What does Warner Bros. have in common with the Chinese communist party? Well, both ‘organizations’ are looking for volunteers to spy on their peers, though there are some slight differences when it comes to the reason behind this. Torrentfreak reports that the major Hollywood studio is looking for students from The University of Manchester in the UK … (read more)
Author: Serkadis
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Warner Bros. Is Looking for Anti-Piracy Spies
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Oficial: Novo Ford Focus RS 500 é revelado
A Ford acaba de divulgar oficialmente o novo Focus RS 500, a versão mais apimentada que a companhia fez de seu hatch. Seu motor de 2.5 litros foi revisto pelo preparadora de veículos britânica Mountune, ganhando cerca de 15% de potencia extra, contando agora com 345 cavalos.
Dessa forma, seu sistema de injeção foi reprogramada pra saciar a fome de seus cavalos extras. Além disso, o esportivo hatch contou com novo sistema de escapamento menos restritivo e uma nova bomba de combustível, agora mais potente. Com isso o Ford Focus RS 500 faz de 0 a 100 km/h em 5,6 segundos e atinge a velocidade máxima de 265 km/h.
Após uma baterias de testes realizados por uma equipe de três pilotos no circuito de Nurburgring, a Ford conclui que a parte estrutural do modelo, assim como suspensão e freios não precisaram ser redimensionadas. Mesmo assim o novo Ford Focus RS 500 conta com o sistema de diferencial de deslizamento limitado chamado Quaif e o RevoKnucle nas suas rodas dianteiras.
Por fora o hot-hatch ganhou uma exclusiva e única pintura em preto fosco além de rodas esportivas também pintadas de preto de 19 polegadas. Seu interior conta com bancos estilo de competição Recaro na cor vermelha, além de uma placa identificando a numeração de série do veiculo, que vai de 1 a 500.
A apresentação do Ford Focus RS 500 acontecerá no Salão do Automóvel da Alemanha, a ser realizada na cidade de Leipzig e deverá chegar as concessionarias na Europa no mês de junho ou julho com um valor estimado em R$ 94.000.
Fonte: AutoExpress
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Ford Focus RS500 hacks out onto the Internet ahead of schedule
Filed under: Performance, Europe, Hatchback, Ford, UK
2011 Ford Focus RS500 – click above for high-res image galleryWe’ve been waiting patiently for the digital reveal of the stonking new Ford Focus RS500, but apparently others aren’t quite so couth. According to one of our inside sources at the Blue Oval, the RS500’s site was breached and the pictures have begun leaking out onto desktops in Europe. In response, Ford of Europe has announced that “Due to overwhelming interest shown for the new Ford Focus RS500, Ford has decided to release more information today.” Uh-huh. Admittedly, while we can’t condone the hacker’s methodology, judging by these photographs we can understand their hurry, because Ford’s latest limited-edition hot hatch looks to be a real corker.
Powered by a 2.5-liter five-cylinder that gives 350 PS and 460 Nm of torque (that’s 345 horsepower and 339 pound-feet to us Yanks), the RS500 offers an appreciable boost over the standard – and still bonkers – Focus RS and its 305 horsepower and 325 lb-ft. We’re assuming that like the ‘base’ RS that all that power gets funneled through the front wheels, which, even with Ford’s trick RevoKnuckle front suspension and Quaife limited-slip differential, figures to be something of a handful. An entertaining handful, we’re sure, but a handful nevertheless. Ford hasn’t released full details yet, but the current RS hits 62 mph in under six seconds and blasts to 162 mph.
If you see one of these beasties on the road (you’ll know them by
the trail of deadtheir 19-inch wheels and serialized one-of-500 dashboard plaques, and at least judging by the pictures above, their matte black paint), you might want to take ask for a ride – or at least take a picture. The entire 2011 production run will be spread out over 20 European markets, with the U.K. predictably getting the most (101 units), Germany getting 55 cars, France receiving 50, tiny Belgium punching above its weight with 50 units of its own, and trickling on down until the hatches get to the likes of Denmark, the Czech Republic, and Greece (five units each) and Ireland, which will receive just three.If you’re interested in picking one up and you live in one of the twenty EDM markets that the RS500 will be sold in, might we kindly suggest that you stop looking at your computer screen and get on the phone to your local dealer now? For everyone else, you’ll want to check back on Wednesday, March 31 when Ford releases more information, along with added frippery like ringtones, video snippets and so on. Top tip, Helmut!
