There used to be downside to having a high stock price because of odd lots. Nobody cares about that anymore. Here is a quick history lesson.
Jargon - a odd lot is any sale where the number of shares bought / sold is not divisible by 100.
Prior to the 70's when you traded stocks you traded stocks. When you sold stock you would take you stock certificate down to your broker, they would send it to the main office, they would send it to the company to be registered, the company would send it to the new broker, who would send it onto the person who bought it. Took 21 days. Lots of fancy paperwork. And I mean fancy - you should see the old stock certificates. Anyway, dealing with small change was a headache.
Market Makers could put you at the end of the line because you were not a "real" trader - so a worse price.
Extra fees would be applied - both by the exchange and by the broker.
etc.
So, from a historical perspective, different industries tended to have an optional price. Electric Utilities would tend to be in the 15 to 25 range because people looking to retire could save $2,000, buy a 100 shares, and not get hammed by fees. If the company every got out of this range it would split to get back in.
This lasted until the late 90's. NYSE would charge an extra fee for odd lots. Legacy computer systems from the brokerage houses would charge an extra fee - and some still do.
And then the internet came along - and Internet brokers - not limited by a legacy computer system - no longer cared it you bought a 100 or some odd lot.
Google, at $500, has as much granularity as most people need. (Unless you are looking to buy less then $100). Look at a daily stock chart and you really have to zoom in to see granularity. The only stock I can think of that has that issue is Berkshire which trades at 100k
The Dow Jones is not exactly a price weighted average.
When it first started it was. They averaged 12 stocks and there you go. No fancy market cap calculations. (Or course, back then it was hard to figure out a companies market cap, but that is something else.)
Then, as stocks issued dividends, spit, and companies were replaced, Dow switched over to weighing each stock price with a factor. So, it does not matter how high Apple's price is when it introduced into the Dow, it's stock will be given a factor that will make the change invisible. For the first few months, a 5% change in Apple's price will basic the same influence as any other company - kind of. Of course, as time goes on, the "winners" (i.e. those who have been around a long time and have had a large price increase) will tend to dominate. But that would come latter.
The Dow is a poor index. It was great when you had to calculate a index in a hour and all you had was pencil and paper - it's simple. However, as soon as people got a second rate spreadsheet they could do something better - like the market cap weighted S&P. (Well, mostly market cap - they adjust for float). The one good thing you can say is that it's been around forever so you got a lot of data to work with. The S&P has been around for only 1/2 as long.
$10, I would guess, would cover the variable cost but not the fixed cost of the customer.
On the other hand, having a low education correlates with being poor. Low education correlates with higher customer service costs. The people tend to be less technically savvy and need more time with a person. A couple of hours of customer service a year and they are losing money.
If I had to guess he was too far along to pull out. (Like that’s never happened before.). He got the advance and he delivered the book. He wanted to cancel the contract (and return the advance) but the publisher said “Thanks, but no – we will publish what we got”. The contract should still be in force.
Let us say a private company wants to give away its product to the product to the poor and needy. What’s the best way to do this?
Should you hand over last year’s tax return? Not only is it invasive, but many poor people don’t even need to file.
What about the “young adult” (mid 30s) who is still living at home. Should the parents, who may be rich, get cheap internet via their child?
So they are using the school lunch program as a proxy. It’s easy to show poverty without being in invasive. And heck, for once I get to use the phrase “Think of the Children” without derision. If a private company wants to give away their product this way I am fine with that. I don’t this it is discriminatory.
First, the guy is accused of fraud, which implies that maybe he was not complying with the firm's risk monitoring system. (No proof of that yet.)
Second, it's not as easy as you think.He was on the derivatives desk, which can be tricky but can be handled. He was a UBS, which is in multiple markets, which is another curve ball. American options need to be handled one way, European options a slightly different way. It can be hard to sum all of these positions.
