Tuesday, March 12, 2019
A regression into AI day trading once again
To whom ever desires to control financial markets,
The reason I am posting this Blog post today is that I have developed two major advancements in my day trading AI, Rebolt 2.0 and Lock & Key.
These two algorithms when filtered over one another yield extraordinary results, %85 or better correct predictions on 24 hour price changes in a variety of currencies, commodities and indexes.
It has been a good long while, over ten years, since I made a post on my Blog. Since before I began employment at MetLife in 2008 and later at Wells Fargo in 2009, I was not in a position to post my opinions publicly, because it could be misinterpreted as the opinion of my employer and it could send a message that would not be in keeping with the marketing programs and goals of said employers.
I can say plainly now that Wells Fargo is an organization which does not at any point within it's management or charter act with the intent to advance the greater good. This is verifiable fact which has been observed by punitive actions against Wells Fargo management in a variety of venues, including the Federal Reserve and the regulatory agencies.
Sadly I must also report that a failure to act for the benefit of the greater good is discoverable throughout the banking and finance industries. I turned my back on all bank owned institutions to the extreme that I spent five years living off the grid in the Rainforest of the Pacific Northwest and two of those five years as a goat herd, earning only that income which was required to maintain my ten goat herd which maintained myself, because to do anymore may mean bending to the bank.
My rural property management experience was noted by old friends and I was invited to San Francisco where I accepted an offer to carry out on call property management duties from 2016 through into 2018. Property Management work involves significant downtime and passive observation.
Inspired by the bull run in Bitcoin I rebuilt my Rebolt 1.0 software within the Metatrader Trading Platform during these downtimes in the office.
Informed by courses in AI on Coursera which were introduced to me by a Japanese Haas MBA whom I met in Berkeley while our children played in the park near my childhood home and influenced by the financial forecasting ideas of person's living within the low income housing where I worked as landlord, I developed two novel statistics Rebolt 2.0 and Lock & Key, I spent several hundred CPU hours back testing these two algorithms, these tests revealed never before observed results. In all fourteen years of my experience in financial data analysis I have never seen an algorithm correctly predict the price change of a financial asset more than %70 of the time. With Rebolt 2.0 and Lock & Key we can get over %70 sloppily and easily with little effort. We can get %85 on 90 day runs when constants are fitted to the data.
These findings led me to produce the Chronostat Offering of 2019.
Chronostat is a theoretical construct which has not yet been developed, but it is clear what function it will perform and several means of performing that function are known to myself and perhaps others who may be ahead of me in the AI game. The purpose of Chronostat is to have an AI trader running on Rebolt 2.0 and Lock & Key adapting to the weekly, daily or hourly trading circumstances by changing constants, blocking trades or raising or lowering the signal thresholds to place trades, algorithmically in response to those circumstances. The Chronostat layer will take constants out of future trading and nearly eliminate constants entirely in back testing.
I will need six to nine months of keyboard time to develop and test the Chronostat layer, I don't have that time available with my two baby daughters and bills. In addition, I need to take Rebolt 2.0, Lock & Key and Chronostat and develop them in a secure development environment on a server where the source code and functions can be maintained within a small circle of trusted developers. Github will not suffice when the winning depends on US knowing better than THEM.
The screen shot below illustrates how Rebolt 2.0 performs in backtesting over a 90 day period. If the profits were invested from one trade to the next, Rebolt 2.0 could produce a million dollars in trading profits from a $500 deposit. Backtesting never predicts future results, but these findings are cause for urgent action.
The urgent request for support on this project is not because I believe we will make %100,000 returns every 90 days, the urgency is because the prediction rate is so high and so accurate that we are approaching root causes. Correlation is not causation, nonetheless, To report causation without correlation is absolutely wrong and false. The correlative power of these signals on future price action necessarily means that within this algorithms we have access to root causes and root predictors of price change, this is not a black box system, I know precisely why it is so powerful, I can prove probable cause, to borrow a legal term, to illustrate why the predictions are so accurate.
