Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/01/the-ready-set-dedicates-song-to-taylor-swift/
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Tuesday, January 29, 2013
Trash piles at Madrid airport as cleaners strike
Passengers and a worker walk past accumulated garbage during a cleaners strike, at Barajas international airport in Madrid, Monday Jan. 28, 2013. Battling to reduce a swollen deficit and avoid a bailout, the year-old conservative government has brought major financial and labor reforms and applied severe cutbacks in wages and spending but so far the economy has shown few signs of recovery. (AP Photo/Paul White)
Passengers and a worker walk past accumulated garbage during a cleaners strike, at Barajas international airport in Madrid, Monday Jan. 28, 2013. Battling to reduce a swollen deficit and avoid a bailout, the year-old conservative government has brought major financial and labor reforms and applied severe cutbacks in wages and spending but so far the economy has shown few signs of recovery. (AP Photo/Paul White)
Passengers pass by accumulated garbage during a cleaners strike, at Barajas international airport in Madrid, Monday Jan. 28, 2013. Battling to reduce a swollen deficit and avoid a bailout, the year-old conservative government has brought major financial and labor reforms and applied severe cutbacks in wages and spending but so far the economy has shown few signs of recovery. (AP Photo/Paul White)
A passenger walks past accumulated garbage during a cleaners strike, at Barajas international airport in Madrid, Monday Jan. 28, 2013. Battling to reduce a swollen deficit and avoid a bailout, the year-old conservative government has brought major financial and labor reforms and applied severe cutbacks in wages and spending but so far the economy has shown few signs of recovery. (AP Photo/Paul White)
MADRID (AP) ? Empty bottles, cans and trash are piling up at Madrid's airport as cleaners enter the fifth day of a strike to protest proposed layoffs.
The strike continues to affect terminals 1, 2 and 3 on Tuesday, a day after a similar strike at Terminal 4, the airport's main terminal, was suspended after one day.
The strike is made worse by the fact that the airport has very few trash containers for the public to use.
The cleaners are protesting plans by their cleaning company to lay off 54 out of 270 workers at the airport.
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Monday, January 28, 2013
Three killed, many hurt at funerals in Egypt port city
CAIRO (Reuters) - Three people were shot dead and hundreds were injured in Egypt's Port Said on Sunday during the funerals of 33 protesters killed at the weekend, part of a wave of violence piling pressure on Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.
State television said Mursi would address the nation later on Sunday. Forty-five people have been killed in demonstrations around the country since Thursday and his opponents have called for more protests on Monday.
Port Said's head of hospitals, Abdel Rahman Farag, told Reuters an 18-year-old man and two other people died from gunshot wounds on Sunday. More than 416 people suffered from teargas inhalation, while 17 were wounded by gunshots, he said.
As coffins were carried through the streets earlier, some in the crowd chanted for revenge or shouted anti-Mursi slogans. "Our soul and blood, we sacrifice to Port Said," they said.
Gunshots had killed many of the 33 who died on Saturday when residents went on the rampage after a court sentenced 21 people, mostly from the Mediterranean port, to death for their role in deadly soccer violence at a stadium there last year.
A military source said many people in Port Said, which lies next to the increasingly lawless Sinai Peninsula, possess guns. But it was not clear who was behind the deaths and injuries.
In Cairo, police fired teargas at dozens of stone-throwing protesters in a fourth day of clashes over what demonstrators there and in other cities say is a power grab by Islamists two years after Hosni Mubarak was overthrown.
The protesters accuse Mursi, elected in June with the support of his Muslim Brotherhood group, of betraying the democratic goals of the revolution. Most of the deaths since Thursday were in Port Said and Suez, both cities where the army has now been deployed.
The violence adds to the daunting task facing Mursi as he tries to fix a beleaguered economy and cool tempers before a parliamentary election expected in the next few months which is supposed to cement Egypt's transition to democracy.
