Based on seven months of investment our ROI is 26% as that is when I jumped in this year. I have to say that I am very happy about this. This ROI is based on funds, stocks, and bonds throughout Europe, and the America’s.
As of today my positions are as follows:
In reply to my automated trading blog entry I have had people send me emails asking what about this or that toolkit? This made me think that I should be doing some reviewing of products and toolkits. Therefore if anybody wants to send me your toolkit WITHOUT RESTRICTIONS I will do a feature by feature (more…)
A while back somebody asked me what I thought of Google stock. My thoughts, then as now is; good company, but I would not trade their stock. Today I read something in Business Week that confirms why I am not a fan of Google stock.
The article talked about how employees will be able to sell their options instead of stock. Interesting idea, but I am not completely happy about it. The following comment from the article bothered me quite a bit.
Under Google’s Transferable Stock Option program, employees could sell their stock options on the semi-private marketplace much the way public options are sold today. That would let employees potentially reap more than if they merely exercised and then sold the securities. Say an employee holds an option with a strike price of $400, meaning it can be purchased for $400 and then resold at a higher price. If Google’s stock is trading at $500, an investor might pay $150 for that option, betting that the stock will rise well past $500 during the life of the option. The employee selling the option could net an immediate $150. An employee exercising and then selling the same option would net only $100, the difference between the strike price and the current price.
So here we sit and see that the USD has dropped and breached the 1.30 mark against the Euro. The question is why? I would have responded on this question earlier, but could not. Last Friday my oldest English Bulldog Patches (11.2 years) went into the doggy hospital, and she died on Monday. Until Wednesday I have been a bit of a vegetable as Patches was my first real dog that I bonded with. So I have been oblivious to what is going on in the markets.
So why did the dollar drop? Is the answer here? Or how about here? What about here? Or what about here? Notice how nowhere you will find the reason why the dollar dropped? I find that really odd! Of course some will say, “Oh its the huge deficits of the US”, or “This drop was long in coming and finally somebody did.” Great love the comments (NOT) as they still do not make it any clearer. Many now say that this is the longer trend, and the drop will be bigger.
For the past two months I have been writing my own automated trading system. Two weeks ago I slowly started trading using manual techniques based on data generated by my software. The initial results are very good, but I am tempering down my glee because I was conservative and focused. It’s like those drugs you test to cure cancer that work in smaller trials, but fail in mass scale. My return has been about 33%, with 95% of the trades being in the money. Being the skeptic I am quite nervous about these results because they are too good to be true. Yet I see the monies in my brokerage account and think, interesting. Time will tell if my software is worth its money.
I was reading Steve’s article and thought “Steve you are a smart guy.” Steve is being smart because I think he is reading the market correctly and getting ready. I read the comments associated with Steve’s article and thought many are missing the message within the article. One comment that caught my eye.
Energy prices are here, there and everywhere. Oil was trading at around 55, then went to 59, USD, March 07 futures are trading at 61 USD, and May 07 Futures are trading at 69 USD. Between now and May oil would have to increase 25%, which is a hefty premium.
A reader of my previous energy update said what I was thinking:
Oil closed on Nov 3 at 59.14 USD per barrel. These days there are some jittery news that could cause the price of oil to increase. Cramer in his 24-10-2006 podcast said that oil futures were driven up by the hedge funds. I agree and said so in July and Fortune said the same in (more…)
Airbus is in deep do-do. The company that was heralded as the role model of a European Corporation, is well, getting bogged down in the reality of Europe. If there is one thing that the European governments and the American Federal government share it’s getting bogged down in details and bickering. Conventional wisdom says that Airbus is a dud stock! After all there are financial problems, A380 shipping problems, and let’s not even talk about the hen pecking between France and Germany.
In a previous blog entry I talked about the price of oil. A couple of days ago I was watching Boone Pickens on CNBC. He was commenting on what direction oil will take, and in his words, “I think you’ll see $70 before you see $50.” This was the same individual that said, “80 before 60.” History has shown that oil did not reach 80, even though it was only a few dimes away from 80. I am going to cut Boone some slack in that oil did reach 80 before 60, but I will take Boone to task in that he was also saying oil would reach 100 USD.
