Topley’s Top 10 – July 13, 2022

1. VDE Vanguard Energy ETF -28% Correction

VDE holding 200 day moving average

Holding Blue uptrend trendline going back to 2020

www.stockcharts.com


2. Small Cap Energy Fast -36% Correction

PSCE Small Cap Energy ETF

www.stockcharts.com


3. Traders Dumped Energy Derivatives Last Week at Fastest Pace Since Covid Crisis

From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading Investors dumped petroleum-related derivatives last week at one of the fastest rates of the pandemic era as recession fears intensified – Hedge funds and other money managers sold the equivalent of 110 million barrels in the six most important petroleum-related futures and options contracts in the week to July 5.  Fund managers have now sold a total of 201 million barrels in the past four weeks, according to position records published by ICE Futures Europe and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.


4. Historical Market Performance After Big Two Quarter Drops

LPL Research

https://iplresearch.com/2022/07/07/reasons-for-optimism-as-second-half-gets-underway/


5. Global Private Equity Performance.

Irrelevant Investor Blog

Charts

https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2022/07/09/talk-your-book-the-state-of-venture-capital/


6. Private Market Record Dry Powder

Dry Powder is Committed Capital that has not yet been Called

BII-2022-Midyear Outlook Report.pdf


7. Home Values Rolling Over in Expensive Markets

Bloomberg-Jonathan Levin

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-12/housing-inventories-may-not-save-prices-after-all?sref=GGda9y2L


8. Rent Inflation Showing No Signs of Slowing.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnburns7/


9. Jail Population -25%

A report out this week from USAFacts explored how the US jail population changed during the pandemic — noting that the number of jail inmates had fallen by 25% from 2019 to 2020.

Jailhouse drop

Jails differ from prisons in that they are usually reserved for those awaiting trials or serving sentences under a year for less serious crimes. The falling jail numbers, which followed a ten-year stretch of relative stability, were largely attributed to an increase in expedited releases and a fall in arrests, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Much of the reduction took place at the beginning of the pandemic as authorities looked to ditch some jailhouse detainees to prevent overcrowding, bringing forward the release dates of around 28% of inmates.

The fall in inmates varied depending on charges, with less serious misdemeanor charges seeing the largest fall — 45% year-on-year — across the country.

More broadly the nation experienced an equally-dramatic drop in arrests, with total arrests dropping from 10.1m to 7.6m according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime report, which also contributed to a smaller jail population.

www.chartr.com


10. Americans Have Stopped Moving

Scott Galloway@profgalloway

The tech exodus narrative is a distraction. The real domestic migration trend is … less migration. Specifically, people aren’t moving. In 1948 roughly a fifth of Americans changed residences. That number has been steadily declining since. During the pandemic, we read opinion pieces about everyone quitting their job and moving to Maine. There was a feeling that migration habits were changing; in reality the song remains (increasingly) the same. In 2021 only 8.4% of Americans moved — an all-time low.

It’s been happening for several decades, though nobody can figure out why. An aging population and a younger cohort described as the “complacent generation” are factors, but there must be more. Lack of portable health care and a decline in the lifestyle once sought in the West could also be explainers. My theory is that, like everything else, mobility has become a luxury item costs can only be borne by college grads (who are themselves increasingly anchored by student loan debt).

American mobility has been halved in three decades. Contrast that with China, where over 370 million people live somewhere besides their home region. (Another contrast: A mere 1 million foreigners live in China, placing it 54th among nations by immigrant population.) Why does it matter? Because when capital is not allocated to its best use, growth declines. A lack of mobility also affects culture, resulting in less dynamism, increased aversion to risk, and suspicion of outsiders. Yes, Covid spurred some relocation, but, like the “renewed” labor movement, that’s a blip that likely won’t reverse the secular decline. The problem isn’t that a tech Karen is leaving the Bay Area, it’s that not enough people are leaving any area. “Remote Work” should be called “Work from Home” as it’s decreasingly remote, just at home. Six in 10 people who move stay within their county; eight in 10 stay in-state.

