Capitalogix: Trading

Trading

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 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.

Click this link to view monthly, quarterly, and yearly views of this data.

Posted at 02:36 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Market Commentary, Trading | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 09, 2013

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

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

Lighter Links:

Shared Wisdom: Thoughts From Some of the Industry’s Best VCs. (PandoDaily)
How Slot Machines Raise Our Hopes, Even When We’re Losing. (NYTimes)
Finding Value in Information Super-Abundance. (Economist)
How Nate Silver Got It Right. It's not how much data you have, it's what you do with it. (NYBooks)
Big Data Can Tell By Your Tweets If You’re a Psychopath. (GlobalMail)

Trading Links:

Small Hedge Funds Outdo Elite Rivals. (FT)
What If They Held a Bull Market and No One Came? Disinterest in the Dow's new high. (WS&T)
Buffett Picks Douglas Kass as His 'Bear' for Berkshire’s Annual Meeting. (Dealbook)
Could North Korea Really Nuke the United States? Threat of a "Preemptive Nuclear Attack" (TW)
As Budget Cuts Loom, Austerity Kills Off Government Jobs. What effect will that have on the economy? (NYTimes)

Posted at 03:47 PM in Books, Business, Current Affairs, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Trading, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

March 02, 2013

Here Are Some Links for Your Weekend Reading

Perhaps you've seen the t-shirt before ...

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

Lighter Links:

Washington, DC, Is No. 1 — at Watching Porn. So they are doing something there. (Newser)
20 Tech Trends That Will Define 2013. Selected By Frog Design (Fastcodesign)
Seeking Cheaper Insurance, Drivers Accept Monitoring Devices. (NYTimes)
Toyota Unveils a Lexus that Drives Itself. But Says It’ll Keep Drivers in Control (MIT TechReview)
Getting the Right Dose of Exercise. Why Four Workouts a Week May Be Better Than Six. (Well)

Trading Links:

How Michael Jordan Still Earns $80 Million A Year. (Forbes)
Kass Gets ‘Summer of 1987 Feeling’. Sentiment and valuations make a strong bear case (CNBC)
Fed Action This Year More Powerful Than in 2012. (WSJ)
A Tax That Could Change the Trading Game. It’s all about ‘Carrots’ and ‘Sticks’. (NYTimes)
Perhaps You Are Not as Good an Investor as You Think You Are. Many investors have been behaving as if the bloodbath between October 2007 and March 2009 never happened. (Wall Street Journal)

Posted at 01:50 PM in Business, Current Affairs, Gadgets, Healthy Lifestyle, Ideas, Just for Fun, Market Commentary, Trading, Web/Tech | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

February 22, 2013

Inflation - The Hidden Tax

Saw this and smiled a little bit.

But the likely result isn't as funny.

Inflation is a tax on capital and it slowly eats away at your portfolio. It also takes a chunk out of your wallet.

With the printing presses running in Washington, how can you tell if things are getting more expensive? It isn't a trick question, you simply compare prices with what they used to be.