Wednesday 9 August 2017

Jan Vecer Máxima Drawdown Forex


Forex trailing stop estratégia stop loss Você nunca, eu prometo que nunca, ser capaz de negociar este estoque. Vendendo CREDIT SPREADS é como você pode negociar opções Aqui está um exemplo Bear Call Credit Crédito líquido 50. Com que espíritos podem eles fazer marchas forçadas sob os oficiais que não têm sequer a força para viajar a cavalo. Veja os líderes da empresa e informações básicas para a Bca Trading Inc. Obtenha um nome de tela grátis. EUA hoje a diferença entre a oferta Forex trailing stop stop estratégia de perda e Ask Price é os corretores. Retirar STP no Paquistão moneybooker e outros. Um útil com algumas características de salvamento ou um jogo divertido. Navegue pelos estilos, incluindo votivas, furacões, lanternas, tealights, sconces e muito mais. Se estamos olhando para o mercado para. PENDAHULUAN Terdapat 6 jenis bagan kendali carta de controle berdasarkan tipe datanya, yaitu a. Os oponentes da caça às baleias também observam que dados como esses seriam considerados inaceitáveis ​​se as baleias fossem tratadas de maneira tão intensa quanto os animais agrícolas abatidos para alimentação humana. Forex trailing stop stop stop estratégia Basics Tutorial O objetivo de um mercado de ações é facilitar a troca de títulos entre ouvido falar destes termos triling. Segurança Eu sou interessante para forex trailing stop estratégia stop loss como um corretor de Forex. Estamos abertos para negócios de segunda a sexta, exceto em feriados nacionais. Um fechamento diário sobre 1. Conheça seus termos forex antes de mergulhar mais profundamente no foreex que existem no mercado forex. O número de roteamento para o Frex Bank é 021000021 se você tiver qualquer remessa EM DÓLARES, US Bank Routing. Uma das formas mais úteis de volatilidade implícita é o índice de volatilidade implícita das opções de índice SP300 do tsrategy SPX normalmente conhecido como VIX. Depósito Tfailing - Economize 20 em nossos preços já baixos. Nossa página da web permite aos cidadãos conhecer a presença ea gravidade dessas espécies de insetos fezes em sua casa, quintal, fazenda ou viveiro comercial. Cronograma de Pagamentos de Benefícios da Previdência Social 2013 Informações da Agência de Previdência Social SSA ssa calendário de segurança social 2013 pagamentos de benefícios Criado. Emirados Árabes Unidos Forex trading UAE Forex trading Emirados Árabes Unidos Online trading Emirados Árabes Unidos Melhor Forex forex trailing parar estratégia parar serviços de troca de perdas através de sua plataforma bancária segura oferece várias plataformas forex traailing para fornecer Quando você entrar na plataforma de negociação, topo. Estou tentando fazer essa equação iônica líquida e eu continuo ficando preso. Serviços em Dehradun Veja uma lista on-line de prestadores de serviços na Índia, oferecendo ampla gama de serviços, tais como limpeza, colocação, astrologia, catering. Os princípios técnicos da. Drawdown Máximo e Negociação Direcional Jan Vecer, Universidade de Columbia, Departamento de Estatística, Nova York, NY 10027, EUA 26 de setembro de 2006 Resumo. Encontre o forex trailing stop stop stop estratégia para muitas perguntas mais freqüentes. Factores que afetam as opções de troca de moeda Qualquer comentário ou fatores que afetam as opções de venda de moeda feitas aqui não refletem as opiniões de Robinhood Markets Inc. 23 de janeiro de 2014O que é uma chamada de margem Como Você Evita Um. 15 de setembro de 2015Columbia Large Pt Quantitative FundA. Curiosity Shop Coisas dentro de nossa loja em 10031011 W 3rd Alliance Ne 13 2 Jun Optoons Junte-se ao Alliance Trader. Excelerator Real Time Excel. Broker Comparison ETFs Fundos de Índice Fundos de Investimento Venha tempo de imposto, assumindo que seu corretor está on-line, uma taxa para o seu patrocínio bancário corretoras. O exemplo de ações acima é um tipo clássico de hedge, exemplos de cobertura incluem. O comprador on-line Richie escreve e diz que conseguir um representante de clientes da Amazon no telefone não é fácil - fatores que afetam as opções de troca de moeda que você pode mandar chamá-lo. Bem-vindo à Animal Puf de Referência de Emergência. Broker membayar kami komisi untuk setiap negociação yang dilakukan introduziu o cliente itu adalah Anda. Principais Ações Martin Roth. No entanto, as transacções comerciais podem facções legalmente estabelecidas de qualquer forma acordada pelas partes envolvidas. Mas enquanto as coisas estão melhorando, o Japão não é um lugar fácil de se locomover para quem usa uma cadeira de rodas, ou para aqueles que têm dificuldade para negociar escadas ou andar longas distâncias. 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Drawdown Máximo e Negociação Direcional Jan Vecer, Universidade de Columbia, Departamento de Estatística, Nova Iorque, NY 10027, EUA 26 de setembro de 2006 Resumo. Nenhum de meus MLP produziu UBTI. Uma maneira de começar é escolher uma empresa com um pacote atraente novato. Você pode reenviar os certificados para a desmaterialização depois de resolver o motivo da rejeição. Tudo que você precisa saber sobre licitação para hotéis em Las Vegas, NV. Opções Básicas Como ler uma tabela de opções Opções Básicas Conclusão Calculadoras Gráfico Advisor Análise de ações Free Annual Reports Stock Simulator. As operações de descarte repetem todas as injeções de espigas conforme necessário para gerar um conjunto completo das medidas de espigão de repetição necessárias. A razão é que, quando as taxas de rendibilidade das obrigações aumentam, os investidores muitas vezes abandonam outras fontes de rendimento mais arriscadas. Corretora de Forex Blog Broker Central Capital Futures. Você pode escolher qualquer um destes três métodos para arquivar um aplicativo gratuito para Federal Student Aid FAFSA Login para aplicar on-line. MCX chamadas de níquel mini tgt primeiro 666 alcançado, possivelmente 2 pode bater today. From uma estratégia que merece uma tomada de casal. Em The New York Times: Apesar de balançar em uma contagem de 3-0 produz significativamente maiores médias de batedura e slugging percentagens de espera por 3-1 ou 3-2, batedores estão indo depois de menos 3-0 arremessos do que em qualquer momento no passado Ainda assim, Forst disse que isso era cíclico. Os jarros eventualmente se tornarão mais agressivos com suas bolas rápidas, levando alguns rebatedores a começarem a subir de novo e trazendo a ameaça e a emoção de volta para o 3-0. Qualquer pai quer poupar seu filho os erros, a dor, o sofrimento que ele passou, especialmente aprender a negociar. Mas cada geração descobre que há apenas uma maneira de aprender: o difícil. Como meu filho deixa seus adolescentes para trás e começa a sua própria negociação, eu ofereço-lhe alguns conselhos hard won humilde sobre negociação. 1. Preste atenção a sua gerência de dinheiro. Don39t sobre estender. Comece pequeno. Aprenda bem com as somas menores. Seja corajoso com as quantidades menores. Itrsquos não os dólares que estão em questão, obviamente, com X partes, é ego / emoção, etc 2. Suponha que vai demorar pelo menos três a cinco anos para obter profissional. Ninguém entra no mercado e começa a ganhar muito dinheiro imediatamente. De jeito nenhum. Todo mundo tem que pagar suas dívidas. 3. Medo e esperança trabalham contra você. Eles estão enraizados por 10.000 gerações. 4. Você está à mercê do corretor. É sempre uma boa prática para rever os seus bilhetes cada dia como. Os erros tendem a ser a seu favor e não o seu. 5. Você experimentará o negócio real que compra dentro em um pânico real e experimenta o medo e a incerteza que serão uma parte regular de sua vida negociando. Aprenda a abraçar esse sentimento. Não é ruim, é bom. É o que os outros sentem e lhe dá a vantagem de vencer. 6. Você vai aprender a sensação de resgate demasiado cedo do sentimento de sobreexposição, eo grande sentimento de um comércio vencedor e vender no topo. Mas itrsquos nunca satisfatório. Coulda, shoulda, woulda. Aqueles que existem em cada comércio. Ignore-os. Não é uma ciência precisa. Para um usado para ganhar, aprender a perder é uma grande lição. Mas ao perder um pouco menos, e ganhar um pouco mais, a guerra global é conquistada pouco a pouco. Essa é a chave. Evitando uma grande perda. 15-20 por ano se transforma em enormes quantidades ao longo de 50 anos. 7. Não mexa. Quanto menor o número de peças, quanto maior o tempo de espera, menor o custo de transação, menor o spread. Vai comê-lo ao longo do tempo. 8. Sempre regatear com o mercado. Coloque suas ordens abaixo para comprar. Coloque ordens para vender um pouco acima. Nunca dê o preço pedido. Nunca pegue a oferta alta. Os centavos extras somam ao longo de uma vida. Melhor passar um negócio do que começar tomado por um vendedor rápido-falando como o mercado. Ver Especulação Prática sobre este assunto. 9. Não negocie seus lucros e perdas (PampL). Você tem que negociar no mercado. O mercado não se importa com o que é sua PampL. Ele sabe o seu ponto de equilíbrio e virá apenas curto dele. 10. Quando as coisas parecem as piores, que é o momento de ser otimista e não cair na mentalidade de rebanho. Essa é a única maneira de ganhar dinheiro. Olhe para ele desta forma nunca vai para zero e você não está alavancado para que você nunca pode perder tudo isso. Mesmo se ele cair 5 ou 10, itrsquos não o fim do mundo. Você tem 20 anos e tem muito tempo para ganhar dinheiro. Agora é a hora de tomar algum risco e espero ganhar algum dinheiro. Mas se você manter sua cabeça e inteligência, ele vai sair bem. 11. Você pode ver como a paciência é importante tanto para comprar e esperar para vender. 12. Os pontos mais assustadores são os melhores momentos para comprar. Todo mundo está em pânico. Isso é quando você começa alguns bons negócios. O rebanho está matando. Isso é quando os predadores atacam. 13. Às vezes ir embora é o melhor. Se ele cair, você pode comprar mais. Sempre bom ter algum dinheiro. 14. It39s muito difícil, tipo de como jogar flinch com a mão tapa. 15. Há operadores afiados lá fora que vêem você vindo uma milha de distância. Quando você olha ao redor na mesa de pôquer e não sabe quem é a marca, adivinha o que eles sabem exatamente o que você está pensando. Bem-vindo ao maravilhoso mundo dos mercados e do comércio. É difícil não notar a semelhança entre o SampP esta manhã às 4 a. m. (tempo de Nova York), e sexta-feira passada, quando o mercado desceu 2 após um 1 para baixo aberto. Como deve ter dado esperança aos ursos crônicos para uma repetição, e como como o mercado para nos dar notícias terroristas de Londres (um dispositivo explosivo foi encontrado) para sacudir todos os touros fracos fora de suas posições. Isso foi tudo para tentar compensar a fantástica ascensão de títulos, a uma distância impressionante do número redondo (5), que tem difundido argumentos de baixa, forçando-os a se concentrar mais uma vez na situação sub prime, que está ficando um pouco cinza No cabelo e longo no dente até agora. Todas as esperanças remanescentes do bearish, são que poderão juntar-se, e cinturar o mercado para baixo nas últimas horas de negociar, no último dia do mês. O quão fraco tudo isso é, agora que podemos ver claramente que o mercado está abaixo de um mero por mês, e os ursos têm jogado tantos cartões, mais e mais, sem ser capaz de bluff fora, mas os jogadores mais pobres na jogo. Laurel e eu estamos atualmente em Santa Monica e estávamos introduzindo o nosso filho Aubrey para o Oceano Pacífico quando nosso espirrar foi interrompido por gritos de mais abaixo na praia. "Saia, saia, estava retumbando em torno de nós agora, e todo mundo estava nadando para a praia. Duas grandes barbatanas cinzentas e os corpos planos de dois pés e mais tubarões aparentemente tinham sido avistados. Nós corremos para terra em modo de pânico, sem pensamentos, exceto para sair antes que os animais rasgados nossas pernas. No entanto, as duas grandes barbatanas acabaram por ser golfinhos, e logo todos voltaram para a água, pensando no que deveriam ter feito de forma diferente nessa situação. Laurel imediatamente comentou, sobre como este evento espelhou os mercados durante a última semana ou assim, e eu tirei minha cópia de comportamento animal por David McFarland. E jurou que eu iria estudar esse campo sistematicamente para aplicar suas lições para o comportamento do mercado. Em uma semelhante fishy experience, também paga uma visita ao Santa Monica Aquarium. E estudou um polvo enquanto tentava abrir uma garrafa com um caranguejo nele. Ele usou todos os seus 800 otários para provar todos os aspectos do ambiente em que estava, para evitar o perigo, e para garantir-se que nada mais estava em seu domínio. Testando cuidadosamente as águas com pelo menos 100 sondas, é algo que todos os especuladores devem fazer também. Para o meu estudo de comportamento animal / mercado, pensei bem em começar com as quatro perguntas de Tinbergen que todos os behavioristas animais (e agora no mercado) deveriam perguntar: Por que os estoques respondem aos estímulos ambientais de uma maneira particular? Empresa e financeiras de uma maneira particular Por que algumas ações respondem de uma maneira e outras de outra maneira, para a mesma situação Por que os estoques de uma determinada indústria ou estilo, ou categoria de valor, caracteristicamente se comportam de maneira particular em uma situação particular, eu acredito O quadro que a McFarland e a Tinbergen adaptarão nos seus trabalhos neste domínio seriam bons para seguir o nosso próprio trabalho nos mercados, e pretendo fazê-lo em postagens subsequentes sobre comparações entre comportamento animal e de mercado eo que podemos aprender Sobre o último do primeiro. Roger Arnold acrescenta: Se bem me lembro, a dívida soberana do Japão com o PIB é maior do que qualquer outro país conseguiu sustentar sem um colapso da sua moeda. A maior dívida para com o PIB de que um país conseguiu trabalhar foi o pós-WW2 dos EUA em cerca de 140. É interessante que a cada ano ou mais, como discutimos aqui, o repatriamento do iene e o desdobramento do carry trade suposto matam o dólar. Buffet / Rogers et al saltar a bordo eo frenesi mídia dura cerca de uma semana ou assim. Nenhum deles menciona a situação extrema em que o Japão está, o que é agravado pelo seu envelhecimento demográfico e falta de uma política de imigração apropriada para mudá-la. E eu acho que sua taxa de poupança pessoal caiu para 8, o menor na Ásia. A Europa Ocidental encontra-se numa situação semelhante, embora as suas taxas de poupança ainda estejam cerca de 14. Como o dólar entra em colapso nesse ambiente Onde iria a capital? Por que iria a capital? Que benefício pode ser alcançado por qualquer uma das áreas levando suas economias para casa dos Estados Unidos? Stefan Jovanovich escreve: A Guerra da Sucessão Espanhola - Deixou a Grã-Bretanha, a França, a Áustria, a Espanha, os Países Baixos, a Suécia ea Rússia com dívidas que, em comparação com os seus próprios governos39, eram muito superiores às do Japão, dos Estados Unidos ou de qualquer dos países europeus. No auge da crise, em 1719, os custos do serviço da dívida sozinho para a coroa britânica eram 60 das receitas do governo. No entanto, de alguma forma, os britânicos, sozinhos entre todas as outras nações europeias, com êxito refinanciado sua dívida e começou sua jornada para o Império. Você pode ler uma introdução à história de seu triunfo financeiro, que pagou para Marlborough, Nelson, e vitórias de Wellington. De Alex Forshaw: A inflação foi muito alta após a Segunda Guerra Mundial terminou, correto Então o valor real da dívida da América teria sido significativamente reduzido. Considerando que a inflação era um fenômeno difundido entre economias de recuperação, a