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Reading across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week.
I especially try to not post Corona related articles as that is all one gets to read in all traditional media.
If you like the collection this consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate.
The innings that changed Indian cricket forever
One of the greatest innings of modern times began 18 minutes past 11 o’clock with no television camera to record its brilliance. A bareheaded Kapil Dev, in a full-sleeve sweater and droopy moustache, “squinted up at the sun”, wrote R Mohan in Sportstar, as he walked in to bat.
In his hands a Slazenger V12. On his mind thoughts of survival. A few minutes on, Yashpal Sharma’s dismissal left India at 17 for 5.
Walking in at No.7, Roger Binny remembers Kapil saying: “We’ve got 53 overs to go.”
https://wisdenblog.wordpress.com/2019/07/04/kapils-crazy-day-out-in-kent/
A sneak peak at the developments of manufacturing artificial organs, at scale
Betting on success for growing organs, Kamen compares scaling their manufacturing to the way Silicon Valley turned an understanding of semiconductors into creating transistors so small and cheap that the tech industry now churns out phones by billions. “So I thought, why don’t we do the same thing for living tissues,” he says. “There ought to be a way to make a high quantity of them, a high quality of them, and at a realistic cost for the American public that’s in desperate need when they have an organ failure.”
The phenomenon called Robinhood
Robinhood took the trend to its logical conclusion — trades that cost $0 — and converted it into an opportunity to connect around money with members of a 90-million-strong generation. It was shrewd: Not only is it easier to reel in newcomers than to peel users away from other services, there’s an opportunity to make them lifetime customers, gradually adding new (fee-based) services. That’s why lots of businesses, including brokerage and financial firms, are interested in young HENRY — “high earners, not rich yet” — clients.
The Big Cycles - Ray Dalio's mega serial soap opera continues
I am not a fan of Ray Dalio. I think he tends to oversimplify complex situations and overcomplicates simple ones!!! Nevertheless, this storytelling on the long cycles is good learning. Also, would urge everyone to read Niall Fergusson's The Ascent of Money or watch the documentary on youtube (link: https://youtu.be/fsrtB5lp60s). The documentary does have some stunning visuals and shooting locations. Worth the 4-odd hours.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/big-cycles-over-last-500-years-ray-dalio/
Cyber-mercenaries on the rise
Israel is a world leader in private cybertechnology, with at least 300 firms covering everything from banking security to critical infrastructure defense. But while most of these firms aim to protect companies from cyberattacks, a few of them have taken advantage of the thin line between defensive and offensive cybercapabilities to provide clients with more sinister services.
The privatization of this offensive capability is still in its infancy. But it raises broad concerns about the proliferation of some very powerful tools and the way governments are losing the monopoly over their use. When state actors employ cyberweapons, there is at least the prospect of regulation and accountability. But when private companies are involved, things get more complicated.
“If you want to take down a plane, if you want to ground air power, you don’t go through the front door, the cockpit,” said Ben Efraim, a former fighter pilot. “You go after the airport. … You go after the logistics systems. You go after the iPads the pilots take home.” There are no “stand-alone entities anymore—everything is part of a network,” Ben Efraim added.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/31/the-rise-of-the-cyber-mercenaries-israel-nso/
Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. The blog posts should not be construed as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.
If you like the collection this consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate.
Stop using old models to understand a new world
There is a parallel between today’s stock market and Fischer random chess. The last time we faced a global pandemic was in 1918, and this might as well have been in the BC era. Few of us were alive then, but even the history books are not that useful, as the structure of the US and global economy, the central bank system, the diversity and dynamism of society, and the state of technological progress are nothing like the world knew then. Most of the mental models we as investors rely on are based on an environment that no longer exists. The only common denominator between now and then is that humans have not really changed that much – it takes a few millennia to rewire our DNA and thus our fundamental behaviour.
We need to confront this environment on its own unique terms: we have never been here before. We have to incredibly careful not to fall back on using old mental models. With every move we make, we have to reexamine our assumptions.
https://contrarianedge.com/the-fischer-random-chess-stock-market/
Rise of Livestream Shopping
Livestream shopping is a natural confluence of several current tech trends—streaming, influencers, social, commerce—and offers companies a new path to consumers' hearts and wallets.
In April, Huang Wei—known professionally as Viya—sold a rocket launch for around 40 million yuan ($5.6 million). The live, online shopping extravaganza the 34-year-old hosts most nights for her fans across China is part variety show, part infomercial, part group chat. Last month, she hit a record-high audience of more than 37 million—more than the “Game of Thrones” finale, the Oscars or “Sunday Night Football.”
Each night, Viya’s audience places orders worth millions of dollars—typically for cosmetics, appliances, prepared foods or clothing, but she’s also moved houses and cars. On Singles Day, China’s biggest shopping event of the year, she did more than 3 billion yuan in sales. The spread of coronavirus, which put most Chinese people under stay-at-home orders, doubled her viewership.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2020-viya-china-livestream-shopping/
Robinhood investing is here
Professional investors have largely abandoned the stock market amid the coronavirus pandemic, but sports bettors and bored millennials have jumped into the retail stock trading market with both feet.
