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THE NEED FOR INDEPENDENCE

You need to do your own thinking. Don’t get caught up in mass hyste-ria. As Ed Seykota pointed out, by the time a story is making the cover of the national periodicals, the trend is probably near an end. Independence also means making your own trading decisions. Never listen to other opinions. Even if it occasionally helps on a trade or two, listening to others invariably seems to end up costing you money-not to mention confusing your own market view. As Michael Marcus stated in Market Wizards, “You need to follow your own light. If you combine two traders, you will get the worst of each.”

A related personal anecdote concerns another trader I interviewed in Market Wizards. Although he could trade better than I if he were blindfolded and placed in a trunk at the bottom of a pool, he still was interested in my view of the markets. One day he called and asked, “What do you think of the yen?” The yen was one of the few markets about which I had a strong opinion at the time. It had formed a particular chart pattern that made me very bearish. “I think the yen is going straight down, and I’m short,” I replied. (more…)

The Dragon bubble

something to remember as you hear this idiocy about China being the most powerful country on earth…

chinadragonChina is still a poor country. Notwithstanding the complexities of measurement, income per head, according to the World Bank, is roughly $3,000, a little less than Jordan and Tunisia.

In the extreme scenario in which US income per head remains the same forever more, and China’s income per head grows by a constant 8 per cent a year, convergence would happen in 2045. But this is silly maths.

The US will not stand still and China’s economic path is likely to be punctured sooner or later by a credit or asset crisis.

Further, it cannot grow by 8 per cent a year for that much longer, not least for demographic reasons. China is the fastest-ageing nation on Earth, with an age structure rather like that of Germany.

Its labour force will begin to decline in 2010 or so and fall every year for the foreseeable future. For a while, the transfer of the 80 million rural migrant pool to higher-productivity urban jobs will mask much of this impact, but only for a few years. (more…)

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