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Category: business – Page 243

I love clearing the air with a single dismissive answer to a seemingly complex question. Short, dismissive retorts are definitive, but arrogant. It reminds readers that I am sometimes a smart a*ss.

Is technical analysis a reasoned approach for
investors to predict future value of an asset?

In a word, the answer is “Hell No!”. (Actually, that’s two words. Feel free to drop the adjective). Although many technical analysts earnestly believe their craft, the approach has no value and does not hold up to a fundamental (aka: facts-based) approach.

One word arrogance comes with an obligation to substantiate—and, so, let’s begin with examples of each approach.

Investment advisors often classify their approach to studying an equity, instrument or market as either a fundamental or technical. For example…

  • Fundamental research of a corporate stock entails the analysis of the founders’ backgrounds, competitors, market analysis, regulatory environment, product potential and risks, patents (age and legal challenges), track record, and long term trends affecting supply and demand.A fundamental analysis may study the current share price, but only to ascertain the price-to-earnings ratio compared to long term prospects. That is, has the market bid the stock up to a price that lacks a basis for long term returns?
    .
  • On the other hand, a technical approach tries to divine trends from recent performance—typically charting statistics and pointing to various graph traits such as resistance, double shoulders, and number of reversals. The approach is more concerned with assumptions and expectations of investor behavior—or hypotheses and superstition related to numerology—than it is with customers, products, facts and market demand.

Do you see the difference? Fundamental analysis is rooted in SWOT: Study strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Technical analysis dismisses all of that. If technical jargon and approach sound a bit like a Gypsy fortune teller, that’s because it is exactly that! It is not rooted in revenue and market realities. Even if an analyst or advisor is earnest, the approach is complete hokum.

I have researched, invested, consulted and been an economic columnist for years. I have also made my mark in the blockchain space. But until now, I have hesitated to call out technical charts and advisors for what they are…

Have you noticed that analysts who produce technical charts make their income by working for someone? Why don’t they make a living from their incredible ability to recognize patterns and extrapolate trends? This rhetorical question has a startlingly simple answer: Every random walk appears to have patterns. The wiring of our brain guarantees that anyone can find patterns in historical data. But the constant analysis of patterns by countless investors guarantees that the next pattern will be unrelated to the last ones. That’s why short term movement is called a “random walk”. Behaviorists and neuroscientists recognize that apparent relationships of past trends can only be correlated to future patterns in the context of historical analysis (i.e. after it has occurred).

Decisions based on a technical analysis—instead of solid research into fundamentals—is the sign of an inexperienced or gullible investor. Some advisors who cite technical charts know this. Technicals have no correlation to long term appreciation, asset quality or risks. They only point to short term possibilities.

The problem with focusing on short-term movement is that you will certainly lose to insiders, lightning-fast program traders, built in arbitrage mechanisms and every unexpected good news/bad news bulletin.

If you seek to build a profit in the long run, then do your research up front, enter gradually, and hold for the long term. Of course, you should periodically reevaluate your positions and react to significant news events from trusted sources. But you should not anguish over your portfolio every day or even every month.

  • Know your objectives
  • Set realistic targets
  • Research by reading contrarians and skeptics (They help you to avoid confirmation bias)
  • Study comparables and reason through the likelihood that another technology or instrument poses a threat to the asset that interests you
  • Then, invest only what you can afford to lose and don’t second guess yourself frequently
  • Dollar-cost-average
  • Revaluate semi-annually or when meeting with direct sources of solid, fundamental information

Finally, if someone tries to dazzle you with charts of recent performance and talk of a “resistance level” or support trends, smile and nod in approval—but don’t dare fall for the Ouija board. Send them to me. I will straighten them out.

Who says so? Does the author have credentials?

I originally wrote this article for another publication. Readers challenged my credentials by pointing out that I am not a academic economist, investment broker or financial advisor. That’s true…

I am not an academic economist, but I have certainly been recognized as a practical economist. Beyond investor, and business columnist, I have been keynote speaker at global economic summits. I am on the New Money Systems Board at Lifeboat Foundation, and my career is centered around research and public presentations about money supply, government policy and blockchain based currencies. I have advised members of president Obama’s council of economic advisors and I have recently been named Top Writer in Economics by Quora.

Does all of this qualify me to make dismissive conclusions about technical analysis? That’s up to you! This Lifeboat article is an opinion. My opinion is dressed as authoritative fact, because I have been around this block many times. I know the score.

Related:

Philip Raymond co-chairs CRYPSA, hosts the Bitcoin Event and is keynote speaker at Cryptocurrency Conferences. He sits on the Lifeboat New Money Systems board. Book a presentation or consulting engagement.

A transition is happening in the satellite business. Fast-moving technology and evolving customer demands are driving operators to rethink major investments in new satellites and consider other options such as squeezing a few more years of service out of their current platforms.

Which makes this an opportune moment for the arrival of in-orbit servicing.

Sometime in early 2019, the first commercial servicing spacecraft is scheduled to launch. The Mission Extension Vehicle built by Orbital ATK on behalf of subsidiary SpaceLogistics, will the first of several such robotic craft that are poised to compete for a share of about $3 billion worth of in-orbit services that satellite operators and government agencies are projected to buy over the coming decade.

