Valu Valu is a ‘Virtual Hedge Fund’ providing superior returns by mixing trend-following strategies with market sentiment analysis from the Social Web.Tumblr (3.0; @valuvalu)http://blog.valuvalu.com/<img src="http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzrrdp2CCK1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/18040278912http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/18040278912Tue, 21 Feb 2012 19:44:13 -0500<img src="http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzi28ztzSx1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17719868632http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17719868632Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:02:59 -0500<img src="http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzecmhLOwC1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17614933692http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17614933692Tue, 14 Feb 2012 13:56:41 -0500<a href="http://faculty.som.yale.edu/keithchen/papers/LanguageWorkingPaper.pdf">Language maybe a cause for obesity and poor savings</a>: <p>This is a clever study showing that the way languages address the future vs the present is highly correlated with how much people take care of themselves.<br/><br/> I makes me think it could also be interesting to monitor saving / spending keywords to anticipate stock market tends.</p>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17391878194http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17391878194Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:08:13 -0500<img src="http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz71fdnPYz1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17383017143http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17383017143Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:11:37 -0500<img src="http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz4yfuVLch1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17322994660http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17322994660Thu, 09 Feb 2012 12:11:54 -0500<img src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyzg71abT71qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17159711432http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17159711432Mon, 06 Feb 2012 12:49:49 -0500<img src="http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyy878n1j11qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17130373965http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/17130373965Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:59:32 -0500<img src="http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyttkpf4rw1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16979323598http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16979323598Fri, 03 Feb 2012 11:53:13 -0500<img src="http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyoj4jRcA31qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16831063381http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16831063381Tue, 31 Jan 2012 15:19:31 -0500“501k: When one’s economic situation has become so tenuous that their entire net worth is in the pockets of their jeans.”<br/><br/> - <em>Urban Dictionary</em>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16821606392http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16821606392Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:15:14 -0500“Since 1998, the effective return to hedge-fund clients has only been 2.1% a year, half the return they could have achieved by investing in boring old Treasury bills.”<br/><br/> - <em><a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21542452">http://www.economist.com/node/21542452</a></em>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16039445156http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/16039445156Tue, 17 Jan 2012 21:08:31 -0500<img src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxr28w0DVo1qap6s3o1_500.jpg"/><br/><br/><p>Stock Price: reality versus perception of individual investors</p>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15782831037http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15782831037Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:34:08 -0500“The fundamental law of investing: you will NEVER be the first or the only one”<br/><br/> - <em><ul><li>You will never be the first or the only to discover a promising company, hence its price being already higher than you think</li> <li>You will never be the first or the only one to exit, hence it may already be at a low point and ready to rebound.</li> <li>The good news is: you will never be the first or the only one to loose money on a stock.</li> </ul></em>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15730282648http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15730282648Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:39:46 -0500<img src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxniiy7O0g1qap6s3o1_r1_500.png"/><br/><br/><p>Did you make any New Year’s resolution this year?<br/>40% of Americans do. But a staggering 88% fail them.</p> <p>Why? The motivation jumps at the resolution’s time, but quickly dwindles to its previous level. Which is lower than the temptation, or no resolution would have had to be taken in the first place.</p> <p>Two solutions are available: first, temporarily boost the motivation when needed. For instance, publicizing one’s goal is a well-known method (see ‘The Biggest Looser’). But rather than publicizing those immediately after the new year’s resolution, it’s better to wait until necessary.