https://www.profgalloway.com/migrant/

Topley’s Top 10 – July 08, 2022

1. Consumer Sentiment and 12 Month Stock Market Returns.

JP Morgan

https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/insights/market-insights/guide-to-the-markets/?gclid=Cj0KCQjw5ZSWBhCVARIsALERCvz6pF3ZOBt3DRza-AgFU8QB1IVs5wrv9YOundIf4gXBWfyG6WoVHxoaAtpLEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds


2. Currency ETF Performance vs. Crypto

U.S. Dollar +9% YTD vs. Bitcoin Trust -65%

https://www.nasdaq.com/solutions/nasdaq-dorsey-wright


3. Strong U.S. Dollar and Emerging Markets

This chart shows the emerging markets vs. U.S. dollar-a strong downtrend.  Emerging market dollar denominated debt more expensive and exports more expensive…


4. U.S. Now Europe’s Biggest Natural Gas Supplier

From Dave Lutz at Jones Trading-US overtakes Russia as Europe’s top gas supplier.  We’re not even at the end of the beginning of this energy war & Europe remains critically short gas


5. Recession Watch on Transport Stocks

Trucking Index holds 200 week moving average

Dow Transports hold 200 week moving average

www.stockcharts.com


6. Luxury Goods Sellers Back to Covid Levels

Kering -50% correction

LVMH -32% correction

www.stockcharts.com


7. Chinese state airlines to buy almost 300 Airbus jets

ReutersBEIJING/SYDNEY, July 1 (Reuters) – China’s “Big Three” state airlines pledged on Friday to buy a total of almost 300 Airbus jets, the biggest order by Chinese carriers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and a breakthrough for Europe as Boeing remains partially frozen out of China.

In apparently coordinated announcements, Air China (601111.SS) and China Southern Airlines (600029.SS) said they would each buy 96 A320neo-family jets worth $12.2 billion at list prices. China Eastern Airlines (600115.SS) said it would buy 100 airplanes of the same type, worth $12.8 billion.

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/china-southern-airlines-buy-96-airbus-a320neo-jets-2022-07-01/

The final result-Airbus vs. BA 2021

All in all, it seems as though Airbus has edged ahead as the winner in 2021, though the gap doesn’t seem to be as significant as last year.

  • Aircraft delivered: Airbus
  • Aircraft ordered: Draw
  • Active fleet: Boeing
  • Most flights: Airbus
  • Aircraft scrapped: Airbus

Airbus 3 – 1 Boeing

Of course, the year has had its ups and downs for both carriers. Airbus has been embroiled in the aforementioned A350 paint issue with Qatar Airways with other carriers reportedly affected. Meanwhile, Boeing 787 Dreamliner deliveries still haven’t resumed three months into 2022. That being said, the Boeing 737 MAX was been ungrounded in many territories last year, and continues to perform strongly for the American planemaker.

Which manufacturer won 2021 in your eyes? Let us know what you think and why in the comments!

Sources: Airbus, Boeing, Ciriumch-aviation.comReuters

https://simpleflying.com/airbus-vs-boeing-2021/#:~:text=Boeing%20accounted%20for%208%2C907%2C948%20flights,flights%20scheduled%20for%20the%20year.&text=While%20Airbus%20is%20the%20overall,to%20645%2C220%20with%20Airbus%20aircraft.


8. DeFi Theft …$1.7Billion Stolen in 2022

Barrons-Theft on DeFi isn’t trivial. Protocols accounted for 97% of the $1.7 billion of crypto stolen in 2022 as of May 1, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. “It’s a major consumer protection issue that you don’t have recourse if you have funds stolen on DeFi,” says Chainalysis Director of Research Kim Grauer, adding that she’s optimistic protocols will get more secure over time.

“There’s no prohibition against wash-trading on crypto exchanges, no prohibition against proprietary trading, no best-execution rules, and no standardized reporting,” says Timothy Massad, a former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “It’s this whole lack of a framework where you can’t compare it to securities that concerns me.”

