First impressions

Monday, December 31, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Placing the most important content at the beginning is a must, as is repeating it at the end. Anything in the middle of your message will be overlooked......... Should you have the choice of presenting first or last, you should always choose to present first, because you have an opportunity to anchor the first "beginning" point against which all other presentations will be measured.

From Neuromarketing, Patrick Renvoisé & Christophe Morin
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We decide and then figure out a reason....

Monday, December 31, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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We are not thinking machines that feel; rather we are feeling machines that think
Antonio Damasio
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Praise desired behaviors instead of punishing...

Sunday, December 30, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The general strategy is this: Instead of just focusing on what happens when a child acts out, parents should first decide what behaviors they want to see in their kids (cleaning their room, getting ready for school on time, playing nicely with a sibling). Then they praise those behaviors when they see them. "You start praising them and it increases the frequency of good behavior," says Timothy Verduin, clinical assistant professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Child Study Center at NYU Langone Medical Center in New York.
This sounds simple, but in real life can be tough. People's brains have a "negativity bias," says Alan E. Kazdin, a professor of psychology and child psychiatry at Yale University and director of the Yale Parenting Center. We pay more attention to when kids misbehave than when they act like angels. Dr. Kazdin recommends at least three or four instances of praise for good behavior for every timeout a kid gets. For young children, praise needs to be effusive and include a hug or some other physical affection, he says.

This is very true people are much more concerned with a negative behavior than praising and rewarding the good outcomes. It's difficult but as parents we should praise more...
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"Regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities

Sunday, December 30, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The broad point of this new notion is that if physical activity helped to mold the structure of our brains, then it most likely remains essential to brain health today, says John D. Polk, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and co-author, with Dr. Raichlen, of the new article.
And there is scientific support for that idea. Recent studies have shown, he says, that “regular exercise, even walking,” leads to more robust mental abilities, “beginning in childhood and continuing into old age.”


Another data point, the best exercise for the brain is to exercise the body.
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Pain in better faster than....

Sunday, December 30, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Shock or no, Mr. Balcerowicz remains adamant that fixes are best implemented as quickly as possible. Europe's PIGS—Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain—moved slowly. By contrast, Mr. Balcerowicz offers the BELLs: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
............
Greece focused on raising taxes, putting off expenditure cuts. They got it backward, says Mr. Balcerowicz. "If you reduce through reform current spending, which is too excessive, you are far more likely to be successful with fiscal consolidation than if you increase taxes, which are already too high."
He adds: "Somehow the impression for many people is that increasing taxes is correct and reducing spending is incorrect. It is ideologically loaded." This applies in Greece, most of Europe and the current debate in the U.S.


In Potugal we are trying to fix things increasing taxes instead of cutting expenses. It's not working according to plan because tax receipt's went down despite raising marginal tax rates.
A friend from Brazil thinks the Goverment has to try something he knows it's incorrect to show the people it doesn't work. After that people will accept cut's in Goverment expenditures.


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Most problems are the result of bad politics

Sunday, December 30, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Poland was the only country in the European Union to avoid recession in 2009 and has been the fastest-growing EU economy since. Mr. Balcerowicz dwells little on this achievement. He sounds too busy in "battle"—his word—against bad policy.
"Most problems are the result of bad politics," he says. "In a democracy, you have lots of pressure groups to expand the state for reasons of money, ideology, etc. Even if they are angels in the government, which is not the case, if there is not a counterbalance in the form of proponents of limited government, then there will be a shift toward more statism and ultimately into stagnation and crisis."
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Lazy but smart!