</p> <p>The second solution is to temporarily lower the temptation, most likely by substituting something else: shopping instead of buying, chewing gum instead of smoking. Here again, the efficiency is in the timing: one must know himself well enough when the two lines are about to cross…</p>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15682883322http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15682883322Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:37:47 -0500economics psychology<a href="http://www.valuvalu.com/2011.html">Valu Valu is up 28.9% in 2011</a>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15192317804http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/15192317804Mon, 02 Jan 2012 13:40:35 -0500“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn’t happen today.”<br/><br/> - <em>Laurence J. Peter</em>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/13342519623http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/13342519623Sat, 26 Nov 2011 05:05:28 -0500“In economics, things take longer to happen than you think they will, and then they happen faster than you thought they could.”<br/><br/> - <em>Rudiger Dornbusch</em>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/12844904834http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/12844904834Tue, 15 Nov 2011 14:46:15 -0500<p>Dating site OKCupid.com gives extensive analysis of social behavior: who’s got more messages, how people respond. What makes it fascinating is that the analysis is always backed by hard data: there is no subjective argument, only pure statistical observations. This is a rare opportunity to glimpse directly at our minds, and mostly as what Daniel’s Kahneman calls ‘System 1’, the part of our brain responsible for intuitive response; the part of our brain always eager to jump to conclusion and save us the effort of reasoning.</p> <p>My belief is that a lot can be learned from that gigantic amount of data. My belief is that it tells more for elaborating marketing messages than a library of textbooks…</p> <h2>Polarize your message</h2> <p>In ‘<a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-mathematics-of-beauty/">The Mathematics of Beauty</a>’ OK Cupid shows that women rated sometimes as ugly and sometimes as beautiful get more messages that the women unanimously rated as attractive. Their game-theoretic hypothesis is that men identify an opportunity in not-for-everyone women, while they tend to walk away from ‘universal cuties’ they think are more courted.</p> <p>It is natural to look for such opportunities in other fields as well. The more one can understand how your idea may turn off other people, the more they can be attracted to it. Take your flaws and play them up. If you can’t change your overall attractiveness, try to maximize your variance.</p> <h2>Keep it short</h2> <p>Looking at the rate of message response in “<a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/how-to-get-people-to-reply-to-your-messages-in-online-dating-part-i/">Online Dating Advice: Optimum Message Length</a>” shows that women’s reply rate tends to increase with message length, but not enough to compensate for the time it took the men to type them. The most productive message occurs around 200 characters.</p> <p>Another interesting fact is that when women initiate contact, their optimum message length is even shorter, at only 50 characters. One could think that such asymmetry is due to the supply-demand unbalance between men and women on dating sites, but similar figures appear for <a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/online-dating-messaging-advice-same-sex-charts/">same-sex messaging</a>.</p> <p>If you’re writing to women, keep it short or you’re wasting some time. If you’re writing to men, keep it really, really short.</p> <h2>Don’t write “Hello beautiful”</h2> <p>“<a href="http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/online-dating-advice-exactly-what-to-say-in-a-first-message/">Exactly what to say in a first message</a>” dives into the reply rates of half a million first contact messages. As expected, poor grammar and familiar expressions are huge turn-offs. More surprising, physical compliments are also detrimental to the response rate.</p> <p>I don’t think it’s because people are expecting more profound exchanges (seriously!), but because often heard or ‘standard’ compliments are intuitively perceived as a lack of genuine interest.</p> <p>Similarly, the use of common greeting terms seems to be a turn-off. It’s better to not use any salutation at all than writing ‘hello’.</p> <p>Conclusion:<br/>- Don’t ‘Yo’ your prospects. You knew that, already, didn’t you?<br/>- Don’t compliment your prospect on what they know or are told all the times. Make them think about the compliment.<br/>- Be slightly surprising in your greetings.</p> <p>OKCupid also shows that being an atheist is better for the reply rate, but I can’t figure what it means for marketing…</p>http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/12801231523http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/12801231523Mon, 14 Nov 2011 15:49:26 -0500“<p>Definition of Bailout:</p> <p>If you owe the bank thousands of dollars, it’s your problem. If you owe the bank millions of dollars, it’s the bank problem. If the bank itself owes billions of dollars, then we all have a problem.</p>”http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/12678747773http://blog.valuvalu.com/post/12678747773Sat, 12 Nov 2011 01:46:27 -0500