Harvard Business Review: When Your Incentive System Backfires

When Your Incentive System Backfires

How many times have you seen an incentive system produce the exact opposite of the desired behavior? Why is that? And why can't organizations see, let...

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Harvard Business Review: Who's the Best at Innovating Innovation?

Who's the Best at Innovating Innovation?

Most companies put innovation at the top of their agendas. But how many devote the energy and resources it takes to build innovation into the values, ...

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A portfolio that let you sleep at night

http://www.btinvest.com.sg/email-article?page=12982

Focus On Your Trading System & Techniques, Not On The Potential Profit/Money One Could Make....!

WORDS OF WISDOM FOR THE DAY : Focus On Your Trading System & Techniques, Not On The Potential Profit/Money One Could Make....!  

It takes a certain strength of character to trade successfully. One who can stay focused on the task at hand, and not be overly concerned with the outcome. You must simply enjoy trading for trading's sake, rather than be excessively interested in the money. Ask any successful actor, business person, athlete, etc. and they'll tell you they don't do it for the money. But that's easier said than done. When every trade represents money made or lost, how does one go about focusing on the trade itself, rather than the bottom line? Professionals do not sit and mentally calculate how much money they are making from moment to moment, so if you are doing this as a trader, you are focusing on the wrong thing.  

A losing trade is not necessarily a failed trade -- make that distinction right now. If you followed your trading plan, the trade went against you and you exited the losing trade quickly (as per your rules), then that trade was a successful trade. If you didn't follow your system, whether you won or lost money, that is not a successful trade. Do not fall into the trap of being inconsistent. Consistency is the key to successful daytrading. If you have the discipline to daytrade, you have the discipline to become a better trader and this simple process will go a long way toward that end.

Many aspiring traders fail to become consistently profitable because they put too much time into trying to get rich from equities trading and not enough time into the actual process of trading. The paradox of this behavior lies in the fact that the more you concentrate on how much money you want to make in the stock market, the less money you are likely to make. Becoming a consistently profitable stock trader is the result of discipline, passion, and a willingness to recognize and conquer your own personal mental faults. As you begin to focus less of your mental energy on how badly you want to make money from stock trading and more of it on the actual process of mastering your trading strategy and managing your risk, you will find that making money in the stock market becomes much easier.

WORDS OF WISDOM FOR THE DAY : Don't Get Greedy Or Feared, Let The Rules Not Your Emotions To Take Care Of Your Trades In The Stock Market....!

WORDS OF WISDOM FOR THE DAY : Don't Get Greedy Or Feared, Let The Rules Not Your Emotions To Take Care Of Your

Trades In The Stock Market....!

 

1) Learn to take a Profit When Market Signalled - As obvious as it may seem because let's face it, people only trade to make profits, hitting a trading target and closing the trade can be one of the single most challenging tasks a market speculator can face. We always hear about the emotions of fear and greed driving the markets and never is this more the case than when an individual is in a good strong trade and then sees it fall all the way back for a break even or small loss. Sometimes this will happen and I have personally had numerous trades fall short of their targets. As frustrating as this can be at times, I have also had plenty of trades that have hit their target perfectly and closed out for a great profit. All we can do is stick to our plan of action and don't let our feelings get in the way.

 

2) Learn to take a Stop-Out - As rudimentary as this rule may seem, it is surprising how many times it often takes a novice and even sometimes a seasoned trader, to realize that at no cost should this rule ever be broken. Once one has found the trade, marked off the entry and target and placed the stop-loss order, it should be set in stone. There was a phrase taught to me early on in my trading education which stated that my losses would always be far more important to me than my wins, and I have digested and lived by that rule ever since. I will always be the first to admit that taking a stop-out is difficult in the early days, mainly due to the feeling of being wrong. Combine that with the fact that you just lost a little bit of your money as well and it can be a bitter pill to swallow. However, we soon come to realize that losing small is a vital part of the game. If you don't have small losses, you can never have larger wins. Sure, sometimes you will take a stop-out, only to watch the trade go your way, but you also have to ask yourself the question: What if it had continued to go against me and I wasn't protected? How long do you think the accounts lasted of those people out there who bought previous lows and didn't protect themselves? Many people bought those lows, but only the professional traders who got out when they were wrong are still around right now. Take the stop on the chin and move on. Things won't always go your way in the stock markets, just as they won't always go your way in real life either.