Saturday, December 29, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Steven Cohen told The Wall Street Journal in 2006 that his mother, who died in 2005, thought he was “smart but lazy.” She viewed his younger brother, Donald Cohen, as the financial success of the family. He is now an accountant.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/business/steven-cohen-of-sac-is-fascinating-to-investigators-too.html?pagewanted=3&_r=0
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The purpose of life

Saturday, December 29, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The purpose of life is a life of purpose. 
Robert Byrne 
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Book Review

Saturday, December 29, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Just finish reading the book Seeds of Victory from Nuno Cobra the biggest Personal Coach in Brazil.  The book is very logical and the main message is that you need to a few things to be in great shape. Physically, mentally and spiritually.
You don't need to be in a gym, in fact he advises to do the exercises in a public garden near some trees (Brazil weather !).

He claims that in order to be happy and to have health which is different from absence of disease you need to:

1.Don't wake up with an alarm clock and sleep at least 8 hours.
2.eat slowly every three hours
3.smell the food and chew at least 10 times before swallowing the food
4.Make some physical activity at least 3 times a week, always aerobic (easy). You can do it at any time any place.
5.Meditate at least 15 minutes every day
6.Have at least 2 cold showers a day (Again he is in Brazil, i finish my showers cold but it's not easy)
7.Forget smoking
8.When you exercise concentrate on what you are doing don't multi task.
9.Try to breath slowly and deeply always
10.Praise more.

With this and other simple rules he has helped lot's of people to have more balanced lives  with good health. Again to have a good health is different from absence of sickness. Sometimes you don't feel sick but you are not well. The amount of energy the body spends undoing the mistakes we make is huge. If we don't do big mistakes it's a huge move in the right direction.



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"Uncertainty" is a buy signal, not a sell signal

Friday, December 28, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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When you hear the term "uncertainty" being bandied about from every corner of the universe, you may want to consider putting in some buy orders. Let's take Greece. How much uncertainty was there about the oft-lamented Mediterranean problem child nation? The maximum. There could not have been more. Each day, the discussion was about when (not if) they would leave the Euro Zone, would they voluntarily withdraw or would they be kicked out, how may millions of people would starve on the streets when it happened and who would be next.


PS This is so true, when everything is well there is no uncertainty who is left to buy?
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You will be Assimilated (From Star Trek)

Thursday, December 27, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent.

John Dewey, Architect of US Education System
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Pratical Wisdom vs Bureaucracy

Sunday, December 23, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Barry Schwartz says rules and incentives are an “insurance policy against disaster, but [they don't] produce excellence.” In the recent book, Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing, Schwartz and co-author Kenneth Sharpe, also a Swarthmore professor, say what is needed is not more bureaucracy. Instead, society needs the Aristotelian ideal that trumps all others — practical wisdom.

 http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2012/12/practical-wisdom/

 PS I am not sure rules & incentives are an insurance against disasters, perhaps they can avoid small mistakes but they can contribute to a big disasters. Once you follow the rules and stop thinking anything can happen.
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My new book (and the first)

Thursday, December 20, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 3 Comments

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I just finish a book with a compilation of the first 10 years of Thought's of the Day. The book it's not for sale, i can't profit from it (in fact i am loosing a lot!). I am figuring out a way to send the book to all the interested without spending more money.

The idea is give the book to friends, family and Colleagues.

I designed the book to be a good read for my kids, i think it's better than an MBA.

The first thought of the book is:

The secret of success is constancy to purpose.
Benjamin Disraeli

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Diet

Wednesday, December 19, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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73 kg and 13% fat
yesterday i ate black beans & ratatouille for breakfast (i am getting used to eat real food for breakfast)
at lunch i ate feijoada (brazilian dish) at my mother's house (no way i could diet there). I didn't eat bread or rice. Drank some red wine.
No eating in the afternoon. No sports either because wednesday is my rest day.
I dinner a big salad & soup with Hemp seeds from ISWARI and some Falaxseeds.
Drank some tea before bed.


