<br>
<br>
<p>Really? I find that very few are familiar with secular markets and long waves. I see no discussion about these topics. A few, like dstark, are aware of them but I’d guess that knowledge of this stuff is around one percent of one percent.</p>
<p>Ten bucks says we’ll get another lecture about long waves. Enough already. Sheesh.</p>
<p>Seems to me you’ve been ducking and weaving on all of the points that I’ve made.</p>
<p>Whatever - a fairly useless rhetorical device when you have nothing to say but you want to diss the other person with a non-material point.</p>
<p>No, I have given my opinion, and and not interested in having my posts continuously dissected for the purpose of being lectured. Have a nice day. If you want to sleep on gold bricks, have fun with that.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Even if you’re wrong?</p>
<p>I guess some people don’t want to hear that.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I sleep on the floor.</p>
<p>Never heard of gold bricks. Coins, nuggets and 100 oz bars, yes.</p>
<p>Please feel free to get your last word in. You still want to parse posts. An opinion is an opinion- it isnt right or wrong. I am sure Geitner must have you on speed dial to avail himself of your infinite wisdom.
Now for the umptenth trime, can we move in. If you wont, that is your choice. Good grief.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Opinions can be right or wrong or neither. Where did you learn reasoning?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Everything that I’ve talked about is easily available on the web or in books. Greenspan was quite familiar with K-Wave theory. He bragged that he hoped that he could be Fed Chairman during a Kondreytieff Winter. He’d just print like mad to battle it. Well he did and it just put it off for many years. It’s amazing that human nature, generational conflict and desire for political gain repeat over and over and over again.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>This is one particular topic that I enjoy.</p>
<p>Now back to the topic at hand…</p>
<p>If a family has demonstrated need, regardless of how/why they are in that situation, why shouldn’t they get aid from their school? I am guessing this guy probably donated generously to his alma mater when he had the means.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Some people that say that actually have the self control to
mean it.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>The problem with college financial aid is that that it uses a static
view. Taking a more holistic view would be expensive and burdensome
though.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Well, that should help with admissions but why would it help with
financial aid?</p>
<p>The guy has his own company but the web site is one of those blank
ad pages so it appears that he let his hosting expire.</p>
<p>A look at his background shows that he held the managing director
position at GE Capital, GE Corporate Finance Bank and that he was
a VP Originator for Structured Trade. The Structured stuff has been
a part of the big subprime mess.</p>
<p>He went to the University of Colorado for undergrad and JH for his
graduate degree.</p>
<p>Surprisingly he touts the benefits of top state universities over
elite schools. He wrote this in an article of predictions for 2010.
It covers many areas of the economy and the markets. It appears that
he has more time now for analysis and writing. Much of what he writes
appears to be conventional wisdom.</p>
<p>[2010</a> Predictions by Post Road Advisors](<a href=“http://www.examiner.com/x-24819-Hartford-International-Trade-Examiner~y2010m1d1-2010-Predictions-by-Post-Road-Advisors?cid=exrss-Hartford-International-Trade-Examiner]2010”>http://www.examiner.com/x-24819-Hartford-International-Trade-Examiner~y2010m1d1-2010-Predictions-by-Post-Road-Advisors?cid=exrss-Hartford-International-Trade-Examiner)</p>
<p>“The excesses of the past 4 years are over and people are beginning to
really question the true economic value of a Harvard/Yale education vs
a top state-school.”</p>
<p>OK, guys. </p>
<p>I find it quite ironic than BC likes to bash Mr. GE for being part of the subprime problem, which itself was the creation of people who seek to make money on the statistics of an investment (often misinterpreted failing to take into account the realities of economics) while BC himself touts market timing analysis (K-wave and whatnot) as a method to pick investments, positioning himself outside the fray because he stays away from very volitile investments (like gold). Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black to me.</p>
<p>IMHO, those who seek to claim the way to wealth is through the identification of short-term misallocation of resources rather than identifying the future worth of delivering real value to real users of goods and services (see Warren Buffet here) are exactly what drives the extremes in the economic fluctuations they claim to be smoothing. This is because the idea of easy to identify (by a simplistic formula that can be reverse engineered) profits attracts more money to exploit perceived (but not necessarily proven) market inequities. Ultimately, the gold-rush mentality sets in to any of these short-term trends creates a speculative bubble. The only questions that remains is when the bubble breaks and can some other group exploit the breakage of the bubble for further profit (see derivitives et. al). </p>
<p>Heck, I was reading about people investing in faster data communications hardware for trading so statistically, their computer generated trades would hit the market computer faster, reacting to trends faster than their competitors. If this isn’t the mother of all tools for speculation-based market exploitation of minute market inequities, what is?</p>
<p>It would seem that this part of “Capitalism” is in and of itself destroying real Capitalism (investing resources in institutions delivering real value to paying customers) by enabling the bubble manipulation that through miscalcualtion causes horrible harm to the market and society’s trust in the market.</p>
<p>Yes, ultimately a computer can figure out where capital is better used better than you or I can, given perfect information. However, information is never perfect, usually far from it because the creators of information have every reason to make it imperfect as they typically want to exploit that information themselves.</p>
<p>However, we like to believe in the idea that markets with enough technology can self-correct, much like we like to believe that real estate prices will continue to rise as a society becomes wealthier. Over many limited periods of time, these are both true statements, but like our current situation proves, it isn’t always true and the failure can be devastating on people’s lives. </p>
<p>So, ultimately BC, the idea that you espose of predicting and acting upon trends in the market has the same moral fallacy as Mr. GE’s work in financial instruments. The difference being that Mr. GE was playing with a more volitile and lesser-know explosive.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>That’s a pretty wild strawman that you have there. Perhaps you should
actually study the topics that I wrote about so that you could get your
topics straight. I stay away from very volatile investments like gold?