Gallery: 2011 Ford Focus RS500 (Europe)
[Source: Ford]
Ford Focus RS500 hacks out onto the Internet ahead of schedule originally appeared on Autoblog on Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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James Cameron: Innovation Trumps Any Piracy Threat
Nearly a year ago, Techdirt reader Parker Mason had submitted a story to us, suggesting that the amazing visuals and 3D + IMAX aspect of Avatar was a perfect example of adding value to movies that would give people a real reason to go to the theater. I actually kept that story open in a tab for months, intending to write it up, and I never got around to it — and, to be honest, I wasn’t entirely convinced that Avatar would really get a huge reception. Don’t I look foolish? Yes, Avatar obviously has been a blockbuster of blockbuster proportions — in part because of exactly those points. People want that greater experience and I was certainly among those who ponied up for the full 3D IMAX version (and not the fake IMAX version either — thanks to a friend who reminded me of that bit of deception).
It looks like James Cameron recognizes all this as well. Nastybutler77 was the first of a bunch of you to point to Cameron’s claim that innovation trumps “piracy,” which he made onstage at CTIA:
“In film we have definitely felt threatened by piracy,” he said. “We saw the music industry crash and burn in its efforts to stop it. But with G4 (I think he meant 4G wireless) and Moore’s Law, you can’t fight it….”“The music industry saw it coming, they tried to stop it, and they got rolled over,” he said. “Then they started suing everybody. And now it is what it is.”
Instead, Cameron said he has tried to innovate to give movie goers a reason to go to theater. And in creating a rich, “reinvigorated cinema experience,” Cameron said he discovered that people are willing to pay money to experience the same content in different ways. Not only are they willing to pay $10 or more to see Avatar on the big screen in 3D, but they also will pay to own the DVD and to take it with them on their phone or portable device.
“People are discriminating about the experience,” he said. “They want to own it, have it on a iPhone when they want it, and they want the social experience of going to the cinema. These are really different experiences. And I think they can all co-exist in the same eco-system.”
Indeed. It’s great that he’s recognizing this. The other interesting point he made was that they’re going to release the Avatar DVD while the film is still showing in the theaters — in part because the show is still doing well in the theaters. Of course, many theaters have complained about how they don’t want shorter release windows (or, horror of horrors, the idea of releasing a movie in the theater and on DVD at the same time). However, it will be interesting to see whether the DVD release, while the movie is still in some theaters, leads to at least a little bump in box office sales for the movie, as people who watch it on DVD decide they want to see it on the big screen.
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Discounted comedy flicks on UK Video Store this April Fool’s
Not much of a prankster? Instead of playing dumb tricks on your friends who might kick your dumb arse this April Fool’s, why not download youself some discounted comedy flicks from the Video Store?
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BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger shipped to the UK
Zen United has confirmed that BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger has shipped to the United Kingdom and will be on retail by the 2nd of April in both standalone and its limited edition (qjnet/playstation-3/europe-getting-blazblue-calamity-trigger-le.html).
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Facebook to Launch Universal 'Like' Button, Chat Toolbar
There are very few companies as determined as Google to take over the web and only one in a position to do so, Facebook. The social-networking giant is getting ready to unveil more features, which would allow it to ‘infiltrate’ even more sites around the web than it has so far. One feature is a ‘like’ button, which third-party sites would be… (read more) -
I never imagined the town hall Nazis would go quite so mad by Richard Littlejohn, Daily Mail
Article Tags: Book, Richard Littlejohn
The Mail’s incomparable Richard Littlejohn has been New Labour’s most perceptive critic.
Now he has written a book excoriating the political pygmies and crooks who’ve wrecked Britain over the past 13 years.
On Saturday, in this brilliant series, he gave us the extraordinary revelation that he nearly became a Labour MP.
Here, he explains how the diversity Nazis have ruined our town halls …
Thirteen years of New Labour rule have made our lives a misery where it matters most to us – on our unswept streets and in our own bin-cluttered backyards.
