Capitalogix

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 17th, 2022

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

Lighter Links:

• Biden is Very Unpopular. It May Not Tell Us Much About the Midterms. (FiveThirtyEight)
• The 23 Best New Productivity Apps for 2022. (FastCompany)
• Meet the Man Keeping Blockbuster Alive. (DallasNews)
• Was Warfare Responsible for the Origin of Complex Civilisation? (NewScientist)
• Create an Action Figure Version of Yourself With Hasbro's "Selfie Series". (Hypebae)

 

 

 

 

Trading Links:

• Does Elon Musk Have a Strategy? (HBR)
• JPMorgan CEO Dimon Sums up U.S. Economy in One Paragraph And It Sounds Bad. (CNBC)
• Where Did the Stock Market's $7 Trillion Loss in Value Go? (Marketplace)
• The Speedy Downfall of Rapid Delivery Startups. (Wired)
• Why Hasn't the Russian Economy Tanked Yet? Putin Has Been Preparing for this Moment for Years. (Fortune)

 

 

 

Reinventing The Wheel

When I think about the invention of the wheel, I think about cavemen (even though I know that cavemen did not invent the wheel).

Lots of significant inventions predated the wheel by thousands of years.  For example, woven cloth, rope, baskets, boats, and even the flute were all invented before the wheel.

While simple, the wheel worked well (and still does).  Consequently, the phrase "reinventing the wheel" often is used derogatorily to depict needless or inefficient efforts.

But how does that compare to sliced bread (which was also a pretty significant invention)?

Despite being a hallmark of innovation, it still took more than 300 years for the wheel to be used for travel.  With a bit more analysis, it makes sense. In order to use a wheel for travel, it needs an axle, and it needs to be durable, and loadbearing, requiring relatively advanced woodworking and engineering. 

All the aforementioned products created before the wheel (except for the flute) were necessary for survival.  That's why they came first.

As new problems arose, so did new solutions.

Necessity is the mother of invention. 

Unpacking that phrase is a good reminder that inventions (and innovation) are often solution-centric. 

Too many entrepreneurs are attracted to an idea because it sounds cool. They get attracted to their ideas and neglect their ideal customer's actual needs. You see it often with people slapping "AI" on to their product and pretending it's more helpful. 

If you want to be disruptive, cool isn't enough. Your invention has to be functional, and it has to fix a problem people have (even if they don't know they have it.) The more central the complaint is to their daily lives the better.  

Henry Ford famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Innovation means thinking about and anticipating wants and future needs.

Your customers may not even need something radically new. Your innovation may be a better application of existing technology or a reframe of best practices. 

Uber didn't create a new car, they created a new way to get from where you want with existing infrastructure and less friction. Netflix didn't reinvent the movie, they made it easier for you to watch one. 

As an entrepreneur, the trick is build for human nature (meaning, give people what they crave or eliminate the constraint they are trying to avoid) rather than the cool new tech that you are excited about.  

Human nature doesn’t seem to change much … Meanwhile, the pace of innovation continues to accelerate. 

The challenge is to focus on what people want rather than the distraction of possibility.

It gets harder as more things become possible.

We certainly live in interesting times!

Americans' Top Financial Concern

It's no secret that the economy is slowing - with high inflation rates and rising interest rates. 

According to Mohamed El-Erian, from Queens College at Cambridge University, we're experiencing stagflation - which is when inflation is high but growth is slowing significantly. Theoretically, that leads to recession. 

via visualcapitalist

The Consumer Price Index has also grown by over 8% in the past year, so the American household is facing financial threats from many angles. 

Many feel that the Fed has responded disappointingly recently, and their response (or lack thereof) will be a major dictator of whether we enter a recession. 

I believe that emotions play a role too. When people are afraid, they spend less and hoard what they can to save themselves from an unknown future. They feel anticipatory grief.  And their fear, uncertainty, and doubt ripple through society and our lives. 

Personally, I've weathered my heaviest storms by sailing toward the future regardless of the threats. An abundance mindset is a powerful tool, and as more people feel confident it becomes a macroeconomic trend with real influence. 

I'd encourage you to think about what opportunities there are and will be. There are always seasons of change … Winter eventually comes – and goes. Nevertheless, winter can be a great opportunity to plan your next moves and build the infrastructure to sow more seeds in the coming spring. 

As well, unlike nature, you can personally have springtime while the majority are in winter. We're currently in an A.I. springtime - and I believe that will continue regardless of economic trends. 

