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The main message is to SAVE. He forgets to say that saving in an inflationary environment is futile. Save in GOLD!
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Freaking awesome!
July 2008 Archives
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The world needs a few more Mr. Rogers.
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The real reason why Oil dropped $20 a barrel recently.
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Stock quote scrapper
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nice.
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This strangely vouyeristic
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Queen Rania opens up her own You Tube channel. Very interesting and pretty well done.
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Sweet, if I can ever learn PHP I can build custom indicators.
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Neat! Open Source for programming images, animation, and interactions
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The difference of 10 cents a gallon or more has some customers used to paying with a credit card irate, but station owners say they have to do something to turn a profit. I'D RATHER PAY THE CASH AND SAVE THE 10 CENTS/GALLON.
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Brother Metal? Interesting.
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I've moved the Rapid Miner User Group back to NJ. If you are in theFairfield NJ area onFriday Aug 22, come by for a few drinks!
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Once-prosperous Zimbabwe has seen an unprecedented economic meltdown since it gained independence in 1980, with the official inflation rate now at 2.2 million percent. YIKES!
I did quite a bit of soul searching when I was away on vacation about life, work, and this blog. The most important thing I realized was that I start too many projects and don’t focus my time effectively. I’m involved in so many activities that it’s stretching me thin and taking quality time away from my family.
Right now I’m involved in two professional societies, one as President and the other as Past-President. I’m a manager at work that requires my constant attention, I’m a landlord that always needs to fix stuff and find tenants, and my family is growing more active as the kids get older. On top of all this, I usually wake up early and write this blog.
I spent time thinking about my priorities and opportunity costs (that MBA sure comes in handy) and realized that I had to prioritize my life based on the things valuable to me. So I listed them from highest to lowest priority.
- Family (love them to death, very valuable)
- Work (it pays the bills)
- Landlord / Rental Manager (it pays another set of bills)
- Professional Organization: President and Past-President (it doesn’t pay my bills but eats my time)
- Neural Market Trends (eats my time and makes a little bit of money)
Right off the bat, I should serve out my term as President and Past-President and then stop volunteering for those organizations. Next, I considered shutting down Neural Market Trends because it competes for time and no matter how much I love writing it, coming up with quality content takes up a lot of my limited time. I thought, “I use my Rapid Miner models to trade and position my accounts, so why not free up some time by shutting down the blog and concentrate on that? My models make me money, this blog doesn’t.â€
Then I thought about the time when I had members, protected posts, Forex trend forecasts, and sent out a weekly S&P500 Market Timing/Volatility Report. I had over 100 members, that signed up for free, and things went smoothly. The goal was to monetize the members section at some time in the future. For reasons, unknown to me right now, I abandoned the report and the member section dwindled.
This had got me thinking that if I want to continue writing this blog and not have it eat my time without making it worthwhile, maybe I should monetize the members section? The trick to making this work is providing content that my readers find valuable and would be willing to pay either a monthly or quarterly membership.
While I mull this idea over, I’ll be opening up the membership section for free again (signup or login here) and will give members who sign up between now and when I start charging, 3 free months of access. I’ll start post protecting new and improved S&P500 market timing posts starting this Sunday and gradually add more content as things move along.
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Interesting, I should propose this to my wife. Nah!
My currency positions pulled back yesterday after the mini USD rally and I decided to take profits. Entry into a position is never the hardest thing to do, its closing that position that can give you sleepless nights! I sold the majority of my holdings in EURUSD and AUDUSD for a profit but my USDCAD position was sold at a slight loss.
I'm still long with a small position in EURUSD and AUDUSD, and short USDCAD. I plan on scaling into these positions as they strengthen and weaken, respectively.
Position Summary:
- EURUSD +47 pips
- AUDUSD +16 pips
- USDCAD +1 pips
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"If the heart rate varies, it shows that the body is relaxed with an activity and is feeling positive stress," he said. "In this case the body is more flexible to react to the demands of the situation".
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Compelled by concern for the demise of Borneo's native orchids, Chairani Siregar of the College of Agriculture at the University of Tanjungpura (Indonesia) undertook a 3-year study to locate and record endangered native orchid species in West Borneo.
Looks like investors are angry after their stock market hits a losing streak, the largest in 18 years. Some say its because of fears that the ruling coalition might collapse but I suspect its something else.
So how do you take out your anger after market collapses and your life savings vanish?
Pakistan stock investors threw stones and smashed windows at Karachi's stock exchange to protest the worst losing streak in at least 18 years, prompting intervention by the police and paramilitary officers.There had to be another reason for all this volatility and reading further I found it. In my opinion, the main reason why the Pakistani market is crashing is that foreign investors are fleeing.
Foreign investors slashed their spending on Pakistani stocks to $62.2 million in the 11 months ended May 31, from $1.76 billion a year earlier, according to data compiled by the central bank. [via Bloomberg]Looks like Musharraf had a lot of friends with money and strangely I feel like throwing a rock at Greenspan!
