Betting on housing
recovery by simply buying houses: Meet David N. Miller, former Treasury
official who now runs Silver Bay Realty. The business is about buying thousands
of foreclosed single-family homes on the cheap through bank auctions, multiple
listing services, short sales and bulk purchases from local investors in need
of cash, with plans to fix up the properties, rent them out and watch their
values soar as the industry rebounds. The realty is about to go public. [Note:
The good old value investing never dies]…Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/business/financiers-bet-on-rental-housing.html?pagewanted=1
Hedge funds fall out
of love with equities: assets in fixed income hedge funds are poised to
overtake those in equity trading strategies for the first time in the history
of the $2tn industry. The dramatic shift comes as investors continue their
search for steady returns even as warnings intensify about the danger of owning
bonds offering very low yields. [Note: I read it more of a sign of bond market
reversal]…Source: http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e23a646c-40b6-11e2-aafa-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2Eb7CZ1AL
Quest to eliminate
diagnostic lapses with a computer: Can a computer become a top-notch
clinical diagnostician? Yes—as long as it can (1) separate signals from noise
and (2) match complex medical patterns/profiles—and probably with (a) no
anchoring bias and (b) does not suffer from the law of availability. As Watson
demonstrated pushed language interpretation and data retrieval to new heights,
the day with a computer doctor might not be that far away. [Note: Essentially a
stats problem matching the patient’s case and millions of available cases, it
is definitely solvable]…Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/04/health/quest-to-eliminate-diagnostic-lapses.html?pagewanted=2
Elon Musk’s next-generation
ecosystem: Now that Tesla S was named car of the year, Elon has grander
visions: also being the chairman of SolarCity, his plan is to set up free
solar-powered supercharger stations for Tesla across the nation. This is some
enviable vertical integration. In essence, he’s marketing the cars at premium
and giving away the gas, the opposite of HP’s much despised
sell-the-printer-for-cheap-and-gouge-consumers-on-the-cartridges approach.
Along the side, Musk could franchise the space around these Superchargers, and
he could control an entire ecosystem and lock down customers who have bought
into his zero-emissions vision for years to come. [Note: The real Tony Stark,
but I wouldn’t want to back his projects]…Source: http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/02/why-tesla-is-like-amazon-and-elon-musk-like-jeff-bezos/
Are you biased toward
vivid data? We all pay undue attention to a good story. Information that
has an emotional impact gobbles up attention. Dry information is ignored. As
you try to accomplish something you may find that the bankruptcy of one
competitor holds your attention more than an improved product being marketed by
another. At work no one has packaged important information to make it easy to
take in. Source: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0887309585/farnamstreet-20
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