It has exposed a deep rift in the nation. Liberals and other opponents accuse Mursi of failing to deliver on economic promises and say he has not lived up to pledges to represent all Egyptians. His backers say the opposition is seeking to topple Egypt's first freely elected leader by undemocratic means.
Although Sunday's violence was less severe than the previous two days, Mursi may have little respite. The opposition Popular Current and other groups have called for more protests on Monday to mark what was one of the bloodiest days of the 2011 uprising.
The Popular Current, led by leftist Hamdeen Sabahy, said it "denounces the state of silence of the presidency and the government during the sad events that the country went through the past 48 hours".
"BLOOD BEING SPILT"
On a bridge close to Tahrir Square, youths hurled stones at police in riot gear who fired teargas to push them back towards the square, the cauldron of the uprising that erupted on January 25, 2011 and toppled Mubarak 18 days later.
"None of the revolution's goals have been realized," said Mohamed Sami, a protester in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Sunday.
"Prices are going up. The blood of Egyptians is being spilt in the streets because of neglect and corruption and because the Muslim Brotherhood is ruling Egypt for their own interests."
Clashes also erupted in other streets near the square. The U.S. and British embassies, both close to Tahrir, said they were closed for public business on Sunday, normally a working day.
The army, Egypt's interim ruler until Mursi's election, was sent back onto the streets to restore order in Port Said and Suez, which both lie on the Suez canal. In Suez, at least eight people were killed in clashes with police.
Egypt's defense minister who also heads the army, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, called for the nation to stand together and said the military would not prevent peaceful protests. But he called on demonstrators to protect public property.
Many ordinary Egyptians are frustrated by the regular escalations that have hurt the economy and their livelihoods.
"They are not revolutionaries protesting," said taxi driver Kamal Hassan, 30, referring to those gathered in Tahrir. "They are thugs destroying the country."
CALL FOR DIALOGUE
The National Defence Council, headed by Mursi, called on Saturday for national dialogue to discuss political differences.
That offer has been cautiously welcomed by the opposition National Salvation Front. But the coalition has demanded a clear agenda and guarantees that any agreements will be implemented.
The Front, formed late last year when Mursi provoked protests and violence by expanding his powers and driving through an Islamist-tinged constitution, has threatened to boycott the parliamentary poll and call for more protests if its demands are not met, including for an early presidential vote.
Egypt's transition has been blighted from the outset by political rows and turbulence on the streets that have driven investors out and kept many tourists away. Its currency, the pound, has steadily weakened against the dollar.
The Port Said clashes erupted after a judge sentenced 21 men to death for involvement in 74 deaths at a soccer match on February 1, 2012 between Cairo's Al Ahly club and the local al-Masri team. Many of the victims were fans of the visiting team.
There were 73 defendants in the case. Those not sentenced on Saturday will face a verdict on March 9, the judge said.
Al Ahly fans cheered the verdict after threatening action if the death penalty was not meted out. But Port Said residents were furious that people from their city were held responsible.
(Additional reporting by Yusri Mohamed in Ismailia and Yasmine Saleh in Cairo; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/riots-over-egyptian-death-sentences-kill-least-32-005245042.html
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Using Twitter to track the flu: A better way to screen the Tweets
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Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Phil Sneiderman
prs@jhu.edu
443-287-9960
Johns Hopkins University
Sifting through social media messages has become a popular way to track when and where flu cases occur, but a key hurdle hampers the process: how to identify flu-infection tweets. Some tweets are posted by people who have been sick with the virus, while others come from folks who are merely talking about the illness. If you are tracking actual flu cases, such conversations about the flu in general can skew the results.
To address this problem, Johns Hopkins computer scientists and researchers in the university's School of Medicine have developed a new tweet-screening method that not only delivers real-time data on flu cases, but also filters out online chatter that is not linked to actual flu infections. Comparing their method, which is based on analysis of 5,000 publicly available tweets per minute, to other Twitter-based tracking tools, the Johns Hopkins researchers say their real-time results track more closely with government disease data that takes much longer to compile.
