Briefly Speaking

作者:Victor Niederhoffer
日期:2011/03/21

1. The return of Gallo to the Denver Lineup, and his previous absence must be the reason that they were winning before and can be expected to lose now. Such a new beginning should be used in markets to determine the distributions after a new event like the first up opening in x days or the first red or green in the colored co-movement chart that Doc updates on daily spec.

2. I have always eschewed the development of systematic methods based on anomalies for making an extra buck in individual stocks for a different reason than Richard Roll who finds that they never do half as well in real life as they do on paper. My reason is that by the time you consider the extra 2 or 3 percentage points you can make from them at the best, your customers if you have any couldn't cover the cost of their fees and be left with anything good. And if you don't have customers like me, then the return you could possibly make from them would never be sufficient to cover your expenses.

3. Louis L' Amour in The Iron Marshall has written a great Horatio Alger story that has almost as much accurate stuff about New York City in the 1850s in it and great Titanic Thompson con man stuff in it, as does his usual Western fare, always written with a topographical map at his side. However, I repeat that his constant emphasis on boxing technique as the deciding factor in who gets ahead and his inability to flesh out the endearing personal nobility of relations between friends the way O' Brian or Schaeffer can makes much of his work very shallow.

4. The overreactions in the market last week show how waiting without trading for the time when you normally would have been squeezed out, but then going in big is a viable strategy. The main problem with this is what would have happened to you if you did this the day in October 2008 the market anticipated the inevitability of the community organizer's election and dropped 20% in two days.

5. It is always amazing to me to read the GaveKal analysis of the influence of world events on stock prices. They invariably come to the same conclusions as me, almost always in favor of the long term drift, and almost always taking a contrarian approach to investing. They have a good essay on why they are bullish on Japan now. Based on such things as that their market is underweighted and undervalued relative to other markets, and their own history, it is likely that easing will occur, and that the nuclear crisis was much more contained than fearful reports made it out to be. I have never seen a GaveKal analysis that I didn't agree with except for one of their favorite hobby horses about how the inexorable and unbeatable new type of virtual company arising a la Carefour that can make an infinite rate of return et al.