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Links -Read and Update yourself

  • That’s enough ‘kicking ass’, Mr President: Barack Obama’s attacks on BP may play well at home, but they are damaging millions of British people (London Times)
  • Banks with state debt ignore not-if-but-when default (Bloomberg)
  • As reported, Caja Madrid, Bancaja start moves to form Spain top savings bank, as BBVA says Spain may need €50 billion of capital to infuse into insolvent banks (Bloomberg)
  • BP weighs cutting dividend (WSJ)
  • Kerviel co-worker says SocGen should have known about trades (Bloomberg)
  • Waiting for inflation? It’s already here (Minyanville)
  • Enough with the economic recovery. It’s time to pay up (WaPo)
  • Irked CDO investors now targetting Merrill (WSJ)
  • Lehman emails that say “stupid” didn’t stay “just between us” (Bloomberg)
  • US firms holding record piles of cash underscoring worries about sustainability of financial recovery (WSJ)
  • Hungary PM says to issue second economic action plan in H2 (Reuters)
  • The bearish forecasters who rose to fame in the market crash of 2008 have, for the most part, not surrendered their pessimism. Their moment could be coming back around (BusinessWeek)
  • Risk/reward from current levels (Green Faucet)
  • The beginning of the end for Wall Street (RCM)
  • Daily humor from disgraced car czar Steve Rattner at the only venue desperate enough for clicks to still have him: How Wall Street stokes populist fury (MSN)

Great Nuggets from the Book-A Better Way to Make Money.

1.  The secret to losing money in the market is to know why.  “The losers “were ‘playing the market’, not using it intelligently.  The fellow at the other end of the deal, who was using it intelligently, not ‘playing the market’, is the one who got the money.”

2.  “It is an undeniable fact that indiscriminate trading in a hectic market will send one to financial oblivion quicker than any other known process.”

3.  “The most careful preparation-a systematic plan-is one of the essentials of success.”

4.  “Market action is not complex but surprisingly simple.  Yet it is often made to appear complex by newspaper forecasters and market letter writers.”

5.  “Market action is human nature in action.”

6.  All market movements are based on “two deep-seated and entirely natural emotions:  the desire for gain and the fear of loss.”

7.  “So anxious are people to find some talisman, some magic wand, that will help them secure the hidden riches of the market, that they will try anything from coin-flipping to crystal gazing to secure the desired assistance.”

8.  “What marvelous results could be attained in the business of making money if those who buy stocks would take a little time to learn a few simple facts about the market in which they are blindly reposing their faith.”

9.  “Market students are continually diverted from making true evaluations of securities and commodities because they study the statistics made by prices instead of the psychology of prices.”

10.  “Adopt one system of trading and stick to it, just as you employ and stick to one physician in whom you learn to have confidence.”

11.  “One of the most important points in your market education is to learn as early as possible that the customary and supposedly weighty market news is of very small importance.  The news only looks important.”

12.  “Don’t trade just because you can afford to lose.”

13. “Practice makes perfect is an old copybook adage that works well in the market place.”

14.  “If a trade fails to come out right, the error will be found in the operator-not the market.”

15.  “Trading is simple another form of business.  Treat it as such.”

16.  “Trend to the investor is like the vein of gold to the miner, who must follow the vein faithfully if he expects to get the yellow metal.”

17.  “Stocks are made to buy and sell…not to be bought and held.”

18.  No matter what a thing costs, stocks or otherwise, “it is worth only what you can somebody to pay for it.”

19.  People will always be prone to be extravagantly optimistic or dolefully in the slumps and “in this action is unlimited wealth for the men who realize this fact and will use it with confidence and decision.”

20.  “Success is the most desirable thing in the world, but it is an eliminating contest.  It may trample the thoughtless trader into the dust, but it will pour large treasure into the laps of those who work in sincere harmony with its laws.”

Trading is a business

Trading can be mastered if you concentrate your efforts on how you will react to price rather than desiring to predict it. Reacting is a business decision, predicting is an ego play.

Traders want to make money. Losses in the long run don’t matter. Forecasters (prophets) want to be right (ego). And that’s all that they are concerned about.

Don’t decide anything (ego), let the market do that job for you (business).

Like any other business you have a business plan and the financial portion of that plan is the most important.