We all depend on the services provided by local councils, yet these days they are run for the benefit of those who work there, not for the people who pay for them.
Click source to read FULL article by Richard Littlejohn
Source: dailymail.co.uk
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Not So Green Hydrogen Buses Reshipped to London
Critics have been talking about how the Transport for London project which includes building several H2 buses for the British metropolitan area is not as green of a project as it appears. And, they have a point.
The five hydrogen powered buses will be build in Northern Ireland, then shipped 17,240 miles roundtrip to San Diego, California. According to the London Evening Standard, “The vehicles themselves will have been built only 350 miles away from London in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, but will then be shipped at least 8,620 miles to San Diego in California for engines to be installed.”
This means the buses will spend weeks on a large diesel powered cargo ship, which will emit tons of pollution into the air. One wonders if it would not be cheaper and greener to fly the engineers and equipment out from San Diego to London?
Now one may argue that since this is such a specialty item and process, there are very few choices right now in companies that can deal with this sort of thing and in the future as the technology develops and more companies come on board, then the complete development of buses (and cars) can be accomplished closer to home.
This was one of the arguments U. S. Congressman Eric Massa was trying to make when he drove a Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell part of the way from upstate New York to Washington DC for his swearing in event. Two Chevy Tahoe Hybrid SUV’s were used to toe two Equinox FCV’s part of the way because of the lack of hydrogen fueling infrastructure.
Personally, I think he was covering his behind on this one (or it was an ill-conceived plan from the start) simply because he could have made arrangements for portable hydrogen fueling stations to be part of the ride or use a Toyota FCHV-adv, which does have sufficient range for the journey.
The critics were right to argue that this was not as green of a trip as it was promoted to be. When advocating for hydrogen technology we need to be vigilant of the valid points the critics will surely make when we take on a project.
We must not try to disguise the larger than expected carbon footprint or spin it like Fiji water does with their green program only to ship their products halfway around the world on diesel cargo ships similar to the Transport for London project.
By being upfront about the pitfalls of hydrogen development, we can first avoid negative publicity after the fact, and second, listen to the criticism and try to come up with greener solutions. Third, if the problem cannot be avoided in the short term, then give the media a long term solution upfront.
Valid criticisms and solutions have to be part of the hydrogen development process. Without valid criticism and finding solutions based upon the criticism, the whole development process is being bogged down.
More transparency is a popular theme now days in Washington DC (though its implementation has been dubious) and the same holds true for hydrogen R&D. Transparency not only means accountability but coming up with creative solutions to complex problems which will ultimately speed up the progress in hydrogen transportation development in a “do it right the first time” approach.
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This week on NintendoWare: WarioWare, Diner Dash, Ogre Battle 64
Quite a big update for Nintendo’s online stores this week, especially if you consider we’ve been getting ho-hums and mehs lately. For starters, Flo’s business expands to yet another platform, making Diner Dash available for Wii owners.
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Here’s What Day Traders Don’t Understand
As we explained earlier, day-trading is one of the dumbest jobs there is: According to one academic study, 4 out of 5 people who do it lose money and only 1 in 100 do it well enough to be described as “predictably profitable.”
Most of the folks who do it, in other words, would be far better off working at Burger King.
As is often the case when we bring up these facts, some readers screamed. One said that our brain-damage was made patently obvious by the fact that Wall Street professionals day-trade all day. If day-trading were so dumb, then why would professionals do it?
Here’s what that particular reader is missing:
Most Wall Street traders get paid to day-trade other people’s money.*
That’s a huge difference compared to what most stay-at-home day-traders do.
The average professional trader gets paid somewhere between 1% and 3% of assets per year just to trade those assets all day. The average hedge-fund trader gets paid another 20% on top of that for any “gains” he or she makes (regardless of whether the gains are the result of the trader’s trading or the bull market).
The average stay-at-home day-trader, meanwhile, trades his or her own money. And while many of these traders do fine on a gross basis (before costs), once the costs of this trading are deducted (commissions, taxes, research and information, time), their performance is usually downright awful.
The reason so many professionals day-trade, in other words, is that getting paid to day-trade other people’s money is one of the best businesses in the world.
Day-trading your OWN money, meanwhile, is one of the worst.