Which is why I don't like the summary. For credit cards you have millions of people buy basically the same things. It is easy to see patterns. In investments you have dozens to scores of strategies that change yearly. CMO bonds one year, Swaps the next, Indian equities the next. From a DB viewpoint it is a nightmare. Each position having it own little quirk meaning you have to modify the Security Master table with new fields being populated by wildly different data sources.
It's a Red Queen's race, each firm trying to reach the next level - and you don't build the IT system to last because you know there is going to be another overhaul in 2 years.
Because that would be a criminal case. See Crazy Eddie. There is a case where the defendants released information that was false to pump up the stock price as they dumped their stock. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie
Here, HP is being charged with being incompetent. (I have not seen anybody saying that the HP management dumped their stock – let me know if I am wrong.)
Part of the issue here is that this type of suit has a bad reputation. It’s not just Monday quarterbacking. Much like patent suits, there are a lot of lawyers trying to shake down fat corporations. And, like patent suits, the majority have are not valid. Which is kind of sad, because when a real legitimate case comes along it gets associated with all of the other scummy cases.
This lawsuit is not about insider trading. Insider Trading is a criminal case and this is not.
This is a civil lawsuit. I want to say SEC Reg FD (Fair Disclosure), but after reading the article I am not so sure. But it's going to be in that universe. Basically, what the lawsuits says is that company announcements must be fair and tuneful – and that HP’s announcements that their PC and mobile divisions were doing fine (in the sense that they were going to be a ongoing division of the comapny) were a lie. After all you don’t want to buy a pig in a poke.
I am not so sure how seriously I would take this. Back in the 1980’s a lot of companies were sued every time there stock dipped. Lawyers of the ambulance chaser type were always able to find some press release that could provide a fig leaf and then shake down the company. This kind of suit rarely gets far. (vast generalization– your mileage may very)
Which was kind of my point. Why invest time to teach skills which in 20 years will be out of date? (and yes, in my mind, 20 is a few). Why not teach them skills that will not go out of date? Which brings me back to my serious question - Is programming the most effective way to instruct chrilden in logic and other core skills? And part of the answer is hour the course is designed - I am sure that a well designed Programing course will do a better job then a poorly designed math class. (I learned nothing frommy computer programming class in high school - but then again when a 1/4 of the students know more then the teacher....) But if one had 2 good teachers teaching 2 good course - which course - programing vs. math - would server the students the best? 40 years ago they would have been teaching Fortran. 20 years ago it would have been C. Today - what? and will it server the test of time. My gut instinct says no – but I want to know more.
Why not teach them how to construct geometric proofs instead? And this is a serious question.
The issue I have with teaching computer programing at such a young age is that programing languages tend to be transient. C or JAVA? A few years go it was BASIC vs. Fortran. I have had good C class that taught me theory which I use today – even though I know longer work in C. But if the kids are just learning how to hack – in the bad sense or the word – twisty rabbit warren logic type of code – then I would think more harm than good was done.
I think at that young age there is better ways to beef up their Cognitive skills (Chess, math - Heck – even a Jesuit priest teaching theology)
Your right about HFT, but let me put a spin on it.
To lose billions would probably require lots of trades over a long time period. There should be compliance and risk checks – and it looks like these failed. However
20 years ago if you wanted to sell 100,000 shares of a stock you would have done a block trade. Maybe one of the big Investment Banks would have taken the whole thing or maybe it would have to be spread out - but it would have 2 to 5 trades - max. And you would have taken a big hit on the price to move such big block.
Today, with automated computers (think HFC – but that is a special case) the trade would be chopped into 100’s of smaller trades to sneak under the radar – after all you would not want to alter people that a huge trade is coming though. And since the HFC might detect that you are selling a large block and front run you, you might actually put in 100s of trades to buy back the stock to muddy the waters.
So, in the end, all of the trades should be clearly laid out in both cases. In the first case it’s easier – not because of the speed of HFT and their ilk, but because the sheer volume. A trader (who is almost always higher paid and makes the firm’s profits) might be able to bamboozle / bully the Compliance or Risk manager.
