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well, there *are* real worries. like the following on the global b2b numbers.
http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA419440
okie dokie. i'm keeping track.
looks like a good bet, seeing as how the european bourses are struggling with their opening gaps.
i thought u already shorted at 8.50
awww. ya can't believe anything u read on yahoo anymore.
maybe i should stop paying attention to those stock message boards ... hmmm ...
speak of the devil! true??
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/040519/234/726q1.html
Andy Kaufman Returns After 20 Years
Wed May 19, 9:00 AM ET
New York City, NY (PRWEB) May 19, 2004 -- Twenty years ago, on May 16, 1984, most of the world believed that we had lost a comedic legend forever. This has turned out to be what will inevitably be known as the greatest comic prank ever conceived. Andy Kaufman, by all accounts, is alive and well at age 55 and is now living in New York City on the upper west side. To his loyal supporters and fans, Andy says "sorry about faking my death," in a recent interview with ABC News at his apartment. In order to reach legendary comic status and seal his place in the history of performance art, he said it was "necessary to go away for twenty years."
Andy Kaufman's official site has been launched at:
http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com/
Even though he has technically returned, Andy says that he plans to maintain his low key lifestyle that he has led for the past twenty years. He has resumed contact with friends and family. Fearing the possibility of this scenario and the potential for another hoax, Kaufman's family has contracted with independent auditors Ernst & Young to determine if this in fact the real Andy Kaufman. He has subjected himself to medical examination and submitted DNA, hair, blood and fingerprint samples to the auditors. Ernst & Young and the Kaufman family report that with a 99% probability, this is indeed the real Andy Kaufman. His mother says, "It's good to have Andy back."
In 1999, a new crop of Kaufman fans were born after Jim Carrey starred in the hit film Man on the Moon. "Andy's bizarre mix of comedy and performance art will inspire fans and comedians alike for generations, especially after this stunt," says Jim Carrey.
Andy says he will make only occasional public appearances, sometimes in disguise so that you won?t know if it?s really him or someone else. Kaufman was famous for pulling this stunt with the Tony Clifton character, sometimes played by good friend Bob Zmuda.
Andy says fans should tune into his website for ongoing updates to his adventures in life. As always, Andy's stage has been the world, testing the boundaries of our beliefs, our sources of information, and our perception of reality. "It's good to be back," Andy writes on his website.
and whether they *can* raise prices, or who can, is still up in the air. airlines are worried that their increases won't stick. and with gas up, consumers are cutting back ... now where was that article ...
no, not the fusion machine, of course. the delorean ....
(or maybe u don't remember "back to the future"
fusion machine in the back of his car!?!?!
was it a delorean?? did u check to see if it had a flux capacitor in it?!?!
yeah! meeting of the minds
here's something fun: how the white house and buddies debated how to abuse folks during interrogations without being subject to the federal war crimes act, which carries a death penalty. of course, the answer wasn't "don't do them" ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/politics/21MEMO.html
re semi cycle:
but of course, these guys - i assume you're referring to these:
http://www.forbes.com/execpicks/2004/05/03/0503automarketscan02.html
http://www.siliconstrategies.com/article/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=20000043
haven't argued that the semi cycle has peaked, but rather that it will peak in june. and that's not inconsistent with the numbers yet ... (the forbes article addresses your tsm point pretty directly.)
Unprofitable companies turn to IPOs
Thu May 20, 7:20 AM ET
By Matt Krantz, USA TODAY
Four years after shoveling money into the IPO incinerator by betting on money-losing companies, are investors ready to do it again?
Unprofitable companies are scurrying to cash in on the revived craving for initial public offerings: Of 11 companies scheduled to go public the next two weeks, seven lost money last year and six bled red in the first quarter. Even more money-losers have filed IPO plans and hope to hit the market in a few months, including PlanetOut and yellow page publisher Dex Media.
This is a dramatic departure from the past three years when companies had to be mature, growing and - above all - profitable if they hoped to have a chance going public. Investors who were burned so badly in the late 1990s didn't want to be fooled twice.
Not anymore. "The bar was high," says Richard Peterson, chief market strategist at Thomson Financial. "Now, the bar is low."
Investors can partly blame the return of the money-losing IPO on Google-itis. The furor about the popular (and profitable) search engine's IPO is causing other companies to think they can cash in.