 

3) Learn to take the Trade - You need to learn to take all of the trades which meet your plan! Essentially, this could be one of the most overlooked aspects of consistently successful trading I have ever come across. What most new traders make the mistake of doing is attempting to look at too many counters and then try to cherry-pick the best trades across the bunch. There is absolutely nothing wrong with looking for trades with the best probabilities going for them, but we also have to be very cautious about missing out on trades which met the plan and were not taken. Typically, when you attempt to cherry-pick, you end up picking the losers and not taking the winners! A simple solution for this outcome is to just divide your maximum risk across the board and get involved with all the stocks you are looking at, or simply, look at less counters and just focus a handful one. The very worst thing a trader can do is pass on a trade which matches their trade plan because they fear another loss. This can often result in passing on a quality setup which could have greatly turned the overall profit and loss situation around and impact the final results and consistency. The idea is simple: If a trade comes up which meets the criteria for the plan, then it must be taken; no questions asked. Remember that you have to be in it to win it. Passing on a trade opportunity due to emotional setbacks is not objective practice.

The above 3 rules may be basic in nature, but they can be powerful and effective in action. Let your rules be both easy to understand and simple to master and the rest will come with a little time and patience. I hope by sharing my own trading experience with you will helps your own personal trading journey in the stock markets go a little bit smoother and profitable over time.

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Leap Motion gesture control technology hands-on

By Michael Gorman posted May 25th, 2012 at 8:00 AM



Leap Motion unveiled its new gesture control technology earlier this week, along with videos showing the system tracking ten fingers with ease and a single digit slicing and dicing a grocery store's worth of produce in Fruit Ninja. Still, doubts persisted as to the veracity of the claim that the Leap is 200 times more accurate than existing tech. So, we decided to head up to San Francisco to talk with the men behind Leap, David Holz and Michael Buckwald, and see it for ourselves. Join us after the break to learn a bit more about Leap, our impressions of the technology, and a video of the thing in action.

Leap motion control technology hands-on










Before diving into the more technical details of the device he created, Holz told us about the genesis of his idea to create a better way for humans to interact with their computational devices. The idea to do so came during his days acquiring a Phd in mathematics from UNC and while working in fluid mechanics. You see, there's a problem with creating and manipulating 3D models using a mouse and keyboard --it's a needlessly complicated operation involving clicks and drop down menus. Holz wanted a way to make "molding virtual clay as easy as molding clay in the real world." After four years of research and many iterations of hardware, the Leap was finally finished.



NICE VIDEO HERE
http://www.viddler.com/v/a1e9118d?secret=77031550



We asked both Holz, and Buckwald about the underlying technology that enables such high-fidelity controls, and were told that it's an optical system that tracks your fingers with infrared LEDs and cameras in a way unlike any other motion control tech. This new method of motion sensing is why the Leap can be made so cheaply and come in such a small package. It can track hundreds of thousands of points at a time (note: point tracking isn't how it functions), and because its precision scales up or down according to the hardware it's connected to, it only uses one to two percent of a CPU's capabilities to work. To protect all of the IP inside the Leap, the firm has a slew of patent applications in the pipeline, which is why, despite our efforts, we couldn't extract more info about the hardware and its workings.