ETF & Delta Hedging – the desk he was on - tend to be “commodity” trading. Simply, low risk / low profit stuff. It’s mostly arbitrage in the classic sense. Pounding out pennies as they say – and you make up the profit with large volume.
As for many players – maybe yes – maybe no. For example, the largest ETF out there is Blackrock’s S&P 500 (SPY). Because it is open ended, this means that Blackrock is contentiously creating shares (and thus having to buy the underlying stock) or destroying shares (and thus having to sell the underlying stock). If he was on the ETF desk and was working with Blackrock (I don’t know if it was Blockrock – but if he were on the ETF desk it would have been with whomever the sponsor of the ETF was) he may be only dealing with a few trades.
Because back in the early days of the internet, when Pets.com still roomed the land and Yahoo’s claim that they would dethrone E-Bay, E-Bay was looking for other options then selling Pez dispensers. Not know what was coming next they look for new opportunities.
They found Craigslist employee who had gotten stock and wanted to cash out – and bought in. Now they’re stuck with it.
Their like a devoiced couple who both live in the same home – with Craig claiming the house is not worth much at all and E-Bay not willing to sell at Craig’s low price. So they snip at each other.
Craig has stocked the board with his friends – which he can because he owns the majority of the company – and E-Bay gripes about fat compensation checks to Craig and management.
Craig is not interested in a IPO (Where E-Bay could dump their stock on the open market). Nor is he interested in commercializing the site [banner ads, etc] to squeeze every last penny – making it hard for E-Bay to sell to a private equity firm or something like that. Nor is he intrested in raising the funds to buy E-Bay out.
It's classic arbitrage - and this is how it works.
There are a lot of things that trade in both New York and London. Think gold, oil, stocks (BP, etc) and there is a portion of each day when both are open.
If BP is trading in New York for $1.00 and BP is trading in London for.6.34 pounds, and the USD/GBP is 1 to 6.33 a trader could squeeze out a penny by buying BP in NY and selling in London. It keeps the price in sync between the 2 markets.
Neil Gaiman has given away for free
American Gods – PDFs - It was a limited time thing.
Graveyard Book – YouTube of him reading the entire thing. OK – this is kind of the expectation proving the rule
So they don't realize that they have their position in the cellphone-market BECAUSE they use Android insted of IN SPITE of it?
Maybe they want WebOS because of it’s patents?
Maybe you noticed that there is a bit of a patent race between the Apple / Google etc. as they buy up Motorola etc. It does not do HTC any good to have hitched it’s company to Android and see Apple et. al. shut it down.
With WebOS in it’s back pocket, HTC can threaten to counter sue if anybody sues them.
One just have to love the ill defined patens being issued.
The US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world. The US has one of the lowest corporate tax burdens in the world.
There is a lot of scope for simplifying. For example, the US is one of the few companies that tax income no matter where it is produced. Most countries only tax corporate income on the income produced within that company. So US multinational companies are at a disadvantage because they have to pay corporarte tax twice [both US and foreign]. Instead of doing the rational thing – harmonizing our tax code with the world - – we give special tax credits / loopholes back to multinational. So we have more complexity and thus more rum for shenanigans.
Let me recast Paul Krugman argument by using this 1930’s example:
The Monetary Supply is fixed
BitCoin: By design – 21 million is the max.
1930: Currency is tied to gold, and no major gold strikes in the 1920s The demand for money increases.
BitCoin: More people get interested 1930: The economy grows in 1920s high productivity, population growth, move away from agrarian society, etc. Supply and Demand
If the supply is fixed and the demand increases, the value of money goes up.
Krugman point – If people perceive that money is going to be more valuable tomorrow then today – why would they spend it either on investments (think the practical kind – plant & equipment - not stocks) or consumption? One can make a good risk free investment by hoarding the currency. Which pulls more money out of the economy, which leads to a downward spiral.
BitCoin is only going to work as a currency if people transact with it – which they are not.