Most agree the IPO market is nowhere near the tizzy of 1999 when cash-bleeding companies such as now-defunct Pets.com seemed like a good idea. Still, many aspects have experts concerned, including:
•The race to get into the pipeline. Knowing that the IPO process can take three months, companies are all but tripping over themselves to get in while the demand is hot. In all, 186 companies are in line to go public, the most since 2000, says IPO tracker Dealogic.
"There hasn't been much of a window in three years," says Russ Landon, investment banking chief at Adams Harkness & Hill. "If there is a market, companies want to take advantage of it."
•Desire to get cheap capital. Now that the Federal Reserve (news - web sites) is threatening to boost short-term interest rates, issuing debt is a much less attractive way to raise cash. Even with the new rules under Sarbanes-Oxley corporate governance laws, the lower cost makes tapping the stock market a preferred way to raise money. That's not being missed by small firms that need the cash the most.
•Biotech resurgence. Many of the unprofitable firms lining up are from the biotech industry, looking to cash in on the strong performance of publicly traded biotech stocks. So far, investors have been willing to buy into many young biotech firms' promises to deliver big future rewards. "When there's an opportunity to get access to IPO markets, (biotechs) eagerly do that," says Joe Muscat, a partner at Ernst & Young. But Landon says there is a key difference from four years ago: "Companies are going public for the right reasons. It feels very different than 1999 and 2000."
hmmm. cold fusion. this predates me, but the story seems interesting, although it looks like it has no fervent believers anymore. why do i recall james randi talking about this thing?
Scientific American (two experts, one slightly negative and one hostile)
http://www.sciam.com/askexpert_question.cfm?articleID=0007CC4D-394F-1C71-84A9809EC588EF21&pageNu...
re changing world techs.
"I don't get it. The guys at U of I haven't talked to the guys at Changing World Technologies? They've already patented it, and have test facilities and at least one commerical installtion."
yah, in fact if you read that article, their plant is mentioned there. apparently changing world is working with turkey parts.
i caught the u of i guy on npr recently talking about his work. he's hoping to get "shortcuts" because pig manure is already broken down, to some extent. plus there's a whole lot of it. and apparently funding from ... i forget, some porcine advocacy group
pig manure
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4732398/
URBANA, Ill. - A University of Illinois research team is working on turning pig manure into a form of crude oil that could be refined to heat homes or generate electricity.
Years of research and fine-tuning are ahead before the idea could be commercially viable, but results so far indicate there might be big benefits for farmers and consumers, lead researcher Yanhui Zhang said.
“This is making more sense in terms of alternative energy or renewable energy and strategically for reducing our dependency on foreign oil,” said Zhang, an associate professor of agricultural and biological engineering. “Definitely, there is potential in the long term.”
Speeding up the process
The thermochemical conversion process uses intense heat and pressure to break down the molecular structure of manure into oil. It’s much like the natural process that turns organic matter into oil over centuries, but in the laboratory the process can take as little as a half-hour.
Tom Roberts / AP
Yanhui Zhang demonstrates the properties of raw oil created from hog manure at his lab at the University of Illinois.
A similar process is being used at a plant in Carthage, Mo., where tons of turkey entrails, feathers, fat and grease from a nearby Butterball turkey plant are converted into a light crude oil, said Julie DeYoung, a spokeswoman for Omaha, Neb.-based Conagra Foods, which operates the plant in a joint venture with Changing World Technologies of Long Island, N.Y.
Converting manure is sure to catch the attention of swine producers. Safe containment of livestock waste is costly for farmers, especially at large confinement operations where thousands of tons of manure are produced each year. Also, odors produced by swine farms have made them a nuisance to neighbors.
“If this ultimately becomes one of the silver bullets to help the industry, I’m absolutely in favor of it,” said Jim Kaitschuk, executive director of the Illinois Pork Producers Association.
Is the process economically viable?
Zhang and his research team have found that converting manure into crude oil is possible in small batches, but much more research is needed to develop a continuously operating reaction chamber that could handle large amounts of manure. That is key to making the process practicable and economically viable.
Zhang predicted that one day a reactor the size of a home furnace could process the manure generated by 2,000 hogs at a cost of about $10 per barrel.
