I'm surprised by how much of my typing is now done outside of
traditional e-mail or business software (like Microsoft Word). Instead,
my typing is done in web-based applications like my blog, Facebook, or
Twitter. That's where a program like Asutype really shines.
I have been using a very effective spell-checking and text expansion program for several years now. It works so well that I forget it's there, even though it automatically fixes most of my typing errors and makes it easy for me to enter repetitive phrases or pieces of information. The bottom-line is that it helps me type more accurately and much faster.
There are three basic ways to use the software.
Correct Mistakes Interactively. The first is an interactive spell checker that works as you type (hence the name "Asutype"). When you type something that isn't in its dictionaries, it pops up a correction box with several of the most likely replacement candidates. This provides a quick and easy way to fix your spelling without having to retype anything.
Correct Repetitive Mistakes Automatically. The software also keeps track of the mistakes you make as well as the corrections that you apply and allows you to create a list of automatic entries. From time-to-time I'll review the list of corrections and choose to add them to my permanent list. When I do that, then next time I mistype that word or phrase, the software automatically fixes it (without even asking). This means I type much quicker because most of my typing mistakes are repetitive and that means I make them consistently). I'm actually surprised by how many different ways I could misspell certain words. It's not so much that I don't know how to spell them, it's that my fingers don't do the right thing when I'm trying to type quickly or get distracted.
Automate Repetitive Typing. The software also has some very powerful text expansion capabilities. I think of them almost as abbreviations or shortcuts. There are certain words or phrases that I type often (examples include: Capitalogix, our web address, or phrase like "please contact me if you have questions or comments".). Another example might be to use the abbreviation "VTY", which could expand to "very truly yours" … and then your signature block.
You never have a second chance to make a first impression, so I'm glad that Asutype helps me seem like a good speller. Here are the links for you to find out more information or to download a trial copy yourself. I don't have anything to do with the company other than I'm a happy user. I've had my license for years, and I can vouch for their service, support, and the good experience that I've had with their tool. I hope you like it too.
We just saw a 24% rally unfold in a little over two weeks. But a rally like that doesn't make too many people happy. For most, this is where fear and greed collide.
Prudence dictates that position size and risk should stay small while in a serious long-term downtrend, especially with a stock like Citibank recently trading under a dollar. Yet a rally that big and steep often makes people feel like they should have been in the market, and wish they would've traded "this, that, or the other" stock or sector that they noticed a week or two ago.
Don't Worry, This Little Bit of Mind Control Won't Hurt A Bit ...
This week I saw several news reports using the phrase "The Great Recession". This might be part of an interesting strategy on the part of the International Monetary Fund, which used that phrase a few weeks ago. Naming something gives you control over it (or at least the appearance of control over it). And "Recession" sounds so much less severe than "Depression". If you can just get people to adopt that phrase, it might give them enough hope that you actually avoid a depression? But just as it's hard to call a recession until you're well into it, I think it's pretty hard to tell whether you come out of it than till you're actually out of it. Still, it is a nice try.
Likewise, I have been impressed by how the administration has played the financial crisis lately. There seem to be some sound ideas, talked about in ways that make sense to the public, which get announced at strategic times. Moreover, it seems to be working; and the market looks like it's responding.
However, the key word there might be "looks". I'm certainly not convinced that the worst is over yet.
Where Are We in the Cycle?
A few weeks ago I noted the spread between smart money confidence and retail investor pessimism was at levels that often indicated short or intermediate-term bottoms. In hindsight it worked again, and there was a pretty sizable rally. However, retail traders are becoming confident again, too quickly for my taste. And the spread is no longer significant. So I don't see an edge there at this point.
I don't believe this is the end of the bottom. Instead, I hope this is the beginning of the bottoming process. My sense is that there are many businesses hanging on by a fingernail, or sheer will. Some of them are getting tired, others are running out of money, while still others are finding it hard to sell something in this environment. The point is that I suspect we're due for another round of culling the herd. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either.
