General Documentation
Etiquette
Jesus said you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's the Golden Rule for living together in peace and harmony. Unfortunately it didn't work out so well for Jesus himself. So let's try and elaborate a bit on that rule, so you know what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior here.
This web-site is not intended to be a Social Media platform. Our main purpose is to create computer simulations that may help you make more informed decisions. However, you can share your simulations with others, and that lets you communicate with others through this web-site. So let us outline the etiquette that we ask you to respect.
The purpose of simulations is to explore "what-if" scenarios for the future. We cannot imagine a "what-if" scenario that would require censoring. Pretty much anything goes no matter how far-fetched it sounds, for example: "What if everyone takes the Covid-19 vaccines, become sterile and grow horns and hoofs?", "What if everyone becomes a transvestite?", "What if everyone votes Democrat – even the living people?"
But we do have a problem with the following:
- Illegal acts such as disclosing insider information, engaging in market manipulation, defaming named people with undocumented claims, etc.
- Foul language. Ordinary adult language is acceptable, but too much filth-flarn-filth is not appropriate. But this is really hard to define and police, just ask the British-Romans and the African-Americans.
In general, we ask you to behave like any civilized person would behave in an ordinary shop or business where you interact with real people in the flesh. You wouldn't go into a mechanic or hair-dresser and start hurling profanity and insults at other people, so please don't do it here either. Try and make a polite and intelligent argument - that is also much more likely to be persuasive.
In extreme cases we may block an account from public view, so others cannot see what you are writing, but you can still use the service yourself. As we do not have the staff to manage this, it could be a very long time before you get unblocked again, so please behave.
If you pose a threat to this service, e.g. if you are trying to abuse or hack our systems, then your account will be permanently blocked.
Copyright
You are generally allowed to use the material on this web-site in your own works, if you provide a link to this web-site. For example, you may use the explanatory text along with simulation results and plots in your own social media posts, in financial reports for your company, in analyst publications, etc. We want to make it easy for you to share your research with others.
However, you are not allowed to use any material from this web-site in competing products and services. For example, if you want to make another web-site that provides a similar service as ours, then you are not allowed to copy any of the material on this web-site. If in doubt, then please contact us for permission first.
Computer Scripts
You are not allowed to interact with this web-site using automated computer scripts, except for standard search-engine purposes, and our system will try and prevent such bad actors. This especially concerns the automated retrieval of content such as the various data-sets that we provide, but which do not belong to us as we have merely licensed them from other providers.
If there is a feature that you would like to have API access to, then please contact us so we may consider providing that in the future.
Account Sharing
The system allows you to login with multiple devices at the same time, so you can login with e.g. both a computer and a tablet. But your account is personal to you, and you are not allowed to share your account with others.
Password
Our login system does not use passwords, instead it sends a random code to your e-mail address that allows you to login. The code is only valid for 10 minutes, and it can only be used once. It would take many thousand years to crack the code, and the system has several ways of preventing cracking attempts. So it is virtually impossible to crack the code.
The only risk is if your e-mail account has been hacked, or if your e-mail server is not properly secured. But this would also be a security risk for password-based systems, because they also send you an e-mail when you have forgotten your password.
Furthermore, some people use the same passwords on many web-sites, so if one web-site gets hacked, the passwords can sometimes be used to hack those users' accounts on other web-sites as well.
Altogether our login system is just as safe – if not safer – than traditional login systems that use passwords.
Privacy
The connection between your web-browser and our web-server uses encryption just like internet shops, so other people cannot intercept and read the information as it travels through the internet.
However, the data you enter that is used to run simulations is visible to us. So if you are worried that we might abuse the information you enter, e.g. if you are trying to value an acquistion of another company which may affect your own stock-price, then we strongly suggest that you use code-names in your simulations, so we cannot gain any insider knowledge from your simulations. You can also use an incognito name for your user account, so we have no idea who you are and which company you work for.
We will generally only look in your private data and simulations if there are technical problems we need to fix. And we do not sell or share ANY of your data to other companies. Our employees have also signed an oath of secrecy regarding your private user data.
Besides, we really don't know how to trade successfully with insider information, as we are often baffled how the stock-market reacts when information is made public. Instead we think in terms of probability distributions for long-term stock-returns, and we have a highly diversified portfolio to protect us from flawed assumptions. That works pretty well.
Cookies
We only store cookies in your web-browser that are necessary for the functioning of this web-site, so you cannot opt out of these cookies. We do not store any cookies in your web-browser for tracking you elsewhere on the internet.