Wednesday, June 29, 2016

On another attack

Newton's Law: For every action (bombing the Middle East), there is a reaction (terrorist attacks). Now, the reverse is true. It seems I'm watching a Kung Fu movie with the endless revenges.

We have been mis interpreting the teachings in the holy books. Fighting has been for centuries between Christians and Muslims. I should be exempt if I were neither a Christian nor a Muslim.

We've been dragged to their conflicts by Israel.

Give peace a chance please!

Brits may avoid some of the conflicts and influx of refugees by existing the EU.

The concept of null

I asked my grand daughter, who is going to Kindergarten, "What is the difference between 'none' and 'zero'?". She drew a zero in the air to represent a 'zero' and opened her hands to represent 'none'. She may understand the concept of zero and none.

I'm working on averaging returns. For example, when you have a return of 100% in one year and a return of 0% in another year, your average return is 50%.

In another year, you do not have a return for some reason such as no data available for that year. The average of the two years with 100% in one year and no data in another year (programmers understand the concept of null better) is 100%.

Smart, luck or I'm data-fitting (an investing term) - you decide. Or, I have too much free time to make you waste your valuable time to read this post. LOL.

BTW, This formula to calculate return (b-a)/a is wrong. It should be (b-a)/abs(a) to take care of negative numbers.

Friday, June 24, 2016

On British exist from EU

It will not be good for Britain and the world markets for Britain to leave EU. It is bad for ALL citizens, rich and poor. To start, the rich will lose in the stock market. When the rich have less money, do you think they will pay more taxes and give more to charities? The poor are the majority judging from the votes. They think the money donated to EU will come to them. It will not be the case.

Britain will face higher unemployment and many corporate headquarters will move back to EU countries. Scots will leave Britain too. Democracy works if its citizens are educated and set aside their agendas for the good of the country for the long term: not in Britain today and not in the US. I bet many Brits will regret their votes to favor to exit very soon.

The major instant losers are the refugees. Most likely most Brits do not want to take them according to the allocation of EU rules.

Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Brief review on Hedge Fund Market Wizards (2012)

Have been busy in testing strategies lately. Will write a summary sometimes.

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It is a good book to some, but not a suitable book to most retail investors. The Conclusion is quite similar to my article “Review what we’ve learned”. I enjoy it but I do not find many I can use for my investing. First, it is for hedge fund market wizards (i.e. traders), not for retail investors. You can guess the volatility of one making thousand-fold return with his annualized return of less than 50% over the years. This is risky trading, not suitable to retail investors. The most famous trader in our generation committed suicide after losing millions and called himself a loser. Making millions to them is easy but keeping the millions is another story. This book did NOT interview losers and the losers will most likely not want to be interviewed.    

There are many pages on the wizards’ personal lives and/or their other ventures that have nothing to learn for retail investors. With so many rave reviews from known celebrities, I am not stupid enough to argue against it but want to remind myself of the real truths.

Most do not want to share how their current strategies in detail. Do you blame them? If the manager publicizes it in a book, the strategy either no longer works at the publish date or not too long after many follow the same strategy. At the meantime, the manager makes good money in the book; his/her fund is flooded with inflow money that causes the fund’s performance to deteriorate.

It does confirm that very few hedge fund managers beat the market and as a group, they have not beaten the market for a while. Most take care of themselves with hefty fees. You take care of your investment yourselves by buying an ETF or several ETFs that stimulate the market. Play with market timing described in my books for better but riskier return.  The book does have a few good ideas for retail investors that I have copied them shamelessly to this book.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

Table of Content of my book Complete the Art of Investing




Contents