Capitalogix: Web/Tech

This past Thursday was the 90th anniversary of Black Thursday, a day when sellers on Wall Street panicked and closed approximately 13 million shares on the NYSE ... causing 5 billion in immediate losses and spurring the Great Depression, easily the worst stock market crash in US history.

With 90 years of education, technology and progress under our belts, we can look back at their mistakes assuming that it could never happen again – but could it?

The years prior to 1929 were filled with post-WW1 optimism and massive speculation. The combined net profits of 536 manufacturing and trading companies in the first six months of 1929 showed an increase of 36.6% over 1928, itself a record half-year. Rural Americans flocked to cities to take part in the excess of the Roaring Twenties. Stock prices were rising and there was massive economic growth. Like many 20 years olds, the '20s was a period where Americans felt invincible, right up until October 24th of 1929. We almost made it out of the decade.

On the day the 1929 Crash started, 11% of the Dow's value was lost by the opening bell. There was so much trading that the ticker tape reports were backed up. Traders had no idea of the true value of the stocks. Panic. Suddenly, 5 billion dollars was gone, along with optimism and trust in the system. By Black Tuesday, several stocks sat without buyers and the Dow drops another 12%. Collective confidence shattered. Psychological traumas compounded until there was widespread economic PTSD. Uncertainty spread like wildfire. Owners of businesses were unsure if they could get credit, workers were uncertain of job prospects or whether they'd get paid. As a result, consumption dropped, businesses failed, banks followed, and shortly thereafter, so did the Great Depression.

From the peak of the Dow (September 3, 1929) to the bottom of the Great Depression (July 8, 1932) the Dow lost 90% of its value.

Human Nature is Human Nature

We've since instituted many measures to protect businesses, banks, and consumers, including measures to suspend trading in periods of rapid decline (like the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934). As well, we have a better understanding and tracking of economic barometers like car sales, real estate, etc.

The reality is that in various scales and timeframes human traders undergo the same issues time and time again. It only becomes a talking point when it becomes painful enough.

It shouldn't take mass unemployment and economic contraction for us to understand the dangers of speculation, the dangers of human fear, greed, and discretion, and the dangers of poor economic theory.

Human fear and greed will likely play less of a role in markets going forward. Increasingly more of trading volume is algorithmic. And increasingly more of the decisions are made with AI using more data and shorter time frames. As a result, while I expect increased volatility, I also expect increased opportunity.

Keep in mind that there is a difference between guessing and knowing ... and knowing is more profitable. The corollary is: if you don't know what your edge is ... you don't have one.

Here's to a great last few weeks of 2019!

Posted at 03:25 PM in Business, Ideas, Market Commentary, Trading, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 25, 2019

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 27th, 2019

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

Lighter Links:

Jeff Bezos: This is the 'Smartest Thing We Ever Did' At Amazon. (CNBC)
The Next Big Thing in AI/ML Is. (DataScienceCentral)
The Pope's First Wearable is a $110 Rosary that Tracks Your Prayers. (FastCompany)
Science Says You Only Need to Work out for 13 Minutes to Make a Difference. (Parents)
The 'Blob': Paris Zoo Unveils Unusual Organism Which Can Heal Itself and Has 720 Sexes. (CNN)

Trading Links:

Posted at 10:12 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Healthy Lifestyle, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Personal Development, Religion, Science, Trading, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Happy Halloween: The Trick To Treats

Good data visualizations are few and far between. Bad data visualizations spread lies, misrepresent content, or are sometimes just plain unreadable.

In honor of Halloween, here's an example of a fun data visualization put together by Mariona Banyeres based on FiveThirtyEight's "The Ultimate Halloween candy power ranking." Compared to simpler charts it may be harder to read, but it's interactive, it's themed, and if you hover over points, it will add extra context. Click to go to Mariona's interactive Tableau DataViz.

Mariona Banyeres via FiveThirtyEight

To skip the data visualization, here are the results of FiveThirtyEight's competition.

via FiveThirtyEight

Hope you have a Happy Halloween.

Posted at 10:09 PM in Art, Business, Current Affairs, Ideas, Just for Fun, Science, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

October 19, 2019

Gartner's 2019 Hype Cycle For Emerging Technologies

Technology is a massive differentiator in today's competitive landscape.

Sorting through predictions of which new technologies are going to impact the world and which are going to fizzle out can be an overwhelming task. I look forward to Gartner's report each year as a benchmark to compare reality against.

Last year, Gartner reported Deep Learning and Biochips were at the top of the hype cycle - in the "peak of inflated expectations." While I'm excited about both industries, there was certainly more buzz than actual improvement in those spaces last year. Excitement almost always exceeds realistic expectations when technologies gain mainstream appeal.

What's a "Hype Cycle"?

As technology advances, it is human nature to get excited about the possibilities and to get disappointed when those expectations aren't met.

At its core, the Hype Cycle tells us where in the product's timeline we are, and how long it will take the technology to hit maturity. It attempts to tell us which technologies will survive the hype and have the potential to become a part of our daily life.

Gartner's Hype Cycle Report is a considered analysis of market excitement, maturity, and the benefit of various technologies. It aggregates data and distills more than 2,000 technologies into a succinct and contextually understandable snapshot of where various emerging technologies sit in their hype cycle.