* There’s another difference, too, of course: Most Wall Street traders have skills, information, and tools that day-traders can only dream of. Trading is a zero-sum game: Market moves aside, every dollar won by one trader comes out of the pocket of another trader. Day traders competing against Wall Streeters is the equivalent of a college football team (or Pee Wee team, depending on the day-trader’s skill) competing against a pro team. Is it possible to win? Yes. But it’s highly unlikely (1 in 100). Wall Street’s winnings do have to come from somewhere, though, so Wall Street thanks the day traders for playing.
See Also: Must Be A Bull Market: The Dumbest Job Ever, Day Trading, Is Cool Again
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Ruthlessly Realistic: How CEOs Must Overcome Denial
Q&A with: Richard S. Tedlow Published: March 29, 2010 Author: Martha Lagace Reviewing a spectacular business failure, we often wonder why the CEO didn’t see trouble coming. It was so obvious.
Why didn’t Digital Equipment Corp. CEO Kenneth Olsen see the PC as a threat to minicomputers? Did Coca-Cola’s Roberto Goizueta really think New Coke was a good idea? How long did Henry Ford think he could keep selling black-only Model Ts?
“Denial has always been a problem,” writes Harvard Business School historian Richard S. Tedlow in a new book, Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face-and What to Do About It. “What is different today is that the cost of denial has become so high. We are living in a less forgiving world than we once did.”
We asked Tedlow to discuss how denial can cripple a company, and what can be done about it.
Martha Lagace: What is the meaning of denial as you conceptualize it in your book?
Richard Tedlow: Denial is the unwillingness to acknowledge and deal with reality. It is the choice—sometimes willful, sometimes unconscious, often semiconscious—to enter an “as if” world, to act “as if” facts are not facts because they are difficult to face.
Sigmund Freud referred to denial as a combination of “knowing with not knowing,” a phrase that has been defined as a “state of rational apprehension that does not result in appropriate action.” In her brilliant study of the disastrous decision to launch the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, sociologist Diane Vaughan used a similar phrase, “seeing but not seeing.”
From the consulting couch to the launch pad, denial is ubiquitous. You find it in individuals, in teams, in companies, in industries. Indeed, you find it in entire nations and economies. Look at the invasion of Iraq, or the dot-com bubble of the 1990s, or the residential housing and commercial real-estate bubble of the past few years, or the fantasy that the market for derivatives could somehow regulate itself—the consequences of all we are dealing with this very day.
Denial is not merely being wrong. Everybody makes mistakes. Denial is falling into a cognitive Bermuda Triangle. Everything is clear, yet you lose your bearings.
Q: How pernicious a problem is denial in business today?
A: Denial has always been a problem. What is different today is that the cost of denial has become so high. We are living in a less forgiving world than we once did.
Here’s an example. General Motors had a dysfunctional business model for decades. Shrewd observers knew it. The company did not transform itself because it could continue to coast along, living in the reflected aura of its past glory.
GM’s leadership acted in 2008 as if it were 1998 or 1988. It wasn’t. And the inconceivable happened—this once-great firm went bankrupt.
Q: Given that a CEO’s role is often to keep the company energy high and to stoke optimism among employees, are CEOs by virtue of their position especially prone to denial? How could they better blend optimism and realism?
A: Accentuating the positive for employees or others is not denial, as long as you yourself are fully confronting reality. In fact, there may be times when it is prudent, even necessary, to put on a brave face.
On the other hand, convincing yourself that things are better than, or different from, what they really are is never prudent, and often disastrous. So the key is to be ruthlessly realistic with oneself. As I hope the book makes clear, this is one of the greatest challenges for any CEO.
Q: The Innovator’s Dilemma by HBS professor Clayton Christensen illustrated how formerly successful incumbents can be blindsided by more nimble competitors. Do you see denial as a particular risk for large, established organizations as much as for young, entrepreneurial firms? Is denial a predictable downside to success?
A: Denial is more endemic to older firms because it so often results from stubborn adherence to a once-accurate perception of reality that has gradually become obsolete. In the words of John Kenneth Galbraith, one’s view of the world “remains with the comfortable and the familiar, while the world moves on.”