Big oil refineries are unlikely to purchase crude oil made from converted manure, Zhang said, because they aren’t set up to refine it. But the oil could be used to fuel smaller electric or heating plants, or to make plastics, ink or asphalt, he said.
“Crude oil is our first raw material,” he said. “If we can make it value-added, suddenly the whole economic picture becomes brighter.”
And IF during the completion of the process or before final completion, S.A. or other oil rich countries got wind of this, they could effectivley knock us back into the stone age by shutting off exports to the US or in a sense blackmailing us into NOT trying to find a way out from under their control.
this would affect the entire world economy, not just the u.s.
even if the u.s. was the only target.
It's intriguing to me and might help Mr. Kerry immeasuably...the fellow needs votes if he wants to win.
although he needs to do it without looking like he's bribing ...
so i don't get it: is it real demand or is it just speculators playing? and if the latter, is this part of a plan to create a glut and depress prices for the fall?
Western Nations
Urged Not to Tap
Oil Stockpiles
Energy Agency Head Says
Reserves Should Be Used
Only in True Emergencies
By BHUSHAN BAHREE
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
May 20, 2004; Page A2
As Western energy czars and OPEC ministers prepare to meet this weekend in Amsterdam to discuss remedies for record oil prices, the head of the International Energy Agency advised oil-importing governments to refrain from tapping their stockpiles to try to drive down prices.
In an interview, Claude Mandil, the chief of the industrialized world's energy watchdog, warned that such a strategy would deplete emergency reserves and could spark a futile battle with speculators.
Mr. Mandil's remarks came amid mounting calls for oil-importing nations to tap reserves or take other action to check oil prices. Oil is at 21-year highs, threatening to choke off the global economic recovery, though prices have gone considerably higher in the past when adjusted for inflation. U.S. benchmark oil closed at $41.50 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, up 96 cents.
President Bush, who has been barraged with such calls from Democrats, rejected the idea again yesterday, saying, "We will not play politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," the U.S. stockpile.
ASIA'S THIRST FOR OIL
China and India are developing an addiction to oil. As the world's two most populous nations industrialize, their demand for oil is putting them on a collision course with another big consumer: the U.S.
Western governments are ratcheting up their demands that the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries act to tame prices. British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown yesterday insisted that OPEC boost supply to bring prices down to within the cartel's informal target range, which is $22 to $28 a barrel for a basket of crude-oil types. The OPEC gauge has soared to $36.93, or 32% above the top of the band.
The energy politicking will doubtless heat up this weekend at the Amsterdam summit, where the key questions probably will be: Can exporters deliver enough oil to fuel a faster-than-expected world recovery? Or have oil markets, stretched by soaring demand, geopolitical jitters and thin spare capacity, spun out of control?
OPEC ministers are expected to discuss an output increase. Saudi Arabia, the country with the greatest capacity to boost output on short notice, already has called for raising the cartel's output ceilings, but traders doubt much more oil will be forthcoming and so prices have barely budged.
Until recently, OPEC, led by Saudi Arabia, had an informal understanding with the 26-nation IEA, under which the Western countries would refrain from using their stockpiles in emergencies so long as OPEC supplied the world with all the oil it needed. At a summit in 2000, the two sides also informally agreed that both could live with an oil price within the OPEC range.
The entente worked in 2003, when OPEC ramped up supply ahead of the Iraq invasion to reassure markets that global demand would be satisfied. But with prices well above the band, the entente is in shreds. Western governments blast OPEC for having restricted supply this spring, preventing inventory cushions from building up. OPEC points to soaring demand in countries such as the U.S. and China, plus geopolitical fears heightened by the U.S. occupation of Iraq.
Mr. Mandil, who as chief of the IEA helped steer the informal arrangement with OPEC, sidestepped questions about whether the accord has broken down. "Our discussions with producers did not succeed, that is true," he said. "At the same time, we have never lost contact with them." Still, he said, the IEA countries shouldn't tap their strategic stocks to tame prices. Doing so, Mr. Mandil said, would rob the world of a buffer in the event of a true emergency shortfall of oil.
He also cast doubt on whether sustained intervention would work. The surge in oil prices stems partly from traders' knowledge that the global supply chain is stretched to near its limit. Some OPEC officials calculate that world crude-oil production is running at 97% of capacity, leaving a thin cushion of two million barrels a day.