moeda de América não sofreu um colapso relativo, mas os americanos que prendem a dívida do governo foram parafusados. Neste caso, a moeda japonesa parece destinada a um colapso relativo. Creio que o serviço da dívida custa ao governo japonês cerca de um terço da sua renda. No caso britânico, um grupo de banqueiros privados não avançou e assumiu essencialmente muitas das obrigações da coroa, porque enfrentou a falência depois da Revolução Gloriosa (Como eu entendo, foi quando o Banco da Inglaterra foi fundado). Charles Sorkin escreve : A inflação dos EUA caiu precipitadamente imediatamente após a guerra. Houve outro pico no final dos anos 50, mas houve também dois períodos de deflação na década imediata (ou assim) no período pós-guerra. Para a maior parte, a inflação foi bastante benigna, pelos padrões de hoje, até o final dos anos 1960. Alex Forshaw escreve: Hmm, eu simplesmente não consigo conciliar a dívida dos EUA / PIB caindo de cerca de 135 no final da Segunda Guerra Mundial para, o que, 20 por 1960 Como poderia o crescimento econômico ter sido tão alto Sim, os impostos eram altos (taxa marginal superior era cerca de 91 E taxa efetiva superior aproximadamente 57) e Eisenhower era extremamente frugal, mas Coreia teria ratcheted acima da dívida nacional outra vez. Então, eu tenho dificuldade de obter esses números para somar sem breves, mas explosões intensas de inflação em algum momento no período de 1945-60. Charles Sorkin escreve: A inflação dos EUA caiu precipitadamente imediatamente após a guerra. Houve outro pico no final dos anos 50, mas houve também dois períodos de deflação na década imediata (ou assim) no período pós-guerra. Para a maior parte, a inflação foi bastante benigna, pelos padrões de hoje, até o final dos anos 1960. Stefan Jovanovich comenta: Eu acho que Charles aceita o ponto. Houve também um breve jorro de inflação dos preços da energia com o início da Guerra da Coréia, mas isso foi inteiramente o produto da imposição do governo Truman dos controles de Jimmy Carter. Quando aqueles foram revogados (com o republicano que toma o controle do congresso), as linhas de gás desapareceram e Exxon estava oferecendo para pôr um tigre em seu tanque e para dar-lhe o dishware livre com cada enchimento acima. A previsão consensual da maioria das opiniões de especialistas em 1945 era de que o país experimentaria um colapso deflacionário. Sewell Avery, o presidente da Montgomery Ward, decidiu manter dinheiro. Os radicais da Sears () optaram por se expandir. Se o Sr. Avery e outros detentores de títulos foram quotedcreasedquot, como Alex coloca, não foi por qualquer precipitado declínio no valor do dólar, mas por não ter participado no que John Brooks descrito como Seven Fat Years. Quanto à falência da Revolução Gloriosa, isso era inteiramente uma função da falta de vontade do Parlamento de pagar as contas do rei, e não qualquer fardo esmagador da dívida. O duque de Marlborough (herói da Guerra da Sucessão Espanhola) começou sua carreira como um jovem go-fer para a coroa Stuart ele - ea maioria dos outros dinheiro inteligente - mudou de lado quando os holandeses indicaram uma vontade de fazer uma aquisição do cavaleiro branco Lance A questão da bancarrota era a história de capa, a verdadeira questão era a falta de vontade dos comerciantes da cidade de aceitar até mesmo uma sugestão da restauração de direitos civis completos para os católicos. E assim, durante mais de cem anos, ninguém que quisesse ouvir a missa em latim poderia assistir a Oxford ou a Cambridge. Isso, naturalmente, não impediu que as forças de Marlborough fossem aliadas dos austríacos (ainda entre os católicos mais fervorosos da Europa) contra os franceses comparativamente agnósticos. Alex Forshaw escreve: Hmm, eu simplesmente não consigo conciliar a dívida dos EUA / PIB caindo de cerca de 135 no final da Segunda Guerra Mundial para, o que, 20 por 1960 Como poderia o crescimento econômico ter sido tão alto Sim, os impostos eram altos (taxa marginal superior era cerca de 91 E taxa efetiva superior aproximadamente 57) e Eisenhower era extremamente frugal, mas Coreia teria ratcheted acima da dívida nacional outra vez. Então, eu tenho dificuldade de obter esses números para somar sem breves, mas explosões intensas de inflação em algum momento no período de 1945-60. Eu tenho encontrado geralmente que, à exceção de alguns povos com os computadores os mais rápidos e os mais melhores algoritmos, qualquer um que can39t seja afastado do mercado por algumas horas provavelmente não adiciona nenhum valor qualquer. Os melhores investidores que eu conheço todos encontrar ineficiências que persistem, de tal forma que existem grandes janelas para tirar proveito deles. Na verdade, a razão pela qual essas ineficiências persistem tende a ser precisamente porque não está claro que se pode ganhar dinheiro com eles em poucas horas ou um dia. Mas essa análise muda no contexto da alavancagem. Ou seja, as próprias idéias subjacentes não requerem um minuto a minuto de monitorização, mas quando se utiliza um monte de alavancagem tem de monitorar para não ser destruído como posições ir temporariamente contra. Cliff Roche acrescenta: Esse é um grande argumento a favor de limitar a alavancagem para aqueles que deveriam fazê-lo. Eu já não tento ganhar dinheiro a cada minuto, hora ou mesmo dia. Eu tentei e isso levou a úlceras e dores no peito. Meus parabéns para aqueles que têm a maquiagem emocional para fazê-lo para viver Naturalmente, eu também não tenho clientes que estão exigindo um dinheiro rápido ou preocupações pessoais sobre as comissões. Eu tomo posições em companhias que estão indo para baixo estradas Eu penso que as companhias precisam de ir para baixo na cara de uma idiotice governamental e societal certa assegurada, em minha maneira limitada e reconhecidamente parcial. Eu não uso alavancagem e às vezes eu tenho que esperar meses ou anos para os payoffs. Mas eles vêm. As vez. Eu durmo bem, e isso pode ser inestimável. Há dois artigos interessantes sobre as atitudes dos peoplersquos para a superstição eo papel que joga em nossas vidas diárias. Um aparece na Ciência ao Vivo: "Esses tipos supersticiosos que assustaram o ano passado quando o calendário lê 06/06/06 terão algo para sorrir sobre o 7º dia do 7º mês de 2007. Acreditando que a aparência tripla do número 7 trará Sorte, muitas pessoas estão planejando eventos importantes para este primeiro sábado de julho de 8230. Assim como algumas pessoas não se atreveriam a se casar em uma sexta-feira 13 ou viver em uma casa com o endereço 666, acreditando na influência positiva do número sete é apenas outro Técnica humanos usam para ter alguma jurisdição sobre o mundo caótico ao seu redor, disse Frankfurter. "Na nossa moderna sociedade americana, temos tendência a procurar maneiras mágicas de controlar o mundo ou o destino, então a numerologia é especialmente importante para nós", disse Frankfurter. A obsessão com a numerologia - e outras para-ciências como a astrologia - tende a ficar mais forte, especialmente durante eventos de vida significativos. Tentativa de exercer algum controle numérico ou calendário sobre o importante ciclo de vida, transição, Ou outras situações de crise, os números de sorte também variam de cultura para cultura, provando, céticos dizem, que as conexões coincidentes entre um evento ea influência de um número sempre pode ser encontrada se você está olhando duro o suficiente, não importa o que o dígito em janeiro de 2005, NyLon Capital LLP do Reino Unido lançou com muita fanfarra um fundo hedge de 1,2 bilhão de alto perfil, apoiado por um banco de blue-chip e administrado por algumas das estrelas mais brilhantes da comunidade financeira de Londres. Em um prazo de 15 meses, o brilho desapareceu. As alegações apresentadas no Supremo Tribunal do Reino Unido alegam que as decisões empresariais tomadas pelo principal gerente do fundo foram influenciadas por um astrólogo e um especialista em feng shui e isso destruiu as relações entre os parceiros. O fundo reconhece que um consultor no feng shui, uma prática geomantic chinesa, foi empregado e diz que o gerente superior está familiarizado com um astrologist8230Mr. Crapanzano alegou em outro documento arquivado na Corte Suprema de Reino Unido em fevereiro deste ano que algumas das decisões empresariais de Burnell sobre os outros parceiros foram influenciadas por France Jacoubet, um astrólogo francês. Ele disse que Jacoubet elaborou horóscopos de todos os parceiros e funcionários do fundo para ver se eles se encaixariam na empresa. Atendida por telefone, Jacoubet se recusou a comentar. Sr. Crapanzano também alegou que o Sr. Burnell contratou um consultor de feng shui para realizar avaliações de fortuna de quotgood dos escritórios do fundo e supervisionar rituais de limpeza espiritual, que envolveu a colocação de figurinhas de trolls, ou ogres, em gavetas de mesa e colocando pilhas de areia e seixos Nos cantos do office8230quot Para o indivíduo único, o casamento está comprando um posto: um fundo redondo apenas abaixo de uma posição longa. Para as senhoras que vendem mesmo, há um custo de oportunidade inicial elevado mas com o tempo sua posição vem para fora no alto. A decaimento de Theta resulta em deriva descendente de longo prazo, com prêmio de risco gravitacional negativo. O ativo do comprador declina pela metade, e o vendedor - bem o bem do vendedor aprecia. Mas nunca mentir para a amante. Eu tive uma chance de ler uma cópia antecipada de um fundo de hedge americano, por Timothy Sykes, sobre sua experiência como um comerciante muito jovem e seu arranque de fundo de hedge. É a história de um estudante universitário que ganhou dinheiro em balcão comprar estoques de volta muito rapidamente, alavancando em ineficiências de curto prazo do mercado em um mercado muito especulativo e volátil. O livro me fez pensar sobre os seguintes aspectos da negociação: A capacidade de um comerciante para se adaptar às condições de mercado em mudança é a chave para o sucesso comercial. Enquanto muitos louvam a previsão, eles confundem incrível sorte com inteligência incrível. Um especulador tem sucesso quando ele / ela é capaz de identificar e tirar proveito das ineficiências do mercado. Os livros de negociação geralmente ignoram a evolução dos mercados. Traders pegar em qualquer estratégia consistentemente bem sucedida até que dure antes do ciclo muda novamente. Negócios de curto prazo que se transformam em situações de longo prazo muitas vezes se tornam a fonte de agonia financeira e mental. Às vezes você precisa aceitar a derrota e avançar para novas oportunidades. Sam Humbert acrescenta: Eu também li uma prova do auto-publicado pelo Sr. Sykes (por que auto-em vez de Wiley-publicado é outro tópico) livro no avião de volta de Chicago na semana passada, e aqui está o meu envelope de volta: Gostei do livro melhor do que esperava. É uma leitura rápida e alegre, e teve um tom agradavelmente sincero e entusiástico. Sr. Sykes aparece como um participante ansioso, trabalhador, observador do mercado com boa sensibilidade hondling. Várias de suas idéias comerciais, embora geralmente não original / exclusivo para ele, são bem apresentados e explicados. O único aspecto negativo é a longa digressão sobre uma situação de private equity que não se desenvolveu, o que distrai do fluxo narrativo principal. Mas acho que esses são os fatos com os quais ele teve que trabalhar. Para um veterano do mercado, é melhor ler com uma mente vazia, sem preconceitos como o que o diabo sabe de 20 anos de idade e pode ser apreciado como tal. Eric Falkenstein observações: Soa fascinante. Eu aceitaria alguma superestimação de habilidade versus sorte, mas geralmente muitas situações de grande dinheiro envolvem pessoas estando no lugar certo na hora certa e os receptores não são idiotas. Mas eu não podia ver onde comprar este livro. Tom Alexander escreve: Eu também tive a oportunidade de ler uma cópia avançada do livro do Sr. Sykes. Acho que há várias lições aqui. O Sr. Sykes me enviou uma nota lisonjeira pedindo que eu revisasse uma cópia de seu livro. Eu aceitei obras de bajulação realmente, muito bem no meu velho ego. Embora eu não tenha tido a oportunidade de lê-lo ainda, minha esposa achou muito legível e iluminante de sua perspectiva leigos. O Sr. Sykes está auto-publicando seu livro, permitindo que ele mantenha uma porcentagem muito maior dos lucros. A desvantagem é que ele tem que fazer o seu próprio marketing. Ele parece ter muito efetivamente descoberto isso usando marketing viral e as maravilhas da Internet para espalhar a palavra através de blogs. É bom ver o empreendedorismo vivo e bem. I39ve tem alguns amigos para baixo na área de Miami / Homestead da Flórida que são grandes pescadores Nós nos encontramos há alguns anos no site North American Hunting Club. O NAHC tem uma característica do Web site onde você pode fazer um huntquot do quotswap. Isso é onde você posta uma caça em troca de outra caçada com outra pessoa. Cerca de cinco anos atrás, eu postei no site uma caça quotbow para caça whitetail e peru em troca for8230quot eu estava aberto a ofertas. Foi assim que conheci os caras da Flórida. Trocamos uma viagem de pesca em alto mar para uma caçada na minha fazenda e tinha tanta diversão que fizemos novamente. Já não trocamos caças ou viagens de pesca só vamos caçar e pescar juntos sempre que podemos. Esses caras são excelentes pescadores. Todos eles têm empregos regulares. Um é paramédico, um possui um negócio de HVAC, o outro um negócio de coberturas, mas eles só fazem isso ao lado. Eles fazem seu dinheiro real pesca. Fiquei surpreso quando descobri o quanto esses caras fazem pesca em torneios. E eles ganham ou pelo menos colocam no dinheiro mais frequentemente do que não. Há alguns anos estávamos pescando em rolos de 10 a 12 pés. Eu estava como verde com doença do mar mas, em seguida, chegamos em uma confusão de peixe de golfinho (por vezes chamado mahi mahi, ou dorado39s). Nós procedemos a pegar mais de 80 peixe-golfinho em quatro horas. Na doca antes de partimos para o dia, estávamos todos falando sobre a caça de veados. A conversa girou em torno de como cada ano lá é algum indivíduo afortunado que tem nunca caçado cervos em sua vida que sai um tiros um fanfarrão gigante do troféu. E uma vez que ele não sabe o que ele tem, ele sai os galhadas e joga-os em sua garagem até que alguém que sabe caçar cervos vê a prateleira e diz ao caçador ignorante apenas o que ele tem. A conversa girava em torno de como alguém poderia ser tão burro para não reconhecer o que eles têm depois de ter tanta sorte. O que isso tem a ver com a pesca (e talvez os mercados) Eli Zabethan observações: Eu estava fora de pesca sábado, magnífico dia ensolarado claro, mas os ventos foram quase força de vendaval e 539-739 mar foram ferver às 6h. Mesmo as baías de Manaloking e Barnegat tiveram 239-339 ondas. Não é um lugar para amadores quando seu fica este vicioso. Clive Burlin acrescenta: Ontem às cerca de 5h a baía em frente à minha casa de Jersey Shore começando a ferver. Centenas de peixes agitando a água em caos com as gaivotas balísticos ao mesmo tempo. Os blues estavam perseguindo o bunker. O que uma visão incrível Um frenesi de alimentação louco absoluto. Dentro de 30 minutos foi tudo ea água estava calmo calmo novamente. Eu nunca vi isso antes, embora eu tenha vivido aqui por oito anos. Meu pai foi até a fazenda e relatou de volta que as colheitas pareciam muito boas. O milho não é tão alto como é normalmente nesta época do ano, mas isso é devido à primavera molhada que resultou em um plantio tardio 8212 tanto quanto um mês mais tarde do que o preferido em alguns lugares, mas ainda dentro da janela aceitável de oportunidade de plantio. Nós tivemos uma quantidade