Migrant Workers

In December 2013, Singapore had its first riot in more than forty years.  Some 300 migrant workers in the Little India district became incensed after one worker was run over by a bus and died.  The crowd quickly turned into a mob, throwing fire-lit beer bottles at police officers, overturning police cars, and destroying ambulances. 

The incident highlighted the state of migrant workers who come from afar countries such as Bangladesh, China, and Nepal.  Many work long, backbreaking hours in fields such as construction and manufacturing, earning wages of less than $800 a month.  Throw in delays in salary payment, work related injuries, crowded living spaces, and segregation from general society and it is easy for one to become sympathetic to migrant worker’s predicaments.

The migrant worker plight is not restricted to Singapore.  In Hong Kong, there have been cases of abuse towards foreign domestic helpers.    Potentially as many as 1,000 workers in Qatar have died in preparation of the 2022 World Cup.  Perhaps most notably, roughly 200 million migrant workers in China have left their rural homes for the job opportunities in the coastal urban areas. China’s predicament is particularly complicated as the country tries to balance reforming the hukou household registration system, and doing so at a practical and implementable pace.

There is no easy solution, but steps can be taken toward improvements. Government must see to it that contracts are enforced, especially in the pay and work safety areas.  This can be done by establishing and supporting social enterprises that investigate and ensure these two criteria are met by companies reliant on the cheap foreign labor.  Often migrant workers face too many disincentives to report their problems, and such entities should allow workers to openly voice their concerns. 

Next governments should turn their attention to the living conditions of workers.  Singapore recently established campuses for migrant workers to live.  The campuses are equipped with kitchens, gyms, movie theaters, and clinics among other facilities.  Companies pay roughly $200 a month to house workers in such accommodations, a reasonable though not insignificant amount.  Some argue that such communal facilities are too segregated and are more like prisons than homes.  However the popularity of the Singapore campuses illustrates that such facilities are a viable option for the migrant population.

Lastly and perhaps most easily implementable, communities should make a greater effort to show appreciation to these instrumental components of society.   Holidays such a Labor Day should celebrate the contributions the workers have made.

On weekday mornings, I run through the Aljunied district as I head to my office in the Singapore financial district.  In Aljunied, I see the migrant workers waking up prior to sunrise in their crowded and run-down accommodation as they make their way to the back of a pick-up truck which will send them to build the next skyscraper.  Such mornings remind me of my fortunes, the great worth of the migrants, and the improvements that are needed to the migrant’s work and living conditions.

First Image Sourced from AsiaOne.com


When it Comes to Sports Analytics, Where is the Standard (Deviation)?

In recent years, the use of statistical analytics in sports has been on the rise.  Oakland Athletics’ Billy Beane’s Moneyball approach in baseball notably attracted the attention of Hollywood.  Daryl Morey of the Houston Rockets has become the face of basketball analytics by building a team that stresses taking shots from only the statistically most optimal locations– leading to a rather aesthetically unappealing style of play comprising of corner threes, layups, and free throws.    ESPN has even devoted an entire new section of its webpage –  Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight - to sports analytics.  New metrics to measure an athlete’s performance are seemingly being developed on a daily basis.

Given this ongoing phenomenon, it is remarkable how volatility/standard deviation of athlete performance has seemingly been ignored.  Google searching standard deviation in sports really only leads to one meaningful link, a 2008 Bleacher Report article on quarterback performance:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/44987-measuring-week-to-week-consistency-with-standard-deviation

Be it the media like ESPN, professional leagues like the NBA, or even statistical websites such as BasketballReference.com, convention in sports statistics reporting is to provide either simple averages of performances (i.e. Points Per Game or Batting Average) or more encompassing but slightly esoteric formulas (such as Player Efficiency Rating or Wins Above Replacement).  However, a player that scores 15 points every game is simply not the same player that rotates between scoring zero and 30 points every two games, but averages of course would not distinguish between the two players. 

