What will change the world first, Communciation or Transportation.

Last month we saw the man who changed the world, Mr. Bill Gates, predict the end of the keyboard. Now he is forecasting large leaps in future technology along the same lines in voice recognition and touch screens. These are very exciting but they won't change the world like we have seen in the past. In fact, with today's commodity markets the advances that will change the world will be those that find greater efficiencies in fuel or fuel alternative. Looking throughout history those inventions that improve the way products are moved to trade and sell effect commerce the most. Taming of animals, the wheel, animal drawn wagons, boats, rail roads, steam engines, cars, trucks, airplanes, jets, speed train, etc. I would be looking f0r a company more like Orbital Sciences Corp. (ORB) to change the world this next time around versus Microsoft (MSFT). I'm interested in some discussion and debate, please feel free to comment.

****Spitzer Alert****

This just in!!! A new picture has surfaced on Spitzer!! See for yourself. I think it looks real. Don't you???


You Be The Judge!!

Innocent till proven guilty but he may get a piece of his own medicine. Payback is a @#$%&! But you really can fault a guy in getting his oo-mox on, right???

CLIENT Number 9

If you have been under a rock today or haven't been able to read the news headlines today, you have missed the next new episode of Law and Order. You really can't make up this stuff some times and people really don't think things through no matter how smart they are.

Governor Elliot Spitzer of New York City is on the verge of resigning today because he was caught in a prostitution ring sting. He just talked with reporters about how he needs to work on and focus on gaining his families respect and trust back. Well, that may be difficult since he was such a "defender of truth" in his prosecution days.

Many on Wall Street, you can hear cheering and possibly chanting "ding dong the witch is dead!" I think he will need to resign his post as governor of NY in his 345th day of governorship.

Spitzer and the Witch from Wizard of Oz (Don't they seem similar?)

How can he think that he could get away with it being in a club called the Emperors club that sets up these prostitutes for high net worth clients. Also, on one of the busiest days of the year when individuals cheat on their spouse and government monitoring of this day for those cheats, February 13th (day before valentines day), you would think that this guy would know better. I guess that is why some in New York got the feeling that he had the "god" complex or untouchable air about him. I don't know him but this isn't good and must go down in a idiot-in-charge stupidity.

Again, there must be someway to make something off of this event. That is just how good Ferengi's think. I know others will. It is too bad but I think that all those that have been wronged by this guy, should have some fun and reprocussion on. All is fair in love and money!!! Have fun you Wall Street guys!!!!!!! Law and Order writers, you have an easy script here. Have some fun with it too.

My EUR/USD Trade

Ok, so the Dollar keeps on getting hammered and the Euro just keeps on going up higher and higher. As you know, I have been bullish the Euro for a little while and have been doing well since 1.4600 on the pair. I was bearish for a short while but ended up going long again and set up a limit sell order at 1.5450 if the pair just shot up. Well, it shot up and I got out of my position at 1.5450 because of my order I had set up on it. I am a happy camper with all my latnium.

Going forward, I still see some bullishness around it as the dollar still weakens. There is talk now of the Fed possibly having an emergency cut because of the markets. I can't see it helping much and only postponing the inevitable. I definitely think that we are in a recession and even though we are no where like the 1920s, it still is a for of recession. In a article that is from 2006 on when recessions may have happened in the past, goes to show that we may be in a small one right now. This article goes into some good information on the make up of these recessions.

Now, my Ferengi side tells me that there is money(latnium) to be made in this time of crises. And that is what I am doing. I just have to be against the dollar till there is something that convinces me that it is turning around. Who know, maybe the dollar will become the new currency carry trade. Remember, making and getting latnium is the" true" oo-mox experience!!!!

Clear Message from Universal Translators

Reed Elsevier Plc (RUK)

Big money movers seem to be sending a message on Reed Elsevier Plc (RUK) the last two days, while much higher than normal volume has appeared. Breaking up to new all time highs a window has opened as the stock gapped higher. While this stock specializes in many different areas of information technology and retrieval one that is most interesting to the Ferengi is that work it has done in the are of Machine Translation as a partner in the Babylon translation technology. One caveat I must highlight is before our recent volume in the stock it was only trading about 50,000 shares a day. I will usually pass up a stock with such little liquidity, especially, since I rely on stop losses so much. It is to easy for a stock to be manipulated by big money and market makers.

BTW as a rugby fan how can I pass up a stock with a ticker symbol of RUK?

