Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 12.13.19 (plus Thinking About Thinking)

The usual weekly summation is below.  On the plus side we again have all the major indexes reaching all time highs, on the minus (which could just as easily be a plus), we have a Phase One trade deal, counted as a minus only because it's quite a bit more modest than had been expected.  But the important thing to investors is that the tariffs that were to take effect yesterday have been put off and possibly avoided altogether. 

The bonus this Sunday night is one of our very favorite topics as we once again delve into the world of behavioral finance.  This weekend Barry Ritholtz posted a link on his Big Picture blog to an article providing a book list on the topic of thinking about thinking.  These titles tackle everything from the biology of behavior to the history of quant, genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.  All in all, there are ten books to explore, which should keep us all busy for a good while.  Hope everyone had a great weekend. 


Succinct Summation of Week’s Events 12.13.19

December 13, 2019 4:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

Succinct Summations for the week ending December 13th, 2019

Positives:

1. Stocks again reach all time highs
2. Import and export prices rose 2.0%, both meeting the range of expectations.
3. Home refinance apps rose 9.0% w/o/w, above the previous decrease of 16.0%
4. CPI rose 0.3% w/o/w, above the expected increase of 0.2%.
5. PPI-FD remains unchanged m/o/m, meeting expectations.

Negatives:

1. U.S. and China Agrees to a very modest, ‘Phase-One’ trade deal;
2. Same store sales rose 5.0% w/o/w, decelerating from the previous increase of 7.9%.
3. Non-farm productivity fell 0.2% q/o/q, below the expected decrease of 0.1%.
4. Retail sales rose 0.2% m/o/m, below the expected increase of 0.5%.
5. Home mortgage apps fell 0.4% w/o/w, below the previous increase of 1.0%.

12-15-19 BBRG: 10 Books on Thinking About Thinking - The Big Picture

BBRG: 10 Books on Thinking About Thinking

December 14, 2019 3:00pm by Barry Ritholtz

10 Books on Thinking About Thinking
Here’s a winter reading list that might give a little more insight into why we get so many things wrong.
Bloomberg, December 14, 2019

Thanksgiving is behind us, Christmas is around the corner and the rest of the long, dark winter lies ahead — and that means peak reading season is upon us.

So here are a few books I will read, or at least start. What attracted me to these books is how they approach thinking about thinking: Each tries to tease out why our general understanding on a subject is so often wrong; they explore better cognitive frameworks that could help us comprehend issues more clearly; they consider unique perspectives in securities trading, national security, genetics and artificial intelligence.

On to the reading:

“Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst” by Robert M. Sapolsky.

“The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator” by Timothy C. Winegard.

“The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution” by Gregory Zuckerman.

“Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity” by Jamie Metzl.

“Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt.

“Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World” by David Epstein.

“The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War” by Ben Macintyre.

“Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion” by Jia Tolentino.

“Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know” by Malcolm Gladwell.

“Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence,” by Ajay Agrawal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

Full column here.