VIX
This interests me – the VIX remains at levels that would still be interpreted as representing fear among investors yet the S&P500 has put on 13% in recent days.
Risk
A mate of mine in the medical profession lobed this in my inbox. I believe Jobs also tried acupuncture, herbal remedies, psychics and colonic irrigation – all of them profoundly unsuccessful and basically bullshit. In reading about Steve Jobs’ death, I was disappointed to learn that after his carcinoid tumor (a rare type of malignant…
DetailsHow David Beats Goliath
I am not normally a fan of Malcolm Gladwell – I find his writing quite simplistic and often wide of the mark. I found his last missive Outliers to be particularly trite. Steven Pinker the noted psychologist wrote – The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who…
DetailsIts Friday
I was trolling through the online version of Rolling Stone the other day and came across their poll of the 100 Greatest Singers So I immediately went to see who was numbers 1 and 100 and found Aretha Franklin and Mary J Blige respectively and thought no argument there. Then I looked a little further…
DetailsBlack Monday
Twenty four years ago in 1987 the Dow suffered its worst one day decline in history losing 508 points or 22% closing at 1738.. This was the final nail in the markets coffin as it had dropped 1010 points from its August peak. The bull market that followed was extraordinary in its gains. By the…
DetailsWhy?
Apropos of this article yesterday I found this little piece – Episodes of extreme market volatility demonstrate the role of emotion-based trading in moving stock and commodity prices. The internet stock bubble is an obvious example of emotions overtaking investors’ “common sense.” More recently, the extreme moves of currency (e.g. USD) and commodity (e.g. gold and…
DetailsI Rest My Case
At the weekend I attended a conference on the Gold Coast – one of the speakers there made the cardinal sin in my eyes of drifting off topic and rambling. In my view the sign of an unprepared speaker. Part of his rambling related to a magical diet he was on – by the way…
DetailsNormal Markets
Whilst I was away at the weekend this bounced into my inbox for comment (I don’t know the original source) SPZ s rallied 13.75% from the pre-NYSE open low on October 4 to October 12 high. Normal markets do not rally almost 14% in 6 sessions. Normal buyers do not behave this way. Volume was lacking…
DetailsGold Coast
Just lobbed home from the Gold Coast – if ever you wanted a reason why boguns shouldnt reproduce just spent two days there.