"When you look at Twitter posts, you can see people talking about being afraid of catching the flu or asking friends if they should get a flu shot or mentioning a public figure who seems to be ill," said Mark Dredze, an assistant research professor in the Department of Computer Science who uses tweets to monitor public health trends. "But posts like this don't measure how many people have actually contracted the flu. We wanted to separate hype about the flu from messages from people who truly become ill."
Dredze, who also is a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, led a team that in mid-2011 released one of the first and most comprehensive studies showing that Twitter data can yield useful public health information. Since then, this strategy has become so popular that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last summer sponsored a contest challenging researchers to design an online application that could track major disease outbreaks.
This winter, as the United States entered an unusually severe and early flu season, Twitter-based flu projections have drawn increasing attention. Many public tweets, such as, "I'm so sick this week with the flu," can indicate a rise in the flu rate. Collecting enough of these tweets can help health officials gauge the scope and severity of an epidemic.
But the reliability of many computer models can be weakened by too many tweets that point to flu-related news reports and other matters not directly linked to a specific flu case, said David Broniatowski, a School of Medicine postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Emergency Medicine's Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences.
"For example," he said, "a recent spike in Twitter flu activity was caused by discussions about basketball legend Kobe Bryant's flu-like symptoms during a recent game. Mr. Bryant's health notwithstanding, such tweets do very little to help public health officials prepare our nation for the next big outbreak."
To improve their accuracy when using tweets to track the flu, the John Hopkins team developed sophisticated statistical methods based on human language processing technologies. The methods are designed to filter out the chatter. The system can distinguish, for example, between "I have the flu" and "I'm worried about getting the flu."
Another advantage of the Johns Hopkins flu projection method is that it can produce real-time results. By comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which record flu-related symptoms from hospital visits, typically take two weeks to publish data on the flu's prevalence.
To check the reliability of their enhanced system, the Johns Hopkins researchers recently compared their results to CDC data for the same period. The researchers said that during November and December 2012, their system demonstrated a substantial improvement in tracking with CDC figures as compared to previous Twitter-based tracking methods. "In late December," Dredze added, "the news media picked up on the flu epidemic, causing a somewhat spurious rise in the rate produced by our Twitter system. But our new algorithm handles this effect much better than other systems, ignoring the spurious spike in tweets."
The researchers have also used their Twitter data to produce United States maps that document the stark differences between last year's mild flu season and the much higher incidence of the virus in the winter of 2012-2013.
While their new method was only recently developed, the Johns Hopkins researchers chose to release information on the flu tracking system because of the higher incidence of illness this winter. Team members hope to share the enhanced flu tracking method with leading government health agencies.
"This new work demonstrates that Twitter posts can be used to guide public health officials in their response to outbreaks of infectious diseases," Dredze said. "Our hope is that the new technology can be used track other diseases as well."
###
Other Johns Hopkins researchers participating in the Twitter flu project are doctoral student Michael Paul and recent bachelor's degree graduate Alex Lamb, both in the Department of Computer Science.
The Johns Hopkins researchers noted that their enhanced Twitter flu analysis system looked only at public tweets in which all user names and gender information had been removed. The system was tested only on messages from the United States. The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health's Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study.
View a video produced by Twitter about Johns Hopkins' use of tweets to track public health trends here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmDIh-YS0GI
Read an earlier news release about Johns Hopkins' use of tweets to track public health trends at: http://releases.jhu.edu/2011/07/06/tracking-public-health-trends-from-twitter-messages/
Color U.S. flu maps and video available; contact Phil Sneiderman.
Related links:
Human Language Technology Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins: http://hltcoe.jhu.edu
Mark Dredze's website: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~mdredze/
Johns Hopkins Department of Computer Science: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/
Center for Advanced Modeling in The Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/emergencymedicine/center_for_advanced_modeling/
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Phil Sneiderman
prs@jhu.edu
443-287-9960
Johns Hopkins University
Sifting through social media messages has become a popular way to track when and where flu cases occur, but a key hurdle hampers the process: how to identify flu-infection tweets. Some tweets are posted by people who have been sick with the virus, while others come from folks who are merely talking about the illness. If you are tracking actual flu cases, such conversations about the flu in general can skew the results.