I have become frustrated in earning partner developers for the Chronostat Layer and this Proprietary Trading Project in general, not for lack of attention by business associates or lack of skill within my network of programmers and traders, but simply that the attention AND skill have not overlapped within the same persons.
If you are interested in direct involvement in such a project please contact me directly on my cellphone.
I am not seeking investors, financiers, loan agreements, salespersons, representatives or recruiters.
This is code, this is a way of doing business, and in a sense it is a religion, because it harkens to a way of life trading against the major institutions to take their power through knowing what they do better than they know themselves. According to Andrew Kanard of Reykjavik Iceland this is a weapon of mass destruction, because I am a man seeking other men and women who intend to carry out a way of life which removes financial power from other men and women and puts it into our own hands. Because of Crypto, banks and brokerages need not be a part of this progress, and THAT is a conversation for a private face to face discussion.
-David
David Theodore Caro-Greene
Simply Click on the Image to Get a Full Screen View
Thursday, October 15, 2009
SEC Views on Investment Advisor Behavior
The SEC has published it's views regarding Investment Advisors.
I find these guidelines particularly interesting.
People do not often think of Investment Advisors as moral creatures.
I have summarized the guidelines below with more easily understood terms.
An Investment Advisor must be Independent, Shrewd, Suitable and Loyal :
Independent:
An investment advisor has to stand on his own two feet. His recommendations may not be that of another advisor or a news article unless he discloses to the client the source of that recommendation. The Investment Advisor ought to be progenitor of the investment ideas delivered.
Shrewd:
The Investment Advisor must buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest price to take advantage of optimal execution on behalf of his clients. Sadly most Investment Advisors do not have an independent and formal program for establishing what it means to execute orders shrewdly.
Suitable:
The advice must be suitable to the life goals and personal values of the client.
Loyal:
Although they typically do not, I feel Investment Advisors should sign loyalty oaths to their clients. In a field where there is limitless information and mixed messages, endless sales pitches and seemingly contradictions one fact must remain, the Advisor must remain loyal to the client. Specifically, it is the Advisors job to exhaust his personal energies discovering and presenting the most essential, up to date and prescient financial information to his client. This information distilling function is what empowers both the Investment Advisor and the client. Through the lens of that essential information the client is made able to act in accordance with his or her values and goals in a world that might otherwise obfuscate the context in which clients make financial decisions. For me loyalty is not just about a feeling. The degree of Advisor Loyalty may be measured by the depth of the information gathering process employed by that Advisor.
I find these guidelines particularly interesting.
People do not often think of Investment Advisors as moral creatures.
I have summarized the guidelines below with more easily understood terms.
An Investment Advisor must be Independent, Shrewd, Suitable and Loyal :
Independent:
An investment advisor has to stand on his own two feet. His recommendations may not be that of another advisor or a news article unless he discloses to the client the source of that recommendation. The Investment Advisor ought to be progenitor of the investment ideas delivered.
Shrewd:
The Investment Advisor must buy at the lowest price and sell at the highest price to take advantage of optimal execution on behalf of his clients. Sadly most Investment Advisors do not have an independent and formal program for establishing what it means to execute orders shrewdly.
Suitable:
The advice must be suitable to the life goals and personal values of the client.
Loyal:
Although they typically do not, I feel Investment Advisors should sign loyalty oaths to their clients. In a field where there is limitless information and mixed messages, endless sales pitches and seemingly contradictions one fact must remain, the Advisor must remain loyal to the client. Specifically, it is the Advisors job to exhaust his personal energies discovering and presenting the most essential, up to date and prescient financial information to his client. This information distilling function is what empowers both the Investment Advisor and the client. Through the lens of that essential information the client is made able to act in accordance with his or her values and goals in a world that might otherwise obfuscate the context in which clients make financial decisions. For me loyalty is not just about a feeling. The degree of Advisor Loyalty may be measured by the depth of the information gathering process employed by that Advisor.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
My past life in day trading
I have left www.dcgfinancial.com on the internet as an example of a way of thinking, and a part of day trading history.