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Regulation

Wednesday, December 19, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles
– Bertrand Russell, "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish"  
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Diet

Tuesday, December 18, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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73,4 kg, 9,3% fat and 21,2 BMI
yesterday was not a perfect diet day
I had the BPI lunch in the Ritz Hotel and i was invited by Citigroup to their Christmas party in Bica do Sapato (one of the best restaurants in town)
i ate black beans with a big green salad as breakfast with Earl Grey Tea
during the morning i drank Green Tea
at lunch at the Ritz i asked the chef for a big salad and then i ate some risotto (not diet.
i didn't touch bread and deserts (sugars). I drank red wine and eat some cheese (Cheese is not sugar) for desert.
Not diet but not a disaster....
Did some Spinning class from 18h30 to 20h where i burned 1200 calories.
At Bica do Sapato it was standing dinner, too many people!
My strategy here was some wine and i asked for some boiled vegetables. I ate a bit of codfish. No desert. It was difficult to diet here because every tapa was a disaster for the diet with sugar and fat mix together. example( a toast with melted cheese and a bit of strawberry jelly)
I decided that i am not going to put weight in the christmas. It's not going to be easy! I will keep you posted.
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Nec major in laude nec minor in vituperio

Sunday, December 16, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Nec major in laude nec minor in vituperio

 Saint Augustine
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Happiness

Sunday, December 16, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 1 Comments

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Estar, porém, perto de uma pessoa feliz nos torna felizes, o que, em última instância, é o objectivo primordial da vida de todos nós.

 Eduardo Moreira, Encantadores de Vidas
 My translation:

  To be near a happy person makes you happy too,  which is the purpose of our existence.


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Nutrition

Thursday, December 13, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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73 kg and 9,8% fat
yesterday i wake in Geneva
I eat some muesli, coffee and berries as breakfast
drank only coffee on the plane back to Lisbon and eat some Almonds i had in my backpack
when i landed i came home and ate some black beans with Ratatouille
1 cereal bar at 6 pm
90 minutes low intensity Spinning class after 6.30 pm
For dinner i ate veggie soup and green salad
Today we will have a big windy rainy day in Lisbon
Tomorrow it's the Troia/Sagres road bike ride with 200 k, hope the weather holds!
Today i will carb load big time.( some fruit )




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Nutrition after 2 weeks in Brazil

Monday, December 10, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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74,3 kg 9,8%fat
Just came from 2 weeks in Rio & São Paulo. 
Despite being careful I put some kg's in the process. I landed with 75kg.
It's difficult do diet while staying in Hotels because i always eat too much sugar at breakfast.
I am back on diet.
yesterday i ate
Ratatouille & black beans for breakfast. yes you read it well, real food for breakfast!
Some Green tea
Eat some salad & one veggie soup for lunch
zero eating in the afternoon, just some more green tea
For dinner i had grilled fish with greens. I put some ISWARI Hemp seed's and Flaxseeds.
i slept well and waked early and fresh




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Simple quant formulas beat human eye almost...

Monday, December 10, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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A meta analysis by Grove et alshowed that simple models beat the experts in 64 of 136 studies, while another 64 cases basically resulted in a tie. A mere eight clearly went to the humans, and in those cases there were indications that the experts had access to more information than was provided to the models.
Based on such wide-ranging observations, Mr. Montier suggested that finance likely suffered from similar problems. In other words, investors might get the best performance from following simple stock screens to the letter, rather than using them as a short list to pick and choose from. The extra intelligence brought to bear on the problem might actually hurt returns.
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Investment, overcapacity & collapse

Monday, December 10, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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1. Sell stocks of companies that announce huge acquisitions, that overdiversify, or that spend a fortune on a lavish new headquarters.
2. Avoid stocks where management picks fights with analysts (or, by extension, hedge funds). See Overstock.com in 2005; Netflix in 2010.
3. Watch out when executives start selling a lot of stock — regardless of plausible-sounding excuses. Top execs in homebuilders, mortgage underwriters and Wall Street dumped billions before the 2008 crash.
4. “Run a mile” from all stocks in an industry going through a huge investment boom: Massive overcapacity and consequent collapse is inevitable.
5. Steer clear of investing in manufacturing companies. Their industries are usually plagued with extreme cycles of boom and bust, overcapacity and slumps.
6. Pay little attention to economists or market gurus.
7. Mistrust all mathematical trading formulas as well — they invariably fail just when you most need them to work.
8. Look for companies where the insiders are buying lots of stock.
9. Look for companies generating a lot of cash — a great sign of sustained outperformance.
10. Look for companies which have monopolies (or near monopolies), and those which manage to take out their main competitors.
11. Remember you are buying businesses, not just stocks. Pay close attention to the quality of the business, and especially the quality of the management.
12. Look for companies which have earned the trust of consumers, and which have very strong brand names.