razoável de chuva através de Missouri como um todo, mas principalmente tempestades manchadas. Assim uma fazenda abaixo a estrada poderia começar uma polegada de chuva enquanto minha fazenda permaneceu seca. Não há muito a se preocupar neste momento, tanto quanto o milho ou soja ir. Por uma questão de fato parece haver razão para ser otimista. As temperaturas devem ser moderadas nos próximos 10 dias, máximos nos anos 70 superiores - 80 superiores. Aquilo é importante. O milho não gosta da temperatura de ser muito acima de 95 e especialmente não por um longo período de tempo. À noite, eles prevêem baixas na parte superior 50s até 70. Isso é bom Mesmo que nós don39t obter chuva, essas baixas temperaturas vai criar um bom molhar orvalho da manhã, o que, naturalmente, é melhor do que não ter um orvalho da manhã Portanto, Seus dedos cruzados como nós nos movemos para a parte quente do verão. Veja as previsões meteorológicas para chuva. Pegar 1/2 polegada de chuva por semana desta vez é a grande chave. Indo mais de 10 dias seguidos sem chuva é ruim. Temperaturas acima de 90 por longos períodos de tempo são ruins. Combined, they are a devastating to corn and bean but worse on the corn this time of year, as the corn enters the crucial tassling stage of its growth process. Beans can do with a bit less moisture and do a lot of growing when the rains come back in September and even October (depending on when they were planted). I talked to my farmer and he is optimistic. Well, as optimistic as a farmer can be. Keep your fingers crossed and pray for the rain to continue Tonight I knew summer was here Coming back into Belpre today I noted sacks of fresh corn at a little roadside market. The corn was picked fresh early this morning along the Ohio River at Reedsville, Ohio. It was delicious tonight with melted butter and freshly brewed iced tea. Corn in this country goes back to the Pilgrims. It was introduced to them by Native Americans. Corn on the cob will compliment any backyard BBQ during the summer months. There is a strong inverse correlation between the movement in housing stocks in one quarter, and the subsequent quarter39s move in stock prices. I also find that there has been an enormous increase in real estate wealth in the past ten years, which is now a very efficient buffer to any sector set-backs. After all, a ten percent decline after a 300 percent increase is much better than a significantly slower yearly increase, in stocks or in real estate. As a second point, the sub prime market seems to be working well as a market. Prices are going up, and this is rationing demand. Those who made a higher than market return by lending at higher prices, are seeing some of that return dissipated. There are two sides to the market, and for those who are losing, there are always an inverse of people who are making money. Finally, there is always so much consternation about hedge fund losses, but they are usually zero sum to the extent that hedge funds don39t buy and hold stocks. There is nothing of long term significance to the markets from Revco, Amaranth, and now Bear Stearns39, demise. Do these problems compare to the loss of wealth from a flood or an earthquake 8212 of course not. Today will make eight new consecutive lows for SampP Sep. future contract. The last time was in May of this year with a happy outcome. The other rare occasions of eight new lows were mixed. Since none of this is very significant statistically and by reason of its rarity, a different approach, discussed by Nison in Japanese Candlesticks. about record sessions might provide an idea to consider. He says eight to ten record sessions is important and is called quotbones of Sakata39s body. quot Sakata was the city in Japan where rice futures were traded in the 1600s. He says buy after eight record session lows. So far today it would have been a good buy, but time will tell. Another interesting technique is the use of three-line break charts. These are similar to point and figure, but rather than use fixed box sizes, the three-line reversal must exceed the low or high of the prior three bars for a reversal. This way the reversal adapts to the market rather than a fixed system and might capture the changing cycles. Vic and Laurel tested point-and-figure and found some value. Perhaps the three-line break approach could be tested as well. A suggestion might be to trade it non-traditionally, in new ways that might be more profitable as suggested by Vic and Laurel39s work, using point and figure in buying the pullback rather than the breakout as is traditionally suggested. New Lows: 1543.8 6/18/07 1540.7 6/19/07 1525.5 6/20/07 1518.0 6/21/07 1513.5 6/22/07 1505.5 6/25/07 1497.5 6/26/07 1494.8 6/27/07 Larry Williams remarks: Not really eight new lows 8212 the gap-up on 6/15 and inside bar (to the prior day39s true range) and then 6/19, also inside the gap day, did not really create new lows. A newly-opened Italian restaurant in my town has their staff park in the best parking spaces out front and then hires people to walk in and out of the restaurant. It39s hilarious once you are there and you figure out what39s happening. Last time I was there, we commented that it must really be catching on because the place looked busy from the outside. When we got inside, there was not one person eating in the restaurant39s main dining area. The whopping ten or so people were all outside on the patio. I have no idea how many of them were hired hands, but I wouldn39t be surprised if we were the only paying customers. We are treated very well and the food is excellent. Watching the marketing performance is a fun freebie Roughly counting the day SampP September futures bars, it looks like it crossed 1400 about 20 times. We have 11 so far for 1500. This reminds me of the criminal defendant on the witness stand at his trial. His lawyer asks him, quotHow many times have you been convictedquot Defendant answers, quotSix times, and this time will make seven. quot I just caught a segment on tonight39s news telling how in 1907, Jim Casey with 100.00 began the American Messenger Company to deliver telegrams. The advent of the telephone killed that enterprise for Casey and he shifted gears and reorganized to become UPS and began to deliver department store packages. Then along came FedEx who offered overnight delivery service. UPS took the challenge and followed suit. Today UPS has 300 planes and is the eighth largest airline in the world. They have 94,000 trucks on the road and deliver 15 million packages per day Impressive. tbudd/rack1.jpg /Many people who have eaten venison have had a bad experience. It has to be prepared correctly, differently from beef. There are many ways to prepare venison. If you39re going to cook steaks, use the tenderloins (quotbackstrapsquot in deer hunting vernacular). And no matter how well done you like your steaks, cook them only to medium at most. Venison is much leaner than beef so don39t overcook it. Feel free to marinade it in advance. I like a balsamic vinegar, garlic, onion powder, salt/pepper marinade. I enjoy roasts of venison too. The best way to cook a venison roast is in a crock pot. Use whatever seasonings and vegetables you like, and make sure there39s plenty of liquid in the pot, otherwise it will dry out. If you choose to marinate the roast in advance, start the night before, then put it into the crock pot in the morning. I love venison jerky 8212 good, smoked peppery whole muscle jerky, which beats the pants off processed venison jerky sticks. I could eat spicy whole muscle jerky for breakfast. I share our venison with family, friends, and the needy (via FHFH Farmers and Hunters Feeding the Hungry) but one thing I won39t share is jerky I even hide it from my kids Another treat is venison ground up into burgers. I don39t add any pork or beef to the burgers. And I make venison chili, venison spaghetti, and (my personal favorite) venison sloppy joes (my mother39s recipe 8212 my favorite meal the whole world). I also get some venison breakfast sausage (a real treat) and summer sausage, too. There is plenty of 100 fresh venison on my farm 8212 it just needs a sharp arrow or a fast-moving piece of lead to bring it to the dinner table So, come visit My mom learned how to make her recipe for sloppy joes in the Campfire Girls. Since we were kids, mom would cook whatever we wanted for our birthdays. She never had to even ask me what I wanted it was always her sloppy joes. When I got married, I didn39t even have to ask my mom to tell Gwen how to make it. Mom just went to Gwen and gave her the recipe and told her that this is a meal guaranteed to make me happy When I mentioned to Gwen that she needed to learn the recipe she informed me that she already had it. I love my mom39s sloppy joes The recipe is based on 1 lb. of beef, although we use only venison in our house which I think is even better 1 lb ground venison 1 small onion - chopped Mix the onion in with the venison and then brown the venison. Drain the meat of grease and then dab it with paper towels to get excess grease off. 1 can of vegetable soup 1 small can of tomato paste This is the key: my mom would add 1/2 cup of sugar (but I recommend that you add to taste). My wife and I have altered it a bit and we use organic honey to taste. We try and use all organic ingredients. I prefer to start out by eating a couple of sloppy joe sandwiches on organic whole grain bread. After that I like to scoop it on my plate and eat it with a spoon. This is an easy and simple recipe to make and I promise you that you39ll enjoy it. My mom is no longer with us, but her memory lives on every time I enjoy her Campfire Girls sloppy joe recipe Kailua-Kona, Hawaii is the world39s capital for big game fishing 1000-pound fish are common. It39s summer and the catch is on. On a typical gamefisher, a 35-64 foot luxury sport yacht, they will run four lures on four poles, one short corner three or four waves back, one a bit longer, one out deeper and one in the far corner about seven waves back. With the lures in we have a good depth for action and if they are hit the line won39t get tangled and when the boat turns, the lines won39t cross. When a lure gets hit, it39s quotfish onquot and time for a long fight. When fishing for big game in the market, I sometimes run lures under at varying depths, say three to seven waves back, hoping to catch some big game. Sometimes only the short lure gets hit. Sometimes all the lures get hit at once and there is a lot of action with hands full and itrsquos time for a big fight. Mark McNabb extends: The boat industry is somewhat bifurcated, as the high end seems to hold while the blue-collar powerboat side is soft. Diesel in the south Chesapeake Bay is near 2.55, while in resort areas with good sport fishing in NC and VA Beach it can run 3.55 or more. After seeing Harborfest and several weekends of boating in the bay, I would say the shock of higher prices last year is wearing off for the fishing-oriented. As my friend who has run a 6239 Buddy Davis off Delaware says, quotFuel is the cheapest part of owning a boat. If you cannot afford to fill it up, it is time to sell. quot Tuna, mahi, and wahoo are running nicely off VA Beach and Hatteras this week. Grilled a friend39s tuna catch last night with cilantro and lime over pecan wood. It39s mahi or crab night at the Bay tomorrow. Our neighbors have so many blue crabs, we39re getting dozens (not cheap this year either) just so they can clear the way for the ones in their pots. Tim Melvin adds: Around Kent Narrows, the Bay has been very busy. Mostly go-fasts and upper end cruisers. As Prof. McNabb noted the high end is fine. They have enough to afford what they want. Middle class, mid sized fishing boats, and center consoles are seen a lot less. Sailing is very active out of Annapolis but those cheapskates use the wind It39s not just a legend about the cheapness of sailors 8212 having worked in, owned part of and spend a lot of time in waterfront bars, the difference between a tip from a sailor and a power boater is in the 100 range. Large Vikings are selling very well, as are the Cigarette-style boats, especially Sonic and Formula. The after market in Intrepids right now is actually higher than original sale price. One interesting result that may mess up a lot of thinking about the relationship between bias and stake is that whereas many relatively small horse betting markets display a favorite-longshot bias, the biggest of them all in terms of pool sizes, Hong Kong, does not 8212 and it once had a reverse bias (favorites were over-backed relative to longshots), but this disappeared in around 1990. I suspect, and hope to demonstrate sooner rather than later, that this bias is due not to psychology, but to information asymmetry. I have already found (with Barbara Luppi) that Hong Kong bettors do display loss aversion. Now since there is no favorite-longshot bias, the latter can39t be due to prospect theory or other such behavioral mess-ups. Adam Robinson remarks: Size of stake is relative. It is quotin the eyes of the investor. quot A wealthy individual may view a 1m stake as small, whereas a middle-class investor might view the same stake as enormous. As described in Fortune39s Formula , large, quotscientificquot gambling syndicates migrated to Hong Kong because of the larger pool of money available, which may at least partially account for persistent anomalies being rigorously exploited away. Adi Schnytzer replies: The syndicates have removed the reverse favorite-longshot bias, but are even more loss averse than the regular outsiders The hedgefund-broker symbiosis co-dependence is obvious, but it is still interesting to see graphically. The basic premise of the book The Only Three Questions That Count by Ken Fisher is that only knowledge that is yours exclusively will help you make money in the markets. In his attempt to carry his point, Fisher gives anecdotes of occasions when what investors were taught was wrong, and contemporaneous charts that attempt to indicate the weakness or inadequacy of many of the things that investors believe in, (including, that yield curves are predictive, that presidential cycles matter, that you should buy when the media is bullish, that you should sell when there is fear in the air, that high price to earnings ratios are bad, that deficits are bad, that seasonal analysis works, that high gold prices are bad for inflation, that value stocks are better than growth, that a sinking dollar is bad for stocks, that the VIX is predictive, etc.). Fisher believes that the reason we believe so many false things is that we are hard wired to fear heights, we tend to believe that what has happened in the past will continue, and we place undue reliance on authority. These reasons are offered up along with a dozen other shibboleths and unproven assertions of the behavioral/finance experts, who scientists like to call the promiscuous asseverators, because of their tendency to pull out one ad hoc hypothesis after another based on experiments in laboratory or college settings that have some explanatory power for some or other anomaly. Fisher has a host of his own beliefs that he feels are true, and he gives many anecdotes, reports of performance analysis, and examples of columns that he wrote for Forbes, as well as a report of a ten year performance that beat the SampP by two percent a year after fees. In this way he feels like almost every other book that I have read in the last 20 years on this subject, including those on point and figure analysis. He shows that all movements are due to supply and demand, that capitalism is good, that the market has a tendency to go up, that an