The Tasgall Group

We’ve spent some time in person discussing “magnet” or “density” points but there hasn’t been any data thrown up on the blog. Given the hooplah over yesterday’s bounce (anybody smell a dead cat?), I thought I’d use it to take a closer look at these little buggers. For example, why did the market, obviously trending up all day, stop where it did? Could a trader have gone into the day with any information that could have helped in making decisions? Let’s see.

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Since adding all the blogs from Ticker Sense to Bloglines, I’ve been going through them mostly with a virtual machete, finding most to be irrelevant to my style of investing or simply poor and uninteresting.? There are a few that are making a place in my daily coffee routine.? One that caught my eye this morning as likely to be of interest to you fellas is CXO Advisory, not because it’s the best blog ever but because it has a great cohesive structure and some very interesting research to share.? The perform inflationary and market forecasts based on the RTV and REY models (similar to the Fed Model) and give daily updates on the status of the market relative to these models.? They also have a great section called Guru Grades that attempts to quantify the success of internet investment guru’s predictions.? The current long-time leader of the list is Ken Fischer, and they have a very interesting article of his on the site.? All in all, an interesting bag of goodies to explore and chew on.? You will note that the market is currently moving in relative lockstep with the 2 models (which are, I grant you, lagging) and that, if you look at what the Bubble looked like, we aren’t in any way close to that kind of overvalued situation.? But then again, you know that.? At the very least, the articles at CXO are thoughtful in a quant sort of way.

So, I’ve used BigCharts for over 9 years now, but I recently noticed a new feature. You can chart the P/E Ratio, Yield, Rolling EPS, and a few other fields below a price chart. (I’ve known since the beginning about the more traditional technical indicators that can be shown there.)

The data is a bit off in a few cases, but you can get some interesting little charts. (more…)

There is a guy that does a fairly interesting look at the official statistics released by the US Government over at Shadow Government Statistics. He has taken the official releases, documents, disclosures, and footnotes, and figured out what all the real values would be for the US economic statistics without the adjustments that have become common in the last 10 years. (Both hedonistic and opportunistic adjustments).

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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

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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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.

With the markets going down in price and up in volatility, I tend to ponder the nature of risk.? Here’s a quote from management guru Peter Druker:

Every decision is risky: It’s a commitment of present resources to an uncertain and unknown future. Risks can be minimized if you know when a decision is necessary, how to clearly define a problem and tackle it directly, and that you’ll have to make compromises in the end. You haven’t made a decision until you’ve found a way to implement it.

He was talking about business decisions, but I think it applies to investing or trading decisions quite well…

I think it brings the point home quickly — when we buy a stock or other financial instrument, we’re committing present resources (money, margin, time/our attention) to an unknown future in the hopes of accomplishing our goal (to make money on the trade/investment).

Do you know how to define your problem?? How you’ll implement your decisions?? I know I need to do some work in that area…