Skip to main content

Investing by Television


In retirement, I watch a lot of business shows.  Here the news is mostly factual, not given to political rhetoric - thankfully.  Most of the shows’ hosts bring in financial leaders to forecast, to project, to explain investment strategies, and otherwise discuss Wall Street comings and goings.  The comments vary, from bull to bear, and from optimistic to pessimistic, from data to anecdote

Almost without variation most financial strategists follow first order cause-effect policies.  The market does this, we do that.  Seldom do you see a strategist with an overall command of fiscal conditions.  Their methods are simple and ad hoc. Sometimes, it seems like there is a predictions club where all read what the others write.  This could be a CYA symptom, as they have high paying jobs and must at all times justify their salaries are well deserved.   Some filter their comments through their politics, but either way, it’s useless.

From time to time, they offer stock picks.  Listening and acting upon their advice is risky.  For example, Halliburton was recommended.  Sources indicated it to be a “buy.” I bought.  Down it has come.  In another, the stock Rewalk Robotics was recommended.  It was cheap.  I bought.  Down it went, but just lately it went to the sky, making me some money. 

Some know their stuff and just how complicated the investment business is.  You can just tell.  Often, because of this complexity, their remarks are difficult to follow.  Blackstone CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman is typical.  His message is complex and encompassing, but well worth distillation efforts. Fox host Charles Payne is another.  He grasps the difficulty and complexity of analysis. One can learn from these guys,  JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon is another but he tends to speak in unhelpful (for me) generality. 

When you combine the crystal ball with data analysis, with gut feelings, you typify business shows, and you accrue the results you might expect.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Please Comment.

Popular posts from this blog

Human Simulation is Possible - by Humans

  Human Simulation: Agent-Based Modeling and the Computational Case for Our Reality   1.       Introduction In the essay, we introduce the notion that humanity could be a deliberate simulation based on an extremely simple single-celled organism, hardly anything more complex than that. This will allow an (apparently) new interpretation of the notion that humanity is simulated, but that there is no master engineer at a massive number of dials and switches, responsible for every twist and turn of our universe and lives. We begin with the notion that the universe exists and operates under its own laws. So, given the Earth [2] , when and where life first began, it was infused with a living agent, self-actualized, reproductive, and with other basic rules for its operations, interactions, and much of what single-celled organisms do today. The idea from this occurred some years back when writing code in ActionScript (formerly Flash), I was able to create...
2 comments
Read more

The Calculus of Ideas and Patterns

  Introduction. When dealing with ideas, patterns, intuition, and brainstorming, we need operations or rules not unlike those of arithmetic. The goal is not proof, a finished device, or a fait accompli , but rather a foundation for further investigation and study. In some cases, these operations may yield a proposition, that is, something capable of being proved. In this sense, they form a practical logic of intuition. The article concludes with a few select examples from a variety of venues. Setting. We are working with a given idea, problem, or project, or simply just thinking. Our aim is to discover pathways, patterns, or conceptual connections that may be useful. The following operations describe ways in which ideas and patterns can be generated, transformed, or refined. These also work toward understanding the imagination. Yet, this framework is distinguished from formal logic and proof. We are tempted to call them as “soft logic” because while nothing is proved, reasons...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hugging your pet.

  There are two kinds of pet people: Those who love their pet and hug it to show affection, and those who hug themselves with their pet. By the way, in the photo below, you see a baby echidna. They are called puggles.
Post a Comment
Read more