Is this you? As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.
Claim your profile
Articles by Todd Moses
The Moses of Technology
My name is Todd Moses. Like Moses, I too am adopted. I too have been rebellious. When God called Moses from the burning bush, he was living in a foreign land, hiding from the consequences of his sin. Moses identified with his biological heritage and turned down the privilege of living as Egyptian royalty. His adopted mother was the daughter of Pharaoh. However, it is unclear how close the two were since she is not mentioned after finding the infant Moses in the reeds.
Electricity Is The New Oil
The new economy is 100% powered by electricity. However, the current production, distribution, and power management cannot meet the increased demand. These problems will be solved over the next five years, but until then, things will get bumpy. Currently, electricity prices in the U.S. are at an all-time high. In the past, energy prices were determined by a handful of factors such as coal prices, natural gas costs, uranium markets, and weather.
The Forgotten Son
"I hate you" was the first word my oldest said to me. The traditional "mama" and "dada" occurred some years before, but my wife Holly and I were not there to hear them. Those words were heard by someone else and told to other people. "Do you want a stuffed animal?" I asked, offering a plush tiger from the Wal-Mart toy shelf. "Why are you gettin' me this?" was the only response from the confused three-year-old securely fastened in...
Financial Warnings You Need To Know
Financial Warnings You Need To Know Image AI Generated from Freepik Pikaso After a year of using AI for global financial analysis, it has become clear that people worldwide are at financial risk. Why it matters: “This was a worst-of-both-worlds report — slower than expected growth and higher than expected inflation,” wrote David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth U.S, about the slowing of the U.S. economy amid rising inflation [1].
Macroeconomics Is Best Described As A Coastline, Not A Machine
Macroeconomics Is Best Described As A Coastline, Not A Machine Image is AI Generated from Freepik Pikaso Ray Dalio says the economy works like a simple machine [1], but he is wrong. Instead, Mandelbrot’s far more complex but highly accurate model of a coastline is a better description. Inputs that matter: Benoit Mandelbrot, the French Mathematician famous for fractals, developed a financial model based on his research of the British Coastline.
How You Can Trade Carbon Offsets
Carbon offsets are a tradeable certificate that proves one ton of CO2 or the equivalent amount of another greenhouse gas has been removed from or not emitted into the atmosphere. Inputs that matter: Carbon offsets have proven to be a legitimate market in Europe, Australia, and Canada [1]. One carbon offset represents one metric ton of carbon or other greenhouse gas (GHG). The EU price on carbon credits is around €80/ton, but carbon offsets can be purchased for less than $10/ton.
Singapore’s Meteoric Rise As Hope For Struggling U.S. Cities
Singapore is the 20th century’s most remarkable success story, and it has much to teach government leaders about growing from an impoverished nation to a global financial hub. Why it matters: Cities in the U.S. that once thrived during industrialization are now centers for crime and addiction. States such as West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and Ohio have been hit with a wave of illicit substance abuse [1].
If You’re Poor, You Already Know This
If You’re Poor, You Already Know This As Banananomics investigated the global economy more deeply, we discovered some surprising ways in which poor people are treated differently in financial transactions. Why it matters: Based on socioeconomics, financial institutions treat you as poor, middle class, wealthy, or business. A renter can be evicted in as little as seven days, and it takes up to 6 months to…
Banananomics: Unexpected Connections In The Global Economy
Many popular assumptions were shattered after connecting our causal A.I. to over 3000 financial datasets. Why it matters: How the economy works and how we believe it works are two different things. The big picture: Big tech appears to rule the world, but the price of electricity is the real king. Pay close attention to uranium prices and supply chain disruptions, which drive electricity costs. The electricity usage for ChatGPT alone is equivalent to 180,000 US households [1].
The Economics of Tech Supremacy
The Economics of Tech Supremacy The reason and the actual purpose of an action are often two different things. As open-source software gained ground in the 1990s, traditional software vendors such as Microsoft and SAS openly attacked the new disruptive model. Today, they openly support the initiative.
The AI that Codes Itself
We have seen tremendous progress in AI over the past few years. However, all of those projects were developed by human teams. This is a slow process. The future AI leader will be a company that creates a self-coding application. Estimand is at the beginning of applying causal AI to reduce defects in software code. The current aim is to work alongside human programmers, but the gap between improving code and writing it is small. This is not the same as an LLM rehashing human examples.
Foundational AI: Building for a New Paradigm
Data Science is not AI. However, we keep treating it as if it is. The tools, deployment methods, and languages of this new era of computing are held back by the ideas of the previous decade. Why it matters: The concept of a compiler is nearly dead, yet we still look to the logic paradigms of the last age of computing to build the new. It is like installing a punch card reader on our PC during the 1980s.
Why Humans Suck at Critical Decision Making
From when to sell a stock to who is guilty of a crime to what the best mutual fund is, these are decisions that humans routinely get wrong. Why it matters: The most important decisions of a person’s life are often made with incomplete information. Decision-making commits one now to future actions. The choice is inherently uncertain. Usually, there is no way to know the best option until the future, long after a decision was made [Rieke, Et al. 2004].
Causal Popularity: A New Model for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)
The research at Estimand is currently centered around Causal Popularity, a combination of cause and effect detection with measurement of popularity. While still in its infancy, this is a critical first step toward AGI. Why it matters: The current means to build AGI using statistical methods is contrary to how humans think and is making things more complicated than they need to be. While building a causal detection model, many Data Scientists declared it was impossible without a human expert.
