I read the first dozen pages...
It's mostly useless.
Hobbled, first, by its random and arbitrary selections of criteria... second by self limiting its focus to a criticism of another authors similarly self limited scope.
It never addressed, in those first pages, anything worth considering more broadly in causality that would be useful... so contributes little to understanding anything new in a dynamic that isn't already obvious to most traders who've lived through more than a few... Don't need to delve into the data once the point is made, mercifully early... as it is both obvious and easy to agree with it...
Some is obvious as constraints inherent in the academic environment... but it takes no risks in first broadening, and only then re-narrowing it focus on a point of value... which ensures it avoids both failure and adding anything new in real value... it succeeds in calling the prior author an idiot... but could have done far more by ignoring him and advancing the study beyond him.
A bit like reading an academic describing and criticizing another authors' academic description of sex... Although it arrives at a better conclusion of its utility than the first author... it imbues it with no new life. Reading it will not help you better understand the nature of the other sex, the dynamic in play at a party, or help you get laid... so, mostly a waste of effort... to arrive at an understanding you already had... now with an academic's approval.
It isn't wrong... but it wouldn't compel me to want to hire the authors to help design the AI that will drive the trading desk, or write and enable the algos to implement crossed strategies, in my next venture ?
Why "industries" rather than "a stock" or "a market"... "fund" or "index" ? Why not all of them in the same sandbox... as all we care about is prediction in performance and not boundaries as anything other than a proper container of a specific set of criteria ? What is lost by not finding what they have in common... that which influences choices made (more than outputs)... that matters more in a dynamic market composed of choices... than the arbitrary criteria, considered after the fact, that were selected ? The market you trade in isn't all about charting past performance... gleaning information from snail trails... to predict snail destinations without working at better understanding the snails by studying them. It is about behavior, choices, the factors in analysis that investors do consider... or those that influence their behavior, even if perhaps they shouldn't... and those they probably should consider, that they do not... and, then, the competition in the market as they interact...
Saw no mention of the madness of crowds... nor any criteria for measuring that ?
Context... always includes new elements... that won't exist in the history... that do influence investors now in ways they couldn't... before they existed ? Tulip bulb prices... are not soaring this spring... the French are not falling all over themselves to invest in swampland in Mississippi... which does not mean I can be sure there isn't a bubble... because I looked at some other industry groups than ornamental horticulture or speculative real estate development ? |