earnings yields greater than a bond yield causes merger activity to increase and thus buoys up stocks, that the French are bad and government spending is bad, that some sectors of the economy (like health care and consumer staples) are less volatile than the market as a whole. All of Fisher39s assertions are based on similar chart analysis, and selected anecdotes, to the beliefs that he decries. Some of his ideas are rather startling and original, including his view that an ensemble of forecasts as to how much a market like bonds or stocks will move during the year has much predictive value. He believes from a few self reported successes and anecdotal references that if there is a 39space39 within which there is no forecast, then that is highly predictive of where the market is going to end up. Another original idea of Fisher39s is that he can predict bear markets by the extent, enthusiasm and pricing of IPOs 8212 Fisher pulls no punches in this book, and he tells you what he thinks about almost everything He is down on mutual funds, because of their high costs and high frictional costs, he hates the French and thinks we can do anything better than they can. The same goes for government, and academics he mainly has contempt for, as to their practical abilities. He feels that Buffet is highly overrated, and Hank Greenberg is much abused and underrated. He loves everything capitalist, and is a big fan of international diversification. The book is replete with endless direct and indirect plugs for his management services, and Fisher reports an excellent track record over the last ten years, for both his picks on Forbes, and the after fees record for his clients. In by far the most valuable part of the book, which has nothing to do with the three questions about what you know that others don39t, and what behavioral finance biases you suffer from, he has a nice discussion of how a person should balance the need for cash flow at various stages of his life against a terminal value to leave to his younger loved ones. He also has some sound advice about the flexibility of selling losing stocks to offset gainers when you manage your own portfolio. The book, and Fisher39s approach, suffer from several grave defects. He asks at the end of the book for readers not to criticize him unless they have done some pencil and paper work, yet since almost half of the book seems to be a recap of what Laurel and I have written about in our two books and 700 columns, and documented with proper statistical analysis, I don39t believe I would be remiss if I critiqued it. The main defect of the book is that there are a host of assertions in the about what works and what doesn39t work, but they are not tested, thus, it is impossible to ferret out the one or two grains of valuable information from the totally worthless. Fisher39s main thread is that everything depends on supply demand, but this is what every book on investment says. The problem is to predict supply and demand, how it will change, and what is already anticipated in the price. Another main thread is that investors are subject to regrets and pride, and that these two tendencies are hard wired into our brains, along with our fear of heights. This apparently makes us buy when it39s high and sell when it39s low, but the evidence that this causes mistakes in stock market judgment and that it isn39t accounted for by tens of thousands of psychologists and economists and their clients, is flimsy at best. Fisher is one of those authors who is awed by high-school mathematics. He gives an example of how to compute the profits from an 39up two years and down one year39 scenario, and wallows in how the formula, which every high school student is supposed to know, is of the higher mathematics. Fisher39s discussion of the difference between a geometric mean and an arithmetic mean, and how the former must always be lower than the latter, is woefully misleading and inadequate. Also inadequate are his frequent uses of perfect information to show that if you knew when a market was higher than it39s low, it39s likely to have shown quite a rise. One of the major messages of the book 8212 that despite the tendency of the market to go up by 10 a year, the average investor by computing correlation coefficients can somehow predict when to get out of the market or reduce his exposure 8212 is very fuzzy indeed. The foreword to the book has one of the strongest recommendations that I have ever seen for a book, by Fisher39s friend, Jim Cramer. Cramer himself says that this is not only the best book that an investor can read this year, but that it39s much more valuable to read this book than to listen to his shows at all. He admits that the book changed everything he39s always believed about the market and contains many a critique of his methodology. It is regrettable that the book has so many lapses in its analysis, so many unsupported assertions, so much anecdotal evidence without any statistical analysis or awareness of uncertainty, variability, retrospection and multiple comparisons. Because of this the average reader is, unfortunately, likely to come away from this book with as much bad information as good. As a final positive note, one thing that Ken Fisher claims in his book that sounds true to me, is that any fear that is widely broadcasted in advance will have no impact on the market. Or perhaps in more predictive terms, to the extent it39s influencing the market, it creates a bullish situation because it39s already encapped by the price, then price will increase when the fear subsides. Fisher gives many examples to carry his point, and if it weren39t so hard to quantify this, and there weren39t so many highways and byways to tie down, this would be a very good thing to study. I feel that this point is highly relevant to sub-prime, and also to the asset seizure on the brokerage house that is famous for seizing the assets of its own customers, (how ironic). Phil McDonnell reviews: In his recent book, The Only Three Questions That Count, Ken Fisher provides a readable account of his brand of contrary thinking. His broad theme is to think against the crowd and the media. For example his three questions are: 1. What do you believe that is actually false 2. What can you fathom that others find unfathomable 3. What the heck is my brain doing to blindside me now The essence of the first query is that the media continually spews forth a kind of pop economics much of which is exactly wrong. If one avoids listening to the meme du jour and does the research personally then the much of the media silliness can be avoided. Simply eliminating the wrong and hurtful memes can improve one39s investment performance. In considering question two the author points out that there are many data sources available on the Internet which even relatively unsophisticated people can access. He describes how to calculate a correlation coefficient, a job which is done by a spreadsheet or stat program. Unfortunately he fails to mention the spurious correlations which arise from calculations based on levels. This is the most serious flaw in the book. Most of the evidence produced is based on correlations calculated on levels. In his discussion of question three the author resorts to teachings of behavioral finance. This field is one I find suspect. Much of the empirical work is subjective. The analysis and explanation of the subjective results requires a Byzantine set of rules and rubrics to explain the evidence. Fisher also quotes some obscure papers in behavioral finance which he co-authored. Having said this, there is still much to be said for studying human psychology as it is reflected in the behavior of markets. The book offers a relatively pop account and explanation of the vocabulary of behavioral finance for the uninitiated. As the Chair has recounted, the book is a thinly disguised pitch for the author39s investment advisory services. His service is essentially oriented toward tracking the MS world index. The philosophy is to track the index as closely as possible and only to deviate when his three questions indicated that he should deviate by over weighting or by under weighting a sector or country. He calls these deviations quotside bets. quot Generally his track record has followed the index in recent years but notably not underperformed overall. This book is an irreverent, opinionated discourse on investing and researching market ideas. There are many pearls of wisdom and some notable flaws. Overall it is a fast and fun read and offers many macro economic hypotheses. Because of the technical flaws, testing the hypotheses should be viewed as an exercise for the reader. Andrew West remarks: I suspect much of Fisher39s book was ghostwritten, probably with an eye to marketing. His Forbes column is occasionally intelligent. However, I lost most of my respect for him when I gave my name and address to his company, and was swamped by primitive and hucksterish marketing pieces in the mail for some time afterwards. Makes me think of the Little Book of Value Investing. allegedly written by Christopher Browne. A true value investor would never pay for it, given its small pages, large type, and lack of new ideas. Sounds like marketing committees at investment managers are demanding that their figureheads publish books on investing. There are many old daily articles from 2001 Chair and Laurel on Worldly Investor. I am having fun tracking the articles along with the daily chart and reading about their work on the markets. It is a very educational supplement for those still hungry for more after Practical Speculation and Education of a Speculator and shows them at work in a tough market. The market calls are uncanny looking back with 20/20 hindsight. Too bad we still don39t get the great calls. Now we have to do the work ourselves. Itrsquos probably better that way. It39s funny but it doesn39t work following someone else39s calls. There is no confidence without doing the work yourself. Recently, I had a chance to go to an Italian restaurant in the area. Some friends indicated it as a place where you can have quotgenuinequot food. Normally, I do not go to Italian restaurants abroad. Most of them adapt their cuisine to local tastes. Or they do not have an Italian cook. Or they do not use original Italian ingredients. Or may be all of it. In this case, the food was fine, the ambience was great. The owner, a man close to his sixties, emigrated to the USA when he was 18 years old. Needless to say, he had nothing when he arrived. He started as a waiter, then opened his own place. He made money. Good money. As a matter of fact, the restaurant is quite popular. Last night I went there again and we started to talk about Italy. He comes from Calabria, a small village in the mountains. His mother is still there. His mind is still there. He almost cried recalling the places of his childhood. In a place that was not able to give him anything but a chance to leave. His dream is to go back to Calabria and buy a hotel on the beach to offer wedding services. He thinks that he can bring, along with his hard-earned money, the organization and methodologies applied in the US. He thinks that the heart is more important than the head. What is amazing is that even his children, who were not born there, would like to return there. But Italy is not what he left behind. He is not any more the man who left his country more than 40 years ago. He is idealizing a place that now exists only in his mind. Many times you see people who emigrated come back to their homeland after they succeed in life and get older. Often they fail. They lose what they have accumulated. They cannot adapt. Leaving your country because of necessity is hard. But America gave him much more than his country could give him at the time. The American dream is here for him. It is realized. I tried to convince him to go back only for his holidays. Maybe long holidays. The reality is that he belongs to here more than to Calabria now. But I left the restaurant with strange feelings. Who am I to judge his life and his dreams Jeff Sasmor adds: This is the second time, it seems. The first time was in 2003. Scott Brooks remarks: I39m starting to become a Ron Paul fan. But I39m worried about what I39ve referred to as the Russia effect, meaning that Russia melted down into chaos after they went straight from socialism to capitalism resulting in anything but a capitalist society. As much as I want to abolish the IRS and 99.99 off all government agencies, what thoughts are there on us melting down into chaos if that were to occur, i. e. abolishing the fed Stefan Jovanovich writes: quotRussia melted down into chaos after they went straight from socialism to capitalismquot is not a very good description of what happened after the U. S.S. R. formally dissolved. Runaway drunkenness, near demographic suicide by abortion, absenteeism rates that made Lordstown look like a Toyota factory, extortion so much a part of ordinary life that someone39s not demanding a bribe was cause for paranoia, had all been part of Russia life even before the defeatism and self-doubt that came after Afghanistan. Scott39s post assumes that Soviet governmental authority had some moral force in 1988. It had none. None of us can predict the future, but I would argue that the odds for Russia39s future are as good as those were for what used to be known as West Germany in the 1950s. Then there were no local German politicians who could pass muster as anti-Nazis, and the new republic39s democracy was a very brittle artifact. If Russia39s current leadership seems tainted by associations with the old tyranny, that situation is little different from what was happening under Adenauer. Ironically, Scott is far more likely to see Ron Paul39s monetary regime created in Russia than in the U. S. I leave it to those who really know about currencies to correct my usual amateur errors, but it seems to me that the ruble is the one world currency that can currently be seen as being entirely backed by a gold/petroleum standard. Alex Forshaw writes: Hmmmhellipwith regards to Russia, the so-called quotfree/ democratic institutionsquot that quotevolvedquot were anything but. It39s one thing to have measured, organic evolution of a free press and robust markets as the US did. But in Russia, the robber baron tycoons immediately built up media machines to massage their public images. Putin destroyed Russian quotfree mediaquot because it was Boris Berezovsky39s tool, and Berezovsky probably achieved greater control of the Russian economy than the Politburo did (with lots of help from Chechen gangsters, car bombs for his competitors, Russian government force, and other ridiculously coercive methods). Stefan Jovanovich adds: The admiration that the official American press (Time, WP, NYT - the usual suspects) showed for the quotfree/democratic institutionsquot that Professor Sachs helped quotcreatequot (sic) has its historical match in the obtusely wrong-headed enthusiasm that the Jeffersonian press showed for the progressive insanities of the French Revolution. Scott Brooks responds: Both Stefan and Alex are doing a better job of making the point I was trying to make. These countries were run by demagogues, despots, and gangsters who simply changed their styles, but ultimately remained in charge. They changed from being in charge in the form of a government to being in charge in the form of being the most powerful gangster. The gangsters, of course, whether under the guise of a legitimate government or as just plain gangsters, were able to manipulate powerless people because the gangsters had made them dependent on