While IEA members' stockpiles equal about 100 days of their imported-oil needs, the same stockpiles equal just 10 days of trading volume on oil markets, Mr. Mandil said. That is too small a pool to mount a sustained battle against speculators, who probably wouldn't ease up on prices for more than a few days. "It will not work," Mr. Mandil said.
The U.S. has tapped its strategic reserve before to fight higher oil prices. The Clinton administration released 30 million barrels of oil from the reserve in fall 2000, when prices were above $35 a barrel. The move quickly brought prices down to the low $30 range. Back then, the oil-producing world had a large amount of spare capacity, so the use of the stockpiles packed a punch, since traders believed the government had the ability to create a glut. Today, the chances of a glut seem remote.
> I thought Max pain on QQQ was between $35 and $36....
gonna be hard, though, cuz max pain on many of the large tech components is higher, and heavy in calls, without alot of short interest to make willing buyers. e.g. the intc battle at 27.5 ....
check the news links on the bottom of the first page,
http://www.prudentbear.com
OT- "Update on Helicopter Attack- NO Wedding Party ..."
um, please note that it doesn't say this. there is, in fact, no real contradiction between the u.s. and iraqi reports on the event. u.s. claims that we hit a safe house. iraqi's claim we hit a wedding. clearly we were targeting what we labelled a military target in a civilian neighborhood. photos of dead children corroborate that we hit civilian targets; but that would have to be expected anyway. weapons were found. (although there are weapons all over iraq anyway ...)
anyway, i don't see anything contradictory. the military/gov't have consistently tried to minimize the civilian death toll.
(as long as this is vaguely political, here's some fun for a meandering day in the markets: historians battle on the place of the current presidency in history:
http://hnn.us/articles/5019.html
"Time to take OPEC out. Greedy little bastards."
yay! i like that kinda talk from the land of 17mpg SUVs!
Actually, US is Adding to SPR, what could that be saying??
doing their best to keep prices high for big campaign contributors? jam it up until it busts so you get low prices for the fall?
"The sharp decline over the past hour has been attributed to selling of S&P futures by a Tier 1 firm."
frank zappa? or was he the father of the mother?
sigh. sorry i'm just too timid here. i don't mind missing the beginning of a big run, when it looks like that's starting. but a profit is a profit.
(teddy) bear parker
well, i'm probably early but i just sold my gold fund (only had it a couple days!) at 11am.
"With the backlog and recent news the set up is perfect."
possible, i guess. i would think, though, it depends largely on continued gov spending for the sciences (not sure how much of this is used for defense). certainly not many businesses, if any, would have a use for a cray. well, maybe pharmaceutical companies.
re cisco code: was talking about this with a friend last night at dinner; his comment: "everyone in the bay already has a copy, and its mostly just bsd anyway".
csco languishing might be more because of factors pointed out by schaffers: high call interest and low short interest.
"As a matter of fact, the 3 very high level engineers I know all have been buying CRAY lately."
well, first, i said "in the long run", so that point is moot. i'll concede that there's lots of software written for the cray and its easy to program for. however, cost/performance isn't there and with the cheapness of beowulf-like clusters, the motivation to develop huge amounts of public software for them (academia, fx/film industry, gov labs), and the fact that supercomputers built from commodity parts will - history shows - win out over these vector machines ... there's not a huge future there. oh, also see "grid computing".
not sure what your engineer friends do. as of at least 2 yrs or so ago, something like 85% of cray business was government. sgi's big gamble with them never panned out because ... well, because of what i outlined above: their gamble was on high end graphics, but all of the major effects houses dumped sgi/cray machines and went with first sun, and now linux clusters/farms.
no need to, my parents are both in the industry. well, one an academic.
re cray
bah. these are dinosaur machines, like the big sgi machines, that are bought because there are plenty of applications out there written specifically for their brand of parallelism. but in the long run ... dead fish.
well, i included a yahoo link. i'm just taking that as gospel (the 52-week range provided, although that clearly omits half-days).
No one was interested in trading today!!!!!!
yeah but that never stopped them before. they just run the computers for some zero-sum game, no?
the scarcity of sunlight parallels the light volume
hmm. i just read a news article on this recently. i think pollution is responsible for dimming the light that's reaching us by something like 7-10%.
solstice. hmm. doesn't that mean that we whip out the virgins for some kind of stravinskian dance?
actually, i thought down on low volume was good for a turnaround back up. but up on low volume?
marc faber's latest
http://www.gloomboomdoom.com/marketcoms/indexmarketcoms.htm
17-May-04
The Bubbles Mr. Greenspan has created!
