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[阅读小分队] 【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障16系列】【16-14】经管

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发表于 2013-3-28 19:25:31 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
本帖精华送给最后两篇extended reading, 建议:Extended Reading Articles for intensive reading!
spencer我终于在27号暂时结束了自己的杀G生涯,所以今天是我最后一次发阅读小分队的帖子了,当然,这不是诀别。(神猴de插播~ 周四经管的人选已敲定为“杀G给猴看”童鞋,感谢她和spencer为小分队所有人的无私付出,大家加油~ 小分队一直是一个温暖的团体,我相信,如果没有这个小队,我也许在遇到挫折的时候就放弃了。所以在这里,我想要感谢小分队,想要感谢所有曾经帮助过我的队员
其实,为别人发帖也是提高自己的一种方式,因为在寻找合适的阅读内容的时候,你也就会拓展你的阅读量——虽然GMAT的阅读是需要一定技巧的,比如总结OG上的题目,找到GMAC出题的逻辑——但是请相信,只有大量阅读,才可以真正提高你的水平。

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言归正传,今天我除了发上速度和越障的文章之外,还发了两篇拓展阅读。这两篇文章在我备考的最后一段时间给了我很大的鼓励,希望大家也能从中有所收获。
ps:文章的标题都被设置成了白色,选中之后即可看见。

最后,祝大家一切顺利!也希望我自己能够在日后顺利拿下T,并且申请到自己理想的学校!

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【Speed】


【Article One】
(Check the TITLE later)
Unparalleled arrogance, undisclosed agenda
by V.V.V.

APPLE and China seem a perfect fit. Both are secretive autocracies that have produced spectacular economic results and technological marvels—but only for those willing to abide by the strict rules imposed within their great firewalled gardens. Apple is one of China’s most successful brands and China one of Apple’s most important markets.

So it is quite surprising to see the American technology firm come under repeated attack in recent days by mouthpieces for the state and Communist party. On March 15th, World Consumer Rights Day, a much-watched annual programme on CCTV, the official broadcaster, attacked Apple’s policies and practices in China. The suggestion was that the greedy firm treated locals as second-class citizens. This week, the People’s Daily, a party mouthpiece, launched a series of vitriolic attacks that accused the firm of “unparalleled arrogance.”

It is not unusual for foreign companies to come under occasional attack in China. Sometimes, this is well deserved—as when, last year, KFC was exposed for supply-chain lapses that led chickens of dubious quality to be served in its restaurants. But the CCTV exposé, which discussed warranty-repair policies, did not find anything remotely as rotten at the core of Apple’s China business. So what is really behind all this?

【215 Words】


【Time One】

One possibility is that the attacks are being orchestrated by a commercial rival that could gain from Apple’s misfortune. A number of celebrities rushed to join the CCTV attack on Apple by posting rude comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter. One of them, known to be a paid spokesman for a rival smartphone manufacturer, made the mistake of including in his Weibo posting the instruction to post the attack at a certain time—making clear that it was not written by him. Embarrassing, to be sure, but that does not prove a firm was behind this—especially since the other celebrity attackers are not thought to be on a rival’s payroll.

It seems more likely that Apple is the target of an officially-sanctioned attack, but which bit of officialdom might be pushing it remains unclear. Some think it might be a shakedown by CCTV, in order to encourage Apple to advertise on its channels. Others think that it is the vanity of bureaucrats at work. The ever-arrogant Apple may have failed to kowtow to the right officials in Beijing.  
But what if Apple were merely a convenient whipping boy? Some think that this recent skirmish is in retaliation for foreign powers’ attacking Chinese firms abroad. The EU, for example, is currently taking a hostile stance towards China’s solar exporters. And American politicians have all but declared war on Huawei, a telecoms giant that stands accused—on no public evidence, it must be noted—of spying for the Chinese state.

【250 Words】


【Time Two】

It is just possible that the attacks on Apple are a prelude to pushing foreign firms out of the Chinese mobile-phone market. That seems ridiculous, given how popular Apple’s operating system and Google’s Android are in China. However, an official white paper did recently make the extraordinary claim that China’s reliance on Android was dangerous. The country’s censors or security enforcers may want to promote domestic operating systems that they can more easily penetrate, monitor or control.

There is another, even more troubling, theory that could explain the bizarre and unexpected attack on Apple this month. Taken together with other recent tirades against foreign firms like Volkswagen, this could mark a radically different approach to foreign companies being tested by China’s new leadership. Such sabre-rattling could be seen, on this view, as the natural complement to the belligerence seen over the Senkakus and in other military matters.

Truth be told, nobody outside the official inner circle has a clue what is really going on. The only certain thing is that the famously aloof technology firm is surely paying attention. “China is currently our second-largest market,” Tim Cook said to Xinhua, the official newswire of Chinese propagandists, before the attacks. He then perhaps tempted fate by going on: “I believe it will become our first. I believe strongly that it will.”