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Good lessons from a good teacher

Monday, December 10, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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PTJ is not only a successful hedge fund manager and philanthropist, but also very original and clear thinker. Here are some of his best market-related insights:
1. Markets have consistently experienced “100-year events” every five years. While I spend a significant amount of my time on analytics and collecting fundamental information, at the end of the day, I am a slave to the tape and proud of it.
2. I see the younger generation hampered by the need to understand and rationalize why something should go up or down. Usually, by the time that becomes self-evident, the move is already over.
3. When I got into the business, there was so little information on fundamentals, and what little information one could get was largely imperfect. We learned just to go with the chart. Why work when Mr. Market can do it for you?
PS Go to the link there is more from PTJ, i believe he has one very good insight, we try to explain everything and spend time figuring out too much.


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Mude

Monday, December 10, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Mude

Sente-se em outra cadeira, no outro lado da mesa. Mais tarde, mude de mesa.
Quando sair, procure andar pelo outro lado da rua. Depois, mude de caminho, ande por outras ruas, calmamente, observando com atenção os lugares por onde você passa.
Tome outros ônibus.


Mude por uns tempos o estilo das roupas. Dê os seus sapatos velhos. Procure andar descalço alguns dias. Tire uma tarde inteira para passear livremente na praia, ou no parque, e ouvir o canto dos passarinhos.
Veja o mundo de outras perspectivas.


Abra e feche as gavetas e portas com a mão esquerda. Durma no outro lado da cama… Depois, procure dormir em outras camas. Assista a outros programas de tv, compre outros jornais… leia outros livros.
Viva outros romances.


Não faça do hábito um estilo de vida. Ame a novidade. Durma mais tarde. Durma mais cedo.
Aprenda uma palavra nova por dia numa outra língua.
Corrija a postura.


Coma um pouco menos, escolha comidas diferentes, novos temperos, novas cores, novas delícias.
Tente o novo todo dia. O novo lado, o novo método, o novo sabor, o novo jeito, o novo prazer, o novo amor.


A nova vida. Tente. Busque novos amigos. Tente novos amores. Faça novas relações.
Almoce em outros locais, vá a outros restaurantes, tome outro tipo de bebida, compre pão em outra padaria.
Almoce mais cedo, jante mais tarde ou vice-versa.


Escolha outro mercado… outra marca de sabonete, outro creme dental… Tome banho em novos horários.
Use canetas de outras cores. Vá passear em outros lugares.
Ame muito, cada vez mais, de modos diferentes.


Troque de bolsa, de carteira, de malas, troque de carro, compre novos óculos, escreva outras poesias.
Jogue os velhos relógios, quebre delicadamente esses horrorosos despertadores.
Abra conta em outro banco. Vá a outros cinemas, outros cabeleireiros, outros teatros, visite novos museus.
Mude.


Lembre-se de que a Vida é uma só. E pense seriamente em arrumar um outro emprego, uma nova ocupação, um trabalho mais light, mais prazeroso, mais digno, mais humano.
Se você não encontrar razões para ser livre, invente-as. Seja criativo.


E aproveite para fazer uma viagem despretensiosa, longa, se possível sem destino. Experimente coisas novas. Troque novamente. Mude, de novo.
Experimente outra vez.

