The Tasgall Group

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.

Ray Johns has been publishing his model portfolio on Daytraders.com since 1997. For $39.95 per month, stock traders can follow along. His live performance record is reported on the site but what can be made from it? I decided to find out so I compiled them all into this Excel spreadsheet which assumes a $1000 investment in each trade call made since 1997. (more…)

I promised a quick lesson in the do-it-yourself Monte Carlo analysis so here goes.

First, some supplies:?

MCSim Excel Add-In: Just?drop this in Application Data\Microsoft\AddIns under your Documents and Settings directory.? Then, in Excel, Tools/Add-Ins… to install.

Resample Demo: A demo worksheet to show how to create a random sample from your raw data.

To begin (more…)

Ok, again I mention the Yen and the end of 0% but this time I’d like to talk about it in terms of the Uberman’s Portfolio.? First of all, I’m extremely excited that I get to “participate” in this event because what better way to test out the strength of the UP in its early days than a once-in-a-decade event of this magnitude?? And to make it more exciting (and valid), I’m the “wrong” way on Yen, being short nearly 4.1 million of the little suckers (that sounds like a lot but it’s only about $35,600 worth), in the face of what is supposed to be a bullish outcome.? Now, of course, no one knows what will really happen because life isn’t that easy but being short isn’t the safest place to be I guess.? So this should really put the UP through the ringer and we can see what it’s made of.

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Continuing my ongoing daily reports on the latest Power Ratings, with the top Power Ratings for 7/14 listed below along with a status report of how all the other PR stocks throughout the week have performed. Please note that today and yesterday were significant down days on the market so I’m not expecting the PR stocks to have performed all that well. (more…)

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…

Apparently ProShares is now offering inverse and double-inverse ETFs.? That means you can short an index with leverage by buying an ETF.? Ideal for retirement accounts where you can’t short very easily and don’t want to be tied down to the end-of-day trading of ProFunds’s inverse mutual funds.

Read more about it from The Big Picture’s post on the topic.