Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading Enjoyment - October 23rd, 2016

Recent polls suggest that Trump has less than a 15% chance to win.  Makes you wonder how much the media influenced that ...

 

   

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

 

Lighter Links:

• Virtue Signaling, or … Why Clinton is in Trouble. (FinancialSense)
• Clinton's Former Prosecutor Endorses Her for President. (Bloomberg)
• How to Make a Relationship Last: 5 Secrets Backed by Research. (Bakadesuyo)
• U.N. Warns Trump May Be 7 Months Away from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons. (TheOnion)
• Over the Counter Comes a New Way to Mimic Calorie Restriction. (Technology Review)

Trading Links:

• How Google is Poised to Become a Dominant Investment Manager. (QuantNews)
• Musk’s Mars Moment: Audacity, Madness, Brilliance—or Maybe All Three. (ArsTechnica)
• A Legendary Morgan Stanley Banker Reveals the Importance of 'Emotional Intelligence' on Wall Street. (Flipboard)
• It’s Not Creepy, It’s the Future. (JasonZweig)
• This Man Wants to Upend the World of High-frequency Trading. (MarketWatch)

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading Enjoyment - October 15th, 2016

A little iconic wordplay.  Let's call this "Trump Has A Potty-Mouth".

 

 

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• Dogs Are Better Than Humans at Resisting Peer Pressure, Filtering Bad Advice. (BigThink)
• Human Brain vs Machine Learning - A Lost Battle? (Data Science Central)
• Why the Best Leaders Want Their Superstar Employees to Leave. (WSJ)
• Here's How Quantum Computing Will Change the World. (Forbes)
• Jon Huntsman and Other Republicans Call on Donald Trump to Drop Out of the Race. (HuffPost)

 

Trading Links:

• Singapore’s Nugit Raises $5.2M to Make Sense of Big Data Using Artificial Intelligence. (TC)
• Algorithmic Trading Computers Blamed for Sterling's 'Flash Crash'. (QuantNews)
• Mohamed El-Erian: Deutsche Bank Not a 'Lehman Moment,' but Still a Big Risk. (HITC)
• 3D Printing Grows Up: Scientists are Using the Tech to Make an Earthmoving Machine. (Wired)
• President Trump’s First Term. (NewYorker)

What Does A Hurricane and Market Crash Have in Common?

Hurricane Matthew hit the east coast this week.  It was the strongest storm we've weathered in 12 years (with 125 mph winds).

As a trader, I've often thought that weather and market conditions share similarities. As a result, the techniques used to understand and predict them are similar.

Have you heard the term "Eye of the Storm"?  Well, in the context of Hurricane Matthew, it went directly over a weather buoy (Station #42058).

The chart is interesting.  Imagine being a person observing the storm.  It builds, and builds until you don't think it can get much worse.  Then, it appears to stop.  You can breathe.  You can see.  You relax ... Then it comes back faster than before.  Your nerves and reserves were already diminished.  So, it is worse.

 

 via NDBC.

Similarly, it's easy to mistake the eye of the storm (in a major market move) for a sign of safety and opportunity.

I remember 2008.  Storms like that caused many to buy wrong and sell wrong.

Humans see clear skies and walk outside.  Perhaps we can teach the computer to know better (or at least to measure and recognize what is happening better).

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading - September 25, 2016

At least in Pro Wrestling, there is usually a 'Hero' and 'Villain'

 

via Cagle

 Are you going to watch the Debate?  

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

 

Lighter Links:

• Wells Fargo Just Became the Poster Child for When External and Internal Values Don’t Match. (QZ)
• The Value Driven Product Roadmap – a New Approach. (OmriZiv)
• Mossberg: Apple, the King of Tech Taste and Daring, Takes a Breather. (TheVerge)
• The (Not So) New Data Scientist Venn Diagram. (KDNuggets)
• CIA Using Pokemon Go for Mass Surveillance. (USAPoliticsNow) 

 

Trading Links:

• Traders Watching for More Volatility. (CNBC)
• New Kind of Correlation Spotted in Factors Obsessing Wall Street. (Bloomberg)
• Wave of IPOs Could Hit Global Markets within the next 12 Months. (ValueWalk)
• AOL Co-Founder Steve Case: Third Wave of Tech M&A Coming…. (FoxBusiness)
• Apple’s Tax Avoidance Illustrates Gap between Law and Economics. (WSJ)

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

At some point, it becomes more important to focus on what you want ... rather than what you don't want.

 

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• AI Comes to Work: How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Business. (BND)
• Princeton Tops List of 2017 U.S. News Best Colleges Rankings. (USAToday)
• iPhone 7 Plus Vs IPhone 6S Plus: What's the Difference? (Forbes)
• Scientists Followed 5,000 Genius Kids for 45 Years — Here's What They Learned about Success. (Insider)
• It’s Now Possible, in Theory, to Predict Life Success from a Genetic Test at Birth. (ResearchDigest)

 

Trading Links:

• One Year Later, This is What Would Prompt Another "Risk-Parity" Blow Up. (ZeroHedge)
• Competition to Reinvent the Car is Getting Fiercer. (Wall Street Journal)
• The Fed's Next Move Will Impact Oil Markets. (OPEC)
• America Has Leverage over China Because It Owns So Much US Debt. (Trump)
• “Complacency” Indicator Implies Market Top.  (SocGen)

iRobot: Artificial Intelligence ... or Artificial Stupidity?

We often think of Artificial Intelligence as a relatively recent creation – but that's not necessarily true. 

Of course, to compare A.I. of the past with what create now would be unfair.  Nonetheless, A.I. has affected thought since Greek mythology. 

