Writers block is always a pain because it usually strikes at the most inopportune time, like right before some thing is due. I’ve been pretty lucky over the years, I haven’t run into it too many times.
Closely related to writers block is Coders Block. Sadly I seem to be suffering from a full blown case of that. I’ve got things I could be doing, yet when I sit down to try and crank something out I just can’t do it. Fortunately nothing is “due” so I’m not working against any deadline. But at the same time I can’t seem to get the motivation to make something.
Tomorrow is another day though, perhaps I will get my groove back then. My little stock market news analysis program needs to move forward, every day that I don’t collect news is a day I don’t gather any data. Its already been a few weeks since I started so I think I’m running out of excuses. Plus Jerry has been giving me all kinds of ideas in his comments, so I really need to get moving so I can keep up with his ideas. 
Must…get….something….done…..
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[…] After my post yesterday I decided that today I would avoid the computer as much as possible. It looks like that was the right thing to do. Tonight I sat down and looked at some notes and it hit me: The reason I was stuck was because I didn’t know what to do next. […]
thank you nick,
your blog has given me a healthy outlet for venting those frustrated creative energies.. since.. lately i’ve been suffering from my own writer’s block writing a thesis. i am pushing dangerously close to some imaginary deadlines. unfortunately, it has seen very little progress since last fall..
anything to avoid doing real work is a blessing
i’ve just read another 100 pages in Poundstone’s book and i can’t put it down! aside from it being an entertaining read (think “wall street” meets “good fellas”), it raises some important questions that i find not only stimulating but downright relevant. some as fundamental as “is it really an efficient market?” and “is there merit to technical analysis?”, but among them, one that really piques my interest is this:
“whether we can still beat the system using analytical techniques if big firms are trading in and out in the billions with armies of astro-physicists and grid computing supercomputers”
with the Internet pretty much nullifying any possible exploitation of temporal arbitrage, does math give me a significant enough edge to beat the masses? what about the powerplayers? aren’t they effectively “saturating the market” by hunting down all the good deals (quicker than you and me) and milking them dry by closing all arbitrageable price differences?
are you familiar with delta hedging? i want to systematically re-educate myself from where i left off in high school. this econ stuff comes up a lot..
http://www.google.com.tw/search?hl=en&q=define%3Adelta+hedging&btnG=Search
I’ve wondered about the math angle too, it seems like it is something cheap/easy for a big company to do. A lot of industries place a lot of stock in mathematical techniques (the insurance industry springs to mind), so imagine that most big business are already using the information they have derived.
But I also think there is a little bit of an art to it also, and some approaches work better for some people than others. I think that combined with the general randomness of the world (i.e. weather events, political/social changes) that there isn’t just one formula that describes everything. I do think all of the analysis causes the equilibrium points for each company to shift, and that helps to keep things in flux…
I hadn’t heard of Delta Hedging before, but its one of those things that makes me go “Yeah, that makes sense”. I never really studied economics before, I always thought it was something that I wouldn’t find interesting. Now that I’m learning the basics of it, I’ve got to say it is pretty interesting.
-Nick
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