Sunny value destroyers

A recent article in the Review of Accounting Studies, that apparently demonstrates CEOs with “sunny dispositions,” –  have a positive impact on stock price, is symptomatic of the time and money wasted by accounting and those who research it. Accounting, the bane of corporate America, deploys so many people – in Wall Street and inside companies, measuring, monitoring and reporting numbers - that have little impact on shareholder value. Part of the blame has to go to business schools, still steeped in tradition, graduating people with irrelevant skills for the modern world.

Shareholder value is seldom created by accounting or “sunny dispositions” of the CEO or the CFO, as claimed by the article. Apparently, the authors mistake bumps in stock price as shareholder value – it is not so. However, “sunny,” the reporter is, those who invest in the stock of the company, do care about the real assets of the firm and how they are growing. They do not really care how “gold plated,” the investment banker is and how McSleasy the consulting firm is. And BS, has an expiry date.

The idea that dressing up numbers and reporting them with a sunny disposition enhances the value of the firm has no empirical validation. 

Economic value of segregation

Humans, still fundamentally driven by visible features, created by less than 1% of their DNA, could be ahead of themselves as they struggle to create better societies and structures. Their recent arrival on a planet, substantially more sophisticated than themselves, signaled a regime change – preferential to tactics than strategy. For 100 thousand years, a mere glimpse of space time, they have been struggling to sustain a clan structure – first created by proximity, then by the shape of the skull and distance between the eyes and in the modern world, apparently by the color of the skin, the least compelling of the segregation schemes they have been able to devise.

If humans are unwilling and unable to rise over their mental constraints – one has to sympathize with them as they had very little experience with it. It appears that societal utility could be enhanced by segregation in transition, something that may extend over a century. A recent study shows that humans tend to segregate when the space occupied – say in a city – hits a threshold level. This indicates that a hard wired need to segregate exists in every one of the currently existing 7.2 billion specimens. Countries provide an efficient segregation scheme and for half the word’s population, the problem reduces to regional schemes – language, imperceptible shades of skin color, height and food. In any case, the need to segregate is as fundamental as the human itself.

Although it may be alarming for some to consider, it is possible that segregation is utility maximizing in transition to a higher level society. The planet, a sitting duck in the midst of space debris, may need to consider local and temporal maximization of utility – and segregation could be a dominant policy choice to maximize societal value.

Ubiquitous Quantum

Recent observations from Princeton (1),  published in the Journal of Nature Chemistry advances the productive frontier of the intersection of Physics and Chemistry to influence biological systems. Scientists steeped in their chosen disciplines, chasing dead ends, have substantially reduced innovation potential and societal utility in the last few decades. The use of quantum mechanical modeling to expand our understanding of chemical properties and their interactions with biological systems is in the right direction. However, traditional life sciences companies do not have the skills or expertise to take advantage of this expanding knowledge.

Physics, the foundation of everything, is not understood well by scientists engaged in the use of chemical actions to impact even less understood biological systems. Chemistry, an inelegant and incomplete bridge, has effected a deadlock on innovation by encouraging incremental benefits. Better understanding of the nature and intent of electrons and the ability to predict their dancing clusters, may allow better design of interventions of biological systems by chemical means. More importantly, this may also open up possible magnetic and electric intervention pathways, something the status-quo appears to have little interest in.

Innovation is about the application of new ideas – it is not about incrementally improving what is existing.

(1) http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/11/20/quantum.mechanical.calculations.reveal.hidden.states.enzyme.active.sites

Stochastically Jumping without a clue

Recent research from NYU (1) that apparently demonstrates that the modeling techniques used to forecast stock market fluctuations could be used to predict animal behavior – in this case, movements of zebrafish – ignores many fundamental aspects of modeling. First, unknown to most people in the financial industry, stock market fluctuations cannot be predicted.In spite of the proclamations of a recent Nobel laureate, who claims he could smell a bubble anytime anywhere, he is still to demonstrate a usable prediction ex.ante. And, high flying hedge fund managers, without insider knowledge, could never create alpha – risk adjusted excess returns, systematically. And, second, equating animal behavior modeling to stock market predictions shows a level of incomprehension in both areas.

Stochastic jumps do occur – the problem with such things is that they are not predictable. Perhaps what the NYU team is missing is the right language – the characteristics of the underlying process of the movement of the zebrafish appear to have stochastic jumps in it. But that has nothing to do with stock market modeling – an oxymoron. The reason the zebrafish is jumping stochastically is the same why stock markets do at times – arrival of new information. And, by definition these are not predictable.

