause us to miss other (often better) opportunities.

The same is true for people in the roles they play and the things they do. Too often, we fall into a rut and focus on the activities and efforts that we've planned (or have always done), instead of what's possible or preferable.

One of the values that I stress here at Capitalogix is that the best way to grow the business is to grow the people. That sounds strange because so much of our business is based on technology. But the point is to continue to automate, delegate, or outsource things that we used to do … so that we can do something better.

Something to think about!

The Market's Slow Roll-Over Just Accelerated

On Friday, Aug. 21, the Dow Jones Industrial Index fell below 17,000.  That means the Dow has now shed well more than 1,700 points in just 90 days. The day before was the S&P's worst day in 18 months. 

Things look like they are moving fast.  But, for the past several months, the US markets have s-l-o-w-l-y rolled over -- with the Dow leading the way.

Lots of people are talking about the "Death Cross" that occurred on the Dow's daily chart early last week (when the 50-day simple moving average moved below the 200-day average).  What led up to it?  Here is a chart from a week ago.

  

 via StockCharts.com

When a market rolls over slowly like this, the first thing to go is the uptrend's momentum.  

To see this market's declining momentum, note that MACD (shown in the upper indicator window) has been moving lower for months.  

The next thing that happens is increased interaction with the 50-period moving average.  Followed by tests of the 200-period moving average.  Then comes a definitive break below the 200-period average and then finally the "Death Cross" occurs - which is where we are at with the Dow.

A longer-term weekly chart shows the slow "text-book" roll-over from a different perspective.

 

  via StockCharts.com

The 40-period weekly moving average corresponds to a 200-period daily moving average.  

This drop takes us back to levels seen at the start of 2014.

Even though the current trend is clearly down, we are approaching a likely decision zone.  If we don't get a bounce here, the election season will be a different game.  

What do you think happens next? 

Apple Is Enormous. How Enormous Is Apple?

In case you hadn't noticed, Apple is BIG!  

It is the biggest company in the world, worth about $725 billion.

How big is that, really? 

 

 Photo AP via Gawker.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently released its annual overview of the world’s largest companies.

Here are some factoids from that report to put Apple's enormity in its proper perspective:

• Apple is worth almost twice as much as the world’s second largest company, Google (valued at $375 billion).
• Apple is worth as much as the second and third-largest companies in the world (Google and ExxonMobil) combined.
• Apple is worth more than Walmart, Facebook, and JPMorgan Chase combined.
• In the past year, Apple increased in value by more than the total value of General Electric.
• Apple is worth more than the gross domestic products of Pakistan, Peru, and the Philippines combined.
• Apple is worth more than the gross domestic products of West Virginia, New Hampshire, Idaho, Delaware, North Dakota, Alaska, Maine, South Dakota, Wyoming, Rhode Island, Montana, and Vermont combined.
• Apple is worth more than the net worth of the fourteen richest people on earth combined—a list that includes Carlos Slim, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, Michael Bloomberg, the Koch Brothers, and the entire Walton family.
• Apple is worth more than $100 billion more than the entire 2014 United States defense budget, which includes all spending on the armed forces and Defense department and related departments and all international wars.

Quick Visit to the Cowboys Training Camp

I am in California to meet my son's future father-in-law.

  

While there, I had the chance to visit some friends at the Cowboys' training camp.

  

Here's a sideline picture with head coach, Jason Garrett.

 

  

  

 

I was very impressed by what I saw.  The Cowboys look good this year.

 

Next week I'll have more on the process, and how I think it applies to excellence in many areas (including trading).

Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

California's Drought is creating a new Gold Rush.

 

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• How Machine Learning Will Fuel Huge Innovation Over The Next 5 Years. (VentureBeat)
• Truths & Illusions: The Profound Importance of Thinking Fast and Slow. (HuffPost)
• Why Sadness Lasts Longer Than Other Emotions. (BPS Research Digest)
• George Zimmer on His 'Uber for Tailors'. On-demand tailoring service. (Esquire)
• When ‘Moneyball’ Meets Medicine. (NYTimes) 

 

Trading Links:

• Dear Future Self, Are you Rich? Are You Wealthy? (Medium)
• Eight Reasons You Make Bad Financial Decisions. (The Guardian)
• Supercomputers Make Discoveries That Scientists Can't. (NewScientist)
• Billionaires Versus Big Oil. Betting on new tech that could displace fossil fuels (Fortune)
• Jamie Dimon Is Now a Billionaire, and He Got There in an Unusual Way. (Bloomberg) 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekend Reading

The Democrats' Dream Ticket is really about Republicans ... Imagine if Trump and Palin ran together.

