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Shantou reverses lockdown order

Reversal may have been ordered from above

Reversal may have been ordered from above
Earlier the city of Shantou, 1000km from Wuhan, had order a lockdown on travel. It was the first city outside of Hubei to do so.
As I highlighted, what was unique about the order was that it was forbidding all transport from entering the city. The lockdowns in Hubei prevent people from leaving.
So despite two confirmed cases in Shantou the aim here was likely to keep people out rather than keep the disease from traveling. Now they’ve had second thoughts and have sent a new notice that says the city will monitor people, vehicles, ships entering city but there are no travel restrictions. All taxi, car hailing, buses will operate normally.
What likely happened is that higher-up officials reversed the order because they didn’t want other cities to follow and a situation of every-town-for-itself. Either that or the situation isn’t as bad as feared.

Perpetuating A Myth Is Worse Than Contrived Lies

March 2015 Tigers in Africa 
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrive d and dishonest, but th e myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.” John F. Kennedy  
“Do you want to see another animal?”  My family were on the last leg of a wonderful trip to the Kruger Park in South Africa, and they were all getting a bit tired, but the French woman next to them had no such quarrels. “Yes”, she quipped, “I would love to see a tiger”. Everyone else was stunned into silence. I am telling you this little tale, not to make fun of the poor French woman, but because it reminds me of something we are all guilty of from time to time – unrealistic expectations. As I have learned over the years, if we cut corners on our homework, we may be expecting things to unfold in a way that just isn’t going to happen. In the following, I will review a handful of ‘African tigers’ – concepts or ideas which have become so engrained that a substantial part of the investment public takes them for granted, even if more in-depth research suggests otherwise.  We are confronted by difficult choices almost every day. The easy way out is to follow the herd and believe that a tiger was just spotted in Africa.  We all know, though, that it just isn’t going to happen (in the wild).  Tiger 1 – Equity returns will be just fine Academics operate with an expression called recency. It basically means that we, as humans, assign greater relevance and importance to more recent events than we do to more distant ones. When equities delivered exorbitant returns during the great bull market of 1982-2000, it became the norm to expect double digit returns from equities, despite the fact that equities had rarely delivered such high returns before the 1980s 

In Trading :Money is the score card, but the performance engine is love of the game.

One of the great challenges of trading is that it requires intense and singular concentration on markets, but also an equal focus on one’s performance in those markets.  That combination of market awareness and self-awareness enables traders to make the most of their “edges” in markets while also cultivating fresh sources of edge.
It is interesting that very successful traders usually don’t achieve monetary success and then walk away from markets.  That is because what drives them is not just the outcome, but also the process:  the ongoing challenges of market mastery and self-mastery.  Even after the money has been made, the game retains its appeal.
If your motivation is primarily to make money, you probably won’t get to the point of career success, because the inevitable periods of drawdown will sap whatever drive is present.  When the motivation is mastery, losing periods provide fuel for reflection, learning, and improvement.  

What is a Trader

What Is A Trader?
 I ask the man.
He looks at me.
A trader is not a bystander, nor a mindless member.
 Neither is he a selfless servant. No,
A trader is an ecosystem,
 Evolving,
 Refusing to be categorized or labeled,
 Branded or defined.
Not one role,
 Not one task,
 Not a tool or production line,
 Not one idea or small man. No,
A trader is an ecosystem,
 Independent,
 Challenging all else
 To survive and thrive, evolve and change, or
 Sink and die. Extinct.
A trader knows existing today is not tomorrow.
 Buttons pushed, research tested, markets predicted.
A trader lives for certainty in self and tomorrow’s unknown.
 Adapting to survive, evolving to advance, competing to learn.
A trader creates a pulse that connects and propels
 An ecosystem he designed to challenge our own.
So the trader returns back to the question,
 What am I and who are we?
Consistent, curious, and connected,
 Accurate, authentic, and adaptable,
 I strive to be.
 I am an ecosystem within this unknown we.
Know Thyself,
 He says to me.

Discouragement Reveals Our Courage

Discouragement is between you and your dreams. Imagine the ways you deal with it in life, business, sports, board games and romance, and then take a tip from deep in the desert. I’ve discovered after living here for two decades that desert rats, as they fondly call themselves, deal with the hardships or heat, privation, and loneliness in eight ways.

1. Books: This is a lifelong plunge.
2. Booze: So is this, so try the other seven first.
3. Exercise: This was my adaptation many years ago; the washes are my sidewalks.
4. Refrigerator People: Live with one hand on the door.
5. Hobby: For most, it’s fixin’ cars.
6. Estivation: Not found in some dictionaries, this is the desert form of hibernation.
7. TV: Hours of it.
8. Sex: Beats watching the cactus grow, or does it?