Henry Ford saw more clearly than most the widespread hunger for inexpensive, motorized transportation. That vision made great successes of him and his company. But eventually, when sales of his breakthrough, no-frills Model T began to flag because car buyers became interested in style, not just functionality, Ford refused to face facts. He denied that the world had moved on. And his once-dominant company paid the price.
Established firms, which by definition have enjoyed some measure of success, are more likely to deny new realities because the old ones worked well for them. Young enterprises are not similarly weighed down by the dead hand of history. But that does not mean that they are immune to denial—far from it.
Q: Companies you describe as crippled by denial include the supermarket chain A&P, the retail conglomerate Sears, and the short-lived delivery experiment Webvan. How did these companies succumb to denial?
A: To paraphrase Tolstoy, every company in denial denies in its own way. To oversimplify a bit, Sears was an example of a firm leaving its market, while in A&P’s case, the market left the firm. Both were like the proverbial frog being boiled in a gradually warming pot of water. By the time they realized what was happening, the opportunity for confronting the facts and doing something about them had passed.
Webvan is an example of the fact that, as noted above, being young and entrepreneurial is no safeguard against denial. Webvan’s backers convinced themselves that the dot-com gold rush was a permanent new reality rather than just another bubble. They were also blind to the obvious flaws in their business model—defects that numerous outsiders noted from day one. It was a classic case of wishful thinking.
Q: How can managers without executive authority spot the warning signs of denial and help reverse the process before it’s too late?
A: It is often middle managers who are best acquainted with new realities. As Andy Grove has noted, these are the people who are out on the front lines while top management is ensconced at the home office, cushioned from the daily reality of the rough-and-tumble of the marketplace. “Snow,” he wrote in Only the Paranoid Survive, “melts first at the periphery.” Problems, in other words, appear initially at the borders.
Unfortunately, when middle managers actually raise these problems—especially those that contradict the firm’s prevailing assumptions and conventional wisdom—they are often ignored, or worse. Henry Ford, for example, fired the executive who dared “speak truth to power” about Ford’s Model T myopia—and this man, Ernest Kanzler, was his relative! (He was the brother-in-law of Ford’s only child, Edsel.)
A firm that deals with bad news by literally or figuratively dismissing the person who bears it is both in denial and in trouble. Not only will that news go unheard but potential truth-tellers will quickly learn to keep quiet. Or get out.
Q: What is it about IBM and Intel that saved them from the fate of other companies that fell victim to denial?
A: One key factor in IBM’s 1990s turnaround (after having denied its way through the PC revolution that it helped create in the 1980s) was its decision to bring in an outsider as CEO. Lou Gerstner was able to reimagine and reshape what had become a calcified corporate culture. The fact that he was alien to that culture, and vice versa, was enormously helpful.
You don’t necessarily need an outsider to provide an outside perspective, however. Occasionally a creative, clear-headed insider can break free of both his company’s and his own preconceptions by adopting a novel point of view.
This was demonstrated by Andy Grove in 1985, when he and his boss, Gordon Moore, were fighting what appeared to be a losing battle against an impossible business dilemma. In the midst of their aimless wandering, Grove asked Moore, “If the board kicked us out and brought in new management, what do you think they would do?” Suddenly the answer to Intel’s dilemma became clear to both men. Grove’s deceptively simple question stripped the blinders of denial from their eyes. It allowed them to see the situation afresh, face it squarely, and make what had instantly become the obvious choice.
Grove’s question did not make either man smarter. Both were, and are, smart enough. So were the men who had led IBM to near-disaster in the 1980s. Fighting denial is not a matter of IQ. It is a matter of point of view.
Excerpt from Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face—And What to Do About It
By Richard S. Tedlow
The A&P had for most of its history been the low-price-grocery leader. But this is a position you can only hold if your costs are lower than your competitors. Through its steady disinvestment in its stores, through its high-priced union contracts, through its ill-advised store-site-location practices, and through a dozen other avoidable errors the A&P lost that position. This fact it learned the hard way in 1972 when it launched a price war.
The hostilities were conducted under the banner of WEO, which was supposed to stand for “Where Economy Originates.” This ugly, clumsy slogan, which sounded like “we owe,” heralded a catastrophic year for the company. Sales increased but losses skyrocketed. A&P lost the price war it started, proving only that it could give away the store.
