Economies out of recession

September 8th, 2009

The media is creating a hooha about France, Germany and Japan being out of recession and their economies being “fixed”, despite one quarter of less than 1% growth. I don’t think you can really say that their worst days are over just because economic output was up vs. previous poor quarters but anyway. The media is saying that these countries are happy while the UK and USA are still in recession and Germany, France etc no longer want to help with stimulus because they are “fixed”.

Has anyone considered what these three companies export quite large amounts of and what other countries, especially the UK and USA have been trying to stimulate?

The UK has barely any car industry, and the USA has broken companies like Ford and GM.

A scrappage scheme with a purse of ~£400M would allow approximately £4-5B to be spend on new german cars with an average price of £20-25k. Obviously they would not be the only cars bought, but when you put the worldwide picture into it, I think the amount of increased spending on German goods easily be £5B due to scrappage schemes.

What’s £5B in terms of the German quarterly GDP? 1.0%?

My Dissertation

July 1st, 2009

Abstract:

The graphical processing unit (GPU) is a piece of hardware that was primarily developed to enhance the realism and performance of computer games. In recent years however the hardware has been opened up to developers and GPU makers are now actively marketing the capabilities of the GPU as a generic processor. This project aims to evaluate what the GPU really has to offer and compare it to a more conventional processing device.

Andrew Rafter - Accelerating Password Recovery with Graphical Processing Units

The markets today

February 20th, 2009

Well the markets have tanked all week and I have felt it bad. I do however wonder if we are going to get a november style rally. It’s options day and we’ve hit new lows just like november. Is this downfall puts being forced into the money? Open interest of puts was seriously high for some financials.

We’ll have to wait and see, how much lower can we go for now though. Todays CPI shows that deflation isn’t occuring yet and that is depite oil sinking a lot since last year.

The effect of a housing collapse

February 16th, 2009

Estate agents aren’t buying those Mini’s!

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7891913.stm

thePirateBay.org

February 16th, 2009

I find this case amusing

A simple analogy to why they are not in the wrong. A library contains books. Someone finds a book on guns, explosives, chemistry or whatever. They make a bomb with this knowledge. The library gets shutdown for teaching people how to make bombs.

TPB has never shared anything illegal, it just tells computers what other computers have whatever they are looking for. If someone tells me where I can buy guns and I buy a gun is that person to blame for any illegal activity I commit with that knowledge?

I hope Sony etc lose again anyway. These big companies need a pay cut in the music industry. Too many execs getting paid too much for doing very little, remind you of another industry at all?

If we lived in a world built around common sense I’d say they were in the wrong, however if TPB lose this battle then surely we will have to follow suit with other examples?

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7892073.stm

Market will crash today : Reinhart

February 9th, 2009

Having posted on gGogle finance discussion board for around two years now I’ve seen a lot of people come and go. Some people really have their heads screwed on and most are complete idiots with no idea of basic logic or reasoning. Reinhart is one of the former. 

He often posted in quite cryptic ways and had some wacky ideas of which not all turned out to be true, but at least there was good reasoning and research behind his work and you could see why he was coming to such conclusions.

His biggest prediction to date was that the markets would crash on September 15th 2008, which turned out to be the day Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection.

As a result of this prediction he now has quite a following. This is no surprise, however I am still skeptical.

The DOW did not crash on that day, it fell 500 points but considering the news it was far from a crash and 5% is not what I’d call a crash either. The crash was weeks later starting in October. The DOW shed approximately 3000 points in 7 trading sessions starting on the 2nd October 2008. That’s a crash, ~30% in 7 sessions.

Google finance has the following data for the DOW on the 15th September 2008

Date: 15-Sep-08
Open: 11,416.37
High: 11,416.45
Low: 10,917.51
Close: 10,917.51
Volume: 432,965,000

Compare this day to September the 17th and 29th
Compare it to the 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th of October (Not every day was a huge drop but 3000 combined)
Compare it to 15th October, where the DOW nearly had a 1000 point high low delta, finishing down over 700 points, same goes for the 22nd.
Compare it to the 5th, 6th, 12th, 19th and 20th of November

These were all big down days too. It was not a secret that Lehman was going to collapse, since march many of us were speculuating it as the next to go from the day Bear Stearns collapsed. WaMu was on the list too although I think that was a forced move by the gov for reasons outside of public knowledge. They were certainly not in the state Lehman were.