【220 Words】


【Article Two】
(Check the TITLE later)
Why Derivatives May Be the Biggest Risk for the Global Economy
By Michael Sivy


Four years after the U.S. recession ended, the global economy is still beset by problems. The present danger comes from Cyprus – where the sea foam once gave birth to the goddess Aphrodite but now only creates froth in panicky financial markets. The proposed bailout plan for troubled Cypriot banks would impose losses of up to 40% on the largest depositors. And that, in turn, could undermine confidence in the banks of other troubled euro zone countries.

Cyprus is only the latest challenge for global financial stability, however. In the U.S., deteriorating urban finances – from Detroit to Stockton, Calif. – threaten municipal bond holders, public-sector workers, and taxpayers. In addition, a rise in long-term interest rates seems inevitable sooner or later, either because of inflation or because the Federal Reserve backs away from its easy-money policies. Higher interest rates would mean big losses for bond investors, and also for government-sponsored entities, such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that hold mortgage-backed assets.

The greatest risk of all, however, may be one of the least visible – namely, the expanding, shadowy market for derivatives. These highly sophisticated investments have contributed to financial disasters from the 2008 bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers to J.P. Morgan’s 2012 trading losses in London, which totaled more than $6 billion.

【224 Words】


【Time Three】

Basically, derivatives are financial contracts with values that are derived from the behavior of something else – interest rates, stock indexes, mortgages, commodities, or even the weather. Just as homebuyers make only a down payment when they buy a house with a mortgage, derivatives traders put down only a small amount of cash. Moreover, one derivative can be used to offset or serve as collateral for another. The result is that a massive edifice of derivatives can be supported by a relatively small amount of real money.

Some derivatives, such as typical stock options, trade on exchanges. But many are simply private contracts between banks or other sophisticated investors. As a result, it’s hard to know the total volume of derivatives now outstanding. The worldwide nominal value – also known as the notional or “face” value – of derivatives tripled in the five years leading up to the recession, at which time it was around $600 trillion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Since then, although some specific categories of derivatives have shrunk, the total value of the derivatives market has not been reduced at all, but has actually gotten bigger.

Although recent BIS data shows only a little growth in the overall value of derivatives, some leading bond portfolio managers and derivatives experts believe that the market has continued to expand rapidly, without being especially visible. While there’s no way of knowing for sure, estimates of the face value of all derivatives outstanding tops a quadrillion (1,000 trillion) dollars, or more than 14 times the entire world’s annual GDP. By comparison, the total value of all the stocks trading on the New York Stock Exchange is roughly $15 trillion. Indeed, the New York Stock Exchange itself is being acquired by an up-and-coming derivatives exchange.

【293 Words】


【Left】

The very fact that reliable figures are hard to come by is itself part of the problem. The $638 trillion currently reported by the BIS is only a floor. Estimates for the total capital employed in derivatives trading is somewhere between $10 and $20 trillion, roughly comparable to the capitalization of the NYSE. That means that each actual dollar in the derivatives market is supporting between $35 and $70 of nominal value. Losses of only a few percent of face value therefore would be enough to wipe out even the best-capitalized derivatives traders.

The problems don’t stop there. Not only is the bulk of the market private and hard to track, but it still isn’t properly regulated. Although the Volcker Rule limits the speculative trading that commercial banks can do, it isn’t as rigorous as the actual separation of commercial lending and investment banking that existed under the Glass-Steagall regulatory framework that was in place from 1933 through most of the 20th century. Other recent regulation aims for more transparency and greater capital requirements. But progress is slow, both in the U.S. and in Europe. And regulators acknowledge that the job is far from done.

One key problem is what’s known as counterparty risk. If you buy a stock for cash, you can’t lose more than you invest. But if you sell $1,000 of derivatives and collateralize it by purchasing $900 of another offsetting derivative, how much are you really at risk? In theory, you can only lose $100. But if the person from whom you purchased the $900 derivative ends up defaulting, then you’re on the hook for all $1,000 you sold. So are you at risk for $100 or $1,000? It’s hard to know. Regulators try to assign weights and probabilities to determine capital requirements. But the bottom line is simple: If the whole market comes apart, everyone is at risk for a lot more than they expect.

With Cyprus, or municipal finances or even the bond market, it’s possible to count the amount of money involved and gauge the scale of possible losses. By contrast, the derivatives markets are impossible to measure with any confidence. All that we can know for sure is that they weren’t reined in and didn’t get any smaller after the last financial crisis. It’s difficult to assess the actual risk exposure of any given set of trades, and equally hard to determine the amount of capital needed to be safe. Overall, the markets are extremely leveraged, which means that any miscalculations could have a domino effect. And in theory, at least, the total losses could add up to more money than there is in the entire world.

【445 Words】


【Article Three】(Check the TITLE later)

【Time Five】
The debt run
by Buttonwood

INFLATE, stagnate, default. That has been the choice facing highly indebted economies ever since the crisis broke in 2007-2008. It would be nice if growth could lift us out of this mess, but that looks unlikely; see how sluggish growth has become (the 2000 decade ended in 2009, before the Greek crisis hit, so this is not just an issue of austerity).