 

   

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

 

Lighter Links:

• 20 Leadership Experts Share Their Best Leadership Tip. (Inc.)
• How to Motivate Yourself: 3 Steps Backed By Science. (Read)
• Cowboys to Use Virtual Reality in Practice & Film Study. (ESPN & Engadget)
• Just Say No To Digital Hoarding. (Washington Post)
• Amazon Says That It Now Adds Computing Power On a Daily Basis That’s Equivalent to Its Entire Capacity Just 10 Years Ago. (The Atlantic) 

 

Trading Links:

• Five Top VCs Predict The Future. (Forbes)
• Bitcoin Index Called 'Stepping Stone' For Currency. (CNBC)
• Wall Street, Meet Block Chain — Investing 2.0. (Medium)
• IMF Paper Finds That Too Much Finance is Bad for Growth. (NakedCapitalism)
• Cashless Society: This country wants to ban the use of cash in stores. Economists love the idea of a cashless society. So, increasingly, do consumers. (Fortune) 

The U.S. Presidential Candidates Raising The Most Money

Which U.S. presidential candidates have raised the most money?

   

 via Statista, data as of June 30, 2015.

According to the Federal Election Commission, two candidates with strong family ties to the White House are in first and second place.

Jeb Bush, whose father and brother are former presidents, is in first place with $114.4 million. Former first lady Hillary Clinton is in second place, having raised $63.1 million.

Market Confidence Remains High Despite Glitch

An offline N.Y.S.E. barely made a ripple in a day’s trading a few weeks ago.  

Moreover, industry research indicates that confidence in the US Equity Market Structure is at a 5-year high, with 64% of the respondents having “High/Very High” confidence and 18% responding “Neutral.”

In years past, a shutdown like that might have stopped Wall Street dead in its tracks, with a broad range of companies’ shares sitting frozen until all technical problems were unwound.

But as the lengthy stoppage showed, the modern world of stock trading is much quicker, more complex and reliant on sophisticated computers — and in many cases able to adapt to issues that could have proved disastrous to the financial markets and the investors’ holdings.

To put it in perspective, NYSE-listed (Tape A) stocks account for approximately 53% of US National Market System (NMS) stock volume. 

Below are industry and Tape A market share metrics for Self-Regulatory Organizations (SROs) for the first six months of 2015. NYSE accounts for 23.2% of NYSE-listed stocks and 12.3% of overall equity volume.

 

 

via Tabb Forum.

Weekend Links

Hillary Clinton may have to deal with more fall-out from her deleted e-mail fiasco.

 

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• The Economist Explains: The End of Moore's Law. (Economist)

• Big Data Explained in Less Than 2 Minutes - To Absolutely Anyone. (DSC)

• A Preliminary Taxonomy of the Voices Inside Your Head. (Digest)

• Disney’s Research Lab Figures Out How To Put Words In Your Mouth. (TechCrunch)

• 'What I Would Tell My 20-Year-Old Self'.  (Fortune)

 

Trading Links:

• Tech Boom 2015: What's Driving Investor Insanity? (Forbes)

• This Is Your Brain on Money: How Investors Trip Themselves Up. (WSJ)

• These 2 Simple Slides Show Just How Hot FinTech Is Right Now. (BizInsider)

• Soros Says China Is Major Risk For World War 3. (ValueWatch)

• China’s Yuan Has ‘Long March’ To Reserve-Currency Status. (MarketWatch)

Amazon vs. Walmart [Infographic]

Amazon celebrated its 20th-anniversary last week.

With 244 million active users, Amazon is by far the largest online retailer in the world.

But how does it stack up against brick-and-mortar retail giants?  This infographic compares the e-commerce giant to the world’s largest retailer: Walmart.

 

via WebpageFX.

Kind of surprising.

 

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