Happy to talk about this … Let me know what you are thinking and feeling!

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - July 2nd, 2022

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

Lighter Links:

• Musk Breaks 9-Day Silence on Twitter, Posts a Picture With the Pope. (Reuters)
• Your Internet Life Needs a Feeds Reboot Here's How to Do It. (TheVerge)
• Analysis of Compound Curse Words Used on Reddit. (FlowingData)
• The Track Record of Futurists Seems ... Fine. (Cold-takes)
• How Netflix Grew from DVD Service to a Hollywood Disruptor with Over 200 Million Subscribers That is Now Losing Customers. (Insider)

 

Trading Links:

• Here's How Long Bear Markets Last And How Stocks React When They End. (ComplianceX)
• Families May Be Offered Mortgages of 50 YEARS that They Can Then Pass to Their Children. (DailyMail)
• Amazon Delivers Some Bad News for the Economy. (TheStreet)
• Crypto's Domino Effect is Widening, Threatening More Pain. (Wall Street Journal)
• 'A Lot of People are Just Not Understanding What's Going On': A 30-Year Market Vet Lays Out 7 Reasons Why a Recession is Imminent And Says Stocks Will End the Sell-Off Down 60%. (Insider)

 

 

Companies With The Most Patents in 2021

Intellectual Property is an important asset class in exponential industries.

Why?  Because I.P. is both a property right (that increases the owner's tangible and intangible value) and a form of protection.

They say good fences make good neighbors.  But you are also more willing to work to build an asset if you know that your right to use and profit from it is protected.

As a result of that thinking, Capitalogix has numerous patents - and we're developing a patent strategy that goes far into the future.  So, it's a topic that's front of mind for me.

Consequently, this visualization of which companies got the most patents last year caught my eye.  In 2021, the U.S. granted over 327,000 patents.  Here is who got them.

 

Raul Amoros via VisualCapitalist

While IBM isn't the public-facing industry leader they once were, they've been topping the list for most patents for the past three decades.  Their patents this past year cover everything from climate change to energies, high-performance computing, and A.I.. 

What ideas and processes do you have that are worth patenting?  And, what processes are worth not patenting - to keep from prying eyes?

Food for thought ... Onwards!

Thoughtful Entrepreneur Podcast

Recently I had a chance to talk with Josh Elledge on his Thoughtful Entrepreneur podcast. We talked about AI's inevitable influence on trading as well as my experience as an entrepreneur. 

Despite mis-spelling Capital Logix ... it's Capitalogix ... the conversation we had is worth a listen. 

Check it out.  

Dall-E .... Not Wall-E: AI-Generated Art

Neural networks creating images from text isn't new.  I wrote about it in 2019 when AI self-portraits were going viral. 

 

Mauro Martino via YouTube

Just like VR is getting a new lease on life, despite its age, AI-generated art is getting another 15-minutes of fame. 

This past week, a new model called Dall-E Mini went viral.  It creates images based on the text prompts you give it – and it's surprisingly good.  You even can give Dall-E absurd prompts, and it will do its best to hybridize them (for example, a kangaroo made of cheese). 

Unfortunately, like our current reality, Dall-E may not be able to produce cheap gas prices.  Nonetheless, it is fun to try.  Click the image to enter the concepts you want Dall-E to attempt to represent.

via Dall-E mini

While the images themselves aren't fantastic, the tool's goal is to understand and translate text into a coherent graphic response.  The capabilities of tools like this are growing exponentially (and reflect a massive improvement since I last talked about AI-generated images).

Part of the improvement is organic (better hardware, software, algorithmic evolution, etc.), while another part comes from stacking.  For example, Dall-E's use of GPT-3 has vastly increased its ability to process language. 

However, the algorithms still don't "understand" the meaning of the images the way we do ... they are guessing based on what they've "seen" before.  That means it's biased by the data it was fed and can easily get stumped.  The Dall-E website's "Bias and Limitations" section acknowledges that it was trained on unfiltered internet data, which means it has a known, but unintended, bias to be offensive or stereotypical against minority groups. 

It's not the first time, and it won't be the last, that an internet-trained AI will be offensive. 

Currently, most AI is essentially a brute force application of math masquerading as intelligence and computer science.  Fortunately, it provides a lot of value even in that regard. 

The uses continue to get more elegant and complex as time passes ... but we're still coding the elegance. 

