Capitalogix

An Insider's Look at Markets

Just because we perceive something, doesn't mean it's true.

Ten people can witness an accident, and all perceive different things. 

Often, our eyes see, and our ears hear, just what we expect them to see or hear.

And with news, rumors, and urban myths, it is important to remember that just because many people say something – it doesn't mean it's true either.

Confirmation bias is dangerous whether we are looking for a reason to do something or not do something.  Likewise, confirmation bias is dangerous whether you are looking to buy or sell. 

The truth is that humans can make things up ... but we also can notice things and infer meanings that aren't there. Sometimes we also assume cause when coincidence is more likely.

I suppose there was an evolutionary benefit to our ancestors who were able to infer danger before it ate them. Nowadays, it's probably better if we temper those instincts a little.

Why Do We See Patterns In Random Data?

The human mind is especially good at finding patterns in data. 

Often, I believe that I can see a pattern in random data.  OK, I understand that I don't really see patterns in random data; but to me, it seems like there are patterns in the random data. 

This happens because we don't look at data neutrally.  That means when the human eye scans a chart, not all data points get equal weight.  Instead, we tend to focus on outstanding cases, and we tend to form our opinions on the basis of these special cases. 

In other words, it is human nature to pick up the stunning successes (or failures) of the method and to overlook the more common performances. It's one of the reasons that I moved from marking up charts myself, to using computers, to leveraging a team of data scientists and advanced A.I. 

Human fear, greed, and discretionary mistakes make it hard for humans to understand or predict markets. 

Understanding Markets

In reality, there is no such thing as a "Market" ... It is really just a collection of separate traders - and only some are human.

One of the reasons that markets experience great volatility is that different groups buy or sell for different reasons at different times.

Consequently, even if one group trades using a consistent set of rules, a strategy that effectively combats it only works until that group stops trading those rules.

And though there are "patterns" in trading, they're essentially random to you or me. Because they can happen in different time frames, or scales, or orders. 

I shot a video that goes into more detail.

 

Conclusion

In trading, predicting markets is much different than using math and statistics to measure the performance of a technique (or a library of techniques). If markets are random, why waste even a minute trying to predict random. Instead, figure out something valuable that you can predict or know.

While I often believe I see patterns in markets, I know better than to make trading decisions off of those perceptions. 

The amount of traders is growing, the diversity of traders is growing, and the speed at which trades are made is growing. As a result, there's more confusion, more volatility, and more noise. 

It's all about finding the signal from the noise, and making finer distinctions - because if you don't know what your edge is, you don't have one. 

Hope that helps. 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 5th, 2021

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

Lighter Links:

• A New Study Reveals Which US City Has the Worst Traffic, and it is No Longer Los Angeles. (USAToday)
• 30 Pics Showing How Unbearable the Heat is In Part of the US and Canada Right Now.  (BoredPanda)
• The Court Decision Freeing Bill Cosby, Explained as Best We Can. (Vox)
• McDonald's is Replacing Human Drive-thru Attendants With AI. (BigThink)
• Joey Chestnut Wins 14th Nathan's Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest with Record 76 Franks. (USAToday)

 

 

 

Trading Links:

• Jeff Bezos Officially Retires with Twice as Much Money as the Entire British Monarchy. (Unilad)
• 130 Countries Agree to Global Minimum Corporate Tax Rate. (Axios)
• EXPLAINER: 5 Key Takeaways from the June Jobs Report. (APNews)
• Manhattan Real Estate Prices Reach New Record as Buying 'Frenzy' Takes Hold. (CNBC)
• Michael Burry, Jeremy Grantham, and Other Top Investors are Predicting an Epic Market Crash. Here are Their Gravest Warnings So Far. (Markets)

 

 

The First Website And The Spread of The World Wide Web

When people think about CERN, they generally think about nuclear research, the Large Hadron Collider, and other physics research. 

But, CERN was also where Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. In March of 1989, he published “Information Management: A Proposal” which outlined his vision for what would soon become the World Wide Web.  CERN also had the first website to ever exist. Luckily, they kept the site up and will let you view it in the old school line mode.  

 

via CERN

It's been 32 years since the release of the World Wide Web (the internet is said to be invented 6 years earlier with the invention of TCP/IP). Think how much that one invention has had on the world. 

Information Gathering 

I remember being in law school, going to the library and scanning through microfiche (or actual books) to study or do research.

I remember reading encyclopedias (and photocopying relevant articles). 

I remember paying for newsletters that were mailed to me (or paying extra for fax delivery).

Having access to more data or faster delivery was a huge advantage.

Today, you have all the information you could ever ask for at the tip of your fingers ... Google and Wikipedia are just the tip of the iceberg.

There is almost too much information now.  It is hard to separate the signal from the noise.  It seems like anyone can find justification for almost anything.  The result is lots of data, but too little knowledge.

Part of what is needed is a way to help people make better decisions about what to trust, what it means, and what to use.

Social Interaction

People record every moment, every intimate detail of their lives online, contrasted by a fear of strangers and letting children roam. 

While riding around the neighborhood on your bike to see if your friends could come out to play is by no means outlawed - it does seem passé. 