Why is this? There has been too much focus on government debt; the problem is total debt in an economy, including the financial sector, corporates and consumers. Government debt usually rises sharply when another sector is badly hit; Cypriot government debt, for example, was only 61% of GDP in 2010.
Think of debt as a claim on wealth. If a bank extends you a loan, you now have wealth in the form of money that you can spend on goods and services or use to buy an asset, such as a house; the bank also has an asset in the form of its loan, which it records on its balance sheet. Debt can thus increase rapidly relative to GDP and can help increase output, as the debtors spend their wealth.

All is well as long as the creditor is confident that the debtor can repay the debt. Indeed much debt in the modern economy is simply rolled over; businesses renew loans, homeowners replace one mortgage provider with another. And creditors are likely to be confident if GDP (and thus debtors' incomes) are rising.

【250 Words】


【Left】

One can thus have debt levels that are many times the level of GDP; i.e. there can be more claims on wealth than the annual production of goods and services. Of course, a nation's wealth (in the form of land, mineral resources etc) can be many times the value of its GDP so this may not appear to be a problem. But this is only a partial help since only a small proportion of a nation's wealth can be realised at any given year; if every American wished to sell his house to repay his debts, who would buy?

Similarly, when debt levels are many times the value of GDP, a large proportion of GDP needs to be rolled over every year. Say, debt is 400% of GDP and the average maturity of debt is five years; then 80% of GDP needs to be rolled over every year. If creditors become nervous about the debtors' ability to repay - as they will in the face of falling asset prices or stagnant incomes - they they will be unwilling to extend the loan. If debtors are able to pay out of their own resources, they will see a fall in their spending power. If debtors are able to repay by selling an asset, there will be a fall in asset prices. And if they are unable to repay, there will be a hit to the creditors' balance sheet. All three results hurt the economy.

Indeed, think of an indebted economy as like a bank. Just as a bank can function as long as too many depositors do not want to withdraw their money, the economy can function as long as too many creditors do not want repaying. the economy is thus vulnerable to a run.

When the private sector suffers a debt run, then the government can step in, rescue it and take the debt on to its balance sheet. This is fine as long as creditors have confidence in the government. As we have seen in Japan, if all the creditors are domestic, then the situation can be stable for quite a long time (although it is hard to believe that it is sustainable in the very long term). But if the creditors are foreign, as has been the case in parts of the euro-zone, a restructuring (write-off) of part of the debt will be necessary.

Inevitably there will be losers from this process. If you are a Cypriot with more than €100,000 in the two main banks, you will feel pretty hard done by. In reality, of course, a bank deposit is a loan to the bank (it is a liability on the bank balance sheet). It is thus a claim on wealth; if there is not enough wealth to meet all claims, then someone must lose out and as pointed out before, large savers are the most likely victims since they are the ones with the money.
An alternative to default is to inflate the debt away, to create so much money that the creditor suffers default in real terms, not nominal ones. As last week's column points out, this is being done in part by financial repression; holding real rates negative. Maybe this is what QE is designed to accomplish. So far, however, the central banks have had very little success in achieving the right kind of inflation; rapid growth in personal incomes. Such income growth will make it easier for individuals to repay their debts. Instead the West has tended to see imported inflation in the form of higher commodity prices. And that of course depresses real wages and makes it harder for individuals to repay their debts.

In short, we are nearly six years into this crisis and we have made precious little progress in running down debts and thus are vulnerable to further crises; Cyprus is just the latest example. Nor have we decided whether default or inflation is the preferred option. Either way, savers should beware.

【663 Words】


【Obstacle】
Informed Trading and High Compensation in Finance
By Vincent Glode & Richard Lowery

Compensation in the financial sector has been a controversial topic in recent years. One particular group of workers who tend to earn extraordinary rewards for their expertise are traders of complex securities. For instance, before the recent crisis managing directors trading exotic credit derivatives were making $3:4 million on average per year. Since then, some Wall Street firms have gone as far as paying a few highly specialized traders more than the CEO to ensure they can retain them.

We propose a labor market model that highlights the importance for financial firms to hire highly talented individuals as over-the-counter (OTC) traders by offering them seemingly excessive levels of pay. High compensation arises in our model even though: (i) the employment of these workers is concentrated among very few firms, and (ii) these workers are hired only to strengthen their employers' position when bargaining with other firms over a fixed pie (hence creating no social value in the model). In fact, we argue that it could be because of these circumstances that specialized traders are so highly compensated.

We model a financial firm as an entity that engages in two interlinked tasks that require the labor of financial experts. Firms compete for a limited supply of skilled workers they can deploy as traders or as surplus creators. Deploying some workers as traders allows a firm to obtain a more precise valuation of a security before agreeing to trade it over the counter with another firm. Deploying some workers as surplus creators, on the other hand, raises the total gains to trade that can be split between firms. This can be interpreted as resulting from expanded efforts to locate counterparties with large private benefits from trade or from designing new securities with improved risk sharing properties.

