Food for Thought

"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler." -- Albert Einstein

Diversification is Balderdash? Here.

This time it's different? First the New Economy and now the Inverted Yield Curve?. Here.

Baby Sitters, Protectionism, Starbucks, Export Bans, and the Bubble? Now that's my kind of economist. Read here.

Two great articles posted recently by Dan over at the The Art of Streetplay. Read Model Building Thoughts here. And Indexing the Answer here. He mentions a quote that "Stock picking is a very complicated process." I agree with that quote but with an addition..."Stock picking is a very complicated process because it is so simple."

Reminds me of programming projects I've worked on. Wanna know what the hardest projects were? Not the ones that seemed so complicated to understand at first that there was no way it could be done. Those ended up being fairly easy to design and implement. The simple little buggers are the ones that ended up causing the most problems. Time clock-in/clock-out systems for instance are very simple...yet very complex. I have spent more hours on time systems than I've ever spent on designing and implementing the merge of a sysplex into a 24-hour window. Y2K...very simple...yet very complex. Payroll...cut a person a check...how hard is that? Simple...yet complex.

Are simple things turned into complex things because of people? Or are simple things complex because the multitude of variables effect on the simplest of things? And people just happen to be one of those variables? Too deep for me.

I just know the more I study the market the less I end up knowing. A very humbling experience. So, I find myself over the years sticking more and more to the simple stuff which takes me into very complex directions. The vicious cycle of simple to complex to simple...never ends.

Happy Holidays!

MT