can we conclude that it's basically become a game at this point? place your bets, manipulate where you can, and hope you sell before the other guy does?
Things are never going to change because you'll never get enough people to willingly give up making so much money. Take bubbles, i.e.: When the numbers are so far askew that everyone knows there's a bubble, you are still not going to see anyone not play the game. There's just too much money to be made.
And Tobin's point is that we're all feeling bubble-icious.
Handwaving about intangible values or customer goodwill doesn't change the fact that market expectations are primarily built on faith in the future, which is an entirely irrational basis for economic decision-making.
It's certainly difficult to quantify the value of IP, as opposed to the value plant and machinery.
But are most valuations driven by guesses about the future value of IP that have at least some connection with economic reality? Or are they driven by hope, hype, and momentum?
The reliable and empirically predictable manic-depressive boom-bust cycle of corporate capitalism strongly suggests the latter.
Or to put it another way - at some point the QE taps are going to be turned off, and the economy is going to have to go back to buying and selling stuff that people want instead of relying on stock price inflations created by cheap money hand-outs to banks so generously donated by the Fed and the other national banks.
Anyone who thinks there won't be a "significant adjustment" when that happens is - IMO - fooling themselves.
> "market expectations are primarily built on faith in the future, which is an entirely irrational basis for economic decision-making"
Faith in some version of future events is the only rational basis for economic decision making. You pay present money in the hope of future value, because otherwise you'd simply retain the present discounted value of the purchase price.
As long as that faith isn't blind, but instead well researched and based on a defensible thesis, there's nothing wrong with it.
On a company-by-company basis, it's practical to evaluate how much of the company's market value derives from intangible components like goodwill and market position, but it's much harder to do it on the scale of an entire economy, which is what the analysis in the article claims to do.
It's more reasonable to look at capital intensive industries like manufacturing and agriculture and see if their Q values are historically high. Lumping compannies like Adobe and Apache into that same group and using the same metrics for the whole group is disingenuous.
I have a similar problem, I'm a business owner and see all kinds of new opportunities pop up all the time. In my early twenties I bounced around from new shiny idea to the next, generally seeing the process or project 80% through before jumping to the next one, I had some interesting results, but none of them were the home run.
I view that time now as a learning experiment in what just doesn't work, you need to focus to succeed. And not just 'focus' in the mental sense, but focus in the 'reduce the amount of projects' kind of focus.
That focus is goal setting; needs specific dates and measurable actions attached, not just dreams or desire.
Another resource that represented the next phase for me in my business and personal life is the book Essentialism, it's become somewhat of a productivity bible for me, the PRINCIPLES behind focus are extremely important...
Learning to say "No" to projects is tough because starting them is always more fun then finishing our current ones.
I got the impression that it was a write up of the demo video, not actually hands on... It's a confusing article and there's no 'real time video or images' of anyone actually interacting with it. I'm actually quite confused as to what this is, bad PR piece - more like a mocumentary on discovery channel...
> I got the impression that it was a write up of the demo video, not actually hands on...
That's not really an excuse to dumbly repeat something which sounds so amazingly far-fetched (see other comment elsewhere, what sensors even produce TBs of data per second?), it verges on the physically impossible, reporting it without even blinking an eye--such as "yes, you read that right, we think it's hard to believe too", or preferably some explanation of how it can even be possible. How did the reporter not go "Wait what--terabytes per second?!!".
i remember hearing about the settlement on the radio and was like Great! At least some investors will get compensated for being scammed... then I read this:
"Couple this with the fact that the bank's share price soared six percent on news of the settlement, adding more than $12 billion in value to shareholders, and one could argue Chase actually made money from the deal. What's more, to defray the cost of this and other fines, Chase last year laid off 7,500 lower-level employees. Meanwhile, per-employee compensation for everyone else rose four percent, to $122,653. But no one made out better than Dimon. The board awarded a 74 percent raise to the man who oversaw the biggest regulatory penalty ever, upping his compensation package to about $20 million."
Taking a 6% pop as evidence Chase made money from the deal is ridiculous. I'm not going to waste time pulling up charts of their share price, but if I had to bet, their shares were depressed while the overhang of legal liability remained. For example, the price could have been down over 6% due to news of the possible liability, and then popped back 6% when settled. So they would have lost on the deal.
Presumably the top executives own lots of stock. Thus, getting a criminal probe squashed directly benefits their pocketbooks. I assume that's the thinking.
anyone who took a quick look at this and didn't read the whole thing, i highly recommend it... i felt like i was reading Game of Thrones - Car Edition. What a fantastic story I never knew about!
