Finance Trends Letter

Came across this clip of Apple CEO, Tim Cook complaining that the ongoing tech patent wars are a "pain in the ass" . Granted, this is a topic that's recently been covered by Mark Cuban , or going farther back, by Bastiat in his "Three Stages of Invention" . However, one could look beyond Tim Cook's complaints to examine the very idea of the supposed necessity of patents and copyrights. The book, Against Intellectual Monopoly does just that, arguing: "Patents and copyrights do not promote economic progress but impede it." Note this passage, from the same book, which calls attention to the fact that patents can block the market's progress by preventing product imitation, development, and refinement:    "Imitation is a great thing. It is among the most powerful technologies humans have ever developed … imitation is a technology that allows us to increase productive capacity. Innovators increase productive capacity directly......

Found this excellent quote from the Elite Trader forums .  In a response to one poster asking, " Why does everyone quote Jesse Livermore? He was a horrible trader, who blew up every couple of years. ", another forum member answered:  " Simple. He was a pure artist of "the game." Artists always reach beyond their grasp. They sometimes succeed brilliantly. They sometimes fail tragically. But they never fail to inspire. "   Speculation is an art form. And true artists, however flawed, never fail to inspire us.    Subscribe to Finance Trend s by email or get new posts via RSS . You can follow our real-time updates on Twitter .      

I'm reading a passage from Scott Patterson's book, The Quants , that looks back on the .com bubble. Let me share a few brief quotes from this section with you here. Backdrop: "A few months before the dot-com IPO frenzy began, LTCM had collapsed. Greenspan and the Fed swept in organizing a bailout. Greenspan also slashed interest rates...the easy money added fuel to the smoldering internet fires...pushing the tech-laden Nasdaq to all-time highs on an almost daily basis."  The .com boom proved disastrous for Cliff Asness' hedge fund, AQR, which invested in value stocks while "betting against companies his models deemed expensive".  After agonizing over the fund's poor performance and the perceived boundless stupidity of market participants, Asness finally came to a realization about markets and crowds: investor irrationality does not stay within expected, "just right" modeled bounds.  Surveying the scene near the peak of the internet...

Arthur C. Clarke forecasts the future of 2001 , a time when home computers and interconnectivity with others through technology are commonplace (via Eddie Markets ).

Bernard Baruch with Winston Churchill (left) and Dwight Eisenhower (right) in 1953 (via loc.gov ). Related posts : 1. Speculation drives human progress .  2. Bernard Baruch: Why I Still Believe in the Future .

"Just one word. Are you listening? Apps ."

"It's always been my idea to make a few thousands early in the game, and then quit for as long as they last..." - Cary Grant , Holiday (1938).