In this business your inventory is stocks, bonds, futures or options. Like any other business you define what an acceptable loss is on an item and what is an acceptable profit for the risk undertaken. Like any other business if the item of inventory doesn’t do what you expected it to do, you put it on sale and liquidate it to raise capital to purchase inventory that will do what you want it to do. Your acceptable loss is your stop. Your money management system tells you how much that is. Your mark up is dependent upon your trading system and trading style. It doesn’t make any difference if you are a day trader or an investor. Like any business, some turn their inventory 10 times a day, some 20 times a year and some only twice a year. Your trading style and inventory volatility will tell you what your turnover rate will be.

Trading is a business and if you treat it as anything else you will be a loser.

The Probabilities Win Every Time

Columnist David Brooks wrote an interesting article in the New York Times on how to effectively use probabilities:

In 2006, Philip E. Tetlock published a landmark book called “Expert Political Judgment.” While his findings obviously don’t apply to me, Tetlock demonstrated that pundits and experts are terrible at making predictions.

But Tetlock is also interested in how people can get better at making forecasts. His subsequent work helped prompt people at one of the government’s most creative agencies, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency, to hold a forecasting tournament to see if competition could spur better predictions.

In the fall of 2011, the agency asked a series of short-term questions about foreign affairs, such as whether certain countries will leave the euro, whether North Korea will re-enter arms talks, or whether Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev would switch jobs. They hired a consulting firm to run an experimental control group against which the competitors could be benchmarked. (more…)

Abu Dhabi Lecture: Short Summary

He began by explaining why extreme deflation scenarios are extremely unlikely under the Bernanke Fed, comparing the Fed chairman’s commitment to an anti-deflation strategy to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a book that also clearly stated a policy program in advance but was not widely believed until it was too late.

Likewise Dr Faber believes Mr. Bernanke is committed to printing money and will in any case have very little choice because of entitlements and the US constitution. Thus he could see the S&P 500 dropping back from current levels to say 950 in this autumn but by then Fed monetary policy would be strongly inflationary and bring the market back up.

Dr Faber pointed out that with the US so deep in debt the Fed thinks it cannot allow asset prices to drop below a certain point because that would devastate the balance sheets of the banks with debt deflation. But he thinks in the long run this is just rolling up another crisis for the future that will destroy the US dollar and cause an even bigger financial crisis.

Declaring himself the ‘most pessimistic of forecasters, nobody is more pessimistic than me’ Dr Faber outlined a scenario in which the dollar has to be replaced by another unit after a future inflation, and holders of cash and bonds lose virtually everything in the process.

20 Nuggets from a Book : A Better Way to Make Money

1.  The secret to losing money in the market is to know why.  “The losers “were ‘playing the market’, not using it intelligently.  The fellow at the other end of the deal, who was using it intelligently, not ‘playing the market’, is the one who got the money.”

2.  “It is an undeniable fact that indiscriminate trading in a hectic market will send one to financial oblivion quicker than any other known process.”

3.  “The most careful preparation-a systematic plan-is one of the essentials of success.”

4.  “Market action is not complex but surprisingly simple.  Yet it is often made to appear complex by newspaper forecasters and market letter writers.”

5.  “Market action is human nature in action.”

6.  All market movements are based on “two deep-seated and entirely natural emotions:  the desire for gain and the fear of loss.”

7.  “So anxious are people to find some talisman, some magic wand, that will help them secure the hidden riches of the market, that they will try anything from coin-flipping to crystal gazing to secure the desired assistance.”

8.  “What marvelous results could be attained in the business of making money if those who buy stocks would take a little time to learn a few simple facts about the market in which they are blindly reposing their faith.”

9.  “Market students are continually diverted from making true evaluations of securities and commodities because they study the statistics made by prices instead of the psychology of prices.”

10.  “Adopt one system of trading and stick to it, just as you employ and stick to one physician in whom you learn to have confidence.” (more…)

What Warren Buffett said…

W.B* For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn’t work is when you start doing things that you don’t understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it’s going up.
* Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results.
* The important thing is to keep playing, to play against weak opponents and to play for big stakes.
* Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well.
* There are all kinds of businesses that Charlie and I don’t understand, but that doesn’t cause us to stay up at night. It just means we go on to the next one, and that’s what the individual investor should do. (more…)

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