The most puzzling aspect of the price war is why A&P initiated it. During 1971, published figures—please note that everyone knew this; none of it was secret-indicated that the A&P’s stores were inferior to those of the four other leading chains. Sales per employee, for example, were almost 45 percent lower than at Jewel. Sales per store were almost 60 percent lower than at Food Fair.
What did A&P’s stores look like in the early 1970s? Here are the recollections of an enraged top executive who started out with the company as a part-time store clerk in the summer of 1938:
“After almost twenty years of steady decline and cutbacks, a debilitating paralysis had overtaken most stores in a growing number of divisions. The symptoms were visible and similar. These stores had few customers and did little business, but were open long hours, often seven days and six nights. These stores were obviously short of help, shelves were poorly stocked. What carriages were on hand were usually out in the parking lot. Only one of the six check stands was operating, with no bagger to help shorten the checkout wait. Advertised sales features were often missing from the shelves, dairy, produce, and meat cases. Most times, and particularly at night, no employees were available to assist customers seeking a cut of meat not on display, or to check backroom stock for sale items missing from shelves, or even to scale and price produce items or grind A&P’s bean coffees. Cleanliness and courtesy standards, freshness and quality standards, shelf-stocking and checkout standards, and store employee morale all deteriorated at the same grinding steady pace.”
Take a good long look at that last sentence. That “same grinding steady pace.” It was the steady downward slide that made it possible year after year to deny that things were getting as bad as they became. I am old enough to remember what an A&P looked like in the early 1970s. The contrast with the mid-1950s was stark. But it had gone to pieces by degrees. Moreover, many things went wrong, not one big thing. The cumulative effects of the slow collapse were easy to deny.
The sad story of denial at the A&P leaves us with a set of questions. What if Bofinger had lived? The seeds of destruction were sown during Ralph Burger’s tenure, but he was not around at harvesttime. What if it had been Bofinger rather than Burger?
Perhaps it would not have made much difference. Bofinger had a lot of operating experience that Burger did not, but he was still very much part of the company’s gerontocracy. What if John Hartford had had a son who was bound and determined that he could post a better record at the company than his father did? That is what happened at IBM. Thomas J. Watson Sr. had built IBM from a motley collection of cats and dogs into a uniquely powerful firm in a growing industry. His equally ambitious son pushed the company to its limits, presiding over the creation of the IBM 360 in 1964, one of the greatest new-product introductions in American business history. In that case, things would, in all probability, have been different. One person with power—the CEO—can make a key difference in even the biggest, stodgiest of bureaucratic companies.
Why did the company not look more deeply into the quality of its sales and earnings? Why didn’t it think more strategically about its reinvestment policy? Why did it pay out so much money in dividends? Why didn’t it devote more attention to its executive-development program? When the company went public in 1958, it put six outside directors on its board. One of these was Donald K. David, dean emeritus of the Harvard Business School. Surely he could have designed an executive-education program that could have fast-tracked young talent.
More questions could be asked. They are not easy to answer. My own view is that the closest we will get to an answer is the quotation in the title of this chapter: “They just didn’t believe these things were happening.” That statement, made by a former A&P executive in 1973, captures the essence of denial. You didn’t have to be a genius to see “these things.” Thanks to the transparency of retailing, all you had to do was to walk into a store and try to buy a steak, try to buy broccoli, watch your child scream for Tony the Tiger when all you could buy was Ann Page cereal, wait for what seemed like ages at the checkout counter, and so on.
This answer raises another question. Why didn’t they “believe these things were happening”? Because, I think, they saw everything through the lens of their history of market leadership. They felt that because they had been leaders for so long, every problem was an outlier, a blip on the screen, not a harbinger of things to come.
All over the country, grocery retailers in the 1950s and 1960s were moving faster and looking better than the A&P. But for a while, especially during the 1950s, the A&P was growing smartly as well. What the company collectively denied was that it is not okay merely to grow. If you grow in absolute terms but decline relative to other firms in your industry, you are going to sacrifice the sharpest, most ambitious executives you have. The less talented will hang around.
The A&P was not destroyed by fire. It rusted. This is the same process, but less dramatic, slower, and therefore easier to deny. “This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot wrote in “The Hollow Men.” “Not with a bang but a whimper.”