As trillion $ slosh around an industry with no value added to society, further research toward predictions of stochastic jumps seems unwarranted.
(1) http://esciencenews.com/articles/2014/11/13/stock.market.models.help.nyu.researchers.predict.animal.behavior

The scope of ignorance

The scope of space and time appears incomprehensibly large – covered by what is visible to us in a narrow slice, covering 15 billion years and speculated to be at least ten times as large, beyond the horizon. This knowledge, albeit imperfect, has not awakened the intellect of the homo sapiens, most still locked in tactical struggle for basic necessities and the rest, perpetuating ignorance in every action and thought.

The scope of human ignorance is at least as fascinating as the artifacts of space and time. Their arrival on a planet that is impossible to detect in space-time – a completely insignificant event – seem to be of great importance to them.The most ignorant of the lot – the religious – seem to engage in such acts that a child would find objectionable. On the other hand, the intelligentsia, claiming superiority, simply make up stuff, as if they are allowed to do so. The most ignorant believe that color of skin and hair and useless religious beliefs are, somehow important. On the other hand, the intellectuals and academics, having figured everything out, wait in amazement why the world has already ended.

Humans, the most comical construct, will continue their journey to the abyss of ignorance.

Policy by convenience

A recent study from Duke (1) showing that politicians believe or disbelieve in scientific theories, primarily based on their policy orientation, should not come as a surprise to anybody who has been watching the campaigns. This is also the reason that half the country has checked out of the process, with no intent of ever returning. This number will continue to increase as more objective millennials take hold of an archaic system ran by octogenarians. The question is how long it will take to clean up the system currently dominated by a few people, with little understanding of science, technology and accelerating knowledge.

Climate change has been an interesting area of contention, as noted by the Duke study. It appears that politicians with free market based policies tend to disbelieve that it is happening. And those, with a passion for severely regulating everything to save the world, believe the world has already ended. This is an unfortunate side effect. Science and analysis should guide policy as forecasts and expectations are not religious. However, forecasts have significant uncertainty and policy alternatives often present flexibility – both in terms of timing as well as choices. Scientists, heady with data and modern tools, have all but sure that the fate of the blue planet is sealed. However, policy is about trade-offs, something academics do not seem to appreciate well. And, any trade-off decision needs to avoid premature exercise of options based on known (but uncertain) data, when waiting is often optimal for policy actions.

It is a conundrum – we have ignorant politicians attempting policy and dogmatic scientists, crying wolf. Neither is likely to get it right.

(1) Denying problems when we don't like the political solutions. Published: Friday, November 7, 2014 - 04:43 in Psychology & Sociology. eScience

Awakening by exercise

Exercise has been in the news – as the only non-medical route to avoid diabetes and cardio-vascular disease. It appears to be a good idea, especially in moderate amounts. But a healthy body without a healthy mind is value destroying for the individual and society. Not to be left behind, video games and other mind-exercising technology sites have been gearing up to awaken the little old grey cells. But they all seem to be missing the bigger picture.

The human brain, an energy hog and complex, does not exercise by playing games or solving puzzles on the computer screen. There is a lot of power behind the veil and most often, the organ simply retires to boredom. By feeding it prescriptive education and jobs that take nothing, society has been playing a losing game. The human brain has, substantially detached from the status-quo, for the problems fed to it seem so trivial and irrelevant.

Content, questions with the scope of the universe strategically and the world, more tactically, could possibly awaken the sleeping organ. More importantly, an advancing society could stitch live brains together to rediscover imagination, a feeling that has been dead for long.

White alpha

A recent study from Michigan State University seems to prove what the Chicago school has been asserting for nearly half a century. Although the study claims to be “first of its kind,” the conclusions have been known to most academics for long. There is no alpha – risk adjusted excess returns – anywhere. And, by implication, a blind man, a high flying hedge fund manager or a super-smart financial advisor has an equal chance of making random alpha in the market.

Mad and fast money experts on financial TV have been perpetuating a farce. The only alpha they make is the money they get paid by the producers of the show. That is indeed, alpha - if they spent that time trading, they would have lost money and alpha, if they knew what that meant. A trillion $ sloshes around the markets – idiots trading back and forth – as if it means something. Then, there are tens of thousand of “financial advisors,” most not qualified to advise anybody and the rest helping to destroy wealth systematically, in fees. The financial services industry destroys wealth to that extent that if the industry is made illegal, the economy will grow by an additional couple of percentage points.

Value is only created by real companies, innovating and creating new products. Those, trying to monetize and trade on them, simply destroys value. And, those who “advises” the common woman on how to invest, destroys more.