Autopilot

Like something right out of Star Trek, okay not really Star Trek but more like Time Cop or Demolition Man, cars that may drive themselves. Looking at GM stock it might take ten years to care but the concept is cool.

Intercepted Fed Communications

Ferengi Traders have recently intercepted a communication to the Federal Reserve. The author of the letter has yet to be ascertained but the content is very relevant.

Dear the Fed,
You suck. You don't have a backbone and as a result you are slowly and
very surely making our country and our currency irrelevant. Usually the
masses rebel and bring down great empires but luckily for us democracy
fixed that problem. Unfortunately, democracy can't fix how lame and
fickle you are and so you will be our ruin.
A few things to tell you:
1) Inflation isn't 2% like your pathetic CPI ex-Food & Energy says it
is.
First of all, as far as I can tell food and energy are the only two
items you should NEVER exclude from an inflation index. Tell your wife
and kids they can have everything in the consumer basket except food and
energy and you will quickly see that they are actually the two MOST
important and indispensable factors in the CPI. You can find substitutes
for, or go without, everything in the basket EXCEPT those two.
Secondly, stop using "Seasonally Adjusted Intervention Analysis" it's as
sketchy as the Seldom-Accepted-Accounting-Principles (SAAP) we use to
cook the books here at LoS. I mean writing a computer program to
automatically remove any items in the basket which deviate meaningfully
from the previous year? Isn't the point of the data to SHOW the change
versus the previous year not hide it? Oh, I found the list of items that
you've adjusted for and it's embarrassing.
The majority of adjustments remove price increases with much less
frequent adjustments for price declines. You've basically left dairy
products out of the index for the last 5 years citing outrageous
one-offs like "a generally tight cheese market" as justification for
this. And as if reporting a separate ex-energy index wasn't enough
you've statistically intervened to remove the effect of higher energy
prices even in the index that's supposed to INCLUDE energy. In one
outrageous case you removed the effect of fuel oil for three months in
March 03 and the reason you cited for the "abnormal"
move was the "end of winter," yeah I was surprised as sh-t when winter
ended in Spring 03, it was wild! For a real measure go back to the old
method, you'll see inflation is at least double what you're reporting.
2) Grow a spine you slimy invertebrate
The market has a memory. Over the past 15 years you trained us to
believe that no matter how much risk we take, and how much we lever that
risk, if anything really scary comes down the pike then you will bail us
out. Now we all run around like reckless, spoiled 16 year olds bidding
up the price of anything we can get our hands on and not worrying about
consequences because daddy (Greenspan) and mommy (Bernanke - that's
right you're spineless AND a girl) will get us out of any trouble we get in.
Well you're only making the problem worse and we aren't learning anything so
we'll continue taking stupid leveraged bets creating bubble after bubble so
you can tip-toe around trying not to pop any of them.
3) You're lying to yourself if you think we still have real GDP growth
in this country.
I challenge you to find one measure of wealth OTHER THAN THE DOLLAR
which shows the US economy as worth more now than in 2001. If I wanted
to buy our country it would cost me 30% fewer euros today than it did in
2001, it would cost me less bars of gold, less barrels of oil, less ounces of copper,
less btu's of natural gas, less cubic feet of lumber, less of almost anything that has
intrinsic value. Yet you keep reporting GDP growth, why? Because your quick fix
is to effectively print more money so that in dollar units everything is getting more
"valuable". But guess what, to the 95% of the world that doesn't use dollars the true
value of the US economy has been shrinking, rapidly.
It's like a company doing a 5 for 4 reverse stock split every year and
claiming to have 20% eps growth, you haven't changed the earnings just
the units those earnings are measured in. The rest of the world is
telling you our country is worth less by massively selling our currency
and you still naively think we're growing value - I feel like I'm at a
gathering of the flat earth society or in Zimbabwenomics 101.
This will come back to bite you but not nearly as much as it bites us.
The cheaper the dollar gets the more expensive all our imports get,
inflation will rise faster than you can statistically manipulate it and
when that happens expected inflation goes through the roof (which as you
yourself have pointed out many times is by far the most serious threat
to economic existence). Then the only way out will be interest rate
increases as swift and severe as all the cuts have been. All the bubbles
will pop at once and then we're really in for it. Maybe it's 10 years
away but there's a toll collector at the end of every free ride.
When will you learn that recession is ok? It's actually healthy, it's
the cycle, it's how things have worked for a 1,000 years. Trying to
prevent every small recession is going to end in one huge recession (ie.
depression) and no one will trust you anymore which is a much bigger
problem. No economy in history has ever been able to successfully
inflate its way to health, this won't be any different.
Benny, I know you had to trade in your hypothalamus and spine to be fed
chairman and now you biologically over-react to everything and are
incapable of standing up straight when confronted by bully-morons like
Kramer. But I'm hoping you at least still have your brain. Before you
had this job all your published research showed that central banks
should strictly target inflation and should be ignorant of asset prices.
You had good reasons for this conclusion, don't forget them.