About the author
Martha Lagace is the senior editor of HBS Working Knowledge.
Reprinted with permission of Richard S. Tedlow. Copyright © Richard S. Tedlow, 2010. Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face—And What to Do About It. New York: Portfolio, a member of the Penguin Group (USA), Inc. 2010. All rights reserved.
Purchase this book. -
Must Be A Bull Market: The Dumbest Job Ever, Day Trading, Is Cool Again
Apparently, day trading is back. The New York Times says so. So it must be.
And that’s fine for those who understand that day trading is a nearly sure-fire way to do worse in the market than you would if you owned a low-cost tax-efficient index fund.
Because the vast majority of day traders will do worse than index funds. Even though they’re spending all day trading.
Of course, a big chunk of those day traders won’t know they’re doing worse than index funds. Because they’ll look only at their gross trading returns. In so doing, they will ignore:
- Brokerage commissions
- Taxes (~50% on short-term gains)
- Research costs
- The opportunity cost of the hours and hours they spend trading (which could be spent doing something else).
But stocks are going up again, which means lots of day traders are making money (because that’s what happens when stocks go up–traders make money). And so day trading is fun and cool again.
Consider the fun one day trader was having the other morning, as described by the New York Times:
[A]nyone hoping to join the day-trade caravan had better wear a seat belt, as Mr. Lindloff’s experience on this Wednesday morning demonstrates. Before lunch, he will buy and sell about 44,000 shares, in 17 trades. He starts off poorly, losing about $500. But a timely bet on a company called Rackspace Hosting (“I don’t know what they do,” he says), as well as quick investments in Applied Materials, Eagle Bulk Shipping and a few others, have turned things around.
“Up $210,” he says, removing his headset. Factoring in commissions, he’s made $60.
Which means that, after factoring in taxes, he’s up $30. Which, pro-rated, is about $8 an hour. But it was fun.
Academics like Brad Barber and Terrance Odean have studied the investment performance of day traders in detail. Not surprisingly, it’s ghastly. Here’s more from the NYT:
The great mass of studies point to the same conclusion: trading is hazardous to your wealth…. The losers far outnumber the winners…
The authors sifted through tens of millions of trades, from 1992 to 2006, and found that 80 percent of active traders lost money.
“More importantly, we found that if you were to look at the past performance of these traders, only 1 percent of them could be called predictably profitable,” says a co-author, Brad M. Barber, a finance professor at the University of California, Davis. Everyone else, it seems, was on a short-term winning streak. Even those who did modestly well found their that profits were wiped out, and then some, by transaction fees like commissions and taxes.
“It’s not impossible to make money actively trading,” Mr. Barber continues. “There are slivers of people out there who are quite good. And everyone thinks they will be in that group of 1 percent.”
Those are some powerful numbers, so let’s review them again:
- 80% of day traders in the study lost money (something that is very hard to do in a bull market)
- Only 1% of day traders in the study were “predictably profitable.”
Put differently, far from this being an enriching line of work, 4 out of 5 people engaged in it pay to do it. Only 1 in 100, meanwhile, make enough to be worth writing home about.
The folks who predictably make money from day trading, of course, are the folks who sell traders tools for their day trading: Information courses, “how-to” advice, data streams, stock charts, technical analysis, trading clubs, investment advice, stock picks, you name it. Those folks do quite well from day-trading. Unless they’re dumb enough to actually trade.
But day trading is fun. Right? And it’s cool again. So, by all means, have at it.
See Also: Here’s What Day Traders Don’t Get
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Landscape Architects Sweep HB:BX Awards
The Emerging New York Architects Committee (ENYA) of the American Institute of Architects announced the winners of its HB:BX ideas competition, which generated concepts for an arts center that “culturally reinforces the physical connection between the Manhattan and Bronx Highbridge communities of New York City.” According to the ENYA, the competition was developed in cooperation with Artists Unite and the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and it is meant to draw attention to efforts to restore and reopen the bridge. Some $9,000 in prize money was given to the top three place winners, including $1,000 to the winning student submission. There were more than 170 submissions from 43 countries.Winners include:
First place: Keith VanDerSys, Marguerite Graham, Marisa Bernstein & Young-Joon Choi of Philadelphia, PA, USA. Principal, PEG office of landscape + architecture
PEG describes their winning entry: “Ripple Effect is a network of social spaces organized to entwine the cultural, environmental, and historical contexts that make Highbridge unique. Our proposal is a circuit of displays, interlacing the programs of art, recreation and landscape in order to create unique or unexpected adjacencies among them.”