I used to write a precious metals newsletter and have done well with
bullion and the precious metals miners. The miners are leveraged to the
price of gold and are far more volatile than the underlying metals.</p>
<p>The differences between Mr. GE and myself are:</p>
<ul>
<li>I don’t create systemic risks</li>
<li>I only play with my own money; not those of shareholders and customers</li>
<li>If I lose, it’s my loss. If a banker gambles and wins, he gets rewarded. If he loses, then he at most loses his job or gets bailed out</li>
</ul>
<br>
<br>
<p>Warren Buffet has been a short-term trader too. He does buy and hold,
derivatives (which he called weapons of mass financial destruction),
perhaps a shady deal with Greenburg, precious metals (he held the
largest above-ground stash of silver in the world for many years) and
he’s been known for some short-term power plays of his own.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>You could simply short - you don’t need derivatives for that. You can
certainly gain a lot of leverage with derivatives but you also ramp up
your risk exposure.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>There was a lot of political hay made over robotic trading but I don’t
see what the fuss is all about. Traders trade in time frames that they
are comfortable in. If you’re in it for a day, week, month, year, then
the subsecond traders shouldn’t be a big deal. Let them beat themselves
over the head.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’d suggest taking a course in artificial intelligence. There you learn
how incredibly dumb computers are.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Look at it over a longer timeframe and things make far more
sense. Study crashes and manias throughout history and it changes your
view on economics, politics and world power.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I already explained the difference above. Mr. GE’s work had systemic
risks. Mine don’t.</p>
<p>That said, I do lay further blame at the concept of the Federal
Reserve. The institution inflates which forces us further out on the
risk curve to just hang on to what we have. I use a variety of trading
and investing approaches but they are all fairly simple as traders
go. Much of this is self-defense. Preserve the value of what I have
and grow it in a way that’s compatible with my risk tolerance. Use
whatever edges I can get from information publicly available along
with the wisdom of others.</p>
<p>Talk about digression!</p>
<p>BC,</p>
<p>Gasoline is a very safe product in liquid form away from heat and oxygen. Add oxygen and you are still safe as long as your spark repression system is foolproof. However, when a certain airliner proved that they couldn’t really control the potential for spark inside the fuel tank that wasn’t adequately vented, they had to upgrade the engineering to better control the vapor in the tank to manage the risk.</p>
<p>Your rationalization of playing with your own money and not creating systemic risks is about on the same level as the individual loan agents writing liar loans not knowing how big the overall pool of speculators are and what effect they can have on the market. The subprime mortgage crisis was created one loan at a time by lots of people who did not have the bigger picture available to them, nor did they care about the bigger picture, which clearly you don’t care about the underlying principles of capitalism. You confuse unregulated markets with free markets and the responsibility of an individual with that of society’s institutions. </p>
<p>Yes, history is full of people like you who do not understand, nor care to accept that the improvement of human kind comes through the application of knowledge that builds the tangible and intellectual wealth of human kind, not redistributes it. Playing the curve for personal profit is all about redistributing the wealth that has already been created whether it is done with your own money or is heavily leveraged and fraudulently sold as legitimate goods.</p>
<p>While you might like to blame the Fed for our little market problem, but that type of thing is all about feeling good about yourself. Greenspan has a greater responsibility for alterting lawmakers to (and to some limited degree regulating) certain types of activity, but all the players on the field down to the individual speculators like yourself own a piece of the failure. It is really easy to blame the quarterback for a football team’s failure, but most of the time, the game is lost by degrees in the trenches and down field where little things compound a less than perfect throw.</p>
<p>You can ramble on about your technical market knowledge, but it is meaningless in the moral debate of responsibility for the wild swings of the markets where blame ultimately lies in the degree to which an individual’s activities don’t make the human condition better.</p>
<p>Go ahead and play with your own gasoline in your sealed trading room, but don’t play victim when somebody opens up the door with a lit cigarette and blows you both up.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>BC’s posts seem to be a bit full of himself these days…</p>
<p>So goaliedad…are you against any speculation?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>The individual loan agents couldn’t do what they were doing without
structured finance. Making CDOs with insurance wrappers that the
insurance companies couldn’t possibly cover. The loan agents were
accomplices; all of the other crap couldn’t have happened without
complicity.</p>
<p>What they were doing was illegal for good reason. What I’m doing is
perfectly legal. Your analogy falls apart.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>The subprime mortgage crisis we perpetrated by illegal activity and a
political system that allowed it to happen. Your analogy falls apart.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’m a software engineer. Our products are exported all over the world
to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. I’m doing my part for the
country. Are you doing yours?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’m a very essence of the improvement of human kind through the
application of knowledge that builds intellectual wealth. I’ve
contributed thousands of hours of engineering time to the open source
community and contribute to the US real economy through my day job.
