Nick Gogert

Two Book Reviews on Derivatives: George Soros and Satyajit Das

actually the "knowledge" here refers to Soro's concept of proven fact(s). Can't really elaborate on what it means in regards to Heisenberg. Uncertainty in closed domain is physicists business, I don't have any skills in that arena. I like Popper but can only say the "philosophy of science" is more anthropology than science. Science is an anthropic construct of facts arranged to define phenomenon. Without an interpretation system science is just information. any way probably to soft an issue to raise here as Seeking Alpha domain is for applied trading theory. I will post something applicable in the future in regards to trading falsifiability a la gott's theorem.

Energy Affecting Food Prices

Raw materials are small component of total FMCG costs. they do hurt margins in the short term, until consumers get hit. The New York foodbank is at 25 years lows. People are hurting. Here is a video from reuters.
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China Bubble Continues to Correct Itself

rice bowl cracks
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Dow at 8000 Is Not Out of the Question

equity premium would indicate that is about write. 8,800 is the average return based on flat earning growth.

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Bearish Bloggers Too Optimistic!

dow 8800 based on equity risk premium. gogerty.com

Is it Safe to Buy Chinese Shares at These Levels?

Chinese stability will be severely tested in 08. closed systems rarely do well in inflationary or stressed environments. Short china.

VMware and Deep Packet Apocalypse

counter mutation will unfortunately always be a responsive action. In theory the next game beyond defensive mutations will be speed. The ability to rapidly transmit attack profiles across networks. Curious has anyone charted the growth rate of mutations and counter defenses relative to absolute traffic growth. Will the ecosystem grow faster than the function set?

The Prius Conundrum

cars beyond motive function are a vanity play. It is one thing to reduce carbon, yet another to be seen apparently reducing carbon. Green is the new black.

Hedge Fund Index Performance vs. the S&P 500

it is important to note that many hedge fund indeces have survivorship bias that can add 200-400bps/ year to performance.

Dissecting MBIA's Letter to Owners

bad models + financial geniuses are no competition for rational thought. Bad assumptions about correlation were behind this and I don't see that turning around. People aren't being duped by MBIA. Most likely MBIA believes in itself...and it will right up to the end.

Housing Market Tracker - Commercial Real Estate Uncertainty

check out the latest moves in the CMBX index.

Will Credit Default Swaps Be the Next Shoe to Drop?

counterparty risk could be very real. buying a CDS is a short gamma trade. A lot of funds with high sharpe ratios >2.00 get them playing the short gamma game. It always end in tears. With $45trillion in notional outstanding and no centralized clearing system, expect todays liquidity issues to look irrelevant once the CDS call start happening. Those monolines that insured CDO's could fail, causing in some cases an event of default in the CDO and consequently the CDS to trigger. Anyone have any idea how many CDS's are wrap risked?

The Next Credit Crisis Will Originate in China

an interesting point to note is that china has recently raised tier one bank capital requirements to 16%. this has the dual effect of reducing asset price inflation and shoring up the banks. It probably isn't enough for such a flawed system, but is a start.