Trent the Stock Whisperer

Victor’s Stocks

Stock Market Challenge (Krishnan)

I am glad that it is just a virtual game

  I lost 34.7775 dollars.  LNKD is the best performer. My biggest lost is from google

LNKD: 203.79*1    +14

LNKD

11:59am EST

217.79

+2.77

+1.29%

213.25

217.94

562,013

1,719,060

27.05B

Chart, News,

Twitter: 49.84*1  -10.76

TWTR

12:00pm EST

39.08

+0.17

+0.44%

38.38

39.42

7,471,200

26,923,000

24.43B

Chart, News, Sta

Microsoft Corporation 47*1  +1.175

MSFT

12:02pm EST

48.175

-0.29

-0.60%

47.805

48.48

8,402,386

35,484,500

397.099B

Chart, News, Stats, Options, Board

Google 571*1 -39.19

GOOG

12:01pm EST

531.81

-1.94

-0.36%

531.25

536.00

463,223

1,811,580

360.98B

Chart, News, Stats, Options, Board

Total -34.775

Joseph's portfolio

Here is my results of media stock portfolio. Netflix saved me.
I found that those stocks fluctuated frequently within last three months.
Even though I earned some money from Netflix, there was sharp decrease in the mid October.

When Colleges Follow Business Logic

Promiscuous College Come-Ons

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/23/opinion/sunday/frank-bruni-promiscuous-college-come-ons.html?_r=0

Stock Portfolio Results

Looks like I made nearly $500 (I spent $9888.99 originally). Glad they released that Star Wars teaser when they did. Disney outperformed every one of the competitors I examined. Guess my family will be receiving Christmas presents after all.

Politico looks ridiculous today.

It's hard to tell if this is Walmart's website or Politico's right now. 

Overcoming the retail logic

Chris Anderson explains in a persuasive way the overreaching power that the Long Tale theory has in  online environments. As he recognizes, the old assumptions about popular taste in the retailer world were actually the result of “poor supply and demand matching.”

Back catalogs, underground art and music find now niche audiences and markets thank to digital platforms that break the physical space and the old store logic. (See this controversial example of Fan Fiction).

Anderson calls it the tyranny of physical space and the dictatorship of entertainment hits. He shows how “misses” are also able to make money if they can be found for the audience.  

I agree when he says that the Long Tail economy is good for societies because probably the industry does not know what the public wants.  

His three rules of the Long Tail Theory are also astonishing: 1. Make everything available, 2. Cut the price in half. Now lower it, 3. Help me find it. I specially like his argument when he explains the logic behind the current price for a digital song and how traditional recording studios want to protect their DVD industry by dividing the price of a physical album.

However, his most powerful argument is when he explains the new capability of the industry to go deeper in their catalog to recommend products that make sense to the costumer according to his/her previous consumption. Also recommendations by friends or people we trust have a great impact on consumers' decisions. 

Anderson’s ideas apply perfectly when talking about digital products that don’t need a physical space to be stored.

However, he forgets to mention that most of the shopping transactions in Amazon, for instance, are orders that imply delivering physical things such as print books, clothes and electronics. For those kinds of products, storage and delivery represent a huge problem that the author forgets to mention probably because it doesn’t support his arguments. 

(e.g. In his last blog post, Picard points out that the material world is reining in Internet companies: "Although they [Internet companies] would like to think they operate in a separate virtual world, they also operate in a material world where users and advertisers reside, where advertising and search placement payments take place, where content is created, and where they locate physical offices.”)

The tail that wags the dog

It really is amazing what can happen for an economy when physical space and time are removed from the equation. When people are uninhibited by when and where information is available it opens the door for individual discovery and development. It brings the concepts of the theory of Diffusions of Innovations to each piece of information produced/published. That eventually allows the information to reach 100% market share and be something that everyone can (not always guaranteed) know and use in their own lives.