Você certamente conhecerá coisas melhores e coisas piores do que as já conhecidas, mas não é isso o que importa. O mais importante é a mudança, o movimento, o dinamismo, a energia. Só o que está morto não muda !

Repito por pura alegria de viver: a salvação é pelo risco, sem o qual a vida não
vale a pena!

Clarice Lispector
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What makes a Company strong?

Sunday, December 09, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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What makes a company strong is not the product or the service. It's the position they own in the mind.

The strength of Hertz is in its leadership position, not the quality of it's rent-a-car service. It's easier to stay on top than to get there.

Can you name a company that has overturned a leader? Crest did it in toothpaste, thanks to the American Dental Association's seal of approval. Budweiser did it in beer and Marlboro did it in cigarettes. But it rarely happens.

A survey of 25 leading brands from the year 1923 proves this point. Today, 20 of those brands are still in first place.Four are in second place and one is in fifth place.

Even changes in rank don't happen very often. If marketing were a horse race, it would be deadly dull affair. In the 43 years since World War II, there has been only one change in position in the top three U.S. automobile companies.

From Bottom up Marketing, Al Ries & Jack Trout 1990
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Bigger beats better most of the time

Sunday, December 09, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Truly durable competitive advantages arise from the intersection of supply and demand advantages, from the linkages of economies of scale with customer captivity.
Competitive advantages based on economies of scale are in a class by themselves. They tend to be far longer lived than the other types and therefore more valuable. The best course is to establish dominance in a local market and then expand outward from it. Economies of scale, especially in local markets, are the key to creating sustainable competitive advantages.
The appropriate strategy is to identify niche markets, understanding that not all niches are equally attractive. Ideally, it will also be readily extendable at the edges. The key is to “think local"

 Source: Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn, “Competition Demystified”    
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Sound business principles

Sunday, December 09, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Oaktree is run for the benefit of its clients and their constituencies as well as for its owners and employees. Profit without performance, bigness for its own sake and prosperity through cost cutting are all explicitly rejected. Our earnings should grow if we achieve excellence in investing . . . but only then. 



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3 rules to follow

Sunday, December 09, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can
― John Wesley
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Life is pretty simple

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.


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Nutrition

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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71 kg, 9% fat

 Yeasterday i ate 

 lentils & a green salad for breakfast (it's weird but you feel strong but not full. Bread and milk is not a good breakfast for me anymore)
Put some Iswari Hemp seeds and some Flaxseeds on top of the lentils

 At lunch after a class of Pilates i ate 1 veggie soup and 1 big Salad with Greens, some Beans, tomato and cucumber

 at 5 pm i ate some Almonds and some more Hemp seeds

 For dinner i ate Beans & ratatouille with some more seeds and lemos juice

 Rooibos tea for desert

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China stock's hit 3 year low!

Tuesday, November 27, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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By Bloomberg News
     Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) -- China’s stocks fell, with the benchmark index closing below 2,000 for the first time since 2009, as the value of shares traded slumped to the lowest in four years. Material and health-care companies led losses.
     The Shanghai Composite Index dropped 1.3 percent to 1,991.17 at the 3 p.m. local-time close, its lowest level since 
Jan. 23, 2009. Shares worth 33.1 billion yuan ($5.3 billion)
 
 
PS If you are a commodity you don't make money. You can sell but you are always racing to lower prices. With lower prices it's difficult to make money. Solutions:
1.Kill de competition/Monopoly. Be nº1 in something (Visa, Master card, etc...) 
2.hire a good marketing guy that builds a good brand. The marketing guy is the top person in a company (Nestele, Daimmler, etc...)
3.Build a product that no one has. I don't believe in this you can build a solid product (this is not a durable solution and it's difficult to do)
4.Keep cutting costs to survive, race to the bottom. Most people are doing this in order to survive.
5.Be small, organic, local, of service, in short with a top service.
 
Leaving for Rio & São paulo, still 71 kg & 9% fat. Hope to be able to get to Rebook Gym in São paulo if it's not too expensive!!
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If only......