When the supply of workers is low enough that firms find it optimal to hire them all in equilibrium, traders earn a premium over the profits their expertise generates for the firm. Intuitively, when trading expertise improves firms' ability to extract the surplus in a fixed-sum trading game, hiring traders imposes a negative externality on rival firms (i.e., trading counterparties). This leads to defensive bidding by firms that offer traders a premium over the profits they produce for the firm. Without such a premium, traders would be hired by rival firms, who would then use this additional expertise against the firm in question. Thus, traders are paid what we call a \defense premium" over their internal marginal productivity | they extract some rents for the losses avoided by preventing trading counterparties from employing these workers to bargain against the firm. Trading, as a whole, may still be a very profitable activity for financial firms as long as the surplus it creates is large. However, traders are compensated above the rents their expertise allows their employer to extract from rival firms.

Our model not only sheds light on the elevated levels of compensation we observe for highly specialized traders but also on those we observe for the financial sector in general, even after controlling for workers' ability levels and hours worked (see Philippon and Reshef 2012). Many other skilled workers in finance may see their compensation increased by the participation of their employer to OTC trading. Equilibrium wages for non-traders, or surplus creators, are determined as follows in the model. When workers are offered contracts that are tied to a particular task, surplus creators may appear to be \underpaid" as they earn less than what they produce for the firm and a lot less than what traders earn. The nature of the trading game allows hiring for surplus creation to have positive externalities, thus reducing the temptation for firms to hire surplus creators away from rival firms. The strict inequality of pay levels in this case is guaranteed by the optimal assignment of workers within the firm; all workers generate the same internal marginal productivity but rival firms see more value in poaching a trader than a surplus creator. If, however, firms assign workers to tasks after the labor market has closed, the dispersion in compensation between traders and surplus creators disappears, with all workers now receiving the high, trader compensation. Financial firms thus need to pay all their experts far more than their internal marginal value, and labor appropriates an abnormally large share of any surplus available.

Naturally, high compensation requires the supply of capable financial workers to be relatively small. If the supply of workers is large enough that hiring fewer traders does not imply that rival firms will employ more traders, firms do not find it optimal to offer a defense premium and traders only receive their reservation payoff. As a result, our model highlights the non-monotonic effect that a market's concentration can have on workers' compensation. The less concentrated a sector is, the more excess demand there is for traders and the higher the likelihood is that firms will have to offer a premium over workers' reservation payoffs. However, as concentration decreases, the probability that a firm will trade with the firm that actually hires a given trader it covets becomes smaller; hence the cost of losing this trader to another firm and the compensation he is offered in equilibrium both decrease.

High trader compensation should therefore arise in markets where most of the trading takes place among a few firms and where very few qualified experts are able to value the securities being traded. For example, Begenau, Piazzesi, and Schneider (2012) show that three dealer banks overwhelmingly dominate the market for interest-rate derivatives, whose total notional value surpasses $160 trillion. From a comparative perspective, trading concentration of U.S. interest-rate options is about two thirds greater than that of foreign-exchange options, as measured using the Herfindahl index by Cetorelli, Hirtle, Morgan, Peristiani, and Santos (2007). Consistent with the arguments in our paper, traders in the former market earn roughly twice as much, on average, as those in the latter market (see Options Group's 2011 annual compensation report). Similar patterns in concentration and compensation can also be observed, for example, in credit derivative trading (whose concentration is empirically documented and theoretically rationalized by Atkeson, Eisfeldt, and Weill 2012).

Our results could also apply to traders working in burgeoning markets. Notable, albeit extreme, examples include Josh Levine who pioneered high frequency trading in the early 1990's and allowed the proprietary trading firm Datek to “out-trade the very best in the business. They could grind Goldman to a pulp. They could make Morgan cry" or algorithmic trader Haim Bodek, who was poached from Goldman Sachs by UBS in the early 2000's \to build an options-trading desk that could go head-to-head with the likes of Hull [Goldman's electronic trading arm]."

From a welfare perspective, the cost of financial expertise takes the form of a transfer from firms to workers, but allocating workers to surplus extraction, rather than to surplus creation, still represents a social inefficiency. This inefficiency arises even though traders are, in equilibrium, overpaid" from the perspective of the firm; firms would prefer not to hire traders at the prevailing compensation levels as efficient trade would take place without experts, but do so to prevent other firms from hiring them instead. We discuss, at the end of the paper, how restricting compensation in the sector, as done in the recent crisis, can improve or worsen the allocation of workers across and within firms.

【1240 Words】


【Extended Reading】

【Article One】

The Most Effective Strategies for Success
by Heidi Grant Halvorson

For years, I've been trying to convince people that success is not about who you are, but about what you do.

