Stress is Bad for your Trading Account

I read this a couple of weeks ago in the FT and forgot to blog about it. Basically Phillips and ABN Amro are teaming up to develop a bracelet to be used by traders that displays a warning if their stress levels are too high. The idea here is that investors might follow irrational strategies if they cannot think properly and should take a brake if they get to stressed out before taking any decisions.

This reminds me of a paper by Andre Lo in which he measures physiological characteristics of traders (like blood pressure) during live real trading sessions and finds significant correlation between changes in cardiovascular variables and market volatility.

Here is a video of how it should work. It looks like really good sci-fi stuff. I wonder if it might help in other situations, like preparing to an interview, approaching girls, or right before some World Cup penalty shoot-out...

Will Electric Cars Become a Disruptive Technology?

The Economist this week has an interesting article discussing if electric cars will turnout to be a "disruptive technology" and forever change how our cars are powered.

There are obvious advantages to cell cars: like lower fuel costs, higher efficiency and a big potential to use renewable energy sources.

It would be really nice if we are able to develop a network of recharging stations (the trial being made in Israel is particularly interesting), benefiting from economies of scale.

Something I'm curious to know is what companies (from Apple to Bosch to Honda) do with batteries after they die. Can they recycle the chemical components into other batteries and/or useful things?