them. In the US we don39t have gangsters in charge per se, but we do have a system where a large group of people like welfare recipients (no offense intended) who are dependent on the government. So I ask if a country can go from a quotdependent systemquot to one of independence overnight If not, then how does one move away from that system Alex Forshaw replies: If by quotwelfare recipientsquot you mean agribusiness, the tort bar (and to a lesser extent other unnecessary functionaries which use quotthe lawquot as an excuse to siphon money from businessmen who would otherwise have no need for them) then you39re getting somewhere Just in personal experience, I39m 21, I trade about 150k total in political futures (snobbier people would call it quotgambling, quot I laugh at the pseudo-distinction). To get even the most rudimentary legal structure (a quotpooling of interestquot) to facilitate moving the money offshore, (because it39s simply stupid and/or prohibitively expensive to risk regulatory harassment over high-risk, novel securities trading in the United States, without the economy of scale of a tens of millions of dollars of a capital pool), I had to utilize the services of two accountants and a securities lawyer. Fortunately I had friends of the family to do it for me, but what about someone who isn39t as privileged as I am Legal overcomplexity is an incredibly high fixed cost/ barrier to entry in this country. And I don39t even have day to day interactions with other people, unlike the Korean immigrants in DC who got sued for 100 million because they refused to give a lawyercrat a 1000 new suit, or the cerebral palsy doctor ruined by John Edwards. Stefan Jovanovich writes: I will let Alex speak for himself, but that is not the point I was making, Scott. No ordinary Russian thinks that the changes over the past 20 years have been merely a change of styles by quotdemagogues, despots and gangstersquot. For one thing, there is now actual freedom of conscience. (Yes, I know the Russians are giving their own national faith preference and have been less than open to proselytizing by Westerners but that is a world of difference from the situation that had Jews, Seventh Day Adventists, and devout Orthodox regularly jailed simply for what they believed.) It is also now possible for people to have savings that are not controlled by the government and private land ownership. These are real changes for the better that have affected millions of people, and they are occurring. But at the same time the conditions of actual life continue to be dreadful. As for the question of dependency, that seems to me a near universal. I have never known a libertarian who actually turned down the offer of a good government job. As the first Mayor Daley once said, quotEveryone wants a little honest graft. quot No society has ever reached that peak of pure individualism that Ms. Rand dreamed about, but we can hope for a world with enough contending interests to limit the amount of loot that any one group can haul away. Gordon Haave remarks: Russia went chaotic, yes. But most of Eastern Europe did not. Why The rule of law. Besides, there is no reason why abolishing the Fed would create a chaotic situation. George Zachar writes: Russia went from a closed-economy kleptocracy to an open-economy kleptocracy. The commanding heights of Russian industry never saw capitalism. The looting, aggregation, and export of its wealth are well-chronicled. Using the word quotcapitalismquot in the context of Russia is to deliberately smear the term as gangsterism. Peter Earle comments: The Federal Reserve, when set up, was ostensibly created to maintain a stable value for the dollar. Looking at the 90 drop in the value of the dollar since the creation of the Fed, I39d say there39s reason to doubt their somewhat self-serving perspective. A look at Panama, where there is only nominally a central bank, may be instructive as well. Stefan Jovanovich continues: When Queen Elizabeth I came to visit the United States after WW II, my grandfather, who was born in Old Serbia, wrote about the news to my dad, who was born in the coal camp near Ludlow, Colorado that has now physically disappeared. In his letter Tata wrote to his American-born son that quotyour queenquot is coming for a visit. What he meant was that Americans, regardless of their origins, end up having an Anglo-centric view of the world - at least as far as Eastern Europe is concerned. The Hungarians, who were fervent Nazis and are more completely thorough anti-Semites than anyone to the east, got a better press in London and New York in 1946 than our allies, those awful Russians. They still do. The economic successes in Eastern Europe - Croatia, Slovenia, Poland, Hungary and the Baltic states - have far more to do with their proximity to Germany, Austria, and Scandinavia than with any special qualities of jurisprudence in quoteasternquot Europe. For their citizens and for the average Rumanian, Serb, Bulgar, and Ukrainian, the rule of law is no better than it is for the average Russian. What is better for all of them is that now the police are merely corrupt they are no longer true Marxist believers dedicated to liquidating all class enemies. Gordon Haave adds: Russia went chaotic, yes. But most of Eastern Europe did not. Why The rule of law. J T Holley asks: Can39t we simply start with the IRS first as a warm-up Gabriel Ivan writes: Having spent the first 20 years of my life in Eastern Europe (Romania) and being exposed to the first 13 years of transition from communism to capitalism, I can second Scott39s comment about the melting into chaos in all Eastern Europe, not just Russia. The looting was mind-blowing and cannot be explained if you didn39t live it. With rampant inflation, no social net whatsoever for maybe 80 of the population and opaque legislation, I39m surprised things didn39t get more explosive in all these years. I personally witnessed two national distribution companies with strong brand names and infrastructure vanishing in two weeks due to central bank39s policies on the exchange rates. And this was 3999 - 3900 after 10 years of quotfree market economyquot. Unfortunately, fundamentals haven39t improved much despite the real estate boom and commodity prices run-up masking an economic growth that is not healthy. High profile businessmen - bank presidents - still get shot in daylight in Bulgaria, (the country is a member of EU for six months now8230 what a joke) due to their affiliation to organized crime (there is no other way to run a business). Imagine Sandy Weill getting whacked in a drive-by shooting to understand the strength of their banking system. I expect the majority of quotemerging marketsquot money managers to be separated from their wealth in the foreseeable future due to their lack of due diligence and reliance on official statistics. Readers interested in the question of debasement of the currency and individual liberties might be interested in the following quotation from Grant39s First Inaugural: quotThe country having just emerged from a great rebellion, many questions will come before it for settlement in the next four years which preceding Administrations have never had to deal with. In meeting these it is desirable that they should be approached calmly, without prejudice, hate, or sectional pride, remembering that the greatest good to the greatest number is the object to be attained. This requires security of person, property, and free religious and political opinion in every part of our common country, without regard to local prejudice. All laws to secure these ends will receive my best efforts for their enforcement. A great debt has been contracted in securing to us and our posterity the Union. The payment of this, principal and interest, as well as the return to a specie basis as soon as it can be accomplished without material detriment to the debtor class or to the country at large, must be provided for. To protect the national honor, every dollar of Government indebtedness should be paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated in the contract. Let it be understood that no repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward strengthening a credit which ought to be the best in the world, and will ultimately enable us to replace the debt with bonds bearing less interest than we now pay. To this should be added a faithful collection of the revenue, a strict accountability to the Treasury for every dollar collected, and the greatest practicable retrenchment in expenditure in every department of Government. quot The average person probably spends about a year of his life filling out forms with his address, filling out change of address forms, filling out wire instructions, etc. etc. My proposed system: Every geographic living space or business location applies for and is assigned a unique number, the quotgeo-numberquot. The mapping between number and location is kept on a public database. Every individual or corporationrsquos address is assigned a unique number, the quotres-numberquot. At any point in time, all the res-numbers map onto a unique geo-number. The user39s res-number typically stays a constant, but he can change its mapping onto a new geo-number when he moves. Your mailing address would be your res-number and would never change. Instead of filling out 50 change of address postcards when you move, you would just go to the database and change the mapping of your res-number to a new geo-number. Every bank account, brokerage account, etc. would have a unique quotacc-numberquot. Instead of filling out complicated wiring instructions, you39d just request a wire to your acc-number. The database would have a mapping of acc-numbers onto specific wiring instructions. The instructions could change with time (e. g. if Schwab starts using Citibank instead of Bank of NY), but your acc-number would remain a constant. While I39m at it, I39d also ban pennies, nickels, and quarters, and just keep dimes and perhaps 50-cent pieces. If I Ruled the World . words by Leslie Bricusse and music by Cyril Ornadel: If I ruled the world, ev39ry day would be the first day of spring Every heart would have a new song to sing And we39d sing of the joy every morning would bring8230 Financial writers refer to liquidity. What is it As of this writing on Friday afternoon at SampP September 1518, Globex cumulative depth shows around 3000 on each side with fewer than 1000 bids or offers at the various levels. Time and sales show orders of 1000 and more are fairly common and such an order might take out several levels. Contrast this to 20,000 cumulative depth per side at market tops and trend days up. Right before the FOMC announcement liquidity dries up to lower amounts, which is followed on the announcement with large movements. The last few days have seen larger handles. Is it just the hot mid-summer and all the big traders are out in the Hamptons, or is something else at work Last night and tonight are midsummer nights following the solstice. quotMore strange than true: I never may believe These antique fables, nor these fairy toys. Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. quot From A Midsummer Night39s Dream . William Shakespeare. I just heard on the nightly news that Ohioan Bob Evans passed away today. I met Mr. and Mrs. Evans at a political dinner some years ago. He began his career in restaurants with a small diner he owned in Gallipolis, Ohio and ran the grill as the short order cook. He has a farm in Rio Grande, Ohio and each summer has Bob Evans Days there. Mr. Evans built a multitude of Bob Evans restaurants across a lot of America and the food quality is always consistent with a down-home and friendly atmosphere. I dined at one this past Sunday and enjoyed my visit as always. We have lost another entrepreneur and the world has lost one more consummate businessman. June 21 (Bloomberg) 8212 Two U. S. lawmakers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to delay Blackstone Group LP39s initial public offering until Congress holds hearings8230. I wonder if Blackstone CEO Schwartzman regrets all the time he39s put into beltway schmoozing, being chair of the Kennedy Center, and all that. At a time like this, one hesitates to do anything but say something descriptive. The Dax broke below 8,000 today, but came back to 8,050, and bonds were down as low as 106.04 and have now recovered slightly, to 106.13. The Dow went below 13,400, to 13,398 for an intra-day negative sequence, and yesterday set a negative reversal of one, with its close below 13,500 at 13,489. The grains are down about three percent from their recent one year highs, with corn near 4, after being at 4.20 a week ago. The open in stocks was particularly confounding, just about unchanged at 1326.7 after closing at 1327. Almost all big moves down in the last year have been greeted with big rises the next day, with Wednesday June 6th being the exception, when there was a decline of 17 followed by a decline of 28 on the Thursday. There was a grave decline in the afternoon yesterday, which will have all weak hands very frightened, and there must have been considerable margin selling at 10a. m. today, as the SampP and Dow hit their lows, down about half a percent on the day. Everything in this post is completely descriptive, and not at all helpful for trading, except maybe for those who like to take out the pencil and paper and turn descriptive thoughts into predictive studies. I can however, give some perspective from a specialist in panics, who was writing for The Ticker in August 1908. The panic specialist has decided to buy only on panics, and so found himself a buying opportunity after Steel broke, circa 1895: A slaughter has taken place during the morning. Everything from St. Paul to Coxey had broken ten, twenty, thirty, or even forty points those were the days: shades of 1987 8212 Vic. The faces about me were those of lunatics, not sane men. Standing next to me was a man who ha seen the last of his fortune swept away, and another was pacing up and down the room muttering to himself: quotMy God, I39ve lost 30,000.quot The panic had come and passed so quickly that if my orders had not been entered in advance I would have stood no change of getting Steel at my figures. I bought my Steel at 25 a share, and the lowest it had touched was 24. It currently stood above 33, so yes, I had a small profit. The tree had gradually lost its branches and fallen throughout the year from its highs, but I had not yet learned how to plant the acorn to my best advantage, and worried that the new tree might never have take root He was a cane investor through and through 8212 Vic. The rest of the crowd were besieging the manager, the order clerk and the the office partner with such questions as quotwhat have I got leftquot . quotcan39t you give me a report on my salesquot . and quotcan39t you carry me overnightquot The market was rallying by then, to be sure it was rallying, but the recovery came too late to save most of them. I heard the manager explain to one unfortunate: quotI39m sorry. but there was nothing else for us to do, we put the stop orders in at about three points above where your margin was exhausted. It was impossible to know in advance that there would be breaks of twenty and thirty points between sales. quot At such times, we brokers stand in the gap, and all for a commission of just one eighth a beautiful touch 8212 Vic. We did our best. The specialist in panics did become a millionaire, and perhaps this will provide some descriptive perspective from one hundred years ago or more. James Sogi comments: Counting the kind of action, it has been over 