Mar

6

1. There is more wisdom in the Ticker Magazine of 1907 and 1908 than in all the investment books and magazine in the last 110 years combined. Why?

2. The new guard of bond traders at Pimco is a credit to our profession and their attention to detail in the prospectuses and their emphasis on contrary trading has a pleasant resonance to our own inestimable and dearly departed Mr. E.

3. Every day the market swoons on some contrived piece of news to make the president look bad and create fear and churning and then closes the day at a new high. 64 of the last 293 days since year end 2015 the spu closed at a 20 day hi. Since year end 2008, its 489 out of last 2097 that closed at a 20 day high. It is a testimony to the wisdom of the triumphal trio and our own Williams and Vince.

3b. A 6' 11 inch giant who played for the Knicks and whose father could have a better + - record than the son, is not content to stay disabled and wishes to come back reminiscent in my opinion of Lenny in Of Mice and Men.

4. The three best books on investment are Bacon, Green and Tarbeaux but they are all only 90 years old rather than the usual hundred that the Markman edition of Reminiscences is also highly recommended.

5. A simulation of seasonalities in markets shows that there is a non-random seasonality in the bond market but not in stocks or gold I think.

6. When one has a very good hand in poker there is a very much elevated chance that another player has an excellent hand also. This of course is not random but a result of sampling without replacement. However in markets, runs of unusual moves in one market are often followed by runs of unusual moves in another market and this is a non-random regularity. For example, there were 5 red days in a row in Feb, 2017 and they were followed by 5 yellow days in a row.

7. The moves in the German Bunds often foretells the moves in the US bonds. The precious metals takes big positive moves to an inordinate degree around holidays and big announcement days.

8. The bonds like like it when the dollar is up, and the stocks like it when the dollar is down.

9. The ratio of the dax to the S&P stays remarkably close to 5 over time.

10. The stocks to bond ratio at 16 is at an all time high.

11. All news that is favorable to the current administration will be suppressed and all news that is unfavorable will be emphasized.

12. I challenge anyone to read the chapter in Monte Walsh on accounting for cattle profits and the race between the horse riders and the train without crying.

13. Any movie that wins a major academy award will of necessity treat business in a highly unfavorable way and lionize people of color, and will contain indirect negative references to Bush and Reagan to show that they are fellow travelers. 

14. The dominatrix beginning and end of the first episode of billions is very dramatic and realistic, but the fight between the agency in Washington and the NY state federal attorney seems contrived as is Axelrod's ability to spot block trades and take short positions based therein. Anyone who shorts stocks that are inside acquisition targets is likely to have a negative return much greater in absolute value than the triumphal trio's results.

Julian Rowberry writes:

A comment on point number 6 about poker: Interestingly this can work both ways as we break down a problem.

If we take a hand of poker, the decisions made during a hand over the flop, turn and river will reduce ranges (possibilities of different hands people can have) players have, i.e. folding bad ranges, continuing with strong ones. Resulting in stronger ranges as we approach the end.

But sampling without replacement will decrease the odds of another player having an excellent hand. If I have 2 hearts in my hand on a board that has made a flush, that is 2 hearts that no one else can have. Which by the end of the hand, where ranges are significantly reduced, there is a very much elevated chance an opponent won't have a flush. When bluffing, in this situation it's good to have one heart, thereby reducing the possible flush combinations opponents can have.

Maybe there's an opportunity with similar behaviour in bonds & stocks? I don't know.

Where a more detailed look involves some behaviour that opposes the stronger over riding behaviour. The stronger overriding behaviour is often more well known and understood. Making hard to remove the ideas out of the boxes we have put them in and think of them differently. Group think markets seem ripe for this type of oversight.

Victor Niederhoffer writes: 

Thanks for your erudite answer. Presumably when you have 4 of a kind, the chances that the opponent will have 4 of a kind are improved. There is also the chance that your opponent has stacked the deck. Much too often it seems one has a full house and the opponent has 4 of a kind?

Julian Rowberry responds:

Tricky question, like a lot of things, it depends. Ignoring stacked decks and rake, there is no one size fits all answer. I can give a general answer of why strong hands clashing appears to happen often. ANd much more often than optimal.

The nature of most poker games, we have pros versus 'recreational' or 'fun' players' (that's the modern PC term for fish, sucker, donkey or mark!).

In general, Pros when playing recreational players are are going to fold vastly more than optimally with their weaker holdings early on in the hand. Recreational players are going to continue on in hands vastly more than optimally with their weaker holdings.

This continuation increases the combinations of hands the weaker player can have towards the end. Which increases the combinations of 2nd, 3rd, 4th best hands for the weaker player against a increased combinations of 1st best hands for the pro. So the result is we see more strong holdings versus strong holdings showdowns. Where inevitably the pro wins what's left, if anything, after rake in the long run.

If two pros played each other, it is much rarer to have very strong showdowns from each player.

Orson Terrill comments: 

It seems that if you sample without replacement from a disordered arrangement of a well ordered system, and you draw a well ordered hand, then you leave a more ordered system on deck as a result.

The complement of order is not disorder.

I've played poker less than 5 times, but if the combined hands of the prior game were well ordered cards of lower value, and I received a well ordered high value hand, the assumption would be that the same situation for my opponents is even more likely.
 


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  1. anand on March 10, 2017 9:26 am

    Ive tried to find copies of a book containing articles from ‘Ticker Magazine of 1907 and 1908′ or an online download but have only seen a quote for £1200 on abebooks. This is a lot for a small time ’speculator’ like myself :) Would anyone be willing to sell me a copy or email a scan at a reasonable price? Thanks, Anand

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