“Forecaster in the Field” Interview with Jeffrey Mishlove, author of The Alpha Interface series.
How did you get started in financial forecasting? In the mid-1990s, I was serving as president of an organization called the Intuition Network (the logo that I designed is shown below) that was dedicated to helping people cultivate and apply their intuitive abilities. A number of our members were active in the financial markets, and several were eager to instruct me in their approaches. Before long, I complemented the intuitive approach with a study of technical analysis and neural networks. The results proved to be surprisingly successful in a short period of time.
Copyright (C) 2013, Jeffrey Mishlove
How did you come to create The Alpha Interface book series? One day, my wife, Janelle Barlow, came to me and said, “I have a billion-dollar idea for you.” In the course of our conversation, I realized that there was a huge body of recent, empirical research about the operation of the financial markets. Old theories concerning the random walk and the “efficient market” were being challenged on multiple fronts. Ironically, most traders, investors, and even economists were unaware of the full scope of this research. The financial forecasting landscape is changing rapidly. Because I have the ability to digest a large volume of information and make it understandable to the general public, I took this project on. Three books have now been released.
What other forms of forecasting have been important in your development? As a doctoral student at UC Berkeley with an interdisciplinary program in parapsychology, I became familiar with the research literature in such areas as precognition and remote viewing. Although I began as a skeptic in my inquiry into these topics, after carefully studying the evidence that’s accumulated for more than a century,I became convinced that this is an important field. Some outstanding scientists have contributed to this area of study. My first book, The Roots of Consciousness (1975), dealt extensively with these phenomena. I also had the privilege of hosting the national public-TV series Thinking Allowed over a 15-year period. During that time, I conducted intimate interviews with thought leaders in philosophy, psychology, health, science, and spirituality. Each of my guests in their own way was attempting to forecast – and to influence – the future of humanity. A number of them were professional forecasters. Their influence rubbed off on me. So it’s fair to say my approach is interdisciplinary.
Do you work with businesses to improve their forecasting accuracy? As scientific as business forecasting can be, there’s always a human element. My wife Janelle and I own the licenses in the United States for TMI and TACK, two international training and consulting consortiums. These businesses work with organizations to optimize the full potential of their systems and staff. We like to say that TACK is about getting customers, and TMI is about keeping them. Our clients are typically, but not always, multinational companies. Missed forecasts often occur when different branches of a business are not aligned with each other, nor with the brands they represent. We help them to identify and then correct these gaps in their organizational alignment and in the collective skill sets of their staffs.
Tell us about your other interests. In 2010, two friends and I discovered the first confirmed dinosaur footprints found in the state of Nevada. They were just a few miles from my home in Las Vegas, in the nearby Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area.
