William Armstrong

Graphic Trends: Is China Selling U.S. Debt?

It is over-dramatic to say that a country is "selling" U.S. debt. They have enough maturing securities that they typically just let them roll off the books. If countries were actually selling, we would be in serious trouble. As it is we are only in trouble.

Comment to Mr. Gould, China does not have to buy dollars to maintain its currency peg. It's existing store of dollar reserves is several times their money supply and way more than what would be needed to peg a rate.

Looks Like an Intraday Double Top

Dear Ashadu, Jegan;

I've never before got into these comment skirmishes but this is too fun to pass up. Do you guys think that Warren Buffet, Peter Lynch, Jim Rogers, Oscar Schaefer, et al spend their time looking at the same squiggles that you do? Or, (how's this for radical) do you think that they might be reading the companies' financial statements, getting into the notes, consulting the companies' web pages, especially the investor relations part, looking at SEC filings, etc. Me, I don't know, but it makes me wonder.

And Jegan, before lathering yourself up in a tither about pattern recognition, you might want to reread that sentence you wrote. It appears you lost the pattern of the argument.

Looks Like an Intraday Double Top

I have finally had enough of this voodoo finance.

Intra-day double top? -- give me a break. Cumulative tick and advance?! My grandmother had that, but she lived a long life, because she didn't trade on the signals her disease was so personally sending her. Next you will be seeing the image of Fatima in your charts.

There is NO, repeat after me, NO evidence that reading entrails reveals patterns that have a predictive quality. Thousands of Phd students have proved this and it is written up for all to see in their theses and journal articles.

This kind of technical analysis is the alchemy of investors and bloggers who could not get in to a good B-school or get through the Graham, Dodd and Cottle Securities Analysis text without getting lost. Please spare us -- some of us are serious investors spending precious time looking for new information.