School is back in session "in these parts." Even though, according to some liberal/socialist bloggers, Texas has a horrible school system, my kids are still excited about the first day of school anyway.
Even with the excitement and the fact that my girls go to a "well-regarded" district, it seems like some aspects of the education system is LONG overdue for a COMPLETE overhaul.
Which brings me to this excellent TED video on Math and School. This guy is SPOT ON.
Math does not equal Calculating.
Math is greater than Calculating.
I've witnessed this phenomenon first hand now. I've seen my oldest daughter absolutely struggle through "calculating" homework answers for Algebra to which a computer/hand calculator could easily solve. It's silly.
The problem with this idea will be apparent to anyone who is paying attention. For teachers, it's WAY easier to teach "calculations" than it is to teach "MATH."
Please give this video some time....
As for the markets, I came up with these ideas and charts for Gold and S&P 500. Good Luck in the week ahead:
Market Commentary 21AUG11
31 comments:
Andy T
Nice work on the charts. On page 9 I noticed that you aren't using price extremes for the fibonacci retracements. Have you tried point "d" as the 100% because it's the retrace high after the peak?
Gold overnight high (so far) 1897.50.
Silver 43.98.
@AAIP (other thread)...
I mainly pointed out SUGAR back in May because it struck me as odd that Au & Ag were carving out what, at the time, seemed like highs, whilst Sugar was not only on the way down (then), but it had basically already retraced the move since Jackson Hole 2010 (at the time), whilst leaving two glaring chart gaps (Feb & April) in the process...
Pretty much anything I look at nowadays I just arb off of gold (silver included)...
I'd be interested in the moment for AMEN RA to put up a AU:Crude chart & a AU:GASO chart...
I'm starting to think there could be some pennies made there...
cv--
was, just, funnin'/'cage rattlin'' ..
was NBD..
AAIP
AT, nice Chartage~
@AAIP
I also said more recently (on the subject of chart gaps), that the S&P had a WEEKLY gap to fill at 1108...
The other week, we had funny overnight move under that number (1108), then off to the races...
Now we're back down there again (almost)... Perhaps the market does, in fact, have to close a print which challenges that number...
1108 is important (to me - anyway), because the weekly level challenges the LEHMAN candle...
My ideas are pretty worthless around here, so take it all with a grain of salt (or sugar - as the case may be)... :-)
BTW
I hit on (1 unit) last night (taking the Jets & giving points to the Bengals)...
To complete the week (week 2 pre-season)...There's...
Chicago at New York Football Giants (-4 1/2)
I'd be tempted to go with a play on the Giants here... Lovie Smith is oftentimes disinterested in pre-season football (witness last week - having his team kick off from the 30 BY CHOICE instead of 35)... He seems disinterested in coaching or doing his job IN ANY WAY lately (which is probably why the Bears are Obama's favorite team)...
I think the key to this game (during the important part anyway), is pressure on Jay Cutler... OC Uminyora is playing games & is on the sidelines after a minor knee surgery, but Jean Pierre Paul looks like he wants to make a name for himself in the NFL... It usually takes a Mike Tice coached offensive line about a half a season to react to anything Tice does, so, you can count on it... The Bears offensive line will have an answer for JPP come about the 7th week in the regular season (when they're lining up to play, like the Saints or something)...
In any case though... It's probably not worth laying any units on here...
If you want to lay units... Put em on the OVER in how many times Ron Jaworski says "National Football League" in the ESPN broadcast... on't worry about the number... Just take the over on that...
cv--
that '1108' "Call" was, no doubt, On.~
ibid.
AT,
btw, re: "School"/"Publicke Skool"
it is Good, of You, to keep an Eye on "What they're Learning"
I know, from my own Experience, I learned, way, more from 3 (p) to 9 (a) than from 9 (a) to 3 (p) ...
ibid.
Maybe with all those math skills, we could find a new "jobs czar"
General Electric is planning to move its 115-year-old X-ray division from Waukesha, Wis., to Beijing.
In addition to moving the headquarters, the company will invest $2 billion in China
and train more than 65 engineers and create six research centers.
This is the same GE that made $5.1 billion in the United States last year, but paid no taxes-the same company that employs more people overseas than it does in the United States.
So Obama appoints GE Chairman Jeff Immelt to head his commission on job creation (job czar). I'm guessing the definition of that job Immelt is doing is supposed to help create jobs.
---
I'm also guessing this is all fine with Ritholtz... I mean, until they start moving our police & firefighter unions to China, the fund ought to keep pumping right along (you know - collecting all that mad cash by being 100% in bonds & all)...
QQQQ -- interesting story in last post. Have you read the "day the dollar died" series? it think its at www.johngaltfla.com. Pretty good.
All my gold futures got sold in the middle of the night. Quite the ride! Looking to buy Oct gold puts if we get into the 1900's today or tomorrow.
