Capitalogix

Some Things to Ponder After the First Quarter

Urgent, please read ASAP.

That's what gets done, of course. The urgent.

Not the article you haven't gotten around to writing, the trip to the gym that will pay off in the long run, the planning for your upcoming birthday party, dinner with your parents (who would love to see you), ten minutes to sit quietly, saying thank you to a friend for no real reason... no, we do the urgent first.

The problem, of course, is that the queue of urgent never ends, it merely changes its volume as it gets longer.

Yes, we've heard it said that it's the important, not the urgent, that deserves attention. But it understates just how much we've been manipulated by those that would make their important into our urgent.

via Seth Godin.

We just finished the first quarter of 2013.

It's been three months since New Year's Eve, and most New Year's Resolutions have been forgotten. As you prepare to face the rest of 2013, ask yourself these powerful questions from Greg Bustin:

1. What do I want?
2. What’s holding me back?
3. What’s the impact of not getting what I say I want?

Now get going. It's not just the first day of a new Quarter ... it's the first day of the rest of your life.

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The Markets Are Making New Highs - All Must Be Well?

Which countries have recouped all financial crisis losses?

For some perspective on the post-financial crisis rally, this chart illustrates how much of the downturn that occurred as a result of the financial crisis has been retraced by several major international stock market indices.

 

Based on work by Chart of the Day.

For example, the S&P 500 peaked at 1,565.15 back in October 9, 2007 and troughed at 676.53 back on March 9, 2009. With it's new high, it has retraced all of its financial crisis bear market decline.

As this chart illustrates, Germany (DAX), the U.K. (FTSE 100), and India (BSE Sensex) have recovered most of the losses suffered.  Meanwhile, China (Shanghai Composite), Japan (Nikkei 225), and France (CAC 40) have lagged. 

While all of these countries are trading above their financial crisis lows (i.e. above 0% on the chart), none are currently trading above their respective pre-financial crisis peak (i.e. none are above 100% on today's chart), except for the U.S.

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

Things are going pretty well considering ...

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• The Most Successful Leaders Do 15 Things Automatically, Every Day. (Forbes)
• China Denies Allegations of Cyber-Attacks by Army. Blames it on the Tooth Fairy. (NYTimes)
• Obama Granted CyberWar Powers. (FastCompany)
• China Calls for End to 'CyberWar'. (Forbes)
• A Siberian Winter - In Focus. (The Atlantic)

 

Trading Links:

• North Korea Preparing For Possible Strikes Against Continental U.S. (Salon)
• Cyprus Isn’t Over, It’s Still a ‘Disaster for All of Us’: Steve Forbes. (Yahoo Finance)
• Carl Icahn Unleashed. Wall Street's Richest Man Is On The Attack - Just Ask Michael Dell (Forbes)
• Microsoft's Explanation Of Why It Loaned Dell $2 Billion. (BusinessInsider)
• NYSE Prepares Disaster Backup Plan. Goal is to operate without human traders in case something shuts down its trading floor (Reuters)

When Sleep Doesn't Help Like It Should ... It Might Be The Position You're In

Front, Back or Side ... What's Your Perfect Sleep Position?

Instead of a good night's sleep, it may be hurting you.

Here is an infographic from the WSJ that lays it out for you.

 

 

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Fund Managers Are Alarmingly Bullish

Is 'Smart Money' Becoming 'Dumb Money'?

The Merrill Lynch Fund Managers Survey shows growing confidence and risk-taking. A quick glance revealed a number of interesting charts and insights.  For example, the chart below shows what has happened, historically, when liquidity conditions hit the levels they are at now.

 

 

Retail investors love the good days, but traders suspect that the end is near when it gets like this.  Click here to see more from the Survey.

Keep in mind, Price is the primary indicator.  You've got to trade the conditions as they are ... not assuming that they are better or worse than they really are.

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

What bothers you most about someone else is often a clue about what you don't like about your own circumstances ... or, a political cartoonist could point it out instead.

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• 10 Billionaire Biographies You Must Read. (Under30CEO)
• Lessons for Data Driven Businesses. (TechCrunch)
• The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food. (NYTimes)
• Desmond Tutu and The Dalai Lama's Extraordinary Talk On God and Religion. (HuffingtonPost)
• An Ingenious Way Of Using Google Maps To Tell Where Rich And Poor People Live. (BizInsider)

 

Trading Links:

• Forbes Lists the World's Richest People. The Billionaire List. (Forbes)
• Singapore: The World's Richest City. (WSJ Video)
• Google Passes Apple as Top U.S. Mutual and Hedge Fund Holding. (AppleInsider)
• Yardeni: S&P 500 Could Hit 1665 Mid-Year. (BusinessInsider)
• Sign of the Times: Celebrity Mila Kunis Talked Stocks on CNBC. Is that as an ominous sign for the rally, or just an indication that “dumb-money” is back in the game? (TDB)

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The Countdown of Life - How What You Do Adds Up Over Time

Are you happy how you spend your day?