To address this problem, Johns Hopkins computer scientists and researchers in the university's School of Medicine have developed a new tweet-screening method that not only delivers real-time data on flu cases, but also filters out online chatter that is not linked to actual flu infections. Comparing their method, which is based on analysis of 5,000 publicly available tweets per minute, to other Twitter-based tracking tools, the Johns Hopkins researchers say their real-time results track more closely with government disease data that takes much longer to compile.
"When you look at Twitter posts, you can see people talking about being afraid of catching the flu or asking friends if they should get a flu shot or mentioning a public figure who seems to be ill," said Mark Dredze, an assistant research professor in the Department of Computer Science who uses tweets to monitor public health trends. "But posts like this don't measure how many people have actually contracted the flu. We wanted to separate hype about the flu from messages from people who truly become ill."
Dredze, who also is a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins Human Language Technology Center of Excellence, led a team that in mid-2011 released one of the first and most comprehensive studies showing that Twitter data can yield useful public health information. Since then, this strategy has become so popular that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last summer sponsored a contest challenging researchers to design an online application that could track major disease outbreaks.
This winter, as the United States entered an unusually severe and early flu season, Twitter-based flu projections have drawn increasing attention. Many public tweets, such as, "I'm so sick this week with the flu," can indicate a rise in the flu rate. Collecting enough of these tweets can help health officials gauge the scope and severity of an epidemic.
But the reliability of many computer models can be weakened by too many tweets that point to flu-related news reports and other matters not directly linked to a specific flu case, said David Broniatowski, a School of Medicine postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Emergency Medicine's Center for Advanced Modeling in the Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences.
"For example," he said, "a recent spike in Twitter flu activity was caused by discussions about basketball legend Kobe Bryant's flu-like symptoms during a recent game. Mr. Bryant's health notwithstanding, such tweets do very little to help public health officials prepare our nation for the next big outbreak."
To improve their accuracy when using tweets to track the flu, the John Hopkins team developed sophisticated statistical methods based on human language processing technologies. The methods are designed to filter out the chatter. The system can distinguish, for example, between "I have the flu" and "I'm worried about getting the flu."
Another advantage of the Johns Hopkins flu projection method is that it can produce real-time results. By comparison, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which record flu-related symptoms from hospital visits, typically take two weeks to publish data on the flu's prevalence.
To check the reliability of their enhanced system, the Johns Hopkins researchers recently compared their results to CDC data for the same period. The researchers said that during November and December 2012, their system demonstrated a substantial improvement in tracking with CDC figures as compared to previous Twitter-based tracking methods. "In late December," Dredze added, "the news media picked up on the flu epidemic, causing a somewhat spurious rise in the rate produced by our Twitter system. But our new algorithm handles this effect much better than other systems, ignoring the spurious spike in tweets."
The researchers have also used their Twitter data to produce United States maps that document the stark differences between last year's mild flu season and the much higher incidence of the virus in the winter of 2012-2013.
While their new method was only recently developed, the Johns Hopkins researchers chose to release information on the flu tracking system because of the higher incidence of illness this winter. Team members hope to share the enhanced flu tracking method with leading government health agencies.
"This new work demonstrates that Twitter posts can be used to guide public health officials in their response to outbreaks of infectious diseases," Dredze said. "Our hope is that the new technology can be used track other diseases as well."
###
Other Johns Hopkins researchers participating in the Twitter flu project are doctoral student Michael Paul and recent bachelor's degree graduate Alex Lamb, both in the Department of Computer Science.
The Johns Hopkins researchers noted that their enhanced Twitter flu analysis system looked only at public tweets in which all user names and gender information had been removed. The system was tested only on messages from the United States. The research was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health's Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study.
