Aug

30

Big Al writes:

A fun and interesting interview with Helene Meisler who has been keeping charts by hand since the 80s.

Helene Meisler On What's Going On With the Stock Market Now

The Federal Reserve is in tightening mode. And there's that old adage "don't fight the Fed" which means in theory it's a bad time for stocks. And yet we saw a surprisingly powerful rally off the bottom in June. But now what? Can the market resume its ascent? Or will we return to the lows, or possibly make new lows? On this episode we speak to Helene Meisler, who has been trading stocks for roughly four decades, and who has a unique approach to analyzing the market. She draws stock charts by hand. In our chat, Meisler explains her methodology, and gives her assessment of the market right now.

Jeff Watson comments:

I still keep up my charts by hand, and I know at least 3 others on the list who do the same. Does keeping charts add value for those who partake in the practice?

Duncan Coker responds:

I would posit that the physical act of writing and drawing is beneficial. It improves focus and generates a sense of mastery and accomplishment, however small, both of which are good for trading. This is all in addition to the statistical information garnered.

Aug

30

1. telling marauding children in back of a car (when on longer trips) to count number of green vehicles….and then red and so on (or let them experience boredom and don't give in and hand over a tablet).

2. for natural vision building -so ppl who lost ability to see far ahead (myopia), they would benefit from counting leaves of a tree or anything they can see - and don't worry if it is still blurry…it is getting better - coz nature rewards those who at least try….but once we believe something (that it can't get better - well, then it won't) - same for presbyopia (start counting tiny letters font size 1 btw).

counting can be wonderful for the brain and the brain is the motor that keeps it all together….millions of other applications. I wish ppl would do more counting - we are just going (as society) in the complete other direction. but the individual can escape that trend.

Vic comments:

very Galtonian who said "always count" and he kept a little pad and pricker with him at all times. counted the number of fidgets in the audience at 90.

Big Al offers:

I practice counting steps to measure distance, say around the park with the dogs, or on a hike.  I count only lefts or rights (switching between the two at intervals) so that for me one "pace" is two "steps".  I calibrated my pace counting against a wristband GPS and found that a mile is about 1100 paces for me.

Another practice is to count breaths, on the exhale, following the breath with one's attention.  It is focusing and relaxing.  One can calibrate one's breaths to measure time.

Nils Poertner writes:

love that counting for breathing - it is not that the drama outside does not exist, but in order to see things more realistically and go with probabilities also for trading… one better improve own mental health….. and many people (not just traders) are so fickle.

eg one of my trader friends would call me in the middle of the night and leave a voicemail that this and that is going to happen since he saw it on TV - mostly pictures that have a strong impact on his amygdala…

Zubin Al Genubi adds:

I count breathing 5.5 seconds in, 5.5 second out, 5.5 breaths a minute, and 5.5 liters per breath.

Andrew Moe writes:

I count seconds during cooking, particularly when operating on multiple dishes simultaneously. Also count seconds when trying to squeeze out an extra minute or two in the sauna.

Duncan Coker notes:

Watering the plants with a garden hose. 10 seconds about half gallon with my
sprayer.

Aug

29

H. L. Mencken's ideas very relevant now: "Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods."

Heard on racquetball courts at Jackson hole: "how do we pretend we are harsh on inflation without hurting the big guy?" correction. lost in time. only pickle ball and paddle now. racquetball going to zero play. play in Jackson Hole is golf.

"when i came back to the Fed i saw that they needed a published paper by a senior guy to say that they shouldn't pay attention to economic models" (saying to worry about recession - a typical comment from the bearish former mayors site).

all smiles at Jackson Hole. "have to help that man." especially now that senate is a lock. crude takes a break. went so far as to edit dissenting opinions out of the official minutes of its meetings. one queries if the minutes of the FOMC are manipulated this same way to stop the "bad brash man."

But the ex-Chancellor also points to a failure to understand the scientific models they were being fed. How true of many supposedly quasi-scientific conclaves and minutes.

