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Stock exchanges say that more than half of all trades are now executed by just a handful of high-frequency traders, who use rapid-fire computers to essentially force slower investors to give up profits, then disappear before anyone knows what happened.
Charles Duhigg -
You have to actually believe in your capacity to change for habits to permanently change.
Charles Duhigg
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While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, flash orders are currently allowed because of a loophole in securities regulations that allows for immediate trades.
Charles Duhigg -
Teenagers ultimately don't mind belonging to a group, because there's always the opportunity to eventually become someone new. The elderly, by definition, are running out of opportunities for reinvention.
Charles Duhigg -
Older Americans are perfect telemarketing customers, analysts say, because they are often at home, rely on delivery services, and are lonely for the companionship that telephone callers provide.
Charles Duhigg -
In the 1970s, New York City defaulted on its debt, and yes, the consequences were painful. Enrollment plummeted at City University campuses, which until then had offered free education. Seven thousand police officers were laid off. Crime skyrocketed. Services for the poor disappeared.
Charles Duhigg -
For Aristotle, habits reigned supreme. The behaviors that occur unthinkingly are the evidence of our truest selves.
Charles Duhigg -
America is the Saudi Arabia of coal.
Charles Duhigg
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Some of the tactics that are used by Foxconn and other companies throughout China is, if you are late, if you violate one of the small rules, some of the punishment is that you have to copy down quotations from the chairman of Foxconn: you have to write out confessions explaining why you were late and promising never to do it again.
Charles Duhigg -
In a flash order transaction, buy or sell orders are shown to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds before they are routed to everyone else. They are widely considered to give the few investors with access to the technology an unfair advantage, even by some of the marketplaces that offer the flash orders for a fee.
Charles Duhigg -
Forty percent of all electronics sold are assembled by Foxconn.
Charles Duhigg -
During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.
Charles Duhigg -
Credit default swap is basically just an agreement that I have with you, where I sell you insurance on some bond you own. If the bond goes belly up, I promise to pay you. And as long as the bond doesn't go belly up, you pay me for selling you insurance.
Charles Duhigg -
Entrepreneurs do not try and create new types of smartphone technologies now because they know it's pointless: They're going to get sued almost immediately.
Charles Duhigg
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There is a calculus, it turns out, for mastering our subconscious urges. For companies like Target, the exhaustive rendering of our conscious and unconscious patterns into data sets and algorithms has revolutionized what they know about us and, therefore, how precisely they can sell.
Charles Duhigg -
Consumer habits are key to understanding how to launch a product.
Charles Duhigg -
Someone will write a resolution that says, 'I want to exercise more,' or 'I want to lose 15 pounds' - which is great, that's a great goal to have - but every study tells us that if you pose things in abstract, goal-related terms, it's much less likely that you will accomplish it than if you structure it as an actual activity.
Charles Duhigg -
Candy bar companies, through commercials, have tied their products to low-energy cues, transforming what was once a dessert into a pick-me-up for cubicle dwellers.
Charles Duhigg -
Older consumers don't want to be treated like teenagers; what's more, they don't want to believe they fall into any niche at all.
Charles Duhigg -
We like songs that are familiar.
Charles Duhigg
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When people have a willpower failure, it's because they haven't anticipated a situation that's going to come along.
Charles Duhigg -
Some officials overseeing local water systems have tried to go above and beyond what is legally required. But they have encountered resistance, sometimes from the very residents they are trying to protect, who say that if their water is legal, it must be safe.
Charles Duhigg -
Vast databases of names and personal information, sold to thieves by large publicly traded companies, have put almost anyone within reach of fraudulent telemarketers.
Charles Duhigg -
State and federal studies indicate that thousands of water and sewer systems may be too old to function properly.
Charles Duhigg