Monday, November 26, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream---and not make dreams your master;
If you can think---and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings---nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
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It's true

Thursday, November 22, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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It's useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk or running for office


Shirley MacLaine
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Better to be Bang & Olufsen than Sony

Thursday, November 22, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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     Nov. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Sony Corp. and Panasonic Corp., the
Japanese electronics makers reeling from record losses, had
their long-term credit ratings downgraded to junk by Fitch
Ratings, citing a weak recovery in the television market.


Things Investors should hate: Innovation

Innovation has two very nasty effects on investors. 

The first one is that it gets everyone excited, often over-excited. It’s possible to trace most of the great booms in stockmarket history to the over-enthusiasm of investors for some new technical trend……

This is the second way in which innovation is a bane to the investor: it destroys existing, often long-established, business models.  This process of creative-destructionism usually, eventually, leads to simpler, better ways of organising corporations and lives.  But in the meantime all of those careful investment plans, built on careful historical analysis of sales and earnings can go hang.

So, yes, I love innovation personally.  But as an investor I’d rather find something which is more likely to stand the test of time.  Powerful brands and physical goods are harder to displace. 

http://www.psyfitec.com/2012/07/things-investors-should-hate-35.html

Better to have design than to have innovation & product. Is Apple a B&O or a Sony? I don't know

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Nutrition

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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71,6 kg, 11% fat and 20,6 BMI
yesterday was an ok diet day
I eat Lentils with a big Salad for breakfast with green tea
Eat some almonds at 11 am
Lunched in a Buffet
Eat some white beans with mushrooms cooked in a delirious sauce
the second time i went to the buffet i ate rucola salad and more mushrooms
1 glass of wine
1 muesli bar at 5 pm
No time to go to the gym
1 hour of Spinning in my Cyclops 3.0 at home, easy, easy
for dinner i ate Lentils with a big green salad with Lemonade (Green Salad with Mushrooms, Spinach, peppers, carrots, lettuce, red cabbage, mini tomatoes and Endives)
1 Rooibos tea before bed

 not a lot of carbs, only the beans and lentils. The breakfast is strange because i eat real food.  Today i am going to eat a bit of brown rice and fruit.

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Nutrition for sports

Wednesday, November 21, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Today i am with 72,2 kg, 8,9% fat and 21 BMI
It's good to be back at 72 after 1 week travelling and eating outside.
I spent last week in NY. I tried to eat has much Veggan opitions as possible.
I ate at Chop's and Whole Foods. The other days i went to my favorite restaurants, Moustache Pizza, Café Mogador, etc... eating normal food always with red wine. Mostly salads and some pasta.

 yesterday i ate
1 Salad with Lentils for breakfast with Green tea
Grilled fish with greens for lunch with red wine
1 cereal bar before going to gym
90 minutes spinning class where i burned 1200 calories
1 big vegetable soup with a bit of Chlorela from Iswari
1 Big salad with Hemp seed and Flaxseeds, dressing only lemon
Roibos tea after dinner


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just do it

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Don't prepare. Begin. Our enemy is not lack of preparation. The enemy is resistance, our chattering brain producing excuses. Start before you are ready

Steven Pressfield
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No more small booms and bust's!

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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And yet our economic policy makers have often aimed for maximum stability, even for eradicating the business cycle. “No more boom and bust,” as voiced by the U.K. Labor leader Gordon Brown, was the policy pursued by Alan Greenspan in order to “smooth” things out, thus micromanaging us into the current chaos. Mr. Greenspan kept trying to iron out economic fluctuations by injecting cheap money into the system, which eventually led to monstrous hidden leverage and real-estate bubbles. On this front there is now at least a glimmer of hope, in the U.K. rather than the U.S., alas: Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, has advocated the idea that central banks should intervene only when an economy is truly sick and should otherwise defer action.
Promoting antifragility doesn’t mean that government institutions should avoid intervention altogether. In fact, a key problem with overzealous intervention is that, by depleting resources, it often results in a failure to intervene in more urgent situations, like natural disasters. So in complex systems, we should limit government (and other) interventions to important matters: The state should be there for emergency-room surgery, not nanny-style maintenance and overmedication of the patient—and it should get better at the former.

