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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Getting Serious

So I've agreed to spend a fair amount of money to up gun one of my computers to get this trading thing happening seriously. And for the price, I am incredibly happy. The guy I am going through has done a few of my friends computers, and a number of traders, and has a very good track record with this set up.

It's going to have the extra monitor on it obviously, with a new 22" wide screen to go alongside the existing 17". I'll be interested to see how the AMD dual core goes when it comes to the back testing and things. Have only had good experiences with them, as opposed to Intel.

Has anyone else had a computer built specifically for trading? I'd love to hear of your experiences, and what you had built, what you added on or found superfluous. As this one allows for a lot of add ons if I decide it's lacking in a few months.


But hopefully by this time next week, or perhaps earlier, I will have a new toy and perhaps a new love. :)

Posted by Glen at 6:16 AM 2 comments  

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Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Halo 3

A lot of noise was made about the Halo 3 release on what Wayne calls, "Bubble Vision". So, I thought I would give my personal experiences of the game, and its potential impacts on Microsoft.

We have (meaning me and my brother) been long time players of the Halo series; completing the first two, and now the third, and routinely having lans for both Halo 1 and 2.

Halo 3 hardly took any time at all to complete, but the in game play is probably not what interests the market nor Microsoft. The multiplayer options, for both online gaming (through x-box live) and through a physical lan set up are impressive. And that's where the money will be made. If new x-box live subscriptions are what they are after, then that is what they will get. The first few nights online were useless simply because of the amount of people hooking in, and therefore, creating massive lag issues. X-box live subscriptions have increased massively since the release of Halo 3. Obviously x-box sales have increased massively as well, but the margins for these are apparently small.

The next step is to evaluate Halo 3 via way of lan, which will draw in the secondary buyers of x-boxes, accessories such as controllers, the game and subsequently other games and subscriptions as well. We have yet to experience this as yet, but we surely will soon.

I'll keep you posted.

Posted by Glen at 12:30 AM 0 comments  

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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Gold and an Entry on LGL

Sorry blog, I've been ignoring you of late. Due mainly to a lack of trading and study commitments. But here I am again anyway.

Through luck or good fortune, I took a trade on LGL last week. I'm not sure if anyone has been following on ASF, but I have been long on Gold and energy stocks for pretty much all of this year. And after the China 3 day collapse, I even decided to take up coin collecting. So have been putting quite a bit of my trading profit towards this, due to a long term punt on precious metals.

Anyway, due to many factors, most of the blue chip gold stocks began looking technically very strong. So it was back into LGL I went. It meets my criteria, environmentally aware (geothermal power) and also a good corporate citizen (helping to develop its region in PNG for the benefit of the local people). And the easiest thing to do when one of your favourite stocks looks strong, is to buy it on the breakout. Easy. And now, with the USD under pressure, energy stocks through the roof, middle east tension, and a potential inflation genie, the spot gold price looks good for at least a little while.



There are a couple of things that worry me about the chart, and gold in particular. For one, a rocket under the gold price has a tendency to bring markets down... which end up tanking the gold price and gold equities with it. The second, is the manipulation the gold price is clearly prone to. In regards to the chart, it appears there should be some resistance at these levels, and there is also a gap fill. Where to from here? Who knows? But it's good to have a proper trade on again. Will be looking for gold to get above 750US an ounce, and we'll see how it is looking once/ if there.

Posted by Glen at 5:52 AM 7 comments  

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Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Booklist

I'm compiling a booklist of "must reads" for developing a philosophical understanding and criticism of economics, markets and trading. At the moment I am half way through E.F. Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' and my list is as follows:

The Wealth Of Nations
Against the Gods
The Art of Conjecture
Exposition of a New Theory on the Measurement of Risk
Theory of Games and Economic Behavior
A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Parts of Popper's Conjectures and Refutations and;
The Poverty of Historicism.

Heheheh, the last two will annoy the trend following E Wavers.

I think that is enough for now, but if anyone has any suggestions for additions, then let me know.

Posted by Glen at 9:01 PM 3 comments  

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Long Walk

What a journey I have before me here, and what a learning curve I will have to be on for the majority of this. As staring before me, a pathway is littered with ideas, postulations and premises I never could have comprehended merely 6 months ago. But life doesn’t pause despite this realisation; the love of wisdom doesn’t attenuate; nor does the addition of knowledge cease. Which leads to more questions like: why am I here? How did I get here and what the hell does my blog title even mean? If it does in fact mean anything at all! Obviously, I plan to explain the answers to these questions in due time. It will be for me, The Long Walk.

In order for a lot of my ongoing positions and statements to make sense later, it is going to be important to explain some basics, and also for the reader to try to understand them. Nominalism being the main one (Plato’s Cratylus is significant in developing this); the opposite concept, “metaphysical realism”, is the ability for objects to exist independently of our experience or knowledge of these objects, irrespective of the concepts in which we understand them - which is the position I am now going to take. However, this can be argued against through idealism, nominalism and the associating immaterialism. The latter is a position that I think can be held in regard to the markets, and largely is but incorrectly, which will be discussed later. But for the time being, we will have to assume the basic building blocks for this blog i.e. the words in the title; do have some actual purchase in their application.

Which brings us to the question I want to introduce today, “How do we measure the incalculable?” Logic or even rationality would dictate we can’t; yet we do on a day to day basis. Which leads to us wondering, what mechanisms do we as humans have or use to make such an evaluation? Does it help if we break down the words? (If you read this blog long enough, you will understand I’m a big fan of etymology.) The word “measure” does not give us much help in itself, except at any given time to provide us with a “standard”. This must place the tension on the word, “incalculable”, root word being calculus, which does have a rich history. Quite literally, meaning “little stone” or “pebble” which was used for tabulating votes, especially in reckoning. Hence the negative connotation associated with a “calculating” person. So incalculable would logically mean, “without end”. “Without ends”, an interesting concept wouldn’t you say? Especially for someone concerned with ethics? So, does this mean we can measure the incalculable because there is no end point? Is it because the process along the way is more existent and important than a “non-ending”?

Unfortunately, I have not been able to answer the question here. All I have done is open a can of worms, and not just in regards to ethical investing, but towards markets and economics/ investing as a whole. It is not to say I don’t have a possible answer, but that it deserves its own post. Until that soon day, I bid you adieu. I did warn you, this will be The Long Walk.

Regards,
Glen.

P.S. do you think bull markets have “reckonings” built into them?

Posted by Glen at 12:00 AM 5 comments  

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