So was Reinhart right? In my opinion only partially. There was not a crash and banks were expected to fail, the odd’s were with his prediction. Funnily enough though even with Lehman failing the market was extremely resilient.  That said it is still interesting to follow him. If he’s right this time the chances of co-incidence are decreased, however I am expecting a big down movement in the coming weeks anyway. I’m not going to take some 300 point drop as a crash. 300 points is just not a crash if you ask me. There have been many -3% / -4% days in the history of the markets, none of them crashes. -10% you have my attention. -6% I’ll start considering that it is not a co-incidence

Here’s a link to his blog, and one of his posts anyway. http://www.enterprisecorruption.com/?page_id=2025

You may want to read up on Legatus too, which is what his predictions are based on. Yes it’s religion. Don’t disregard it because of that though. Relgion is the greatest control system ever invented :)

The one eyed idiot

February 6th, 2009

Well as usual it seem’s some people cannot take a joke. I especially hate institutions/charities/whatever you want to call them such as these.

But the Royal National Institute for Blind People called the comment offensive.

“Any suggestion that equates disability with incompetence is totally unacceptable” said chief executive Lesley-Anne Alexander

Where do they get these ideas from? Where does it say people with one eye are incompetent? If it said two-eyed idiot would all two-eyed people be incompetent? Did these people never go to school? Anyone who is different always has their attributes pointed out. It’s a way of life.

I never see why these people are quoted, they never have anything intelligent to add.

Can we disagree with Clarkson? Okay the guy is absurd at times, but Gordon Brown does indeed have one working eye and is completely useless at handling this crisis.

I want to speak for the National Institute for Idiots

“Any suggestion that equates idiocity with disability is totally unacceptable” said chief executive Anne Idiot, “Or even worse, that they are Scottish.”

Phil is a millionaire. Phil has one leg. All people with one leg are millionaires?

At the end of the day is a joke. definition: JOKE

At least Clarkson identifies people for who they are rather than putting “lipstick on the pig” like politicians aka glorified liars.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7873624.stm

5 Month ROI

February 4th, 2009

This is my past 5 months of returns. This excludes a £3000 withdrawal made on the 8th October thus everything from that date onwards should be £3000 more.

You can see when Lehman filed chapter 11 and a few weeks later when the markets rallied hard again. Oh I wish that could happen again. My stomach can only handle that kind of leverage once a year though!

Just looking for steady returns these days. £1000-2000 a month. The biggest challenge is ensuring my cash flow falls as little as possible when the markets are sinking. The DOW is down about 1000 points yet I am up. That puts me in a good position when we rally.

5 Months return on investment

5 Months return on investment

 

Currently holding:
1000 (LON:SOLA / NYSE:SOL (ADR) )
1 NDAQ100
400 NYSE:BAC
100 NASDAQ:CSCO
150 NASDAQ:INTC
500 NYSE:GE

Ditched BARC and RBS when they were in profit. Same for C and BAC. Bought BAC again though in this latest fall.

Heavier than i’d like on GE, but hoping it will pay off. It’s a risky one!

It’s the d.d.d.d.d….D word

January 30th, 2009

Southern Water is to freeze the pay of its 1,600-strong workforce, including directors, because of the recession.

The company, which has 2.3 million customers in Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, said the aim was to avoid job losses.

Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7859038.stm

No raises, then lay offs then wage cuts. Looks like depression is on the way.

Some good books! (ha)

January 20th, 2009

My brother brought these to my attention

http://www.amazon.com/Think-Astrology-Grow-Rich-Money/dp/0963884719/

The tags has epic_fail (and many more). That takes you to more books like these.

http://www.amazon.com/Dow-36-000-Strategy-Profiting/dp/0609806998/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_i

http://www.amazon.com/Dow-2008-Different-This-Time/dp/1893958701/ref=tag_tdp_sv_edpp_i