By  [Joe%20Light]Joe LightFollow  https://www.barrons.com/articles/bitcoin-crypto-crisis-51656620781?mod=past_editions

From CoinLive https://coinlive.me/the-hacks-in-2022-caused-1-7-billion-in-damage-97-of-which-came-from-defi-18796.html


9. No bids on Chevy’s first NFT, even though it came with a free Corvette Z06

By Andrew J. Hawkins@andyjayhawk  

·   SHAREAll sharing options Chevy’s first foray into non-fungible tokens was a non-fungible dud. The automaker netted zero bids for its first NFT during an auction last month, even though the digital drawing came with a free 2023 Corvette Z06, according to Corvette Blogger.

The NFT, which depicts a lime green Corvette Z06 blasting through a cyberpunk landscape, was created by artist Nick Sullo, who goes by xsullo online. The winning bidder would have also received a unique “Minted Green” Corvette Z06, which will be the only car painted in that color, and an option code RFN, which will “forever associate” the car with the NFT auction. And the Corvette’s VIN number will be in binary because NFTs are digital and computers use binary and you get it.

But alas, there was no winner to ascribe to the blockchain, because mighty Chevy struck out. The automaker was only accepting bids in Ethereum (most NFTs are purchased using Ethereum), the price of which has been extremely volatile in recent weeks. The cryptocurrency has dropped more than 64 percent since April 1st, while the most lauded NFTs have seen their floor price — price for the lowest one on the market — drop more than 70 percent.

BASICALLY, THEY PULLED A MORBIUS.

The auction was held from June 20-24. SuperRare, the NFT marketplace that oversaw the auction, tweeted on June 24th that it would reopen bids for 24 hours because some users “missed” the window. But apparently that didn’t work: the auction closed yet again with zero bids. Basically, they pulled a Morbius.

Trevor Thompkins, a spokesperson for Chevy, shrugged off the disappointment in a statement to Corvette Blogger. “Our first step into Web3 has been educational, and we will continue to explore ways to leverage technology to benefit our customers,” Thompkins said.

No bids on Chevy’s first NFT, even though it came with a free Corvette Z06 – The Verge

From Morningbrew Newsletter https://www.morningbrew.com/daily


10. John Maxwell-Know Your Growth Plan

Success.com Tiger Woods works on his strengths

I was with a group of CEOs and presidents not too long ago and as I was talking to them about this whole process, one of the presidents raised his hand and said, “John, I’m not sure I agree with you when you say not to work on your weaknesses. Take Tiger Woods for example. When he has a bad round of golf, he heads directly to the practice range and may spend two or three hours working on his swing—a perfect example of working on your weaknesses.”

I told this gentleman he just gave a perfect example of the importance of working on your strengths. I think it’s safe to say that Woods is the greatest golfer in the world. So when the greatest golfer in the world is working on his swing because he’s got a little flaw in it, he’s not working on weaknesses. He’s working on strengths. He’s in his Strength Zone working to improve something he’s already good at.

The difference is when I go to the practice range, I’m in my weak zone. For me practice makes permanent. If you’re in your Strength Zone like Woods, practice makes perfect. When I work on my golf swing, I consistently hit a bad shot to the same place every time, which is a big help because then I know where to find it in the woods.

What’s your growth plan?

Success is knowing your purpose in life. But there’s more to it than that; I know people who know their purpose in life but are not successful. You need a growth plan to help you reach your maximum potential. It’s not only knowing what you should do; it’s about growing in that area to maximize and highlight the things that you do well. That’s continual growth.

I had a life-changing experience back in 1973. Attending a seminar in Lancaster, Ohio, a man sitting next to me asked me one of the most important questions I’ve ever been asked. He said, “John, what’s your plan for growth?” I was just a kid in my 20s, not knowing that I was even supposed to have a plan for growth. And so I decided to fake it and proceeded to tell him about my elaborate schedule and how hard I was working toward my goals. I was like a plane circling a field trying to come in for a landing, going around and around until I finally ran out of gas and shut up. As soon as I did he looked at me, smiled and said, “You don’t have a plan, do you?” With a smile, I replied, “Eh, no, no I don’t.”