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For the first time, Volkswagen experts have succeeded in simulating industrially relevant molecules using a quantum computer. This is especially important for the development of high-performance electric vehicle batteries. The experts have successfully simulated molecules such as lithium-hydrogen and carbon chains. Now they are working on more complex chemical compounds. In the long term, they want to simulate the chemical structure of a complete electric vehicle battery on a quantum computer. Their objective is to develop a “tailor-made battery”, a configurable chemical blueprint that is ready for production. Volkswagen is presenting its research work connected with quantum computing at the CEBIT technology show (Hanover, June 12–15).

Martin Hofmann, CIO of the Volkswagen Group, says: “We are focusing on the modernization of IT systems throughout the Group. The objective is to intensify the digitalization of work processes – to make them simpler, more secure and more efficient and to support new business models. This is why we are combining our core task with the introduction of specific key technologies for Volkswagen. These include the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, as well as quantum computing.”

The objective is a “tailor-made battery”, a configurable blueprint Using newly developed algorithms, the Volkswagen experts have laid the foundation for simulating and optimizing the chemical structure of high-performance electric vehicle batteries on a quantum computer. In the long term, such a quantum algorithm could simulate the chemical composition of a battery on the basis of different criteria such as weight reduction, maximum power density or cell assembly and provide a design which could be used directly for production. This would significantly accelerate the battery development process, which has been time-consuming and resource-intensive to date.

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AMD at Computex 2018 unveiled what may turn out to be one of the most exciting GPU designs in town, the world’s first 7nm GPU, which packs as much as 32GB of high-bandwidth memory.

However, that product won’t really be available for purchase anytime soon, unless you’re in the business of developing machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) products.

Don’t Miss : Amazon’s offering a rare discount on the adapter that speeds up your Fire TV Stick or 4K Fire TV.

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OLDSMAR — Cryo-Cell International, the local company that was the first private cord bank to separate and store stem cells, has acquired a public cord blood bank company based in Orlando for $14 million.

Cryo-Cell announced the acquisition of CORD: USE on Monday. The sale propels Cyro-Cell into the public cord blood banking business. Cryo-Cell co-CEO David Portnoy said the purchase will raise revenues by about 20 percent.

Cryo-Cell was founded in 1989 and now holds the stem cells of more than 500,000 families from 87 countries, according to the company. CORD: USE has agreements with hospital across the country to receive donations from mothers of babies’ chord blood while also storing families stem cells.

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Google ends Pentagon contract to develop AI for recognising people in drone videos after 4,000 employees signed an open letter saying that Google’s involvement is against the company’s “moral and ethical responsibility”.

Google will not seek another contract for its controversial work providing artificial intelligence to the U.S. Department of Defense for analyzing drone footage after its current contract expires.

Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene announced the decision at a meeting with employees Friday morning, three sources told Gizmodo. The current contract expires in 2019 and there will not be a follow-up contract, Greene said. The meeting, dubbed Weather Report, is a weekly update on Google Cloud’s business.

Google would not choose to pursue Maven today because the backlash has been terrible for the company, Greene said, adding that the decision was made at a time when Google was more aggressively pursuing military work. The company plans to unveil new ethical principles about its use of AI next week. A Google spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about Greene’s comments.

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I will be 85 somewhere in the mid 2050s. It seems like a mirage, an impossible thing, but the future eventually arrives regardless of whatever you or I might think about it. We all have a vision of what it is to be 85 today, informed by our interactions with elder family members, if nothing else. People at that age are greatly impacted by aging. They falter, their minds are often slowed. They are physically weak, in need of aid. Perhaps that is why we find it hard to put ourselves into that position; it isn’t a pleasant topic to think about. Four decades out into the future may as well be a science fiction novel, a far away land, a tale told to children, for all the influence it has on our present considerations. There is no weight to it.

When I am 85, there will have been next to no senescent cells in my body for going on thirty years. I bear only a small fraction of the inflammatory burden of older people of past generations. I paid for the products of companies descended from Oisin Biotechnologies and Unity Biotechnology, every few years wiping away the accumulation of senescent cells, each new approach more effective than the last. Eventually, I took one of the permanent gene therapy options, made possible by biochemical discrimination between short-term beneficial senescence and long-term harmful senescence, and then there was little need for ongoing treatments. Artificial DNA machinery floats in every cell, a backup for the normal mechanisms of apoptosis, triggered by lingering senescence.

When I am 85, the senolytic DNA machinery will be far from the only addition to my cells. I underwent a half dozen gene therapies over the years. I picked the most useful of the many more that were available, starting once the price fell into the affordable-but-painful range, after the initial frenzy of high-cost treatments subsided into business as usual. My cholesterol transport system is enhanced to attack atherosclerotic lesions, my muscle maintenance and neurogenesis operate at levels far above what was once a normal range for my age, and my mitochondria are both enhanced in operation and well-protected against damage by additional copies of mitochondrial genes backed up elsewhere in the cell. Some of these additions were rendered moot by later advances in medicine, but they get the job done.

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Advances in Deep Neural Networks

The third and the most critical factor in AI research in the advancement in deep learning and artificial neural networks.

Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are replacing traditional Machine Learning models to evolve precise and accurate models. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) brings the power of deep learning to computer vision. Some of the recent advancements in computer vision such as Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD) and Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) are revolutionizing image processing. For example, using some of these techniques, images and videos that are shot in low light and low resolution can be enhanced to HD quality. The ongoing research in computer vision will become the base for image processing in healthcare, defense, transportation and other domains.

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