Economic Secrets You’re Not Suppose to Know
What they taught you in school barely scratches the surface of economic reality. Why it matters: You must understand what drives economic change to discover financial opportunities. Behind the scenes: Most news is just noise that captures clicks, followers, and likes. However, some news influences economic activity, but it is not always obvious. For example, the price swings of everyday items are a more vital indicator of economic change than the S&P 500.
Measuring News Impact
For investors, it is difficult to discern what voices to follow and which are just noise. Why it matters: News impact is a measure of the relevance of a news story as it impacts the market. 📰 Some news has near zero impact while other sources make waves. 😃 Then there is the matter of sentiment, where a negative story may produce a positive result. Backstory: A client for Estimand’s Risk Scenarios requested we provide sentiment analysis of news articles.
Shocking: Global Brent Crude Driven By Electricity Prices
While geopolitics plays a part in determining Brent Crude prices, our AI discovered that electricity may play a more significant role. Why it matters: Human intuition on what drives markets is always incomplete and often wrong. The backstory: Today, in the Middle East, with conditions similar to the 1973 oil crisis, we see unexpected stability in the global oil market [Watkins 2024]. Crude oil contributed more significantly to inflation in the 1970s than today [Lioudis 2023].
The Cost of Beer Index
Inspired by The Economist's publication of the BigMac index, we at Estimand are building the Cost of Beer Index. Instead of measuring the strength of currencies like The Economist, we want to determine if the daily cost of making a bottle of beer is going up or down. Then, measure the causal relationship between beer and other parts of the economy. Beer is a symbol of social well-being. Globally, 1 in every 110 jobs are linked to the beer industry [Kedia 2023].
Critical Risks in the Global Food Supply Chain
The modern food supply chain is built upon global cooperation where crops are grown in areas with the most comparative advantage, moving them to the best places for processing and transporting them to areas of highest demand for consumption [Kingsmen 2019]. “Our vision is to feed a hungry world,” explains Greg Heckman, CEO of Bunge. For over 100 years, the function of grain merchants has been to be a global supply chain manager. Food is a worldwide resource.
Network Effects, Cascade Events, and Power Laws in Markets
A detailed description of my Causal Influence Graph for Forecasting Market Volatility. Network Phenomenon is a deceptively simple yet powerful concept for many fields. Beginning with Larry Page’s (co-founder of Google) PageRank, we can see how to start from a complex problem and end up with a straightforward solution [Amine 2020]. The simple concept of measuring the number of referring links to each webpage resulted in a vastly superior search experience.
The Evolution of Agricultural Commodities and Human Rights
Commodities are unlike any other financial market. One does not simply buy and sell contracts. Instead, they buy a harvest, store it, and sell it at the most advantageous time and place. Sometimes, they sell as a raw product but usually transform these commodities into ingredients like flour or table sugar. Today, it could even be a branded consumer product. Unlike stocks, one should be an expert in an agricultural commodity to invest in it [Kingsman 2019].
Markets, Commodities, and the Supply Chain
In Genesis 40, Pharaoh was given a dream by God. The dream began with seven fat cows and seven gaunt cows. In a strange turn, the skinny cows turned and consumed the fat ones. After awakening, Pharaoh went back to sleep, where he had a second vivid dream of seven ears of corn ready for harvest and seven ears to be thrown out. Like the first dream, the seven ears void of kernels consumed the plump ones. In the morning, a troubled Pharaoh asked his magicians to interpret the dream.
Stream of conscience: Kennett Square Golf and Country Club
Paul Stead, CGCS, faced an intruding stream that hindered play and threatened course infrastructure when he began overseeing Kennett Square (Pa.) Golf and Country Club in 2005. Twelve years later, the transformed stream is not only no longer a risk, but is an asset within the Red Clay Creek watershed.
How Markets Crash
On October 19, 1987, ABC halted the airing of General Hospital with the words, “interrupting our regularly scheduled programming to bring you a special report.” Soon after, news anchor Peter Jennings was reporting the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) tremendous drop. Known as Black Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged over 20% within a few hours. Once graphed, the pattern revealed startling similarities with the first Black Monday of 1929.
Hedging with Machine Learning
There are many ways to reduce trading risk through hedging. Funds typically use futures and options to hedge each trade. Similar to insurance, this safety net comes at a price. Using an AI-based strategy, though, there is a way to protect a position at a much lower cost. Before McDonald’s could introduce Chicken McNuggets, they had to hedge against the cost of chicken. If chicken prices rose dramatically, they would no longer be able to offer the product.
The Blockchain and the Fur Trade
During the 18th and 19th centuries, beaver pelts were a form of currency in North America, used to purchase manufactured goods. The men involved with the fur trade enjoyed high social standing due to their contacts between cultures and new found wealth. The entire business was fueled by foreign trade. Europeans could travel to North America, purchase beaver pelts, then return home and get a ten times return on their investment.
Deep Learning in Finance
Siri is the voice-controlled AI behind most Apple products. It can recognize speech, analyze sentiment, and answer questions. The man who was key to its development, Babak Hodjat, is now Chief Science Officer for a new fund called Sentiment. Hodjat is currently experimenting with applying deep learning to trading. Just as deep learning can pinpoint particular features that show up in a photo of a cat, he explains, it could identify particular features of a stock that can make some money.
Show More
loading
Actions
Is this you?
As a journalist, you can create a free Muck Rack account to customize your profile, list your contact preferences, and upload a portfolio of your best work.Get in touch with Todd
Contact Todd, search articles and posts on X, monitor coverage, and track replies from one place.
Learn more about Muck Rack