My positions took a slight tumble yesterday after oil dropped like a rock but then they firmed up. That little pull back triggered two of my three limit orders and I added to my EURUSD and USDCAD positions. I'm still short USDCAD, long EURUSD, and long AUDUSD.
Like I posted before, I expect the Euro to break $1.70 and the Aussie Dollar to hit parity soon. Here's the profit/loss summary so far:
- AUDUSD +116 pips
- EURUSD +122 pips
- USDCAD +41 pips
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Man this hits home, right home.
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Getting closer to eradicating all disease...
I hear this type of conversation amongst my struggling friends as well.
Heat or food? Gas or electricity? Medicine or mortgage payments? What to give up? What to cut back? The conversations were everywhere. In the supermarket, I heard one man tell another: "When I was a kid, you woke up, went into the bathroom, and broke up the ice in the toilet. Now my kids will have to do the same. America is moving backward." [via Business Week]It's a sad state of affairs but we're too blame, we elected socialist leeches and idiots to power.  Only true capitalism can save us now.
With everyone scrambling to see how low the Dow, Nasdaq, and S&P500 will go, I've decided to throw my Monte Carlo simulated price targets into the mix. They've been pretty accurate so far and I use this system to find my Forex stops and limit BUY/SELL points. I also use it for work creating complex budget risk Excel spreadsheets but you wouldn't care about that.
The benefit of the using the Monte Carlo simulation is that you can update the model with new information and get a fresh perspective on where the “key†price areas in the market and how you can profit from them.
The price targets below are from low to high as of this week and the bold numbers are the most likely prices to be hit this week:
- S&P500: 1099 / 1161 / 1223 / 1285 / 1347
- Dow Jones: 10400 / 10800 / 11200 / 11600 / 12000
- Nasdaq: 1700 / 1900 / 2100 / 2300/ 2500
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Ah yes, how to get more readers! :)
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Can we bail them out or should we? Capitalism says we should let them die.
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The surge in Aud/Usd is relentless as it brushes aside option barriers at 0.9800 to trade up to 0.9826. CAN ANYONE SAY PARITY?
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The dollar declined to a record low against the euro on speculation Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson will say credit- market losses are hurting U.S. economic growth. TELL ME SOMETHING I DON"T KNOW!
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You go ROSS!!!
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Similar stuff to what I read in Elements of Style by Strunck.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) come in so many flavors these days that it’s hard to keep track of them all. I really like them because it gives the average investor exposure to different asset classes such as currencies, commodities, and emerging markets. The beauty of ETF’s is that you can usually buy them for your 401K or IRA accounts thereby giving you the ability to diversify very broadly.
Currently there are 8 major currency ETF’s available that I know of and they are:
- Australian Dollar: FXA – (chart)
- British Pound: FXB – (chart)
- Canadian Dollar: FXC – (chart)
- Euro: FXE – (chart)
- Swiss Franc: FXF – (chart)
- Mexican Peso: FXM – (chart)
- Swedish Krona: FXS – (chart)
- Japanese Yen: FXY – (chart)
Sorry to all you South African Rand and Brazilian Real traders, you’ll have to stick with a currency brokerage account for now.
Update: Soren has kindly updated the currency ETF list in the comment section; it goes to show you that it truly is hard to keep track of them all! As a special shout-out, take a moment to sign up for Soren's Stock Tweet @ Twitter, it truly is a piece of genius.
You have to love Jim Rogers and the interviews he gives Bloomberg. He's a wise man that comes across as a cranky at times but we should listen carefully to what he has to say.
``I don't know where these guys get the audacity to take our money, taxpayer money, and buy stock in Fannie Mae,'' Rogers, 65, said in an interview from Singapore. ``So we're going to bail out everybody else in the world. And it ruins the Federal Reserve's balance sheet and it makes the dollar more vulnerable and it increases inflation.'' [via Bloomberg]Commenter and blogger Kevin H posted this reply to my $5 Trillion Dollars of Debt post yesterday, "How in the world is the U.S. going to bail Fannie and Freddie out of 5 trillion? We are already in debt 9.5 trillion dollars." Yes, the question is "how" and "can we?" Stay long Euros, Gold, and Oil for now.
I get an IM from TraderGav this morning and he messages me this, "look at your Euro and Aussie. it is time for some beers." I logged into my account and sure enough I'm sitting on some sizable gains! I think I'd rather have my coffee first before I start drinking beers. :)
My EURUSD position is raging, its up 257 pips, my AUDUSD position is up 143 pips, and my new short position in USDCAD is up 53 pips. What a way to wake up!
I have several limit orders in to BUY more Euro's, Aussie Dollars, and Canadian Dollars on pullbacks. I'm so negative the USD right now that'd I'd short my neighbor's dog if I could.
