Tag Archives: keynote

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TED Talks: The Official TED guide to public speaking

Over the years my job has required me to do varying amounts of public speaking. A few years ago I was doing it weekly to audiences ranging from a handful of people to dozens. I’ve done less recently but it’s something I wanted to get back into, hence this book. TED talks are slickly produced and the speakers almost always appear to be, at the very least, competent, and usually much better than that. That made “TED Talks” a good place to start.

While reading the book I ended up speaking at a conference and I was able to put some of the lessons into practice. Of course I’d only read half of it so I did make some avoidable mistakes. However, it also showed some practical limitations of the book: naturally it’s about the kind of talks given at TED, but most people rarely do that.

My talks are often given at fairly short notice, frequently with a “standard” slide deck that you’re not supposed to edit significantly. The last talk I gave was written entirely by someone else and I only had the time to adjust the slides to work with my delivery style better.

Other than the logistics, the subject matter also differs. If you gave a presentation about your companies product roadmap in the style of a TED talk you’d get laughed out of the room! (That doesn’t stop so many companies trying to ape Steve Jobs, but those are usually also seen as inauthentic.)

And, perhaps unlike at TED, at most places you don’t get to choose how the stage looks. I like to walk around a little. This, I feel, makes the presentation look more dynamic but also means that I can’t look at my notes all the time and I have to engage with that audience; double win! But you can’t always do that. Maybe the stage is too small; perhaps they’re recording and they don’t like you moving out of shot continually; maybe the microphone is attached to the lectern.

What I’m saying is, while the advice is probably great for when you give your TED Talk, you’re going to have to allow for a much greater degree of outside control for most presentations you have to give.

But overall, the advice is good. It covers everything from how to structure the talk, to preparation (including your slides, and whether you should even use any), stage presence, voice and how to work best with your strengths and weaknesses.

Where it lost me, though, are the last few chapters (“Reflection”). After talking about how to give a great talk only at the end does it discuss why it’s important and why you should do it. The little bit of TED history is quite interesting but the book probably could have done without it — presumably if you’re reading the book you’re already convinced — or maybe put it at the beginning as a form of motivation for reading the rest.

Ironically, people who don’t want to ever give a talk are the very people that the last section is really aimed at, unfortunately they’re never going to read it.

Of course, that’s mostly a quibble in an otherwise decent guide. Not everyone is going to want to give talk, but if you do it’s worth a look.

Opinion

Taking Stock

Share price movements are kind-of-sort-of-rational but not always intuitive. For example, when Apple has a big keynote and announces some significant product, everyone expresses surprise that the share price goes down straight afterwards. Even many smart people get this wrong (“It isn’t based on logic and reason” – The Talk Show episode 53). I hope to explain why the price dropping actually does make sense in this post.

In doing so I’ll likely make some errors. Some of those will be deliberate simplifications. In other cases I’ll probably just be wrong. But either way, I think the gist, if not the details, should give you a good idea of what’s going on.

I’m going to keep things simple by only talking about the share price. There are other factors (such as dividends) that might reasonably be considered but I think we can get a decent enough explanation without complicating things.

If we only worry about the share price, the obvious way that you make money is by selling the share at a higher price than you bought it for. So, even when you first buy a share you’re making a punt on the future of the company.

For a keynote, where no actual financial information is shared, it’s a pretty simple case of “buy on the rumour, sell on the fact.” Traders heard some of the same rumours about the shiny new iUnicorn that you did. They speculated that people would like and buy this new product and bought some shares. By the time the product is announced, the theory is that the share price already factors in all the up side (profit) of it, so they sell.

It doesn’t matter whether the product is good or bad, better or worse than was predicted, the share price will likely still go down. The next bit of good news that will likely pump up the stock will be an earnings announcement, good launch weekend sales figures, etc., but no more good can come out of this announcement. So sell.

The process for an earnings call are similar though possibly are a little more technical. In addition to any sales figures, traders are also looking at things like the “earnings per share” (EPS). However, in common with a product announcement, at the point of the call, traders would generally consider all the good news to already be factored into the price. Even if the company beats expectations, there’s no more good news to be had so they may as well sell.

For the sake of completeness, let’s also consider a couple of other circumstances that can trigger significant variation in the price. These are typically financial in nature and if they happen at the same time as an earnings call or keynote can exacerbate any already significance price changes.

The most common are options, a derivative financial product that gives the owner the option to purchase a share at a price set in advance, pushing the real share price towards the option price. (A large number of people are going to have to buy the same stock at a set price, so that becomes the price.)

Something else that happens fairly frequently is a share price dropping by a certain amount causing algo trading systems to kick in a sell too. Combine this with the sell off after an earnings call or product announcement and the effects can be way out of proportion with what was announced.

The last one I’m going to mention is when a company is added to a well traded index, such as the S&P 500. This happens because many investors looking for relatively low risk (such as pensions) buy index funds, so as soon as you’re added to the index your shares suddenly become a lot more popular. (Sadly I worked for a company and had shares in it when the opposite happened.)

The short story here is that, unless you’re a professional investor, you probably shouldn’t buy shares to make a quick buck. Buy Apple stock because you like the company and expect to hold onto it for at least a few months. Don’t let the day-to-day peaks and troughs worry you.