These are my last words on this topic I promise. We have learnt that merely taking the average annualised return for an index and then back dating that figure to achieve a hypothetical magical figure is naive and reflects a tremendous lack of knowledge as to how markets work. Likewise suggesting that someone simply buy all…
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I actually saw this article the other day whilst having breakfast after training. The opening point so caught my eye that I had to find the original source article and see if it was correct – my looking over someones shoulder guess was that is was not. The article begins with a somewhat staggering claim…
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When I run an explorer over an collection of stocks it has a number of benchmarks that a stock has to hit before being considered a potential trade. In addition to this standard exploration I also run what I call a dirty or bare bones scan – this is a scan with minimal hurdles for price…
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Two pieces on how numbers conflict with emotion and expectation. Star statistician Hans Rosling takes on Ebola The Case Against Early Cancer Detection
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………. For five hours that day, they prospected for mink stoles and freezer units, gold watches and diamond rings. One of them, Fay Maccalupo of Buffalo, New York, dug up a toy car. When she saw the real Ford it represented, she planted her face against the hood and began to weep, repeating, “I love…
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Around this time of year there is always a bit of chatter regarding a Christmas rally, so instead of relying on myth and hyperbole as most of the financial community do I thought I would fire up excel and have a look. The table below is of the average percentage gain for each month going…
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It has been awhile since I did a dodgy correlation matrix of some of our major stocks. These are price correlations only – a correlation above 51% is coded yellow, below 0 is coded grey.
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One of the more frustrating things about trading is that in some ways your returns are bounded by the environment within which you are investing. This is particularly true if you are dim enough to be a buy and hold investor. The underlying sentiments of markets ebbs and flows and this sentiment infects all aspects…
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