Croudsourced WooWoo Trading Experiment
August 5th, 2009I have a nice gain on a stock trade that is live in the market now. Earnings are about to be released.
I have written out options on how to proceed. Below are four different randomly generated 16 character strings. One of those corresponds to the optimal course of action to take. Optimal means that the course of action will produce the highest short term gain.
Which course of action will result in the highest short term gain?
- x4t99mn9cm7o9k6j (45%, 135 Votes)
- mubapuk4x8br87xg (31%, 94 Votes)
- 5m7pht21c3f6mfpk (17%, 51 Votes)
- jte8ddeaqbof6dj9 (8%, 23 Votes)
Total Voters: 299
Loading ...I have already chosen one of the options, and I have no idea how it’s going to play out. As I was looking at my squiggly lines and charts, I thought, “I wonder if the Cryptogon hive subconscious can produce a better result on this?” After chuckling about it for a while, I then thought, “Why not try!?”
You won’t have to wait long to see how this little experiment will turn out.
UPDATE 1: 8/5/2009 – 11:33pm EST: FASCINATING RESULT
I’m not revealing the name of the company in question because I don’t want anyone to interpret this as some kind of recommendation.
Here’s how you guys voted:
45% – x4t99mn9cm7o9k6j – Wait until after [stock symbol] releases earnings today, August 5, 2009, at 5pm EST
31% – mubapuk4x8br87xg – Null
17% – 5m7pht21c3f6mfpk – Null
7% – jte8ddeaqbof6dj9 – Sell [stock symbol] at the close, today, August 5, 2009 before earnings are released
Well, believe it or not, 45% of participants picked the option that I decided to go with before I wrote this post. I decided to hold through earnings. The closing price on the stock was $2.91, up .10 (3.56%). In afterhours, the stock was down .11 (-3.78%).
I wrote the exercise pretty fast, and now, upon reflection, I see a couple of problems with it.
The first problem is that I knew which combination of numbers and letters was associated with the course of action that I took. Did you guys somehow pick up on what I’d done?
I should have made a better effort to eliminate that possibility. I should have had Becky (my wife) associate the random characters with the options so that I had no knowledge of the links. It could have been done with strips of paper in two bowls; the four sets of random characters in one bowl and the courses of action on folded pieces of paper in the second bowl. She could have drawn the random characters and then paperclipped them to the options (which wouldn’t be visible, even to her).
Why didn’t I do that? First of all, Becky was asleep. Second of all, I was pretty sure that this poll would come back with about 25% of the votes equally distributed among the four options, two of which were noise. HAHA. It didn’t go that way.
Additionally, this option is not specific enough: Wait until after [stock symbol] releases earnings today, August 5, 2009, at 5pm EST.
I should have written it with a hard stop date included. For example: Wait until after [stock symbol] releases earnings today, August 5, 2009, at 5pm EST, and then sell the open on August 6, 2009.
Thanks to the 299 of you who participated in this. It will be interesting to see what happens to the stock price going forward.
Now, to save time and effort: There’s no need to leave comments saying that this could all be chance. Thanks Captain Obvious, I read you loud and clear. Yes, this could be chance.
—End Update—
UPDATE 2: 8/6/2009 – 10:10am EST: You/Me/We Were Right
It went up at the open and hit $3—and then gapped down.
—End Update—
Some related materials:
Wikipedia: Quantum Entanglement
Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality by Dean Radin
The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena by Dean Radin
Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness by Bruce Rosenblum
Some Science Adventures with Real Magic by William A. Tiller Ph.D.
and *I* specifically didn’t choose the first answer, because of what I remembered from some long-ago reading of a “multiple choice test taking strategy”. Here ’tis:
“8. If all else fails, choose response (b) or (c). Many instructors subconsciously feel that the correct answer is “hidden” better if it is surrounded by distractors. Response (a) is usually least likely to be the correct one.”
hahahaha. So some ‘goners may have felt the woowoo call to choose No. 1, but resisted due to prior training, remembered or otherwise.
Or maybe Pookie just hates to think she has diddly squat when it comes to psi skills.
It was only between the B & C options because of something I remembered from the SATs: You never pick the A or B options on the questions that you don’t know, and the reason I picked the C was chance. I didn’t even try to decipher the numbers.