1000 days since there has been a 30-minute bar larger than today39s 12-point handle at 10 am. One hypothesis is that in trading with leverage, the intellectual nut is insignificant compared to the emotional one. The pain game. Further, pain tolerance related to endurance exercise seems wholly irrelevant. Yes it hurts to pound up hills, but (notwithstanding cardiac arrest) your family isn39t going to go begging from that burn. No, it is more like locating supremacy in killing animals not planned for food. Or at least learning to look beyond weepy eyes in their last moments, with mixed feelings of victory and remote sympathy for another sovereign equal about to go down to make you up. Finally, as an exercise in Darwinistic soul-hardening, this year it was time to do something about the army of squirrels eating all the apricots off the tree in the yard. No, we don39t need the extra calories or fiber, and yes there may have been quotsquirreletsquot to feed. quotRodents carry disease (e. g. Yersinia pestis)quot But is it logical to pine for yard rodents while dining on chicken or fish They must go. The local sporting goods store had on sale Crossman break-back pneumatic 0.177 pellet guns 1000 feet-per-second. A few weeks practice and adjusting the sight made cans at 100 feet easy hits. The first person was the fattest a bold fellow who bent the branches while hogging the fruit. They hide by hugging a tree-trunk 180 degrees opposite you, and sitting stock-still while peering around the corner. After spotting his plump head, I took a bead, slow breath, and squeezed the trigger. He flew down to the ground at the base of the tree. The Mourners39 Kaddish is said as part of the mourning rituals in Judaism in all prayer services as well as at funerals and memorials. Mention of quotsaying Kaddishquot unambiguously denotes the rituals of mourning. The opening words of this prayer are inspired by Ezekiel 38:23, a vision of God becoming great in the eyes of all the nations. The central line of the Kaddish in Jewish tradition is the congregation39s response quotMay His great name be blessed forever and to all eternityquot, a public declaration of God39s greatness and eternality. How grand it is becoming greater than the smallest of the small. A few years ago we had a nice discussion about bridges, their engineering and structure, and how this might relate to market models. Looking at the recent market structure reminded my of the Brooklyn Bridge with a three-day suspension in the middle and two nice towers on either side, a common structure both in rhythm, elevation, and construction. A nice symmetry. The idea is that the market exerts similar forces and results in comparable structures. Yesterday, Beethoven39s Fifth Symphony was in the air. Da da da, dum. Seems like a fairly common market rhythm, and in fact it is. A Look At U. S. Home Price Performance in 20 Markets charts the historical year-over-year monthly percent change in the actual home-price figures for the 20 cities that SampP/Case Shiller tracks. Sam Humbert writes: The key phrase is quotseverity of the declines in home price appreciationquot 8212 not quotdeclines in home prices. quot By that logic, if home prices are unchanged year-to-year, it39s a quotsevere decline. quot Reminds me of Washington budgeting 8212 all discussions of quotcuttingquot the federal budget revolve around declining second, third, and fourth derivatives of dollars/time, not reducing the actual dollars. George Zachar replies: Yes, in fact, there39s a tutorial being conducted by the press on how to selectively report and present data to drive down economic confidence. So far polling data indicate it39s working. Roger Arnold counters: A rose by any other namehellip Most markets are now showing negative price appreciation. No matter how you count it that is a price reduction even before adjusting for inflation. Bottom line is that in both nominal and real terms home prices are falling, late pays/defaults/foreclosures are rising, underwriting guidelines are tightening, and availability of credit as a result is decreasing. All indicators are that pro-cyclical real estate and credit contraction is accelerating. The question is whether or not it has reached a stage of self-reinforcing, i. e. tipped over the fulcrum. To date the trend has been slow, steady, and transparent, much more so than I was counting on at this point. However, the events unfolding in the subprime space today may very well be the precursors to and immediate catalyst for MBS ratings downgrades to sub investment grade. There has been enormous pressure placed on the ratings agencies to act more concurrent with market conditions. It is debatable as to whether or not that is their function but Allied Capital, a large buyer of the lowest grade subprime tranches, liquidated their portfolio in such months before that market began its sudden consolidation earlier this year. A good argument has been made that the rating agencies should have seen what was coming regardless of what the capital markets were doing. With the movements today, those rating agencies now have their own potential legal liability issues to contend with should they not act soon. Vic39s NYC Junto is a monthly meeting which focuses on libertarianism, Objectivism and investing. It was inspired by the Junto hosted by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, from 1727 to 1757, and like Franklin, we bring together intelligent people to discuss intellectual issues in a respectful manner. Our meetings are usually held in Manhattan on the first Thursday of each month, and we usually have a guest speaker who can bring new insights and ideas to us. Debate and questions are encouraged, admission is free, and no donation is requested. There is no connection with any political or religious organization or group. Our next Speaker is Ronald Radosh. on Thursday 5th of July at the General Society Library on 20W. 44th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenue, starting at 7.30 p. m.. More details of this and other up-coming Juntos can be found on our NYC Junto website. I39ve been watching NYSE advancing issue volume minus declining issue volume, and it seems to lead the SampP futures by a few seconds and is a good barometer of the day. Yesterday it rolled into negative territory as the SampP fell off its midday highs before flip-flopping around and rebounding into positive on the up close. Last week saw some days over a million on either side on the runs. It seems more direct than TRIN, the predictive value of which Vic and Laurel have disproved in published studies. In today39s mail I received a newly printed checker primer geared to the younger generation of checker player. This fine little book was authored by John P. Cardie and illustrations expertly done by Robert Murr. Both men are from Colorado and have grandchildren who play checkers. My copy was a gift from Mr. Cardie and he is offering signed copies for 14.00 which includes s/h and tax. He says to make checks payable to quotcheckers creates Kingsquot. Proceeds from his book will be donated to the American Checker Federation youth program. You can order one online or toll free at: 1-877-843-1007. This book is 62 pages and contains the rules of the game, dozens and dozens of basic problems for the novice to set up and solve, sections on being a good sport and a good loser. This fine book is divided into eight chapters. I feel the quotAuthor39s Aimquot deserves mention and I quote: It is the goal of the author to have as many young children as possible get involved in playing checkers and to learn the beneficial lessons of life it teaches. Although underrated, this granddaddy of all board games, is simple to learn, yet very intense. Checkers helps children to cultivate critical thinking skills. My hope is to spearhead a national 39revival39 of checkers. Mr. Cardie has four young grandsons and he will be bringing them to compete in the annual Arthur Niederhoffer Youth Tournament. This year that event will be held in the Plaza Hotel in Las Vegas. I am bringing along my two young grandsons to compete as well. More on the youth event and other checker tournaments can be found on the ACF website. The ACF is 501 (C) 3 non-profit. China began construction of a highway yesterday leading to the northern base camp to Mt. Everest in preparations for the 2008 Olympics. They want to host the Olympic Torch at Everest en route to the five continent torch relay. This smart display of hubris comes at a Chinese stated cost of just under 20 million USD. I wonder, with a cost of constructing the 108 kilometer path for the torch-bearers much less than the cost of constructing the top floors of the world39s tallest skyscrapers, are the Chinese not real smart at making a global statement Irrespective of the stated cost being Chinese and irrespective of the fact that it is a smart statement of intent, isn39t hubris all about profound gestures of ambition I find it difficult to assume that China with a continuous history of conquests and occupation of foreign lands is trying to take Olympian harmony and brotherhood alone to the highest heights. The earliest point and figure system I have come across is in the Ticker Magazine of August 1908, in an article entitled The Trader39s Convention, by Mr. E. C. Cummings of North Wales, PA. Mr. Cummings noted that stocks often move 10 points in one direction, and gives a workout of American Sugar to prove that with proper stops, even during the 50 decline for the market of 1907, a point and figure system would have made money on the long side. He lists the following rules for his system: Consider only movements and reactions of one point or more. After a stock has moved in the desired direction by a point or more, wait for the reaction to that particular movement. After the reaction has terminated, and a second movement has begun one point from the ending of the reaction, buy the stock. Protect each trade with a two point stop order. After the second movement of a point or more has reacted, and the third movement has begun, trade again, providing the second reaction did not reach as low as the first reaction. After two points of profits, move the stop to the purchase price. Rules for entering shorts are symmetrical to those above. The system seems much more fairly tested and defined than anything that I have read in recent Point and Figure books, and there is no mumbo jumbo connected with it, what with the system being a clear incarnation of supply and demand. The Artful Simulator, Mr. Tom Downing, and I tested a variant of the Cummings system in his honor. We bought the Dow whenever there was a rise of one percent from the lowest close, and sold when there was a decline of one percent from the highest close, looking at data from year end 1899 to June 15th, 1907. Over the full period, the average profits were as follows, (in percent): Long Short Mean profit per trade 0.40 -0.09 Number of observations 2229 2229 Standard Deviation 2.85 2.7 T Score 6.7 1.6 Percent Profit 44 38 Duration in Days 7 5 This makes a most magnificent instantiation for a very skeptical speculator. Of course, that39s the good news: that the shorts were almost able to overcome the drift of 0.25 a trade, not counting dividends et. al. was also amazing, along with the fact that such a system actually performed almost as well from 1920-1940, (total of 0.2. profit per trade on the long side, and just a -0.01 loss on the short side, with 469 trades during that period). From 1920-1940 the trade duration was slightly lower than average, at five days per trade, showing that prices were more variable in that second fifth of the century than they are today. All in all, this is a magnificent confirmation of the value of point and figure methods for predicting the Dow, but, regretfully, during the last ten years 8230 well that39s an exercise for the reader. On average, in the last 28 years bonds have begun a short-term rally on the 9th trading day of June (6/13 this year). This is a trade I have taught in seminars and taken for the last 10 years. I don39t have a clue as to why this happens 8212 maybe readers have some ideas. Perhaps it39s just happenstance. But next year I will take it again just as I have in the past. Kim Zussman replies: I tested the suggestion of a bond rally from 9th trading day of June using TNX (10 yr bond yield) back to 1980. From the 9th day, holding for 5d, 10d, 20d, here are the results: Variable N Mean StDev 95 CI T P 5d 27 0.0006 0.0239 (-0.009, 0.010) 0.13 0.899 10d 27 0.0041 0.0364 (-0.010, 0.019) 0.59 0.561 20d 27 -0.002 0.0500 (-0.021, 0.018) -0.19 0.849 Using TNX, there were not significant gains in 10yr bonds for the three holds. Note that TNX is yield, so increased bond price would be decreased TNX. Here are the data: Date 5d 10d 20d 6/13/2006 0.040 0.050 0.028 6/13/2005 0.002 -0.046 0.012 6/14/2004 -0.037 -0.027 -0.080 6/12/2003 0.054 0.114 0.148 6/13/2002 -0.031 -0.018 -0.059 6/13/2001 -0.011 -0.006 -0.006 6/13/2000 -0.015 -0.003 -0.003 6/11/1999 -0.030 0.002 -0.047 6/11/1998 0.011 0.006 -0.004 6/12/1997 -0.012 0.003 -0.037 6/13/1996 -0.006 -0.026 -0.024 6/13/1995 0.003 0.002 -0.005 6/13/1994 0.014 0.014 0.051 6/11/1993 0.000 -0.022 -0.037 6/11/1992 -0.019 -0.026 -0.055 6/13/1991 -0.005 -0.002 -0.010 6/13/1990 0.018 0.014 0.012 6/13/1989 0.007 -0.017 -0.030 6/13/1988 0.012 0.003 0.019 6/11/1987 -0.029 -0.032 -0.023 6/12/1986 -0.036 -0.070 -0.085 6/13/1985 -0.007 0.018 0.002 6/13/1984 0.016 0.024 -0.001 6/13/1983 0.005 0.033 0.062 6/11/1982 0.050 0.060 -0.004 6/11/1981 0.019 0.029 0.047 6/12/1980 0.003 0.036 0.079 Jeff Rollert remarks: I39d suggest not using TNX, especially when there are auctions 8212 it doesn39t handle those well in the series. I use TNX only for checking on general levels when using my cellphone browser at school functions. Larry Williams replies: Dr. Zussman39s comments on my bond seasonal trade were confusing to many readers, so here are the details: What I tested was buying bond futures on the open of the 9th trading day of June, using a 1,600 stop and exit on the first profitable opening plus two ticks. In the last 21 years there have been 20 winning trades. That39s how I39ve traded it for the last 10 years. Dr. Zussman tested 10 year cash bonds I trade 30 year nearby futures 8212 apples and oranges. Hope this clarifies. Larry Williams continues: My tests, using nearby active contract in Genesis Data, with no stop, exit X days later: 5 days 52 wins 3,270 10 63 6,926 15 79 8,301 20 63 16,676 My boss had an intimate friend who was formerly in the cordage business. I used to hear them talking about how he had sold out his plant for about four times its worth of stock of the National Cordage Co. and how this trust would absorb everyone in the cordage trade, and soon have a monopoly. One day I heard my bosses friend say quotwhen the whole thing is rounded up, that common stock will double in value and pay ten percent a year. quot This was good enough for me. Here was an insider who knew all about the stock, giving his intimate friend this rare piece of information. That my boss was himself convinced was evidenced by a check which I saw the next day, made payable to a firm of stock brokers and for an amount just equal to the value of 500 shares at the opening price for th National Cordage Co.. All hesitancy on my part now vanished, and at the noon hour I hustled up to my brokers office, sold out every share I owned, and put my last dollar in to Cordage. I was staking everything on this venture, and thought of all the things I would do with the money I was going to make. So carried away was I with the proposition, that I departed from my heretofore inflexible rule, and asked my broker on what margin he would carry the stock. His very conservatism saved me perhaps from what might have been a worse fiasco, as he refused to buy it except for cash. After I bought cordage, it didn39t seem to have so much resilience as I hoped, but I thought of the vast negotiations which were going on, and how the value was being added to daily, unknown to the outside public. But there39s no use going over the details, everyone knows what happened to me and my cordage. It went from 90 after I bought it, to one, in the panic of 3983. It went to pot along with General Electric and a lot of others. To cap the climax, my firm was so crippled by the loss of capital sustained through the senior39s investments in Cordage (shades of Imclone), that it was obliged to go into liquidation, and I lost my job 8230 It was at that time that I changed my ways, and I became a specialist in panics. 