Capitalogix

Before You Vote: Getting Educated

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. 

via Ad Fontes Media

On top of reading various news sources, there are a couple of other tools I like: 

• FiveThirtyEight - Uses graphics to tell visual stories on valid statistics. Named after the number of electoral votes. Also has a visual presidential forecast. 
• 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. 

We live in interesting times!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 18th, 2020

 

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

Lighter Links:

• The Only Four Books Bill Gates Has Rated Five Stars. (Medium)
• Meet the 2020 Nobel Laureates. (Flipboard)
• How Crowd Forecasting Can Predict the Future. (Axios)
• Nvidia Will Build the 'World's Fastest AI Supercomputer'. (TechRadar)
• Record Avalanche of Early Votes Transforms the 2020 Election. (APNews)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Six NFL Teams Return Positive COVID-19 Tests in 24 Hours, and Why It's Important. (NESN)
• Fed Officials Call for Tougher Regulation to Prevent Asset Bubbles. (Reuters)
• As US Election Nears, Hedge Funds Gauge Far-reaching Market Impact of Trump-Biden Battle. (HedgeWeek)
• Beware Stock Market Divergence and Double Top Patterns!. (SeeItMarket)
• Young and Dumb' Traders Have Created a Total Nightmare' in the Stock Market, Fund Manager Warns. (MarketWatch)

 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 10th, 2020

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

Lighter Links:

• The Quantum Internet Will Blow Your Mind. Here's What It Will Look Like. (Discover)
• The US Military is Trialing Augmented Reality Goggles for Dogs. (CNN)
• Modern Science Didn't Appear until the 17Th Century. What Took So Long? (NYT)
• Qantas Airways 'Flight to Nowhere' that Sold out in Minutes Takes Off. (FoxNews)
• What Really Happens When You Become an Overnight Millionaire? (Marker)

 

 

Trading Links:

• Tesla Plans to Offer Machine-learning Training as Web Service with Its New 'Dojo' Supercomputer. (Electrek)
• Analysis: We Read the Antitrust Case against Amazon, and these are the Key Takeaways.  (GeekWire)
• Father of VIX Warns Options Glitch is Costing Investors Millions. (Bloomberg)
• Economists are More like Storytellers Than Scientists Don't Let the Nobel for Economic Sciences' Fool You. (TheConversation)
• The Stock Market Won't See the Bullish Outcome It's Expecting from a Biden Win Unless There's a Full Blue Wave, a JPMorgan Stock Strategist Says. (BusinessInsider)

How Machines Learn: Big Brother Is Watching

The ubiquity of Machine Learning algorithms remains a topic of interest because we, as a society, still haven't come to terms with what "acceptable" use looks like, and what privacy looks like in the post-AI world. 

Algorithms are helping you pick out your next gift on Amazon, controlling what you find on Google, they're suggesting new music for you on Spotify, and they're doing their best to keep you on their website.

They're following you in stores, on the streets, and many would argue they're tracking your phone calls, text messages, and more. 

With all that being said, I do think it's important to have a cursory knowledge of the things that impact our lives ... so, even if you're not an AI-aficionado, I think it's important to somewhat understand how machines learn, and how powerful they're becoming. 

The video is a bit simple in its explanations, but it describes some important concepts.

 

CGP Grey via Youtube

The video focuses on Genetic Algorithms, which is one type of machine learning – and neglects some of the other more complicated approaches.

As machine learning gets more complicated and evolved, it gets harder for a human to understand what makes it good … and that's okay. Understanding the direction AI is heading is more important than truly understanding the intricacies. 

It's human nature to feel safer when we understand something. It's human nature to envision machines as making human-like decisions, just faster.

Of course, just because it suits human nature to believe something, that doesn't make it true. 

Part of what makes machine learning exciting is that it can do a lot of things well that humans are really bad at. 

In reality, it doesn't matter why a bot is making a decision, or what inputs the bot is making the decision on. What matters is the performance and level of decision-making in relation to itself and to other options (and whether the bot is biased).

With respect to trading, focusing on the markets is a distraction.

For the most part, I don't care how markets are doing.

I care how our systems are doing and I care how the portfolio is doing.

It's a brave new world, and not only is big brother watching, but algorithms are too.

Live long and prosper!

What It Was Like Buying a Computer in 1994

We take for granted a lot of the technology we have today. Computers and phones have evolved so fast that it's hard to remember that they haven't been around for many years. When my youngest son was born in 1993,  cassette tapes and the Sony Walkman were still popular, I had a wired phone in my car, and we had a Macintosh-II in the study. 

Everything in this photo now exists in the cheapest of smartphones. 

For a blast from the past and a look back at what used to be top-of-the-line ... here's a video of people buying a computer in 1994. 

 

via David Hoffman

Video transfer and playback. 160-megabyte hard drive. 32 megahertz. All for the low price of $2,000. 

Pretty cool to see how far we've come!  Still, someday soon, they will look back at the tech we have now as "primitive" and "quaint".

I can't wait!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 4th, 2020

Did you watch the first presidential debate this week? I have friends on both sides of the fence, but we all agreed the debate was a mess. 

