For many professionals it seems, Sunday is less a “day off” than it is to do similar things as you might do while “at work” but without the infrastructure and bureaucracy of being “on the job.”
Category: Finance
The Secret Science of Stock Symbols
We separated stocks with pronounceable ticker symbols from those with unpronounceable symbols. Across both markets, stocks with pronounceable symbols enjoyed a bigger post-I.P.O. boost than their unpronounceable counterparts. The effect was strongest during the first few days of trading; over time, it weakened, but never quite vanished.
Big Data’s Little Brother
Standard statistics might project next summer’s ice cream sales. The aim of people working on newer Big Data systems is to collect seemingly unconnected information like today’s heat and cloud cover, and a hometown team’s victory over the weekend, compare that with past weather and sports outcomes, and figure out how much mint chip ice cream mothers would buy today.
Shadow Banking And The Global Financial Ecosystem
In either case, the fundamental problem we are dealing with is a financial ecosystem that has outgrown the safety net that was put around it many years ago. Today we have new types of savers (cash portfolio managers versus retail depositors), new types of borrowers (risk portfolio managers to fund pensions versus ultimate borrowers to finance investments and consumption) and new types of banks (dealer banks that do securities financing versus traditional banks that finance the real economy more directly via loans) to whom discount window access and deposit insurance do not apply.
These twin pillars of the official safety net were erected around traditional, deposit-funded banks to address retail runs. In contrast, the crisis of 2007–09 was a crisis of institutional runs where cash portfolio managers ran on dealers, and dealers ran on risk portfolio managers. But importantly – as the examples above demonstrate – beyond the institutional façade of the ecosystem it is ultimately real wealth and promises that are at stake.
We are Founders, and We are Afraid
Fear doesn’t go away, it simply evolves. And that’s okay, because it’s the fear that drives us—but it’s up to us to embrace that fear and channel it, rather than let it drown us. It’s up to us to recognize the fears and go after them. It’s the scary parts of our business (like talking to potential clients to make a sale, or firing a troubling employee) that play the most critical roles.
Abnormal Capitalist 