My ten most-read entries of 2019

Once again, it’s time to review my most popular articles over the last year. During 2019, I’ve seen how my column in the US edition of Forbes has on occasion been among the most-read pieces on the site, while Medium continues to make up a significant percentage of my traffic.

In brief, my topics have been fairly balanced: two articles on the automotive industry, two on the financial markets, along with the climate emergency, health, machine learning, Apple or the future of work.

1. “Tesla: There’s None So Blind As Those Who Will Not See…” As with 2018, an entry on Tesla, a topic that seems to polarize readers and generates a lot of interest, became my most read article of the year. My second article to exceed half a million readers, and for two days in a row was the most-read of the entire edition of the magazine.
2. “Surprise, Surprise, Warren Buffett Was Right: Machine-Managed Investment Is A Better Bet”: an article written as a result of my personal experience with an investment model, indexed funds, and with the added evidence of reading in some depth about why that model is succeeding, attracted more than 180,000 readers.
3. “Apple And Netflix: Is There Any Truth To The Rumors?”: not so much a speculative entry about a possible acquisition that was no more than rumor, but rather an analysis of the importance of services to Apple, several months before the launch of Apple TV, exceeded 140,000 readers and was even translated into Japanese.
4. “We’d Better Be Ready To Rethink The Meaning Of Work, Because Things Are Changing Fast”: originally the basis of an interview for Spanish-language site El imparcial in the wake of my book, “Viviendo en el futuro” (soon available in English as “Living in the Future”), I decided to translate it for Forbes where to my surprise it was read by 60,000 readers. Let’s hope the book generates as much interest.
5. “An open letter to men of a certain age: do you find Greta Thunberg annoying? Good.” This was my visceral reaction to the nonsense about a young activist turned symbol who has already done more with her little finger than a whole legion of politicians lined up. In its Spanish edition it surpassed 40,000 readers and became by far my most read article, while in Medium, it was read by more than 50,000.
6. “Amazon’s Very Bad Choices”: an article about Amazon’s misuse of the Amazon’s Choice label illustrated with a photograph by Jeff Bezos caught the attention of nearly 50,000 Forbes readers.
7. “The Twilight of the Hybrids”: a response to the announcements by a number of carmakers that they are to stop making hybrids, which was always just a way to prolong the life of an obsolete technology, this article was read in Spanish by almost 40,000 people, the second most-read of the year, and in English by some 3,000 more.
8. “Stop Experimenting With Machine Learning And Start Actually Using It” was written after multiple conversations with managers and after seeing how the application of such immensely promising technologies as machine learning is slowing down because many companies are reinventing the wheel with things like Python or R, instead of using tools that already exist and work wonderfully. It was read by 23,000 people in the Forbes edition, and nearly 10,000 more in its Medium reprint.
9. “Blood Pressure, One Of The Keys To Preventive Healthcare”: in a year when I experienced a number of health problems, I wrote this after a number of extensive conversations with doctors, in this case from the Spanish Society of Cardiology. It was read by 38,000 Forbes readers.
10. “Why it’s The End Of An Era For The Financial Markets”: a short piece about how AI is replacing brokers on Wall Street attracted almost 27,000 Forbes readers.

So there you have this year’s top ten, although there were several other articles that attracted similar numbers of readers. As you can see I , now have more readers in English than in Spanish, which increasingly influences what I write about: I only tend to cover Spanish topics if I think they have international appeal.

As always, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read my work, as well as contributing to the comments section, and hope to be able to meet your expectations in the coming years.

I’m sure that 2020 will provide more food for thought, and that health permitting I can cover more subjects that reflect our changing times.

(En español, aquí)