I think it's fair to say gold is not an anti-dollar trade, nor an inflation trade, and perhaps not even a QE trade (Gold up $400 since QE2 ended June 30th). Mostly just a bull market story that the mainstream (i.e mutual fund) investment community still hates.
I intially thought this was going to be wave 5. But I am fairly sure the last 3 years was a third wave, with a 1 to 3 year sideways consolidation ($1400 to $2000), and then a massive wave 5 after that. That's my current thinking.
Steve
BAC still getting killed while the other TBTF are up.
RBS down. BCS is struggling too. Unbelievable to see Barclays this low, many banks worldwide are trading at price/book of about 0.4.
Dividend yield 3.59% fro BCS and 4.44% for HBC.
Lloyds is trading as though it will expire. I hate all banks, but...
SCGLY is up. Yield 8.17%, if it survives... BNP up too.
Luv the gold trend...
Good to hear from you. Congrats on that trade bro.
It's been a beast.
@Steve (10:13)
I'll go along with that in a macro sense...
Long term though... IT IS somewhat 'anti-dollar' when it comes right down to it...
Or rather 'anti-[un-backed fiat that enjoys reserve status & yet whose economy is managed imprudently]'
kinda makes you feel like a Roman...
TOGA! TOGA! TOGA!
Interesting math related stuff Andy. I use Khan Academy for tutoring in math (not my long suit). It's all there...and its all free. Check it out.
http://www.khanacademy.org/
Has anybody noticed that WTI price divergence compare to Brent and almost any oil type ( even mexican basket now is more expensive than WTI)?. WTI is supposed to be of very high quality and for many years it was one of the more expensive oil types. Since 2009 it has not going up as the other oil types and when there is a price adjustment it also retraces more than the others. For me it is like buying 99.9% gold in USA cheaper than 95% gold in the rest of the world. Since I have no inside knowledge in the oil markets, I have no idea what is happening. It seems as if somebody is holding down prices in the USA. The same situation is happening with Natural Gas prices. Divergence between USA and rest of the world is just getting wider. I don`t buy the high inventories explanation (shale gas and many media stories). Natural gas prices if you take in consideration usd devaluation and inflation are just unbeliavable cheap. Get a cave and fill it up with natural gas seems to be the the best investment at this moment. If anybody has any idea of the reason of this divergence I would really appreciate his feedback.
Cacerolo
Cacerolo...
The Pipeline between Cushing and Gulf Coast currently goes one way...from GC to Cushing.
So, there's no way to get bbls down from Cushing to GC easily.
It's logistically constrained.
This will change in the next few years...as new Pipeline capacity comes in.
http://www.traderdaily.com/08/cftc-leak-spurs-speculation-of-oil-speculation/
Gold is not giving up its hunt for $1900. I wouldn't worry about hikes on silver until it's over $45.
AT,
thanks for the charts man.
I also failed to account for the 78.6.....WTF?
too distracted following a bunch of bullshit instead of my charts
can't help but think gold ends with a major blowoff/overthrow of that channel
Steve's idea (LTGT) is pretty interesting to me (not so much shorting gold here, not for me, gl!) but the idea it might have been a wave 3.
the only thing I guess I take issue with is that I'd have thought a wave 3 would have taken out the inflation adjusted 1980's price of gold, so I think generally I lean toward the corrective labels.
I'm basically on board with this idea that we haven't really seen a true impulse at large degree in pretty much anything since the year 2000. Some might say it's bad luck to have to operate in a 20 year triangle but it's the hand we've been dealt isn't it.
New UAV for Police Can Taze People from Above
August 22nd, 2011
Via: Singularity Hub:
The ShadowHawk is the seven-foot, 50-lb copter that is the toy-sized dealer of destruction from Texas-based Vanguard Defense Industries. The copter is the result of three years of development. If being tased from above sounds frightening to you, I suggest you cease all criminal activities now (simply staying indoors is an option). There’s a good chance ShadowHawk’s spine tingling buzz could be heard approaching a city near you. As a sign of new law enforcement tactics to come, the Sheriff’s Office of Montgomery County, Texas was recently awarded a grant by the Department of Homeland Security for a squadron of ShadowHawks. Montgomery County’s Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel is psyched. “We are very excited about the funding and looking forward to placing the equipment into the field. Both my narcotics and SWAT units have been looking at numerous ways to deploy it and I absolutely believe it will become a critical component on all SWAT callouts and narcotics raids and emergency management operations.”
http://cryptogon.com/?p=24405
you know, because, "They hate us for our 'Freedoms'"
if We enslave ourselves, the 'Threat' will go away..
ibid.
Ding ding ding! Gold touches $1900.
but, much to cv--'s broader Point..
The Network of Global Corporate Control
August 22nd, 2011
In Fiat Currency Hell, people who have managed to accumulate savings have to become speculators in an attempt to preserve what will otherwise be taken away from them through inflation. They will often hand their savings over to companies that will attempt to do this for them. So, below, here’s a paper that includes a list of companies that are mostly involved with pension funds and wealth management for high net worth individuals. And to everyone’s shock—*snort*—a small number of firms exert a lot of control over the overall network.
