Adam Wible just finished 'Kindle Fire'

HBR Article that argues Apple will remain blind to the low-end threat from Kindle Fire while focusing on the higher end of the market, and will eventually lose control of the tablet market as Amazon builds volume and adds features while keeping the price point low enough to entice the masses.  Seems a little naive re: Apple's strategy - as a successful technology company surely disruptive threats are analyzed more thoroughly and intelligently than what we get from equity research...

Amazon's Kindle Fire Is a Disruptive Innovation

- Adam Wible

Adam Wible just finished Uncertainty Data and Judgement Intro Articles

We've now covered some fundamental concepts of behavioural finance (and more generally, blind spots in human intuition).  Probability is a big one.  Given the complexity of the formulas it isn't surprising that we aren't doing factorials to exponents in our heads, but it is surprising that we still have a high degree of confidence in our gut reactions, despite several real time classroom examples to the contrary.  Some biases I found interesting:

• Anchoring
• Overconfidence
• Exaggerating importance of recent information
• Misplaced priorities and counterproductive regret
• Change in risk appetite when losing vs. winning (throw good money after bad)
• Endowment effect (place higher value on things you already own) and bias for status quo
• Look for evidence to confirm one's own preferences
• People measure success relative to peers rather than on an absolute scale
• Tendency to get probability wrong when expressed in % vs absolute numbers
• Projections, mutual funds, etc are not able to consistently generate outsize returns

Economist: Getting the Goat (Feb 1999) - birthday puzzle, Monty Hall, and false-positive puzzle
Economist: Freud, finance, and folly (Jan 2004)
Economist: To Have and to Hold (Oct 2003)
HBR: Hidden Traps of Decision Making (Jan 2006)
FT: Forget the gurus - toss a coin (Jan 1998)

- Adam Wible