The trading team at the now non-existent Solid Gold Financial and I developed this information gathering platform for the purpose of making informed 24 hour trades in the Currency market.
I traded my own money using this methodology and the results from this short real life experiment are linked below:
Day one:
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/FirstTrade.htm
Months later an opportunity arises:
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/July24Statement.htm
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/4minute.htm
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/DetailedStatement.htm
Then we caught wind that the regulations regarding small broker dealers would soon change.
Needless to say most of us closed our accounts and sought greener pastures.
The discrepancies between business practices in Forex and Finance are immense.
I will not detail them here but those of you who are interested in discussing the regulatory nuances of the two fields with someone who has experience in both please call me.
Forex has been a bad experience for the vast majority of participants. I hope I can educate people on why this is the case and alternatives.
I thought you ought to know that.
-David Caro-Greene
The trading team at the now non-existent Solid Gold Financial and I developed this information gathering platform for the purpose of making informed 24 hour trades in the Currency market.
I traded my own money using this methodology and the results from this short real life experiment are linked below:
Day one:
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/FirstTrade.htm
Months later an opportunity arises:
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/July24Statement.htm
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/4minute.htm
http://www.dcgfinancial.com/DetailedStatement.htm
Then we caught wind that the regulations regarding small broker dealers would soon change.
Needless to say most of us closed our accounts and sought greener pastures.
The discrepancies between business practices in Forex and Finance are immense.
I will not detail them here but those of you who are interested in discussing the regulatory nuances of the two fields with someone who has experience in both please call me.
Forex has been a bad experience for the vast majority of participants. I hope I can educate people on why this is the case and alternatives.
I thought you ought to know that.
-David Caro-Greene
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Brokerage within the Walls of your Business
A broker is a party that mediates between a buyer and a seller.
I would like to extend this definition to represent a more abstract sense of doing business with the interests of every person you meet in mind.
In some ways every one who has ever sold anything has been a broker in the first sense.
It is rare that a person takes careful consideration of all of the ways they may trade information of value with their clients and colleagues as in the latter sense.
The abstract "brokerage" I'm describing has less to do with products, securities or services and more to do with strategic business planning with monetary goals.
If I as a Financial Planner have non-material but clearly valuable information that others do not, I am serving as an Information Broker when I write your Financial Plan. The degree of informational advantage, the money waiting to happen, may not be easily predicted, but it can be understood and compared through the double barreled process of generalization and specification.
If I provide for one company a specific way to relate to another so that the two companies make absolute gains based on the compliment of skills and assets they share I have created value greater than any goods or services exchanged. This value sourced purely in the informational advantage that I originate is the essence of brokerage.
Over time we can produce statistics to generalize about the value of information in a history of business outcomes and over time manage to produce an increasingly informed management team.
This informational advantage is non-linear. Meaning that it can produce large spikes in revenues or service cost reduction that will be noncontiguous with trends. It's source is in the depth and detail of understanding I have about the companies involved. In the information management industry small details often overtake big blue chips.
Corporate Strategy or Mergers and Acquisitions, benefits may reduce overall costs through shared services. They may also improve revenue generating messages by creating a unified front in marketing and sales. People often think that these blue chip strategies are rarely adopted in the small business environment. In reality these strategies are represented in the small business community, but only in a finite set of business owners who see the depth of their own people. The average small business owner often feels at risk when they lose any of their key talent and they can't imagine merging with another company in the same field. This would feel like giving up to a competitor.
In these lean times many small business owners are learning that they must partner whenever and where ever they may to find the hidden opportunities and bring to market core competencies. Those who "stick to their guns" tend to suffer in times of systemic change.
It is important for small businesses to observe that within each individual there is often several roles played. Many employees in small businesses take on many roles. If two competing companies knew each other well enough to identify the strengths and weaknesses within their staff, there would be the potential for the two companies to reduce the number of generalists and increase the number of specialists in either a partnership or a series of contracts for services.
