Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed

• Poll: What percentage will Groupon IPO open up tomorrow? http://t.co/33Q1jxYb via @polldaddy #
• Just posted a quick Groupon IPO poll for tomorrow. Not to bias things overly, but I'm on record with 50% float-driven pop possible. #
• How many polls will there be about inane Groupon subjects in next 24 hours? http://t.co/mQGVIWmi #
• What's the difference, if anything, between Jawbone's new Up thingie and a Fitbit? #
• I love how people feel compelled to explain to me how IPOs work. #
• Bloomberg reporting that Greece referendum idea has been scrapped. Apparently they're moving it to PollDaddy. #
• In other news, that woman beside you in bed is Suzanne Pleshette. RT @BloombergTV: Papandreou: Would never put Euro as referendum question #
• McKinsey: Another oil shock ahead – http://t.co/SDuXBBju #
• We should be much more blasé about oil price shocks. Clearly we have insulated our economy from such things. #
• Il Pleut. Greece has poured vinegar on the G20's frites. http://t.co/kBut7kZu #
• Rethinking Revolutionary User Interfaces – http://t.co/w7qWFDzV #
• If the over-airy Google Reader ui is driving you mad, an effective tweak – http://t.co/b92odz2g #
• NYT: The High-Tech Home Office – http://t.co/M67lWqmJ #
• Must be DM fail day today. Seen some doozies. Thanks all for the entertainment. #
• Amusing that some venture firms still discovering that mixed IT/clean tech/bio investing doesn't work. Unrelated: Apples still fall down. #
• Max Hastings' latest, "Inferno", a one-volume WWII history, is a career capstone. Rich, moving & human. http://t.co/9XPVn2dS #
• Apparently some company called "Group-On" is going public tomorrow. Doing a segment on Bloomberg TV at 3pm pst to find out more. #
• Good piece on Bloomberg right now about the auteur theory of venture capital. If I could web link to it, I would. #
• Video: Brazilian police ram moving plane to stop drug smugglers. http://t.co/I7P7gw18 /via @DrVes #
• Today in 1999-ishness: Deepak Chopra Brings Well-Being To Start-Up AHALife – http://t.co/LiqatecM #
• BBC's In Our Time on the origins, science and mythology of the moon. http://t.co/UPv2f2l9 #
• Hugely amusing that people treat IPO pricing as some sort of science. People, it's a marketing exercise. #
• This entire Groupon thingie is a reminder of how absurd the IPO process is. All regulatory & Wall Street theater. #
• Cool fin'l app. RT @slaven: @pkedrosky Just an update, http://t.co/KUmtEWZV launched today, hit #1 in finance on both Canada and US side #
• I'm intro-ing VC legend Don Valentine next week at event in Palm Desert. Honored to do so. #
• Hmm. RT @BloombergNews: 40 Republicans back revenue hike to cut deficit | http://t.co/WuoZDpz0 #
• I see a new ornithological Steadicam ahead – http://t.co/LR0j5H0V #
• On the idiosyncratic causes of suboptimal free throw shooting, or, why physicists can't score – http://t.co/a6Inz4Rv #
• On the idiosyncratic causes of suboptimal free throw shooting, or, why physicists can't score – http://t.co/I2D9aCd2 #
• What was the last tech IPO to (at least) double offering size on eve of offering? Anyone? #
• .@LongShortTrader Sadly, I don't have the answer. Night before doubling. Trying to find out. #
• Here is one. RT @40z: @pkedrosky Looks like Solazyme did it in May, but it was algae #
• I won't link to it, because that would be falling for it, but @hblodget is apparently wangling for a Groupon linkbait award tonight. #
• Ignore my earlier tweet about doubling IPO offering size. Temporarily went mad. #
• Scoring Strategies for the Underdog: A general, quantitative method for determining optimal sports strategies http://t.co/7RZkYj6F #
• Paul Volcker: Financial Reform — Unfinished Business http://t.co/WOHUl1hz #

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Fun new paper on scoring strategies for underdogs in sports:

Scoring Strategies for the Underdog: A general, quantitative method for determining optimal sports strategies

When facing a heavily-favored opponent, an underdog must be willing to assume greater-than-average risk. In statistical language, one would say that an underdog must be willing to adopt a strategy whose outcome has a larger-than-average variance. The difficult question is how much risk a team should be willing to accept. This is equivalent to asking how much the team should be willing to sacrifice from its mean score in order to increase the scores variance. In this paper a general, analytical method is developed for addressing this question quantitatively. Under the assumption that every play in a game is statistically independent, both the mean and the variance of a teams offensive output can be described using the binomial distribution. This description allows for direct calculations of the winning probability when a particular strategy is employed, and therefore allows one to calculate optimal offensive strategies. This paper develops this method for calculating optimal strategies exactly and then presents a simple heuristic for determining whether a given strategy should be adopted. A number of interesting and counterintuitive examples are then explored, including the merits of stalling for time, the run/pass/Hail Mary choice in American football, and the correct use of Hack-a-Shaq.

via [1111.0693] Scoring Strategies for the Underdog: A general, quantitative method for determining optimal sports strategies.

