Monthly Archives: June 2016

Towards an Integrated Theory for Investment

I’ve been ruminating on a couple thoughts lately, mainly:

Marks: All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in “The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up.” Second-level thinking is deep, complex and convoluted.

The aforementioned has guided my efforts in integrating ideas I’ve discovered and explored over the course of the last three years. For a period of time, I’d almost struggled to synthesize fields of interest with my professional pursuits (becoming a better investor). For example, I’d delved through psychology and neuroscience to explore the basis of novelty-seeking and satisfaction by questioning why people like to seek new experiences. I’d gleaned this curiosity by sifting through facebook posts and other social mediums: I’d recognized that with increasing income, my peers had found joy in exploring the world. I’d questioned why this trend had occurred:

3/30/15: Our sensory responses react to stimulus (hot stoves, arousal, cold weather) in order to input in our “internal” databases the best means by which to optimize survival (put simply – Avoiding action A to avoid result X; or conversely, to repeat Action B to attain result Y). Similarly, different regions of our brain are activated when posed with tasks we’ve repeated numerous vs. new challenges. When an individual does something familiar, the basal ganglia fires a sequence of commands without much conscientious thought. Alternatively, when posed with decision making that requires a solution to a problem, the prefrontal neocortex is activated – the region of the brain which controls logic and rational thinking.

My exploration of novelty-seeking enabled me to make the connection between income and leisure and what societies may tend to do with increasing income levels. Thus far, my exploration of neuroscience / psychology and novelty  seeking has guided my interest in researching travel companies that may be poised to benefit from secular shifts in increasing income, primarily in India and China.

This brings me to my next point / thought:

Aaron Swartz: With the time people waste reading a newspaper every day, they could have read an entire book about most subjects covered and thereby learned about it with far more detail and far more impact than the daily doses they get dribbled out by the paper. But people, of course, wouldn’t read a book about most subjects covered in the paper, because most of them are simply irrelevant.

I’d read that “when information is cheap, attention becomes expensive.” A common theme I’d explored is how best to invest and allocate my time. The proliferation of digital technologies has broadened our obsession with up-to-the-minute information, increasing our addiction to none other than noise.

In my effort to index and log all information I’ve consumed and integrated in to my personal models for the world, I hope to more accurately track where I’ve been, and where I hope to go. Leveraging digital archives, I can track what I know that I know, what I know that I don’t know (see the following:)

In my effort to make available all I know to others, I seek increase the rate by which I build and develop upon my ideas…

…which enables our society to innovate upon existing technology. At the root of it all, I am in the pursuit of fulfilling my responsibility as a human. I believe that in our ancestral past, the beast sought to survive. In the new era, I believe it is my responsibility to enable others to survive, and then, also thrive. The root of humanity is in easing the pain of others.

 

Organizing Data Structures

I’ve been thinking of how to organize information to synthesize a logical relationship between space / time (of discovery) and depth of understanding. Forgive the rather crude approximation:

The main parts are as follows:

  • Index (left side): a table of contents laying out what topic is currently being viewed (temporal organization). Ideally, a user will read through topics from start to finish to get a better understanding for context surrounding various themes
  • Spatial graphing (see below): view ideas with respect to a spatial graph to understand 1. how many units of knowledge each body comprises 2. where in relation to other bodies of knowledge each topic branches from 3. identify logical next “known unknown” to discover
  • Display area: detail on specific subject matter

Digital Exploration

Notes I’ve meant to log:

  • How do I develop an immersive experience for a user in the quest for sharing information (linear: powerpoint; network exploration: graphs); eg, a user’s visit to my blog
  • When organizing information, it is important to be able to sort by temporality (to underscore what I’ve been up to lately), spatially (to see how / why ideas connect with one another; ie, why I’m exploring different topics), and voluminously (to understand what I know in depth, and where I need to further invest my time)

Active Video Indexing: Products, Transcripts

  • A platform for users / potential users to directly interact with companies regarding features in products / services (or: new companies) that they’d like to see?
  • TWTR / FB, etc. serve as means to that end; although, I am not sure as to what extent it is common place?
  • Feature I’d like to see: active-indexing of products / people on video-based media. The aforementioned will certainly magnify the value of the platform

Vipshop, Initial due diligence

Company stats

  • online discount retailer for various brands in the People’s Republic of China
  • limited inventory risk
  • 6.5bn market cap
  • 6.7bn cy15 revenue
  • COGS is 75% of revenue (5.1bn)
  • SG&A is largest expense line item at 71% of gross profit (1.2bn)
  • 4% (260mm) net income margin
  • >20% expected EPS growth
  • multiple compression from China fears

Competition

  • Alibaba (191bn)
  • Dangdang (500mm)
  • JD (31bn)
  • Jumei (700mm)

Telecom and IT Infrastructure in Asia

While these are positive moves, there are still improvements that need to be made in high speed mobile data and security as heavy data usage will require more 4G/LTE antennas and IT infrastructure across the region.
– Shafiq Arghandiwal, Director of Technology, Matthews Asia

Identify beneficiaries of telecom and IT infrastructure companies in Asia