M6 - Man, Mind, Money, Markets, Method & Madness

DSM

Well-Known Member

Catch22

Well-Known Member
The Bitcoin bungler - a salutary tale…

Source --http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-25120902

Here's a cautionary tale for anyone thinking of climbing aboard the Bitcoin bandwagon. You could lose your entire investment in a moment of carelessness. Then again, you would have to be as daft and forgetful as me.

Here's how it happened. Back in the spring I acquired some Bitcoins - well about half a Bitcoin - to carry out an experiment on behalf of Radio 4's PM programme. I wanted to see how easy it was to use the virtual currency to buy something real - in this case a pizza.

My mission succeeded, although I found it quite a tricky and cumbersome process. I first needed to set up a Bitcoin wallet on a mobile phone, then acquire some currency, paying for it on an exchange using a mobile money app. But having succeeded in getting my lunch delivered, I decided to top up my Bitcoin balance again, so that I still had 0.5 Btc in my mobile wallet.

A few months later I went to a conference about the currency, where I tried out the world's first Bitcoin ATM, putting in £10 and topping up my account to 0.7Btc. So now I had about £43 at that day's exchange rate. At the conference I winced sympathetically when an early adopter explained how he'd lost 7,000 Bitcoins (then $200,000)

because he hadn't backed up his private key to his computer.

For months, I thought little about the small investment sitting in an app on my phone. Then I looked at the Bitcoin exchange rate - now pushing towards $900 in the latest extraordinary bubble - and realised it had turned into a rather big investment.

But then I remembered what I'd done with the phone containing the currency. Wanting to make sure it was somewhere I could get easier access, I'd transferred almost my entire Bitcoin holding to a new wallet on another phone that I was testing back in the summer.

Then, a few weeks ago, I offered this phone - supplied by the manufacturer - as a prize in a charity fundraising effort. And before handing it over to the winner I had of course restored it to factory settings, wiping all of my personal data and apps, including my Bitcoin Wallet.

So my Bitcoin holding - now worth upwards of £400 - had vanished into thin air. The record of the transaction sending 0.7 Btc to the wiped phone was still on the original handset, and when I tapped on the app up came a message: "If you lose your device you lose your Bitcoins. This means you need to back up your private keys!"

Of course, I had not done that. so my money had disappeared into the void - and as Bitcoin is by its nature an unregulated currency with no central bank or ombudsmen, there was nobody to whom I could appeal for advice or recompense.

A salutary tale then - but for me a worthwhile lesson in understanding the mechanics of a virtual currency. And I've two sources of comfort - first of all, the man at that conference who lost 7,000 Bitcoins is now down about $6m (£3.7m) by today's exchange rate. And secondly, there is every possibility that we will see that exchange rate plunge again in the coming weeks - so our respective Bitcoin bungles may not matter so much in the long run." -Rory Cellan-Jones
 

Catch22

Well-Known Member
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gregsat...eting-combines-big-data-with-human-intuition/

The Future Of Marketing Combines Big Data With Human Intuition

Great marketers have great guts. Leo Burnett didn’t need a legion of focus groups to come up with the Marlboro Man. Steve Jobs, arguably the greatest marketing mind ever, famously eschewed market research because he didn’t think customers knew what they wanted until he showed it to them.

Yet big data and technology are clearly revolutionizing marketing. Gartner predicts that CMO’s will soon be spending more on IT than CIO’s. VentureBeat recently reported that marketing technology companies have attracted a hefty $50 billion in investment.

Still, most marketers would prefer to be like Leo Burnett and Steve Jobs. They take pride in their “marketing guts” and want to follow their instincts, which makes it hard for them to succeed in the era of big data. Yet too often this is presented as a false choice. The future of marketing is not technology or intuition, but successfully integrating both.

The Problem With Guts

In Blink, author Malcolm Gladwell argued that snap judgments are often superior to studied, rational responses and there is a wealth of serious research that supports that view. Antonio Damasio, a prominent neuroscientist, has shown that our biological response to information can often outpace our neurological recognition. In other words, gut feelings are very real.
However, there is also evidence that shows that intuition can lead us astray. Philip Tetlock, who conducted a 20 year study of political pundits, found that their judgments were no more accurate than flipping a coin. To see why that happens, take a look at what longtime observer Peggy Noonan had to say the day before the 2012 Presidential election.

All the vibrations are right. A person who is helping him who is not a longtime Romneyite told me, yesterday: “I joined because I was anti Obama—I’m a patriot, I’ll join up. But now I am pro-Romney.” Why? “I’ve spent time with him and I care about him and admire him. He’s a genuinely good man.” Looking at the crowds on TV, hearing them chant “Three more days” and “Two more days”—it feels like a lot of Republicans have gone from anti-Obama to pro-Romney…

…Is it possible this whole thing is playing out before our eyes and we’re not really noticing because we’re too busy looking at data on paper instead of what’s in front of us? Maybe that’s the real distortion of the polls this year: They left us discounting the world around us.

Clearly, the “vibrations” that Noonan experienced had negligible predictive power, yet she felt them strongly nonetheless and, because she felt them, she had confidence in her judgment. They seemed right, so she acted on them and ended up looking like a fool.

