Mafeking

Jim Rogers on the Next 10 Years

Actually there is no such language as 'Chinese'. Does Rogers mean Mandarin or Cantonese . Mandarin is most widely spoken, but Cantonese is most common in Southern China and HK.

Such a blunder seems strange from people who purport to be experts on China.

Sobering Stat: ARMS Index Indicates Market Is at Peak, Not Bottom

I am a well known coin toss expert that uses a proprietary coin toss methodology: heads the market goes up; tails the market goes down.

I tossed the coin for the coming week and the coin came up heads. Obviously that is rubbish so I kept tossing. On the fourth attempt the coin came up tails.

I declare that my methodology (which is close to the ARMS approach of evidence based analysis) suggests the market will go down this coming week.

Please note: the tossing method described in this posting should not be confused with simple coin tossing using a hand. All coin tosses were done using the proprietary Mafeking Tossometer that removes human 'thumb' bias.

Sucker's Rally Approaching an End

You speak as if you are a buy and hold artist. If so, probably not worth you reading this site. If you were not buy and hold then I presume you are long with appropriate trailing stops.

I am long QLD and it has done pretty well, but it now looks like we are reverting to the downtrend and I'll probably be stopped out.

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

Perhaps the funniest moment of the whole financial debacle so far was Barney Frank's demand that those responsible for the mess should be charged and jailed.

2009 Predictions I Hope Are Dead Wrong

Humans tend to extrapolate from the present and recent past. Most of the predictions above do just that.

Humans are poor at spotting changes in trends. Predictions 1 to 5 are simply trend following. Predictions 6,7 and 8 are inferences assuming existing trends continue.

In addition, there is a dependency between predictions 1 to 5 so that if one of the predictions are wrong - say stocks change trend and march resolutely upwards - then it is likely to quickly change the trend discussed in the other projections.

In essence there is only one prediction: the economic situation will continue to deteriorate in '09 with the linkage that if this happens political instability will increase.

If economic 'events' had no 'memory' one could argue that there is about a 50% chance of being correct. But the economic world indeed has 'memory' and a tendency to revert to the mean. On this basis alone - as unscientific as the original predictions - I predict there will be a reversion to the long term mean.

2009 will be an improvement on 2008.

Fear Goes Hand in Hand with Drama

As Bespoke pointed out - they did not commit the $700 billion - oh great, but in the meantime the stock market lost around $750 billion today. Since most of us have 401Ks and stock, we lost the value anyway.

The other way we would have more chance of it coming back.

Obama Is Bad for the Economy - Barron's

Regardless I hope they tax the s**** out of Buffet. I find it so offensive that the 3rd richest man in the world is all for raising taxes. A preferable approach for Buffet is to voluntarily handing over say an extra 10 percent of his profits to the Feds - he, of course, would not notice it though the share holders would no doubt complain.

Then at his next meeting he could explain ti was for the common good. I am sure his shareholders would be happy.

The Economic Cost of the Military Industrial Complex

From an insular American view of course the article is correct. But thinking more broadly the US is the world policeman that through military might keeps a modicum of stability in the world.

Any fool can point out that war is bad and that spending money on military might is a waste of money. And of course there is the pubertal reactions of dumb American government and so on. And blaming the previous generation. (The problem is that most Americans have grown in a time of peace and cannot conceive that things could be otherwise. Travel a bit you man to less stable parts of the world and consider than most of the world would be like that without Pax Americana. Before that there was pax Britannia)

What is the alternative - and before you answer consider how difficult it would be to do business and earn a decent living in a world without stability.

The pie chart is also misleading in that China has a much lower cost structure than the US and that is applicable to the military as much as manufacturing. China has a larger army - head count wise - than the US

Is the Equities Party Over?

The problem with EWI is that it functions on the stopped clock principle that is right twice a day. They have been calling for the mother of all collapses since the mid 1990s. Missing the run up in tech and other great opportunities.

It indeed may now be the end of civilization, but EWI has cried wolf so much we no longer believe them.

Having said that I do use technical indicators. I find they work well for relatively short time scales - as durations lengthen fundamental and macro analysis comes into their own.

High Likelihood of a Market Crash

Obama - right face, right name, right experience for the coming American Obama Republic - sorry I meant American Banana Republic. This is how the US goes down, not with a bang but an Obama.

A factor mentioned in passing by one or two postings, but not emphasized, is that the market is perhaps reflecting the growing concern that we will soon have a president named Obama with limited experience, a Chicago leftist agenda and a naive do-good worldview like Carter.

On the global scale gasoline in the US is still cheap at $4 a gallon. Have you traveled to Europe lately and seen the prices there? Oil is only one factor in the decline.

Financial Fears Sweeping the Globe

Sometime over the next month Time magazine will feature the coming melt down on its cover. So will the Economist. That will mark the end of the crisis and the start of the next bull market.

Things are not good, but they are NOT the end of the world. And this being an election year the media is keen to talk down the economy as much as possible to get the Banana into the White House.

Think I am crazy - check LexisNexis: during Bush senior's tenure reports on homeless people skyrocketed reaching a crescendo just before the election. Soon as Clinton got in those stories went away.

This time they have something to build on so they are having a field day.

Payrolls Drop - And You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

It always surprises me how naive pundits are regarding the power of the president to effect economic reality. It is dubya this and the &*(^ Bush that when in actual fact we would be in this place even if Kerry or Obooma was in power.

It is the sub-prime crisis which came about when Clinton put pressure on financial organizations to come up with creative ways of increasing home ownership amongst the poor. Did anyone anticipate this - no! although Bill Gross began calling it early. Clinton was being sensible in what he proposed. It is not his fault either. (Although.... 'The Road to Hell is paved with good intentions")

My only question to Ms Lien is whether this is a classic recession or is something else what with China funding American excesses and the media helping by talking down the economy to get a Dem elected and is the improvement in stock prices over the last while a sucker's rally or does the market know something