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Speculation drives human progress

  
  Education
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Speculation, in all its forms, is what drives human progress. This is the core message behind Michael Bigger’s recent post, “The Desire to Speculate”.
An excerpt from Michael’s essay: 
“It is said that the desire to speculate is very strong in the American people. That is why our country has made greater progress than any other country in the world, because progress is the result of speculation. We are not referring merely to stock speculations, but to the word in its broadest sense. Every new undertaking is a speculation.

An inventor speculates on what he is going to invent. Often such speculations result in losses, because many inventors, or would-be-inventors, never accomplish very much. They spend their money, time, and efforts, and probably live years in poverty, and then if the invention is not profitable, they are heavy losers.

It is the same thing with every new business. It is purely a speculation…”  (more…)

The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs

  
Analysis, Education, Life
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Walter Isaacson follows up his biography of Steve Jobs with an “insanely great” piece in the April HBR.   He drills down on the factors that helped to catapult the legendary entrepreneur into an elite league of American business leaders, including Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney.

The 14 factors listed below continue at Apple as part Jobs’ legacy, which is helping drive the stock on an epic run,  now up 67 percent since November 25th and adding $240 billion to the company’s market capitalization.  That’s a lot wealth creation — equivalent to 1.6 percent of U.S. GDP.  No wonder the animal spirits are running again.

1)    Focus;
2)   Simplify;
3)   Take Responsibility End to End;
4)   When Behind, Leapfrog;
5)   Put Products Before Profits;
6)   Don’t Be a Slave To Focus Groups;
7)   Bend Reality;
8)   Impute;
9)   Push for Perfection;
10) Tolerate Only “A” Players;
11)  Engage Face-to-Face;
12)  Know Both the Big Picture and the Details;
13)  Combine the Humanities with the Sciences;
14)  Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.

Below are the first few paragraphs of the article with a link to the full article.   This is a must read, folks! (more…)

The Right Approach to Losses

  
  Education
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First of all, understand that losses are a necessary part of any risk taking activity.  The goal should always be to blunt the impact of  losses as opposed to eliminating the losses altogether.  There is a distinct difference between minimizing the impact of losses versus minimizing the number of losses.  If the money you are risking stands between you and hunger, think twice before placing it on the line.  Risk capital must be true risk capital.

Second, losses are better teachers than wins.  As noted above, wins often lead to complacency.  Losses usually compel you to figure out “why.”  If small and incidental to your overall strategy, they confirm that your plan is  working.  If relatively outsized and/or unexpected, losses make you examine the precedent trades and determine if your strategy should be adjusted.  This is how advancement happens.  Thomas Edison needed nearly 10,000 tries to find filament for an incandescent bulb that would last for more than a few hours.  Of the thousands of attempts that did not produce the bulb, Edison did not see them as failures, but rather as things that didn’t work which was useful knowledge in and of itself.  By knowing what didn’t work, Edison was able to find his way to what did.  Containing and then examining your losses will help you do the same with your trading strategy.

Third, recognize that losses that are kept small relative to your portfolio are a big part of the fuel that propels your account higher.  They say that you are taking prudent steps to grow your account… that you are “in the game.”  The alternative, especially if you accept that losses are a necessary part of trading, is no risk taking or the taking of outsize risk (refusing to cut losers).  Neither of these provide a path to account growth.  If you can find/develop a trading method that allows for (in fact, embraces), many small losses while still delivering profits overall, you will have gone a long way toward eliminating the trepidation that most new traders feel about entering the fray.  You will also be able to stop worrying about having the “right” picks.

A to Z -Motivational Tips

  
  Education
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■A – Achieve your dreams.

Avoid negative people, things and places. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “the future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Consume yourself with the motivation to achieve tremendous results from everything you attempt

■B – Believe in your self, and in what you can do.

Motivation comes from within, if you trust in your abilities you will come out on top.

■C – Consider things on every angle and aspect.

Motivation comes from determination. To be able to understand life, you should feel the sun from both sides. Never say never, there is a way of accomplishing anything if you keep an open mind and never give up.
■D – Don’t give up and don’t give in.
Thomas Edison failed once, twice, more than thrice before he came up with his invention and perfected the incandescent light bulb. Make motivation as your steering wheel. The only way you lose for sure is when you quit.
■E – Enjoy. Work as if you don’t need money.
Dance as if nobody’s watching. Love as if you never cried. Learn as if you’ll live forever. Motivation takes place when people are happy. Maintain a positive attitude under any circumstance. Fill your mind with positive thoughts and the whole world will be your playground.
■F – Family and Friends – are life’s greatest ‘F’ treasures.
Don’t loose sight of them. So often we look past our greatest treasures, remain motivated to always seek the treasures in your family bonds.
■G – Give more than what is enough.

