Hypernomics

CHAPTER 8Aiming and Missing

“A goal is not always meant to be reached; it often serves simply as something to aim at.”

Bruce Lee

Markets, as we have come to realize, have boundaries and limits, densely populated regions and some much less so, and relationships that buyers form in reaction to the products offered to them. Just as an armed unit invading a foreign land strives to conquer a part of it, a producer entering a market aims at a segment of a highly bounded region, whether that producer realizes it or not. Thus, producers must understand what it means to aim and how to plan for the inevitable misses that come from taking shots.

NEOCLASSICAL AIMING

The current or neoclassical school of thought makes many predictions about the economy and the markets that make it up. Regarding their market projections, they often forecast a series of single elements—such as the prices of agricultural items such as wheat, corn, or soybeans (in the commodities market). In contrast, others estimate what buyers will spend to acquire heavy or light crude oil in the future. The errors associated with such estimates usually form a straight‐line error of a single dimension—the prediction is higher or lower than the actual Value, as shown in Figure 8.1. Neoclassical analysts spend much time and effort on these forecasts, but they are often incomplete, as they fail to account for all the variables in action. Primarily this is because they lack a framework with sufficient dimensions to perform ...