Replies to post #69857 on Zeev's Turnips Patch-No Politics (ZEEV)

[oeo2oo]

Strange Activities? How about negative interest rates??

TOKYO - Japanese domestic interest rates fell below zero for the first time on Friday, the effect of the Bank of Japan's policy of flooding the banking system with excess cash.

Bankers said the rate on overnight call money traded between banks dropped to minus 0.01 per cent and minus 0.02 per cent for January 27-28.

By borrowing at a negative rate, borrowers, thought to be foreign banks on Friday, pay back less than the amount borrowed.

Lending money at a loss may seem like a foolish deal, but for the lender it is a way to reduce its yen exposure at a time when confidence in the Japanese banking system is low.

Bankers said a total of about 15 billion yen (S$220 million) was traded at a negative rate.

http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/money/story/0,4386,168284,00.html


oeo2oo

[Smart_Money]

Zeev, This is amazing. Do you think you can come up with additional uses
. http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/singapore/story/0,4386,169122,00.html?

Docs grew eye 'patch' - from her own eye
Black mole covering cornea of girl's eye is removed using stem-cell transplant pioneered by S'pore team

By Salma Khalik

A YOUNG girl who once had a black mole covering almost the entire white of her left eye now looks just fine.


Video: Watch the STTV news clip here


Doctors took stem cells from 10-year-old Mercy Mohen's own eye, grew them in the laboratory and created a patch to repair her damaged conjunctiva, the thin surface layer of the eye.


It's all looking bright for Mercy, 10, whose left eye used to look black due to a mole (below). Doctors, who removed the mole, grew stem cells taken from her eye and used these to cover her eye's damaged layer. -- HOW HWEE YOUNG
The Singapore doctors are the first in the world to harvest the stem cells - master cells that can replicate themselves - and grow them in a laboratory for use in eye treatment.

They have filed a patent for their pioneering effort, which they had used to help Mercy, who was born with the mole.

She could see, but doctors were worried because the mole was growing into the cornea, the transparent part of the eye in front of the eyeball.

Until recently, she could not have had the her mole removed as it would have left too much of her eye raw and exposed.


Some of her schoolmates at Gan Eng Seng Primary, used to call her 'Black Eye'.

After the operation last year, Mercy kept looking at herself in the mirror, admiring her eye which now looks normal, said her father, Mr Mohen Ambrose.

The doctors who worked this miracle on her are from the Singapore Eye Research Institute (Seri).

The method sounds deceptively simple. Doctors took a tiny amount of stem cells from the conjunctiva high up under Mercy's eyelid.

In the laboratory, they grew these cells into a sheet over 100 times the size of the original bit of cells measuring about 2 sq mm.

After they removed the mole, they stitched this sheet over the exposed areas in the white of her eye.

Seri director Donald Tan, who led the team and heads the opthalmology department at the National University of Singapore, said the conjunctiva stem-cell technique has been used on 24 patients here in the past two years.

But the technique is still on clinical trials and is not yet available to everyone.

Most of the patients had fleshy growths covering their corneas, a common eye problem called pterygium.

The third most common eye problem treated here, it affects one in 10 people over the age of 40, though not all need surgery.

If the growth covers a large part of the iris, or if it is fast growing, doctors would cut off the growth and patch it up with conjunctiva from another part of the eye.

This leaves two scars on the eye.

Associate Professor Tan, said the results are optimistic, though the fleshy part re-grows in about a third of the patients on the stem-cell treatment.

It recurs in 5 to 35 per cent of patients who are not on the stem-cell treatment.

Nevertheless, this is a significant advance in the treatment of eye disease.

The team hopes to have better outcomes in the future.

They also hope to start work on growing retina from stem cells as well as bio-engineering various layers of the cornea for transplant.

The retina lies at the back of the eye and translates what the eye sees to the brain.

If they succeed, it could help a lot of people suffering from retinal diseases or damaged corneas.

The team, which hopes to publish its work in medical journals soon, will present their findings to about 600 eye specialists from 37 countries who will gather here next month for a four-day eye research meeting.

Seri and the Association for Research in Vision and Opthalmology (Arvo) are organising the Meeting on Research in Vision and Opthalmology jointly.

Arvo meetings are considered the foremost eye research gatherings in the world, say eye doctors, and had never been held outside the United States before. Deputy Prime Minister Tony Tan will open the meeting which features more than 70 speakers.

[positiontrader]

Zeev,

The total p/c also rose to .81 today.

Take a look at the VIX candle on Tuesday.It was completely(not partially like I have seen many times before) out of the upper BB.Have you ever seen this before?If so how often is it seen?

Regards

Marc

[mlsoft]

"Interesting, ysterday the VIX did the same swan dive.... Interesting also that the QQQ P/c ratio jumped from .21 yesterday to 1.19 today, very strange activities going on."
---------------------------------------------------------------

Zeev...

Either we have entered the twilight zone, or it's manipulation. Lemme think......

mlsoft

[pstuartb]

Zeev or anyone-

CBOE has the equity-only p/c today at about .63 and the index p/c at about 1.37, with a total p/c at .81. http://www.cboe.com/MktData/default.asp

Pardon the question if you've explained this elsewhere, my search didn't turn anything up, but why focus on the equity-only p/c as more representative of sentiment? The only reasons I can think of are 1) volume is higher on the equity p/c side, and 2) if market makers and hedge funds buy blocks of index puts to hedge long positions, it skews the index p/c up. But they can also hedge their long positions in individual stocks by buying puts in those stocks, or they can sell calls to all these exuberant retail investors, so I'm not sure the second reason makes sense. I'm missing something. Any other reasons? TIA

[The Freep]

Zeev... along with the put/call, I'm sure you've noted the disaparity of puts to calls on the QQQ options. In Feb, for instance, it's most noticeable at 24, where there are over 100K puts, but less than 20K calls. Below 24 the disparity continues. In March, from 25 down, puts outnumber calls by a huge margin.

Now, I don't know when all those puts were bought, but they certainly would seem to "agree" with your scenario of bouncing around a fair amount. Do these disparities give you pause to a 1200 target in March, or is it part of what the turnips are eating in order to come up with your bounce times?

the freep

[Smart_Money]

Saudi Arabia Water Wells run dry. Hah... I think we checkmate. "Saudi Arabia may sit atop the world's largest oil reserves, but the other side of the geological coin is that the country also sits atop one of the world's smallest reserves of water. It does not have a single lake or river."
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/01/28/201.html

[tantal]

Zeev, would the LEAP QQQ puts being played with this week have an effect on the VIX? Sorry if I'm displaying my ignorance here.

thanks.