Chat rooms, Facebook, Online multi-player ... many people's key friendships are born and kept online. 

I remember my son, 13 years old at the time, sending 10,000+ texts a month and thinking it was a phase. I was wrong. 

The internet has radically changed the structure of relationships - for better, or often worse. 

Privacy ( ... or the lack of it)

One of the biggest changes is that we as individuals have become productized. We take advantage of all these free resources at the cost of being pixeled and cookied into oblivion. We've chosen convenience over safety. 

Remember, if you’re not paying for a product - you are the product.

Little bits of our private information, demographics, and psychographics are sold to advertisers to create smarter ads, new offers, and realistically we have very little control over that.

It’s been proven time and time again that these giants like Google and Facebook will find ways to sneak your data to advertisers even when it’s “illegal” with a slap on the wrist.

Data protection is a massive issue not only for corporations but for individuals. While many companies are trying to manage your privacy while still monetizing your data, there are just as many companies who couldn’t care less.

The GPDR - while frustrating for many - is a step towards protecting individuals.

Every action has a reaction, and every benefit has a cost. The internet is an amazing tool - but it can also be a weapon. 

 

What will the next 30 years of the internet hold?

"The Internet will disappear. There will be so many IP addresses, so many devices, sensors, things that you are wearing, things that you are interacting with, that you won't even sense it. It will be part of your presence all the time. Imagine you walk into a room, and the room is dynamic. And with your permission and all of that, you are interacting with the things going on in the room." — Eric Schmidt

 

It has been 30 years since its inception, and there's still radical growth coming. 

We’ve gone from bit speeds to megabyte speeds. We’ve gone from crappy-quality video taking hours to download to streaming HD quality video live.

How do imagine that the internet will evolve?

What influence do you think the Internet of Things will have?

It’s hard to foresee how innovation and regulation will change the internet, but it’s clear there will be change.

We live in exciting times!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 27th, 2021

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

Lighter Links:

• Why is Cognitive Flexibility Important and How Can You Improve It? (WEForum)
• The Perfect Number of Hours to Work Every Day? Five. (Wired)
• Artist Sells Invisible Sculpture for Over $18K. (NYPost)
• Check Out the Rotation of the Earth from a Whole New Perspective. (Flipboard)
• CRISPR Injected into the Blood Treats a Genetic Disease for First Time. (ScienceMag)

 

 

Trading Links:

• The Global IPO Market Has Never Been Hotter Than It is Right Now. (Bloomberg)
• Banks Will Double Their Capital Return After Successful Stress Test, No. 1 Analyst Mayo Says. (CNBC)
• Hotels and Restaurants' Rebound Summer Held Back by Shortages of Everything. (Wall Street Journal)
• Feds Accelerating Crypto World Crackdown. (FoxBusiness)
• Virgin Galactic Gets Official Clearance to Start Flying Paying Customers to Space. (Gizmodo)

 

A New Experience For Me

We had Nick Nanton and his crew in our office, recently, to film for a documentary on 'Getting to Next' – How AI is transforming the world and humanizing technology. 

 

Nick has been involved with many cool projects from a documentary on Peter Diamandis to Operation Underground Railroad (and more). He's also won more than 20 Emmys. 

Nick is also working on a documentary with Chris Voss - who wrote Never Split the Difference. I spent time in D.C. watching Nick shoot with Chris and his son Brandon Voss, who is the president of Black Swan Group. 

While I've done podcasts and interviews before, this was a surprisingly fun and cool experience for me.

It was also interesting to watch some of our more introverted data scientists in front of the camera. 

The documentary just started shooting - but I look forward to showing you the finished product when it's ready. 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 13th, 2021

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

Lighter Links:

• Blue Origin Auctions Seat on First Spaceflight with Jeff Bezos for $28 Million. (CNBC)
• This is Why There are No Mosquitoes at Disney World. (Hunker)
• There's a Stark Red-Blue Divide When It Comes to States' Vaccination Rates. (NPR)
• Vladimir Putin's Time in Power, Compared to Other World Leaders. (Barrons)
• He's Heckled Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. Now He's the First Fan in the NBA Hall of Fame. (Vice)

 

Trading Links:

• G7 Leaders to Announce Plan to Phase Out Gasoline Cars. (Axios)
• UN Says Cost of Food at Highest Level in Over a Decade. (BBC)
• The Perfect Storm Making Everything You Need More Expensive. (CNN)
• Inflation Scare? Look At This Chart Before Freaking Out. (MarketWatch)
• Nvidia CEO: We're Moving Towards a Crypto Metaverse. (Decrypt)

Getting To Next: How Thoughts Become Things

Two weeks ago, I introduced Innovation Activity Centers which are the building blocks for my technology adoption model.

Today, I have a video and a worksheet for you that goes into the overarching Technology Adoption Model Framework. It explains how thoughts become things and how ideas scale with respect to capability, audience, and monetization.

The four base stages of this framework are: Capability –> Prototype –> Product –> Platform. 

It's a great use of 20 minutes. Check it out.