Ultimately I feel these articles are preaching more about the existence of niche markets and the ability that the internet gives us to exploit those markets by eventually reaching everyone in that market, regardless of where and when they are. Everything is a "HIT" to someone, and there's room for it when space is "Free".

Week 11 Reflections

I'm not sure how Chris Anderson's piece got published without (what I consider) a crucial aspect of the abundance economy: the profit of the producer. Sure, consumers get access to rare b-sides and companies like Netflix and Spotify (Rhapsody is a little dated) make tons in revenue off of their non-hit portfolio content, but how does the producer of the content do? Well, it depends. As the Wall Street Journal reported last year, the rights holder to a Spotify song is paid between $.0006 and $.00084 for every paid song.

If you're Lorde, Drake or someone who is going to generate a lot of plays, you will make out great from having your content on Spotify, but if you're one of those independent "non hits" Chris Anderson talks about, you're basically screwed. This point has gotten in to the zeitgeist recently as Taylor Swift (who made $6 million on Spotify this year for her catalogue) took her music off the streaming site. 


I know I harp on the fact that consumers are now producers, but I think that it is interesting in the last few years they have begun to adopt a similar model to companies like Netflix and YouTube. If you look at YouTube stars they are posting content at an insanely fast rate, generating a large portfolio of content that will collect revenues for the foreseeable future. But in addition to money, they are collecting Likes which has become an important currency in the abundance/attention economy. This is the focus of a Frontline documentary from earlier this year, Generation Like, which I highly recommend everyone in the class watch.

More than big data

The common thing between this week’s readings is that they all implied consumer’s behavioral patterns. For me, the discrimination between behavioral economy or psychology does not matter at all. As Grant mentioned at the end of the article, it is far better for us to pursue interdisciplinary approaches between fields and just name behavioral economists and psychologists as ‘behavioral scientists.’ I want to emphasize the point: ‘if economy and psychology meet, they might create synergy effects.’ Thus, do not fight for the hegemony.

These days, synergy effects can be easily achieved, by the ‘big data.’ Amazon and Netflix are the examples of utilizing big data to keep track of consumer behavior. Big data helped those services infer what consumers want, based on their shopping lists. Their former purchases are the great proofs for future purchases. Defined as a recommendation system, big data can cumulatively calculate future scenario of consumers. High probability of future behavior (consumption) can suggest future ‘wish lists’ for consumers, saving time greatly. The reason that big data has been emphasized for most areas including marketing is that it can successfully predict the future, leading to the earning ultimately.

Web already made ‘everything available,’ by archiving former records. We might tell that this is a micro-targeting period, but we should feel thankful for the past mass production. All those mass production became fundamental basis for the present and future behaviors. Long-tail economy is based on the web technology. Everything is there and even free stuffs are also there. Big data made it. The past made the present and the past and present predict the future.

How long should the tail be

     I enjoy reading the long tail article for this week. The long tail seems to free all audience from commercial market, which follow the rule of the lowest-common-denominator.

            What surprising me is that no matter how small the market is, as long as it is put on the internet market, the profit of small markets make can add up to a huge market. The author pointe out that almost everything is worth offering because it will find a buyer. My question here is that is the profit of selling to only one buyer greater than the cost of offering it? Only when the cost of distribution and manufacture of the product is approaching zero, can it make a profit from few buyers. It is understandable that there is no cost of distribution, package and shelf space for online product but is it really no cost to offer digital content? Especially for those old movie without digital format.

            Another interesting point in the article is that lowering price to pull consumers down the tail. The price of a track can be a lot cheaper than it is now. The author pointed out that compared to free track, a few more cents of track but with a consistent quality, legality and time efficient can compete with free. I doubt it. Like the experiment statistics we saw in class last week, consumers tend to choose free stuff regardless its quality. As long as there is a free music to download, even 20 cents seem to be way more expensive.

            In conclusion, I wondered how low should the price be and how long the tail is can make a profit that add up to a huge market?