If you're not feeling stupid, you're not managing risk
Latest Posts
rssChina’s malls are empty, but whole cities?
The China bears tell us that stimulus spending there is largely being wasted. This report from Al Jazeera offers startlingly strong support for that proposition:
China’s economy is continuing to grow despite the global recession, helped by a massive government stimulus package of $585bn.
But doubts remain whether such strong growth can be sustained by public spending alone.Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan reports from Inner Mongolia, where a whole town built with government money is standing empty.
Four Stages Of Awareness in Trading
Have you ever noticed that awareness is the first step toward future growth? If you want to improve in any area, read on below to understand the four stages of awareness as they relate to good trading.
The learning curve in any endeavor involves four stages:
Unconscious incompetence (where the trader has no idea how much he doesn’t know about trading)
Conscious incompetence (where the traders realizes after initial losses that he has a lot to learn)
Conscious competence (where the trader has developed and is now doing well as long as he works his system and its rules)
Unconscious competence (where the trader has mastered the rules and also knows when to break the rules as conditions change, in a complete flow with the markets based on great experience)
Thought For A Day
Greece bans shortsellers
Greece’s securities regulator banned short-selling on the Athens stock exchange from today until June 28, according to an e-mailed statement from the Hellenic Capital Markets Commission today.
Updated at 15:02/28th April/Baroda
LUCK VS SKILL
Successful technical traders know that their technical analysis does not make them successful.
It does not take much skill to learn how to read a chart. In fact, there is plenty of programs that can do that for you. Technical analysis provides an historical record; it does not predict what will happen. History is not doomed to repeat itself in the markets. No, the skill comes in managing what happens next. The skill comes in managing the luck handed to us, good or bad.
Technical analysis is a tool that when used properly and for the right reasons will aid the trader in managing what happens at the right hand side of the chart, most of which is pure luck. Once in a trade the trader is 100% dependent on the decisions and news events that follow, none of which is in his or her control.
A reminder
Average intelligence is enough.- William Eckhardt
"A statement that can explain two contradictory outcomes explains nothing at all."
US Media Hits Record High, As CNBC Viewership Drops To Multi-Year Low
In today’s “less than surprising data point” category, the clear winner is Gallup’s analysis of people’s ever increasing distrust in the mass media. From 46% in 1998, the percentage of people who indicate they have “not very much/none at all” trust in mass media has grown to a stunning 57% currently. This is an all time record, as the general public perception toward the MSM has flipped over the past decade. Is it becoming increasingly more difficult to lie to the average American? In this time of unprecedented economic upheaval, where the political regime depends on just how far any given administration’s lies can penetrate amongst the broader population, this may well become the most critical factor in determining policy for the future. And with ever increasing alternatives of non-traditional media, could the legacy ad-supported media model, which by definition is one which espouses the status quo, be doomed precisely by the slow but steady education of the average American, who intuitively realizes that nearly every “fact” appearing in the media, especially that supported by any given political party, is a lie?
From Gallup’s study on media distrust:
For the fourth straight year, the majority of Americans say they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. The 57% who now say this is a record high by one percentage point.
The 43% of Americans who, in Gallup’s annual Governance poll, conducted Sept. 13-16, 2010, express a great deal or fair amount of trust ties the record low, and is far worse than three prior Gallup readings on this measure from the 1970s. (more…)