View a video produced by Twitter about Johns Hopkins' use of tweets to track public health trends here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmDIh-YS0GI
Read an earlier news release about Johns Hopkins' use of tweets to track public health trends at: http://releases.jhu.edu/2011/07/06/tracking-public-health-trends-from-twitter-messages/
Color U.S. flu maps and video available; contact Phil Sneiderman.
Related links:
Human Language Technology Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins: http://hltcoe.jhu.edu
Mark Dredze's website: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~mdredze/
Johns Hopkins Department of Computer Science: http://www.cs.jhu.edu/
Center for Advanced Modeling in The Social, Behavioral, and Health Sciences: http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/emergencymedicine/center_for_advanced_modeling/
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/jhu-utt012813.php
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Google Facing Legal Action In UK Over 'Safari-Gate' | WebProNews
Google continues to deal with the fallout from ?Safari-gate? privacy scandal that led to a record fine (for a single company) from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission last August. The company was fined $22.5 million.
Now, iPhone users in the UK are getting together to sue Google over the debacle. The Guardian reports:
At least 10 British iPhone users have started legal proceedings and dozens more are being lined up, according to Dan Tench, the lawyer behind the action at the London-based firm Olswang.
?This is the first time Google has been threatened with a group claim over privacy in the UK,? he said. ?It is particularly concerning how Google circumvented security settings to snoop on its users. One of the things about Google is that it is so ubiquitous in our lives and if that?s its approach then it?s quite concerning.?
There is a Facebook Group called ?Safari Users Against Google?s Secret Tracking,? which has been set up by the law firm in connection with the users who are going after Google. In the ?About? section, the description says:
This group has been set up to provide information for anyone who used the Safari internet browser between September 2011 and February 2012, and who was illegally tracked by Google.
Any users in the UK may have a claim against Google for this breach of their privacy. Other users, who have set up this group, are taking action against Google to hold them to account.
?
Members of this informal group have instructed the leading technology and media law firm, Olswang, to begin an action against Google.
If you have concerns or want to join the action, contact us via this group and we will share your views or put you in touch with the legal team.
It will be interesting to see how many users get on board with this, and what it ends up meaning for Google. A press release from Olswang has more on the case.
Source: http://www.webpronews.com/google-facing-legal-action-in-uk-over-safari-gate-2013-01
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Sunday, January 27, 2013
What is it? Social Cells
Image: Alex Wild
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Your Three Investing Opponents | The Big Picture
?Tough Year!?
We hear that around the office nearly every day ? from professional traders to money managers to even the ?most-hedged? of the hedge fund community. This year?s markets have perplexed the best of them. Each week brings another event that sets up some confusing crosscurrent: call them reversals or head fakes or bear traps or (my personal favorite) the ?fake-out break-out? ? this is a volatile, trendless market has been unkind to Wall Street pros and Main Street investors alike.
Indeed, buy & hold investors have had more ups and downs this year than your average rollercoaster. The third and fourth quarters alone had more than a dozen market swings, ranging from 5 percent to more than 20 percent. Despite all of that action, the S&P 500 is essentially unchanged year-to-date. It doesn?t take much to push portfolios into the red these days.
Three Opponents in Investing
With markets more challenging than ever, individual investors need to understand exactly whom they are going up against when they step onto the field of battle. You have three opponents to consider whenever you invest.
The first is Mr. Market himself. He is, as Benjamin Graham described him, your eternal partner in investing. He is a patient if somewhat bipolar fellow. Subject to wild mood swings, he is always willing to offer you a bid or an ask. If you are a buyer, he is a seller ? and vice versa. But do not mistake this for generosity: he is your opponent. He likes to make you look a fool. Sell him shares at a nice profit, and he happily takes their prices so much higher you are embarrassed to even mention them again. Buy something from him on the cheap, and he will show you exactly what cheap is. And perhaps most frustrating of all, Mr. Market has no ego ? he does not care about being right or wrong; he only exists to separate the rubes from their money.
