Based on a theory of cooperative herding and imitation working both in bullish as well as in bearish regimes that we have developed in a series of papers, we have detected the existence of a clear signature of herding in the decay of the US S&P500 index since August 2000 with high statistical significance, in the form of strong log-periodic components. Since August 2000, the USA as well as most other western markets have depreciated almost in synchrony according to complex patterns of drops and local rebounds. We have proposed to describe this phenomenon using the concept of a log-periodic power law (LPPL) antibubble, characterizing behavioural herding between investors leading to a competition between positive and negative feedbacks in the pricing process. This work was motivated by the similitude between the evolutions of Nikkei 225 and S&P 500 Index.

"Let's take a mental journey three generations into the future, to say 2079. What will well educated people think about the period we're now passing thru?"

"Michael Dertiuzos and Bill Gates ponder open-source software and future of the computing industry."

"He is explaining the essence of a grand pattern I'll call The Truly Great Company Failure Theory."

The secular trends concept holds that the long-term rise in stock prices displays a "stair-step" pattern. During the secular bull markets (corresponding to the riser) stocks move strongly upward, averaging a 13-14% return in real terms. During the secular bear markets (corresponding to the step) stocks move basically sideways, averaging close to no return in real terms. The market spends roughly equal amounts of time, in 10-20 year blocks, in each kind of secular market trend.

History shows that the market never remains permanently overvalued or undervalued but periodically swings from one extreme to the other. The swing from overvalued to undervalued is the essence of a bear market and the table below indicates that this is a periodic occurrence in the U.S. stock market as it has been in all markets everywhere since ancient times. Human beings have made great progress in many areas but the alternation of emotions between greed and fear remain. Since the current market is starting from an extraordinarily high valuation, the decline this time could be particularly steep even if it only swings from high value to fair value.

"Wall Street's optimists insist that the recession is already ending. Which recession? The one that almost no one predicted but that-if you drive a truck or manage a store-you may feel in your bones. It is ending. According to the emerging consensus, because the Federal Reserve will continue to push down interest rates and the stock market will obligingly start back up again. Barton Biggs of Morgan Stanley Dean Witter spoke for skeptics everywhere when he recently mused in Barron's, "Is that the way it works?" "It still boggles my imagination," said Biggs, "that everybody thinks we can come through the biggest bubble in the history of the world and certainly the longest boom that the U.S. has ever had and get out of it with a very, very mild recession."

"Hongkong-based Dr Faber - who heads the investment management firm Marc Faber Ltd and is popularly known as Dr Doom for his often bearish forecasts - said the US economy is headed for a "deflationary recession". He said a lowering of interest rates by the US Federal Reserve will not cure the problem and may even prolong it. Moreover, lower rates combined with a loss of confidence in US stock markets could lead to a 10-20 per cent weakening of the US dollar against the euro."

"Standard & Poor's credit rating agency has been warning that the next business cycle downturn will generate twice the bad debt that the last one did in 1990. And they are not assuming a hard landing. Thus, creditors will ultimately stop smiling and start collecting. US Corporations are going to have to pay employees with cash (rather than stock options) if only to avert the additional administrative costs associated with processing the added IRS and other garnishee(s) enforced on employees who cannot afford to pay their rent. The psychology will turn bullish and drive the Nasdaq higher immediately, but the market will shortly thereafter find that newly created liquidity is not moving into the equity market, generally. The new owners of the "soft" money will find it is in their economic interest to exchange it for things that have been inflating, rather than deflating. When the psychology runs ahead of the liquidity, you know what happens…the owners of the new "psychology" use leverage to anticipate the new liquidity….Oops, and ouch. The bounce in the Nasdaq will precipitate a crash in the Blue Chips."

"But this raises a key question: How will a market plunge like Nasdaq's affect the modern economy? There, history is less of a guide because so much has changed since the 1920s. The service industry, which varies less through economic cycles, is far more important today than in the 1920s, when much of the U.S. economy was agricultural. There is federal deposit insurance today, unlike in the 1920s, when frightened customers made runs on their banks to get their uninsured deposits backs. Economists also point to other stabilizing influences: a larger, wealthier middle class; a Federal Reserve that is more sophisticated in intervening to prevent an economic disaster, and policy-makers who understand the dynamics of international trade better. However, even bullish economists have no trouble pointing out dark clouds on the horizon that could turn the soft landing into something worse."