Here are the five regions of Gartner's Hype Cycle framework:

Innovation Trigger (potential technology breakthrough kicks off),
Peak of Inflated Expectations (Success stories through early publicity),
Trough of Disillusionment (waning interest),
Slope of Enlightenment (2nd & 3rd generation products appear), and
Plateau of Productivity (Mainstream adoption starts).

Understanding this hype cycle framework enables you to ask important questions like "How will these technologies impact my business?" and "Which technologies can I trust to stay relevant in 5 years?"

That being said - it's worth acknowledging that the hype cycle can't predict which technologies will survive the trough of disillusionment and which ones will fade into obscurity.

What's exciting this year?

It's worth noting that in this edition of the hype cycle, Gartner shifted towards introducing new technologies at the expense of technologies that would normally persist through multiple iterations of the cycle; 21 new technologies were added to the list. For comparison, here's my article from last year, and here's my article from 2015. Click on the chart below to see a larger version of this year's Hype Cycle.

via Gartner

This year's ~30 key technologies were selected from over 2000 technologies and bucketed into 5 major trends:

Sensing and Mobility represents technologies that are gaining more detailed awareness of the world around them like 3D sensing cameras, the next iteration of autonomous driving, and drones. Improvements in sensor technology and their communication through the IoT is leading to more data and more insight.
Augmented Human builds on the "Do It Yourself Biohacking" trend from last year. It represents technologies that improve both the cognitive and physical abilities of humanity - technologies like biochips, augmented intelligence and robotic skin. The future is bringing implants to extend humans past their perceived limits and increase our understanding of our bodies; biochips with the potential to detect diseases, synthetic muscles, and neural implants. Many of my friends believe this realm will elongate human lifespans.
Postclassical Compute and Comms represents new architectures of classical computing technologies like 5G or nanotech - it results in faster CPUs, denser memory and increased throughput. Innovation is commonly thought of as new technologies, but better versions of existing technologies can provide just as much value - and disrupt industries in a very similar way.
Digital Ecosystems are platforms that connect various types of "actors." They create seamless communication between companies, people and APIs. This enables more efficient decentralized organizations (and decentralized autonomous organizations) and allows constant adoption of new evolutions in technology. Examples of this technology are the decentralized web, synthetic data, and decentralized autonomous organizations.
My wheelhouse, Advanced AI and Analytics is an acknowledgment of new classes of algorithms and data science that are leading to new capabilities, deeper insights, and adaptive AI. The future of this space involves more accurate predictions and recommendations on smaller data sets. More signal. Less noise.

Looking past the overarching trends of this year, it's also fun to look at what technologies are just starting their hype cycle.

Artificial Tissue (Biotech) could be used to repair or replace portions of, or whole, tissues(cartilage, skin, muscle, etc.)
Flying Autonomous Vehicles can be used as taxis, but also as transports for other things such as medical supplies, food delivery, etc. Amazon and Uber are likely excited about this development - and expect it in the next couple of years.
Decentralized Web builds on the same arguments blockchain creates against normal currencies. Because the mainstream centralized web is dominated by massive and corporate-controlled platforms like Facebook and Google, the decentralized web movement strives to enable free speech and increased access to those users whose access to the internet is strictly regulated.
Transfer Learning refers to the ability of an AI to solve one problem and apply that "lesson" to a different but tangential problem. When AI becomes able to generalize knowledge more abstractly, you will see a massive spike in utilization.
Augmented Intelligence complements humanity instead of replacing them with robots. To be clear - Augmented intelligence is a subset of AI, but a different perspective/approach to its adoption.

AI has been around since the '60s, but technological advancement and increased data mean we are now in an AI spring after decades of stagnation.

Many of these technologies have been hyped for years - but the hype cycle is different than the adoption cycle. We often overestimate a year and underestimate 10.

Which technologies do you think will survive the hype?

Posted at 10:53 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Ideas, Market Commentary, Science, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here Are Some Links For Your Weekly Reading - October 20th, 2019

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

Lighter Links:

Six Lessons We Can Learn from Geniuses. (BBC)
Breaking down the 10 Need-to-know Emerging Technologies. (ZDNet)
Understanding Heart Zone Training: All You Need to Know. (BTW)
How Spotify's Algorithm Knows Exactly What You Want to Listen To. (OneZero)
A.I. Musicians are a Growing Trend. What Does that Mean for the Music Industry? (DigitalTrends)

Trading Links:

Jeff Bezos's Master Plan. (The Atlantic)
"Demystifying Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Corporation". (Forbes)
Three Big Things: the Most Important Forces Shaping the World.(CollaborativeFund)
Goldman Sachs: the Economic Run is Not over and the US 'Is Not Close to Recession'. (CNBC)
Nobel Laureate Robert Shiller Forewarned Investors about the Dot-com and Housing Bubbles. Now He Tells Us Which Irrational Market Behaviors Have Him Most Worried. (BusinessInsider)

Posted at 10:49 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Healthy Lifestyle, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Music, Personal Development, Science, Trading, Trading Tools, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0)

Prophetic Predictions

New technologies fascinate me ... As we approach the Singularity, I guess that is becoming human nature.

Second Thought has put together a video that looks at various predictions from the early 1900s. It is a fun watch – Check it out.

via Second Thought

It's interesting to look at what they strategically got right compared to what was tactically different.

While not all predictions are made equal, it seems that we have a better idea of what we want compared to how to accomplish it.

The farther the horizon, the more guesswork is involved. Compared to the prior video on predictions from the mid-1900s, this video on the internet from 1995 seems downright prophetic.