Why is investors business daily always writing articles that are saying under armour is doing the best and sketchers is not doing as well and that their sales growth is slowing year-over-year.
Thoughts?
I couldn’t get my iPhone to copy the link but if you go to Yahoo finance under sketchers you will see the article today. There was one just like it a few weeks ago
Why is investors business daily always writing articles that are saying under armour is doing the best
I don’t follow UA, but here’s a guess. Everyone else was up or down 5% or 7% or something like that. UA was listed as up 61% or something. My guess is that they just started carrying athletic shoes of the type they are measuring and are coming off a tiny base so they can post a big percentage increase, which may not be very big in dollars.
But as I said, that’s just a commonsense guess. The article may have been written by a machine.
Saul
Thanks Saul. You have excellent insight
The article may have been written by a machine.
Wow! That’s a scary thought if you think on the implications.
So one machine scans available data and infers meaning (that is, abstracts information based on some algorithms). Then, using basic pre-programmed English grammatical constructs and basic vocabulary composes an article. IBD provides a publishing platform for the article, and because of their status, the article is imbued with some level of integrity.
Then another machine (or, actually, it could be the same machines) scans published articles and reads this one. It is given a certain weight based on the reputation and credibility of the source. And once again, meaning is abstracted. But this time rather than publishing a new article a different set of algorithms whir away and an order gets placed for UA and maybe Skechers gets shorted.
More machines pick up on the order activity and start scanning for related information and come across the same article and maybe a dozen more similar ones (also written by machine). More whirring algorithms and more orders generated.
I know, it’s kind of a nightmare scenario, but I can’t see what would interfere with this happening . . . Once you take the humans out of the process and rely largely on artificial intelligence, it seems you might generate a lot of artificial (unsupported) activity.
Google just accomplished the “impossible” with respect to AI, they built a machine that successfully beat a go master in successive play (I think the final outcome was 4 out of 5 matches). There has been speculation that we are not far from AI capabilities that outmatch humans in every respect (including “common sense”). What will the become of investing if it is largely the domain of machines pitted against one another? Is there any room for individual investors in that world?
I have posted positive or negative posts here on the Fool that have made Post of the Day, and those posts seemed, (were coorilated with) other articles that echoed mine and the stock prices then tended to move for a bid the way the articles would have caused them to move.
My take is that machines pulled and parroted my writing, and exactly the scenario you pointed out took place.
For astute value investors, this is a good thing, it allows you to buy blue light specials.
Cheers
Qazulight