So you're bearish for 2006. It's interesting to read your comments, even if I don't trust them yet enough to follow them (except when they support my analysis). I always had an aversion toward "black boxes".
Black boxes don't get my vote either. It is a proprietary system that has evolved over many years with an intent to measure commercial marketplaces across many industries in this and other economies. It is simply a tool to invest or trade with other techniques and formulas. Each individual must decide for themselves what works best for them. The equity markets are unforgiving and also without praise. Win or lose, it's just people betting they are right and that you are not. I have a game that we play when we are watching and listening to people/customers. I usually win. It's a simple game. Pick 4 people to observe for a certain number of minutes. Then each player must choose the person they think will first touch their body above the shoulders. It's quite easy to guess, once you understand people and their tendencies, habits and behavior. That would also be called a "black box" solution to the game. Black boxes exist everwhere in your life. You just don't notice or care about them. How does aspirin know where to go to stop the pain? Somebody knows this, of course, but they don't tell us the science of that on the bottle. Nor do we get an explanation of why an object as big as a warehouse will fly from Los Angeles to New York in four hours. We just buckle our seat belts and wait for takeoff. That is a huge black box. Familiarity with a black box gives us faith or doubt about any mystery about its nature. That is solid thinking and part of our survival nature. So keep watching this tool work, over and over. Credit it with accuracy and me with the errors. I'm the weakest link in the system. Good Trading and God bless W. B. Busin
I never thought this way about black boxes, but you're correct: we're using them all the time without questioning them a lot. Why? Trust, need, despair, credulity, simplemindedness, etc.. Because of my engineering formation I'm used to operate with boxes: black / gray, opaque / transparent, and trust / doubt them on a case by case basis. Thanks.
============ Also on your airline flight /trading illustration; noticed on AMR flights to South America, pilots use trendlines/map,[ink drawn flight plan trendline]