Then he said words that changed my life. He said, “John, growth is not an automatic process. If you’re going to grow, you need to do so intentionally.” That afternoon I went home and sat down with my wife, Margaret, and said, “I don’t know what a growth plan looks like, but I heard a guy tell me today I needed to have one and I’m going to figure it out.” And I took that whole year to figure out how to do a growth plan, and I’m here to tell you, it changed my life.

That was in the early ’70s. For 30-plus years, I have been on a personal growth plan every year.

The speed of the leader determines the speed of the pack. And the only way that you and I will ever continue to be in front is to continue to learn, grow and make a commitment to it. Highly successful people have a continual thirst for knowledge and are always asking questions.

What you do today determines your success

I don’t think success is a mystery. I think it’s tangible and achievable for everyone, but it’s going to start with this statement: The secret of your success is determined by your daily agenda, by what you and I do—today.

I believe this principle so much I wrote a book called Today Matters, and in the book I write about how we overexaggerate yesterday, we overestimate tomorrow and we underestimate today.

You see, every day you are either repairing or preparing. Every day you’re either trying to fix yesterday—relationships, issues, priorities, lost opportunities—or you are living your life in such a way that you are preparing for tomorrow and setting up success almost as a given.

Highly successful people know their purpose in life, they grow to their maximum potential and they sow seeds that benefit others. They don’t live for themselves. They’re a river, not a reservoir. They understand what significance is—adding vaue to others.

John C. Maxwell

Articles

John C. Maxwell, an internationally respected leadership expert, speaker, and author who has sold more than 18 million books, has been named an inaugural SUCCESS Ambassador. Dr. Maxwell is the founder of EQUIP, a non-profit organization that has trained more than 5 million leaders in 126 countries worldwide. A New York TimesWall Street Journal and BusinessWeek; best-selling author, Maxwell has written three books that have sold more than a million copies.

https://www.success.com/finding-your-purpose/

Topley’s Top 10 – July 07, 2022

1. Publicly Traded Warehouse Companies -30%+ Corrections

TRNO -35%

EGP -33%

www.stockcharts.com


2. One Month Solar Stocks -4% vs. Energy -22%

TAN solar ETF vs. XLE energy ETF

www.yahoofinance.com


3. Buy Now Pay Later Swedish Unicorn Klarna Valuation $45B to $6B

Valuation re-set for valuation as borrowing costs spike

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-01/klarna-discussing-valuation-cut-to-6-billion-from-45-6-billion?sref=GGda9y2L


4. 20 Day Move in Commodities Third Largest Decline in 90 Years

Jim Reid Deutsche Bank-Earlier this year commodities and bonds saw some of their biggest moves for decades, or all time in some cases, mostly in the direction of higher yields and commodity prices.

Over the last few days, these big moves are back again but mostly in the other direction as recession fears mount and central bank expectations are pared back.

The rolling 20-day move in our commodity index is now seeing around the third largest decline in 90 years (hat tip to DB’s Tom Sykes for pointing out), behind only the GFC, the initial Covid shock, and on a par with that seen in the early days of WWII in 1940. In March, we saw the fourth largest 20-day uptick after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The start of WWII and two occasions in the 1970s were the only bigger moves.

In addition, 10yr bunds have seen their joint largest 10-day fall in yields since reunification, equalling a move seen during the GFC.

2022 has seen many such moves across many different asset classes and as such will go down as one of the most volatile years for financial markets on record.