Marc Faber
Credit has to be given to Mr. Greenspan. By bailing out the S&L Associations in 1990 he contributed to the creation of the emerging market bubble of 1994, which led to the Mexican crisis. Then, by bailing out Mexico - with the then acting Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's help - he contributed to the emerging market debt excesses that led to the Russian crisis and the LTCM debacle of 1998. Again he bailed out the system with an enormous liquidity injection and created in the process financial history's biggest bubble – the NASDAQ bubble of 1999/2000. But until then, Mr. Greenspan was only a “serial” bubble blower. He managed to create bubbles, but only one at the time and in different asset classes, at different times and in different parts of the world. But this time around, we have to give him far more credit for his monetary achievements and nominate him for a Nobel Price in bubble creation. After all, he is the first central banker in the history of capitalism who has managed to not only create a credit bubble in the US, which has led to the entire mortgage refinancing scheme, excessive household borrowings, over-consumption, and a growing current account deficit, but he has also miraculously managed to create bubbles all over the world – in stocks and bonds of emerging economies, the currencies of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, in housing, and lastly in Chinese capital spending, which is now growing by more than 40% per annum, as well as in commodity prices (see figure below).
In addition, as a result of the growing US current account deficit, which is offset by current account surpluses in Asia , he has managed to create a bubble in foreign exchange reserves of Asian central banks. As can be seen from the figure below, Japanese foreign exchange reserves have exploded on the upside since year 2000, whereby the same situation of soaring foreign exchange reserve growth can be found in China as well as in most other Asian countries.
So, what terrorists are to peace loving citizens – we must exclude from these Mr. Bush & Co – Mr. Greenspan is to sound money, which is not supposed to lose its purchasing power. In short, he is for the honest saver, who depends on the purchasing power of his money to be maintained for his retirement or for his children' sake, the world's most dangerous man!
In the meantime, US industrial production is hardly growing, as can be seen from the continuous decline in commercial and industrial loans (see figure below courtesy of Bridgewater Associates).
So, all Mr. Greenspan has created is a huge financial and asset bubble everywhere in the world, but no real improvement in the US economy, which is like a drug addict and requires more and more credit to stay afloat. As someone once said, in order to avoid a hangover, you must keep on drinking…
The problem, however, is that the US requires an increasing amount of credit growth in order to keep real estate and stock prices up and to make them move higher, which in turn supports the US consumer's excessive consumption. But, at the same time, while asset prices in the US are soaring, output is not rising for the simple reason that the market has discounted this “evil” Fed induced con game.
We all know from basic economics that the only way in which monetary policy can really affect output is if it comes as a surprise – and this only in the short-term. If, however, everybody knows that monetary policy will be easy, everybody will move prices instead of output, and the monetary expansion will be "neutral" at best. But what is now suddenly happening is that the investment community, through the market mechanism, is beginning to catch on to the fact that there is much more credit growth out there than productive capacity, and therefore prices have risen in some cases, such as for commodities, very rapidly.
It would seem to me that the realization by the investment community that Greenspan's game cannot end well has begun to reverse expectations. Suddenly, out of the blue, the bond market has collapsed and brought down stock and commodity prices along with it .
As I have maintained before, this is not a time to play hero like the brain-damaged president of the US in Iraq . It is a time to stay of out of all assets and be patiently waiting for better buying opportunities. In particular, I am concerned about the US housing market.
In some areas of the US , housing prices have been rising at almost 30% per annum in recent years and overall prices have doubled since 1997. The question, therefore, arises when this housing boom, which was fueled by ultra low interest rates and allowed people to refinance their homes, will come to an end. This is an important question because US consumption since year 2000 was not driven by capital spending and employment gains, but purely by asset inflation in the housing market, which allowed people to take out larger and larger mortgages and spend the additional funds (well understood, “borrowed funds”) on consumer durables such as cars and consumer non-durables. Now, however, there is a problem with the housing market. If the US economy continues to strengthen, interest rates, which are negative in real terms, will have to rise considerably and this could lead - if not to a housing crash - so at least to a less buoyant market. In addition, as we can see from the figure below (courtesy of Bridgewater ), the inventories of unsold homes are at a record. Therefore, should higher interest rates, driven by a stronger economy, lead to less home purchases by individuals, home-builders who are holding these inventories could get hurt quite badly.