Comcast encourages competitive quotes between it's own engineering cells as a means of observing the market value of the employees within each cell. Engineering cells literally auction the value of their own engineers internally through old fashioned phone calls and conversations about the projects on the table, the demand for skills, and the supply of skills across cells. There is some time lost as these engineers perform business functions with each other in cell to cell interactions but ultimately the value of the work and the cost of the work become more transparent through the conduct and tracking of this behavior.
I am not arguing for more specialization. I am not arguing for more generalization. I am arguing that a good business owner or manager can take advantage of a situation by adapting his strategy to meet the needs of the scenario at hand. This adaptation can maintain an underpinning in classic cost benefits analysis without leaning on ideal forms to produce optimal outcomes. Creative adaptation driven by bottom line orientation will increase the probability of non-linear revenue and savings spikes for your business. Free your mind and the rest will follow.
You probably already knew that.
-David Caro-Greene
I would like to extend this definition to represent a more abstract sense of doing business with the interests of every person you meet in mind.
In some ways every one who has ever sold anything has been a broker in the first sense.
It is rare that a person takes careful consideration of all of the ways they may trade information of value with their clients and colleagues as in the latter sense.
The abstract "brokerage" I'm describing has less to do with products, securities or services and more to do with strategic business planning with monetary goals.
If I as a Financial Planner have non-material but clearly valuable information that others do not, I am serving as an Information Broker when I write your Financial Plan. The degree of informational advantage, the money waiting to happen, may not be easily predicted, but it can be understood and compared through the double barreled process of generalization and specification.
If I provide for one company a specific way to relate to another so that the two companies make absolute gains based on the compliment of skills and assets they share I have created value greater than any goods or services exchanged. This value sourced purely in the informational advantage that I originate is the essence of brokerage.
Over time we can produce statistics to generalize about the value of information in a history of business outcomes and over time manage to produce an increasingly informed management team.
This informational advantage is non-linear. Meaning that it can produce large spikes in revenues or service cost reduction that will be noncontiguous with trends. It's source is in the depth and detail of understanding I have about the companies involved. In the information management industry small details often overtake big blue chips.
Corporate Strategy or Mergers and Acquisitions, benefits may reduce overall costs through shared services. They may also improve revenue generating messages by creating a unified front in marketing and sales. People often think that these blue chip strategies are rarely adopted in the small business environment. In reality these strategies are represented in the small business community, but only in a finite set of business owners who see the depth of their own people. The average small business owner often feels at risk when they lose any of their key talent and they can't imagine merging with another company in the same field. This would feel like giving up to a competitor.
In these lean times many small business owners are learning that they must partner whenever and where ever they may to find the hidden opportunities and bring to market core competencies. Those who "stick to their guns" tend to suffer in times of systemic change.
It is important for small businesses to observe that within each individual there is often several roles played. Many employees in small businesses take on many roles. If two competing companies knew each other well enough to identify the strengths and weaknesses within their staff, there would be the potential for the two companies to reduce the number of generalists and increase the number of specialists in either a partnership or a series of contracts for services.
Comcast encourages competitive quotes between it's own engineering cells as a means of observing the market value of the employees within each cell. Engineering cells literally auction the value of their own engineers internally through old fashioned phone calls and conversations about the projects on the table, the demand for skills, and the supply of skills across cells. There is some time lost as these engineers perform business functions with each other in cell to cell interactions but ultimately the value of the work and the cost of the work become more transparent through the conduct and tracking of this behavior.
I am not arguing for more specialization. I am not arguing for more generalization. I am arguing that a good business owner or manager can take advantage of a situation by adapting his strategy to meet the needs of the scenario at hand. This adaptation can maintain an underpinning in classic cost benefits analysis without leaning on ideal forms to produce optimal outcomes. Creative adaptation driven by bottom line orientation will increase the probability of non-linear revenue and savings spikes for your business. Free your mind and the rest will follow.
You probably already knew that.
-David Caro-Greene
Monday, September 21, 2009
Social Post : Best Man
Yesterday I was the best man at my best friend's wedding.
I was honored to have been chosen.
As months passed and the date approached I wrote and rewrote the toast many times. Initially I wrote about the grooms family history and his personal characteristics. I translated this into Chinese with the bride. I thought everyone should know on both sides what this guy is made of.