My Point – Deflation. Yeah, I know that in theory people should be o.k. with inflation – but their not. There is something hardware in our reptilian brains. Give a worker a 10% raise when inflation is 10% and they can work things out – and they are happy. Give a worker a 5% cut with 10% deflation and they can’t work things out. Nor can Harvard MBA students. There is something about seeing the number of dollars shrink – even if there value is increasing – which throws people. And – also – not many banks offer negative interest rates on loans.
If I understand correctly, Moore's law should hold out for another 4 years - that is we have mapped out the technology to get to chips down to 11 nanometers - it just a matter of implementing that technology - which is no small feat. After that - what?
3d chips - by gluing chips on top of each other 3d chips with different strata quantum bits quantum tunneling to replace current gates etc.
If Moore's law is to continue, some new rabbits are going to have to pulled out of hats. Maybe this?
Except that the bacteria goes airborne, survives and propagates for a couple of generations beneath the soil, and many years later we discover rouge bits of DNA that look kind of like earthling DNA – and we are left wondering – is this because of cross contamination or did Mars and Earth share some type of link? [Comets, E.T.s etc.]
Well - kind of. The SEC does some reviewing but....
The big point is that the outside auditors and the invesment banks do sign off on it. And while there is a fine line between hopeful optimism and fraudulent statements of facts, the auditors and banks can pay big fines if they find themselves on the wrong side.
FYI - You have to wait for 30 days to short the IPO - those are the regs. There are some execptions for market makers. Put options may be safer, but, once again, they may not be aviliable right off the bat.
Since the tree lines runs through the state. Yes, Alaska has lots of trees – but vast areas lie north of the tree line. Since he talks about flying into remote areas I would guess he would be far, far north. I would lay odds that the students have access to wood chips – but it is no guaranty.
Slashdot Mirror
There used to be downside to having a high stock price because of odd lots. Nobody cares about that anymore. Here is a quick history lesson.
Jargon - a odd lot is any sale where the number of shares bought / sold is not divisible by 100.
Prior to the 70's when you traded stocks you traded stocks. When you sold stock you would take you stock certificate down to your broker, they would send it to the main office, they would send it to the company to be registered, the company would send it to the new broker, who would send it onto the person who bought it. Took 21 days. Lots of fancy paperwork. And I mean fancy - you should see the old stock certificates. Anyway, dealing with small change was a headache.
Market Makers could put you at the end of the line because you were not a "real" trader - so a worse price.
Extra fees would be applied - both by the exchange and by the broker.
etc.
So, from a historical perspective, different industries tended to have an optional price. Electric Utilities would tend to be in the 15 to 25 range because people looking to retire could save $2,000, buy a 100 shares, and not get hammed by fees. If the company every got out of this range it would split to get back in.
This lasted until the late 90's. NYSE would charge an extra fee for odd lots. Legacy computer systems from the brokerage houses would charge an extra fee - and some still do.
And then the internet came along - and Internet brokers - not limited by a legacy computer system - no longer cared it you bought a 100 or some odd lot.
Google, at $500, has as much granularity as most people need. (Unless you are looking to buy less then $100). Look at a daily stock chart and you really have to zoom in to see granularity. The only stock I can think of that has that issue is Berkshire which trades at 100k
The Dow Jones is not exactly a price weighted average.
When it first started it was. They averaged 12 stocks and there you go. No fancy market cap calculations. (Or course, back then it was hard to figure out a companies market cap, but that is something else.)
Then, as stocks issued dividends, spit, and companies were replaced, Dow switched over to weighing each stock price with a factor. So, it does not matter how high Apple's price is when it introduced into the Dow, it's stock will be given a factor that will make the change invisible. For the first few months, a 5% change in Apple's price will basic the same influence as any other company - kind of. Of course, as time goes on, the "winners" (i.e. those who have been around a long time and have had a large price increase) will tend to dominate. But that would come latter.