I would, therefore, recommend to all investors who believe that the US economy is expanding solidly to sell all homebuilding companies' stocks here or on any rebound. Personally, however, I am not so sure about the strength of the US economy, since consumption is purely driven by additional borrowings and government spending, which leads to larger and larger budget deficits. In fact, I have just bought some US treasury bonds with the view that, in the next few weeks, investors' expectations about future growth could be somewhat disappointed. After all, every asset-inflation, which drove consumption in the past, such as was the case in Japan in the late 1980s and in Hong Kong prior to 1997, came to a bitter end. Thus, with bond prices being near-term oversold, any disappointment about economic growth could lead to a modest or even strong rebound in bond prices. If you look at the figure below, which shows the recent performance of 10 years US Treasury bonds, it would appear that there is some support around this level and that a modest rebound is probable.
Still, this short term rebound aside, bonds may shortly be completing a longer-term head-and-shoulders top, which would mean that in future we could see lower bond prices or much higher interest rates. Such an outcome could spoil all other asset inflation parties and lead to lower home, commodity and stock prices…. Therefore, once again, patience and staying aside from the markets may be the best option.
nasdaq lowest volume day in 1 year.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^TV.O&d=t
what's the message of this?
"how reiable" ... reasonable, but yet its a 3 candle pattern, and won't be complete until after the close, so bets are off until then.
DEUTSCHE JUNK BOND ISSUE BLOWS UP
By JENNY ANDERSON
May 18, 2004 -- Deutsche Bank's New York junk bond desk saw a $500 million bond deal finally go bust last night, forcing the giant firm to reprice the offering this morning.
Repricing the deal, done for tractor maker Case New Holland, is a major embarrassment to the bank and its top-flight junk desk, industry sources said.
Deutsche Bank, which bought the bonds - a standard procedure on Wall Street - may have to sell them for less, which could leave the bank with tens of millions in losses.
The bond bust-up is a black eye for Deutsche Bank, whose cranky bondholders have watched the value of the bond plummet as information came out showing that the CNH assets guaranteeing the bond were of a lower credit quality than was previously disclosed.
That made the bonds a riskier bet for investors, who in turn demanded a higher interest rate - the factor that sent Deutsche back to the drawing board.
Market sources say Deutsche Bank did not know about the disclosure issue when it priced the deal, but did know about it before the final documents confirming the deal reached investors.
A Deutsche Bank spokesman declined to comment. A CNH spokesman did not return calls for comment.
Case New Holland is a wholly owned subsidiary of CNH Global, the second-largest maker of agricultural equipment and the third-largest maker of construction equipment, according to business data provider Hoovers.
The saga started on May 4, when Deutsche Bank priced the bonds at $97.46 with a 6 percent yield.
Demand for the issue was weak, and traders involved in the offering estimated that Deutsche Bank had been able to sell only 40 to 60 percent of the bonds; the low demand sent the price plummeting.
If Deutsche Bank can reprice the bonds at a level more acceptable to the markets, the bank could minimize its loss.
bernie schaeffer feels the love for big tech ... and gets bearish.
Big Love for Big Technology
Bernie Schaeffer and Beth Gaston
5/17/2004 11:32 AM ET
Frequent readers of this space recognize my view that, from a contrarian perspective, nothing is more negative than overwhelming optimism on a stock or a sector that has displayed weak price action. I took a look at the sentiment on six of the largest-cap names within the technology sector (all boast an average daily volume of between 16 million and 73 million shares) and, as presented in the table below, it is not a pretty picture. Highlighted in green are examples of bullish sentiment (which, when seen on down trending stocks, is bearish in our contrarian view).
[...]
http://www.schaeffersresearch.com/commentary/bernie_observations.aspx?ID=10159
Why would anyone adhere to any other strategy when this one works so well?
so well? last year it did a cumulative 20+%, which underperformaned buy and hold on qqq, and seriously underperformed some informed stock picking. this year its done a cumulative 4%, which underperformed a good short and hold strategy.