Realizing it was not a history lesson. I wrote the speech to reflect my life experiences with Colin to tell a character story of the man I know so well. Then I realized a man's actions must speak, not a man's best man.
As the wedding date came closer and brought plans, dresses, tuxedos, decisions, and timing, it dawned on me what the wedding rituals are all about.
Every ritual signifies a part of the relationship between two families. A marriage is made up of a series of negotiations and agreements. As single men we often think of a marriage as a kind of legal trap for the stupid. It is not. It is a time to define a complex series of subtle relationships that exist between two families.
My wife and I could never get our parents to meet and have not done so even after six years going strong. I never had a chance to begin the process in my own experience in marriage of helping individual people within families become a group.
That is when it dawned on me that the only thing that really matters is that these families share the best that life has to offer together. What greater grudge can there be than to know that as a parent you have provided less than your best for your child.
The word compromise never worked for me. For me it brings up images of two starving men on a deserted island sharing the last coconut.
One family is a traditional Chinese family. They would like shark fin soup.
The other family is a traditional Berkeley family. They would like to save the species of shark endangered by the soup.
It seems we have only to compromise. One side has the soup and the other side does not. Isn't this a way of saying what is good for you may not be good for me.
This bothered me quite a bit. Knowing that this could be a problem for the Chinese family for the next 4000 years I decided to offer bit of a competition to save the shark.
I will be throwing a one year anniversary party in honor of the groom, the bride and the soup, same time, same place. I challenge all of you out there to contribute to the National Ocean Consevancy enough money to protect at least as many smalltooth sawfish sharks as you may endanger this year. Let me know how much you have contributed. I'll keep the score.
As we all know the smalltooth sawfish is at 15% of it's virgin population domestically and that is not OK.
What you may not know is that this is also advertised nationally by protection agencies across the Chinese provinces.
Chomp all the shark you want we will make more.
I thought you ought to know that.
-David Caro-Greene
I was honored to have been chosen.
As months passed and the date approached I wrote and rewrote the toast many times. Initially I wrote about the grooms family history and his personal characteristics. I translated this into Chinese with the bride. I thought everyone should know on both sides what this guy is made of.
Realizing it was not a history lesson. I wrote the speech to reflect my life experiences with Colin to tell a character story of the man I know so well. Then I realized a man's actions must speak, not a man's best man.
As the wedding date came closer and brought plans, dresses, tuxedos, decisions, and timing, it dawned on me what the wedding rituals are all about.
Every ritual signifies a part of the relationship between two families. A marriage is made up of a series of negotiations and agreements. As single men we often think of a marriage as a kind of legal trap for the stupid. It is not. It is a time to define a complex series of subtle relationships that exist between two families.
My wife and I could never get our parents to meet and have not done so even after six years going strong. I never had a chance to begin the process in my own experience in marriage of helping individual people within families become a group.
That is when it dawned on me that the only thing that really matters is that these families share the best that life has to offer together. What greater grudge can there be than to know that as a parent you have provided less than your best for your child.
The word compromise never worked for me. For me it brings up images of two starving men on a deserted island sharing the last coconut.
One family is a traditional Chinese family. They would like shark fin soup.
The other family is a traditional Berkeley family. They would like to save the species of shark endangered by the soup.
It seems we have only to compromise. One side has the soup and the other side does not. Isn't this a way of saying what is good for you may not be good for me.
This bothered me quite a bit. Knowing that this could be a problem for the Chinese family for the next 4000 years I decided to offer bit of a competition to save the shark.
I will be throwing a one year anniversary party in honor of the groom, the bride and the soup, same time, same place. I challenge all of you out there to contribute to the National Ocean Consevancy enough money to protect at least as many smalltooth sawfish sharks as you may endanger this year. Let me know how much you have contributed. I'll keep the score.
As we all know the smalltooth sawfish is at 15% of it's virgin population domestically and that is not OK.
What you may not know is that this is also advertised nationally by protection agencies across the Chinese provinces.
Chomp all the shark you want we will make more.