The Dow is a poor index. It was great when you had to calculate a index in a hour and all you had was pencil and paper - it's simple. However, as soon as people got a second rate spreadsheet they could do something better - like the market cap weighted S&P. (Well, mostly market cap - they adjust for float). The one good thing you can say is that it's been around forever so you got a lot of data to work with. The S&P has been around for only 1/2 as long.
$10, I would guess, would cover the variable cost but not the fixed cost of the customer.
On the other hand, having a low education correlates with being poor. Low education correlates with higher customer service costs. The people tend to be less technically savvy and need more time with a person. A couple of hours of customer service a year and they are losing money.
I assume he will.
If I had to guess he was too far along to pull out. (Like that’s never happened before.). He got the advance and he delivered the book. He wanted to cancel the contract (and return the advance) but the publisher said “Thanks, but no – we will publish what we got”. The contract should still be in force.
Let us say a private company wants to give away its product to the product to the poor and needy. What’s the best way to do this?
Should you hand over last year’s tax return? Not only is it invasive, but many poor people don’t even need to file.
What about the “young adult” (mid 30s) who is still living at home. Should the parents, who may be rich, get cheap internet via their child?
So they are using the school lunch program as a proxy. It’s easy to show poverty without being in invasive. And heck, for once I get to use the phrase “Think of the Children” without derision. If a private company wants to give away their product this way I am fine with that. I don’t this it is discriminatory.
First, the guy is accused of fraud, which implies that maybe he was not complying with the firm's risk monitoring system. (No proof of that yet.)
Second, it's not as easy as you think.He was on the derivatives desk, which can be tricky but can be handled. He was a UBS, which is in multiple markets, which is another curve ball. American options need to be handled one way, European options a slightly different way. It can be hard to sum all of these positions.
Which is why I don't like the summary. For credit cards you have millions of people buy basically the same things. It is easy to see patterns. In investments you have dozens to scores of strategies that change yearly. CMO bonds one year, Swaps the next, Indian equities the next. From a DB viewpoint it is a nightmare. Each position having it own little quirk meaning you have to modify the Security Master table with new fields being populated by wildly different data sources.
It's a Red Queen's race, each firm trying to reach the next level - and you don't build the IT system to last because you know there is going to be another overhaul in 2 years.
Because that would be a criminal case. See Crazy Eddie. There is a case where the defendants released information that was false to pump up the stock price as they dumped their stock.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eddie
Here, HP is being charged with being incompetent. (I have not seen anybody saying that the HP management dumped their stock – let me know if I am wrong.)
Part of the issue here is that this type of suit has a bad reputation. It’s not just Monday quarterbacking. Much like patent suits, there are a lot of lawyers trying to shake down fat corporations. And, like patent suits, the majority have are not valid. Which is kind of sad, because when a real legitimate case comes along it gets associated with all of the other scummy cases.
This lawsuit is not about insider trading. Insider Trading is a criminal case and this is not.
This is a civil lawsuit. I want to say SEC Reg FD (Fair Disclosure), but after reading the article I am not so sure. But it's going to be in that universe. Basically, what the lawsuits says is that company announcements must be fair and tuneful – and that HP’s announcements that their PC and mobile divisions were doing fine (in the sense that they were going to be a ongoing division of the comapny) were a lie. After all you don’t want to buy a pig in a poke.
I am not so sure how seriously I would take this. Back in the 1980’s a lot of companies were sued every time there stock dipped. Lawyers of the ambulance chaser type were always able to find some press release that could provide a fig leaf and then shake down the company. This kind of suit rarely gets far. (vast generalization– your mileage may very)
Which was kind of my point. Why invest time to teach skills which in 20 years will be out of date? (and yes, in my mind, 20 is a few). Why not teach them skills that will not go out of date? Which brings me back to my serious question - Is programming the most effective way to instruct chrilden in logic and other core skills? And part of the answer is hour the course is designed - I am sure that a well designed Programing course will do a better job then a poorly designed math class. (I learned nothing frommy computer programming class in high school - but then again when a 1/4 of the students know more then the teacher....) But if one had 2 good teachers teaching 2 good course - which course - programing vs. math - would server the students the best? 40 years ago they would have been teaching Fortran. 20 years ago it would have been C. Today - what? and will it server the test of time. My gut instinct says no – but I want to know more.
