"In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase
of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president
used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection."
During the COVID pandemic, I saw some truly magical statistics in our government (I am French).
I tried to understand some of their data but it was beyond my capacities - despite having access to some raw data. I do not think that the general population cared (the concern was rather on how to calculate 1 km from their house) but for someone who is allergic to bad statistics creating crappy results it was torture.
I used to work doing epidemic models, it was torture sometimes to see people abuse mathematical concepts (eigenvalues, r0, etc) when talking about covid
We had an expert one on TV answering questions, and one of the questions was the one I was burning to ask: "how do you know there are X infections per day"?
To what he answers "because we get data from pharmacies, doctors, etc. about cases"
- so how do you know that this is a total number? It is just the number of positive tests?
- yes, so we know the ratio and therefore can tell for the whole population
- so the number you provide is an estimate?
- no, the number of cases
(some time passed and then another question)
- when you extrapolate (they used a more human-friendly term), how do you know that the ones who come for tests are representative of the whole population
- ...
While I must say that our government reacted to the pandemic almost very well (except that they lied at the beginning), some of the experts they put ahead were ridiculous.
It cuts the other way with stock market earnings reports. There are blood baths when "profits are down" when actually profit growth is down on record profits.
Yeah, this annoys me quite a bit, but I guess I was naive. I’ve recently started buying stocks from companies I think are really on a nice path for the future, I’m in the field of genomics so I think I have a nice view on novel developments, like Liquid Biopsies (blood based cancer monitoring and diagnostics)…
And indeed some companies report growth of up to 30%… and then the stock goes down because it is less than expected. I know it was going to be like that but it’s even more so than I expected it to be. It feels… annoying.
Same with Beyond meat, they strike some deal with McDonalds, feels like a big deal, the stock does… nothing :s.
As John Maynard Keynes said, it doesn't matter what you as an investor think of a stock, or what you think other investors will do, or what other investors think you will do, or what other investors think other investors will do, what matters is what other investors think other investors think other investors think other investors will do.
"And there are some, I believe, who practice the fourth, fifth and higher degrees."
- It's trading way beyond its revenue and losing lots of money.
- The McD partnership alone isn't going to put them in profit, nowhere close, not to mention McD are going to be suffering themselves (relatively speaking) over the next few years.
- People with plant based diets don't tend to be huge McD consumers.
- BM's growth has been poor over the last few years. A lot of meat eaters tried these plant based burgers as a gimmick during the initial hype, few continued to buy it regularly. Sure, there is a general growing market for plant based options but it's a slow burner.
- Even within that growing plant based market, Beyond Meat is expensive. It's a luxury choice. It's exactly the type of business I can see suffering over the next few years as disposable income shrinks.
They might be on a nice path for the future if you're thinking very long term, but in general these equity markets are placing the most weight on what's happening in the next 6-24 months, and in the next 6-24 months I can't see a bullish argument for Beyond Meat.
I think that's because many market participants make bets on other people's expectations rather than anything fundamental. That's why the market is always wrong ;-)
This quote came to mind when seeing the title but I could not remember the source (read it in high-school, I think before learning formally about derivatives). I'm glad someone found it.
-- http://www.ams.org/notices/199610/page2.pdf