Note that Barclays acquired Lehman’s rotting entrails and zombie Bank of America got Merrill Lynch’s. Also, Walton Enterprises LLC just deals with the Walton family’s (Walmart) fortune.
Via: PhysOrg:
For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true. The team has uploaded their results onto the preprint server arXiv.
Using data obtained (circa 2007) from the Orbis database (a global database containing financial information on public and private companies) the team, in what is being heralded as the first of its kind, analyzed data from over 43,000 corporations, looking at both upstream and downstream connections between them all and found that when graphed, the data represented a bowtie of sorts, with the knot, or core representing just 147 entities who control nearly 40 percent of all of monetary value of transnational corporations (TNCs)..."
http://cryptogon.com/?p=24384
the Fiat, she is Harmless, she is for Love, to Us..
AAIP
Monsanto and the Mortal Danger to Traditional Agriculture
August 21st, 2011
Via: Axis of Logic:
The greatest threat to the future of food production in the world is the introduction of genetically engineered foods from the bio-tech industry. Contrary to their mendacious propagandized promises of solving the problem of world hunger through the so-called second green revolution, the bio-tech companies are instead in the process of destroying the world’s ecosystems, and thus the natural food chains and life cycles. Their goal is certainly not to solve any problem at all, but instead to fill the corporate coffers with the profits from selling their dangerous products to countries with already high mortality rates from malnutrition and starvation.
Posted in Atrocities, Dictatorship, Economy, Elite, Environment, Food, Genetic Engineering, Health | Top Of Page
One Response to “Monsanto and the Mortal Danger to Traditional Agriculture”
lagavulin Says:
August 21st, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Here’s a great piece from May 2011 ACRES magazine about Monsanto’s Roundup/glyphosate: why it was so groundbreaking and the emerging problems that are being identified with it’s use (esp. in cattle fed on Roundup ready grains).
http://www.acresusa.com/toolbo....._Huber.pdf
More on topic is the article’s discussion of Professor Huber’s concerns about the approval of GM alfalfa – the first perennial plant to be approved. He wrote a letter to Tom Vilsack urging them to deny approval, which was infamously leaked.
http://cryptogon.com/?p=24378
the GE pHoods, she, too, is Love, for Us
the Glyphosate, likewise, Love for Mother Earth, and, for Us..(as long as We don't need to Eat..)
ibid.
AT,
Thanks for your answer and your link. I have also read about the Cushing glut problem but it just does not make sense. Oil companies invest big money to get extra oil from expensive projects just to realize they can`t move the oil from Cushing, and because of that extra capacity (lets´say 5%) they got a 20% price reduction vs Brent (historically WTI has been a little bit more expensive that Brent) which affect the 100% of the production. It just seems crazy to me. My guess is big oil companies that sell most of their production not related to WTI prices want to bankrupt medium companies, so they are pushing down WTI prices while they can keep selling their oil at higher prices. In this way, they will buy medium and small companies assets on the cheap. I am just not familiar enough with oil companies in order to put more evidence of this situation. It would be interesting to find out which companies are most affected by low WTI prices.
Cacerolo
Cacerolo (this is all snark, so feel free to skip it)
you just can't put it together can you?
isn't it obvious that oil companies are "keeping the price of oil down" in order to help the economy, those Evil Koch's and the rest of their fat cat buddies are going to try to make things look better for a while.
I've heard, like they have I'm sure, that low oil is a "tailwind"....I don't get that because it looks to me like oil goes up the better the economy does, but, you know, experts say it works like that because of lag time.....
so that's all, they are just lending a helping hand to the little guy, surely low oil should provide a major boom for christmas shopping and the like
in closing,
what debt?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/22/us-goldman-blankfein-idUSTRE77L5VK20110822
Gold breaks 1900. Very powerful. Stocks weak like the girlie-man.
hey, more Food Fractions, for the Serf-itariat..
LILLE, FRANCE — Tate & Lyle, P.L.C. has launched a cocoa replacement solution that uses Carcao, a carob powder ingredient, and is designed to save costs in the total recipe. Carcao may be used as a partial cocoa replacer in dairy, bakery and ice cream applications.
Manufacturers also may achieve a desired color or flavor. For instance, Tate & Lyle specialists may adjust the temperature and roasting conditions during carob powder production to produce a series of different Carcao products. The products may range from light brown and sweet-tasting to dark brown with a strong unsweetened taste.
Tate & Lyle has developed case studies to demonstrate the cost benefits of using Carcao. They include a chocolate mousse, a chocolate-tasting muffin, a cocoa drink, chocolate ice cream and a cocoa filling.
http://www.bakingbusiness.com/News/News%20Home/Supplier%20Innovations/2011/8/New%20carob%20powder%20ingredient%20may%20replace%20cocoa.aspx
ibid.
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