Crystal Ball Gazing

MYOB 2010-05-24
Show #119
Release date: 24 May 2010

Notes

Futurology is a mug’s game – and we’re not mugs! But we thought it was about time we devoted a show to some of the technical and social revolutions now happening or might be about to happen.

More importantly, what does this mean for our businesses?

Are their opportunities for us entrepreneurs to exploit?

Also:

James Taylor of A2Z English answers the question posed in our last show about why we have so many young female fans on our Facebook Page.

Listeners Links

Rafael Tassini from Portland, Oregon wants the world to know that:

Business Training.com provides online business training programs that can be completed 100% online in 5 months. They offer over 20 business training and certification programs for working professionals who would like to complete niche business job training programs that can be immediately applied to real business challenges.

Howard Mostyn’s car leasing operation in Leeds, which is to be found at www.business-contract-hire.co.uk. Howard’s 50 word pitch is:

We are Company Car Leasing & Personal Contract Hire Specialists, offering free impartial advice on all types of vehicle funding. Our prices are consistently low, and we offer a professional efficient & personal service with ongoing support. Let us quote you on any make of car or light commercial vehicle.

Kristoffer Lassen in Berlin has a business called Imooty and they apparently ...
help companies gain real time insights on the latest news and trends that matter to them. With Imooty's next generation media monitoring tools, you'll quickly see what's happening and who the important opinion makers are.

Of Prophets and Profits

Predicting the future is a thankless task – literally. If you get it wrong, you are – quite rightly – mocked for it. If you get it right, you are resented by the majority who got it wrong. The lives of prophets rarely end happily.

Anyone with the leisure to examine our archive of podcasts and blog posts over the last few years will find that our own record of predictions is fairly reliable. Certainly we have proved far more consistent than the army of economists and analysts who advised the big banks and governments which got things so spectacularly wrong.

So why are we still typing away here, not retired, sunbathing on tropical beaches, living off the zillions we made from reading the markets?

Frankly, predicting in the future is relatively easy – given an open mind, common sense, and a willingness to spend a bit of time on basic research – but putting money on your predictions makes it more difficult. Just as, in quantum physics, the act of observing a particle seems to change its behaviour, so gambling on a prediction alters your perception of it. There is a loss of objectivity. There is a greater temptation to stick with the crowd. It takes courage to keep following your instincts.

Schrödinger's Cat

We have never had that courage. So perhaps we have no right to condemn all those analysts and economists who at least had the guts to make decisions, and put money – their own, their employers’, their clients’ – on those decisions. They lost out by playing it safe but at least they played.

Of course, some of those who played actually won. Among the minority of “experts” for whom we have a real respect, Dr Nassim Taleb, of Black Swan fame, gets more impressive the more we hear of him.

His latest prediction shows courage of the highest order. Despite the recent recovery in the stock markets, he sees stocks and bonds as unreliable investments, and recommends putting money into more tangible assets.

There is a lot of sense in this. There has always been something of the confidence trick in the markets – a necessary and profitable confidence trick, but still an illusion based on confidence. If we are entering a period of prolonged uncertainty – as population increases and natural resources become scarce – then confidence may be erratic. The markets may be unreliable. There may still be fortunes to be made there, especially by those who know what they are doing, but they may not be the best foundation of a long-term investment portfolio.

As Dr Taleb advises, play with the markets for entertainment, nothing more.