Stories of golden robots, homunculi and Golems have fascinated for generations.

More recently, a 240-year-old doll was found that can write any custom text up to 40 letters long using a goose feather and has eyes that follow what it writes. Imagine what the creator of that gadget could do with the tools we have today.

 

 

 

Seems pretty simple in comparison to all the different applications of A.I. we have today.

But as smart as Artificial Intelligence has become, it doesn't take much to thwart its purpose.

For example, iRobot's Roomba seems like a pretty cool piece of technology, right?  It'll vacuum for you, learn where your furniture is, etc.

Unfortunately, it's not smart enough to tell when your pet has left a "present" on the floor for you ... in which case, it just might spread poop over your whole house.

Yup, that's a real Roomba story, worth a chuckle while you read it here.  

This image shows A.I. isn't always a substitute for lack of the real thing.

 

via Facebook

People claim that they fear Artificial Intelligence ... I think artificial stupidity is pretty scary too  - even when it doesn't result in smearing poop across your carpet.

One of the biggest challenges in automated trading is how quickly we can recognize when things aren't going right, and get back to doing the right thing again.  It isn't just about making money, it's about making and keeping money, consistently.

As for the iRobot,  they are aware of the automated poop-spreading issue and are working on a fix. 

Onwards.

Size Matters: Comparing the U.S. to the Rest of the World

This week, I saw a chart that ranks countries by the number of Olympic medals won in relation to their GDP and population.

Sometimes it helps to employ unconventional perspectives when thinking about the size of things.

So here's an interesting map from the American Enterprise Institute that shows how massive and productive America's $18 trillion economy is on a global scale.

The map compares the gross domestic product of U.S. states with the national GDPs of other nations.

America's largest state economy is California. In 2015, the Golden State's GDP was about $2.46 trillion.  As a separate country, California would have been the 6th largest economy in the world last year (just behind the U.K. and slightly above France's GDP of $2.42 trillion). But France's population is about 66.48 million, while California's is only about 39.14 million — meaning California produces about the same as France – with about 40% fewer people.

America’s second largest state economy is Texas.  In 2015, the Lone Star state's GDP was about $1.59 trillion.  This would have ranked Texas as the world’s 10th largest economy last year.  To compare, Canada’s GDP last year was $1.55 trillion. However, to produce about the same amount of economic output as Texas required a workforce in Canada (18 million) that was 50% larger than employment in the state of Texas (12 million). That is, it required 6 million more workers in Canada to produce the same output as Texas last year.

Check out the rest of the states in the map below:

  

 via AEI.

Based on population, the US is the third-largest country in the world.

To put that in perspective, below is a a map that renames each state with the country that has the closest population to it.

 

via Business Insider.

The map, below, is interesting in a different way.  I'm sure you've heard that "a picture is worth a thousand words."  Here, a couple dozen words capture the world.

 

by Michael Tompsett via Fine Art America.

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading - August 13, 2016

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

 

Lighter Links:

• Three Ways the Tech Industry (Still) Misuses Metrics. (FastCompany)
• Machine Learning Key Terms, Explained. (KDNuggets)
• We Have Become an Idiocracy. (Time)
• Combat Juggling. (Neatorama)
• How to Use Distraction to Your Advantage. (99u)

 

Trading Links:

• Beaten-Up Hedge Fund Billionaires Reminisce About the 'Golden Age'. (QuantNews)
• A Booming Wall Street Business is Based on Guesstimates, and That Could Be A Problem. (BI)
• Authorities Want to Know If Electronic Trading Giants are Cheating Small Customers. (Fortune)
• Who Owns America's Debt? (Money)
• Megacities, Not Nations, are the World’s Dominant, Enduring Social Structures. (Quartz)

Is Clinton Pulling Too Far Ahead For Trump to Catch Her?

It has been a rough week for the Presidential prospects of Donald Trump.

According to Betfair, the odds for Clinton to win in November have rallied in the last several days and are back near their highs of the year at slightly more than 75%.

The chart, below, overlays the odds for a Democratic win and the performance of the S&P 500 Index.

  

via Bespoke. 

That being said, in politics, three months is a lifetime;  and Trump has made some miraculous recoveries before in his career.  

In each of the prior times where Clinton’s odds (late April and late June) have approached current levels, they have quickly pulled back.  

Conventional wisdom says that a strong stock market and a good economy are good for the incumbent party.  Consequently, the Dems are feeling confident with the S&P 500 at new highs and jobs data coming in strong for the second straight month.  Will this be where Clinton finally breaks out (or are her odds due for another pullback)?  

We’ll soon find out!

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

Lots of crazy stories from the Olympics.  For example, an Olympic Kayaker capsized after hitting a submerged sofa.  At least they figured out how to deal with the mosquitos.

 

 

 

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

 

Lighter Links:

• There Are More White Voters Than People Think. That’s Good News for Trump. (NYT)
• Inside the Bitter Last Days of Bernie's Revolution. (Politico)
• The Pittsburgh Steelers are Practicing with Football Robots. (PopSci)
• The Craziest Predictions  From Tech BigWigs Recently. (PScience)
• Dos Equis Wants to Rank You on the "Most Interesting Person in the World" Index. (FastCo) 

 

Trading Links:

• The Big Banks are Becoming ‘Dumb Pipes’ as Fintech Takes Over. (CB Insights)
• How the World's Currencies Got Their Names. (World Economic Forum)
• Fund Managers Fear Central Banks Will Create Next ‘Lehman’ Moment. (MarketWatch)
• What Would Happen If 40 Million Americans Defaulted on Their Student Loans? (FastCo)
• Alleged Russian Spies in the U.S. Were Interested in High Frequency Trading. (QuantNews)