LATEST BLOGS

The Great Apple Suppository

I have written extensively about Apple in the past in the context of people falling in love with a stock and being blind to any possibility that their decision making could be flawed. This sort of situation which is also being repeated to a lesser degree with gold highlights the myriad of cognitive biases that…

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Gold Conspiracy

Now the gold nuts think it was a conspiracy because gold cant ever possibly go down…. From the ABC…”It looks as though it’s a coordinated, orchestrated attack on the price,” said David Baker, a managing partner with Baker Steel Capital Managers who helps manage hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold assets for the…

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Gold and Silver – Where Do We Go From Here?

The above title is not mine – I pinched it from a blog called Behavioural Macro that someone emailed me a link to. I used it because it is instructive of a number of failings that traders have. The blog this headline comes from is a contradiction – supposedly a blog with a leaning toward behavioural…

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Wingsuit Flight – Batman Cave

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In a week that showed us how appalling some members of the human race can be comes someone doing something bonkers but spectacular….in a good way. Hands up if you thought being long gold was terrifying during its recent fall off the cliff – trading has nothing on real life and only a fool thinks…

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Are Short Sellers Positive Feedback Traders? Evidence from the Global Financial Crisis

During the recent global financial crisis, regulators, politicians and high-profile media coverage blamed short sellers for amplifying stock market downturns. Regulatory authorities in a number of countries imposed short-sale constraints aimed at preventing excessive stock market declines. This paper examines bans on selected financial stocks in six countries during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis. These…

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The Death Of Value Investing

I got bounced this for comment and my immediate thought was why if value investing is doing so well why is one of the rotating images in the the page header what looks to be a shitty little Toyota 86. But that’s just me being bitchy… a more reasoned response follows. Value investing will never…

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America’s Health Disadvantage

This fascinates me and seems to be a valuable window into the values of a country. I still cannot wrap my head around the ludicrous arguments against universal health care other than to offer the opinion that the more conservative you are the dumber you seem to be. Image compliments of Master of Science in…

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John Paulson And Gold

I am not really much of a contrarian. You cant be when you are a trend follower and whilst I take mild amusement from magazine covers trumpeting that housing is the best investment in the universe in 2007 only to see housing end up in the toilet. It is not a strategy I find compelling…

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Resources Boom?

Last night I caught a snippet on Woodside calling it quits on a prject in WA. Ordinarily this wouldn’t worry me but I was intrigued by all the crap speak that surrounded the event. So I went in search of what was actually happening. – Woodside Petroleum Ltd. has decided against using the Western Australian…

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Introduction To Backtesting Metrics Part 2

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Kora Reddy of asxiq is back as  a guest contributer with part two of his introduction to backtesting metrics. It follows on from Part One which can be found here. Payoff ratio (Ratio avg win/avg loss): Payoff ratio is the system’s average profit in Dollar terms per winning trade, divided by the average loss in Dollar…

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