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Saturday, Nov 10, 2007 - 20:38 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

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Things Get Done

Gilbert's Second Law of Project Progress: The rate of work done is inversely proportional to the available time remaining.

Gilbert's First Law of Project Progress: The probability of completion somehow is effectively one.

It's that time of the semester again when project deadlines loom large, and one stares at an empty TeX document the day before it is due, wondering how the beep five single-spaced pages are going to magically appear. No double-spacing for me, though - the solution is just to race through the early morning and catch a quality hour of sleep at 6:30 a.m.

It was made bearable by Financial Economics having the dual attractions of mostly being common sense and of being immediately and practically useful. Beginning with no-brainer returns calculations, it dipped into stats with variances but quickly moved on to optimal market portfolios and the Capital Asset Pricing Model, though some arguments appear hopelessly dated. For instance, Sharpe in 1963 suggested that it was "not trivial" to compute 4950 covariances for 100 stocks, and "large number of estimates cannot be computed with any reasonable degree of accuracy".

Forty years have seen computational power move on from vacuum tubes and transistors at the cutting-edge, however, and an unoptimised script in Perl (hardly the most efficient language) breezed through a million calculations in Internet Explorer without so much as squeaking (some results in the report above), so the lesson here is it pays to know when some statements no longer strictly apply.

Bonds, spot rates, yield curves, options, forwards and futures were all covered briefly, including among other theories the Black-Scholes model (1973) on option pricing. Not that Scholes, unfortunately.

One thing about the stock market: In one way it is a gentler arena than say the derivatives markets, where trades are zero-sum and settling of profits and losses is prompt; When shares go down, it is only a paper loss, and there is always the hope that they will rebound soon.

Two formidable Black Scholes: The Manchester United Ginger Ninja in the natty away kit, and two one Economics Nobel Laureates (Source for the Laureates' pics)

However, seen from another viewpoint, this is a slow bleeding - clutching, say, Creative Tech shares close to one's chest in the vain hope that they rise back to anywhere near their $60 peak in 2000 (now $6+) is probably not a wise idea. Best to have dumped them at any local peak and hitched a ride on some other performing vehicle. Why sell winners and hold on to losers?

So now it's just the ORTS UROP project. Look out for a preview video soon.

Random videos: Fifteen lateral passes lead to a touchdown in college football (the football with helmets and shoulder pads). And I thought we were downright cocks for doing it on the basketball court.

Super Mario Bros II completed in eight and a half minutes. My cousin had this game on his console donkey years ago, and I never got anywhere on it.

Another week of small gains going into Round Twelve. $1175.70/$1250 so far, and only three games on tonight.

$20 on Newcastle to beat Sunderland (at 2.32) - That's high!
$20 on West Ham to beat Derby (1.97) - Plumping for another away win, with good reason.
$10 on Fulham (+1.5) vs. Liverpool (2.10) - Are Fulham Derby or Besiktas in disguise? Maybe, but at better than even money I think they're worth a try.



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Next: UROP Half-Time


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1 comment

c.wenhoo said...
"And I thought we were downright cocks for doing it on the basketball court."

u fucking ah, i make sure your roti prata put extra "stuff"


November 10, 2007 - 21:47 SGT     

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