The latest Q3 IDC/Appcelerator survey of developer interest in various mobile operating systems. I used last year’s version of this data a year ago, in part, when I began my RIMM short.

Follow the bouncing devs to know which mobile platforms are likely to do well.

• Am entertained by the debacle at Sony today: halving TV sales estimates, troubles in components, etc. Huge confirmatory bias fodder. #
• Full disclosure: Still cheerfully short Sony, of course. #
• Updata: With me slowly covering RIMM, my two largest tech shorts are now MSFT and SNE. No glory in former — yet. #
• "Everyone has opinions. We have convictions." Ironic magazine ad from newly bust MF Global /via @wsj http://t.co/hloxub4u #
• Speaking of WSJ, I like how it's getting away from whole distraction of running news on front page. http://t.co/aD9Zmgcb #
• Am on a zero travel week. It always feel like being at a resort on holidays. #
• Having been involved with its propagation early on, can I now say I wish people would shut up already about "big data". I am so tired of it. #
• What's the opposite of "big data"? Little anecdote. I'm officially back in favor of that. #
• RT @kathrynschulz Big Data to Little Anecdote = frying pan to fire. How about "modest hypothesis" (or even "small hunch") instead? #
• Celebrity defined down RT @brianstorms: Surprise visit from @pkedrosky at @Nettle's office! Our first celebrity! http://t.co/6kOhFZuw #
• Notice telltale hats, khaki shorts, upturned collars & stroller: Yes, a sighting of homo touristicus, La Jolla variant http://t.co/o9OR0ezp #
• Only time I watch hour of fincl TV is when having my teeth cleaned, which is often on Fed days. Now associate @SullyCNBC with tooth pain. #
• I'm in Portugal week after next. Don't say I didn't warn you. #
• Because It's Steep: Why people run Mt Washington – http://t.co/VwBJgmht /via @kathrynschulz #
• Watching Ben Bernanke press conferences is much better on nitrous oxide. All the beard, none of the content. #
• First bears, and now this: Swimming jellyfish may influence global climate – http://t.co/b22gQier #
• Roy Batty would have loved this: Clearance of p16Ink4a-positive senescent cells delays ageing-associated disorders – http://t.co/O0YPuxYV #
• Energy Economics: What Will Turn Us On in 2030? http://t.co/wqxId1hC #
• Ah, ash falling from the sky and the smell of burning chaparral. It must be Santa Ana season in San Diego. #
• I get the distinct sense that in an alternative dimension I was/am/will be a pyromaniac. I love the smell of wildfires #
• Argued to a friend today that Google today increasingly reminds me of Microsoft circa 1999. Such clumsiness after such a run. #
• New paper: "Price-quakes" in global stock exchanges – http://t.co/z5u340kP #
• Got to play "guess the reporter's real agenda" on a reporter call today. I hate doing that, but refuse to be sandbagged. #
• U.S. is first choice of wealthy Chinese emigrants, but Canada right behind which is huge per capita skew – http://t.co/lS9iRfWD #
• .@AGORACOM Yeah, made that point in a blog post. China funneling is larger yet when you consider immigration is Vancouver/Toronto only. #
• Pew: Graphic of historical long-term US unemployment http://t.co/LScG0jJ6 #
• Only Robert Reich can take data I agree with and an argument I agree with and make me disagree. That's a skill. http://t.co/29uIzBNl #
• Favorite email subject line du jour: "Paul Kedrosky is Half Executed". #

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Authors@Google: Steven Pinker – YouTube.

Groupon poll:

And a meta-poll:

Online Polls at GoPollGo

From a new Pew study, a graph of historical US long-term unemployment.

From the WSJ tonight, an article that (drive-by) makes the case for why wealthy Chinese immigration represents such an important forcing function in Canadian real estate. As the following figure shows, Canada is right behind the U.S. as the most desired location for exiting Chinese with more than $1,6m in assets.

Now, here is the important thing: Canada is only one-tenth the U.S.’s size, so the effect on Canadian real estate is immense, especially when the inbound wealth is funneled largely into two population centers, Vancouver and Toronto. And, within those two cities, most of the Chinese immigrants settle in Vancouver West and Markham/Thornhill, respectively. Incredible point mass of capital.

New PLoS paper echoing some of Didier Sornette’s work on tectoni models of stress relief in financial markets:

Price-quakes in World’s Stock Exchanges

Background

Systemic risk has received much more awareness after the excessive risk taking by major financial instituations pushed the worlds financial system into what many considered a state of near systemic failure in 2008. The IMF for example in its yearly 2009 Global Financial Stability Report acknowledged the lack of proper tools and research on the topic. Understanding how disruptions can propagate across financial markets is therefore of utmost importance.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Here, we use empirical data to show that the worlds markets have a non-linear threshold response to events, consistent with the hypothesis that traders exhibit change blindness. Change blindness is the tendency of humans to ignore small changes and to react disproportionately to large events. As we show, this may be responsible for generating cascading events—pricequakes—in the worlds markets. We propose a network model of the worlds stock exchanges that predicts how an individual stock exchange should be priced in terms of the performance of the global market of exchanges, but with change blindness included in the pricing. The model has a direct correspondence to models of earth tectonic plate movements developed in physics to describe the slip-stick movement of blocks linked via spring forces.

