Abnormal Capitalist

Games People Play

Monthly Investment Outlook from Bill Gross :

Good players know that it is critical to move quickly around the board, make acquisitions and then develop the properties by creating hotels. Three hotels on each property are desirable and of course as every Monopoly pro knows, it’s not Boardwalk or Park Place that are the key holdings but the Oranges and the Reds. Same thing in reality’s markets, I would suggest. Which companies and which investments to overweight and how much leverage to use usually point to the eventual winners. But an ample amount of cash is important as well as you land on other owners’ properties. You need liquidity to pay rent or service debt – otherwise you sell assets at a discounted price and are swiftly out of the game. That reminds me of Lehman Brothers and its aftermath. Early in Monopoly, property is king but later in the game, cash becomes king and those without cash and the ability to get it go bankrupt.

→ Janus Capital

Solving an Unsolvable Math Problem

In “The Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field,” published in 1945, Jacques Hadamard quotes a mathematician who says, “It often seems to me, especially when I am alone, that I find myself in another world. Ideas of numbers seem to live. Suddenly, questions of any kind rise before my eyes with their answers.” In the back yard, Zhang had a similar experience. “I see numbers, equations, and something even—it’s hard to say what it is,” Zhang said. “Something very special. Maybe numbers, maybe equations—a mystery, maybe a vision. I knew that, even though there were many details to fill in, we should have a proof. Then I went back to the house.”

→ The New Yorker

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(App Store) Bigger than Hollywood

Although the totals for Domestic (US) Box Office are not the complete Hollywood revenues picture, Apple’s App Store billings is not the complete App revenue picture either. The Apps economy includes Android and ads and service businesses and custom development. Including all revenues, apps are still likely to be bigger than Hollywood.

But there’s more to the story. It’s also likely that the App industry is healthier. On an individual level, some App developers earn more than Hollywood stars and I would guess that the median income of app developers is higher than the median income of actors. The app economy sustains more jobs (627,000 iOS jobs in the US vs. 374,000 in Hollywood) and is easier to enter and has wider reach. As the graph below shows It’s also growing far more rapidly.

→ Asymco

Pour Ahmad et Charlie

If there’s a parallel to be drawn between jihadists and cartoonists, I think it lays beneath the fact that both are soldiers. To me, mudjahids, as jihadists like to call themselves, refer to the soldiers that Commandant Massoud — Ahmad Massoud — commended in a fight against the Soviet army and Talibans. The Lion of Panjshir used to fight for civils, women and freedom, while talibans were spreading chaos and fear, all over the land.

So to be perfectly true to history, I think these armed jihadists are usurping the title from a glorious army who fought for a noble cause, and so they should be called talibans. On the other hand, cartoonists and especially Charlie Hebdo followed the path of Massoud in a way, by fighting for freedom – with pencils, so I think they are the true mudjahids.

On January 7th of 2015, two armed men stormed the hidden, yet joyful place that used to be home for freedom and french values. In Charlie Hebdo, they killed 10 or 12 highly talented people in God’s name. Just to make a point, I’m not willing to paraphrase them — they actually say “Allah” — ‘cause it’s disturbing to me in a sense that they must not have the same God as other Muslims. So in their God’s name, they made one of the most brutal and gruesome attack against not only journalists, not only Parisians, not only French, not only Muslims, but against the whole humanity.

As a proof, I don’t recall any French event that drove so many attention around the world. Roughly 4 million people marched the streets from the Republique to the Nation’s plaza, in memoriam of the victims. This made a statement : we the French people will forever fight for freedom of speech, against hate and violence, against terrorism. This was a deeply emotional moment, in which french reconciled with their old complains : the police, immigrants, religion. This happened at a time when the nation was divided, as if we needed chaos to meet unity. Like the Masonic mantra says : Ordo ab Chao (Order came at from Chaos).

I want to conclude with the following Afghan poem, I’m sure it would have pleased Ahmad :

In the order we are born
we enter the streets
to follow the clocks of the dandelions
that tell the candles’ life
We are reborn
one in India, one in the wasteland of Hijaz, both in search of
the one born down a well in Isfahan
In the beginning
we learn the name of the wind
the name of the rain
In the beginning
we learn the names of spring and winter
and we rummage through everything
until we find death

Note : don’t get mad at me for laughing at a moment, I was having some beers and had a stomach issue.

Context : this is a work for an English class, regarding Charlie Hebdo. My thoughts also goes to the victims from the kosher supermarket. I will pray for them on friday’s Sabbat.