Predicting weather patterns using models is still far from trustworthy. Here is the prediction for March 2013 versus reality. The prediction was made only a few weeks beforehand.
Friday, April 19, 2013
Misled by models
A lot of the recent economic problems were due to believing models. In his "Black Swan" book, Nassim Taleb notes that investors are misled by models of risk.
Predicting weather patterns using models is still far from trustworthy. Here is the prediction for March 2013 versus reality. The prediction was made only a few weeks beforehand.
Predicting weather patterns using models is still far from trustworthy. Here is the prediction for March 2013 versus reality. The prediction was made only a few weeks beforehand.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Cupcakes crumble
It's the end of the cupcake bubble! Oh nooos!!
A few years ago, cupcake shops were hot. They rode on the wave of rapid growth. From a few cupcake bakeries in New York City, the trend spread to other cities and even had a show or two on cooking television channels.
In 2011, Crumbs stock started trading on NYSE. Its market cap exceeded $65 million when the stock traded over $13/share.
Now in 2013, the stock has dropped 90%.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=CRMB+Basic+Tech.+Analysis&t=2y
Wall Street Journal has an article on the cupcake crumble:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324345804578425291917117814.html
A few years ago, cupcake shops were hot. They rode on the wave of rapid growth. From a few cupcake bakeries in New York City, the trend spread to other cities and even had a show or two on cooking television channels.
In 2011, Crumbs stock started trading on NYSE. Its market cap exceeded $65 million when the stock traded over $13/share.
Now in 2013, the stock has dropped 90%.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=CRMB+Basic+Tech.+Analysis&t=2y
Wall Street Journal has an article on the cupcake crumble:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324345804578425291917117814.html
Saturday, April 13, 2013
What's next for Bitcoins?
Their price zoomed up from about $15 at the start of 2013 to over $250 in April.
I think that in a year, Bitcoins will be viewed as an innovation on the path to a digital payment system. However, other systems will surpass it.
Like Napster was an early way to get digital music but it was quickly exceeded by competing services, Bitcoin showed the possibility of digital payments that didn't require interchange costs.
Early digital currencies have tried out various exchanges or small economies. Outside of tightly controlled virtual economies like those used in games or limited to single websites like Facebook, digital currencies have failed.
Even earlier were social currencies based on tightly linked money changers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala)
Bitcoins are the first decentralized electronic currency that achieved popularity. Bitcoin used cryptology techniques to expand its money base but not for secrecy of users or transactions. Basically Bitcoin is a distributed accounting system that supports signed transactions. Payment networks are an old idea but Bitcoins used the idea of peer-to-peer networks. Its "block chain" (http://blockchain.info/) data is exchanged so that servers see the transactions.
A next-gen digital currency system to watch is Ripple.
Their price zoomed up from about $15 at the start of 2013 to over $250 in April.
I think that in a year, Bitcoins will be viewed as an innovation on the path to a digital payment system. However, other systems will surpass it.
Like Napster was an early way to get digital music but it was quickly exceeded by competing services, Bitcoin showed the possibility of digital payments that didn't require interchange costs.
Early digital currencies have tried out various exchanges or small economies. Outside of tightly controlled virtual economies like those used in games or limited to single websites like Facebook, digital currencies have failed.
Even earlier were social currencies based on tightly linked money changers.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawala)
Bitcoins are the first decentralized electronic currency that achieved popularity. Bitcoin used cryptology techniques to expand its money base but not for secrecy of users or transactions. Basically Bitcoin is a distributed accounting system that supports signed transactions. Payment networks are an old idea but Bitcoins used the idea of peer-to-peer networks. Its "block chain" (http://blockchain.info/) data is exchanged so that servers see the transactions.
A next-gen digital currency system to watch is Ripple.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Here's a history puzzle -- why did economies
starting growing at compounding rates?
So 2 millenia of flat economes.
Compounded growth at even 1% will result in
huge gains after a century or two.
- energy from coal mines?
- all of the above?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)