Barry Ritholtz

With Twitter, you can build your own virtual trading floor and research department, populated by the smartest people on earth. Almost any subject or sector has you can think of, you can find a few people with an expertise in that area.

Most of Google's home technologies have failed to catch on in a major way.

History is replete with examples of tech firms that were marginalized by new companies and technologies.

The electronics industry expanded rapidly and the seeds for the semiconductor and software revolution were planted. The postwar period also saw the suburbanization of America, the rise of the homeowner, the build-out of the interstate highway system, and the rise of automobile culture. Credit availability expanded dramatically.

Many hedge fund managers have become billionaires; perhaps this - plus their reputations as the smartest guys in the room - is why they have captured the investing public's imagination.

The way we finance homes in this country is slow, filled with middlemen, who run a nonstandardized evaluation process. This makes financing a home cumbersome and difficult.

The consumption and production of energy is a major component of the global economy.

People who work in specialized fields seem to have their own language. Practitioners develop a shorthand to communicate among themselves. The jargon can almost sound like a foreign language.

The good news is that economists are intelligent, engaging and often charming folks. The bad news is their work is often of little use to investors.

How are the cabs in your city? In Manhattan, where I work, they are rather awful.

In social media, people cannot build big followings organically unless what they are putting out to the world has value.

Despite all the media coverage, glitz and glam of hedge funds, they have not done well for their investors. They have high - some say excessively high - fees; their short- and long-term performance has been poor.