Capitalogix: Current Affairs

Current Affairs

April 13, 2013

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

Some things are harder than others ...

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

Lighter Links:

Clayton Christensen Wants to Transform Capitalism. Interesting insights. (Wired)
Why Weirdos Outperform Normals. (Linkedin)
Your Brain Is Hooked on Being Right. (Harvard Business Review)
Spotify’s Top 10 most viral tracks. Or, proof I'm getting older and more like my father. (Salon)
Online Passwords. At the height of the cold war, the "secret unlocking code" for America's nuclear missiles was 00000000. (Guardian)

Trading Links:

Dear SEC, This Is HFT "Cheating" At Its Most Obvious. Regards, Everyone Else. (ZeroHedge)
Computer Algorithms Rely Increasingly on Human Helpers. (NYTimes)
FBI Joins SEC in Computer Trading Probe. (FT)
Top 10 Richest Colleges for 2012—The Biggest Endowments. (AdvisorOne)
David Stockman On ‘The Great Deformation’ and Our Economic Doom. Are these new stock-market records just another bubble? (TDB)

Posted at 02:18 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Personal Development, Science, Trading | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

April 07, 2013

Why Are We Hearing So Much About Bitcoin Recently?

The Internet currency, Bitcoin, has seen an uptick recently as more people look to the virtual currency as a way to get rich or avoid the problems of fiat currency.

Bitcoin was created in 2009 by "Satoshi Nakamoto" — almost certainly a false name — in order to be anonymous currency, easy to use, self-regulating, and free from any central authority.

People are starting to realize they can now put their money in the cloud and access it anywhere, from any computer. As a result, the value of bitcoins is rsing.

Two months ago, one bitcoin hovered in the $10 to $15 range, and a $30 peak was considered ludicrously high. What about now?

The surging valuation suggests that people are starting to see ways to use it to create and protect value.

Bitpay, a company that facilitates bitcoin transactions, logged over $5 million worth of transactions in March alone, as people traded bitcoins for tangible items, mostly high-end electronics and precious metals.

Expect to hear a lot more about this in the media.

Posted at 02:13 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Market Commentary, Trading, Trading Tools | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 30, 2013

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)

Posted at 02:33 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Market Commentary, Trading | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 24, 2013

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.

Posted at 01:27 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Market Commentary, Trading, Trading Tools | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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)

Posted at 09:30 AM in Business, Current Affairs, Food and Drink, Healthy Lifestyle, Ideas, Just for Fun, Personal Development, Religion, Trading, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 16, 2013

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?

Posted at 04:27 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Market Commentary, Trading, Trading Tools | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

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)

Posted at 04:02 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Religion, Trading | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 11, 2013

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!

Posted at 03:33 PM in Art, Current Affairs, Film, Just for Fun, Science, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

March 10, 2013

A View From the Top - The Dow Makes New Highs

The Dow Made New Highs!

Wait, you don't care ... neither do a lot people.

Why? Pick your poison: 1. Distribution days are piling up. 2. Short-term volatility and correlation are picking up. 3. Dividend-paying, defensive stocks (consumer staples) are leading the market. 4. The deterioration among momentum stocks as a group has accelerated. 5. Momentum divergences are showing up in charts. 6. Or, perhaps, it is because Central Banks are propping things up.

Regardless, things have been moving higher ... and that is the market you have to trade.

Hold on; that isn't true. While there have been lots of headlines about the Equity Markets, that hasn't been the whole story this year. There are lots of other markets to trade.

The chart shows the top-ten performing markets, ranked by weekly performance, for the past few months. The data is color coded based on sector. The first column posts the current week's open performance followed by six columns of the most recent weekly market performance.