That’s the problem with gut feelings. They are not only often wrong, but we also tend to have more confidence in them than we should. They feel much more real than data and algorithms, so we are more comfortable acting on them. When we go with our gut, we are putting our faith in the power of our own personal experiences and that feels good.

So we should not only distrust gut feelings, but also be skeptical of the confidence and passion they produce. Intuition can be valuable when we experience events directly and have the opportunity to receive immediate and continuous feedback, but is fairly useless when our experience is indirect or infrequent. That’s when data is not only useful, but crucial.

The Rise Of The Robots

Everybody in business today is struggling with data, but the challenges for marketers are especially daunting because there has been such an enormous shift in the amount and quality of data we work with. Historically, we only had backward looking surveys to guide us, but now we collect data in real time and can process it with amazing efficiency and precision.

Perhaps even more importantly, the technology we have now is not only super fast, but super smart. Computers today are not merely big calculators, but can recognize and learn patterns. Often, they outperform humans in things like legal discovery, making medical diagnoses and even evaluating creative work such as music and screenplays.

Yet as powerful as they have become, computers are not all powerful, they perform much better when guided by humans. For example, in a freestyle chess tournament combining both humans and machines, the winner was not a chess master or a supercomputer, but two amateurs running three simple programs in parallel.

And that’s gives us a clue to where marketing is going.

Racing With The Machines

As Brynjolfsson and McAfee put it in their book, The Second Machine Age, we need to stop trying to race against the machines and start racing with them. Yes, today’s computers are highly intelligent, able to analyze and learn from mountains of data in the blink of an eye, but they still need humans to design the curriculum that educates them.

BloomReach is a company that is at the forefront of the revolution in machine learning. Its algorithms power some of the world’s most popular retailers, such as Neiman Marcus, Staples and Williams Sonoma, allowing them to create personalized customer experiences through the power of big data.

Recently, it announced the launch of BloomReach Compass a new application that puts humans at the center, instead of just letting algorithms run in the background. As Ashutosh Garg, the company’s Co-founder and CTO told me, “it’s designed for marketers rather than big data experts or a dedicated business intelligence team.”

The idea is to allow marketers to do what they do best—imagine new possibilities. “Compass encourages professionals to follow their intuition and test unconventional ideas. A crazy idea isn’t so crazy when you can calculate its effect without risking failure in the market,” says Joelle Kaufman, who heads up marketing for the company.

The Future Of Marketing is All Too Human

Leo Burnett was a magician. The Marlboro Man, The Pillsbury Dough Boy and the Keebler Elves—all characters he created—revolutionized his clients’ brands. Steve Jobs conjured up devices in his head that changed the world. Neither of them needed machines to tell them what to do.

Yet both of them had their failures as well. Many of Burnett’s campaigns bombed, just as many of Jobs’s products flopped. Clearly, they would have been far better off if they could have used massive amounts of real time data to test their ideas before they went to market.

That’s what’s so exciting about the coming era of data driven marketing. When done right, it puts humans at the center. As Scott Brinker, CTO of Ion Interactive puts it, “big data makes it cheaper and easier to test concepts, but marketing is still about coming up with the big idea. Algorithms are great at optimization, but terrible at imagination.”


And I think that gets to the heart of it. Marketing technology does not mitigate the need for marketing guts, but it can help us tell the difference between an inspired idea and a bad lunch."
 
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Catch22

Well-Known Member
How to succeed as a successful human .[Will be useful for a trader as well] ]--- source- internet http://www.lifehack.org/