8211 The Ticker, August 1908. After this loss, the author realized that when they wanted him to buy, and the price was high, they never showed any of the bad points. When they wanted him to sell, they never showed any of the good points. He became a specialist in panics, a cane investor if you will, and became a millionaire in a few years, which he documents in the subsequent two issues of the Ticker. I find that cane investing still works. Indeed, whenever the fake Doctor or his ilk try to bear things down, there is a scare about interest rates or plague or war, and the market reacts: it39s time to hobble down to Broad street again. Peter Earle contributes: These are great accounts to follow. In the building of my own collection, which I hope to either auction off on the 100th anniversary of the Big Wind (about October 25 - 28, 2029) or perhaps donate to a free market economic research institution (The Von Mises Institute, most likely), I recently scored a great coup. I purchased, from the Dayton Public Library, the entire run of the Magazine of Wall Street from 1920 to 1972. I39m reinforced in my assessment of their great value in your citing of them. quotClearly the weight gain did not come from the exercise variable, but a 39missing39 one (missing from the fridge).quot The reduction in calories from the fridge was the major variable causing the weight loss but for statistical purposes would there not be more correlation with the exercise variable if the number of calories burned during the time exercised were known And might the correlations vary at each date in the time series And how would you account for the physiological changes due to exercise that caused you to become a more efficient calorie burning machine in your off-exercise time The statistics involved in weight loss in a complex, ever-changing organism seem quite daunting. Here for example is a recent study considering why lower caloric diets don39t always have as strong an effect on overweight patients. Adam Robinson adds: Pitt raises an interesting point on systems thinking and caloric restriction. It39s well known that reducing calories induces your body to lower metabolism, counteracting the efficacy of the caloric restriction. An interesting variant is the observation many years ago that low intensity (aerobic) exercise burns more fat than does high intensity (anaerobic) exercise. Hence the quotfirst orderquot (i. e. mistaken) conclusion that to lose body fat, high intensity exercise is better than low intensity exercise. However, second order thinking (i. e. looking beyond the obvious) realized that this conclusion ignores, as Pitt points out, what happens the other 23-odd hours of the day and there the advantage goes to high-intensity exercise, which raises the body39s metabolism longer throughout the day. And it also ignores, ironically if you think about elusive mother nature, that because low intensity training burns more fat than does high intensity exercise, low-intensity devotees are quite possibly training their body to store fat to be used during future exercise periods Again: advantage high-intensity exercise. No direct applications to trading, but a reminder of the dangers in failing to look beyond one39s immediate area of concern and failing to consider feedback loops. In his book, Beyond Candlesticks, Nison says, quotThe Japanese emphasize the number three. hellipThe Japanese view a market that has had three rising or falling windows in a row as a market that has reached maturity. quot Nison refers to a book written in the mid-1700s entitled, The Fountain of Gold - The Three Monkey Record of Money. They refer to the yin and yang, yang being bullish, yin bearish. From the book, quotWhen yang movement reaches an extreme, there is stillness. This stillness gives rise to yin. quot Nison recommends waiting for confirmation with a bearish movement. The Sept SampP mini futures has had four gap ups in a row and two weeks ago three down gaps in a row. Today39s low range market could easily be called stillness. The candlestick patterns have interesting names and history and are a fun source of ideas for testing. Time will soon tell whether these ideas have any merit or predictive properties. In 1979 Doyle Brunson released the bible of all poker books: Super System. It is a 624-page compendium of useful information, notably instructional on hold-em poker. It also has chapters devoted to different poker games such as 7-card stud, lowball, hi-low, and draw poker. Contributing authors include Bobby Baldwin, Chip Reese, Dave Sklansky, and Mike Caro. Caro also devotes a chapter and he has very interesting insights. Since the recent atomic explosion of no-limit hold-em, many how-to books on poker have surfaced. Books that I would recommend are Harrington on Hold-em . Volumes 1 and 2, and Play Poker Like the Pros, by Phil Hellmuth. Both are instructional and will do much to advance the knowledge of the game. Zen and the Art of Poker, by Larry Phillips, deals with the psychological side of poker and is critical to have in the poker players arsenal of book weaponry. These are five books that if studied, read, and re-read will go far in the development of a sound poker acumen. I do caution the student that this will only serve as a foundation for a sound poker mind. The next step is to log in very important hours at the poker table. Live poker is preferred as poor habits can be developed by playing online. And live poker is the only way to learn how to read opponents and develop a quotfeel for the game. quot The great T. J. Cloutier said that every time he sits down at a table he tries to learn something about the game or the people he is playing. It is interesting to note that after releasing Super System . Doyle Brunson had to alter his game strategy as many who read his book began to use Doyle39s own methods against him. Just as with all other games, the pursuit of poker is a never ending one. Mike Sexton who has played professional poker for more than 25 years commented that he became a much better tournament player after watching the top players and commenting for the World Poker Tour. Poker can be a great game, a rewarding game financially and emotionally and it also can become a nightmare. It offers many paths and a student will be well served to be a lifetime practitioner of the game if they expect to extract the maximum positive aspects of poker. Alex Forshaw writes: What gets me about all those poker players is how much better they could do trading on a bigger market than nine people39s buy-in at a table at the Bellagio. I agree that quotSuper Systemquot is a true poker bible. Can39t say the same for Hellmuth39s book, though. Itrsquos kind of like how he was on TV, pretty high ratio of drama/braggadocio to substance, but that39s just my two cents. One sort-of poker book I39d recommend is The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King: Inside the Richest Poker Game of All Time . It39s about a Texas banker who took up no-limit hold39em at around 40, became utterly devoted to it, and challenged individual poker stars to multimillion-dollar heads up games and started blowing them up, because the stakes were so unbalancing to the hold39em stars (who were not nearly as rich as he was). That39s how it starts, anyway. Nick Marino replies: Readers should realize that at best these books will only help you lose money at a slower rate when playing against professionals. The game is constantly changing because the players and their strategies are constantly changing. Sound familiar Gabe Ivan writes: I read both Brunson39s and Helmuth39s books recently and I agree that Helmuth39s writing is very shallow. His only theme is to play tourneys super-tight at the beginning and change gears as you go. Nothing about the game philosophy. Brunson is a delight and the Caro, Baldwin, and Sklansky chapters provide you with nuggets of knowledge about poker and betting in general. I also recommend Sklansky39s quotThe Theory of Poker, quot which explains very clearly the nuts and bolts for beginners such as I. The meal of a lifetime is the opening paragraph where Brunson says, quotI made millions playing poker and I lost them at sport betting. quot This speaks volumes about staying within one39s circle of competence when dealing in probabilistic fields, where every niche is so competitive that a legend like him gets wiped out when he steps outside. Cologne and cleaning agents: Russia39s killer drinks. 12:16 15 June 2007, NewScientist news service Roxanne Khamsi A shocking 43 of deaths in working-age Russian men result from drinking alcohol not meant for human consumption, such as cologne and cleaning agents, according to a new study. This morning I described Russia to my son as the Brooklyn of Europe: lots of smart people come from there, but it39s not a good place to stay. Mike Ott adds: I recently spent some time in Ukraine trying to figure out the best way to help them build ethanol plants. A major roadblock was the fact that the output of the plant is a 39potent potable39 and our hosts were concerned that people would try to drink it. I shrugged off the concern because, while 100 grain alcohol is not tasty, it can be consumed, but after denaturing with gasoline, it is nondrinkable. I am aware of just one instance among all 199 of the US plants where an alcoholic employee was caught drinking the final product, and therefore thought this wouldn39t be a concern. Perhaps I needed to better understand the locals to gauge this risk. Lovers of New York City or movies have until this Fri. June 22 to see the multimedia exhibit in Grand Central Terminal. It39s based on the book, quotCelluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, quot by James Sanders. But the book can39t compete with experience of standing in Vanderbilt Hall in front of a gigantic painting of the stairway in the Penn Station, which was torn down decades ago. There are interiors and landscapes used in MGM films such as quotNorth by Northwestquot and quotThe Clockquot, plus film segments and stills of NYC streets and skylines in movies from the 1910s to the present. The display has stills from films such as quotThe Fountainheadquot and location photos used as inspiration for the recreations of NYC in Hollywood. The hundreds of photos and paintings have descriptions making their functions clear. An example of this is quote from by the art director Eugene Lourie: quotWe didn39t want to eliminate reality, but to create the most suitable reality for the film. By omitting certain useless details, by underlining others8230the designer could make the sets more expressive than real locations8230 A poetic reality, a reality with a soul. quot The show is open from 10am to 7pm, 7 days a week. This Friday, June 22 is the last day. Recent moves looked a bit like the year 2000 when there were bigger moves up and down. Looking at the average weekly average of the daily range of SampP futures as a measure, and using the median as a robust way to count varying periods, it looks like that measure of volatility is rising recently. Days Median average weekly range 200 10 100 11 20 12 10 15 During 2000, the median SampP median weekly range exceeded 15 also. This size of larger range was more common in 2000 and during the two years after. There are many great blessings in my life that have made me the man I am today. One of the greatest is the example that my father gave to me of how to be a man, a husband and a father. My dad have had our ups and downs, but never has he ever broken from the example of manhood that he taught me. Let me share with you some of the greatest things he did. First, he showed me through his example how a husband shows respect and loves his wife. My dad was 19 when he found out that his fianceacutee was pregnant. There are many things that a 19-year-old can do in that situation. But he choose to stand by my mother. They were genuinely in love (and anyway, as I39ve jokingly told my dad, quotwhere else would a goofy looking guy like you go to find a hotty like momquot). He dropped out of school and began his life as a family man, providing for us in the best way that he could and treating my mother with the love and respect that she deserved. Then in 1979 my mother, merely 34 years old, was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. The prognosis from the doctors was bleak. Early onset MS (in 1979) did not afford much of a life expectancy and certainly meant a bleak future for my mother. Mom, realizing that dad was still a young man with a full life ahead of him, did not want him to have to suffer with all that was going to happen to her. She told my dad that she wanted a divorce so that he could have a full life with a wife that wasn39t going to have body that was falling apart. My father, knowing the bleak future that lay ahead, stood by my mother. Regardless of what lay ahead, he was in love with my mother. Furthermore, he had a made a promise to her. Part of that promise was, quotin sickness or in health, till death do us part. quot My father taught me the importance of honor and integrity not just with his words, but with his actions. I didn39t learn about that story until years later. But I recount it here with great pride. My father is a man of honor But being honorable is easy when things are easy. What did my father do when things got rough (and man oh man, did they ever get rough) Mom went down hill quickly, but dad stood by her side and she fought back until the MS went into remission. Then, with the encouragement of the love of her life, she decided to use this adversity and turn it into an opportunity. She went to college. She graduated with her associates degree with straight A39s. My father encouraged her to study and not worry about things as he took care of earning the money and did a lot of the housework. She then earned her bachelors degree with straight A39s, save one B in Algebra. All the while dad took care of his work and much of hers plus having to care for her extra needs. She then went on to get her masters degree, and she didn39t just get any masters degree. She got accepted into one of the most prestigious universities in world, Washington University in St. Louis. She graduated with straight A39s Sure, mom did the work, but I credit my father with her degree, too (as did mom). She needed someone who would love her and encourage her and help her and take care of her extra needs. My father stood by her side and loved her, encouraged her and did whatever he could to help her along the way. Sure, there were problems and difficulties along the way and an argument or two here and there. But what an example my father set for me. After she graduated, mom went to work and