Rows and rows of numbers. A meta-layer above them in the form of an algorithm. It'll digest those numbers and try to find patterns. Take out all the numbers related to political postings, then take out all the numbers related to oil prices, then take out all the numbers related to the stage play version of Grease. And maybe then there's a pattern that, um, means something to investors? Maybe.
That's the gist, anyway...or the hope. Predictive analytics work in Black Box Investing...until they don't.
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Finance: How do you forecast earnings?4 Views
and finance Allah shmoop How do you forecast earnings All
right we'LL ask an old Wall Street warhorse and you'LL
get the joke about first putting on blindfolds spinning around
three times and sniffing for a donkey's butt Yeah but
the process really isn't that opaque You own a football
stadium a small one seat seven thousand people and caters
to a large pacifist organisation that loves the game but
wants to see tackles replaced by light feathery taps You
have football if you can still call it that in
the fallen winter Baseball in the summer a few concerts
weddings and bar mitzvahs Owen A rodeo or two You
only sell seeds for anything about one hundred days a
year like you don't sell many Tuesday nights in the
winter And City Ordinance doesn't allow you to sell tickets
in the summer when the weather forecast is supposed to
be over one hundred degrees because your power grid usage
would then blow out the city's electricity Your average seat
ticket net to you is thirty bucks net because you
pay five dollars commission to StubHub Ticketmaster and while other
vendors to market your local wears so they retail for
thirty five each but you keep thirty and on average
when you do sell a night you sell five thousand
tickets The stadium is rarely sold out so it plunks
along with a total of one hundred nine times five
thousand seats on average sold which is a total of
El half A million seats Seat units sold per year
at an average ticket price of thirty bucks to you
Well revenues last year were about fifteen million dollars In
addition you sell recycled but boiled horse hooves which you
call hot dogs along with Coke Fear popcorn and Candy
Floss which is actually floss you can use to get
those horse hooves out of your teeth They really stick
in there at another two million bucks in revenue for
all that stuff And that's what you had in revenues
last year Well what about costs Well when you had
your light hitting baseball in football teams you had to
pay licensing fees for them Tio you know show up
of three million dollars a year for the other events
like concerts and weddings and bar mitzvahs He only had
incremental cleanup costs for beer spillage and vomit of about
two million dollars And your quote food unquote costs were
another million You had insurance electricity legal and well other
bills totaling another million box You had total expenses then
of seven million dollars and made pretax ten million dollars
So you had total expenses of seven million box He
had seventeen million of revenue with seventeen money Seven Its
pretax ten million dollars on the set of calculations is
a kind of forensic starting place in forecasting future earnings
And you start with a spreadsheet This thing like Well
what happens to pre tax profits if you can average
thirty four dollars a ticket instead of thirty a ticket
Well there you go What if you average fifty eight
hundred seats sold instead of five thousand OK well we're
trying to forecast earnings here So is that what you
think you'LL actually earn Or just what you hope you'LL
earn Well forecasting earnings is all about being real not
hopeful Meaning you try to be porridge Not too hot
not too cold but actually accurate So if you're suddenly
going to grow from five thousand to fifty eight hundred
seats on average sold over one hundred ninety year than
What changed Did Amazon build a new warehouse in the
neighbourhood Do you expect many tall women to be attending
ballparks now Is Oprah showing up to every event and
giving out free human days What happened Maybe there's a
new popular glow in the dark cotton candy that actually
makes you glow in the dark It doesn't glow but
it makes you glow You make another mil for selling
it or you think you will Maybe Well how do
you forecast What data do you put in What assumptions
did you make Well in this sense the qualitative factors
that make up your predictions are everything in that the
numbers well that you just randomly type in could be
almost anything But if they're not accurate numbers or reflective
of well the nation's new love affair with pickled horses
or whatever is driving you to new heights and profitability
well than it best there just hopes Nay pipe dreams 00:04:02.493 --> [endTime] Yeah don't do that
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