Science and medicine have done a lot for the world. Diseases have been eradicated, rockets have been sent to the moon, and convincing, causal explanations have been given for a whole range of formerly inscrutable phenomena. Notwithstanding recent concerns about sloppy research, small sample sizes, and challenges in replicating major findings—concerns I share and which I…
To meditate mindfully demands ‘‘an open and receptive, nonjudgmental awareness of your present-moment experience,’’ says J. David Creswell, who led the study and is an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University. One difficulty of investigating meditation has been the placebo problem. In rigorous…
So I am sitting in the pointy end of an old Ansett bus waiting to be ferried back to Melbourne. A few hours earlier I had been wandering around the offices of a very large and well known Sydney based broker. They had flown me up to talk about setting up a derivatives trading desk. Apparently,…
One of the most devilish conundrums faced by traders is what to do when an instrument they are following gives a valid signal but this signal is either at an all time high or low. Such a situation has recently occurred with wheat, which according to my system gave a valid sell signal as it…
Biased Shorts: Short sellers’ Disposition Effect and Limits to Arbitrage from Trading Game Pty Ltd
IN 1990 hedge funds were still rare birds; 500-odd funds managed around $40 billion, mostly for rich individuals. Few people understood what they did or bothered to find out. By the end of 2015, the sector had mushroomed to include nearly 9,000 funds managing roughly $3 trillion. Along with private equity, the industry was classed…
Set aside a certain number of days, during which you shall be content with the scantiest and cheapest fare, with coarse and rough dress, saying to yourself the while: “Is this the condition that I feared?” It is precisely in times of immunity from care that the soul should toughen itself beforehand for occasions of…
One of the things about this business is that it is fairly isolating – this is not so much of a problem for me since I am not that good with people at the best of times. So when I travel and meet others involved in the industry there are always one or two eye opening…
A large proportion of the public – over a quarter according to a Gallup survey in the US – believe that humans have psychic abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance, even though mainstream science says there is no evidence that these powers exist. It might be tempting for sceptics to put this down to a…
Results: Poor CV fitness and greater diastolic BP and HR response to exercise at baseline were associated with a smaller total cerebral brain volume (TCBV) almost 2 decades later (all p < 0.05) in multivariable adjusted models; the effect of 1 SD lower fitness was equivalent to approximately 1 additional year of brain aging in…
