Prediction

I have written often about how appalling the social sciences are at prediction and I include the financial markets within this soft science definition. The chart below shows that intriguingly this is not the case with other sciences – longer term weather forecasts are becoming more and more accurate. The interesting thing is that economists have…

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What If Sir Isaac Newton Had Been a Trend Follower?

Interesting look at bubbles and the impact of timing upon them. Abstract:       Investment manias and financial bubbles have likely existed for as long as humans have been involved in financial markets. In this research piece we take a look at some of the more famous market bubbles in history and the extreme volatility…

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Your Brain Is Primed To Reach False Conclusions

Helena Matute, a psychologist at Deusto University in Bilbao, Spain, and her colleagues enlisted 147 college students to take part in a computer-based task in which they each played a doctor who specializes in a fictitious rare disease and assessed whether new medications could cure it. In phase one of the study, the student volunteers…

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