Category: Research – Alex

In his textbook study of historical inflation titled “The Great Wave,” David Fischer recounts a tumultuous period in Europe that reached its climax in 1316, writing: Then, inconceivably, torrential rains came again in 1316. The grain crop failed a third year in a row. Europe began to experience the worst famine in its history. When…

The most obvious way to do something complex, such as govern 100 million people or walk on two skinny legs, is to come up with a list of all the tasks that need to be done, in the order they are to be done, and then direct their completion from a central command, or brain.…

The less successful you are, the more you’re going to have to work to correct the situation. If the portfolio is doing well, you’ll have to work less. There is an inverse relationship. ~ George Soros In this week’s Dirty Dozen [CHART PACK], we look at seasonality cycle composites, Bull regimes in Europe, check in…

What winning traders share, however, is that they all understand that losing is part of the game, and they all have learned how to lose… ~ Jim Paul’s, What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars In this week’s Dirty Dozen [CHART PACK], we look at changing cyclical leadership and explain why this risk-on rally has…

To be successful, you need leisure. You need time hanging heavily on your hands. ~ George Soros  In this week’s Dirty Dozen [CHART PACK], we look at the worst bond returns in over 200-years, cover more reasons to be bullish on small-caps long-term, discuss the key thing to watch for risk-on to continue, check in…

People form opinions at their own pace and in their own way; the notion that new information could be instantly processed was one of those ivory-tower assumptions that had little to do with reality. This gradual absorption of information by investors explained why markets moved in trends, as new developments were gradually digested. But market…

Personal intuition does not mean that you can translate last night’s exotic dream into some brilliant choice in the market. Professional money managers often seem to make up their minds in a split second, but what pushes them over the line of decision is usually an incremental bit of information, which, added to all the…

Understanding and dealing correctly with the trade-off between risk and return is a fundamental, but poorly understood, challenge faced by all gamblers and investors.~ Edward Thorp In this week’s Dirty Dozen [CHART PACK], we talk average bear markets, playing politics with national security, a rare breadth thrust in tech stocks, extreme short positioning in bonds,…

Implementation and flexibility. You need to implement a trade in a way that limits your losses when you are wrong, and you also need to be able to recognize when a trade is wrong. George Soros has the least regret of anyone I have ever met. Even though he will sometimes play up to his…

“The more humans try to be half-gods, the more they become half-monsters.” ~ Nassim TalebTaleb’s “half-monsters” quip is in reference to a point he made about modern-day Olympians and how systematic overoptimization had corrupted the original spirit of the contest. He went on to write: “There used to be a distinction between an athlete representing…