5. 20 Year Treasury Bond -23% Correction

Another bond chart 50 week thru 200 week to downside

www.stockcharts.com


6. Euro Zone Inflation 8.6% vs. Interest Rates Negative

@Charlie Bilello Eurozone inflation has moved up to 8.6%, its highest level ever. Meanwhile, the ECB is still holding interest rates at negative levels. This is perhaps the greatest disconnect between easy monetary policy and unabating rising prices that the world has ever seen.

https://twitter.com/charliebilello


7. Above Leading to 20 Year Low in Euro vs. Dollar

EURO breaks to new lows

www.stockcharts.com


8. Utility Stocks and Semiconductor Stocks Now Have the Same Forward P/E Ratio 20x

This chart shows XLU utility ETF vs. SMH semiconductor ETF this year….outperformance by utilities led to reversion in valuations

www.stockcharts.com


9. Tesla and China Competition

Unplugged

Last week we discussed how Nike was struggling with its business in China — today it’s Tesla’s turn.

The electric vehicle maker reported that it had delivered just over 250,000 cars globally, an 18% drop on the effort from Q1 when the company had shipped more than 310,000.

Like Nike, Tesla has been struggling with COVID restrictions at its factories. Tesla’s Shanghai factory — known as the Giga Shanghai — had to close multiple times in the first quarter, and broader supply chain constraints like the computer chip shortage haven’t helped either.

Tesla’s minor hiccup follows years of remarkable progress that made it the largest EV manufacturer in the world. But just as it struggles with its operations in China, it’s also facing rising competition from within the country. Chinese rival BYD reported just this week that it sold 641,000 EVs in the first six months of this year, more than Tesla’s 565,000, leading some to proclaim that Tesla has officially been dethroned as the world’s largest EV maker.

Technically some of those BYD sales were not fullbattery electric vehicles, with some hybrid sales included, so the distinction is slightly muddled. Nonetheless, the competition is coming — and, crucially, consumers are expecting it; data from Morning Consult showed that consumers expect to have the choice of more than 130 EV models by 2024. Back in 2010 they only had a few to choose from.

www.chartr.com


10. Ted Roosevelt and Bad Luck

The Daily Stoic-In the late 1800s, Theodore Roosevelt was on a hunting trip in Big Hole Basin in Montana. The trip did not get off to a good start. Upon getting off the train, and searching for a wagon to transport them, Roosevelt and his party immediately ran into the first of many issues. The wagon they found was overpriced, the harnesses were rotting and falling apart, and the horses were spoiled and ill-trained. There wasn’t much use in complaining, Roosevelt later wrote in his wonderful hunting memoir, The Wilderness Hunter, because “on the frontier one soon grows to accept little facts of this kind with bland indifference.”

Because what’s the alternative? Let it ruin the trip? Yell at the horses? Fix the harnesses with your anger? In fact, part of the appeal of the outdoors lifestyle is that it’s a challenge and that it tests us in these little ways. Camping and hunting, the Stoics would have said, are both great metaphors and great training for the difficulties of life.

Bad luck continued on the trip, with mishap after mishap. The wagon got mired at various crossings, the horses were a constant struggle, and the weather was freezing. At one point, it looked like the weather was set to take an even more serious turn. Roosevelt turned to his partner and said casually that he would “rather it didn’t storm.” His partner, even more stoic than Roosevelt, stopped his whistling, looked at him and said, “We’re not having our rathers on this trip,” then cheerfully resumed whistling.

The truth is, we don’t get our rathers in life either. All of us are pulled along by Fate, or the logos as the Stoics would call it, as well as by Fortune. Sometimes they line up with what we want, sometimes they don’t. That’s why amor fati is the right attitude. We have to embrace it. We have to accept the little facts of life. Bland indifference is a start, but cheerful whistling is even better.