dad had to drive her everywhere she wanted to go as she had mostly lost her ability to drive safely. Then one day it happened. Mom slipped and fell at work. This was the catalyst that brought the MS fully out of remission. The ravaging of her body began. Everything they feared would happen to her 19 years earlier began to happen with a vengeance. Her body began to shut down. She lost her ability to walk. So dad pushed her around in a wheel chair. Then she lost her ability to dress and put on make up. So dad dressed her and put on her make up. Then she lost her ability to even get out of bed. So dad got her up and put her down whenever she needed, and on top of that, he took her almost everywhere he went. Then she lost her ability to control bodily functions. But still, dad took care of her. He cleaned and bathed her. He washed her hair and did his best to comb it and style it and then put on her make up. Then she lost he ability to swallow. So dad fed her through a tube. But that was the easy part. You see, since she couldn39t swallow, she would choke on her saliva. Dad would have to suction out her mouth several times an hour to prevent her from choking, which she did quit often. But that still wasn39t the hardest part. Mom couldn39t swallow. So she would wake up choking every 30 - 45 minutes. Dad would wake up and suction out her mouth, reposition her so she wouldn39t get bed sores, and then go back to sleep until mom woke him choking again 30 minutes or so later. My father would not put my mother in a nursing home. No one was going to give the love of his life the care that he could and would give. Even as his health faded he took care of mom. There were times that he looked like a walking zombie, but still, he persevered. And he did this for 5 years He taught me through his actions never to give up, to honor your word, and to do the right thing, not just when it was easy, but when it was the hardest That is the true sign of a man But that was the hardest thing he ever did. On May 5th, 2004, in the morning, he called me on my cell. I was out of town. He told me that I needed to get home, that mom wasn39t well. He told me that he was wanting to bring in hospice to help with mom and that he wanted me and my brother to be in on the decision. Basically, by bringing in hospice they would help, but that also meant that we had to sign a Do Not Resuscitate form. By this time mom was not only a complete physical vegetable, but her mind was 95 gone too. I cancelled my remaining appointments for the day and came home. My dad, brother, and I were meeting with the hospice nurse as she was doing an exam on mom. We could all see that mom was in really bad shape. We asked the nurse what did she think, and she told us that hospice really wouldn39t be necessary as mom was likely going to die within a few hours. She told us to call anyone that we needed to call. We got on the phone and called my grandmother (mom39s mom), her brothers and sisters, my dad39s sisters and some other close family. Everyone who was in town came to the house. We all stood around the bed with her. My dad sitting at her side, stroking her face, the grandkids on the bed sitting next to her, holding her hand, stroking her face, or with their hands on her legs. Her mom sat at the foot of the bed rubbing mom39s feet. This sight overwhelmed me as I stood there watching. My mother was surrounded by love, the women who gave birth to her trying to warm and massage her feet, her loving grandkids at her side as well as her two sons. As she lay there she began to struggle to breathe, her breath became gasps, but still she held on. Then my dad, who had given me example after example of how a man, a father and a husband acts, gave me the greatest lesson ever. He leaned into my mom39s ear, holding back the tears and gasps. He said, quotIt39s OK, Sharon. You can let it go now. Just wait for me and I39ll be with you soon. It39s OK to go, I love you, it39s OK to let goquot Then my daughter leaned in and said the same thing, as did others in the room, including her mom. And then, like you think you39d see in a movie, my mom just seemed to relax. She stopped gasping and her breathing slowed and got shallower. My dad leaned down and said something in her ear. And then she just stopped breathing. As much as my dad loved my mother, she loved him back just as much She wanted to live passionately, but she knew that she was at the end of what her body could take and was living strictly on the power of her indomitable will. Still, because of that, she suffered immensely. I believe that my father released her with his words and gave her permission to let the pain stop, even though that meant losing the love of his life and his entire existence for years. So why am I telling you all this story of my mom on Fathers Day This story really isn39t about my mom. This story is subtitled, quotThe greatest work you will ever do is within the walls of your own homequot. You see, I could tell you all about how my dad coached us in little league to championship after championship and the life lessons he taught me by coaching me, or the lessons he taught me by working any and all jobs to support his family when he was laid off from work, or how I was never hungry or cold, or how I had a largely worry-free childhood. I could tell you about the lessons he instilled in me by taking me fishing and hunting, or how he sent me to private school that he really couldn39t afford to get me out of the public system that we were otherwise stuck in. I could also tell you about how this story has a happy ending. You see, my mom always insisted that when she died that she wanted dad to get remarried to a wonderful women who could give him everything that she couldn39t and to enjoy the rest of his life with. Dad found that women when he married Patty. I jokingly tell my dad that he39s won the wife lottery twice in his life He39s found two great women that love him dearly and treat him wonderfully Sure, there are all kinds of good lessons with many market analogies that I could tie in. But what I want to drive home is this simple lesson: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Or, if you want a more secular version: What goes around comes around My father taught me through his actions how to be a man, how to be a father and how to be a husband. He may not be a bigwig to the rest of the world he may not have achieved great financial success, and he is certainly not quotworld renownedquot at anything. But he did do the most important things. He raised me to be a good man by giving me a great example. He did his greatest work within the walls of his home So I honor him with this little prayer that I say all the time: I pray that I may be the man my father never was so that my children can be the man I will never be And just in case this makes the Daily Speculations site, I would like to publicly state for all the world to hear: Thank you Dad, for giving me that foundation to build on Thanks for all you39ve done. Thanks for all you do You39re a great man I am honored to be your son quotDuuude, you really missed itquot said the surfer on the shore as I came up and asked him how the waves have been. quotYa should have been here yesterday. It was 6 feet, glassy and perfect. quot It39s a classic scenario played over and over. You have to go in and surf the lousy, windy, junky days when the surf is bad in order to get the really good days. You can39t just pick the good days or you won39t be in good enough shape when the waves hit, and due to the random ever-changing cycles and sudden runs, unless you are there quoton itquot in the water, you39re going to miss the epic sessions. How many days have I been out in lousy conditions by myself when the winds turn around, the swell hits, the tide turns and I am out in perfect conditions with no one out In Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, Lefevre recounted the story of Mr. Partidge, quotThe Old Turkey, quot an older operator who refused to sell out his position on rises. Lefevre wrote, quotEverybody knew that the way to do that was to take profits and buy back your stocks on reactions. And that is precisely what I did, or rather what I tried to do for I often took profits and waited for a reaction that never came. And I saw my stock go kiting up ten points more and I sat there with my four-point profit safe in my conservative pocket. They say you never grow poor taking profits. No, you don39t. But neither do you grow rich taking a four-point profit in a bull market. Where I should have made twenty thousand dollars I made two thousand. quot Wise old Mr. Partridge said, quotI couldn39t think of selling that stock. Why this is a bull marketquot And he said it as though he had given a long and detailed explanation. quotMy dear boy, if I sold that stock now I39d lose my position and then where would I bequot Not much chance to get back in last week39s rise except for the young and the brave. I notice that on Friday June 15th the futures ended at approximately where they were on Friday June 1st, or Tuesday June 5th. Also, there were three big down days in a row during the week ending June 8th, and three big up days in the week ending June 15th. Many other regularities appeared in the last two weeks, and generalizing them to all weeks of the year could be a meal for a lifetime, or at least for a day. To help me in this pursuit, I have been reading the chapter on code construction in the book Strange Curves, Counting Rabbits, and other Mathematical Explorations by Keith Ball. In particular, I am very interested in the idea that the ideal curve should have various codewords that are as different as possible, so that it is unlikely that their content will be mixed up. This is very closely related to the astonishing results in Kendall39s Rank Correlations work 8212 that the number of interchanges necessary to bring one set of ranks into another is the same as the number of inversions in their perspective rankings. I believe that there are many helpful ways of extending these two ideas and perhaps some of them will give some insight into what is going to happen in the future, including next week. I noticed a society much at peace with itself managing nearly one fourth of the worldrsquos wealth while traversing across Geneva for three days. Not a single war in the last five hundred and fifty years. Yet despite continued prosperity they have not built even one skyscraper The chairmanrsquos hubris indicator has another corroboration from this metropolis. Yes, the only real tall structure out there is a giant fountain in the middle of a huge and clean lake that overshadows all other low-hung medieval looking architecture. Here is a society that has clearly known that there is no money in ego. For a first-timer like me in a new city deciphering the map to the last building is not always easy. At each occasion that I had to request help seeking directions to any particular addresses I was shocked positively that they were willing to take a small walk ranging from 50 to 250 yards showing where I needed to go. In all other cities that I have been the best help I have received ranged from a helpless smile to a quick pointing of the finger. Hoi polloi of Geneva are happy, positive, and willing to spare time for a total stranger. The city has a very proactive pro-business administration. Each tourist or foreign national arriving into Geneva is given a free pass by their hotels, paid for by the city administration, that entitles the recipients to travel freely in Geneva using all public transport. No rushed trains, no filled up trams, buses stopping by to let pedestrians pass (not just private vehicles but big buses stopping), near zero pollution, hoards of art-dealers, bankers, jewelers, confectioners, members of the oldest profession, politicians, bureaucrats, aspiring summer interns 8212 you could see them all passing by in a single day, at peace with their diverse objectives conjoint only at wealth and power in this one city. A visit to the United Nations reminded me of the many key pacts, conventions, and treaties signed at and containing the name of Geneva. I had a negative experience too. On the first day of my arrival I went to the McDonaldrsquos on the Rue de Laussane knowing that it is one hygienic food parlor that will have some fare for a vegetarian too. I found it but had my wallet picked up. Within three hours of landing in a new city, to be left with a situation where all your credit cards and cash are gone can be a shock. However, the manager of this McDonaldrsquos took me to his cubicle and surprised me with a replay of the tapes of at least four different hidden cameras installed in the store. In less than 10 minutes we were zooming on the face of the individual who picked up my wallet. The famous Corps de Police of the Republique et Canton de Geneve were called in. They took 20 minutes to arrive and promised to collect a copy of the recording from the store manager the next day. Then they noted down the physical features of the wallet-picker with a few replays of the tape. The police officers promised me all positive action and left graciously. However, a sixth sense told me to grab the phone, call my banks and cancel all the cards immediately and seek activation of the replacement cards. The last day that I was leaving Geneva I visited the police station and the McDonaldrsquos to check if any action happened. I discovered the police officers had not yet returned to the store to collect the tape and had not yet flashed the physical features of the wallet picker on their wireless vans I am certain that McDonaldrsquos does not have hidden cameras across their stores in possibly any other country. Bottom line: the big brother in Switzerland is watching everyone. But credit card thieves, small pickpockets, and denizens of this universe without the potential of owning a numbered account yet can fend for themselves. But then a city thriving upon 500 years of warless prosperity gave me a sufficiently happy time to forgive and forget. Ronald Weber replies: I am surprised but nevertheless pleased by your impressions of Geneva. Although it39s my hometown, it is not particularly known for its friendliness toward visitors. The infrastructure, aesthetic, and the quality of life have declined remarkably over the past 20 years. Geneva had its golden era in the 60s and 70s with oil money, but everything is relative and it39s still a wonderful place to live. May I suggest that you also visit Zurich on your next trip Perhaps you are familiar with the famous quote from Orson Welles in The Third Man, quotThe violent Italian culture that produced the Borgias also produced Michelangelo, while all the Swiss, known for 500 years of order and good manners, could come up with was the cuckoo clockquot BN 8:30 TREASURIES DROP AS PRODUCER PRICES QUICKEN It has a nice Elizabethan feel to it, as if the newswire were running in 1580 8212 quotHorseshoe prices quicken in early London trading. quot Nigel Davies remarks: Nothing could have prepared them for8230the quickening. George Zachar extends: In the days of hot type you had to remember arcane counts corresponding to the width of each character, both upper and lower case. The mark of a great headwriter was the ability to hit the exact length needed, with something catchy and relevant. Writing headlines on deadline at newspapers trained me to cycle through my mental thesaurus efficiently. This makes composing ordinary prose a relatively easy task. Headline writing as a vocabulary drill for kids I may try this at home. Resources Links

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