Some virtual definitions. a Texas Hedge: long stocks and crude. a new mexico hedge: long crude and long bonds. a Baron Coleman hedge: long stocks, bonds and crude. a Powell hedge: long stocks and bonds. what else do you propose?

bullard hedge: short bonds and S&P. Interactive hedge: margin call at 3 am then reverse, after down 150 pts from 20 day high 8 days ago - we call for an interactive hedge Mon 3am.

Kerry Packer Hedge: long everything and persists in it. margin calls may already have taken their toll: possibly no longer bear.

bonds were up on 2-day and 5-day as of Friday close but S&P was down 100 big and 200 big respectively…what's the panic? we'll know perhaps on the next margin call. looked pretty hairy at 4110.

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

24

Non-Zero, by Robert Wright, shows persuasively that there is an élan vitale of history with non-zero-sum games of mutual benefit leading to sustained growth especially fomented by gains in information like printing press and internet. wright's book is another reason like the grandeur of evolution of Darwin to believe that the 10,000-fold gain a century will continue.

an interesting study: Hidden Cost of Free Trading? $34 Billion a Year, Study Says. of course the maximum is going to be greater than the average. but this is the tip of the iceberg. study should have compared to brokerages like Interactive that make money off commissions and margin calls rather than kickbacks.

From: Laurel Kenner
Sun, Aug 21, 5:25 PM
To: me

I was at a dinner party last night, with a neurologist. He said that medical people have been forbidden to use the words "sir" or "madam" for patients, and nobody knows what to call them. "Patient 6074?"

I suggested "comrade."

fellow travelers and agrarian economists all around. the more prevalent it is the better for regulatory capture and the market. amazing how none of my tweets are transmitted to an audience except when I pay $5 a follower. apparently I am on a x-list with the algorithms not knowing that whenever reg capture increases, the better it is for market.

the best way for me to approach the market is by paying attention to the interactions between the bonds and stocks. I believe that the fed is mainly interested in stocks and how that will affect the elections. rite now the S&P is down 3 days in a row and the life expectancy hazard ratios are very bullish. a former female associate of mine used to say that the Fed doesn't care about bonds because they all trade stocks. I have found that a good theme to follow even if its only true in part. But no way will they hurt their young-looking boy.

so far the Ibiza trade was rite on only 1 of 3 markets but Dr Brett told me that it gets more and more frenetic in Ibiza as the nite progresses.

My history with Victor is far more personal, as it was his influence and inspiration that brought me to financial markets nearly 20 years ago. It was then that he and co-columnist Laurel Kenner announced an online competition for the best market indicator. I had some free time in my medical school office, thanks to a couple of students who had canceled their counseling meetings, so I assembled my submission. It tracked the average beats per minute of popular music and the level of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. I surmised that we could be near a market peak, citing the growing popularity of the electronic/rave scene, as epitomized at the time in Ibiza. Victor and Laurel declared me the winner, the year 2000 did fortuitously turn out to be a market peak, and the valuable prize I collected was a visit to Victor's trading office in Weston, CT.

From: 3 Things To Learn From Market Speculator Victor Niederhoffer

ibiza not working on bonds yet. don't they realize that when long-term bonds go down, it is self-correcting because it brings economy and stocks down? and remember they have to pretend to help the young-looking bicyclist.

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

20

Arthur Niederhoffer
1917 - 1981

Dad would love this ceremony. He wishes me to thank all of you for coming and taking out so much time from work and family. The family deeply appreciates all of the very generous contributions to the memorial fund. But he quickly adds "that's enough" and truly the tribute would be more appropriate for others here today like Alex Smith or Al Danoff or Mother; that he's just an ordinary man and he doesn't understand why so many people love him.

Read the full text.

Aug

17

the Yankees fortunes losing 9 of last 10 are similar to the bear stock market people gartman and el erian. Aaron Boone's decisions are like those of the ray ban bicyclist - yet they are both in first with senate odds now almost 60% in favor of D's.

what is the best explanation for the 100% correlatioon betweeen the yankees losses since the all-star game 11 of 15 and the steady gains of the dark bicyclist in the pres odd (now up to 13.2% of becoming 47)? the degree of advocacy for social justice is paramount and at a maximum for Hicks and the GM.