Why not teach them how to construct geometric proofs instead? And this is a serious question.
The issue I have with teaching computer programing at such a young age is that programing languages tend to be transient. C or JAVA? A few years go it was BASIC vs. Fortran. I have had good C class that taught me theory which I use today – even though I know longer work in C. But if the kids are just learning how to hack – in the bad sense or the word – twisty rabbit warren logic type of code – then I would think more harm than good was done.
I think at that young age there is better ways to beef up their Cognitive skills (Chess, math - Heck – even a Jesuit priest teaching theology)
Your right about HFT, but let me put a spin on it.
To lose billions would probably require lots of trades over a long time period. There should be compliance and risk checks – and it looks like these failed. However
20 years ago if you wanted to sell 100,000 shares of a stock you would have done a block trade. Maybe one of the big Investment Banks would have taken the whole thing or maybe it would have to be spread out - but it would have 2 to 5 trades - max. And you would have taken a big hit on the price to move such big block.
Today, with automated computers (think HFC – but that is a special case) the trade would be chopped into 100’s of smaller trades to sneak under the radar – after all you would not want to alter people that a huge trade is coming though. And since the HFC might detect that you are selling a large block and front run you, you might actually put in 100s of trades to buy back the stock to muddy the waters.
So, in the end, all of the trades should be clearly laid out in both cases. In the first case it’s easier – not because of the speed of HFT and their ilk, but because the sheer volume. A trader (who is almost always higher paid and makes the firm’s profits) might be able to bamboozle / bully the Compliance or Risk manager.
Unless, of course, the underling capital was put to productive work, and grew in value. (Or the company paid dividends)
Your right but....
ETF & Delta Hedging – the desk he was on - tend to be “commodity” trading. Simply, low risk / low profit stuff. It’s mostly arbitrage in the classic sense. Pounding out pennies as they say – and you make up the profit with large volume.
As for many players – maybe yes – maybe no. For example, the largest ETF out there is Blackrock’s S&P 500 (SPY). Because it is open ended, this means that Blackrock is contentiously creating shares (and thus having to buy the underlying stock) or destroying shares (and thus having to sell the underlying stock). If he was on the ETF desk and was working with Blackrock (I don’t know if it was Blockrock – but if he were on the ETF desk it would have been with whomever the sponsor of the ETF was) he may be only dealing with a few trades.
Because back in the early days of the internet, when Pets.com still roomed the land and Yahoo’s claim that they would dethrone E-Bay, E-Bay was looking for other options then selling Pez dispensers. Not know what was coming next they look for new opportunities.
They found Craigslist employee who had gotten stock and wanted to cash out – and bought in. Now they’re stuck with it.
Their like a devoiced couple who both live in the same home – with Craig claiming the house is not worth much at all and E-Bay not willing to sell at Craig’s low price. So they snip at each other.
Craig has stocked the board with his friends – which he can because he owns the majority of the company – and E-Bay gripes about fat compensation checks to Craig and management.
Craig is not interested in a IPO (Where E-Bay could dump their stock on the open market). Nor is he interested in commercializing the site [banner ads, etc] to squeeze every last penny – making it hard for E-Bay to sell to a private equity firm or something like that. Nor is he intrested in raising the funds to buy E-Bay out.
Yeah!
AT&T says it needs to by T-Mobile to get more spectrum - and now we have a better answer - they can get the spectrum and we don't get a monopoly.
It's classic arbitrage - and this is how it works.
There are a lot of things that trade in both New York and London. Think gold, oil, stocks (BP, etc) and there is a portion of each day when both are open.
