The Tasgall Group

Well, as a self-proclaimed avoider of stocks, I still enjoy contributing to our discussion and analysis of stock pick services. I’m still sorting out a problem in getting my Daytraders.com trial started but, hopefully, I’ll have something to report soon. In the meantime, I want to bring light to another service that looks very interesting: WhisperNumber Risk Sentiment Reports. These reports, updated weekly, provide a model portfolio with unambiguous entry/exit signals. So those are two pluses in that it isn’t a daytrading system with lots of market watching and commission expenses and the calls are not fuzzy. The theory behind it is appealing also. Here is what they say:

The concept is simple – present favorable stocks with low sentiment risk and improving technicals and heavy short interest. Conversely, present unfavorable stocks with high sentiment risk and low short interest and technicals that are long in the tooth.

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This is by far the tastiest morsel of economic data I’ve ever seen:

Big Mac Index

Now, do you want fries with that?

Having just finish Kessler’s Running Money, I was very interested in his theory about the margin surplus vs. the trade deficit.? John, I suggest you find the time to read the one chapter in the book that breaks down this theory nicely and is really the best part of the book whether or not you care about hedge funds.? But what it amounts to is that we shouldn’t worry about our trade deficit because we have what can be termed a “margin surplus” where our intellectual property gets exported without being put on the books to manufactories in Asia who then export to the US creating what looks like a deficit but is really money in the pockets of the US companies that produced the IP in the first place.? (more…)

Well let’s break it down:

What War Means For Your Wealth

There’s a great story about a famous local trader at the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT). One day, he was on the floor of the CBOT and a U.S. inflation number came out that was totally unexpected. Pure pandemonium ensued. When all the noise died down, he walked out of the pit having made $10 million and said, “By the way, what was the number?”

-Dr. John Porter, Barclays Capital

as quoted in Inside the House of Money, p. 133

This is the last batch of fresh Power Ratings that I have to report since I canceled my free trial tonight. I had to phone in to cancel and they guy gave me a hard time and asked tons of questions before he’d submit the cancel request. He tried to offer me a free month if I’d agree to pay for a month, then he wanted all sorts of info about my experiences and wanted me to compare them with other strategies that I’d tried. Anyway, the updated spreadsheet is attached: Power Ratings Worksheet

Whoever is over at Ticker Sense has decided to start a survey of bloggers. They hope to “become a convenient barometer for the consensus outlook of the blogosphere?s new wave of independent market analysts.”
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Now might be a good time to start thinking about a CD or bond ladder for your short-term or “safe money”. With the FOMC still raising short-term rates, long term rates have had plenty of time to move up as much as possible…

Why ladder? Let’s look at three scenarios: (more…)

I just read one of the IITM Weekly Emails and it described an Efficiency Trading System that might be worth following.

The beginning of the article:

This system was created for someone with good market knowledge but not a lot of time. It was designed for someone who can do a thorough analysis of the markets each weekend, who doesn?t need to spend much time on the markets.

The system he describes is very similar to the one put forward in Safe Strategies for Financial Freedom, but it looks like Tharp updated it to be a little more sophisticated in the weekly email.

I am already a subscriber to the weekly email (it’s free), but you guys might want to subscribe to follow along and see how his trades work out.

I just saw that someone is trying to put together a currency ETF.? It sounds vaguely like the Uberman Portfolio, but I have a feeling that UP is doing something different.

You can read about it at the Abnormal Returns article on the topic.