How about you?</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Greenspan doesn’t have that responsibility now; Bernanke does. My
arguement is with the systemic issues of fiat currency. Bubbles are
not impossible with metals-based currencies but they are a lot harder
to blow.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I spend far more time on engineering than I do on the markets and have
had a long career in projects and products. I was once project leader
on a product with half a billion in revenues. This was many decades
ago when that was a lot of money.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I’ve never played the victim. Traders that feel that the system is
against them are typically miserable. Traders that take responsibility
for their losses make better decisions in the future. You look at what
you did right and what you did wrong and then don’t make the same
mistakes again.</p>
<p>Your analogy is the thing that blew up.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Your writings are sophomoric.</p>
<p>danas:</p>
<p>In my general geographic area, two school teachers in their 50’s who bought a house 30 years ago and contributed 10% of their combined income to their 401(k) plans (or equivalent) over that time could easily have a net worth of $1,000,000 or more.</p>
<p>This situation might not be the norm or within the reach of many people, but it certainly isn’t an extreme outlier. And I wouldn’t argue that those people are rich. Financially secure hopefully, but not living the high-life based on their municipal bond income.</p>
<p>
I don’t think you can outlaw it, but personally, I think short term capital gains tax (under a year) should be on the range of 80-90%. 
Long term (over 5 years) should be minimal (5%). If you think something is of value today, you should think that it should be of value in 5 years.</p>
<p>Of course, the problem with the capital gains tax is that implementing it in one country is like squeezing a balloon - the speculative markets move overseas where they can speculate on our assets (through other vehicles) outside of our taxation system.</p>
<p>This real-time information genie is truly out of the bottle and it is going to take a concerted effort to bottle it up, as there are a bunch of fools out there making stupid short-term wishes that are destructive to the real economic development.</p>
<p>BC is getting a bit testy here and very defensive. </p>
<p>Still weak in reasoning, especially arguing my moral arguments with legal arguments.</p>
<p>I never said legal=moral, although it would appear that he does. By that definition, we let our legislators define our morality.</p>
<p>I don’t care what BC does for a living and what I do is none of his business. He chooses to espouse that trading on trends creates wealth, which if applied to everyone would imply that we should ignore common sense about companies business propositions and build trading models based upon market data. That is exactly what the thinking (playing a poorly reasoned statistical game while ignoring the bigger investment value picture) behind the subprime mortgages that Mr GE (trying to get back on topic here) was repsonsible for. </p>
<p>I’m sorry, speculation on an investment that you don’t understand the underpinnings of because of supporting statistics is just as morally wrong (not saying legal) no matter how good the underlying asset is. Mr. GE’s assets he was developing were clearly not very well thought out, perhaps BC’s are, but the moral hazard of participating in markets you don’t understand the underpinnings of is the same. BC just likes to think of himself as more sophisticated and responsible.</p>
<p>And he REALLY blows himself up arguing that a metals-based bubbles are harder to blow. Yes metals are harder than subprime paper or tulip bulbs in a physical sense, but I think the fact that lemmings following trends can create bubbles in meaningless commodities (tulip bulbs) as well as meaningful asset bubbles (oil) shows the fallacy of his whole trading on trends philosophy. BC is lucky, not good; legal, but not capitalistically moral in my book.</p>
<p>BC, you are more than welcome to continue your raging against my “sophomoric” writings.</p>