Benjamin Franklin was a most admirable and accomplished man and his advice on all matters is well worth taking. His thoughts on markets rested primarily on the power of compound interest and frugality and industry leading to wealth and success.

Here is some advice he gave on exercise: there is better exercise in walking one mile up and down stairs than five on a level floor. He recommended a cold bath naked in cold air each morning and silence as a virtue that should be practice by all the young. He practiced all virtues each day and in a Galtonian way, made check marks on his favorite 15 each day to count how he was doing and develop the habit.

fallacies about S&P most harmful: (1) when an announcement in the past has been predominantly bearish but the markets since the last announcement have been bullish, go with the markets. they are at least 2 months ahead of the announcements.

(2) The alphabet agencies are peopled by fair-minded employees who will go beyond their 95% political bias to be fair. (3) a rise in the prospects of the ray ban bicyclist party is bearish. (4) a big decline in bonds overnite is bearish for S&P. (5) a decline in crude is bearish for S&P. (6) an overreach by law enforcement is bearish for S&P.

(7) the professional sports leagues are all in what they espouse. (8) a 50-day high in S&P is bearish. (8) El erian and the congo dancer can be followed with profit.

(9) a bear market in S&P or NASDAQ is bearish for the future (10) you can make money in markets by going for a 1/2% swing. (12) the public get a much better deal because of HFT.

(13) the degree of followership and notice on social media is related to the intrinsic interest in its content.

(14) the minutes of Fed meetings are bearish for S&P when there has been a big rise recently.

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

11

only question is how long to all-time hi. i don't know but it looks like another big hi in 10 trading days. if bicyclist and senate continue to gain, could be sooner. you have to admire the full court press of the dark bicyclist and of course this is very bullish.

the bonds have arabesqued very quietly to a 17-day low, and crude is up 5 days in a row with stocks at a 120-day hi.

as grandpa Martin would say: Martin served as court interpreter and spoke 25 languages. he didn't like that court interpreters were paid 1/2 of court clerks so he took the exam at 70 years of age and came in second out of 5000. he was a genius. still have his old math books.

He served as controller for Irving Berlin's music firm and there he met his wife who he proposed to on first meeting her. he traded with the boy wonder and liked to buy stocks such as allis chalmers, air reduction, and american standard.

he liked to use the theory of least effort to guide his speculations. "i believe the least effort would be for stocks to go down" he would say. Having lost his fortune in the depression, he always feared a repeat and never took more than a 10% profit on any holding.

like so many others I was fortunate enough to know well, I wish I realized his greatness at the time. Some unsung heroes I have not written about are the Schrade family, Herb London, and Harvey Sellers. "a kite not caught on a tree is like an ice cream cone not eaten."

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

11

I need some new books to inspire me. Suggestions? Last few science book were great.

Bill Egan replies:

Against the Tide: Rickover's Leadership Principles and the Rise of the Nuclear Navy by Dave Oliver.

Laurel Kenner adds:

Sue Stuart-Smith: The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature
William Logan: Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees
Thomas Sowell: Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Michael Brush suggests:

The Gene
The Emperor of all Maladies
Why We Sleep

Henry Gifford offers:

Buildings Don’t Lie, Better Buildings by Understanding Basic Building Science: The movement through buildings of heat, air, water, sound, fire, light, and pests. By…well…Henry Gifford!

Big Al recommends:

Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics
The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom
The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

Re Riemann, 3Blue1Brown has a great bit to enhance the visual:

Visualizing the Riemann zeta function and analytic continuation

A reader writes:

Major Transitions in Evolution: Maynard Smith & Szathmary
Indra's Pearls: Mumford + Series + Wright
Coe/Stone: Reading The Maya Glyphs
Fred Schwed: The Pleasure Was All Mine
Japanese Tales: Royall Tyler
African Folktales : Paul Radin
Ernst Haeckel : Art Forms from the Abyss
Owen Jones: The Complete Chinese Ornament
Trigonometric Delights : Eli Maor
Voices from the Whirlwind - Fenc Jicai
The Cowshed - Ji Xianlin
Rural Worlds Lost - Jack Temple Kirby

Paolo Pezzutti enjoyed:

Relentless Strike: The Secret History of Joint Special Operations Command

Laurence Glazier adds:

Emily St John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility. Sequel to her earlier The Glass Hotel, which was partly about a Ponzi scheme.