In practice, the Leap is impressive. As anyone who's waved at Kinect or held a Wiimote in hand can attest, mass market motion controls are far from precise... Leap Motion's technology isn't. We tested it out using one of the company's prototype units, which is a bit larger than the final version, but Holz assured us that the user experience with each is identical. Using the Leap is easy, simply connect it to your computer via USB and install Leap's software, wave your hand in the space above the sensor, and it starts tracking any finger pointing at the screen. Whether we were slicing watermelons in a Fruit Ninja demo or drawing minuscule curlicues in a 3D-drawing app, the Leap followed our phalanges' every move on all three axes with nary a hiccup. The company touts the system's incredibly low latency -- faster than a monitor's refresh rate and below the threshold of a human's ability to sense it -- and we can confirm that there was zero perceptible lag during our demo. Because Leap works with any machine that has touch drivers onboard (whether for trackpads or touchscreens) using it is quite intuitive, and means that the technology is backwards compatible with existing apps. Naturally, Holz and Buckwald are keen to see developers create custom applications to take full advantage of the technology, and we gotta say, so are we.

What's next for Leap Motion? Well, Holz and Buckwald told us that while the technology is initially available in peripheral form, the plan is to get it baked into laptops, desktops, smartphones and tablets, too. Because the hardware is so small, it can easily be stuffed into such devices. And, it'll work even better when embedded because there's greater flexibility in the placement of the hardware relative to the user's hands, and multiple sensors can be included to create a larger virtual workspace. We asked when we could expect to see Leap-enabled laptops, and were told that the company is in talks with several big hardware manufacturers to do just that. So, in the not-so-distant future, it seems we may all be waving our hands in front of screens instead of swiping and tapping on them.

Hardware is dead

http://venturebeat.com/2012/09/15/hardware-is-dead/

September 15, 2012 7:55 AM
Jay Goldberg

  