What I'll be looking for, this time, is that I think we'll see a number of deals get done as prices get lower again. The companies that are going to survive, the companies that are going to thrive, the companies that are going to become new leaders in this next phase of our economy are going to start moving forward again.
Chances are this will give you a different perspective on their impressive land-grab and expansion.
There are three simple reasons I'm looking at Walmart. Tough economic times have Americans looking to save money. Proximity is power. And that means most Americans don't have to look far to find a Walmart. So I'll be watching how they do.
Data visualization is an important tool in trading. Sometimes work skills carry-over into personal life. Watching stuff like this interests me. Not sure if that means my hobby is part of my work, or if work is part of my hobby.
I
remember the first time I used TiVo. I instantly knew it was a
disruptive technology that would change how people watch TV. It's even
better than I thought I was. That doesn't mean it was a great
investment in the stock market; but it was a terrific investment in the
household.
And the ripples of this technology are still being felt
whether you're using TiVo or some other digital video recorder.
The Kindle is a Disruptive Technology Well-Placed In the Consumer Adoption Cycle:
Using
a Kindle reminds me of the first time I used TiVo. Only this might be
different, because we're several generations of technology further
along. And the world is ready for it.
The
Kindle 2 is ergonomic and reasonably fast. It is a great way to read.
It also has a built-in Internet connection, which means you have access
to content virtually anywhere. And it just so happens that the content
you want is the content Amazon sells.
Chances are you already go to Amazon's website. Because of
economies of scale, not only do they have a bigger inventory, they have
a bigger community of users who rate the books and write reviews of the
books.
A few years ago, Barnes & Noble and Borders tried to compete
with Amazon online. As a user, I went to the competitors' site once or twice ... but the
first time Amazon had the book I was looking for and the other site didn't ... or
the first time that Amazon had reviews of a product and the other site didn't -
well, that was all it took to stop going to those sites.
And
Amazon
continues to extend that edge with bigger inventories, more product
lines, and a truly mature delivery pipe. Their storefront and
shopping cart has been used tens of millions of times is an important
part of the value proposition.
Psychologically Smart, Part 1: Amazon Banks on Funny Money:
Once you have a profile on
Amazon, it doesn't feel like you're spending money. Casinos know the
token is treated differently than cash.
On the Kindle, Amazon makes it easy for you to
buy with "one click" over their "Whispernet" always-on data network.
So you don't hear or feel your money as it leaves your account. This is
brilliant.
Psychologically Smart, Part 2: Amazon Banks on Your Addiction to Instant Gratification:
Even better, though, is how they handle samples. It is already changing how I use Amazon. With the Kindle, I
have instant gratification.
I can find a book and download a sample in
seconds. In many cases, the Kindle version is dramatically cheaper than
the old paper version. So, I suspect that I'll be downloading samples
of many books. And when I like the author's writing style or find a few
ideas that I can use, I'm one click away from being able to read the
rest of it (even if I'm in a meeting or stuck at the airport).
Over
time, I might find that I prefer certain books in paper format. On
the other hand, I've been surprised by how likely I am to read a little
of this and a little of that.
And being able to have a whole bookshelf
is a pretty cool competitive advantage too.
As the recession deepens, the Federal Reserve announced a plan to revive the struggling economy. It will pump more than an
extra $1 trillion into the mortgage market and longer-term Treasury
securities. Short-term, equity markets did push higher.
The problem with desperate measures, though ... they can end up stoking fear, not confidence. In this case, the plan to buy-up bonds caused the decade's steepest one-day fall in the Dollar against the Euro as investors worried that the Fed's decision to print new money would lead to inflation.
One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure:
In business, I'm constantly facing a build or buy decision. Namely, is it cheaper to develop something that does what I want, or can I simply buy something that does it already?
Well, that equation may soon produce a different result for many companies. A key indicator is flashing. Companies are starting to notice. What is it?
