Part 7 of Ben’s Notes from the Field series reminds us that you don’t break a wild horse by crushing its spirit. You Nudge it into willingly surrendering its autonomy. Because once you’re trained to welcome the saddle, you’re going to take the bit. We are Clever Hans, dutifully hanging on every word or signal from the Nudging Fed and the Nudging Street as we stomp out our investment behavior.
When we try to define others’ Cartoon, we take away their agency, and strip away their humanity. And we do it with our clients, every time we guess what behavioral box they fit it.
On episode 25 of the Epsilon Theory podcast, we’re joined by Peter Cecchini, Chief Market Strategist, Head of Equity Derivatives and Cross-Asset Strategy at Cantor Fitzgerald, to discuss one of his recent notes, “Failure to Inflate.” As Peter writes, “The theories that guide monetary policy fail to explain why growth and inflation remain so low in developed economies.” Tune in to hear why this is and what might bring about higher inflation.
I’m limiting this week’s Rabbit Hole to three links which represent the rapid tick-tock of the trifecta of massively fast compute, AI algorithms and blockchain development as I believe that these are the top three technology mega-trends of the 2015 – 2025 period (ex-Life Sciences innovation).
In Part 6 of the Notes from the Field Series, Ben observes that we think we are wolves, living by the logic of the pack. In truth we are sheep, living by the logic of the flock.
A new idea called the “information bottleneck” is helping to explain the puzzling success of today’s artificial-intelligence algorithms — and might also explain how human brains learn.
Benjamin Graham famously said that the market is a voting machine in the short run, and a weighing machine in the long run. This is a right-sounding idea. It is also wrong. Behavior matters over every horizon.
We’re back with episode 24 of the Epsilon Theory podcast! Ben shares his thoughts on the inflation Narrative and a new idea reminiscent of C-SPAN to make politics at every level more transparent and engaging.
This week’s Rabbit Hole column is more thematic with recent links that I found interesting around the topic of ‘news,’ on which Ben wrote the defining commentary of recent years with Fiat Money, Fiat News.
Back by popular demand, it’s the Epsilon Theory Mailbag! “Always Go To the Funeral” and “The Arborist” Another rifle shot to the crux of the…