Was that the Inflation/Interest Rate Adjustment ?

I am talking about what occurred in the time period between August 8 and September 18. On the face of it, that is what the market seems to be saying. There seems to be the conclusion that higher rates are bad for the real America, the small cap and retail world, and that they don’t matter for the Tech world. I think that premise is about to be tested. Two of the price patterns that are prominent in our model are the S&P 500, and the unweighted composite of a wide range of indexes: ( S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, Russell, Dow Industrials, Transportations, Discretionary, Financials, and Utilities). At the moment these two price patterns are suggesting a high correlation to periods in the past when the market uncovered a high degree of underlying risk. As such our model is staying in the Hedge Column.

No doubt AI is the thread that is encouraging risky behavior. Investment in computer hardware, buildings, and software development are fueling huge expenditures that help roll into GDP. The bigger question is whether the payback in terms of usage fees will be sufficient to cover operating and continuing development costs down the road.

I happen to find AI very useful in analyzing things, mostly in terms of creating an array of data that can be part of a human decision. All of the hand wringing these days in terms of AI taking over the world are probably misplaced. To me AI is a tool not a brain, I use it to arrange alternatives in a decision, not to make the decision. Michael Pollan’s new book “A World Appears” takes a look at consciousness, and the inferences that flow into what AI is and can do. One comment in the book that I love is essentially, neuroscientist’s know a lot about the brain, what parts control what, etc, but no one really knows how thoughts and analysis are created, although he does provide a lot of examples of people who are trying, so it is quite a leap for computer scientists to say that they have developed something that can think.

In utilizing AI I find the quality of the human generated questions that one gives an AI platform to be the biggest factor in the quality of the answer. To me all the worry in the public sphere currently in terms of government controlled AI taking over the world comes down to the age old premise, you get back what you vote in.