"With the Nasdaq retreating, corporate profit growth slowing and the election in limbo, the mighty US economy is in trouble. A good analysis.

"These are exciting times for the global custodian industry. As finance becomes more global in prespective and more complex in execution, custodians are increasingly called on to tie the whole enterprise together. Worth reading.

"A look as to why has Asian economies grapple with the challenges of aging and financing the retirement of future generations, they have a great opportunity before them."

"The way the world has changed since the first public pay-as-you-go pension was introduced in Germany in 1889 are many. But the demographic changes that are currently taking place threaten to topple existing social support structures. Worth reading.

"Securities processing today is characterised by dramatic increases in global volume, the sharp reduction of settlement cycles, and the explosive demand for instantaneous information. A look at how the financial industry can attack this dilemma.

"A good account as to the source from which nations can find the reliable, patient, long-term capital flows needed to support the growth of healthy capital markets. The answer seems to be in finding ways to link pension reforms that mobilise the savings of hundreds of millions of people to the development of healthy well-regulated capital markets. Worth reading.

"A great account for why pension reform, free-trading capital markets and the information explosion ignited by the Internet are all coming together to create an era of rising entrepreneurship and more rapid global growth."

"A look at the global trends shaping the financial services industry, the role of capital markets as it results in bank disintermediation and some solid arguments why for those nations that get it right, the financial crisis of the late 1990s will be the crucible for sustained economic growth in the current century."

"A superb article on the clear signs of a genuine financial market revolution in the making - a "Global Big Bang" - which will have a growing impact on financial services delivery, pricing, trading volumes and business strategies."

Universal banking, or one stop shop for financial products is a new buzzword for the banking industry. In India the debate on whether universal banking is desirable or not, is warming up, more a matter of when and how it will evolve than whether it should. ICICI is keen on becoming a universal bank through a merger with ICICI Bank, whereas HDFC's Board has shot down a similar proposal. Read on….

Futurist Alvin Toffler looks at implication of the surfeit of information, at the fact that agility can not substitute strategy, that society and the economy are increasingly differentiated, the diminishing longevity of brands, the perils of the current education system, "microtrade" and the digital divide and the implications of the role reversal of biotech inluencing information technology. A must read for anyone attempting to crystal gaze.

In this typical example of our regular professional investor forums, four leading experts debate the outlook for tobacco stocks in the wake of the litigation now going through the American courts. Has it created a classic contrarian buying opportunity? This forum will help you form a considered judgement.

Mike Thomas is the AAA rated manager of three specialist Japanese funds at the Edinburgh based fund manager Martin Currie. In this detailed fund manager interview, he explains why his firm has now gone overweight the Japanese market for the first time in many years, lists his favourite sectors and companies, and explains what investors need to know in order to follow the Tokyo market in depth.

In this typical example of our Investors' Forum, Dr. Sandy Nairn, Director of Global Research at the Templeton Group, tells us why he sees value in mining shares now that gold has sunk to a twenty-year low. Four other expert investors give their own readings on the gold market.

Iron Man 3 has passed the $1bn mark at the global box office, less than four weeks after it first hit cinemas.

What's the most difficult job in marketing? Change. And J.C. Penney is the latest example of how hard that is. In the year since now-departed Ron Johnson introduced his new strategy for the brand, sales were down 25%, the stock was down 66% and the company has lost $985 million.

Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker warned of the risks of an asset bubble forming given the incredible amount of liquidity the Bernanke Fed has injected into the market, even though he said banks are substantially stronger than before the crisis on Wednesday. Volcker also indicated that in the U.S. government makes up about 35% of GDP and that the financing of the residential mortgage market by the state has led to a dysfunctional financial system.

The brouhaha over Carmen Reinhart’s and Kenneth Rogoff’s article “Growth in a Time of Debt” may be the most conspicuous and incendiary scholarly controversy since 1974, when two earlier economists, Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman, published a notorious book, Time on the Cross, defending the efficiency of American plantation slavery.