Institutional Competitors
Yes, Mr. Market is a difficult opponent. But your next rivals are nearly as tough: They are everyone else buying or selling stocks.
Recall what Charles Ellis said when he was overseeing the $15-billion endowment fund at Yale University:
?Watch a pro football game, and it?s obvious the guys on the field are far faster, stronger and more willing to bear and inflict pain than you are. Surely you would say, ?I don?t want to play against those guys!?
Well, 90% of stock market volume is done by institutions, and half of that is done by the world?s 50 largest investment firms, deeply committed, vastly well prepared ? the smartest sons of bitches in the world working their tails off all day long. You know what? I don?t want to play against those guys either.?
Ellis lays out the brutal truth: investing is a rough and tumble business. It doesn?t matter where these traders work ? they may be on prop desks, mutual funds, hedge funds, or HFT shops ? they employ an array of professional staff and technological tools to give themselves a significant edge. With billions at risk, they deploy anything that gives them even a slight advantage.
These are who individuals are doing battle with. Armed only with a PC, an internet connection, and CNBC muted in the background, investors face daunting odds. They are at a tactical disadvantage, outmanned and outgunned.
We Have Met the Enemy and They Is Us
That is even before we meet your third opponent, perhaps the most difficult one to conquer of all:
You.
You are your own third opponent. And, you may be the opponent you understand the least of all three. It is more than time constraints, lack of discipline, and asymmetrical information that challenges you. The biggest disadvantage you have is that melon perched atop your 3rd opponent?s neck. It is your big ole brain, and unless you do something about it, it is going to lose all of your money for you.
See it? There. Sitting right behind your eyes and between your ears. That ?thing? you hardly pay any attention to. You just assume it knows what it?s doing, works properly, doesn?t make too many mistakes. I hate to disabuse you of those lovely notions; but no, sorry, it does not work nearly as well as you assume. At least, not when it comes to investing. The wiring is an historical remnant, hardly functional for modern living. It is overrun with desires, emotions, and blind spots. Its capacity for cognitive error is nearly endless. It was originally developed for entirely other purposes than risk assessment in capital markets. Indeed, when it comes to money, the way most investors use those 100 billion neurons or so of grey matter, they might as well not even bother using their brains at all.
Let me give you an example. Think of any year from 1990-2005. Off of the top of your head, take a guess how well your portfolio did that year. Write it down ? this is important (that big dumb brain of yours cannot be trusted to be honest with itself). Now, pull your statement from that year and calculate your gains or losses.
How?d you do? Was the reality as good as you remembered? This is a phenomenon called selective retention. When it comes to details like this, you actually remember what you want to, not what factually occurred. Try it again. Only this time, do it for this year ? 2011. Write it down.
Go pull up your YTD performance online. We?ll wait.
Well, how did you do? Not nearly as well as you imagined, right? Welcome to the human race.
This sort of error is much more commonplace than you might imagine. If we ask any group of automobile owners how good their driving skills are, about 80% will say ?Above average.? The same applies to how well we evaluate our own investing skills. Most of us think we are above average, and nearly all of us believe we are better than we actually are.
(Despite having taken numerous high-performance driving courses and spending a lot of time on various race tracks, I am only an average driver. I know this because my wife reminds me constantly.)
As it turns out, there is a simple reason for this. The worse we are at any specific skill set, the harder it is for us to evaluate our own competency at it. This is called the Dunning?Kruger effect. This precise sort of cognitive deficit means that areas we are least skilled at ? let?s use investing decisions as an example ? also means we lack the ability to identify any investing shortcomings. As it turns out, the same skill set needed to be an outstanding investor is also necessary to have ?metacognition? ? the ability to objectively evaluate one?s own abilities. (This is also true in all other professions.)
Unlike Garrison Keillor?s Lake Wobegon, where all of the children are above average, the bell curve in investing is quite damning. By definition, all investors cannot be above average. Indeed, the odds are high that, like most investors, you will underperform the broad market this year. But it is more than just this year ? ?underperformance? is not merely a 2011 phenomenon. The statistics suggest that 4 out of 5 of you underperformed last year, and the same number will underperform next year, too.