 

Onwards!

Don't Touch That Dial

History may not repeat itself exactly ... but it often rhymes. News stories, however, seem to replicate.

There is nothing wrong with your television. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now controlling the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can deluge you with a thousand channels or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. - The Outer Limits (1963)

 

via YouTube

It almost feels like an episode of Black Mirror, watching these stations quote the same pre-determined diatribe on fake news and its danger to our democracy.

The very message they are purportedly supporting, in the video above, directly contradicts their actions. 

Most people realize this happens to some degree, but it seems different when presented like this.

I believe I am reasonably aware and somewhat immune from propaganda. That probably isn't as true as I'd like to believe.

Meanwhile, Sinclar Broadcast Group owns nearly 200 stations in 80 different markets and wants to buy more. That is a powerful platform to deliver mass messages and influence the zeitgeist of its audience.

It used to be true that winners wrote history (think empires, wars, etc.). Now, the one that delivers the most broadcast narratives shapes the emotional and seemingly logical responses to what we perceive to be happening around us.

The result impacts elections, financial markets, buying choices, and countless other areas of our life. 

We see and hear it every day about politics, wars, economic issues, and many other things we don't focus on enough to notice.

As A.I., Bots, and social media grow, our ability to discern truth from 'truthiness' weakens. Especially with the growth of deepfakes. 

What do you think about this?

A Brief Look At Bear Markets

Main Street and Wall Street are often at odds.  Terms like "retail" and "professional" or "smart money" and "dumb money" highlight the difference in perspective and access to tools, processes, and even information.  

The biggest disparities happen at turning points.  Today, many companies are posting record profits, but markets are volatile, gas is expensive, and inflation is high.  So, we're getting some mixed signals.

It may be too soon to say we're in a recession, but we are experiencing a downturn. 

Here is a comparison of recent market corrections showing each decline's intensity and duration.

 

via Reddit (Dow Jones Market Data & the WSJ)

While this chart is a week or two old, it shows some interesting data.  While there are a few shorter drops, most were longer and deeper than where we currently are. 

Thus, we could have further to go ... but it could also be a sign that we're responding better to market issues than in the past. 

via Cascade Financial Strategies

The blue areas represent past bull market durations and returns (total and annualized).  The red areas represent past bear markets.

 

Note: this chart is from 2018 - Nonetheless, it is a good reminder of the bigger picture.

I remain optimistic about the future state of our economy.  That doesn't mean there won't be pain.  Still, I believe that technology continues to increase the size of our potential pie and the capabilities we can leverage as a catalyst to recovery. 

 

As a bonus, if you want to see a flashback to the Great Recession, here are two pieces of my market commentary from the time.  It's interesting to look back and see how my writing has changed. 

• Market Commentary 02/06/09
• Market Commentary 05/01/09

How are you feeling about the markets and our economy?

Are We Alone In The Universe?

Information Is Beautiful has an interactive data visualization to help you decide if we're alone in the Universe. 

As usual, for them, it is well done, fun, and informative. 

For the slightly geeky amongst us, the model lets you adjust the estimate by playing with two equations: the Drake equation and the Seager equation.

The Drake equation estimates how many detectable extraterrestrial civilizations exist in our galaxy and then in the Universe based on factors like habitable planets, change of life, and then intelligent life, and then the amount of time a civilization sends signals into space. 

The Seager equation is a modern take on the equation focusing on bio-signatures of life that we can currently detect - for example, the number of observable stars/planets, what % have life, and then % chance of detectable bio-signature gas. 

via Information Is Beautiful

For both equations, Information Is Beautiful lets you look at various default options – but also to play with your own choices to adjust the outcomes. 

For example, the skeptical default answer for Drake's equation shows 0.0000062 communicating civilizations in our galaxy (which is still 924,000 in the Universe).  The equivalent for Seager's equation shows 0.0009000 planets with detectable life in our "galactic neighborhood" and 135,000,000 planets in our Universe. 

Even with the "lowest possible" selection chosen, Drake's equation still shows 42 communicating civilizations (Douglas Adams, anyone?) in the Universe.

via Information Is Beautiful

One of the most interesting numbers (and potentially significant numbers for me) is the length of time a civilization sends signals into space.  Conservative numbers are 420 years, but optimistic numbers are 10,000+. 

If any aliens are reading this ... don't worry; I won't tell.  But, we will find out if you voted in the last election.