 From WSJ Learning to Love Volatility

 http://professional.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324735104578120953311383448.html?mg=reno64-wsj
PS The idea to regulate, to suppress volatility, to combat the business cycle and to bailout the losers is turning the world into a fragile system prone to a big fall. If we don’t allow for small failures one day we will get a big one. All of this is done in order to win the next election......I think democracy is not serving the people anymore.
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Stay the course

Tuesday, November 20, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance
- Dr. Samuel Johnson
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Online teaching is the future

Sunday, November 18, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The best way to increase the quality of teaching is to increase the number of students taught by the best teachers. Online education leverages the power of the best teachers, allowing them to teach many more students.......
 Not every university can afford world-class lecturers in development economics, the history of Croatia, or pop art, but more universities will be able to offer such courses by supplementing their own lecturers with online offerings.

 Alex Tabarrok

 Last year, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence, an online course from Stanford taught by Peter Norvig and Sebastian Thrun, attracted 160,000 potential students, of whom 23,000 completed it, a scale that dwarfs anything possible on a physical campus. As Thrun put it, “Peter and I taught more students AI, than all AI professors in the world combined.” Seeing this, he quit and founded Udacity, an educational institution designed to offer MOOCs.

 Clay Shirky

 I believe online teaching is the future because:

 1.Cost
2.You can repeat over an over
3.Quality, you can leverage the best teachers
4.You can still have practical classes, campus, homework, Sports but providing the best lectures available.
5.Thare are no sick days and bad lectures (the teacher is not feeling well)


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How to solve all the problems! ( not all but...)

Sunday, November 18, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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As of 2000, for instance, a worker in Mexico earned a wage 40% that of a Mexican-born worker of similar education and experience working in America.
Most of this wage gap is down to productivity differences, stemming from disparities in the quality of infrastructure, institutions and skills. An individual worker, however talented, cannot hope to replicate the fertile environment of a rich economy all on his own. But transplanting a worker into rich soil can supercharge his productivity. A Mexican worker earns more in the United States than in Mexico because he can produce more, thanks to the quality of US technology and institutions........

In a recent report Sharun Mukand of the University of Warwick calculates the effect of movement by half of the developing world’s workforce to the rich world. Such a vast migration could never happen in practice, of course, but as a thought exercise it is instructive. If migration closes a quarter of the migrants’ productivity gap with the rich world, their average income would rise by $7,000. That would be enough to raise global output by 30%, or about $21 trillion. Other studies find even bigger effects. A 2007 paper by Paul Klein, now at Simon Fraser University, and Gustavo Ventura, now at Arizona State University, reckons that full labour mobility could raise global output by up to 122%. Such gains swamp the benefits of eliminating remaining barriers to trade, which amount to just 1.8-2.8% of GDP, reckons Mr Mukand.





PS This is so true, the temptation to try to stop immigrants from entering Europe is killing Europe. We need people to work and pay taxes and since there are no babies what we should do is open the doors to all that want to work and live here.











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Never Outshine the master!

Sunday, November 18, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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From Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Power:
Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they are and you will attain the heights of power.
Outshining the master is the worst mistake of all…
Everyone has insecurities. When you show yourself in the world and display your talents, you naturally stir up all kinds of resentment, envy, and other manifestations of insecurity…With those above you, however, you must take a different approach: When it comes to power, outshining the master is perhaps the worst mistake of all.

 http://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2012/11/never-outshine-the-master/


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Diet day 71

Wednesday, November 07, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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72 kg no change, 7% fat
yesterday ate a smoothie at breakfast
1 banana
some spinach
some Hemp seeds from iswari and some sesame seeds
1 green tea during morning
big green salad with beans at lunch
1 glass red wine
Another green tea mid afternoon with some Almonds
Black beans
1 grilled salmon 
some Aspargus for dinner
yesterday i did no sport went to bed early
it's good to stay in the same weight, to stabilize