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The dollar jumped, safe-haven U.S. Treasuries fell and stock futures rallied on the message of support from Washington. Shares of the two agencies listed in Berlin and Frankfurt surged on Monday. Freddie jumped 44 percent in Berlin. DOWNTREND TO RESUME
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And the size of the two GSEs is so large that a BIG mess is all but guaranteed. The real danger here is that these actions ultimately lead to a cross-infection of the Treasury bond market. If this happens the wave will be a tsunami that will wipe the US o
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Good to speed up the website
I knew the debt level of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was high but I didn't realize it was that high. Fannie and Freddie both sit on $5 trillion dollars of debt, with about $979 billion of that debt owned foreign countries, especially Asian countries. You better believe that the US Government is going to bail these two enterprises out, and fast.
A failure of these two enterprises would be the beginning of a global depression and spell doom for the US Dollar and our superpower status. Of course the bag holders for this bail out will be the American Taxpayer who's under a lot of financial pressure right now.
"At the end of the day, the holders of agency debt are significantly in overseas hands and foreign central banks. They had to do this because confidence could weaken further, and that would be very, very bad for the dollar," she [Sharada Selvanathan] said. [via Washington Post]So its best to stay short the USD, be long Gold, Oil, and currencies. I can't believe I'm saying this but I might go long the loony.
I went long the AUDUSD pair last night with the same intent to build a longer term position in it. My belief is that this pair will go to parity with the USD this year or early 2009. I'm still long EURUSD and sitting on a nice profit; I'll be adding to it on pullbacks, which it looks like might be today.
For all my neural net aficionados, the trend remains up for both these pairs.
Here's the current score:
- EURUSD +124 pips
- AUDUSD +7 pips
The largest blow up of a bank happened last week and fingers are being pointed in Washington. It seems that the blame game is rather fierce in DC these days, with fingers pointed to speculators for high oil prices, Alan Greenspan for creating the Real Estate Bubble, and Ben Bernanke for creating massive inflation. You never read about this when times are good and people are gorging themselves on "easy money."
Remember this, there's no such thing as easy money, anywhere. If it looks easy, its probably attached with some hidden risk somewhere. So now with IndyMac's failure this past Friday, tied directly to the subprime mortgage market, the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) is blaming NY Democrat Chuck Schumer for creating a bank run panic after he expressed concerns about IndyMac's viability.
OTS announced Friday that it was taking over the $32 billion IndyMac and transferring control to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation - and the agency pointed the finger directly at Schumer for the failure, accusing him of sparking a bank run by releasing a letter that "expressed concerns about IndyMac's viability." "In the following 11 business days, depositors withdrew more than $1.3 billion from their accounts," the OTS said in a statement announcing the California-based lender's takeover. The statement included a quote from OTS Director John Reich saying, "Although this institution was already in distress, I am troubled by any interference in the regulatory process." [via CNN]I'm glad he expressed his concern but this is just the tip of the iceberg for bank failures. I believe that we'll see only a fraction of the bank failures we saw back in 80's with the Savings and Loans scandal, but the damage will be massive. As more and more money gets concentrated in fewer banks, you can expect any future failures to be spectacular and destructive. I wonder who'll be to blame when the next bank fails.
I'm back from vacation feeling refreshed, relaxed, and ready to post. I was slowly burning out from work and blogging so I needed this vacation badly. We had a lot fun and I spent most of the time with my family, driving to all sorts of kid-fun places and doing some small "fix it" projects at home. I did step out a few times to have beers with the MarketDoctor and visit with, for the first time, his gold coin dealer.
Yes, yours truly bought shiny gold and silver coins for the first time in his life (I promptly buried them next to my shotgun and 2 year supply of plastic sealed toilet paper).
All joking aside, I decided to start saving in Gold and Silver. Yes, you read that correctly, I said saving. I'm not playing the Gold and Silver market by buying and selling these coins, I'm just transfering my paper money (USD) into Gold and Silver. Essentially I'm switching one asset for another shiny and hard one.
Yes, I know I won't be earning any interest on them but I will be maintaining my purchasing power. Right now if I park my savings in a bank account, I'll make maybe 2% interest. That would put me in a depreciation hole faster that shit sliding down a stick, if you believe that our true inflation rate is really between 10 and 12%.
If you ask me, maintaining purchasing power wins over a 2% interest bank account in a border hyper-inflationary economy any day.
Two days ago I went long EURUSD and just sat on it. My aim was to build up a larger position in the Euro on pullbacks because I believe this currency pair is going through 1.70 over the next few months. Today I sold half my position after bagging a +202 pip profit.
Days like this make up for all the recent crap and stop losses I had trading this market over the last month.
I think I'll have a nice beer or three!
BTW, I'm back from vacation. Posting to resume over this weekend and boy do I have a lot to write about!
Although I'm on vacation, I pop in from time to time on Twitter. I shoot off quick Tweets on what I see going on in the markets. You can follow me at neuralmarket if you are so inclined!
Although I'm still on vacation, I had to pop in and check on what the markets are doing. Stepping away from the markets is a great way to change your perspective and hopefully see any traps I might be stumbling into.
Gold has finally started getting active again, probably because of all this Iran attack talk. I'm guessing we'll see Gold at $1000/oz by the end of the year and possibly $2000/oz next year.
I'm curious to know if my readers think Gold could hit $2000/oz next year or if it will collapse back down to $500/oz.