For the 4th quarter of 2008, Argus Research notes the "Q" ratio declined its lowest level since the 4th quarter of 1991. This implies that it is cheaper to buy a company than to build a replacement. To me this is an early indicator that merger and acquisition activity is about to increase. So, expect to see more deals like IBM's proposed acquisition of Sun.
Sector Rotation: Will Financials Take the Lead?
Sector rotation theory posits that Financials are a leading indicator of the economy. Historically they start to perform well six to twelve months before the general market. Perhaps one of the reasons is that they tend to generate big fees from M&A activity. And M&A activity starts to get interesting while certain assets are still cheap. Consequently, I'm watching the Financials and the level of deal activity.
Last week I posted a chart highlighting the performance of the banking sector, noting that it hadn't been able to sustain a rally longer than a week for quite a while. Well, it looks like decision time. Just a few weeks ago, Citi's stock price was under $1. Saturday Night Live made a joke that it was the first major bank to make it onto McDonald's value menu. Well, it has tripled since then. And the rally has taken prices in this sector to interesting levels. The chart below shows that the rally has a series of heavy technical burdens to overcome.
However, making it past this price area would go a long way towards convincing me that an intermediate term rally was starting.
One other potential negative, indicating a reversal back to the down-side (at least in the short-term), is that the Equity Put-to-Call ratio just hit its ten month low ... and that is often a reliable sell-signal.
The Red Ribbon is a fun video worth watching. It is a reminder that Hope, Inspiration and Passion are important catalysts to moving forward, regardless of what you do for a living.
It's a puzzle. Is this yet another bear-market bounce, or the start of something more meaningful? It was just the second gain in 10 weeks; but the 12% rise from 12-year lows was enough to start the debate.
The usually bearish, and quite well-respected, Doug Kass suggested that we might be seeing a "generational low" here. Personally, I'm skeptical. But when Doug Kass and Warren Buffet agree, I'm going to try and see what they see.
Also note that tech is leading, and the financials are doing reasonably well, right now, too. For a sustained rally, that is as it should be. Nonetheless, the proof will be in the follow-through.
With that in mind, here is a chart of the Banking Index from Bill Luby's VIX and More. It shows that we've had one-week rallies several times since August. A bigger move might be an important sign?
Also note that the major US Equity Indices are rallying into the overhead resistance created by the November lows. And that is where we start the week.
There's a joke amongst traders: The Trading Gods allow you to buy the low-tick then sell the high-tick ... once. After that, you're free to do the opposite as often as you want.
Note that there is a kernel of truth in most good humor ... and if you haven't seen Jim Cramer on the Daily Show, it's worth watching.
Last week's article predicted that Twitter is likely to be in your future. In this article I'm going to share some guidelines and the best tools I've found to make your Twitter use easier and more productive.
The number of third-party tools available for Twitter is one of the best indications that the service is destined to continue growing in functionality and popularity. I tried many things and settled on a few that work well. Hopefully that list will save you some time. It is at the bottom of this article.
Twitter 101: The Basics.
Twitter can be anything you want it to be. If you only want to follow a few friends and keep things very social, that's okay. On the other hand, if you want thousands of followers and the ability to drive traffic to your website, it's still okay.
I've come up with some basic guidelines that work well for me. I'll share some of them with you here.
First, you never have a second chance to make a first impression. So make a good first impression. That means choosing the right user-name and picture to support the image you want. It also means that you should fill-in your one-line bio in a way that makes people want to find-out more about you. Try to use the key words that will help people find you
using search (or choose to follow you when they look at your profile).
Second, Twitter is not e-mail, and you're never going to read all of it. This was hard for me because I'm used to starting at the beginning and ending at the end. I like that kind of structure. However as the number of people you follow grows ... the stream of information becomes overwhelming. It helped me to think of it as a stream. That meant I didn't have to drink all of it, but it was there for me to dip my cup into anytime I wanted.