If we want to understand what drove the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to terrorism, the answer almost certainly does not lie in Dagestan, where the brothers lived before moving to the United States, or in the two wars fought in Chechnya in the last 20 years. Instead, a key to the Tsarnaevs’ behavior may perhaps be found in developments in England 500 years ago.

“Writing isn’t hard work, it’s a nightmare,” Roth said in 1987.

“Building a new and livable world will necessitate thousands of little changes.”

“Imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time.”

The pre-societal, animal model of conflict resolution is simple, brutal, and effective. Leaving aside political gambles, moral considerations, and the like, the strong are more willing to fight for their self-interest, while the weak find it more advantageous not to assert themselves. Extrapolated to a fairly simple conflict of interest — wealth redistribution — do modern humans operate under the same logic?

Central Park almost didn’t exist. When it was first proposed, no comparable urban green space could be found in the whole of the United States—and it seemed unlikely that one would arise on land that could be put to other, more profitable use – especially with New York real estate values on a steady rise. But on May 5, 1851, Mayor Ambrose Kingsland proposed that a large public park might be just the thing for the growing city. Not only could it have a salutary impact, but it would allow Europeans to see that Americans could, too, be cultured and refined. Their Hyde Parks and Tuileries Gardens had nothing on us.

There seems to be only one kind of loan that bankers want to make—SBA loans. SBA stands for Small Business Administration, a federal agency that guarantees certain loans made by banks that operate within its guidelines.

Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio are two of the most well-known, successful investors in the world. And The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Zweig says they have at least one key trait in common: They are open to criticism and self-doubt.

While not written specifically for investment managers, the subject matter of this McKinsey Quarterly article – building an effective organizational risk “culture” – is nonetheless quite relevant to them.

President Obama said the conduct involving the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups for extra tax scrutiny was "inexcusable" and that acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller is out

Raico grew up in the Bronx, but in contrast with the leftist views common in his family’s apartment building and neighborhood, he acquired from an early age a sympathetic grasp of the isolationist wing of the Republican Party. In high school, he joined Youth for Taft, where he encountered George Reisman. While still in high school, Raico and Reisman became interested in Mises, and Raico describes their hilarious attempt to meet Mises, in the guise of door-to-door salesmen for The Freeman.

Today, roughly one-quarter of the world’s population lives in conflict-affected and fragile states. Despite vast sums of money spent aiding such states over the last 50 years, armed conflict and violence continue to blight the lives of millions of people around the world. International and national partners must radically change the way they engage such states.

The Bank of England has upgraded its economic growth forecast. BBC reports. The perennially gloomy Sir Mervyn King says the Bank now expects GDP growth of 0.5% during the current quarter. This flies in the face of the current vogue for seeing the UK economy as a basket case, limping from one lacklustre economic quarter to the next as Cherry Reynard reports

“Maybe you have to believe in the value of everything to believe in the value of anything.”

“I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.”

In any conversation, organizational or otherwise, people tend to overuse one particular rhetorical tool at the expense of all the others. People’s default mode of communication tends to be advocacy— argumentation in favor or their own conclusions and theories, statements about the truth of their own point of view. To create the kind of strategy dialogue we wanted at P&G, people had to shift from that approach to a very different one.

Since before the tech bust, we’ve been suggesting that while Americans “think” they’re getting richer... they’re actually heading in the other direction. They’re getting poorer.

On Tuesday a group of scientists published a protocol, a set of instructions for running an experiment, which represents the culmination of a year’s discussion on the problems inherent in academic publishing. The protocol is the first in the Registered Replication Reports project. The scheme, led by Alex Holcombe, Bobbie Spellman and Daniel Simons, is far reaching, and requires putting aside egos and working together across universities and research groups to raise the standard of research.

What is science revealing about the nature of the criminal mind? Adrian Raine, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is an expert in the expanding field of “neurocriminology.” He has written The Anatomy of Violence, a sweeping account of crime’s biological roots, including genetics, neuro-anatomy and environmental toxins like lead. He spoke with Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook.

