Challenge  I’m a portfolio manager. In stock market, one main problem is that people are flooded by too  much information and too many opinions. For example, when President Trump declared a trade  war towards China, ten analysts may have eleven opinions. We have more than enough data,  such as employment rates, imports & exports, capital investment, company profits and etc, but  we still have no ability to forecast what will happen in the future.     Selection  The difficulty is that one factor may cause a series effects. Some of them have positive feedbacks  and some negative. When these effects mix, people have no ability to deal with the results. It’s  not linear correlation. Under such circumstance, Mind Mapping is a very powerful tool for me,  because it can visualize the complex correlations between factors and make them easier to  understand.     Application and Insight  When I use Mind Mapping in analyzing the economy, I will outline the main first tier effects. Then  I will follow each effect to generate consequent results.   As I demonstrate following, a trade war will decrease China’s exports. In the first way, decreasing  exports will lower China’s money supply, and then interest rate is forced to rise. In the second  way, decreasing exports will reduce Chinese companies’ profits and solvencies. Both ways lead to  the same point, China’s leverage. Since a large ratio of Chinese companies depends on selling  products overseas, it may cause a serious result. The bankruptcy rate in China may rise, and slow  down both global and US economy growth. Then US may or may not change the trade policy  depending on how slow growth US can stand.

Using Mad Mapping, I consider more factors in my analysis. It helps me clarify the complexity.  Some factors may be missed in linear analysis. But there are still some limits. The results can’t be

very accurate because it’s impossible to know how much a company’s profitability will affect its  solvency.     Approach  I’m sure I will keep using Mind Mapping in my analysis as well as other areas in my life. The tool  helps me find important unknown factors and hidden relationships between known factors.   The course is very helpful to me as well. I learnt to live with failures and change my mind set to  adapt new things. Thank you very much.

