Discovery, Invention, and Stocks

There is a difference between discovery and invention. A discovery brings to light what existed before, but what was not known; an invention is the contrivance of something that did not exist before.
Sir William Ramsay

There was a hidden discipline lying about, unseen from view. I unearthed it. When I did, I discovered HypernomicsTM. Its foundation, the Law of Value and Demand, states that

  1. Features determine Value
  2. Value drives Price
  3. Price limits Quantity Sold
  4. Quantity Sold is a Feature.

Useful by itself, it needed an invention to get results quickly.

That came as HypernomicaTM (formerly MEE4DTM) software, built by Shad Torgerson, Kent Joris, and me. It speeds up the analysis of complex markets.

Just over 44 months ago, we set it on the most complicated market we could find — that of stocks. Using only stocks from the S&P 500, our HypernomicsTM Fund (private, not open to the public) managed to beat it by 2.35X. The likelihood of that happening by chance is very much less than one in a trillion. At the same time, our fund outperformed Berkshire Hathaway A by a factor of 1.39X.

HypernomicaTM is available now; soon, we will begin classes on it. Be among the first to benefit from this discovery and its companion invention.

There’s a preferred way to compare the means of two groups and verify if their differences came about randomly.That is the Student’s t-test. William Sealy Gosset conceived it in 1908 (published under the pen name “Student”). That test (the two-tailed version) reveals that the likelihood that HypernomicsTM beat the S&P 500 by 2.35X over 44+ months was due to chance was 2.01 E-237.That test for HypernomicsTM against Berkshire Hathaway A, where we beat it by 1.39X in the same period, calculates the probability that the result was due to chance as 1.57E-152. In short, our algorithm, built using the HypernomicaTM Software, works. It will work for you, too, whatever your market might be.

Ants, Airbus, And Avoidance

Hit ’em where they ain’t.
Wee Willie Keeler

I finished a run the other day and stretched at the trail’s end. I looked down, and an ant caught my eye. Starting from position A1, it reached A2 and seemed to be going in a circle for a moment. But then, as its path widened to A3, A4, and A5, I realized it was doing reconnaissance! I raced home and found out that ants do that to “avoid hostile conspecific neighbours,” when considering where to set up camp, they use “a weighted additive strategy, the most comprehensive of consumer evaluations, to choose nests with the best combination of attributes.”*

People, of course, do the same thing.

In B, during 2009-2018, the business jet market had a lot of competitors offering various cabin and price combinations. Noticeably, though, there were a few prominent gaps in the market, akin to how the ants saw regions away from their neighbors. In Q1 of 2019, Airbus launched its A220-100 business jet in the most prominent open region (C). Along with the base airliner from which it came, this vehicle has several hundred orders, helping ensure its long-term viability.

When considering where to place your next product, work to avoid local opposition.

Finding Your Niche

Wee Willie Keeler knew a thing or two about baseball. The Hall of Famer still holds the National League hitting streak record, 45 games over two seasons. He summed up his approach with “Hit ‘em where they ain’t.” It turns out that’s sound advice for entering a market, too.

In the early 1970s, the airline industry embraced the then-new Boeing 747 wide-body. Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas both wanted some twin-aisle profits as well. They came up with the L-1011 and DC-10, respectively. While they had obvious design differences, from the standpoint of their customer airlines, they were virtually identical, with highly similar specifications and prices. Neither had a corner in the market – they shared the same spot, and would have to split the sales.

Lockheed only sold 250 L-1011s; its break-even point was 500 units. With a lower target, McDonnell-Douglas managed to squeak past its break-even value of 438 planes, as it sold 446 DC-10s, eventually offering engine options and added range to distinguish it from the L-1011.

But neither model was a financial triumph.

Nothing guarantees success in the market.

But mimicking the competition reduces your chances.

#innovation #newproduct #business #success #branding #competition #entrepreneurship