Third, Twitter doesn't limit your ability to follow people for the first 2,000 people. For most people that means that Twitter doesn't put any practical limit on them. However, after the first 2,000 followers, Twitter restricts your ability to follow additional users using a simple guideline ... you are limited to a 10% extension of your followers. So if you have 3,000 followers, then Twitter will allow you to follow up to 3,300 people. With very few exceptions, that means that I un-follow someone if they don't follow me back. A lot of people follow that rule. This brings me to the fourth rule.
Fourth, you'll end up with a lot more followers if you follow people back. Tony
Robbins and Bill Gates can get by following a dozen people and still
have 100,000 people follow them. I suspect that you and I won't be able to do
the same thing. At first, I spent a lot of time deciding whether I was
going to follow a certain person. Over time, however, I started to set
the bar much lower. It simply took too much time to filter. So now, I
follow back almost everyone, but I'm very quick to un-follow someone
whose messages are too frequent or too distracting. This was simply a
more efficient way of dealing with the practical realities of using
Twitter.
Fifth, this is social media ... be social. For every two or three posts, have at least one with a link to an interesting article not by you. Also, study a few of the stars, thought leaders, and examples of your target customer. Note that they have different behaviors. Then match and mirror relevant behavior (follower/followee ratio, number of posts with external links, etc.).
Hope that helps.
Here are the tools I use to make working with Twitter easier and more productive.
Browsers:
TweetDeck: Very nice, full-featured Twitter browser application. I keep coming back to this.
Twittelator Pro: Complete iPhone Twitter client. I tried them all, this was the best for me.
Power Twitter: If you use Firefox, then try this add-on. It works very well.
I finally got around to reading this book, and it was worth it. This
review has links to videos and related material to help you get more
from the book. Bottom-line: It was fun and easy-to-read ... with short
chapters and memorable stories that make practical points.
Magic, Markets and the Mind ... A Little Back-Story.
Magic fascinated me when I was younger. I loved learning new and cool illusions. There's something satisfying about seeing behind the curtain, and understanding how it works.
Now, as an adult, I'm struck with how similar that is to my fascination with understanding stock markets and trading techniques. Of course, increased skill in this area is potentially rewarding financially. But there also is something intellectually pleasing about believing you can see and understand what's really happening in the markets.
Taking that a bit further, it's not surprising that people spend so much time and money trying to understand how the mind works. Our brains didn't come with a user's manual; though sometimes it would be useful to have one to help understand why something is happening or
how to get a different result.
Some aspects of my mind that truly amaze me, while other parts of my mind confound me. Have you ever asked yourself: How can someone so smart be so dumb, at the same time? I suspect that most people have.
Obviously that is why there are whole industries that help shine a light into that darkness. Whether it's through personality or temperament testing, learning to use NLP, or finding some other way for us to optimize our performance or understanding ... people want insights and answers.
That is why I'm happy to review the book Predictably Irrational. It was interesting and fun; and it provides some insights worth having. Think of it as a few of the missing chapters from our Owner's Manual.
Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions.
When it comes to making decisions in our lives, we think were in
control. We think we're making smart, rational choices. But are we?
In a series of illuminating, often surprising experiments, Professor Dan Ariely refutes the common assumption that we behave in rational ways.
His book, Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape
Our Decisions, contains an interesting mix of psychology and economics, he calls "behavioral
economics". The main point of the book is that while irrational behavior is a
part of human nature, people tend to behave irrationally in a predictable fashion.
Consequently, Ariely suggests that we would be better off if we designed systems to compensate for our limitations. With that in mind, this
book can change the way you interact with the world, one decision at a
time.
Why Smart People Do Dumb Things:
Blending
everyday experience with research, he explains how
expectations, emotions, social norms, and other invisible, seemingly
illogical forces skew our reasoning abilities.
Not only do we make
astonishingly simple mistakes every day, we make these same types
of mistakes, repeatedly.
We consistently overpay, underestimate, and
procrastinate.
We fail to understand the profound effects of our
emotions on what we want. And
We overvalue what we already own.