Roughly two years ago, I wrote about the "Nine Things Successful People Do Differently," which became HBR's most-read piece of content over that time span. It was a list of strategies, based on decades of scientific research, proven effective for setting and reaching challenging goals. I later expanded that post into a short e-book, explaining how you can make each one a habit. But how would readers know if they were doing enough of each "Thing"? (After all, we're terrible judges of ourselves.) To help answer that question, last spring I created something I called the Nine Things Diagnostics — it's a free, online set of questionnaires designed to measure your own use of each of the nine things in pursuit of your personal and professional goals.

I now have responses from over 30,000 people who've logged on and completed one or more of the Nine Things Diagnostics. The results are fascinating, and a bit surprising even to me. First, each of the Nine Things had a significant impact on success. (That actually didn't surprise me, for obvious reasons.).

But which packed the biggest punch? To find out, I recently took a look at the responses of about 7,000 people who had completed every Nine Things Diagnostic, along with a brief measure of how successful they felt they had been in reaching their own goals in the past.
In order of effect magnitude, the most impactful strategies were:

1. Have Grit — Persistence over the long haul is key
2. Know Exactly How Far You Have Left to Go — Monitor your progress
3. Get Specific — Have a crystal-clear idea of exactly what success will look like
4. Seize the Moment to Act on Your Goals — Know in advance what you will do, and when and where you will do it
5. Focus on What You Will Do, Not What You Won't Do — Instead of focusing on bad habits, it's more effective to replace them with better ones.
6. Build your Willpower Muscle — If you don't have enough willpower, you can get more using it.
7. Focus on Getting Better, Rather than Being Good — Think about your goals as opportunities to improve, rather than to prove yourself
8. Be a Realistic Optimist — Visualize how you will make success happen by overcoming obstacles
9. Don't Tempt Fate — No one has willpower all the time, so don't push your luck

Notice how persistence is at the very top of the list? While we marvel at people who've shown incredible perseverance — Earnest Shackleton, Nelson Mandela, Susan B. Anthony — I wonder how many people have ever thought to blame their own failures on "not hanging in there long enough"? In my experience, very few. Instead, we assume we lack the ability to succeed. We decide that we don't have what it takes — whatever that is — to meet the challenge. And we really couldn't be more wrong. Grit is not an innate gift. Persisting is something we learn to do, when (and if) we realize how well it pays off.

Or take "knowing how far you have left to go." Even someone with a healthy amount of grit will probably find his or her motivation flagging if they don't have a clear sense of where they are now and where they want to end up. How much weight would a contestant on The Biggest Loser lose if he only weighed himself at the beginning and the end, instead of once a week? How well would an Olympic-level athlete perform if she only timed her official races, and never her practices? We can see how essential monitoring is for others' performance, and yet somehow miss its importance for our own.

But does that mean that the items further down the list aren't as important? Not quite. For instance, #7, "focusing on getting better, rather than being good," actually predicted using each of the other eight things! People who focused on "being good," on the other hand, were less likely to use the other tactics on the list. In fact, if you do a lot of "be good" thinking, you are less likely to be gritty or have willpower, and you are more likely to tempt fate. You're also, not surprisingly, less likely to reach your goals.

Perhaps the most remarkable finding, however, was the extent to which people weren't using these tactics.

Respondents answered each of the diagnostic questions on 1-5 scale, with 1 being "not at all true of me," 3 being "somewhat true of me," and 5 being "very true of me."

If your average score for a particular tactic falls between Not at all and Somewhat, then you really aren't doing what you need to do to be effective. Here's how the percentages break down:

So about 40 percent of responders aren't being realistically optimistic, or focusing on what they will do, rather than what they won't. And 50 percent of responders aren't being specific, seizing the moment, monitoring progress, having grit, and having willpower. An astonishing 70+ percent of respondents also don't bother avoiding tempting fate. (Apparently, people just love to put themselves in harm's way.)

Here's some good news: an incredible 90 percent of responders report pursuing at least some of their goals with Get Better mindsets. But here's the Bad News: 80 percent of responders are also pursuing goals with Be Good mindsets. So there's still way too much I-have-to-prove-myself thinking going on out there, and it's sabotaging our success.

If you have a few spare minutes, I encourage you to take the Nine Things Diagnostics yourself, assuming you haven't already. It's a quick yet powerful way to target your weaknesses (and learn about your strengths). Remember, improvement is only possible when you know where you're going wrong, and what you can do about it

【Article Two】

Nine Things Successful People Do Differently
by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.

1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.

2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.

To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.

3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.

4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.

5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.

Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.

To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.

8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.

9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.

If you want to change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.

It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.  
发表于 2013-3-29 17:40:08 | 显示全部楼层
Extended Reading里的这位作者,Heidi Grant Halvorson真牛,我以前还留过另一篇他的文章,也是惊为神作~分享给大家~

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Nine Ways Successful People Defeat Stress
by Heidi Grant Halvorson

Feeling stressed? Of course you are. You have too much on your plate, deadlines are looming, people are counting on you, and to top it all off, you still have holiday shopping to do. You are under a lot of pressure — so much that at times, you suspect the quality of your work suffers for it.