And Brandon Q. Morris, physicist sci-fi writer.

Peter Krupp writes:

Here are two science books that I found fascinating focused on quantum physics written by one of the great contributors to the quantum theory of computation, David Deutsch.

The Fabric of Reality (quantum theory - many world interpretation, quantum computation, epistemology, and much more).

The Beginning of Infinity (the nature of scientific progress, how it has accelerated in the past few centuries).

Aug

10

young-appearing bicyclist up to 12.6% chance of victory and his party now 53% to take senate. regulatory capture looks good. the dark bicyclist pulling out all stops to suppress competitor like brumfield.

Joe Torre says the most important thing for winning baseball is to adjust to new conditions. same is true in markets. Elmer Kelton says same thing.

el erian, ms. meister at max of bearishness. only up this much at 930 11 times since 2011. Nice kitchen talk and delphic forecast from bearish site: "i'm no economist but when I go to the supermarket i am paying higher prices."

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

10

Rereading the Count of Monte Cristo with my highs schooler, I am struck by the fact the all the virtuous characters are failures at business (ship owner, tailor, inn owner), while all the evil ones are great financial successes (currency speculators, war profiteers, state bankers). Of course the Count rectifies this. His fortune comes by way of a cardinal in Italy, a secrete cave and 14 years in prison. Perhaps the author's ( Alexandre Dumas) message is that every great fortune has a dark past. Maybe that was true in his day, but ones hopes that is not the case today.

Kim Zussman comments:

Socialism is as old as the bell curve.

Gyve Bones writes:

I'm reading this book too, and have found it really interesting. I picked it up because I'd seen two different film adaptations of the story, one starring James Caviezel, who a year later would portray Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's "The Passion", and an earlier one from the 1970s. The two were so different in many details that I wanted to see the real story in the book. Both movies were good, each in their own way.

Like Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, the Dumas story is about French society dealing with the ripple effects of the French Revolution. Both have heroes who are sort of New Christ figures. Both characters are unjustly imprisoned. In the case of Danton, the "Count", it was a case of a corrupt prosecutor during a time much like now, where Napoleon is in exile, and his alleged supporters still in France are being hunted down and imprisoned. It reminds me a lot of this nation, which has sent a former president into exile on an island off the coast of Florida, and there is an official inquisition into his affairs which is imposing punitive political prison sentences on his political supporters, and making it a crime to speak with the former president on the phone, in order to thwart any attempt to organize a campaign to return to office.

There's a point where the Count uses and extols the virtues of hashish which you might want to be prepared to discuss with your teenager.

Project Gutenberg has a very nice illustrated edition of the book available, which is helpful in imagining the scenes described.

I had trouble with the size of the illustrated ePub version for my iOS Books app on my iPad. It's 76 megabytes with the images included and it would crash the app. So as an alternative workaround, I downloaded the image free ePub into the Books app, and keep a web page open on the index of the images, which are named according to the page numbers in the book, and I view them as needed as I'm reading along.

Stefan Jovanovich responds:

Dumas pere was anything but a socialist. He was an aristocrat who was beyond snobbery and sentimentality. Good people regularly get screwed by thieves, frauds and liars; but then, so do the thieves, frauds and liars by each other. That is the "moral" of the novel. The Count succeeds in his quest for revenge by turning the bad guys against one another. He is a truly great figure, and the wiki page does him proper justice.

Dumas was neither a monarchist nor a Bonapartist. He was a republican and a Freemason. The novel makes that very clear; and it got Dumas in real trouble when a second Bonaparte became Fuhrer. Dumas had to flee France for Brussels, which also helped him escape his creditors. Read the wiki page; it is a beautiful exposition of an extraordinary life.

