« October 2003 | Main | October 2006 »
Got three bucks? That and a nickel will buy you a coffee drink at Starbucks . Starbucks Corp. said Thursday that it planned to raise prices of its lattes, cappuccinos, drip coffee and other drinks by 5 cents, or an average of 1.9 percent.
Home sales in Southern California continued at their slowest pace in nine years as price levels appeared to be nearing a plateau.
A total of 25,628 new and resale homes sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties last month. That was up 12.8% from 22,712 in July, and down 25.3 percent from 34,292 for August a year ago, according to DataQuick Information Systems.
| All Homes; | No Sold Aug-05 |
No Sold Aug-06 |
Pct. Chg |
Median Aug-05 |
Median Aug-06 |
Pct. Chg |
| Los Angeles | 11,653 | 9,193 | -21.1% | $494K | $517K | 4.7% |
| Orange County | 4,708 | 3,203 | -32.0% | $617K | $633K | 2.6% |
| San Diego | 5,379 | 3,666 | -31.8% | $493K | $482K | -2.2% |
| Riverside | 6,452 | 4,879 | -24.4% | $388K | $415K | 7.0% |
| San Bernardino | 4,522 | 3,611 | -20.1% | $344K | $365K | 6.1% |
| Ventura | 1,578 | 1,076 | -31.8% | $592K | $598K | 1.0% |
| So. California | 34,292 | 25,628 | -25.3% | $476K | $489K | 2.7% |
Like I've said before, I've seen as much so-called wisdom over the years that I've eventually learned to hold as inviolate truth, as that which should be thrown out with yesterday's garbage. Yet why does the eventual accumulation of pertinent knowledge translate so slowly into one's trading results? If we are capable of weeding out the good stuff from the bad, why doesn't the good stuff just take over and guide us directly towards success?
Eyes Wide Shut / via: tradingthoughts.blogspot.com
Continue reading "Why does it take so long for a trader to learn?" »
Does the federal deficit matter? Oceans of ink track and report this monster tally (current estimates for fiscal year 2006 stand at $260 billion), yet Jerry Green of Harvard Business School and Laurence J. Kotlikoff of Boston University contend that the deficit and related fiscal measures are arbitrary terms with no intrinsic meaning, a lesson that even economists have not learned.
"On the General Relativity of Fiscal Language," a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, provides a mathematical proof that the deficit, taxes, and transfer payments are no more than labeling conventions—representing, in the words of the authors, "an exercise in linguistics, not economics." Like Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, which concluded that concepts like time and distance depend on one's reference point, current fiscal language "represent numbers in search of concepts that provide the illusion of meaning where none exists."
Continue reading "When Words Get in the Way: The Failure of Fiscal Language" »
The U.S. current-account deficit--the combined balances on trade in goods and services, income, and net unilateral current transfers--increased to $218.4 billion (preliminary) in the second quarter of 2006 from $213.2 billion (revised) in the first quarter. The increase was mostly accounted for by increases in the deficits on goods and on income. Net unilateral current transfers to foreigners also increased, and the surplus on services was virtually unchanged.
How social computing and P2P activity are changing financial research and lending
Do not dismiss the power of consumers in the internet. To some, social computing and P2P (peer-to-peer) activity appear to be just more irrelevant remnants of the dot com era. This view ignores the sheer volume of information, opinion and services transmitted directly between ordinary consumers over the internet. Each day, for instance, volunteers create close to 10,000 articles for the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia.
Blogs propagate information and opinion. Close to 40% of US internet users read blogs, user-written online diaries on a variety of topics. This illustrates how easy it is for consumers to follow the experiences of many other users (accurately presented or not) before taking decisions. see chart 2 Social computing can augment to commercial success. Some of the best-performing internet firms rely on user-created content to enrich their services. Customers love to share their views on products they own. Amazon, an internet retailer, publishes such comments to inform undecided shoppers. Other ventures take the idea even further.
http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000201284.pdf
BT, BT Group plc, has broken out to new highs on the stock chart. I like the big volume on today’s gap up.
BT Group plc, through its subsidiaries, provides communications solutions and services to business, residential, and wholesale customers in Europe, the Americas, and the Asia-Pacific. It principally offers networked IT services; local, national, and international telecommunications services; and broadband and Internet products and services.
Recent Comments