They may be a driving force pushing U.S. stocks to their recent highs — and potentially driving them further.
43% of North American men aged 25-34 who watch sports also bet on sports at least once per week, and that's the same group that has flocked to Robinhood.
https://www.axios.com/sports-betting-stock-market-surge-0e945773-d676-4f0a-a6a0-a0f92611b10b.html
John Bogle did not invent the index fund - A lesson in history of the index fund
In the January 1960 issue of the Financial Analysts Journal, Edward Renshaw and Paul Feldstein published an article entitled, “The Case for an Unmanaged Investment Company.”
The fundamental problem facing individual investors in 1960 was that there were too many mutual-fund companies: over 250 of them. “Given so much choice,” the authors wrote, “it does not seem likely that the inexperienced investor or the person who lacks time and information to supervise his own portfolio will be any better able to choose a better than average portfolio of investment company stocks.”
The solution suggested in this paper was an “unmanaged investment company”, one that didn't try to beat the market but only tried to match it. “While investing in the Dow Jones Industrial average, for instance, would mean foregoing the possibility of doing better than average,” the authors wrote, “it would also mean that the investor would be assured of never doing significantly worse.”
https://www.getrichslowly.org/history-of-index-funds/
Newton's Law of Productivity
In many ways, procrastination is a fundamental law of the universe. It's Newton's first law applied to productivity. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. It works the other way too. Objects in motion tend to stay in motion. When it comes to being productive, this means one thing: the most important thing is to find a way to get started. Once you get started, it is much easier to stay in motion.
https://jamesclear.com/physics-productivity
Disclaimer: Abhishek Basumallick
is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure
quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. T
My article in Economic Times today:
The full text below:
Abhishek Basumallick
is the Head of the equity advisory www.intelsense.in for long term wealth creation and a pure
quant focused newsletter at www.quantamental.in. Nothing in the article should be construed
as investment advice. Please do your own due diligence before investing.
Reading across disciplines is one of the best ways to improve our investment acumen. Here is a summary of some of the best articles I read this week.
I especially try to not post Corona related articles as that is all one gets to read in all traditional media.
If you like the collection this consider forwarding it to someone who you think will appreciate.
This is a double error. First, disciplines do not constitute different parts of reality; they are different aspects of reality, different points of view. Any part of reality can be viewed from any of these aspects. The whole can be understood only by viewing it from all the perspectives simultaneously.
Second, the separation of our different points of view encourages looking for solutions to problems with the same point of view from which the problem was formulated.
https://thesystemsthinker.com/a-lifetime-of-systems-thinking/
100,000 year old extinct bird come back
The Aldabra white-throated rail bird was declared extinct, a victim of rising sea levels almost 100,000 years ago.
However, the flightless brown bird has recently been spotted – leaving scientists scratching their heads as to how – and why – the species has come back to life.
According to research in the Zoological Journal of Linnean Society, the re-incarnated Aldabra bird is a product of ‘iterative evolution’. That’s when old genes thought to have died out re-emerge at a different point in time.
While iterative evolution has previously occurred in species such as turtles, it has never been seen in the realm of birds.
“We know of no other example in the rails, or of birds in general, that demonstrates this phenomenon so evidently,” said paleobiologist David Martill, in a statement.
“Only on the Aldabra, which has the oldest palaentological record of any oceanic island within the Indian Ocean region, is fossil evidence available that demonstrates the effects of changing sea levels on extinction and recolonization events.”
https://www.esquireme.com/content/46133-an-extinct-bird-just-evolved-itself-back-into-existence
The rise and rise of TikTok
TikTok has become the best way to create and consume short videos on mobile. It rode the wave of AirPods and audio memes to over 1 billion DAU’s (Daily Active Users), and is likely worth ~$200 billion. This would make it not only the world’s most valuable "startup” but one of the world’s most valuable companies, period.
https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-understanding
Journey to take back control of your info on the internet
Deciding to delete your information online is the easy part. The hard part is figuring out where to start.
For many, the obvious answer would be focusing on consumer-facing services such as Facebook and Google, where we willingly -- if not always consciously -- hand over data about ourselves on a daily basis.
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/21/tech/deleting-personal-data-online/index.html
Take a few deep breaths
He started small by taking three deep breaths each time he sat down at his desk. He found it helped him relax. After three breaths became a habit, he expanded to a few minutes a day. He found he was more patient, calmer, more in the moment. Now he does 30 minutes a day. It restores his perspective while enabling him to take a fresh look at a question or problem and come up with new solutions. Deep breathing exercises have been part of yoga practices for thousands of years, but recent research done at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital document the positive impact deep breathing has on your body’s ability to deal with stress.
https://hbr.org/2013/11/reduce-your-stress-in-two-minutes-a-day
