LATEST BLOGS

How David Beats Goliath

I am not normally a fan of Malcolm Gladwell – I find his writing quite simplistic and often wide of the mark. I found his last missive Outliers to be particularly trite. Steven Pinker the noted psychologist wrote – The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who…

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Risk

A mate of mine in the medical profession lobed this in my inbox. I believe Jobs also tried acupuncture, herbal remedies, psychics and colonic irrigation – all of them profoundly unsuccessful and basically bullshit. In reading about Steve Jobs’ death, I was disappointed to learn that after his carcinoid tumor (a rare type of malignant…

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VIX

This interests me – the VIX remains at levels that would still be interpreted as representing fear among investors yet the S&P500  has put on 13% in recent days.

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Positive Contagion

I am not certain of its application to trading but I am certain there is one somewhere. Putting Like a Pro: The Role of Positive Contagion in Golf Performance and Perception Abstract Many amateur athletes believe that using a professional athletes equipment can improve their performance. Such equipment can be said to be affected with…

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Email Of The Month

Occasionally at blog central we get an email that requires us not to wait till the end of the month before awarding our email of the month. Sometimes some fucknut is so far above the competition that we have to go off early as no doubt our winner this month has on many occasions. Louise…

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Black Monday

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Twenty four years ago in 1987 the Dow suffered its worst one day decline in history losing  508 points or 22% closing at 1738.. This was the final nail in the markets coffin as it had dropped 1010 points from its August peak. The bull market that followed was extraordinary in its gains. By the…

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Black Monday

Twenty four years ago in 1987 the Dow suffered its worst one day decline in history losing  508 points or 22% closing at 1738.. This was the final nail in the markets coffin as it had dropped 1010 points from its August peak. The bull market that followed was extraordinary in its gains. By the…

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Why?

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Apropos of this article yesterday I found this  little piece – Episodes of extreme market volatility demonstrate the role of emotion-based trading in moving stock and commodity prices.  The internet stock bubble is an obvious example of emotions overtaking investors’ “common sense.”  More recently, the extreme moves of currency (e.g. USD) and commodity (e.g. gold and…

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Why?

Apropos of this article yesterday I found this  little piece – Episodes of extreme market volatility demonstrate the role of emotion-based trading in moving stock and commodity prices.  The internet stock bubble is an obvious example of emotions overtaking investors’ “common sense.”  More recently, the extreme moves of currency (e.g. USD) and commodity (e.g. gold and…

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I Rest My Case

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At the weekend I attended a conference on the Gold Coast – one of the speakers there made the cardinal sin in my eyes of drifting off topic and rambling. In my view the sign of an unprepared speaker. Part of his rambling related to a magical diet he was on – by the way…

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Normal Markets

Whilst I was away at the weekend this bounced into my inbox for comment (I don’t know the original source) SPZ s rallied 13.75% from the pre-NYSE open low on October 4 to October 12 high. Normal markets do not rally almost 14% in 6 sessions. Normal buyers do not behave this way. Volume was lacking…

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Normal Markets

Whilst I was away at the weekend this bounced into my inbox for comment (I don’t know the original source) SPZ s rallied 13.75% from the pre-NYSE open low on October 4 to October 12 high. Normal markets do not rally almost 14% in 6 sessions. Normal buyers do not behave this way. Volume was lacking…

Read more