Where does motivation and self improvement take place? At work? At home? At school? When you exert extra effort in doing things. Try to give more than what is asked of you, this shows true self motivation.

■H – Hang on to your dreams.

They may dangle in there for a moment, but these little stars will be your driving force. Dreams keep us motivated to go after the things that excite us in life. Holding onto your dreams shows a strength in your character of positive expectations. (more…)

Timeline — from Thomas Edison to the unwinding of GE Capital

  
Analysis, Education
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1890 — Four companies representing inventor Thomas Edison’s interests merge to form the Edison General Electric Company.

1932 — GE Credit Corporation begins to offer credit to customers to buy General Electric appliances.

1981 — Under chief executive Jack Welch, GE Capital begins a dramatic ascent. Between 1986 and 1993 profits double to $1.5bn and assets to $155bn. GE Capital becomes the world’s largest car-leasing company, the world’s largest ship container leasing company and the biggest private mortgage insurer.

2004 — GE Capital buys Dillard’s credit card unit for $1.25bn.

2008 — As the credit markets seize up, GE announces its first fall in quarterly profits for five years. In September, chief executive Jeff Immelt calls Henry Paulson, the then Treasury secretary, to say GE “was finding it very difficult to sell its commercial paper for any term longer than overnight”.

2011 — GE buys MetLife Bank, an online retail banking arm.

2013 — Mr Immelt sets a target that GE Capital should provide no more than 30 per cent of group earnings.

2014 — GE Capital has $7bn of net income, assets of $499bn and more than 35,000 employees. It operates in 40 countries. In the US, GE takes Synchrony Financial, its store credit card arm, public in a $2.88bn initial public offering.

2015 — Mr Immelt announces plans to sell the bulk of GE Capital over the next two years and return the company to its manufacturing roots.

Speculation drives human progress

  
  Education
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Speculation, in all its forms, is what drives human progress. This is the core message behind Michael Bigger’s recent post, “The Desire to Speculate”.
An excerpt from Michael’s essay: 
“It is said that the desire to speculate is very strong in the American people. That is why our country has made greater progress than any other country in the world, because progress is the result of speculation. We are not referring merely to stock speculations, but to the word in its broadest sense. Every new undertaking is a speculation.

An inventor speculates on what he is going to invent. Often such speculations result in losses, because many inventors, or would-be-inventors, never accomplish very much. They spend their money, time, and efforts, and probably live years in poverty, and then if the invention is not profitable, they are heavy losers.

It is the same thing with every new business. It is purely a speculation…”  (more…)

Lifestyle & Improvement

  
Education, LINKS
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  • How to add an hour to your day (Harvard Business Review)

  • The Bucket List lie (Jonathan Fields)

  • Why all happiness and success fades away (Peter Shallard)

  • Why what you believe gets you nowhere (Peter Shallard)

  • How to really shake things up (James Altucher)

  • There are real-life advantages to being a strategic deceiver (New York Times)

  • Don’t let email run your life (CNN)

  • Great idea – change your smoke alarm batteries with daylight savings time (Lifehacker)

  • Yet another reason to get off your duff and exercise (BBC)

  • We make risk/reward decisions every day, all day long (Tech Crunch)

  • Tips from Thomas Edison (Open)

  • It’s looks like it is a really good thing I feel happy while trading (Forbes)

  • Natural approaches to combating the winter blues (Dr. John Briffa)

Life Insights From Great Inventors

  
Education, Life
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* “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison.

* “The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” – Nikola Tesla

* “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.” – Alexander Graham Bell

* “A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.” – Charles Kettering

* “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.” – Thomas Edison

* “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

* “A successful person isn’t necessarily better than her less successful peers at solving problems; her pattern-recognition facilities have just learned what problems are worth solving.” – Ray Kurzweil

* “It doesn’t matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again.” – Charles Kettering

* “What we do during our working hours determines what we have; what we do in our leisure hours determines what we are.” – George Eastman

* “God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper.” – R. Buckminster Fuller

* “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.” – Thomas Edison

* “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell

* “We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently… to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.” – Charles Kettering

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