The finance industry can be used as a parallel to illustrate the importance of volatility.  An investment manager might be most concerned with fundamental ratios such as Price-to-Earnings and Debt-to-Equity when constructing his portfolio; these would be similar to today’s sports statistics of Point Per Game and Player Efficiency Ratings.  The investment manager would simultaneously take into account his fund’s volatility to insure it does not exceed his risk tolerance.  Similarly, a sports general manager would want to construct a team with an optimal amount of reliable consistent performers and less predictable performers. 

Over the years, sports fans have witnessed underdog teams that have run off remarkable playoff win streaks.  Specifically, teams such as the 1999 New York Knicks, the 2007 Golden State Warriors, and the 2011 Connecticut Huskies all might come to mind.  A common characteristic of these teams is all had players (Latrell Sprewell, Stephen Jackson, and Kemba Walker respectively) that based off the naked-eye performed rather volatilely.  Perhaps general managers who lack the foundational players to win a championship as a favorite should invest more in riskier assets the can offer surprise performances (assuming the ultimate goal is to win a championship).  I would like to more thoroughly research this theory.

The 1999 New York Knicks made a surprising run to the NBA Finals as an 8th seed.

The 1999 New York Knicks made a surprising run to the NBA Finals as an 8th seed.

Illustrating the simplicity of calculating the standard deviation, I quickly pulled together the scoring standard deviations of few notable NBA players in the 2014-2015 season (table below).    I find the table rather informative, in particular we witness what might have been the key to success for the Cleveland Caveliers (who reached the NBA Finals).  The celebrated LeBron James was one of the least volatile players studied, illustrating his consistent greatness.  He was clearly the foundation of the team’s playoff run.  However no team makes it through the playoff without a bit of luck, and LeBron was paired with one of the league’s most hot-and-cold players J.R. Smith.  This blend of stability and volatility might be a model for playoff success.

2014-2015 NBA Stats

2014-2015 NBA Stats


Life Accounting

As someone in his mid-to-late twenties, I am naturally interested in learning what separates the good from the great.  Two books I have recently enjoyed are Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers and Robert Greene’s Mastery.  Both of these books investigate the common characteristics of outliers/masters – people who have far surpassed the norm.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, most extremely successful people are extremely hardworking, with both authors highlighting 10,000 hours as the threshold for an individual to become an expert in their field.

After hearing this mythical 10,000 hour threshold quoted so frequently, I decided to estimate how I have invested my most precious commodity – time.  The below table summarizes my findings:


Macklemore's song "Ten Thousand Hours"

The table offers some interesting insights.  First, I smiled to see I spent nearly 10,000 hours studying at university.  I admit I was a rather industrious student who attended a particularly studious school, but I do think the message is clear: the college experience turns young adults into “masters/experts” of society.  Post-graduation, a college grad should be able to handle the demands of the average workplace.  Similarly, one can presume a PhD/medical/law student would surpass the 10,000 hour threshold studying his particular subject, turning him into a expert of his respective field.

Next, I was somewhat surprised to see that I have already worked nearly 15,000 hours. Hence I pondered – does that already make me a "master" of the financial markets?  The answer is not yet, and that is because while I have logged many hours working, I have only devoted a portion of that time to high-level projects such as trend analysis or algorithm development.  As a young analyst in the financial industry, one must earn his stripes and that can entail running a few repetitive/unchallenging tasks.  There are thus two takeaways: 1) make your career your passion as you will spend so much of your life at work 2) while on the job, focus on high-level, in-demand tasks.

Lastly, as an ardent sport fan, I found it insightful that I have played roughly seven-thousand hours of sports split between a number of sports (tennis, basketball, soccer, and football).  Seven-thousand hours is a considerable amount of time and explains why I am pretty athletic (I was the fifth fastest runner in the 2013 Singapore Bloomberg Square Mile which had more than 1,500 participants).  However, because I split my sport time between multiple sports, I never approached a level of mastery in a single discipline.  Here, the message is simple: if you want to be great, you must specialize.

This life accounting exercise took me only 30 minutes to complete and I found the process to be meaningful.  People invest countless hours managing their finances to insure wise spending.  As the saying goes, “Time is money,” and I recommend anyone who is wishful of making the most of their life to invest the half-hour to analyze where they are allocating their time.