I thought you ought to know that.
-David Caro-Greene
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
What Malcolm X and the Washizumu don't know
Let's begin with a quote from Malcolm.
"Anytime you have to let another man set up a factory for you and you can't set up a factory for yourself, you're a child; anytime another man has to open up businesses for you and you don't know how to open up businesses for yourself and your people, you're a child; anytime another man sets up schools and you don't know how to set up your own schools, you're a child. Because a child is someone who sits around and waits for his father to do for him what he should be doing for himself, or what he's too young to do for himself, or what he is too dumb to do for himself."
Malcolm X
This sentiment is echoed in the traditional business practices of Japan. The system is designed to make certain that Japanese businesses do as much as they possibly can in house. In theory this makes certain that costs are controlled (i.e. favorable) and that the community is not subject to external influences.
In real life business does not work this way.
If a community spends it's resources trying to produce a technology, factory or resource it is taking resources away from other functions. If it can not produce these technologies in a way that is affordable, it is wasting it's valued time and money. Wasting time and money is a sure way to lose in a competitive scenario.
Let's take an example of a Japanese company that would like to design a product for an English speaking audience. Let's say the Japanese company has four choices. A Japanese Design Firm, a Japanese American Design Firm, a Big Budget American Design Firm or a Small American Design Firm.
The money politics are clear in each of the four choices. If the Japanese choose to go with a Japanese design firm they will be keeping the money within the Japanese business community.
Business is not politics.
The question should not be "Where does the design budget go?" it should be "what will be the result of my design efforts and how much will it cost to produce those results?"
If you want to design a product for an English speaking audience, you need to hire native English speakers who understand you.
If the Big Budget American Design firm does not make it clear that they can communicate your message and they are not priced well, don't go with them. If the Small American Design firm does not make it clear that they can communicate your message and they are not priced well, don't go with them.
A cost benefit analysis only requires looking at the outcomes and dividing them by the costs.
A small American design firm may put themselves into poverty to get the job done for the Japanese business. This is both favorable to the Politics and the Finances of the Japanese business community.
If the Japanese business decides to go with a Japanese design firm at a lower cost they are certainly not going to communicate what they intend to communicate through the design. If they pay too little to the Japanese design firm they may be putting people in their own community into poverty. This does not make any sense when there is the potential to get the job done by lower cost Americans.
In any case accountability is the main issue here. The history or nationality of the firm's people is not.
Negotiations should be centered around objective and competitive comparisons of all of the firms being considered. The most effective way to damage a community is to pay them very little for a lot of work. All people in the negotiation are trying to avoid this situation. Having work that pays less than you need to sustain business is more damaging to a business than having no work at all. If you have no work you can find something else to do.
Japanese designers can find other projects that pay more money, because Japanese designers, in general, have a better reputation than American designers.
Never overlook a business opportunity. You never know when someone is going to be able to provide more of what you want at a greater expense to himself than the person you usually work with.
I thought you ought to know that.
-David Caro-Greene
"Anytime you have to let another man set up a factory for you and you can't set up a factory for yourself, you're a child; anytime another man has to open up businesses for you and you don't know how to open up businesses for yourself and your people, you're a child; anytime another man sets up schools and you don't know how to set up your own schools, you're a child. Because a child is someone who sits around and waits for his father to do for him what he should be doing for himself, or what he's too young to do for himself, or what he is too dumb to do for himself."
Malcolm X
This sentiment is echoed in the traditional business practices of Japan. The system is designed to make certain that Japanese businesses do as much as they possibly can in house. In theory this makes certain that costs are controlled (i.e. favorable) and that the community is not subject to external influences.
In real life business does not work this way.
If a community spends it's resources trying to produce a technology, factory or resource it is taking resources away from other functions. If it can not produce these technologies in a way that is affordable, it is wasting it's valued time and money. Wasting time and money is a sure way to lose in a competitive scenario.
Let's take an example of a Japanese company that would like to design a product for an English speaking audience. Let's say the Japanese company has four choices. A Japanese Design Firm, a Japanese American Design Firm, a Big Budget American Design Firm or a Small American Design Firm.