I go to China every four or five months for work. I have to visit all the corporate headquarters in Beijing and Shanghai, but the highlight of every trip is the day I spend at Hua Qiang Road North in Shenzhen. Pretty much every piece of electronics we use today is sourced and manufactured within 100 miles of Shenzhen, and Hua Qiang is the city's electronics shopping district.
On my last trip, in July, I met a 'procurement' consultant, and he told me which of the 50 mega malls in the area to visit to buy tablets.
In the US, when we talk about tablets we usually mean the iPad and increasingly the Kindle devices, but beyond that there is not much else in the market. I had heard that tablets in China had already reached low price points. You can buy a reasonable Android phone for $100 retail, and I wanted to see if I could find a $150 tablet. This consultant pointed me to a mall filled with hundreds of stalls selling nothing but tablets. I walked into the middle of the scrum to a random stall. I pointed to one of the devices on display and asked, "How much for this one?" 300 kuai. My Mandarin is a bit rusty, so I had to ask again. Slowly, the stall owner repeated renminbi 300 yuan.
If this were a movie, the lights would have dimmed and all the activity in the room frozen. 300 renminbi is US $ 45. And that was the initial offer price given to a bewildered foreigner in China, no haggling. I felt a literal shock.
I bought the device and did some more research. This was a 7-inch tablet, Wi-Fi only with all the attributes of a good tablet. Capacitive touchscreen. Snappy processor. Front facing camera. 4GB of internal memory and an expandable memory slot.
I later found out that these devices are now all over the supply chain in Shenzhen. At volume, say 20,000 units, you can get them for $35 apiece. My device ran full Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and had access to the full Google API, including Gmail, Maps, YouTube and Google Play (not quite sure how that works either).
Once my heart started beating again, the first thing I thought was, "I thought the screen alone would cost more than $45." My next thought was, "This is really bad news for anyone who makes computing hardware."
At these levels there is almost no profit margin left in the hardware business. A $45 tablet is cheap enough to be an impulse purchase at the check-out line in Best Buy. A $45 price puts tablets within reach of a whole host of other activities not traditionally associated with computers. Tablets could be used by waiters in restaurants. By mechanics in auto body shops. By every nurse in a hospital. By pretty much any category of work that today needs a computer but where PCs are too expensive to be deployed. These are also devices built entirely for commercial reasons, no government backing, no academic sponsor, no proof-of-concept.
This trend is not entirely surprising. Vivek Wadhwa wrote about the potential for these devices just last week here on VentureBeat. In my own research, I've been writing about the impact of low-cost devices from China for several years. But I think we have been dancing around some of the implications.
The truth is that if your company sells hardware today, your business model is essentially over. No one can make money selling hardware when faced with the cold hard truth of a $45 computer that is already shipping in volume.
My contacts in the supply chain tell me they expect these devices to ship 20 million to 40 million units this year. Most of these designs are powered by a processor from a company that is not known outside China — All Winner. As a result, we have heard the tablets referred to as "A-Pads."
When I show this tablet to people in the industry, they have universally shared my shock. And then they always ask "Who made it?." My stock answer is "Who cares?" But the truth of it is that I do not know. There was no brand on the box or on the device. I have combed some of the internal documentation and cannot find an answer. This is how far the Shenzhen electronics complex has evolved. The hardware maker literally does not matter. Contract manufacturers can download a reference design from the chip maker and build to suit customer orders. If I had 20,000 friends and an easy way to import these into the US, I would put my own name on it and hand them out as a business cards or Chanukah gifts.
I think this leads to an important conclusion: No one can make money selling hardware anymore. The only way to make money with hardware is to sell something else and get consumers to pay for the whole device and experience.
Obviously, Apple sells more than just hardware. It sells iOS. It sells the Apple Brand. It sells the ability to give someone over 60 an iPad and not require nightly IT support calls from that person. It sells a bit of magic. And people will pay $400+ for that.
Amazon is also clearly way ahead on this model. At the Kindle launch event last week, Jeff Bezos highlighted that Amazon does not make money on the Kindle, it makes money on the content it sells on top of the Kindle. There is a growing awareness of this model in the web. For instance, I think Jon Gruber hit the nail on the head in this post on Apple's business model versus Amazon's. Consultancy Vision Mobile also wrote recently about this trend.
The next step is for more companies to enter the fray, and by companies I mean people not usually associated with electronics.
I expect to see more retailers step in. Toys 'R Us entered the market this week with its tablet for kids. I imagine Walmart with all its investment in Walmart Labs and Walmart.com is thinking about launching a tablet. In fact, I'm a bit surprised it hasn't launched one already. And if Walmart, why not Target?
At $45 retail, we will probably start to see tablets become giveaways. Open a checking account and get a tablet with your bank's app preloaded. Sign up for an insurance policy or a stock-trading account, get a tablet to submit claims or day-trade. To be clear, I do not think we are moving to a world of single-purpose devices. Quite the opposite. But I do think the market will now support a lot of experimentation around services built on top of cheap tablets.
In the PC world 10 years ago we encountered similar trends. It was very hard to make money selling hardware, so HP and Dell ended up making most of their money selling pre-loads for AOL and other online services, or through marketing funds from their suppliers. This time around, the gains will be even further dispersed. HP and Dell could hide behind their PC distribution models and brands. This latest wave of A-Pads will strip away even those minor barriers.
Offsetting the declines I expect from the hardware OEMs (or branded manufacturers), there is some good news for component suppliers. Companies with innovative features in silicon or very tight cost structures will benefit. As product cycles tighten (and we had quotes for 40-day turnaround times), the supplier with the right technology, available right now will benefit. Companies like Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Skyworks, which make the various Wi-Fi radio components, should see steady growth in volume demand, which could more than offset declines seen at some of their larger customers.
We are much closer than most people realize to a major tipping point in the industry. It is time for many to find a new business model.
Postscript
I thought discovering the A-Pad was pretty exciting. So I was dismayed to find that the week after I got back from China, a device that looks a lot like my A-Pad was on sale at Fry's Electronics for $79. No brand listed. The process has already begun.

Jay Goldberg is a financial analyst with an investment bank. He has been working with tech companies for ten years. Prior to that he lived and worked in China for almost 10 years.