This is life in the modern workplace. It is more or less impossible to be any kind of professional these days and not experience frequent bouts of intense stress. The difference between those who are successful and those who aren't is not whether or not you suffer from stress, but how you deal with it when you do.

In the spirit of Nine Things Successful People Do Differently, here are nine scientifically-proven strategies for defeating stress whenever it strikes.

1. Have self-compassion.

Self-compassion is, in essence, cutting yourself some slack. It's being willing to look at your mistakes or failures with kindness and understanding — without harsh criticism or defensiveness. Studies show that people who are self-compassionate are happier, more optimistic, and less anxious and depressed. That's probably not surprising. But here's the kicker: they are more successful, too. Most of us believe that we need to be hard on ourselves to perform at our best, but it turns out that's 100 percent wrong. A dose of self-compassion when things are at their most difficult can reduce your stress and improve your performance, by making it easier to learn from your mistakes. So remember that to err is human, and give yourself a break.

2. Remember the "Big Picture."

Anything you need or want to do can be thought of in more than one way. For instance, "exercising" can be described in Big Picture terms, like "getting healthier" — the why of exercising — or it can be described in more concrete terms, like "running two miles" — the how of exercising. Thinking Big Picture about the work you do can be very energizing in the face of stress and challenge, because you are linking one particular, often small action to a greater meaning or purpose. Something that may not seem important or valuable on its own gets cast in a whole new light. So when staying that extra hour at work at the end of an exhausting day is thought of as "helping my career" rather than "answering emails for 60 more minutes," you'll be much more likely to want to stay put and work hard.

3. Rely on routines.

If I ask you to name the major causes of stress in your work life, you would probably say things like deadlines, a heavy workload, bureaucracy, or your terrible boss. You probably wouldn't say "having to make so many decisions," because most people aren't aware that this is a powerful and pervasive cause of stress in their lives. Every time you make a decision — whether it's about hiring a new employee, about when to schedule a meeting with your supervisor, or about choosing rye or whole wheat for your egg salad sandwich — you create a state of mental tension that is, in fact, stressful. (This is why shopping is so exhausting — it's not the horrible concrete floors, it's all that deciding.)

The solution is to reduce the number of decisions you need to make by using routines. If there's something you need to do every day, do it at the same time every day. Have a routine for preparing for your day in the morning, and packing up to go home at night. Simple routines can dramatically reduce your experience of stress. In fact, President Obama, who assuredly knows a great deal about stress, mentioned using this strategy himself in a recent interview:

You need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day... You'll see I wear only gray or blue suits. I'm trying to pare down decisions. I don't want to make decisions about what I'm eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can't be going through the day distracted by trivia. –President Obama, Vanity Fair

4. Take five (or ten) minutes to do something you find interesting.

If there were something you could add to your car's engine, so that after driving it a hundred miles, you'd end up with more gas in the tank than you started with, wouldn't you use it? Even if nothing like that exists for your car just yet, there is something you can do for yourself that will have the same effect... doing something interesting. It doesn't matter what it is, so long as it interests you. Recent research shows that interest doesn't just keep you going despite fatigue, it actually replenishes your energy. And then that replenished energy flows into whatever you do next.

Keep these two very important points in mind: First, interesting is not the same thing as pleasant, fun, or relaxing (though they are certainly not mutually exclusive.) Taking a lunch break might be relaxing, and if the food is good it will probably be pleasant. But unless you are eating at the hot new molecular gastronomy restaurant, it probably won't be interesting. So it won't replenish your energy.

Second, interesting does not have to mean effortless. The same studies that showed that interest replenished energy showed that it did so even when the interesting task was difficult and required effort. So you actually don't have to "take it easy" to refill your tank.

5. Add where and when to your to-do list.

Do you have a to-do list? (If you have a "Task" bar on the side of your calendar, and you use it, then the answer is "yes.") And do you find that a day or a week (or sometimes longer) will frequently pass by without a single item getting checked off? Stressful, isn't it? What you need is a way to get the things done that you set out to do in a timely manner. What you need is if-then planning (or what psychologists call "implementation intentions").

This particular form of planning is a really powerful way to help you achieve any goal. Nearly 200 studies, on everything from diet and exercise to negotiation and time management, have shown that deciding in advance when and where you will complete a task (e.g., "If it is 4pm, then I will return any phone calls I should return today") can double or triple your chances of actually doing it.

So take the tasks on your to-do list, and add a specific when and where to each. For example, "Remember to call Bob" becomes "If it is Tuesday after lunch, then I'll call Bob." Now that you've created an if-then plan for calling Bob, your unconscious brain will start scanning the environment, searching for the situation in the "if" part of your plan. This enables you to seize the critical moment and make the call, even when you are busy doing other things. And what better way is there to cut down on your stress than crossing things off your to-do list?