https://dailystoic.com

Topley’s Top 10 – July 06, 2022

1. Factor Returns Grid…Dividends, Value and Low Vol Lead

Nasdaq Dorsey Wright

www.dorseywright.com


2. Total Returns 10 Year Treasury the Worst Since 1788

Jim Reid-Deutsche Bank


3. Mega Cap ETF Holding 200 Week Moving Average

Mega Cap also Holding blue trend line going back to 2020

www.stockcharts.com


4. XLE Energy ETF Breaks Blue Trend Line Going Back to 2020

www.stockcharts.com


5. Once Liquidity in Money Supply Stopped…Bitcoin Sell-Off


6. Year Over Year Change in S&P Profit Margins

Ed Yardeni

The table below shows that the forward profit margin of the S&P 500 rose 4.4% y/y through the June 9 week (to a record 13.4%). Only three of the 11 sectors are down over that period: Financials (-1.3%), Consumer Staples (-4.5), and Utilities (-5.0). Outpacing the increase in the margin of the S&P 500 have been Energy (79.0%) Real Estate (18.1), Industrials (8.4), Materials (6.9), and Information Technology (4.5).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/edward-yardeni/


7. Used Car Prices and Subprime Borrowing

@GrahamStephan

(21) Graham Stephan (@GrahamStephan) / Twitter


8. Average Price of New Home at Record Based on Per Capita Disposable Income

@Charlie Bilello The unaffordability of the US housing market has risen to unsustainable levels.

Exhibit A: The average price of a new home in the US is now over 10x higher than per capita disposable income, the highest ratio in history.


9. Crypto Market Cap History..Breaks $1Trillion

https://coin360.com/charts


10. Sleep Quality Chart

[OC] 2 years of my GF and I tracking the sleep quality impact of various choices/behaviours. These were the 8 most significant effects : dataisbeautiful (reddit.com)

Topley’s Top 10 – June 29, 2022

1. Crude Oil vs. Copper

Two inflation measures disconnect

Jonathan Baird https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanbaird88/

2. OPEC Pumping Under Quotas

https://twitter.com/AlessioUrban

3. Two-Thirds of Americans Saying High Gas Prices Causing Hardship

Zero Hedge Blog–Two-thirds of Americans say recent increases in the price of gas are causing them hardship, which is up from 52% feeling this financial pinch in April. Although more Americans say they are experiencing “moderate” rather than “severe” hardship, the percentage describing the hardship as severe has risen from 14% to 22%.

https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/gas-prices-squeezing-americans-more-rate-bidens-economy-poor

4. Leading to Majority of Public Predicting Recession

https://twitter.com/AndreasSteno

5. Professional Investors Majority Betting on Recession Next Year

Jim Reid Deutsche Bank–In terms of preliminary results so far, you can see the risk of a US recession by the end of 2023 has only been building in recent months with 88% of you now thinking it happens by the end of 2023 up from 78% last month.

Interestingly only 17% believe it starts this year (up from 13% last month) so I think the market narrative of a more imminent recession has moved quicker than the responses. Of these over a third (so c.6% of the total responses) believe the recession has already started.

I still think 2023 is more likely than 2022 but it’s clear the risks are building.

6. Massive Cash Pile to Offset Recession

Irrelevant Investor Blog

https://theirrelevantinvestor.com/2022/06/29/animal-spirits-are-we-sure-a-recession-is-coming/

7. Last Week Saw Retail Selling but No Capitulation Yet

Callum Thomas Chart Storm https://www.linkedin.com/in/callum-thomas-4990063/

Source:  @GunjanJS

8. China State-Owned Industry Market Cap Weight History

WisdomTree- Liqian RenDirector of Modern Alpha

The two charts below illustrate that a majority of Chinese equity market cap is in now in non-state-owned companies, and a majority of Chinese citizens work in the non-state-owned part of the economy. 