Yet
these misguided behaviors are neither random nor senseless. They are
systematic and predictable - thus, making us predictably irrational.
Here is a brief video that explains more about how you can use behavioral economics to combat the Predictably Irrational.
The Book Illustrates Some of the Ways We Exercise Bad Judgment in the Economics of Life.
There are a lot of interesting tidbits in this book. For example, the book explains why cautious people make poor decisions when excited, or why
you enjoy the more expensive option over its cheaper counterpart.
One study in the book shows that Cheap is Good; But Free Seems Better. When asked if they’d like a 15-cent Lindt truffle or a one-cent Hershey’s Kiss, 73% of people buy the truffle. However, simply drop a penny off the price of each - so ... a 14 cent truffle or a free Hershey’s Kiss - and only 31% choose the Lindt. Is eating the chocolate you don’t really want worth saving a penny? Probably not; but it is human nature.
According to Ariely, we should re-examine and re-cast our understanding of economics to reflect the systematic (and unsurprising) irrationality of human nature. Ariely argues that greater understanding of previously ignored or misunderstood forces (emotions, relativity, and social norms) that influence our economic behavior brings a variety of opportunities to better predict individual motivation and consumer choice, as well as economic and educational policies.
There is a kernel of truth in most good humor. So last week I posted a clip of Jon Stewart poking fun at CNBC on the Daily Show ... and it was funny. This week, Jim Cramer went on the Daily Show to defend himself ... and the results are funnier, with even more kernels of truth. Here are un-edited extended versions of that interview. This is certainly worth watching.
Capitalogix Commentary 03/27/09
We just saw a 24% rally unfold in a little over two weeks. But a rally like that doesn't make too many people happy. For most, this is where fear and greed collide.
Prudence dictates that position size and risk should stay small while in a serious long-term downtrend, especially with a stock like Citibank recently trading under a dollar. Yet a rally that big and steep often makes people feel like they should have been in the market, and wish they would've traded "this, that, or the other" stock or sector that they noticed a week or two ago.
Don't Worry, This Little Bit of Mind Control Won't Hurt A Bit ...
This week I saw several news reports using the phrase "The Great Recession". This might be part of an interesting strategy on the part of the International Monetary Fund, which used that phrase a few weeks ago. Naming something gives you control over it (or at least the appearance of control over it). And "Recession" sounds so much less severe than "Depression". If you can just get people to adopt that phrase, it might give them enough hope that you actually avoid a depression? But just as it's hard to call a recession until you're well into it, I think it's pretty hard to tell whether you come out of it than till you're actually out of it. Still, it is a nice try.
Likewise, I have been impressed by how the administration has played the financial crisis lately. There seem to be some sound ideas, talked about in ways that make sense to the public, which get announced at strategic times. Moreover, it seems to be working; and the market looks like it's responding.
However, the key word there might be "looks". I'm certainly not convinced that the worst is over yet.
Where Are We in the Cycle?
A few weeks ago I noted the spread between smart money confidence and retail investor pessimism was at levels that often indicated short or intermediate-term bottoms. In hindsight it worked again, and there was a pretty sizable rally. However, retail traders are becoming confident again, too quickly for my taste. And the spread is no longer significant. So I don't see an edge there at this point.
I don't believe this is the end of the bottom. Instead, I hope this is the beginning of the bottoming process. My sense is that there are many businesses hanging on by a fingernail, or sheer will. Some of them are getting tired, others are running out of money, while still others are finding it hard to sell something in this environment. The point is that I suspect we're due for another round of culling the herd. That's not necessarily a bad thing, either.
What I'll be looking for, this time, is that I think we'll see a number of deals get done as prices get lower again. The companies that are going to survive, the companies that are going to thrive, the companies that are going to become new leaders in this next phase of our economy are going to start moving forward again.
Business Posts Moving the Markets that I Found Interesting This Week:
Lighter Ideas and Fun Links that I Found Interesting This Week
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