One of the first questions to ask a person to know them better is: “What do you do in your spare time?” The answer in the desert is always one of the above. And from that you will be discouraged or encouraged. Think of encouragement as a cheerleader that says, “Do it!, Don’t give up!” until you reach your dreams.

5-minute MBA ( 6 Lessons )

Lesson 1:
A man is getting into the shower just as his wife is finishing up her shower, when the doorbell rings.
The wife quickly wraps herself in a towel and runs downstairs.
When she opens the door, there stands Bob, the next-door neighbor.
Before she says a word, Bob says, ‘I’ll give you $800 to drop that towel.’
After thinking for a moment, the woman drops her towel and stands naked in front of Bob, after a few seconds, Bob hands her $800 and leaves.
The woman wraps back up in the towel and goes back upstairs.      
When she gets to the bathroom , her husband asks, ‘Who was that?’
‘It was Bob the next door neighbor,’ she replies.
‘Great,’ the husband says, ‘did he say anything about the $800 he owes me?’  
Moral of the story:
If you share critical information pertaining to credit and risk with your shareholders in time, you may be in a position to prevent avoidable exposure. (more…)

10 Types of Trading Animals:Which Are You?

The Bear- This trading animal believes the market will be going down and plays the short side. Bears think that a market is going to be very red.

The Bull- This trading animal is very optimistic that the market will be green. Bulls love to buy and believe their screen will be full of green.

The Whale- This trading animal can move prices when it buys and sells. The whale has to faze into positions and out of them so it does not make big enough waves to attract piggy backers. A lot of money can be made trading along side the right whale.

The Pig- This trading animal likes to trade big and often. The problem is that the pig does not know how to exit a winning trade he usually has too big of a target, too big of a position size, and too big of a time frame.

The Shark- This trading animal is just about making money, it gets into trades, makes money and gets out. It has little interest in big complicated theories or esoteric methods. The shark keeps it simple it makes money then moves on to the next opportunity. (more…)

Lessons from Lobagola

[A LoBagola, as described in The Education of A Speculator

by Dr. Niederhoffer, is a phenomenon whereby a market makes an
historically large run in one direction, usually up, and then at some
unpredictable point begins an equally extreme run back to where it
started.]

1. The pace of the elephants on the way down set the underlying conditions for the reversal. The expectation studies must include the number of failed reversal attempts, as well as the usual measures.

2. In actual migrations, elephants selectively eat trees/plants without killing them, the plants re-grow and the elephants eat them on the reversal (coppicing effect). Hence, elephants are able to use the same migration route because they know that the resources in these areas will be available to them. In markets, the footprint of the move can be observed in the patterns of time and volume and untouched bids and offers.

3. The most difficult part of trading lobagolas is: “nobody knows when they come back”. Qualitative observations about the nature of the migration might help. There are two main causes for elephant migration: resources and human intervention, the latter also is known to be able to change the path of the elephants. Some classification studies (not retrospectively) in market moves is appropriate. (more…)

Improve Cognitive Performance-3 Simple Steps

Here are three simple practices that can improve alertness, concentration, and overall cognitive performance:

1)  Hydration – Thanks to Henry Carstens for pointing this one out.  A lack of proper hydration has been found to negatively impact mood among women and decrease alertness and concentration among men.  A wide range of studies link dehydration to declines in short-term memory, concentration, alertness, visuomotor tracking, motor skills, and computational performance.  Water is essential for feeding the brain.


2)  Power Naps – Sleep is a restorative.  Although sleeping on the job has a negative connotation, research finds that power naps improve creativity, memory, energy level, and general cognitive functioning.  Naps also improve decision-making and problem-solving, with naps of different lengths offering different benefits.  A 20-30 minute nap is ideal for improving alertness.    

3)  Moving Around – Prolonged sitting carries a number of health risks.  Standing at the desk for a portion of the day can also increase energy and improve mood.  Exercise during the day improves sleep quality, energy level, and mood.


So what does that tell us?  The traditional way of working as a trader–sitting at the desk all day, hunched over and focused on screens, guzzling coffee and soda–is bad for our cognitive performance and bad for our health.  If you’re a world-class athlete, you will do everything possible to maintain your body in peak condition.  If you’re a world-class trader, keeping your brain in peak condition is equally important.  It makes little sense to spend time looking for more and better trade setups when our minds are poorly maintained to act upon those.