Full disclosure: One of the Stefan's weird (academics don't even want to discuss it) speculations about Ulysses Grant is that he was reading Dumas' novels when he was at West Point when he was supposed to be studying "tactics". Grant did not have a full duplex brain when it came to language and music; he taught himself to read German and French, but he found it impossible to speak or understand the languages when spoken. He loved music, but could not play it or read it as anything but notation (i.e. he could not translate the symbols on the page to sounds in his head). Hence, his joking about himself that he only knew two songs - one was Yankee Doodle Dandy and the other was not. The biographers all assume that because Grant had no verbal fluency, he had not read Jomini. He had; he also knew it was complete crap, but why say so except to start an argument? (Grant definitely did not have the legal mind or temperament).

Gyve Bones counters:

Straw men are easy to knock over. I did not assert Dumas was either a monarchist or a Bonapartist. In the same way, Hugo, son of a mother of the ancien regime and a father who was a Revolutionary, he was a melding of the two, and the novel sort of becomes a Hegelian dialectic about the synthesis which emerges from the thesis (the old order) in conflict with the anti-thesis (the Revolution). Jean Valjean is his synthesis, the New Man, a man of Christian virtues without Christ and the sacraments of the Church He founded.

Steve Ellison adds:

Dumas lived a high life and was chronically in debt despite having a number of bestsellers. I still remember one sentence from the book, "He was denounced as a Bonapartist …" It made me think that the first totalitarian society was Revolutionary France, but I hesitate to make such a sweeping pronunciation in the presence of Mr. Jovanovich. In any case, current efforts to make modern denunciations similarly career-ending are a grave threat to liberty.

Stefan Jovanovich agrees:

Great comment, SE. The French revolution - as an event - has a scale and complexity that can only be matched by the global war that began in Spain in 1936 and China in 1937 and ended in Korea in 1954. What Dumas was describing was its net effect: everyone in France had become so kind of spy and snitch. So, yes, it was the first totalitarian society; but you need to give the Citizen Emperor the same credit that Stalin and Hitler deserve for so thoroughly organizing the tyranny.

Bill Rafter offers:

Pardon me for coming in late to this discussion, but there is a mistake: The tailor was Caderousse, one of the three co-conspirators against young Dantes. That failed tailor then became the owner of the Inn at Beauclaire, who then murdered the jeweler. The Inn itself failed because its location was bypassed by a newly constructed canal. That leaves Mr. Morrel, who failed because he was in a highly speculative business (the hedge fund of its time) and was not diversified. However his successors in the business, Emmanuel and Julie were certainly righteous and successful. They retired to a nice home in Paris.

Stefan Jovanovich writes:

Not mine. Dumas was very much someone who believed that an honorable life was the only one worth living, whatever its financial costs or rewards.

Henry Gifford writes:

When I was growing up in a part of New York City that was populated by about half Christians and half Jewish people, almost none of the Christian adults owned a business – they had jobs. The one Christian adult that I knew owned a business did not attend religious services. All the Jewish adults owned businesses except a few that were involved in organized crime (professional level: state senator, state assembly, etc.).

When I was a child attending a Christian school, they made us sing a song that included the words “oh lord, do until me as you would do unto the least of my brothers”. I didn’t sing it, even though I was required to, as I saw it as a request for the all the worst things that happened to other people to all happen to me. As a child I thought this included blindness, loss of multiple limbs, leprosy, locusts (even though I wasn’t sure what those were) etc.

I have never had a mentor in my life. The closest I came were adults who advised me to “make sure you learn a trade so you will have something to fall back on”, who I made sure to steer clear of after I nodded and smiled and made good my escape. When I was 16 I asked my father what he thought I should do when I grew up. He suggested I go on welfare. I never asked again, or brought up the topic of what I was doing with myself, etc. When I was about ten years into writing a book, I showed the almost-finished version to my parents, figuring they should see it while they were still alive. The only comment they had was a harsh criticism of the grammar on one page, which they insisted I correct. The “incorrect” grammar was part of an insightful and charming passage written by Benjamin Franklin in the 1700s.