If BP is trading in New York for $1.00 and BP is trading in London for .6.34 pounds, and the USD/GBP is 1 to 6.33 a trader could squeeze out a penny by buying BP in NY and selling in London. It keeps the price in sync between the 2 markets.
Neil Gaiman has given away for free
American Gods – PDFs - It was a limited time thing.
Graveyard Book – YouTube of him reading the entire thing.
OK – this is kind of the expectation proving the rule
So they don't realize that they have their position in the cellphone-market BECAUSE they use Android insted of IN SPITE of it?
Maybe they want WebOS because of it’s patents?
Maybe you noticed that there is a bit of a patent race between the Apple / Google etc. as they buy up Motorola etc. It does not do HTC any good to have hitched it’s company to Android and see Apple et. al. shut it down.
With WebOS in it’s back pocket, HTC can threaten to counter sue if anybody sues them.
One just have to love the ill defined patens being issued.
The following are both true statements.
The US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world.
The US has one of the lowest corporate tax burdens in the world.
There is a lot of scope for simplifying. For example, the US is one of the few companies that tax income no matter where it is produced. Most countries only tax corporate income on the income produced within that company. So US multinational companies are at a disadvantage because they have to pay corporarte tax twice [both US and foreign]. Instead of doing the rational thing – harmonizing our tax code with the world - – we give special tax credits / loopholes back to multinational. So we have more complexity and thus more rum for shenanigans.
Let me recast Paul Krugman argument by using this 1930’s example:
The Monetary Supply is fixed
BitCoin: By design – 21 million is the max.
1930: Currency is tied to gold, and no major gold strikes in the 1920s
The demand for money increases.
BitCoin: More people get interested
1930: The economy grows in 1920s high productivity, population growth, move away from agrarian society, etc.
Supply and Demand
If the supply is fixed and the demand increases, the value of money goes up.
Krugman point – If people perceive that money is going to be more valuable tomorrow then today – why would they spend it either on investments (think the practical kind – plant & equipment - not stocks) or consumption? One can make a good risk free investment by hoarding the currency. Which pulls more money out of the economy, which leads to a downward spiral.
BitCoin is only going to work as a currency if people transact with it – which they are not.
My Point – Deflation. Yeah, I know that in theory people should be o.k. with inflation – but their not. There is something hardware in our reptilian brains. Give a worker a 10% raise when inflation is 10% and they can work things out – and they are happy. Give a worker a 5% cut with 10% deflation and they can’t work things out. Nor can Harvard MBA students. There is something about seeing the number of dollars shrink – even if there value is increasing – which throws people. And – also – not many banks offer negative interest rates on loans.
If I understand correctly, Moore's law should hold out for another 4 years - that is we have mapped out the technology to get to chips down to 11 nanometers - it just a matter of implementing that technology - which is no small feat. After that - what?
3d chips - by gluing chips on top of each other
3d chips with different strata
quantum bits
quantum tunneling to replace current gates
etc.
If Moore's law is to continue, some new rabbits are going to have to pulled out of hats. Maybe this?
Except that the bacteria goes airborne, survives and propagates for a couple of generations beneath the soil, and many years later we discover rouge bits of DNA that look kind of like earthling DNA – and we are left wondering – is this because of cross contamination or did Mars and Earth share some type of link? [Comets, E.T.s etc.]
Well - kind of. The SEC does some reviewing but....
The big point is that the outside auditors and the invesment banks do sign off on it. And while there is a fine line between hopeful optimism and fraudulent statements of facts, the auditors and banks can pay big fines if they find themselves on the wrong side.
FYI - You have to wait for 30 days to short the IPO - those are the regs. There are some execptions for market makers. Put options may be safer, but, once again, they may not be aviliable right off the bat.
Since the tree lines runs through the state. Yes, Alaska has lots of trees – but vast areas lie north of the tree line. Since he talks about flying into remote areas I would guess he would be far, far north. I would lay odds that the students have access to wood chips – but it is no guaranty.