Daily Brief - The Friday Edition (Dec 17, 2021)

The 10 days ahead: TOGGLE Leading Indicator

The TOGGLE Leading Indicator is the aggregated indicator of all TOGGLE insights for stocks in the US market

The leading indicator has recently retraced in neutral territory (within 0.1 and -0.1), after correctly highlighting the chance of the market rebounding from the latest drawdown.

Guide to reading this dashboard

- Top-left chart: SPX overimposed over colouring based on the TLI, blue = bullish and red = bearish

- Top-right chart: scatter plot of the TLI (x-axis) vs the performance of SPX 12 days forward (y-axis), with the current level of the TLI shown as a dashed orange line

- Bottom-left chart: orange area chart is the 2-week change in price of the S&P 500, dark grey line is the TOGGLE leading indicator, shifted to the right by 2 weeks

- Bottom-right chart: Analysis of led-forward correlation of TLI vs the return of SPX

Important disclaimer: you can see for yourself that the correlation between the TLI and SPX was far from 1:1, so use at your own discretion. Past performance is not indicative of future returns!

Upcoming at TOGGLE

Every week we’ll be sharing a sneak peek of exciting new feature releases.

Did someone say Crypto?

At TOGGLE we love data. From changes in analyst ratings to shifts in the leading indicators for the economy, we love to play with data and see what it tells us about the future.

Cryptocurrencies offer a fantastic opportunity for data analysis, as by definition all on-chain data is public.

So if you like crypto and you like data, get ready for something sweet!

Interested in how the number of miners impacts BTC? Check! Would you like to discover if gas fees impact ETH? We got you covered!

We’re putting the finishing touches to our new data offering this day bringing 400+ new crypto currencies to TOGGLE!

General Interest - A field day for hackers worldwide!

Every week we endeavour to bring you one high quality article post from around the internet, of general interest.

Have you heard about log4j?

If you don’t know what we’re talking about, you’re a lucky person: you don’t work with Java.

Let’s start from the beginning. The comic strip below shows a very concrete aspect of today’s global software architecture.

Unbeknownst to many, there are dozens of small software packages that underpin the work of billions of devices - running the gamut from handheld smartphones to servers.

These packages are small archstones of the global digital infrastructure and if they break, it’s bad.

So log4j. What is it even?

The package is a small logging utility in Java, part of the open-source Apache packages. Apache in turn is the backbone of the Linux servers that run the internet. This data you are reading? It passed through an Apache server on its way.

And what about the vulnerability?

In a simplified way, the weakness allows external users to record any data of their choosing on your machine. This flaw allows them to send commands to your server - commands that can retrieve your data and send it outside!

Scary, right?

If you want the technicalities, go here. If you want the memes instead, r/ProgrammerHumor has been on a monotone about this for a few days:

View Reddit

Needless to say, hackers are having a field day thanks to log4j.

The FT reports that state-backed groups from China have launched millions of attacks to western companies. It is safe to assume Russia, the US and other major hacking powers are not playing second fiddle.

The best part is that the flaw existed since 2013, but was not widely known. It can be assumed someone has used it for months or years before.

Which brings us to our closing remarks.

It’s all fun and games when someone uses a vulnerability to steal credit card details, or even sensitive legal documents.

It’s entirely another story to think about the impact on self-driving cars. Imagine if the vulnerability allowed a hijacker to disable the safety features in your Tesla.

Well guess what - a dutch researcher just managed to do that.