Bustler offers a detailed look at PEG’s Ripple Effect idea.
2nd place: Tetsuya Kawano, Julien Boulley & Chol Pak of Paris, France.
Third place: Yekaterina Yushmanova of Albuquerque, NM, USA. Student of Landscape Architecture, University of New Mexico
Student prize: Kristina Guist of Albuquerque, NM, USA. Student of Landscape Architecture, University of New Mexico
ENYA said the competition would encourage emerging architects to look into how to reuse existing infrastructure. The competition asks how can ”disused historic structures” be “reprogrammed into vibrant urban centers.” Competition entrants are also asked to examine the relationship between “infrastructure (aqueduct, railway, highway) and it’s urban context.”
Learn more about the winning projects.
Also, the Topos 2010 Landscape Architecture Award went to stossLU, a landscape design and planning firm led by Harvard Professor Chris Reed. Learn more about Chris Reed and his firm’s work.
Image credit: ENYA / HB:BX Competition
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How SamCam’s super-rich father is coining £3.5m from taxpayer… to fund wind turbines by Tom Kelly, Mail on Sunday
Article Tags: Windfarms
David Cameron’s father-in-law is among rich landowners cashing in on Labour’s green subsidies, with a wind farm generating an estimated £3.5million a year on his country estate.
Sir Reginald Sheffield, 63, who is worth at least £20million, splits the profits with the project’s developers.
Around half of the income comes from a government scheme to make power companies use more renewable energy, much of it bought from private generators. It is subsidised by every household, via their electricity bills.
Sir Reginald’s eight 400ft turbines were switched on last August at Bagmoor, part of the 3,000-acre Normanby Hall estate near Scunthorpe that has been in his family since the 16th century.
He plans a second development at nearby Flixborough Grange, despite fierce opposition from locals.
Samantha Cameron, 38, is the elder of his two daughters by his first marriage to Annabel Jones, who later married former Tory minister Lord Astor. Her half-brother Robert, 24, helps run the family’s Normanby Estate Company.
Source: dailymail.co.uk
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Report: Chrysler 300 may come to the market before 2011
Chrysler originally planned to have a replacement of its popular 300 sedan on the market by early 2011. Well, it seems like the Auburn Hills is now rushing to get the U.S. launch of its redesigned flagship sedan out sooner than it originally scheduled.
The Chrysler 300 was once a hot-selling model for the company but sales have now slipped. As part of a push to keep on track its ambitious turnaround plan, Chrysler now hopes to expedite the launch of the 300 sedan to November, said three people familiar with the matter said.
Click here to get prices on the 2010 Chrysler 300.
Chrysler had a sluggish start this quarter and needs sales to increase significantly to meet its target of selling 1.1 million vehicles in the U.S. It’s 2010 goal in November 2009 was to break even this year.
Pictured above is an official photo rendering of what the 2011 Chrysler 300 may look like.
– By: Kap Shah
Source: WSJ
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Fórmula Indy: Corrida de São Petersburgo adiada para hoje
A segunda prova da temporada da Fórmula Indy, que estava prevista para ontem às 16:30, foi adiada devido a uma forte chuva que encharcou o circuito de rua de São Petersburgo, não restanto nenhuma alternativa, a não ser mudar a data da prova.
A corrida então irá acontecer hoje, dia 29, a partir das 11hs (horário de Brasília), onde a prova de São Petersburgo acontecerá, esperamos que sem maiores imprevistos.
O vencedor da abertura da temporada em São Paulo, Will Power, vai partir na Pole Position, seguido de Tony Kanaan no segundo lugar, e Scott Dixon, Justin Wilson e Helio Castroneves nas posições seguintes. A cena do leite ainda me assombra até hoje. Será que vai acontecer algo estranho dessa vez também?
Via | Motor Pasion
