From: Reason (reason@exratio.com)
Date: Tue Sep 03 2002 - 20:35:34 MDT
Funnily enough, I wrote an automated analyst four or five years ago (in
Forth :). It still exists at www.wallstreetcity.com. Look at
"http://host.wallstreetcity.com/wsc2/Corporate_Snapshot.html?DB=SQL&template
=corpsnap.htm&Symbol=aapl" and hit the "Dcipher this stock" link above the
graph. It was enormously popular with potential clients (AOL loved it), but
never made headway in the company beyond this trivial usage because the
writers felt threatened.
The underlying math of producing one of these things was actually a very
interesting one of optimizing population of N-dimensional spaces that have
flow constraints. Not to mention doing it in Forth. Did I mention that it
was in Forth? :)
The CEO at the time (who now dwells atop a hill in Santa Barbara surrounded
by a 1/2 scale model trainset with 4km of tracks, but that's a whole
different story) was real big on automating the whole analyst thing. He
wanted avatars that gave you stock information over the web...(and funnily
enough, AtomFilms did exactly that as a spoof in Flash that hooked up to a
stock ticker and gave you offbeat but not hugely useful analysis about six
months after I left).
Strange old world. Anyhow, I guess my point is that there's a bunch of stuff
out there involving transfer of knowledge from expert A to students B
through Z that could handily be automated. Many experts don't want to get
involved, however, as it significantly changes their business models.
Reason
http://www.exratio.com/
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-extropians@extropy.org
> [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]On Behalf Of spike66
> Sent: Tuesday, September 03, 2002 6:45 PM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: stock market bot
>
>
> The stock market took a huge hit today. The news
> in pretty much any web-based report is accompanied
> by the requisite photo of some broker looking ashen
> faced, as if to say, oy vey. Conversely, when the
> market does well, they have photos of stock traders
> looking like a flock of Swedish sparrows.
>
> It occurred to me today that they could get a bunch
> of guys together, pose them with various expressions,
> 1% loss, break even, 1% gain, and so forth, then
> archive thousands of these. Then a web-bot could
> automatically read off the closing result, select the
> appropriate photo, generate a generic accompanying
> news story with the usual meaningless commentary
> about profit taking, earnings expectations and
> yakkity yak and bla bla, all automatically. This would
> cost nothing, since it would not require a human
> newsperson, yet could still sell ad space.
>
> Is this a great business plan or what?
>
> It does leave one question, however. Why is it always
> guys down on the trading floor at the stock exchange?
> I dont recall ever seeing oy-veying women in those
> photos.
>
> spike
>
>
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