u/moschles

In 2004, Danish physicist Steen Rasmussen attempted to create life in a laboratory starting from non-living precursor chemicals. While his lab used PNA (peptide nucleic acid) as a storage for genetic information, they were unsuccessful in their endeavors. Rasmussen reported to the press that they were unable to get "one freaking life cycle". Rasmussen described his work as a vicious chicken-and-egg problem. The enzymes required to replicate DNA are themselves encoded in DNA.

In June of 2026, researchers at University of Minnesota got one freaking life cycle in a synthetic bacterium. Spudcell completes a life cycle and makes a copy of itself. After many generations, the researchers observed selection of certain attributes. In other words, Spudcell was evolving.

Questions remain, however. Spudcell is unable to feed itself and requires outside help by humans. After 10 generations, Spudcell cultures deteriorate. The reasons are related to ribosomal structures, which Spudcell can't autonomously maintain. In the early 2000s, researchers assumed that genetic information + metabolism is all that is needed in a functionining living organism. But Spudcell's failures highlight missing ingredients in that formalism. At this juncture, we must update our pre-existing definition of "life" and once again redefine what we mean when we say that some collection of matter is "alive."

• https://www.biotic.org/research/spudcell/

Mean reversion in currencies is most explicit on scales of months. Even for the volatile Mexican peso, and the Russian ruble, mean reversion is exhibited on a scale around 12 to 18 months. Shorter reversion never reaches the daily or hourly range, which means any effective mean reversion strategy would require positions held for a longer term.

https://i.imgur.com/UDPTAOc.png

Strategies that track indicator signals from central bank policy rates, and 90-day risk-free interbank yields are (effectively) impossible to implement with retail forex. The brokers charge overnight swap fees that either disallows or highly discourages position trading.

Large leverage ratios are mysteriously advertised by brokers as being desirable. But these large ratios can allow the broker to margin call their clients from a mere change of a few pips on a pair.

Strategies leveraging fundamental analysis would require spot trades that occcur infrequently, but there is no avenue for these strategies in the retail broker space. Broker who tried to facilitate such clients would have no business model for them. Spot trading through other avenues is also not profitable, as retail banks already charge 3% on every currency conversion ("spot").

The end result of all this are internet communities that do nothing all day but place trend lines, support and resistance levels on gold all day long, without a single mention of a central bank's policy rate.

I am happy to hear any arguments against the claims made here. If there is an avenue for smaller yields with spot trading, tell me what institute you used to do that (CME currency futures, mutual fund, bank, STP, DMA through ECN) and the APY you expected from that.