Underperformance is not a disease suffered only by retail investors ? the pros succumb as well. In fact, about 4 out of 5 mutual fund managers underperform their benchmarks every year. These managers engage in many of the same errors that Main Street investors make. They overtrade, they engage in ?groupthink,? they freeze up, some have been even known to sell in a panic. (Do any of these sound familiar to you?)
These kinds of errors seem to be hardwired in us. Humans have evolved to survive in competitive conditions. We developed instincts and survival skills, and passed those on to our descendants. The genetic makeup of our species contains all sorts of elements that were honed over millions of years to give us an edge in surviving long enough to procreate and pass our genes along to our progeny. Our automatic reactions in times of panic are a result of that development arc.
This leads to a variety of problems when it comes to investing in equities: our instincts often betray us. To do well in the capital markets requires developing skills that very often are the opposite of what our survival instincts are telling us. Our emotions compound the problem, often compelling us to make changes at the worst possible times. The panic selling at market lows and greedy chasing as we head into tops are a reflection of these factors.
The sort of grinding market we had in 2011 only exacerbates investor aggravation, and therefore increases poor decision making. Facts and logic go out the window, and thinking gets replaced with naked emotions. We get annoyed, angry, frightened, frustrated ? and that does not help returns. Indeed, our evolutionary ?flight or fight? response developed for a reason ? it helped keep us alive out on the savannah. But the adrenaline necessary to fight a Cro-Magnon or flee from a sabre-toothed tiger does not help us in the capital markets. Indeed, study after study suggests our own wetware works against us; the emotions that helped keep us alive on the plains now hinder our investment performance.
The problem, as it turns out, lies primarily in those large mammalian brains of ours. Our wiring evolved for a specific set of survival challenges, most of which no longer exist. We have cognitive deficits that are by-products of that. Much of our decision making comes with cognitive errors ?secretly? built in. We are often unaware we even have these (for lack of a better word) defects. These cognitive foibles are one of the main reasons that, when it comes to investing, we humans just ain?t built for it.
We Are Tool Makers
But we are not helpless. These large mammalian brains of ours can do a whole lot more than merely overreact to stimulus. We think up new ideas, ponder new tools, and create new technologies. Indeed, our ability to innovate is one of the factors that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
As investors, we can use our big brains to compensate for our known limitations. This means creating tools to help us make better decisions. When battling Mr. Market ? as tough as any Cro-Magnon or sabre-toothed tiger ? it helps to be able to make informed decisions coolly and objectively. If we can manage our emotions and prevent them from causing us to make decisions out of panic or greed, then our investing results will improve dramatically.
So stop being your own third opponent. Jiu jitsu yourself, and learn how to outwit your evolutionary legacy. Use that big ole melon for a change. You just might see some improvement in your portfolio performance.
Individual Investors Have Certain Advantages Over Institutions
One final thought. Smaller investors do not realize that they possess quite a few strategic advantages ? if only they would take advantage of them. Consider these small-investor pluses:
? No benchmark to meet quarterly (or monthly), so you can have longer-term time horizons and different goals;
? You can enter or exit a position without impacting markets;
? There is no public scrutiny of your holdings and no disclosures required, so you don?t have to worry about someone taking your ideas;
? You don?t have to limit yourself to just the largest stocks or worry about position size (this is huge);
? Cost structure, fees, and taxes are within your control;
? You can reverse errors without professional consequences ? you don?t get fired for admitting a mistake;
? You can have longer-term time horizons and different goals;
And with those thoughts, good luck and good trading in 2012!
~~~
This was originally published as part of a longer piece in?Thoughts from the Frontline exactly one year ago, on January 25, 2012.
?
Source: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2013/01/your-three-investing-opponents-2/
Mavericks Surf Stonewall Inaugural Ball Kaepernick kelly clarkson julio jones j crew
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