The money politics are clear in each of the four choices. If the Japanese choose to go with a Japanese design firm they will be keeping the money within the Japanese business community.
Business is not politics.
The question should not be "Where does the design budget go?" it should be "what will be the result of my design efforts and how much will it cost to produce those results?"
If you want to design a product for an English speaking audience, you need to hire native English speakers who understand you.
If the Big Budget American Design firm does not make it clear that they can communicate your message and they are not priced well, don't go with them. If the Small American Design firm does not make it clear that they can communicate your message and they are not priced well, don't go with them.
A cost benefit analysis only requires looking at the outcomes and dividing them by the costs.
A small American design firm may put themselves into poverty to get the job done for the Japanese business. This is both favorable to the Politics and the Finances of the Japanese business community.
If the Japanese business decides to go with a Japanese design firm at a lower cost they are certainly not going to communicate what they intend to communicate through the design. If they pay too little to the Japanese design firm they may be putting people in their own community into poverty. This does not make any sense when there is the potential to get the job done by lower cost Americans.
In any case accountability is the main issue here. The history or nationality of the firm's people is not.
Negotiations should be centered around objective and competitive comparisons of all of the firms being considered. The most effective way to damage a community is to pay them very little for a lot of work. All people in the negotiation are trying to avoid this situation. Having work that pays less than you need to sustain business is more damaging to a business than having no work at all. If you have no work you can find something else to do.
Japanese designers can find other projects that pay more money, because Japanese designers, in general, have a better reputation than American designers.
Never overlook a business opportunity. You never know when someone is going to be able to provide more of what you want at a greater expense to himself than the person you usually work with.
I thought you ought to know that.
-David Caro-Greene
Monday, September 7, 2009
Professional Story : Bridging IT and Finance
The Story
I have been in Tech facing C Level Decision makers for six years. I say it all of the time. What does it mean?
It means I meet people all day long to talk about the technologies they produce, the technologies they service and the technologies they use to advise them on how and "who with" they might do more of the same "better, faster and cheaper".
The Tech industry is like any other business except more complicated, containing more exceptions and until recently a lot less political.
When my father walked off Berkeley High School Campus on to the Labs to learn cathode ray tubes, Fortran and Assembly he did not know he was going to end up training engineers at NASA, Lockheed and Apple on how to do their jobs with the then new C+ programming language but he was proud to be a part of it.
When he taught me to perform text analysis on hexadecimal code to search for and replace suspected dropped bits, showed me what the VC fund had him writing for accounting software in Basic and told me "son in the future everything is going to be on the computer. You won't be able to wipe your butt without pressing a buttOn button" he was not planning on raising a second generation Technology guy, it was only natural.
I saw where things were going with my father so I picked up a UC Berkeley Degree and some Masters education in Advertising.
As he transitioned from his last position in Corporate America as an Information Architect at TIS Worldwide to IT Director for one of the wealthiest groups of Lawyers in Northern California we had a chance to work together for a year. We had a chance to reflect on the past and the future of the Industry while helping our firm win Best Firm awards and reducing administrative malpractice costs to fractions.
The main difference is that in the old days everything was specialized. Now everything is a commodity. The skills change. Since I have been in business, most if not all of the deals now involve, insurance, lines of credit, Net30 accounts, upgrade planning, upgrade financing and maintenance. As a dealer I was purchasing from 14 hardware providers, contracting 3 service groups, getting financing quotes through 6 banks and blowing away many of my customers with financing options, savings, flexibility and time to delivery.
I became a Bay Area Business to Business Sales Leader at my first job, rocked some national scale manufacturing deals with Polywell Computers and recently made deals with CIOs at several Fortune 500 Companies at the multinational Corporate Executive Board.