At first glance, highly successful people may seem like they only succeeded in life because of their talent, their great connections or their family. However, that’s not the case at all! They manage to excel in their industry and make millions of dollars because of their amazing beliefs--
What are some of them? Here they are:
They have weird routines
Some of us may have read about the weird sleep and work routines of highly successful people.
While some successful people develop innovative ideas when asleep, some derive ideas by refusing to sleep!
Very few of us might know that Thomas Edison slept for hardly three hours per day!
Did you know that Beethoven developed ideas in his bathroom.
Some people prefer being completely solitary during work time.
Forget fate! Focus on doing what you love.
If you want to be highly successful, don’t just rely on the concept of “destiny”. Don’t even think about fooling yourself by thinking that “fate” will let whatever’s meant to be to happen.
When Steve Jobs was fired from his own company, he could have just stopped. He could have just told other people that “it wasn’t meant to me.” But what did he do next? Because he was too focused in developing technology to help change the world, he launched NeXT, a new computer company, and he also launched Pixar Animation Studios.
“Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love.” – Steve Jobs
Being a genius doesn’t automatically translate to being successful.
“I failed some subjects in exam but my friend passed it all. Now he is an engineer in Microsoft, and I am the owner in Microsoft.” – Bill Gates
You don’t need to ace all your exams. You don’t need to top every class. And you don’t need to be a know-it-all just to be able to succeed in life. Talent and persistence can always trump intelligence any time.
If you really want it, you’ll find a way to get it.
Walt Disney asked the banks and other lending institutions to lend him money so that he could get started on his amusement theme park. Since he had no credit history and collateral, naturally, they all refused him. He didn’t stop there. He took a loan from his own life insurance policy and made history.
Take calculated risks.
“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
Chess wonder kid Magnus Carlesen decided to be a professional chess player when he realized that he was “quite good.” He didn’t make the decision out of a whim – he initially assessed his abilities and decided based on that fact.
Know what you’re getting into.
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” – Albert Einstein
Self-made millionaire and highly successful person Warren Buffett always believes that you should never invest in a business that you don’t understand. Simply put, if you don’t know how something operates, how can you figure out how you can make money off of it?
Choose to continue, even if nothing seems to be working out.
“It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” – J. K Rowling
J.K. Rowling was working on her first ever Harry Potter novel when she was a single mother who was just living off welfare. Even so, she didn’t let this stop her. She finished the book and asked publishers all over the town. As she wasn’t well-known yet, publishing houses rejected her and even gave her harsh criticisms. Nothing seemed to be working out for her — but she still chose to continue and push through!
J.K. Rowling became the first-ever billionaire author in 2014
Don’t wait. Create.
“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs…. One step at a time.” – Joe Girard
KFC Founder Colonel Sanders drove all over America and offered his fried chicken recipe for a certain percentage of the sales. He knocked on their doors, slept on his car and wore his white suit even though he already got 1,009 refusals. On the 1,010th time, he finally got a “yes”.
Engrave these beliefs into your heart and don’t stop at anything to reach your goals.
Fail just means First Attempt In Learning.
Think of every highly successful person you know. Do you know any one of them who got lucky by being successful at the first try?
Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first television job as an anchor.
Walt Disney was fired by a newspaper editor as he “had no good ideas.”
Vincent Van Gogh only sold one painting in his life. (The sale was even months before his death!)
So the next time you fail, keep going on. Highly successful people didn’t stop — and neither should you.
After all that money you made -- Think of charity .
They are humble and philanthropic
Being humble and down-to-earth is by far a very peculiar sign of highly successful people.
They never boast about their achievements and continue life in the routine way.
Also, successful people are engaged in philanthropic activities, to improve lives of several needy people.
They believe they have gained a lot from the society.
On achieving success, they feel good sharing it back with the society.
Bill Gates announced Sunday 11/03/2014 @ 2:22PM - his foundation will give away $500 million this year to combat diseases like malaria on top of the $50 million it already committed to fighting Ebola.
Being selfish and being stingy can help make you money at first but it’s not really a good plan for the long-term.
Focus on serving other people, on helping them and even on giving them some of your resources. You may not believe in good karma, but believe in this list of highly successful people who give back and continue to succeed:
Mark Zuckerberg gave nearly $500 million gift to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
- Billionaire Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife Penelope pledged $125 million to Oregon Health & Science University
 

DSM

Well-Known Member
Six Rules of Michael Steinhardt by Barry Ritholtz

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2010/09/six-rules-of-michael-steinhardt/

Michael Steinhardt was one of the most successful hedge fund managers of all time. A dollar invested with Steinhardt Partners LP in 1967 was worth $481 when Steinhardt retired in 1995. The following six rules were pulled out from a speech he gave:

1. Make all your mistakes early in life: The more tough lessons you learn early on, the fewer (bigger) errors you make later. A common mistake of all young investors is to be too trusting with brokers, analysts, and newsletters who are trying to sell you something.

2. Always make your living doing something you enjoy: Devote your full intensity for success over the long-term.

3. Be intellectually competitive: Do constant research on subjects that make you money. Plow through the data so as to be able to sense a major change coming in the macro situation.

4. Make good decisions even with incomplete information: Investors never have all the data they need before they put their money at risk. Investing is all about decision-making with imperfect information. You will never have all the info you need. What matters is what you do with the information you have. Do your homework and focus on the facts that matter most in any investing situation.

5. Always trust your intuition: Intuition is more than just a hunch — it resembles a hidden supercomputer in the mind that you’re not even aware is there. It can help you do the right thing at the right time if you give it a chance. Over time, your own trading experience will help develop your intuition so that major pitfalls can be avoided.

6. Don’t make small investments: You only have so much time and energy so when you put your money in play. So, if you’re going to put money at risk, make sure the reward is high enough to justify it.
 

DSM

Well-Known Member
Understanding Economics

Source : Mail fw.

One day a tourist comes to the only hotel in a debt ridden town. He speaks to the manager, lays a 100 dollar note on the table and goes to inspect the rooms. The Hotel owner takes the note & rushes to pay his debt to the Butcher. The Butcher runs to pay the Chicken farmer, who in turn runs to pay the Feed Supplier. The Feed supplier runs to pay the Hooker who he owed money, who in turn runs to pay off her debt to the Hotel owner for the rooms she rented for her clients.

The tourist comes down, and demands his money back as he did not like the rooms. The Hotel owner gives the 100 dollar note he received the from the Hooker. In the end, nobody earned anything. But the town is now without debt & looks to the future with a lot of optimism.

And that is exactly what pushing extra money in the system is doing today!!