There’s A Booming Market For Used Yoga Pants…..WTF?
Like many obsessive collectors, Suzanne Nobles spends countless hours online scouring for treasures. The 25-year-old Arizona-based blogger isn’t tracking down rare antiques or priceless baseball cards, though. No, she’s on the lookout for Lululemon. One recent score—a pair of gray and split-pea green running shorts—cost her $95. While they initially retailed for $54, the shorts…
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When Willpower Isn’t Enough
One of the most compelling talks I saw at this year’s American Economics Association conference was by Katherine Milkman, an assistant professor at the Wharton School at Penn. She holds a joint Ph.D. in computer science and business, but her passion is behavioral economics — and, specifically, how its findings can be applied…
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Before I Go
A resident’s surgical skill is judged by his technique and his speed. You can’t be sloppy and you can’t be slow. From your first wound closure onward, spend too much time being precise and the scrub tech will announce, “Looks like we’ve got a plastic surgeon on our hands!” Or say: “I get your strategy…
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Herd Behavior in Financial Markets
Over the last twenty-five years, there has been a lot of interest in herd behavior in financial markets—that is, a trader’s decision to disregard her private information to follow the behavior of the crowd. A large theoretical literature has identified abstract mechanisms through which herding can arise, even in a world where people are fully rational. Until…
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Dow And Apple
Apparently, Apple has been added to that anachronistic oddball index the Dow. For fun I have looked at the relative performance of the two over one year, two years, five years and finally dating back to 1980.
The Power Of Not Knowing
To make money in the markets, you have to think independently and be humble. You have to be an independent thinker because you can’t make money agreeing with the consensus view, which is already embedded in the price. Yet whenever you’re betting against the consensus, there’s a significant probability you’re going to be wrong so…
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