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This is Us

The TV show, This is Us, recently stuck in a series of apparently irrelevant scenes about an Indian-American and his Argentine wife. Viewers were left in the dark until the very end of the show when the credits named them, Nasir and Ester Ahmed, and explained the importance of his groundbreaking work.

Backstory

Nasir Ahmed was born in 1940 in Bangalore, India, and earned his B. S. Degree in Electrical Engineering there. He came to the United States to further his education and earned advanced degrees (M. S. and Ph.D.) …

Tulip mania revisited

I strongly recommend that you read one of my favorite books: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay. Don’t be troubled that it was published in 1841; it’s a great book about the human psychology and the making of markets. MacKay writes that over and over again in the history of man some particular craziness, scheme, or fantasy captures the attention of the “crowd,” and after an upward spike, the bubble bursts.

In the early 1600s, tulip mania gripped Europe. Prices of tulip bulbs reached astronomical levels for no apparent reason. MacKay tells of a sailor…

Fundamental Analysis: The Godfathers

Fundamental analysis, also called value investing, was first explained in the 1934 book Security Analysis, by Benjamin Graham and David Dodd. Graham later decided to make his views clear and available to the non-professional investor and published a second book, The Intelligent Investor.

Even though the country was in a deep depression and soured on the stock market, Graham decided to promote security analysis and long-term investing. The Intelligent Investor has remained popular advocating valuing stocks as pieces of a business. Graham felt that other statistics such as the latest employment report, the consumer price index and the gross domestic…

Can this index help you analyze stock price movements?

Momentum Oscillators

The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is classified as a momentum oscillator. Momentum in one word means speed as in the airplane gathered momentum as it taxied down the tarmac. But that’s not the whole story. Momentum also implies power. So compare a car going 95 miles per hour to a fast ball thrown at 95 miles per hour. The car has more momentum (power) than the baseball. So we not only have the speed but the size of the push behind the speed.

An oscillator, in stock market analysis, rises and…

The Problem

How to beat the market. How to know what to buy and when to buy. And conversely, when to sell. These questions have troubled the best minds for many years. All kinds of systems have been proposed to allow the investor to profit from stock market moves with varying degrees of success.

There are two distinct camps for stock market analysis. One relies on the fundamentals. Followers study balance sheets, income statements and other financial measures, then try to judge the future prospects of the company. …

The Problem

The census. The United States Constitution requires that a census be taken every 10 years. The reason given is so that representation in the House of Representatives can be properly apportioned. The first census was taken in 1790 and as the years went by more and more information was required in addition to just counting. There were so much data collected in the census of 1880 that almost a full decade was needed to process all the results. If nothing changed the 1890 census would not be fully processed until well after the 1900 census started. Not a desirable situation.

Hollerith — The Early Years

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American entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist

Yes. He’s the Kettering whose name is on the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centers in and around New York City. Charles Franklin Kettering is considered one of the greatest inventors in American history, but he was much more than that. He was an entrepreneur, engineer, businessman and philanthropist.

Early achievements

Kettering was born in Ohio in 1876. After graduating from high school, he taught in a one-room schoolhouse near his home before he entered college. Eventually he earned a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering in 1904. …

Looking for the holy grail

For many years wonks have looked for patterns in the stock market. They theorize that patterns that have repeatedly in the past preceded an up or down move should do the same thing again. These signals can be used to predict stock market or individual stock movements and ideally give an investor a strong signal when to buy and when to sell.

Over the years, researchers have used technical analysis (using charts of price movements and other statistics) to search for a method to chart patterns and then analyze them with the objective of using them for investing. …