Almost fifteen years ago, in a book called “Chance, Development, and Aging,” the gerontologists Caleb Finch and Thomas Kirkwood described a truly elegant study of biology: a batch of roundworms, all genetically identical, raised on identical diets of agar. Despite having identical genetics and near-identical environments, some worms lived far longer than others. The lesson? The classical equation of “life = nature + nurture” had left out chance.

I now know why I gained more than 30 pounds in my early 20s: I was lonely. I had left my beloved alma mater upstate for graduate school and a job in the Upper Midwest. I knew no one and felt like a fish out of water.

When we asked Bill Gates to curate a list of his favorite talks, his first response was, “There are too many to pick, really.” Here, he's whittled it down to 13 essentials.

It’s not a well-kept secret, either. Just a simple string of characters—maybe six of them if you’re careless, 16 if you’re cautious—that can reveal everything about you.

Microsoft aims to upgrade the software more frequently, about once a year, rather than every two or three years as it’s done in the past, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the product plans are private. The company plans to unveil the first of these updates in 2013, one of the people said.

For the first time, scientists have confirmed that the planet Mercury holds at least 100 billion tons of water ice as well as organic material in permanently shadowed craters at its north pole.

Ed Boyden, an engineer turned neuroscientist, makes tools for brain hackers. In his lab at MIT, he's built a robot that can capture individual neurons and uses light potentially to control major diseases -- all in his quest to 'solve the brain'.

In 1870, German chemist Erich von Wolf analyzed the iron content of green vegetables and accidentally misplaced a decimal point when transcribing data from his notebook.

The United Nations Environment Program warns that global emissions of greenhouse gases are opening up a widening gap between reality and climate change goals

Thanks to gravitational lensing by a cluster of galaxies, the light emitted by a small galaxy 13.3 billion years ago has reached Earth. John Matson reports

In energy matters, what goes around, comes around—but perhaps should go away

An ambitious plan to provide 15% of Europe's power needs from solar plants in North Africa has run into trouble. The Desertec initiative hoped to deliver electricity from a network of renewable energy sources to Europe via cables under the sea.

Bill Gates in His Own Words readers get a glimpse of the visionary Microsoft co-founder and philanthropist's philosophy on business, technology and life via some of his most memorable quotes

A pioneering European space telescope that discovered the first rocky extrasolar planet is on its last legs, Nature has learned.

A cascade of misfolded proteins may trigger Alzheimer's By Carrie Arnold Researchers have untangled some of the neurological events that may ultimately lead to Alzheimer's disease. Two new studies show that a protein implicated in this form of dementia can infect other neurons to spread disease across the brain. These problematic proteins clump together, which can lead to cognitive problems.

A species of giant tortoises from the Galapagos Islands could be brought back from extinction despite the death earlier this year of the famed "Lonesome George," a tourist magnet and conservation icon who was the last of his kind.

On the heels of a Russian drilling effort that reached Lake Vostok, British and American teams also aim to penetrate ancient subglacial lakes By Quirin Schiermeier and Nature magazine

The report comes by way of the rover’s principal investigator, geologist John Grotzinger of Caltech, who said that Curiosity has uncovered exciting new results from a sample of Martian soil recently scooped up and placed in the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument.

The system uses a NeuroSky MindWave Mobile EEG headset to record brainwave data, which is then sent to software on either a tablet/smartphone or on a specially designed pyramid-shaped base. The software converts the brainwave data to flight commands, which control the flight of the spherical helicopter,

In a rare direct photo of a world beyond Earth, astronomers have spotted a planet 13 times more massive than Jupiter, the largest planet in our own solar system.

Human Shares ove 90 % of their DNA with their primate cousins. The expression or activity patterns of genes differ across species in ways that help explain each species' distinct biolgy and behavior.

The random motion of a hydrogen molecule can drive the oscillation of a much larger structure By John Matson

Halloween is a time for sharing ghost stories and watching spooky movies. But have you ever thought about the science behind some of these uncanny experiences? Haunted houses, for example, take advantage of the way your brain uses sensory information.