This presence of deep market economy and state power is a unique phenomenon. China will be a formidable challenge for the U.S. If U.S. understanding of China is just horror stories about state power, it may make people here feel good, but it won’t help the U.S. compete.

https://www.wisdomtree.com/blog/2022-06-23/chinas-economy-geopolitical-risk-and-zero-covid-policies?utm_source=linkedin&utm_medium=social&utm_term=organic&utm_content=100005334&utm_campaign=china

9. Hours Worked to Cover Mortgage Payments Hitting 2007 Levels

Schwab-Liz Ann Sonders

https://www.schwab.com/learn/story/cant-find-my-way-home

10. How You Define the Problem Determines Whether You Solve It

HBR by Art Markman

Typical stories of creativity and invention focus on finding novel ways to solve problems. James Dyson found a way to adapt the industrial cyclone to eliminate the bag in a vacuum cleaner. Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque developed cubism as a technique for including several views of a scene in the same painting. The desktop operating system developed at Xerox PARC replaced computer commands with a spatial user interface.

These brief descriptions of these innovations all focus primarily on the novel solution. The problem they solve seems obvious.

But framing innovations in this way makes creativity seem like a mystery. How could so many people have missed the solution to the problem for so long? And how in the world did the first person come up with that solution at all?

In fact, most people who come up with creative solutions to problems rely on a relatively straightforward method: finding a solution inside the collective memory of the people working on the problem. That is, someone working to solve the problem knows something that will help them find a solution — they just haven’t realized yet that they know it.

Sure, some people stumble on the answer. When Archimedes stepped into the bath and noticed the water level rise, he lucked into the solution for finding the volume of an ornately decorated crown. And others invest decades and millions (or even billions) of dollars into research and development (see drug companies). But tapping into the individual’s or group’s memory is one of the most cost effective and repeatable problem-solving approaches.

The key to this method is to get the right information out of memory to solve the problem.

Human memory is set up in a way that encountering a piece of information serves as a cue to retrieve other related things. If I ask you to imagine a birthday party, you can quickly retrieve information about birthday parties you have attended, and you will likely be able to think about party hats, cake, and singing “Happy Birthday.” You don’t have to expend much effort to recall this information; it emerges as a result of the initial cue.

If you want to retrieve something else from memory, you need to change the cue. If I now ask you to think about salad, you can likely call to mind information about lettuce, tomatoes, and dressing, even though you were thinking about birthday parties just a minute ago.

When doing creative problem solving, the statement of the problem is the cue to memory. That is what reaches in to memory and draws out related information.

In order to generate a variety of possible solutions to a problem, then, the problem solver (or group) can change the description of the problem in ways that lead new information to be drawn from memory.

For example, it is hard to see how Dyson would have gotten to industrial cyclones from thinking about vacuum cleaner bags. But an alternative way to describe the problem is that a vacuum takes in a combination of dirt and air and has to separate the dirt from the air. Bags do this by acting as a filter that traps the dirt and lets the air pass through pores in the bag. But there are many ways to separate particles from air. Industrial cyclones create a spinning mass of air that throws particles to the edges by centrifugal force.

This way of describing a vacuum is that it generalizes the problem by removing some of the specific components typically used to solve it. The phrase “separating dirt from air” does not mention the bag at all. When you focus on the bag, you’ll naturally be reminded of aspects of bags. The large list of patent numbers on most vacuum cleaner bags suggests that many inventors have done just that. A radically new solution to a problem, though, requires a new problem statement.

So how do you create the problem statement you need to find a solution to your business problem? Unfortunately, there is no ideal problem statement. Instead, the most consistently creative people and groups are ones that find many different ways to describe the problem being solved. Some of those statements will be specific and talk about the objects being acted on (e.g. vacuum bags). That leads to retrieval of specific information that is highly related to the problem (e.g. different types of vacuum bags). Then, groups should find several ways to describe the essence of the problem being solved in ways that focus on the relationships among the objects or a more abstract description of the goal (e.g. separate dirt from air). Each of these descriptions will help people to recall knowledge that is more distantly related to the domain in which the problem is stated.

Most of us have been looking in the wrong place for our creative insights. We ask people to “think outside the box,” but we should be asking people to find more descriptions of the box and see what that causes us to remember.

https://hbr.org/2017/06/how-you-define-the-problem-determines-whether-you-solve-itutm_medium=social&utm_campaign=hbr&utm_source=LinkedIn&tpcc=orgsocial_edit