A few years ago I was walking past a Jewish community center near where I live in Manhattan. On the bulletin board outside I saw a schedule of upcoming lectures. One was titled “The Five Risks Every Entrepreneur Should Take”. I picture a member of the community that sponsored that lecture stumbling in business a little while being surrounded by people who are supportive, and who applaud the person for trying, and then for getting up and going at it again. I doubt any member of that community would ask the person who stumbled if she or he had made sure to first learn a trade to fall back on, or demand that children sing a song like the one I and my classmates were required to sing.

I still manage to do OK financially. Among other endeavors I own or am part owner of property in nine US states, soon to be ten, all worth much more than I paid (including the properties I am contracted to buy on Monday). And I have never “paid my dues” by spending years doing something I hate, or by gaining all the easily available advantages of being dishonest. But the Christian kids I grew up with? I can’t think of one who owns a business, and I can only think of two who likely have enough investments to carry them for long if they didn’t keep working at their job. And I can’t think of any who seem to enjoy or gain much satisfaction from that which they spend their day doing.

As for the emotional toll religion has taken on people over the centuries, suffice to say that someone once summarized the difference between the emotional state of veterans of the US military during WW2 vs. those who were veterans of the Vietnam War as the emotional state of Vietnam War veterans being the embodiment of the result of one generation of young men being lied to by their father’s generation. Likewise, young people being lied to about what economic decisions they ought to make, meanwhile a different reality is there for the seeing, also has its cost.

When growing up I spent time in Jewish households when I could, as the people there seemed to me to have an upbeat and healthier attitude, compared to the funeral home ambience I sensed in most Christian households. But, of course, most people growing up in the US do not have that opportunity, and fewer take the opportunity if available. Most are simply beaten down by the forces of religious insanity and stay down for life. Just today I was waiting for a train and a person nearby was shouting into her phone on speaker, describing in an upbeat tone her life that struck me as horrible, while she periodically mentioned that “god is good.” Not to her, I think, but I didn’t argue with her.

Bo Keely responds:

henry, this is interesting from our comparative angles. I’ll bet the few kids like u and I would say the same thing. as a child, I also rejected the ‘do unto others…’ because it included negative things.

i also had no mentor throughout life. when I eventually took a teacher test that required answering, ‘describe your first mentor’ I wrote about an admitted imagined mentor.

likewise, when I was sixteen, my mother asked, ‘what do you want to do in life,’ on receiving a selective service notice. It had never donned on me, so I replied, ‘be a veterinarian’ since that was my summer job. that’s how I became a vet.

and, i also have never ‘paid my dues’ to society figuring i never owed any. The only real money I ever made was in rental housing in Lansing, MI with a strategy of buy cheap complexes, fix them up, and rent to tenants receiving monthly checks directly deposited into my account. i still do well financially with 25 published books that sell, on average, one each per month. my financial secret of life is to have negligible expenses. I have gained satisfaction from each of dozens of jobs too, and never lived hand-to-mouth. it’s long-term gratification.

I have reacted to the lies of my father’s generation by retreating from Babylon into an anarchic desert town. each is an independent citizen who thinks god is a stinking mess in the sky, and one should learn in youth to take care of himself.

Kim Zussman adds a coda:

After the revolution apartments and land was confiscated and living arrangements made equitably* by central committees.

Los Angeles voters to decide if hotels will be forced to house the homeless despite safety concerns

*government jobs, military, connections, etc.

Aug

9

How to win

August 9, 2022 | Leave a Comment

guaranteed to happen: measures willl be announced to require mail-in voting and ballot harvesting. only question is when is the Doc who loves the cattle trader going to weigh in?

First they came for the Fordham agents, and I did nto speak out because my father was in law enforcement; then they came for the Collective Bargainists, and I did not speak out because I had a small number of emloyees. Then they came for the Scholars, and I did not speak out as my daughter went to Holly cross; then they came for the Service people by increasing their budget by 500% - the goose has no more flesh.

how to win a competition: legend has it that Brumfield broke the finger of his opponent in between games of the finals. same thing apparently happens in music competitions. good to see it hapenning in politics. bullish.

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