6. Use if-thens for positive self-talk.

Another way to combat stress using if-then plans is to direct them at the experience of stress itself, rather than at its causes. Recent studies show that if-then plans can help us to control our emotional responses to situations in which we feel fear, sadness, fatigue, self-doubt, or even disgust. Simply decide what kind of response you would like to have instead of feeling stress, and make a plan that links your desired response to the situations that tend to raise your blood pressure. For instance, "If I see lots of emails in my Inbox, then I will stay calm and relaxed," or, "If a deadline is approaching, then I will keep a cool head."

7. See your work in terms of progress, not perfection

We all approach the goals we pursue with one of two mindsets: what I call the Be-Good mindset, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and that you already know what you're doing, and the Get-Better mindset, where the focus is on developing your ability and learning new skills. You can think of it as the difference between wanting to show that you are smart versus wanting to get smarter.

When you have a Be-Good mindset, you expect to be able to do everything perfectly right out of the gate, and you constantly (often unconsciously) compare yourself to other people, to see how you "size up." You quickly start to doubt your ability when things don't go smoothly, and this creates a lot of stress and anxiety. Ironically, worrying about your ability makes you much more likely to ultimately fail.

A Get-Better mindset, on the other hand, leads instead to self-comparison and a concern with making progress — how well are you doing today, compared with how you did yesterday, last month, or last year? When you think about what you are doing in terms of learning and improving, accepting that you may make some mistakes along the way, you experience far less stress, and you stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur.

8. Think about the progress that you've already made.

"Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work." This is what Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer refer to as the Progress Principle — the idea is that it's the "small wins" that keep us going, particularly in the face of stressors.

Psychologically, it's often not whether we've reached our goal, but the rate at which we are closing the gap between where we are now and where we want to end up that determines how we feel. It can be enormously helpful to take a moment and reflect on what you've accomplished so far before turning your attention to the challenges that remain ahead.

9. Know whether optimism or defensive pessimism works for you.

For many of us, it's hard to stay positive when we've got assignments up to our eyeballs. For others, it isn't just hard — it feels wrong. And as it turns out, they are perfectly correct — optimism doesn't work for them.

It is stressful enough to try to juggle as many projects and goals as we do, but we add a layer of stress without realizing it when we try to reach them using strategies that don't feel right — that don't mesh with our own motivational style. So what's your motivational style, and is "staying positive" right for you?

Some people think of their jobs as opportunities for achievement and accomplishment — they have what psychologists call a promotion focus. In the language of economics, promotion focus is all about maximizing gains and avoiding missed opportunities. For others, doing a job well is about security, about not losing the positions they've worked so hard for. This prevention focus places the emphasis on avoiding danger, fulfilling responsibilities, and doing what feel you ought to do. In economic terms, it's about minimizing losses, trying to hang on to what you've got.

Understanding promotion and prevention motivation helps us understand why people can work so differently to reach the same goal. Promotion motivation feels like eagerness — the desire to really go for it — and this eagerness is sustained and enhanced by optimism. Believing that everything is going to work out great is essential for promotion-focused performance. Prevention motivation, on the other hand, feels like vigilance — the need to keep danger at bay — and it is sustained not by optimism, but by a kind of defensive pessimism. In other words, the prevention-minded actually work best when they think about what might go wrong, and what they can do to keep that from happening.

So, do you spend your life pursuing accomplishments and accolades, reaching for the stars? Or are you busy fulfilling your duties and responsibilities — being the person everyone can count on? Start by identifying your focus, and then embrace either the sunny outlook or the hearty skepticism that will reduce your stress and keep you performing at your best.

Put some or all of these strategies for fighting stress, and you will see real changes not only in the workplace, but in every area of your life. With the holidays around the corner, you might want to work on creating a few if-thens for dealing with the relatives, too. "If I'm about to lose my mind, then I'll have some more eggnog," works wonders for me.
发表于 2013-3-28 19:38:37 | 显示全部楼层
占座!明天来做!!!好久没做了
感谢spencer一直以来的辛勤付出~~希望你能顺利走到最后一步!希望大家都能杀G成功!
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1.18" Apple was seriously attacked in China recently.
1.38" the reason why apple was attacked may be that apple irritated the China official.apple is being attacked in China,while China's solar exporters are facing an obstacles in EU and Huawei was accused by America.
1.18" It seems like China's new leadership is trying to rule out the foreign smartphone producer and develop our own operational system.
1.09" Before the US’deteriorating urban finance which may lead the long-term interest rate drop and thus result in the losses of bond-holders occurred, Cypus was the latest challenge for the global finance.
1.47" the derivatives market is expanding at an incredibly fast rate with a relatively small amount of money.
2.52" the problems of the derivatives markets. the key is the counterparty risk is uneven among the financial markets.
1.38" the so-called growth of the indebter econmomies is actually not helping.
4.08” In the indebted economies, debt levels may be several times the value of GDP. Even if the debtors can repay the money, the economy will be harmed. Compare the economy to a bank, then large savers are vulnerable to default or the inflate just like the case in Cyprus.
9.34"  the author made a financial firm model which demonstrates that the traders with high compensation are within very few firms and they are hired to  strengthen the employers' position when bargining with other firms.
发表于 2013-3-28 19:52:14 | 显示全部楼层
占座!spencer看C.M.的吗?
发表于 2013-3-28 20:05:48 | 显示全部楼层
好感动~!spencer一切顺利,加油!(都是我逼着大家退位让贤 好让当期备考的同学们参与进来……)