Rising seas and severe storms are the most talked-about threats of climate change. But here's another: no more coffee. Because rising temperatures may cripple wild populations of Arabica coffee—the most cultivated species in the world.

The notoriously brittle building material may yet stretch instead of breaking

A specialized parasite fungus can control ants' behavior. But that fungus also faces its own deadly, specialized parasites

For every one unit of energy that is converted into electricity in power plants today, two units of energy are thrown away. This wasted energy is primarily in the form of heat – or thermal energy – and, there is technology available today that can turn this waste into a usable energy stream.

This is the first study to examine what factors are associated with an increased follower-count on Twitter over an extended period of time. Hutto et al. (2013) studied 507 Twitter users over 15 months and half-a-million tweets

“Stay glad. Keep hoping machine running. Love everybody. Make up your mind.”

Under Ravi Venkatesan's leadership from 2004 to 2011, Microsoft India's revenues grew fivefold and the country became one of the fastest growing geographies for the software firm.

Ties between the two men go way back. In May 1939, Churchill reviewed Drucker's first major book, The End of Economic Man, for The Times Literary Supplement, praising him as "one of those writers to whom almost anything can be forgiven because he not only has a mind of his own, but has a gift of starting other minds along a stimulating line of thought."

Most people know Peter Drucker through his books and articles. But Drucker was also a great speaker, especially in the classroom, where his students would sit rapt, listening as he pulled facts from his encyclopedic mind and shared insights on countless subjects. This side of the "father of modern management" is captured in The Drucker Lectures, (McGraw-Hill, 2010). Edited by Rick Wartzman, executive director of the Drucker Institute and a columnist for Bloomberg Businessweek, The Drucker Lectures features 33 of his most important talks. The earliest was delivered in 1943. The latest were given at Claremont Graduate University in 2003, two years before Drucker died. The excerpt below, on "The Future of the Corporation," comes from one of those final lectures.

It's a good time to be a corporate gadfly.

So many of the problems we face today result from poor decision-making by private corporations. Prominent examples include the Gulf oil spill and the seriously weakened financial sector, which is imperiling the rest of our economy. However, so many who describe themselves as liberals or progressives seek to address such problems with more government regulation and programs instead of by preventing the bad decisions at the source, which is likely to be more efficient from a resource utilization perspective.

This letter to Occidental Petroleum’s board of directors from Ralph Whitworth of Relational Investors (VII, September 30, 2009) and Anne Sheehan of the California State Teachers’ Retirement System outlines why the activist investors are seeking to replace at least four board members: “[T]he board, as currently composed, suffers from entrenchment and ossification, which renders each of its members incapable of functioning as vigorous and independent shareholder representatives.”

Recently an acquaintance at the next table in a Palo Alto, California, restaurant introduced me to his companions: three young venture capitalists from China. They explained, with visible excitement, that they were touring promising companies in Silicon Valley. I’ve lived in the Valley a long time, and usually when I see how the region has become such a draw for global investments, I feel a little proud.

Power in modern society is progressively being diffused, moving away from central government to interest groups, even to single individuals. Society and the body politic in democratic societies are becoming pluralist in new ways. This phenomenon was analysed by management guru and social science professor Peter Drucker in his book The New Age. A clear understanding of this development would help political and social leaders to cope with changing electoral aspirations.

The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management was recognized as an “Excellent Business School” by EDUNIVERSAL, an organization that helps students choose the best business schools worldwide. The Drucker school was honored to be among the 1,000 selected business schools in the world because of its strength in the US and international influence.

Peter Senge (born 1947) studied aerospace engineering at Stanford University before moving into the field of organisational behaviour and becoming director of the Centre for Organisational Learning at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. He is credited with developing the idea of the learning organisation, based on his study of social systems and the relationship of the whole to its constituent parts. A learning organisation, he once said, “is continually expanding its capacity to create its future”.

We live in a world of euphemism. Undertakers have become "morticians," press agents are now "public relations counsellors" and janitors have all been transformed into "superintendents." In every walk of life, plain facts have been wrapped in cloudy camouflage.

The influence the CEO has on people--individually and collectively.

