An interesting article on obtaining a pool of 'experts' making predictions for you. See related post here. It seems that ProbabilityFootball has successfully done what I was talking about in that old post. The most remarkable thing:

Even when we average together the very worst participants -- those participants who actually scored below zero in the contest -- the resulting predictions are amazingly good.

It seems that it would be worthwhile to try something like this on the stock market. However, it would probably be a lot harder to get people making predictions about the stock market since not so many would care. Also, I keep thinking that with football it is more reasonable that people do well because they can make educated guesses which is harder to do for the stock market. I wonder how educated the pool of 'experts' needs to be in order to produce decent results. Heck... I might even try to do it...

Interesting read from the Times Online. It seems that computers are going to be reading the news for bank and hedge fund managers so that they can spend their times on other more important matters. At this rate, we will end up with computers doing all our work which reminds me of the following joke.

A very wealthy US businessman is visiting the south of Bolivia when he sees a native farmer just sitting under the sun taking a nap while his field is completely empty and not being cropped.

"Why don't you get to work and plant in your field?" asks the businessman.

"And why would I want to do that, sir?"

"So that afterwards you can go into town and sell your product and make some money."

"And why would I want to do that, sir?"

"So that you can start saving and maybe in a couple of years buy a tractor and bring your production rate up."

"And why would I want to do that, sir?"

"So that eventually you can buy another field and a truck and you can develop a whole corporation based on your product."

"And why would I want to do that, sir?"

"So that afterwards you can start exporting your product and have thousands of employees worldwide. You could be on top of the world!"

"And why would I want to do that, sir?"

"So that afterwards you can just sit under the sun and enjoy life"

"And what do you think I'm doing right now sir?"