Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Social unrest in Spain, fears of Catalonia secession
Study Reveals Germans Less Confident than they Seem
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/study-reveals-germans-less-confident-than-they-seem-a-857918.html
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
German High-Frequency Bill to Affect Hedge Funds, Official Says
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/german-high-frequency-bill-to-affect-hedge-funds-official-says.html
Monday, September 24, 2012
EES: Has the Euro Peaked
http://seekingalpha.com/article/881041-has-the-euro-peaked
Bankers among the least trusted, says Which?
Which? said that recent banking scandals meant there was an urgent need for a "fundamental change" in banking culture and practice.
An industry body said that there was a commitment for change among banks.
Which? conducted a survey of 2,060 people, asking how much they trusted various professions. Nurses, doctors and teachers were the most trusted, with bankers, journalists and politicians in the bottom three.
The consumer group said that bankers should comply with a code of conduct or be struck off. They should also be punished for mis-selling, with bonuses clawed back.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19639795?print=true
Friday, September 21, 2012
System Expectations
I found myself outside today looking for an excuse to make a video. It's 80°F / 27°C, sunny skies and a soft breeze in Dallas. The last place anyone wants to be is in front of the computer when the weather is this nice.
No doubt that some active daytraders or people that hate their jobs are thinking the same thing. I suspect that the motivation for most people making automated expert advisors is the dream of making money without doing anything. Turn on the software and wait for the trading profits to roll in. That was certainly the case with the company Forex Made Sleazy... I mean, Forex Made Easy several years ago.
We do have a handful of customers that trade profitably, but even then, it takes a long time for an automated system to get to the point where it's largely hands off. The best conceived ideas, which I would define as plausibly worthy of my own investment funds, takes a bare minimum of several months to execute from start to finish. This also presumes the unlikely notion that the idea has genuine potential to start with.
Even the most simple, valid concepts encounter substantial setbacks before the system can truly run hands-free. It's usually not some kind of epic programming disaster where the client wants black and the programmer makes white. Don't get me wrong; communication is critical. The smoothest projects are always the ones where both parties understand one another readily.
Nonetheless, even the most well-oiled team experiences countless hiccups in the process of morphing from idea to reality. Simple ideas often fall the most vulnerable to real world problems. Trade execution stands out as the most common obstacle. If anything goes remotely unexpected, a potentially profitable scenario may lead to unexpected losses.
I worked with one client that came up with a simple idea that mathematically showed a heavy positive expectation. Yet when we launched the idea in the real world, the prices that the system absolutely required in order to function never came through. Slippage occurred precisely when it was the most damaging.
We had to go back to the drawing board looking for ways to re-engineer the expert advisor where the importance of execution declined. That setback alone took several months to overcome in any meaningful sense.
The take away here is that it's totally unreasonable to expect to hire a forex programmer and expect a dramatic shift in profits and life style. The best ideas take several months before they are worthy of running their full account balance. Unfortunately, most of the ideas out there are not good to begin with. That's why making an EA that is profitable over the long run is so incredibly difficult.
Deutche Bank: Gold is Money
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-09-19/deutsche-bank-gold-money
Intercontinental Exchange, the US futures exchange group, has followed rival CME Group by allowing its European clearing house to accept gold bullion as collateral for transactions.
When World War I broke out in 1914. The banks suspended redemption of gold for paper money. This broke their contracts, but the governments all ratified this action. Then the governments had their central banks confiscate the gold that had been stored in the vaults of the commercial banks.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Coin mintage collapsed the Roman Empire. Is history repeating itself?
In the third century AD, the Roman Empire went through a hard period, know as the “military crisis”. This period is characterized by political problems, such as the violent death of the emperors and their family, caused by revolts, plots and military uprisings, military problems caused by the invasion of the empire by the barbarian populations such as the Goths and economic problems such as the lack of production, the decrease of the population, famine in some cases and inflation.
http://www.coins-auctioned.com/docs/coin-articles/coin-mintage-collapsed-the-roman-empire-is-history-repeating-itself
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
EES: QE3 to start new US Dollar Carry Trade
http://seekingalpha.com/article/872541-qe3-to-start-new-u-s-dollar-carry-trade
Monday, September 17, 2012
EES: Competitive Devaluation of Currencies via QE3
http://seekingalpha.com/article/870971-competitive-devaluation-of-currencies-what-qe3-means-for-forex
Sunday, September 16, 2012
Swiss banks seek new model as secrecy gone
With their long-cherished secrecy practices increasingly under attack, Swiss banks are scrambling for a new way to attract wealthy foreign clients.
"Banking secrecy is no longer there. That's gone. It is over," international wealth management consultant Osmond Plummer told a gathering of Swiss bankers in Geneva last week.
And once the secrecy ends, he stressed, Swiss financial institutions will have to come up with a new magnet if they want to remain attractive for large foreign placements.
"Something has to change in Switzerland," he told the seminar, focused on wealth management and banking secrecy.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Japan Hints at Possible Yen Intervention
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444709004577650632272233176.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303879604577407743768560590.html
US cannot continue the endless sugar rush
Friday, September 14, 2012
US Credit rating cut to AA - as Fed increases QE
http://www.cnbc.com/id/49037337
Perma-QE: Lessons from Bernanke's Latest Splurge
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article36525.html
The Fed’s launch of QE3 looks more than a tad desperate. If you believe the central premise of the Fed’s action, that propping up asset price gains would have enough effect on consumptions to lift the economy out of stall speed, it would seem logical to sit back a bit and let the recent stock market rally and the (supposed) housing market recovery do their trick. But the Fed has finally taken note of the worsening state of the job creation in an already lousy employment market and has decided it needed to Do Something More.
Read more at http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/09/the-feds-qe3-no-exit.html#Gv1iHbCxHdDBXjPh.99