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

Lighter Links:

• Don't Neglect the Thing that Makes You Weird - People Probably Admire it. (Freakonomics)
• Mindfulness for Skeptics. (RealSimple)
• Elon Musk: Neuralink Brain Implant Will Improve 'Bandwidth' of Human Communication. (CNet)
• The Typical Progression of Covid-19 Virus. (CNBC)
• Why Magic Mushrooms are the next Big Booming (and Legal!) Drug Market. (Observer)

 

 

Trading Links:

• President Trump Tests Positive for Covid. Why the Stock Market Isn't Getting Hammered. (Barrons)
• There's No Place to Hide Anymore When the Stock Market Plunges. (Wall Street Journal)
• Big U.S. Banks to Report Profit Plunge as Pandemic Recession Takes Hold. (Investing)
• Manhattan Apartment Sales Tumble 46%, Leaving 10,000 Homes on the Market. (DailyMail)
• SEC is Willing to Try' a Tokenized ETF, Chairman Says. (CoinDesk)

 

Can A Minute Be Faster? A Look At The Internet Minute

As I get older, time seems to move faster ... but it's also true that as I get older, more is accomplished every minute. 

Technology is a powerful force function.

Every couple of years I revisit a chart about how much data is generated every minute on the internet.  

In reverse chronological order, here's 2018, 2015, and 2011. 

Here's an excerpt from 2015 for some perspective: 

Compared to 2008 here is what's happened with social networks:

• The number of people online has more than doubled from 1.4 billion to over 3 billion
• Facebook has gone from 80 million users to more than 1.4 billion
• Twitter had 2 million accounts and now it is 300 million and counting.
• The number of smartphones was 250 million in 2008 and today there are more than 2 billion. That is an 800% increase!

Today this is what happens every minute on the web.

• 4 million search queries on Google
• Facebook users share 2.46 million pieces of content
• Email users send 204 million messages

Over the course of its (pretty short) history, the internet has been arguably the most important battlefield for relevancy and innovation. 

So, what does the internet look like in 2020?

DOMO via VisualCapitalist

Partially as a result of the quarantine, you're seeing an increase in digital cash transfers with tools like Venmo, an increase in e-commerce shops like Shopify, and an increase in (you guessed it) collaboration tools like Zoom or Microsoft Teams. 

This year, DOMO also created a chart that shows the services that have appeared in the graphic since 2012. It's an interesting way to look at the relevancy and staying power of different companies and technologies. 

We're currently in a time period of massive competition and turnover. Innovation means incumbents are being challenged every day, and the status quo doesn't stay that way for long. Even within the S&P 500, you're seeing companies stay a member for shorter periods of time.  

You have to stay on your toes to maintain an edge. I think you can expect increased competition, increased volume, and as a result, increased noise vying for your attention or fueling your distraction. 

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - September 27th, 2020

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

Lighter Links:

• AI Should Change What You Do, Not Just How You Do It. (HBR)
• Twitter CEO Explains How Bitcoin, Blockchain Will Revamp Its Business. (Decrypt)
• The 12 Best Fitness Apps Right Now. (GearPatrol)
• Scientists are Preparing to Implant the World's First Human Bionic Eye that Will Allow the Blind to See. (AOL)
• Freezing Bodies for Reanimation' in China and Why the Country's Cryonics Tech Has the Potential to Leapfrog the West. (South China Morning Post)

 

 

 

 

Trading Links:

• The 12 Richest Tech Billionaires in the World Ranked. (South China Morning Post)
• Wall Street is about to Start Trading Water for the First Time. (EuroNews)
• Why Investors Want 50% of Stocks above 200-Day Moving Average. (SeeItMarket)
• A Complete Mess: Traders Fear Volatility Long after Election Day. (Bloomberg)
• Wall Street's Campaign Donations to Biden are Five Times Larger Than Those Going to Trump. (CNN)

 

 

AI & Intellectual Property With Rich Goldstein

It has been a crazy ride.

I studied psychology and philosophy at Duke in the early '80s.  Then I got both an MBA and a law degree at Northwestern University in Chicago. 

My first job out of school was doing corporate and securities work at a law firm in Dallas.  By the early '90s, I knew that I was an entrepreneur. 

Regardless, the path seemed random as I was going down it ... but looking back, it all seems to make some form of sense. 

I recently did a podcast with a patent lawyer friend, Rich Goldstein. We talk about that, what it's like working with my son, the difference between practicing law and creating AI, innovation, and the role of Intellectual Property and its protection. 

I think it's a good listen. Check it out. 

 

The State of Democracy

I feel very lucky to live in America and lucky to live in a democracy ... but democracy is a term that encompasses a wide spectrum of activity and governments. In the same way that Republics and Capitalism also represent a wide spectrum of activity.

America has adopted a form of all three of those underlying structures, but it changes with each regime change, and as we adapt to the complexities of modern-day civilization.  

It's worth understanding the nuances of what brand of democracy you live in - and what would make it ideal (in your opinion).

That's a much too complicated question to answer in the scope of this article, but a great starting point is understanding the world spectrum of Authoritarian -> Full Democracy, and how the different countries score. 

Luckily, visualcapitalist put together a great interactive graphic based on the Democracy Index global ranking (as of 2019). Click the image to see the interactive version.

via visualcapitalist

Before I get into the rankings, a quick look at the classifications within the Democracy Index. It bases the score on 60 questions that cover things like the electoral process, civil liberties, government functions, and political culture. 

• Authoritarian Regime: 0.0 - 3.99
• Hybrid Regime: 4.0-5.99
• Flawed Democracy: 6.0-7.99
• Full Democracy: 8.0 - 10.0

Topping the list is Norway, and the most Authoritarian regime is North Korea.

Unfortunately, based on this metric, the U.S. (which is one of the oldest democracies in the world) was downgraded to a flawed democracy as of 2016, after teetering for many years. Some stated reasons for this shift are the growing distrust in public institutions, an upshot in ideological purity, and less bipartisan efforts. 

 Since 2006, when the Index was created, Democracy has actually been decreasing globally. Today, around half of the world's population lives in a democracy of some sort, with only 5.7% living in a "full democracy".