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To do what is right

Wednesday, November 07, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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"A president's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
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Diet day 70

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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72,3 kg, 5,8% fat and 20,9 BMI
I am not doing a hard core diet anymore, my target is to stay around 72 kg during the winter and try to go down to 70 kg before the race season starts in April. I think i figured out how to lose some weight without a big pain.
yesterday i ate

1 banana 100
some greens 50
Some Iswari Açai from Brasil
Some chia seeds
Some lemon juice 50 and put all in the mixer for breakfast
Some Almonds before lunch 200
1 grilled fish 200
Big portion of greens 200
2 slices of cheese 100
2 glasses of red wine 100
1 big Green tea after lunch
1 muesli bar before 6 pm
1h30 Spinning class burned 1200 calories
at dinner i ate
A bit of Black Beans 200
A bit of Ratatouille 200
a bit of Hemp seeds 100

Total calories in 1,500 calories in
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Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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The phrase, as it is normally quoted in Latin, comes from the Satires of Juvenal, the 1st/2nd century Roman satirist. Although in its modern usage the phrase has universal, timeless applications to concepts such as tyrannical governments and uncontrollably oppressive dictatorships, in context within Juvenal's poem it refers to the impossibility of enforcing moral behaviour on women when the enforcers (custodes) are corruptible (Satire 6.346–348):

Well i think the idea of regulating the world might be dumb for 4 reasons

1.Regulators are human and they don't know
2.If they make the economic actors they regulate to act all in the same way if one has a problem we are faced with a systemic problem
3.They distort the price signals in the market and investors make non economic decisions. (Buy sovereign paper because it is favored by regulators at zero yields)
4.People stop thinking because after all they are doing all according to the regulators

I guess there is nothing to do about this because people still think that a Employment Initiative by the government creates job's and a growth policy creates growth. 

After 10 years of this policies in Portugal we are in deep trouble but people still believe that a Development Bank is going to bring development and a market regulator is going to regulate?


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What my kids should study?

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Well i guess they will study whatever they like but for the sake of making a decent living after they should consider this (the underlying is mine):


The fact that employment in routine occupations has been disappearing is well documented by recent job polarization literature (Acemoglu 1999, Autor et al. 2006, Goos and Manning 2007, Goos et al. 2009, Autor and Dorn 2012). This literature finds that occupations focused on routine tasks tend to be middle-waged. Thus, the disappearance of routine occupations in the past 30 years represents a ‘polarization’ of employment because the middle of the wage distribution has been hollowed out.
As recently as the mid-1980s, about one in three Americans over the age of 16 was employed in a routine occupation. Currently, that figure stands at one in four. The fact that polarization is occurring should not surprise anyone who understands the influence of robotics and automation on machinists and machine operators in manufacturing. Indeed, the influence of robotics is increasingly being felt on routine occupations in transportation and warehousing. Of equal importance is the disappearance of routine employment in ‘white-collar’ occupations - think bank tellers being replaced by ATMs, or secretarial work being replaced by personal computers and Siri, Apple’s iPhone-integrated ‘intelligent personal assistant’. Thus, all of the per capita employment growth of the past 30 years has either been in ‘non-routine’ occupations located at the high-end of the wage distribution, such as software engineers and economists, or in low-paying jobs, such as service occupations like restaurant waiters and janitors. For this last set of occupations, this has been especially true in the past decade.

I think this trend is not going to change soon, Machines are much better than man and they never get tired. So you need the guys who control the machines and some manual  & creative jobs and of course sales people (always).
All the rest is going to slowly disappear.




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How to move forward

Tuesday, November 06, 2012 Francisco Carneiro 0 Comments

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Do one thing everyday that scares you

Eleanor Roosevelt
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