Category: Non-Fiction
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Recipe for a Market Crash
Earnings season is upon us and a diabolical mash of market conditions is converging to make it an interesting one. Let’s get cooking. Ingredients: Two tablespoons of rising stock prices One cup rising price to earnings ratios One cup falling dividend yields 2 cups falling earnings estimates A dash of slowing global growth One scoop…
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Two Kinds of Smart
How do you define intelligence? A scene from Good Will Hunting comes to mind. “My boy’s wicked smaht.” What does wicked smaht leadership look like? Here’s how the hard sciences are defining intelligence: The equation above was developed by Shane Legg (Deepmind) and Marcus Hutter. It states that intelligence is directly related to achieving positive outcomes across…
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Thinktank Evolved
A prior post outlined a structure, formally called SCRUM, which helps organizations achieve the best results. The process is completely dependent on how teams are formed within the project. The mix of individuals ultimately determines success or failure. People run companies. No matter how dynamic your development process is, without the right people, the company…
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Thinktank Methodology: Millenials, Boomers, and VC’s
I’ve been thinking a lot about the recent changes in our culture. There’s a big divide between the young and the old and how we interact with each other. I would like to sit down and source knowledge from people older than me; those went through the same situations as I am experiencing now. I…
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Choices We Make
“Accidents” allowed life to be possible on Earth. For example, the leading theory is that the moon formed when an object smashed into early Earth. It knocked earth on a tilt so we have seasons. World destroying meteors would have hit the Earth if Jupiter’s gravity hadn’t been our protector. If this hadn’t happened, the…
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Jingle Bells, Batman Smells: YTD Reflection & 2019 Positioning
Christmas season is upon us and geez has the year flown by. Below is a reflection on the year’s returns and what to expect/how to position going forward. Returns year to date have been tepid in the US and abysmal in Europe and Asia. The question is, what should investors expect moving into 2019? Growth…
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The Climate Change Conspiracy and How to Position Your Investment Account in 2019
President Trump tweeted the following on Nov 6, 2012: US manufacturing is not competitive even without regard to climate change! It’s common economic sense. Chinese production costs are lower than the United States. Chinese manufacturing yearly wages amounted to $9,207 in 2017. The Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis Economic Research division estimates the average hourly…
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Patterns in the Numbers
Ray Dalio emphasizes credit cycles as integral to his firm’s investment strategy. Watch this video on how the economy functions: While we can be sure the pattern will repeat itself in some form or another, we can only be sure how the pattern played out in the past and play the game of averages. With…
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Friday Thoughts: Motivation
Find a scalable profession. While re-reading the The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb I came across the idea of scalable professions. These are professions where you can add zeros on your productivity and income without adding zeros onto your hours worked. By adopting a profession of this sort, you decouple your hours worked and income. Deploying…
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Get Paid to Take Risk
Is the risk-reward trade-off broken? Historically smaller companies have higher stock price returns, but this relationship has faded since 2008. What happened and why aren’t investors being compensated for taking more risk? Table 1.1 shows how small-cap stocks have performed relative to large-cap stocks since the Great Financial Crisis in 2007-08. There is more volatility…
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