Conclusions/Significance

We have shown how the price dynamics of the worlds stock exchanges follows a dynamics of build-up and release of stress, similar to earthquakes. The nonlinear response allows us to classify price movements of a given stock index as either being generated internally, due to specific economic news for the country in question, or externally, by the ensemble of the worlds stock exchanges reacting together like a complex system. The model may provide new insight into the origins and thereby also prevent systemic risks in the global financial network.

via PLoS ONE: “Price-Quakes” Shaking the Worlds Stock Exchanges.

• Explosive Volatility: A Model of Financial Contagion http://t.co/fECVKSDU #
• What are the current odds we have military government in Greece by end of year? 20% 60%? Higher? #
• Narrative fallacies, convenience sampling, etc. played role in Dutch soc psych fraud, approp enough – http://t.co/57ET3XGv #
• Huge solar power plants are blooming in California's southern deserts – http://t.co/Knw3nldp #
• Greece PM George Papandreu increasingly reminds me of former Newfoundland premier Clyde Wells in the Meech era, but that's just me. #
• What news Americans follow, 1996-2008 http://t.co/naNnNWAA #
• On my Greece military rule question, answers were trimodal: 2% / 50%/ never. Some point out military now less capable of rule than Papandreu #
• RT @seb_shepard: @pkedrosky neatly broken into: gloomy Europeans / cynical N. Americans / Greeks #
• Eurozone crisis: live blog http://t.co/9g0oRRMF #
• Note to self: Don't leave possessions on other continents. Huge pain getting them back. #
• Cognitive dissonance: Fuel economy now in top 10 factors for U.S. sports car buying for 1st time ever – http://t.co/jsM39Lde /via @drgrist #
• The (r)evolution of the marathon: An unprecedented era http://t.co/ZJFgWf61 #
• Good analysis: Greek referendum is coin-flip on euro exit http://t.co/MvnSHrWn #
• Despondent Greeks call referendum plan blackmail – http://t.co/Uhikd7YR #
• Those fall/winter/spring/summer colds are the worst. #
• Recently finished Ian Kershaw's "The End", on the final days of Hitler's Germany. Smart & unrelenting. http://t.co/VWF28LaW #
• Scholarships for snowboarders looking to attend mountain schools? I want to be 18 again. http://t.co/fzIdbe3W #
• Got to respond to a Groupon hypothetical yesterday on @BloombergTV with "If my aunt had wheels she'd be a bicycle". My work here is done. #
• I also argued yesterday on @BloombergTV that we should worry about Groupon "pundit fatigue". What will all these people do post-IPO? #
• Lest anyone be in doubt that Greece's infection has moved well beyond that host, I give you Italy – http://t.co/ocfiyC0S #
• Bethany McLean: Did accounting help sink Corzine’s MF Global? http://t.co/jvZSeHQG /via @john_hempton #
• Martin Wolf: Creditors can huff but they need debtors http://t.co/XzZ01GBc #
• Love the Freudian autocorrect of European "momentary union" for "monetary union". http://t.co/9ygBDvQp #
• Lake Mead's glass is no longer half empty, but 52% full – http://t.co/JYjjvaV0 #
• Twenty of the world's top athletes and explorers share their dream trips – http://t.co/2ZhF5OOi #
• Flipped to new Gmail UI and am very unhappy. How do I go back? #
• Whew, back in old Gmail. I missed my Minimalist Gmail extension. #
• Spider porn and moments of transcendence – http://t.co/rJn8Nn8a #
• The never-ending Fed obsession with mortgage refinancing in U.S. is a remarkable indictment of monetary policy. #
• So, we're three weeks from the US supercommitee deadline, and also 17 days from a possible govt shutdown. I see no troubles there. #
• You'll either really dig this, or go WTF? A self-referential aptitude test – http://t.co/Ul3BOxaH #
• Pesek: Mona Lisa Will Look Great on China’s Wall – http://t.co/fB13lElT #
• Lowenstein: The widespread belief that liquidity offers safety is an illusion, & a terribly dangerous one at that. http://t.co/3xHY9WW3 #
• Bogleheads: How do you deal with all the economic doom & gloom? – http://t.co/ZnNNbfFP #
• "I was on safari in the suburbs". — Louis Theroux, "America's Most Dangerous Pets" #
• If any of you fine people get a chance to watch this new Louis Theroux BBC special on wild pets, watch it. He's like no-one else. #
• Thoughtful energy outlook with data for both peak-ers and non-peak-ers – http://t.co/YWjUkVAy #
• Good perspective: Tax impasse threatens US deficit progress: http://t.co/yXUDCZt0 #FT #

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