Distraction is eating away at society. Now that almost everyone has a handheld computer at their disposal 24/7 distraction is life. This is an older video from Microsoft, but worth checking out again. It is a perfect example of how much of our lives are being missed by chatting with someone in cyber space rather than living in the moment:
Too much stimulation is like a massage that never ends–no good. Think about it from an investing perspective too.
Adam Smith (1723 – 1790) in “The Money Game” wrote:
“Prices have no memory and yesterday has nothing to do with tomorrow. Every day starts out fifty-fifty!”
If the above statement is to be trusted, then you could just take the 50 – 50 odds, expand their daily time horizon to a yearly one, and decide whether or not to “stay in the stock market game” in 2009!
Decide on just a flip of a coin?
Given the past year’s negative returns, what does this “flip” imply for the investors’ chances this coming year?
Well, that is a matter of asking the question the right way!
If you assume that the years are flipping randomly, and that there is no bias for any year, then you could ask if it is fair enough to assume that flipping through a calendar is otherwise the same as just flipping a coin?
Let’s assume that you were just flipping a coin. Then, YES …
The odds of one flip would always be 50 – 50!
Indeed, you might be led to start questioning about how fair the coin actually would be! In this case, you really should look back and base your expectations on historical econometric analysis and try to establish how fair the coin would be!
But if you are guessing that some things do look like a flip of a coin, shouldn’t you also assume that just because we had a negative year, we’re now going to get a positive one?
Who knows … Investments based on that kind of speculation might actually end up yielding a positive result!
But the odds are still only 50 – 50!
On the other hand …
I do know that …
I will get a much better than 50 -50 chance!
Edward O. Thorp is a legend in both the gaming and the quant worlds. The author of Beat the Dealer and Beat the Market, he went from math professor and blackjack whiz to renowned hedge fund manager. In A Man for All Markets (Random House, 2017), he reflects on his life and the power of thinking differently—and deeply.
Thorp learned how to puzzle things out for himself as a largely self-taught child. He also devised methods for learning how to learn. For instance, when at the age of 12 he set out to master Morse Code, required to get his ham radio operator license, he invested almost three weeks’ income from delivering newspapers in a “tape machine” to practice transcribing code. The machine’s speed was adjustable. Young Thorp’s plan “was to understand every tape at a slow rate, then speed the tapes up slightly and master them again.” He measured his progress against that of World War II army trainees. He writes: “I drew a graph of the hours I spent versus my speed and found that using my method I learned four times as fast per hour spent as did the army trainees.” That Thorp was uncommonly bright might also have contributed just a tad to this carefully recorded outcome.
Fast forward to Thorp’s time at the blackjack table. He recalls playing at one casino where the rules were excellent: “players could insure, split any pair, and double down on any set of cards. Even so, the cards ran badly, I lost steadily, and after four hours I was behind $1,700 and discouraged. Of course, I knew that just as the house can lose in the short run even though it has the advantage in a game, so a card counter can fall behind and this can last for hours or, sometimes, even days. Persisting, I waited for the deck to become favorable just one more time.” Soon enough the deck produced a 5 percent advantage, so Thorp made the maximum bet of $300, all his remaining chips. Dealt a pair of 8s, he pulled out his wallet to bet another $300 on the split hands. And, getting a favorable second card on one of the 8s, he dropped another $300 on the hand. The dealer busted, so Thorp gained $900. The deck continued to be favorable, “calling for big bets,” and the next deck was good as well. In a few minutes he was ahead $255 and quit for the evening.
As Thorp reflects, “for the second time, the Ten-Count System had shown moderately heavy losses mixed with ‘lucky’ streaks of the most dazzling brilliance. I learned later that this was a characteristic of a random series of favorable bets. And I would see it again and again in real life in both the gambling and the investment worlds.”
The full moon was discussed many years ago on this site by Mr. McDonnell with respect to markets with results “consistent with randomness”. It would seem though that the day(s) after a full moon and particularly near the end of a difficult week might cause some sleep deficit effects to show in sensitive individuals–but perhaps extra coffee is used to counter such things.
“Blame Bad night’s Sleep on the Moon“:
Malcom von Schantz, a sleep and circadian researcher at the University of Surrey in the U.K., called the new findings “fascinating” because they run counter to the results of several other studies that failed to find a link between the moon and human behavior.
“Essentially, every report published to date has failed to show significant associations between the phase of the moon and any number of behavioral and physiological parameters,” von Schantz, who was not involved in the study, said in an email.”This is the very first report that suggests an association with one behavior, sleep, and of course it’s a behavior that in our species normally occurs at night.”
“Evidence That the Lunar Cycle Influences Human Sleep”:
We found that around full moon, electroencephalogram (EEG) delta activity during NREM sleep, an indicator of deep sleep, decreased by 30%, time to fall asleep increased by 5 min, and EEG-assessed total sleep duration was reduced by 20 min. These changes were associated with a decrease in subjective sleep quality and diminished endogenous melatonin levels. This is the first reliable evidence that a lunar rhythm can modulate sleep structure in humans when measured under the highly controlled conditions of a circadian laboratory study protocol without time cues.
— Toyota Motor has developed a humanoid robot that mimics its controller’s movements at a distance, a technology with potential applications ranging from nursing care to space travel.
The T-HR3 robot unveiled Tuesday is controlled by an operator seated in what the automaker calls the Master Maneuvering System. Equipment worn on the arms, legs and hands reads the user’s movements and maps them to the robot.
A head-mounted display lets the operator see through the robot’s camera, allowing for interaction with its environment — picking up objects, for example. Sensor-equipped joint modules let the user feel outside force applied to the robot.
Though the current version of the robot must be connected to the control system by cable, Toyota plans to develop a wireless link. The company envisions the robot performing work in such dangerous locations as disaster areas or outer space, as well as providing assistance in the home or medical facilities.
The automaker will showcase the T-HR3 at the four-day International Robot Exhibition here starting Nov. 29.
This is hardly Toyota’s first foray into robotics. In April, the company started rentals of a system designed to help patients suffering from leg paralysis learn to walk again.
Skirmishes in the South China Sea lead to full-scale naval confrontation. Israel bombs Iran, setting off an escalation of violence across the Middle East. Nigeria crumbles as oil prices fall and radicals gain strength. Bloomberg News asked foreign policy analysts, military experts, economists and investors to identify the possible worst-case scenarios, based on current global conflicts, that concern them most heading into 2015. (more…)
