Windows of Opportunity: The Real Holy Grail?

[Billy]

Hi--

I stumbled into this group via a High Growth Stock Investor webinar by Mr. Duncan. I'm also a subscriber to Morales and Kacher. I've been in trading only since last summer. I have sorted through a lot of promotion, hype, thievery... to arrive here with you all. I'm very happy about this and am excited to see how this program evolves.

If I can be of any help, please let me know.

Nickola Pazderic, Ph.D.

Welcome on board, Nickola!
A quick Google search reveals that you are a respected cultural anthropologist and University Professor specializing in qualitative research. You also immersed yourself for 20 years in Taiwanese society for an anthropological study of their culture.
Perhaps you can help with qualitative resarch ideas and concepts about the markets, counterbalancing the dominant quantitative approaches.
And immersing yourself for as long as you wish in our EV family, you are welcome to ask the right questions stemming from your experience.
Also, you may from time to time give some feedback on Taiwanese financial culture.
Feel free to be the only judge of your posts.
Cheers,

Billy

[nickola.pazderic]

I appreciate very much the warm welcome.

I've done many things in life and have the scars to prove it!

I'd like to think that if I can do anything well it is to spot quality in people and their pursuits-- thus, my optimism about what I find here.

On investing, in a previous (my first) post I noted my game with the SPY and my investment in TZA. I agree with the Robot, Pascal, Dr. Kacher, and others. This makes buying puts on rallies and the following volatility easier to do and to stomach.

I have some good friends in Taiwan who speculate-- all very successfully; and they've taught me a lot, especially that I must always respect the charts. I'm sorry, however, that I can't comment on any specific Taiwanese companies at this point. I will inquire and pass along what I may learn.

Since I am not an engineer, computer programmer or mathematician, I rely on others, such as the Robot, to help me with brute calculations and precision. An an anthropologist I've written on neoliberalism and its effects on tertiary education in Taiwan. It has been and remains a difficult process for me to transform my thinking from critic to investor. Nonetheless, I think my long term strength as an investor will be in analysis of macro-economic trends.

Again thank you for the kind words and welcome.

Back to work I go...

Nickola

[adam ali]

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/05...eat-investors/

[nickola.pazderic]

As a contemporary cultural anthropologist, I can say it has been difficult to adjust myself to the absolute practicality of investors. In teaching, there remains the element of missionary or monastic life. Professors are paid poorly in the USA and elsewhere, but they justify their sorry state on the grounds of the greatness of their callings/research and on importance of the transfer of knowledge through (and from the point of view today) archaic means of transmission (classes, tutorials, etc.). Traders also live a life of the mind. The greatness of their achievements are measured by capital, expanding social networks, and notoriety. In many ways, the most successful university teachers have adopted these measures, as well. The difference of course is money. It is clear to me that no professor in the USA can compete with a successful investor in the game of capital accumulation. And since the world is capitalist, the bounty of the world will be steered their way, too.

From the stand point of the practicing academic, this seems artificial, anemic, heartless, and artless. Traders seem to ignore the reality of capital itself as they play their games of liquidity. Meanwhile, anthropologists and others are perplexed by questions such as: what precisely is value? How is it measured, accrued, transferred, and politicized? These questions are no doubt germane to trading but perhaps not to traders. Of course, value can change in a heartbeat. Every trader knows this and has experienced it. Every trader implicitly acts as though there is no absolute store of value-- even though they may claim that it is gold, or real-estate, or even the common stock of Dow Chemical. There are some "gold bugs" who see intrinsic value in objects and perhaps rightly so. But the fact remains that most, if not all traders, would exchange their gold or other store of value for something that could guarantee them more of what they desire. Anthropologists would look at traders and their fixation on liquidity and wonder how can the acts of so many be rendered liquid during a sale (as Marx noted in his study of commodity fetishism)? Traders, however, will consider liquidity as a dynamic store of value itself. Both are operating in the realm of the mind. The difference again: the academic will speak of the abstract in terms of social justice, the good or beauty while the trader intends to realize new surroundings and opportunities via the machinations of his or her intellect, ambition, and skill.

It is saddening to me to note that most traders, if they attend to academic thought at all, consider only the work of economists. But academics are impoverished too by their lack of knowledge about the sophisticated working of traders. In particular, the antennae of quant-oriented traders are very fine. They pick up money flows, statistical values, the slightest changes in seasons, multiple and simultaneous auctions, and many other elements of quantitative analysis. Indeed, it has occurred to me since the first day I began to use ThinkorSwim that the complexity and artfulness of the trading platform is one of the magnificent accomplishments of this epoch. Outside of business school, who knows anything about ToS or Tradestation? Both sides suffer from their ignorance.

I’m also struck by how much traders depend on unwritten rules of decorum in the same way academics do. I am struck every day by how well certain pivot and resistance points are respected by traders. Only when a market is flying away like a beautiful balloon or selling off like-- what else?-- suicidal traders during the Great Crash of ’29 are boundaries not honored it seems to me. Of course, prices are manipulated and weak hands shaken out. But this nastiness is understood by experienced hands. In academics, social codes prevail in writing as well as conversation and debate. Boundaries are well understood, and those who violate them pay the price of ostracism and derision (or, we might say following Pierre Bourdeiu, with the loss of their cultural capital).

Ok. This is enough for me tonight. I wonder if there is any interest in such reflections? And surely, I would accept comments; for this is really my first attempt to write anything of this sort on this topic. I wonder now how I got started on this topic. ...

[ericoleman]

Thank you Nickola. I greatly enjoyed reading your observations and reflections. The anthropology department was my favorite on campus some years ago, and I have fond memories of my "Money and Power" course and instructor.

Best,

Eric

[grems8544]

Quite and enjoyable read, and yes, keep the flow of ideas coming.

Regards,

Pgd