May

18

One of the giveaways of imposters is their use of highly technical terms, as if they are on a loftier plane of understanding higher math than you and I. For instance, the Fake Doctor said today "at the moment, I still say as I said before, by algebraic implications, the odds are 2 to 1 we won't have a recession," referring to some probabilities from Fed researchers about the odds of a business slowdown, when the yield curve is inverted or when the expansion has run X quarters or more.

There are so many problems with such "algebraic" implications, starting with changing cycles, retrospection, multiple comparisons, the part-whole fallacy, and the general impossibility of predicting from retrospective small numbers of observations. But it brings up the general subject of key semantic indicators of poseurs and imposters. What key words do CEOs, advisers, et al, use when attempting to appear rigorous and profound and smart? Words that should act as a leading indicator of staying away and avoiding such poseurs? To start off, I would propose lognormal and neural networks as two other key semantic posings.

Martin Lindkvist adds:

Greenspan has been all over the media today, but I saw the headline yesterday evening, so perhaps some people got frightened and used it as a reason to sell. He now says there is "a 2 to 1 chance that the US avoids a recession." But he said something like "a 1 in 3 risk of a recession" in February. Is he trying to be funny? Or maybe he just wants to avoid being called a pessimist? Why is it that he always is in the headlines talking about recession as soon as the market goes down? Does he miss the limelight?

Victor Niederhoffer remarks:

Yes. I believe he suffers from the old lion displaced from the pride syndrome that so many other old men suffer from. It is limned in grotesque detail in the indie movie, Little Miss Sunshine. 

George Zachar adds:

Another old lion scandalized by youth:

May 16 (Bloomberg) — Nothing in John Whitehead's 37-year career at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. prepared him for the excesses of today's Wall Street. "I'm appalled at the salaries," the retired co-chairman of the securities industry's most profitable firm said in an interview this week. At Goldman, which paid Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein $54 million last year, compensation levels are "shocking,'' Whitehead said. "They're the leaders in this outrageous increase.''

From Gordon Haave: 

I have always thought the #1 way to spot a fraud would be based on the percentage of falsifiable statements per total words spoken/written. The issue you raise, i.e., speaking on a plane above others, would count to total words but not towards falsifiable statements. The general point of such statements is "until you have my level of education on this subject, you are unqualified to falsify my statements". Of course, one can't attain that level of education, because part of the education would be agreeing with them.

An example in the world of trading would be a discussion of Elliot wave theory. The Elliot wave folks defend themselves by taking it deeper and deeper into the theory to a level that you can't attain without spending years studying it. If you study it with an open mind, you will quit studying it after a few weeks. If you push on, you will have a heavy bias towards believing it in order to justify the amount of time you put in.

This is also very prevalent in academia. The most useless of all professors tend to just make up entire new words, and speak in the most complicated of matters solely to keep you from pointing out that the emperor has no clothes.

Now, you ask how to quantify and test? I have given a shot at quantifying, but you can't test. That is the whole point. They prevent you from testing because the statements are always non-falsifiable.

From Sushil Kedia: 

Regarding the Chair's posting, focusing back upon CEOs and their ilk operating or claiming to operate at a higher plane:

1. Descriptive handles: for example when on CN*C market analysts / advisors start describing market as a tough animal, as G_d etc., etc., and not answering to the point, that is, where do they think the analysis is going.

2. Deflective handles: words like in spite of, despite, even after, in the face of a hostile, or for example a Chairman's report / comment in corporate annual reports saying that despite competitive challenges your company has done well.

3. Picking the Fly: secondary variables of valuation like market share, cost management, planning. An example is,"We have chosen to push for a continued growth in market share and are certain that in the long run this would continue to accrue value to our shareholders." [Oh I thought returns in excess of the cost of funds created value, unless you believe in today's age and times you would one day become a monopoly while continuing to feed the expansion of your ego.]

4. Shifting in Time: that brings to mind another key handle called, "In the long run". Would a bad trade qualify to become a good investment? Oh, often it would if you are in the presence of an advisor. In the long run, none of them have died.

John Floyd writes:

This may get off the track of the question's intent but I think there are a number of facets of this to explore that are of use in vetting imposters, as well as helping to find profitable trading opportunities. There is choice of words, clothes, cars, etc. that all give clues.

Beyond the actual word choices and phrases, I think one should look at the number of times certain words are used and word choices changed. The currency markets, for example, have had a fixation on Trichet of the ECB's use of the words "strong vigilance". Another example would be the number of times certain words such as "slower" are used in U.S. Fed comments. The degrees to which these words are expected and unexpected by markets as well as the shifts in language often expose opportunities. Yesterday for example the fact that the market had become calloused to "strong vigilance" yielded no reaction and the Euro actually weakened in part on the comments.

Steven Pinker has done some interesting work on linguistics and cognition. I have also heard that both Mark Frank and Paul Ekman have done some worthwhile work on non-verbal communication. Marc Salem, while some of his work is clearly of the "fun" and non-scientific variety, is entertaining and I would recommend his live shows when he is in town. 

Vic replies:

I had in mind terms such as "Pareto distribution" and "infinite variance" and "closed-form solutions" or attempts to absorb prestige from academic institutions like Stanford, Caltech, MIT, or Princeton, through their "luster" and "close encounters" thereto, a la the magician who can bend keys and spoons at will. 

From Easan Katir: 

There was a certain bond trader in London who was horrible at trading, but could talk such a good story he was able to move from one high-paying desk to another. He was head of trading for a Japanese Bank, last I checked. Anyway, his favorite word to throw into a conversation was "hypersclericity". I don't know how to test prospectively, but retrospectively, when the secret account where he hid his losses came to light, it was game over. 

Vincent Andres writes: 

As a programmer working with algorithms, I must say that I'm a bit distressed seeing algorithms often blamed as faulty rather than the users. Every morning I use my razor. Yet in the hand of a baby, a razor would clearly be horrible. Should I throw my razor away?

It's exactly the same thing with algorithms, though this is not to say that there aren't bad algorithms. Hundreds are invented every day (mainly rococo useless constructions). But generally those algorithms don't reach the news.

Jason Ruspini remarks:

For many people, even "bootstrapping methods" is buzzwording. It does come back to the user/context. "Correlation" can be a buzzword, and often is. Count the unnecessary syllables. On Friday's 8pm show a CEO cited a "one hundred basis point" improvement in margins. 

Vic comments again:

Part of the pseudo-math is using a terms when one does not know the first thing about what it means. The idea that the frequency distribution of some aspect of market prices or paths more closely fits a normal distribution than a log-normal distribution, and that this explains long tails/isn't properly priced, is so complicated that it would take the most competent of practicing statisticians to unravel it.

When the person who has never had a statistics course uses it, and pretends that he has the same understanding as great 'mathletes' such as the mediaval liberal fund, or the Harvard opera fundist, or the math arbitragers from Columbia use it — why that's transference and flimflammery squared.

It amazes me that it is so easy to fool so many with these high sounding words. The other aspect of course, is that those who know math and use the words properly often lack the wisdom to consider why such exact and precise and computationally intensive methods are completely useless except as a marketing tool, due to such things as the law of simplicity, the principle of ever changing cycles, and multiple comparisons.


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