The Turning Point
This is where the career change happened to me. The skills for selling a commodity are that of the broker. The industry demanded that I the computer salesmen become a broker. Just because one product appears to be the same as another it does not mean that price makes the deal. More importantly who can look past the appearances? When a client needs a financial product they can get from any financial house do you tell them it's the same no matter where you go? Many people honestly believe this is the case. But the devil is in the details. I differentiate products and services when others can't. I challenge people to compare the information I provide to that of the competition. Brokers are different animals from sales people because they have in mind the interests of several counterparties in each deal. Over the years my business to business database has became ripe and cumbersome.
I see hundreds of ways that the thousands of companies I have helped with technology could benefit from financial tools suited for the kind of business they perform.
One day I speak with the man who is presently my boss about working in financial services for Tech Businesses in California. I tell him about my plan to offer Health Care Benefits, Key Person Insurance, Employee Retirement Account Planning and Capital Expenditure review all under one name. He said "That is exactly how we are going to do it. But David, compliance say's I can't promote you to management until you have been here for at least six months."
So if you are wondering why an IT Business guy is asking you questions about your financial plans you need no longer wonder.
I thought you ought to know that.
David Caro-Greene
I have been in Tech facing C Level Decision makers for six years. I say it all of the time. What does it mean?
It means I meet people all day long to talk about the technologies they produce, the technologies they service and the technologies they use to advise them on how and "who with" they might do more of the same "better, faster and cheaper".
The Tech industry is like any other business except more complicated, containing more exceptions and until recently a lot less political.
When my father walked off Berkeley High School Campus on to the Labs to learn cathode ray tubes, Fortran and Assembly he did not know he was going to end up training engineers at NASA, Lockheed and Apple on how to do their jobs with the then new C+ programming language but he was proud to be a part of it.
When he taught me to perform text analysis on hexadecimal code to search for and replace suspected dropped bits, showed me what the VC fund had him writing for accounting software in Basic and told me "son in the future everything is going to be on the computer. You won't be able to wipe your butt without pressing a buttOn button" he was not planning on raising a second generation Technology guy, it was only natural.
I saw where things were going with my father so I picked up a UC Berkeley Degree and some Masters education in Advertising.
As he transitioned from his last position in Corporate America as an Information Architect at TIS Worldwide to IT Director for one of the wealthiest groups of Lawyers in Northern California we had a chance to work together for a year. We had a chance to reflect on the past and the future of the Industry while helping our firm win Best Firm awards and reducing administrative malpractice costs to fractions.
The main difference is that in the old days everything was specialized. Now everything is a commodity. The skills change. Since I have been in business, most if not all of the deals now involve, insurance, lines of credit, Net30 accounts, upgrade planning, upgrade financing and maintenance. As a dealer I was purchasing from 14 hardware providers, contracting 3 service groups, getting financing quotes through 6 banks and blowing away many of my customers with financing options, savings, flexibility and time to delivery.
I became a Bay Area Business to Business Sales Leader at my first job, rocked some national scale manufacturing deals with Polywell Computers and recently made deals with CIOs at several Fortune 500 Companies at the multinational Corporate Executive Board.
The Turning Point
This is where the career change happened to me. The skills for selling a commodity are that of the broker. The industry demanded that I the computer salesmen become a broker. Just because one product appears to be the same as another it does not mean that price makes the deal. More importantly who can look past the appearances? When a client needs a financial product they can get from any financial house do you tell them it's the same no matter where you go? Many people honestly believe this is the case. But the devil is in the details. I differentiate products and services when others can't. I challenge people to compare the information I provide to that of the competition. Brokers are different animals from sales people because they have in mind the interests of several counterparties in each deal. Over the years my business to business database has became ripe and cumbersome.
I see hundreds of ways that the thousands of companies I have helped with technology could benefit from financial tools suited for the kind of business they perform.
One day I speak with the man who is presently my boss about working in financial services for Tech Businesses in California. I tell him about my plan to offer Health Care Benefits, Key Person Insurance, Employee Retirement Account Planning and Capital Expenditure review all under one name. He said "That is exactly how we are going to do it. But David, compliance say's I can't promote you to management until you have been here for at least six months."
So if you are wondering why an IT Business guy is asking you questions about your financial plans you need no longer wonder.
I thought you ought to know that.
David Caro-Greene
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