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Editor’s Note: This is an on-going INDEX of Humanity Projects being developed and produced at Phinance Technologies, an independent group founded in 2022. The founders, Yuri Nunes (Physics PhD), Carlos Alegria (Physics and Finance PhDs), and former Blackrock fund manager and author Edward Dowd, work as “independent agents to act as gatekeepers of the public interest ... provid[ing] high-quality research to other individuals and institutions who seek similar outcomes.” Their independent critical analysis includes sweeping multi-level data sets drawn from public sources.
See Also: Transcripts of Interviews and Films / Recordings
PHINANCE TECHNOLOGIES
we do data-driven research to build knowledge for top-level decision making
Independent, un-biased research
We excel in doing out of the box research.
We are critical thinkers who use data-driven research processes to separate signal from noise.
HUMANITY PROJECTS INDEX
Index Current as of July 2024
Contents

PHINANCE TECHNOLOGIES purpose: “we do data-drive research to build knowledge for top-level decision making”.
MISSION: “Our passion is to add value by building knowledge using data driven research processes. With knowledge, informed decisions can be made with the possible risks and rewards emerging organically from the process. To build knowledge we ask the right questions and then find out the answers through our data-driven information gathering processes. The process is iterative as the research process typically runs through several feedback loops to increase refinement of our final knowledge.”
Phinance Technologies Founders on the About page:

Yuri Nunes, PhD

Most of our real-life decisions are based on information we receive every day. We all know that the information that comes to us has bias, due to the particular agendas held by mainstream media, governments and big companies. We can try to compensate for this bias in making our decisions. The problem comes when we have bad information and even misinformation, which is disseminated as being “based on science” . This information must be scrutinised, publicly debated, and corrected.

I am a physics engineer with a PhD in Physics and an MSc in Mathematics. For the last three decades I have worked as a researcher, applying scientific methods to solve complex problems in several areas (defence, space, finance, …). I decided to participate in this project because publicly-available information should be fair, free from bias, and analysed by an impartial person with qualifications and experience.

YN at ResearchGate; Universidade NOVA de Lisboa | NOVA Â • Centre for Physics and Technology Research (CEFITEC)


Carlos Alegria, PhD

Back in 2008 while still working at a London-based hedge fund, and at the onset of the 2008 US housing crisis, which was the biggest crisis since the 1930s great depression, almost no-one “saw” it coming. I realised that in a world awash with data and information, we are actually LESS informed regarding what decisions to make.

With more and more data and information being splashed by our media devices the more important becomes answering the question: How do we separate information (signal) from noise? Our passion is to fill this gap.

Apart from developing critical research skills over years of doing multi-disciplinary research, we also believe that providing independent and un-biased research is key to support decision making processes at the highest levels of organisations.

The world seems to have gone crazy since 2020. After 2 weeks to “flatten the Covid-19 pandemic curve” I came to the realisation that we were living in a historic period. Generalised fear allowed the rise of authoritarianism and the suppression of independent ideas and critical debate. I realised that at the core of the problem was information asymmetry between authorities and individuals. The answer to such problem is obvious: more transparency and for this reason I decided to give my time and energy to this project.

I hold two PhDs, one in Physics (in Optoelectronics) and a second one in Finance. In the financial field, I’m called “a quant” and I specialised in Risk Management and the development of trading systems. I have special skills in analysing data and solving complex problems that allow me to investigate reality.

CA: Economic Cycles, Debt and Demographics – The Underlying Macroeconomic Forces that will Shape the Coming Decades, Second Edition, Independently published, 11 Sep 2021; Phinance Technologies Resources by Carlos Alegria, LinkedIn.


Edward Dowd

We live in interesting times to say the least. Did you ever imagine that censorship and sudden death would be normalized or that critical thinking and asking questions would be labeled as “conspiracy theories?” I have been here before in my career as an equity research analyst and portfolio manager where my contrarian notions about dotcom and housing fraud were called crazy at the time. I live in the world between perception and reality and being early to identify trends and make my clients money. This current environment is the biggest information asymmetry of my career and unfortunately our institutions have been captured. The answer to this dilemma is transparency and being the watchdog of the watchdogs and this is the reason I have decided to participate in this project.

I am a current Wall Street careerist with experience in both credit and equity markets. I hold both a Bachelors and an MBA degree in Finance. Most importantly my experience and wisdom has given me a good nose for fraud and equivocation.

ED: “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022; X; LinkedIn.

Ed Dowd (They Lied, People Died, Totality of Evidence), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Gavin de Becker: “Cause Unknown”: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 & 2022, Skyhorse, 13 December 2022, 216 pp.
Afterword by Gavin de Becker
What is killing healthy young Americans?
2020 saw a spike in deaths in America, smaller than you might imagine during a pandemic, some of which could be attributed to COVID and to initial treatment strategies that were not effective. But then, in 2021, the stats people expected went off the rails. The CEO of the OneAmerica insurance company publicly disclosed that during the third and fourth quarters of 2021, death in people of working age (18-64) was 40 percent higher than it was before the pandemic. Significantly, the majority of the deaths were not attributed to COVID.
A 40 percent increase in deaths is literally earth-shaking. Even a 10 percent increase in excess deaths would have been a 1-in-200-year event. But this was 40 percent.
And therein lies a story—a story that starts with obvious questions:
  • What has caused this historic spike in deaths among younger people?
  • What has caused the shift from old people, who are expected to die, to younger people, who are expected to keep living?
It isn’t COVID, of course, because we know that COVID is not a significant cause of death in young people. Various stakeholders opine about what could be causing this epidemic of unexpected sudden deaths, but “CAUSE UNKNOWN” doesn’t opine or speculate. The facts just are, and the math just is.
The book begins with a close look at the actual human reality behind the statistics, and when you see the people who are represented by the dry term Excess Mortality, it’s difficult to accept so many unexpected sudden deaths of young athletes, known to be the healthiest among us. Similarly, when lots of healthy teenagers and young adults die in their sleep without obvious reason, collapse and die on a family outing, or fall down dead while playing sports, that all by itself raises an immediate public health concern. Or at least it used to.
Ask yourself if you recall seeing these kinds of things occurring during your own life—in junior high? In high school? In college? How many times in your life did you hear of a performer dropping dead on stage in mid-performance? Your own life experience and intuition will tell you that what you’re about to see is not normal.
Or at least it wasn’t normal before 2021.

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