 

 

While the Technology Adoption Model Framework stages are important, the ultimate takeaway is that you don't have to predict what's coming, only how human nature works in response to the capabilities in front of them.

It's a bit cliche, but to paraphrase Wayne Gretzky, you just have to skate to where you think the puck is going to be. 

Desire fuels commerce.  As money fuels progress, desire grows ... and so does the money funding that path. As such, the path forward is relatively easy to imagine.

This isn't about predicting specific technologies, but rather about the capabilities people will want.  I think of it as anticipating the natural path.  It is easier to ride the wave than it is to fight nature.

Each stage is really about the opportunity to scale desire and adoption.

It isn't really about building the technology, rather it is about supporting the desire.

If you understand what is coming, you don't have to build it, but you can figure out where you want to build something that will benefit from it.

This model is fractal.  It works on many levels of magnification or iteration.

What first looks like a product is later seen as a prototype for something bigger.

For example, as a Product transforms into a Platform, it becomes almost like an industry of its own.  Consequently, it becomes the seed for a new set of Capabilities, Prototypes, and Products.

SpaceX's goal to get to Mars feels like their North Star right now ... but once it's achieved, it becomes the foundation for new goals.

This Framework helps you validate capabilities before sinking resources into them. 

In the video, I walk you through several examples of companies, their innovations, and how they fit into each stage. I even used Capitalogix as an example. 

I'm also attaching a fillable PDF of the form we used so that you can run through this with your business as well. 

As I continue to refine and work with this framework, I look forward to improving it and sharing it with you all. 

As the world continues to change faster and more dramatically, this framework will help you anticipate changes, and it will also help you take advantage of them. 

If you have any questions or comments about the idea, or how to implement it, feel free to reach out. 

Onwards! 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - June 6th, 2021

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

Lighter Links:

• Benevolent Bots Are Suckers – Why A.I. Should Be Afraid of Us. (NYT)
• Microsoft's First GPT-3 Product Hints at the Commercial Future of OpenAI. (TheNextWeb)
• Netflix Secret Codes: How to Access Hidden TV Shows and Movies on Service. (Independent)
• Physics' Greatest Mystery: Michio Kaku Explains the God Equation. (BigThink)
• Scientists Gene Edit Mice to Live 23 Percent Longer. (Futurism)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Where Did 1.5 Million Cable Customers Go Last Quarter? Here. (MotleyFool)
• Technology Changes - But Fear and Greed Never Do. (HowardLindzon)
• Higher Interest Rates Would Be Good for the Country, Treasury Secretary Yellen Says. (CNBC)
• A Stealthy Growth Correction. (HumbleStudentOfTheMarkets)
• The Future of Money: The Digital Currency Revolution is Here, and May Sweep Away 5,000 Years of Monetary History. (Globe&Mail)

 

 

 

Make News Beautiful Again

My mother watches the news religiously. To her credit, she watches a variety of sources and creates her own takeaways based on them. Regardless, there's a common theme in all the sources she watched – they focus on fear or shock-inducing stories with a negative bias. As you might guess, I hear it when I talk with her.

While I value being informed, I also value things that nourish or make you stronger (as opposed to things that make you weak or less hopeful).

Negativity Sells. 

Sure, news sources throw in the occasional feel-good story as a pattern interrupt ... but their focus skews negative.  History shows that stories about improvement or the things that work simply don't grab eyeballs, attention, or ratings consistently.

The reality is that negativity sells. If everything were great all the time, people wouldn't need to buy as many products, they wouldn't need to watch the news, and this cycle wouldn't continue.

It's worth acknowledging and understanding the perils our society is facing, but it's also worth focusing on the ways humanity is expanding and improving.

As a brief respite from the unending doom and gloom of mainstream media, Information Is Beautiful has a section of their site focused on "Beautiful News".

It's a collection of simple data visualizations for positive trends, it's updated daily, and can be sorted by topic.

 

Beautiful News via Information Is Beautiful

If you're looking for more "good news", here's a list of 10 sources focusing on good news. 

The Law and Flaw of Averages

The law of averages is a principle that supposes most future events are likely to balance any past deviation from a presumed average.

Take, for example, flipping a coin. Should you get 5 "Heads" in a row, you'll assume the next one must be "Tails" despite the fact that each flip has a 50/50 chance of landing on either. 

Even from this example, you can tell it's a flawed law. While there are reasonable mathematical uses of this law, in everyday life, this "law" mostly represents wishful thinking. 

It's also one of the most common fallacies seen in gamblers and traders. 

Perhaps you heard the story about how the U.S. Air Force discovered the 'flaw' of averages by creating cockpits based on very complex mathematics surrounding the average height, width, arm length, etc. of over 4,000 pilots. Despite engineering the cockpit to precise specifications, pilots crashed their planes on a too regular basis. 

The reason?  With the benefit of hindsight, they learned that very few of those 4,000 pilots were actually "average". Ultimately, the Air Force re-engineered the cockpit and fixed the problem. 

It's a good reminder that 'facts' can lie, and assumptions and interpretations are dangerous. It's why I prefer taking decisive action on something known, rather than taking tentative actions about something guessed. 

 

via ReasonTV