I've read about shamrock organisations, horizontal organisations and federal organisations. I've read about intelligent enterprises and spider-web organisations. The most-quoted management guru Peter Drucker said that managing an information-based organisation is more like conducting a symphony orchestra than running a business on traditional lines. Others have compared it to running a jazz combo, and then there are those who say it's like running a sports team.

The bestselling author answers our readers' questions about business, leadership - and mountain climbing.

Think of them as the "walking dead," a type of customer who currently maintains service with a particular company, but whose next action will most likely be to discontinue that relationship, according to a new study that examines how the customers of a telecommunications firm acquire and discard services over time. The paper -- "Modeling the Evolution of Customers' Service Portfolios," by Wharton marketing professors Peter Fader and Eric Bradlow and a former Wharton PhD student -- focuses in part on whether it is possible to predict future purchasing patterns by looking at past buying behavior.

How CEO George Buckley is managing the yin and yang of discipline and imagination

Some shoppers just can't help themselves and buy mostly on impulse without regard to price. Others are die-hard bargain hunters, who only open their wallets for a discount. Then there are the strategic consumers, who are willing to buy full-price sometimes, but at other times they will wait for a bargain. According to new research by Gérard P. Cachon, professor of operations and information management at Wharton, and doctoral student Robert Swinney, it's these customers that retailers need to focus on in order to reap the full benefits of lean retail inventory management and variable pricing.

Few have had as great an impact on the business world as Peter Drucker. So, it is more than fitting to have his work amplified on Branding Strategy Insider during this years Marketers For Charity effort.

Robert Bruner still remembers the first book he read as a manager. It was 1988, and Bruner, now the dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, was an up-and-coming professor, respected for his work in finance. But he'd never managed people before. And when he was charged with overseeing the first year of the school's M.B.A. program, Bruner began to struggle.Under fire, Bruner scrambled for guidance. He found it in Peter Drucker'sThe Effective Executive. In the book, published two decades earlier, the dean of management thinkers—known for his study of GM under Alfred Sloan—offered advice to managers burdened with exactly Bruner's problems.

If you own stock in a company that is ripe for takeover, you should hope the company is not acquired by a private equity firm.

Most people assume that good corporate governance benefits shareholders, and that corruption in a banking system should be rooted out. But just how much benefit does a company really get when it improves its accounting and puts a few outsiders on its board of directors? And when does an anti-corruption crusade start to backfire, causing a chilling effect that denies loans to credit-worthy borrowers? India offers a chance to study both questions, which were the subject of papers presented at a global conference on India's Financial System held in April at Wharton. The conference was organized by Wharton's Financial Institutions Center with the Centre for Analytical Finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the Stockholm-based Swedish Institute for Financial Research.

While a number of Indian IT companies are expanding globally, several major U.S. IT firms are increasing their presence in India. Among them is Adobe Systems, which views India as an important development center and a growing market for its products. In the second of a two-part interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Adobe president and chief operating officer Shantanu Narayen discusses the company's strategy regarding India and global expansion. In the first part of the interview, published in Knowledge@Wharton, he talks about Adobe's product strategy for the emerging trend of rich Internet applications.

A key element of what has been called "web 2.0" -- along with ideas such as user-generated content and social networks -- is the concept of "rich Internet applications," which use the web as a platform for innovative types of online experiences. A new generation of Internet-connected applications is beginning to emerge led by such companies as Adobe Systems. Knowledge@Wharton recently interviewed Adobe president and COO Shantanu Narayen about the company's latest product introductions. In the second part of this interview, published in India Knowledge@Wharton, Narayen talks about the key role that India will play in the company's global growth strategy.

Hedge Fund Tools offers the only reverse bidding platform for hedge fund services. Hedge Fund Tools expert team helps setting up your hedge fund or for jobs.

Knowledge management systems and knowledge management software for business growth & communication

The website of James O’ Loughlin, author of "The Real Warren Buffett".

The General Center for Internet Services Inc. ( GCIS ) is one of Canada's oldest and largest Internet services provider and e-commerce application developer. Originators of the famous Pagina+ (tm) Search Engine Optimization service, GCIS is in business since 1996.