Do you ever think about how most people choose to spend their time?  

As you might guess, average Americans spend 8 hours at work, maybe half an hour in traffic, a few hours watching TV in the evening.

But what if you looked at it another way - what if you added up all those hours over the course of your whole life? The following infographic shows the tally.

 

 

 

That half an hour in traffic adds up to over a year of your life. And those innocent hours of TV? They add up to 9 years for the average American.

"It's not the years in your life that count ... It's the life in your years."  ~ Abraham Lincoln

Are you giving time to the things you really care about?

How Far Is Too Far, When It Comes to a Market Rally?

Have you been waiting around to "buy the dip" on this latest stock market rally? If so, you have been waiting a long time.  And I'm not just talking about the recent 10-day winning streak.

The Dow surpassed its all-time high and the S&P 500 is not that far from the tops of 1553 on March 24, 2000 and 1576 on October 9, 2007.

How Strong is the Trend?

The chart below compares each of the equity markets. If a market is shown to be at 100%, then it's currently at a new three year equity high. If not, then the percentage number indicates how close it is to reaching a new equity high.

 

Also visit the Drawdowns Metric page to view historic equity high watermark charts.

 

Similar to 2000 and 2007, the economic, valuation and political background does not seem to support the budding euphoria.

But, as Citigroup's CEO said in 2007: “... as long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance. We’re still dancing.”  Remember how well that turned-out?

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Putting the Rally In Perspective

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Markets Around The World Are Rallying Again...

Stats on the Rally

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

So there is a new Pope.  They probably didn't pick him this way.

 

 

Here are some of the posts that caught my eye. Hope you find something interesting.

 

Lighter Links:

• 6 Key Things You Should Know About Pope Francis. (The Week)
• How the Conclave Picks a Pope: By the Numbers. (NYMag)
• 5 Things About Popes and Their Names; Like, Why Do They Change Them? (NPR)
• Boehner Turns Down Invitation to Visit Pope. President Obama invited John Boehner to travel with Vice President Joe Biden to Rome to watch the Roman Catholic Church install its first pope from the Americas in its 2,000-year history. (WSJ Video)
• How Rich Is the Catholic Church? Nobody really knows, because religious groups don’t need to follow regular accounting and disclosure rules. (Slate)

 

Trading Links:

• Lessons From Past Dow Milestones. (MarketWatch)
• Could the Dow really reach 36,000? Surge greeted by at least one outlandish prediction (TW)
• Secret and Lies of the Bailout. Taibbi warns the worst may be yet to come. (RollingStone)
• Move Over, Goldman. College grads are clamoring to work for a different firm this year. (TDB)
• Amazon Launches ‘Amazon Coins’ In Its First Move Into Virtual Currency. (TechCrunch)

A View From Above ... Making the Invisible Visible [Video from the Space Station]

It is easy to get lost in the admistrivia of day-to-day life.  Here is a quick antidote for that.

International Space Station astronaut Don Pettit lived on the station for about a year, and took many pictures while up there.  The results of his innovative photographic work and passion have changed the way we see earth from space.

Next, astrophotographer Christoph Malin took thousands of Pettit's individual photos and animated them, adding clips of Pettit giving a talk about his stay aboard the ISS and his photography there. He also set it to music, creating a simply stunning time-lapse video.

The result is certainly worth watching.  So, set aside 16 minutes of your busy day, sit back, and soak this in: “The ISS Image Frontier”.

 

"Making the invisible visible" - the ISS Image Frontier from Christoph Malin on Vimeo.

 

The video presents an interesting perspective of our planet.

Many astronauts, even from back in the Apollo days, talk about an incredible feeling they get after a few days in space. As they gaze on the Earth from above, they lose their feeling of borders and nationality. The Saudi astronaut Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud, who flew on the Space Shuttle in 1985, commented on this, saying , “The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.”

On a different note, the technique where they create a composite view of a visual time series is facinating.  It makes the invisible visible ... and has many uses in the big data space as well.  Very cool!

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