Subprimely,

Long or Short Capital Management

Honeywell bounce

Just wanted to point out a play on Honeywell (HON) this morning. Remember the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition to be aware of which direction the wind is blowing. When the Dow 30 bounces, start looking at the Dow components. If you enter today look to sell half your position when the stock moves up to 57 and the second half if the stock moves up to 61. I like to use the 8 day moving average as my stop. If the stock closes below the 8 day moving average then close the entire position. This keeps a a very tight rein on the stock helping us to control our losses.

Honeywell (HON)

Finding Stocks The Ferengi Way

Here are a few key Ferengi Rules of Acquisition that can helps us find stocks in which we would want to trade. These rules are significant because they lead us into a top down approach. A wise man can hear profit in the wind because he is looking for the next opportunity. He understands that in a bull market everyone looks like a trading guru but a bear weeds out the chaff. The crowd jumps on at the end when the wise and prudent are selling and those who have become educated will reap the rewards.

Rule 22 – A wise man can hear profit in the wind
Rule 44 – Never confuse wisdom with luck
Rule 69 – Ferengi are not responsible for the stupidity of other races
Rule 74 – Knowledge equals profit
Rule 162 – Even in the worst of times someone turns a profit
Rule 217 – You can’t free a fish from water

Below you will find relative strength charts of four different industry groups versus the S&P 500. If the chart is uptrending then the industry group is outperforming the S&P 500 whereas the opposite is true if we were searching for bearish stocks. The recent decline in the markets makes the wise trader prove his mettle. As I mentioned before the prudent investor is looking for the next opportunity. Since stocks tend to move with their industry groups we can find good stocks by finding industry groups with strength.

Relative Strength Charts

Major Drugs

I particularly like this chart because it has recently broken out of a down trend. Although we didn’t get the very bottom (and rarely will we ever) we may be getting in on a fresh new uptrend.

Insurance Accident & Health

Insurance gives me similar excitement because we see it was in a sideways basing pattern for some time. Now we see it has broken out of its consolidation and a new uptrend may be on the way.

Tobacco

Tobacco has been showing strength for some time so we aren’t necessarily finding a bottom but we are seeing a break out of a “resting period”. These companies do a lot of exporting so they are benefiting from a weak American dollar. Also, any Ferengi investor understands what a good investment addictive products are!

Oil & Gas Operations

We have all seen gas and oil companies profiting from the rise in oil prices. Once again the weak dollar along with higher world demand for crude has driven oil prices higher and higher. A break out of this consolidation is also evident on the chart.

Here we have identified four possible groups of opportunity. Look for my next postings where I will identify stocks and ETF stocks that will allow us to begin out profiteering.

On a side note, these are all industry groups that perform well when the economy is about to go into recession.

Why Star Trek First Contact is the Best

Many trekkers and trekkies will ask me why I believe First Contact to be the best of all Star Trek movies, and while I must concede that picking a favorite Star Trek is about like picking your favorite note in a Mozart concerto, I must say knowing that Zephram Cochrane was just out to make a buck pleases me.

Oh yeah true believers, he was out in true Ferengi fashion hoping to make some money and hook up with a few ladies to get his oo-mox on. They didn't put that on his statue in Montana did they?

If only a Ferengi ship came by when he made his successful flight then the ultra-capitalists of earth would reign supreme. Ayn Rand would have been the educational format for the Star Fleet Academy and the Klingon Empire would have been been overthrown by hostile take over.

Stupid, sexy, self-righteous Vulcans!

Welcome to Trading the Ferengi Way

We are a couple of traders that want to have some great discussions and give our thoughts on trading in the markets. We have many, many insights and need a place to put it all. We needed a venue to discuss everything that we have in our big Ferengi heads. We want to show real life examples and insights with a Ferengi twist. We will be using the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition as a kind of play book and model.

I guess the only thing to say now is Hang On And Enjoy The Ride.