Rating: Two Thumbs Up, Required Reading, with a note of caution. This book review is hard for me to explain. On the one hand I want to say, go, go, go buy this book. On the other hand this book is not like Fooled By Randomness. Fooled By Randomness I feel was a book written because Taleb had some...

I shorted down a burning ring of fire I went down down down And the flames went higher Black Thursday? Or will The Fed return and carpet bomb the market with money? I still maintain this has a few more months to run - watch the Shanghai Composite. We may have a head and shoulders pattern that...

On CNBC Europe there was this guy from Saxobank who talked about how the models of today are illustrating that computers will yet again fail. He was saying how good traders will save the day. I replied as follows: > I am following the algorithmic trading talk and the Saxobank guy is dead wrong. The...

...the next low (read: the next support level) is 1222 of June 13th, 2006. (!!!) We appear to have bounced back off that level, but that support level is not holding strongly. Don't be suprised if it falls over. Countrywide is all but gone. That is the last of the non-bank lenders. What is even...

I find it amazing that with a 10% drop in the market reached it is now time to buy? Why? Because P/E ratios are good? Because cash flow is good? The economy is still good and strong right? And therefore there is no recession? It's a time to buy right? After all it seems all the professional traders...

Today on CNBC American Squawk box I heard one of the most straight talking individuals I have listened to in a long while. The panel was Steve Forbes, and a woman called Janet Tavakoli, and they were talking about Quant funds and their models. Janet's comment regarding quant model's was, and I...

Many, including myself are wondering who is responsible for this mess. Many point at Greenspan, but I think it is not so black and white. One problem that we have is that people don't understand the mathematics and dynamics of mortgages. I even get the feeling that mortgage lenders are pretty...

The market is in turmoil and BNP is complaining about liquidity issues. I went back to look at an interview from Scholes (author of Black-Scholes pricing) for an opinion on the situation. > As a result, "decision time becomes elongated" and speculators hold back their capital just when their...

At iTulip they had an interesting posting regarding the currency markets. > "We are fast reaching a stage at which elegant quantitative models won’t determine who survives, in fact, those that tend to rely on models in this environment may be most likely to be shining shoes sooner rather than...

I'm in a funk. You ever get to that place where you want to reverse every one of your trade ideas? I'm there now. I sell GRMN at $81 and it goes to $103. I buy BBBY for some reason at $36 and it goes low. Then I watch it bounce, set a stop loss that gets hit at $34.74, and watch it have a nice up...