The Stars Are Aligned for SpaceX
Astrology, ADM Nutrition, M&A competition, AI employee benefits and neolabs.
One occasional interest of mine is whether people should make investment decisions using astrology. The first-order analysis is: “Making investment decisions using astrology is dumb. There is no fundamental reason to think that the alignment of the planets influences asset prices, no mechanism other than medieval superstition.” There is a relevant xkcd.
But then the second-order analysis is: “Look, it doesn’t matter that it’s dumb. People do lots of dumb stuff, and financial markets reflect the stuff that people actually do, dumb or not. If, empirically, lots of people make trading decisions based on astrology, then the alignment of the planets will influence asset prices. The mechanism is not medieval magic, it’s regular old investor psychology. Good investors and traders have to understand and take advantage of other people’s irrationality. Your job as an investor or trader is to anticipate what other investors will do, and if those other investors are influenced by beliefs about the planets then you should start casting horoscopes.” There is a relevant passage in Keynes.