咳咳,极度推荐spencer陪我一起读下去 读的native到不行~哈哈~

best wishes~
发表于 2013-3-28 20:27:34 | 显示全部楼层
占座占座~~~
spencer辛苦啦!祝一切顺利哦!
@神猴,我本来想考完以后帮忙发文章的……原来都是当期备考的啊……

1 - 01:18
Apple is one of China's most successful brand, and China is one of Apple's biggest market. But a recent program on CCTV critized Apple saying that the company carried out double standards while treating its customers (unfair for the Chinese people). It is not the first time (KFC last year) that a large multi-national corporation faces such situation. And the author doubts that there must be other reasons behind.

2 - 01:42
The passage suggest that Apple may be attacked because it hampers the development of Chinese companies in the same industry. And the authors doubts that some authority "directed" the attack (eg. 8点20发什么的…). But there is no strong evidence to support the guess. The author also think that Apple may be an innocent target for the Chinese authority to take "revenge", because some Chinese companies have faced hostile situations abroad (solar energy in Europe, and Huawei in the US (suspected by the US of spying for Chinese government))

3 - 01:16
It is also possible that China wants to push foreign mobile phone companies out of the market. The authority has already viewed the penetration of forerign OS as dangerous. The Chinese gov. want to promote domestic systems that are easier to control. This act may be related to the new generation of leadership in China. But no outsider knows what exactly is happening.

4 - 01:28
Cyprus is now facing severe financial crisis. Its depositers will probably lose up to 40% of their savings. And that affects the confidence of related Eurozone countries. Also, crisis appears in US despite of the recovery of the 2008 crisis. For example, the interest rate will probably rise (2nd: because 1.inflation; 2. end of easy money policy). And that will cause long-term bond holders to lose. Besides, financial derivatives remains to be a huge concern. These complex tools has led to the bankruptcy of Lahman Brothers.

5 - 01:32
What is a derivative? It is a contract derived from other things such as mortgages or even weather. The total amount of derivative is difficult to measure. But it is reported that the "face-value" has tripled in the 5 years, and that it is still on the rise. (supported by lots of data...)

6 - 02:27
Financial derivatives is risky not only because of its higher leverage (the holder can have significantly larger risk than he/ she expects in theory, that is, several times larger than what he/ she initially invested), but also because of lack of regulation (because most derivative contracts are private). Although there are regulations limiting the speculation that IBs can do, the countries involved in the market know quite well that the regulation is far from being done.

7 - 01:14
The balance of inflation, stagnate and default has been a problem since the 2008 financial crisis. The main problem is actually debt, debt from all sectors. When one sector is badly hit, government debt rises sharply. But every thing will be all right if the creditor is confident that debtors are able to repay the debt.

8 - 03:00
好累…TT…不想写了……TT


今天的文章都好有趣!尤其看derivative那篇的时候,想到了好多financial economics的东西,就好激动……&想到一部纪录片,inside job,个人觉得非常不错!虽然有人说它有比较强的bias……

啊…………后面扩展阅读也看完了,就剩越障了………………等会再做…………………………好……累……TT

obstacle - 7:00
This passage establishes a model to explain the rationale that some traders receive seemingly excessive pay.
identified two circumstances & two types of employees (who can bring different aspects of benefits to the firm)
discuss the situations under equilibrium.
support by real world examples (GS...)
唉,还是太急了,文章还是没大懂…但是一慢下来就慢得没救…TT……梳理逻辑还是得提高!
发表于 2013-3-29 09:32:39 | 显示全部楼层
祝贺祝贺
祝日后成功拿下T!!!
1.15"+1.48"
1.39"
1.12"+1.57"
2.33"
1.16"
8.19"

发表于 2013-3-29 09:36:38 | 显示全部楼层
Apple  was  attack by China government.
This attack will be a chance for other compete company.
Combine with the VW,  this attack may be a kind of new test by China’s new government.
发表于 2013-3-29 10:03:25 | 显示全部楼层
感谢spencer为大家的无私付出,祝一切顺利!

欢迎杀G给猴看 我第一次知道小分队就是在你的日记帖子里知道的,后来搜到阅读专区才开始跟小分队的,算是启蒙人了哈哈,亲切感~大家一起加油啦!
发表于 2013-3-29 10:09:39 | 显示全部楼层
杀G给猴看 发表于 2013-3-28 20:27
占座占座~~~
spencer辛苦啦!祝一切顺利哦!
@神猴,我本来想考完以后帮忙发文章的……原来都是当期备考的 ...

嗯~ 这样小分队才能有源源不断的活力嘛~
发表于 2013-3-29 10:45:55 | 显示全部楼层
1:38
2:29
2:01
2:22

9:16
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