Atomic events

Last night, as the sun was setting, Heidi looks out across the Lake and sees the detonation of several nuclear devices. Them's the steel mills letting off steam, eh?

 

Monthly Returns

Here, I mention the variation in DOW monthly returns. It occurs to me that some may find it entertaining to do that for other stocks (or Indexes), so I got me a spreadsheet that looks like this: Click to enlarge. To download a copy, click here.

 

Fettuccine Alfredo!

Perhaps my favourite pasta dish is Fettuccine Alfredo. I just happened to run across a list of "national food days". Guess what's coming up?

 

DOW stuff

Okay, January was a lousy month for the DOW: down 4.9%. It was also lousy for the S&P: down 5.2%. The Nasdaq? Down 7.0%. But the value of the DOW is proportional to the sum of the stock prices. Which of the 30 DOW stocks has the highest price? IBM at $122. The lowest price? AA at $12.73. So IBM has about ten times the weight in calculating the value of the DOW. Okay, so what about the S&P? Its value is proportional to the market caps. What if the DOW were calculated like the S&P? Which of the DOW30 has the largest mkt cap? XOM at $306B. The smallest mkt cap? AA at $12.4B So, if the DOW were calculated like the S&P (proportional to mkt caps), XOM would have about 25 times the weight!! And how did these guys perform, in January 2010? Click on the pretty picture to enlarge. Ain't it nice that AA has a small weight. P.S. AA stands for Alcoholics Anonymous Alcoa. ------------------------------------ To have your portfolio mimic the DOW, you'd buy one share of each of the 30 DOW stocks. Suppose you invested equal dollar amounts (rather than equal share amounts)? You'd invest $1 in each DOW stock. How would you have fared, in Jan, 2010? Just like the DOW or S&P: about -5%. ------------------------------------ Want to see the current weights, for DOW stocks? by MktCap and by Price and performance assuming $100K were invested with equal amounts in each stock ------------------------------------ Will February be better? 'course, they is variations from the average from bestest to worstest, eh? (Click on the chart.)

 

as January goes

 

Canadian mutual funds

My brother-in-law has a spreadsheet that he uses to track his portfolio. It includes Canadian mutual funds. Though Yahoo provides prices for U.S. funds, it don't do nothin' for Cdn funds. It'd be nice if'n Gerry could click a button and download stock prices and Cdn mutual fund prices directly into his spreadsheet. I could only think of a clumsy way of doing that It's described here: http://www.gummy-stuff.org/funds.htm Who knows? Mebbe other Canucks may find it useful, eh?

 

OLED, eh?

A few days ago, while reading about the soon-to-be-announced iPad, I read that it may have an OLED screen. Huh? OLED? SO, this old guy had to google "OLED" and now, having explained it to Heidi, I have to write up a tutorial on Organic Light Emitting Diodes. What surprised Heidi (and me) was Organic? I'm sure I've seen something like that on Star Trek. If'n (like me) y'all don't know about OLEDs, the tutorial will be over there ... soon.

 

self-publishing

You know that novel I was gonna publish? ** Well, it ain't supposed to cost me nothin'. I just got e-mail from the "publisher" asking for $18 to send me the manuscript for proof-reading ... then some other shipping & handling charge. Then it's gonna cost $22.17 if anybody wants to buy it. Then nobody in their right mind would actually pay that. Then I decided to forget this self-publishing gig. Since the "publisher" requires that I submit the novel in pdf format, I had bought a nifty piece of software that converts MS Word docs to pdf. ($45). There's free software, but this was so slick. (It also converts images and Excel files to pdf - whatever that means.) Once upon a time I wrote a calculus text and paid a few bucks to have it converted to pdf so's I could make it available on gummy-stuff. Years ago, somebuddy on a discussion forum mentioned that s/he was partially blind and couldn't get info on stocks. I wrote a spreadsheet (described here) that downloaded info on a stock and pasted a text message which could be read with text-to-speech software. Though I tested it with a "free" version of the software, I figured users would have the sexier version ... so I bought it. Click! Click! Heidi complains that I'm spending too much money. I reckon it's a good thing that she controls the finances in our family else we'd be broke. ** I was looking for any online reference to my novel and happened across this. There, I read this: Huh? (Well, at least I'm in good company, eh?) P.S.

 

posting 1 - 2 - 3

I've been getting e-mail saying "I'd like to post a comment, but I have to register." Hmmm. So I check out the blogger.com manual and find I can set it up so ANYBODY can post ... and that's the way it is now. For some reason, I get e-mail from blogger.com asking if I "approve" the comment. I reckon that's to avoid spam. ** Uh ... what's gonna happen when Heidi & I are on a cruise ? I should read past the first page of that manual. ** Once upon a time I stuck a Comment Box on gummy-stuff. I got a hundred pieces of junk/comments in less than a week. It took me a day to larn how to annihilate the Comment Box. At my age, it'll probably take me a week to get past the first page of the blogger manual. ============================================== Having read past the first page of the manual, I find I can eliminate the need for my "approval".

 

about gummy-stuff.org

<rant> For over ten years I've been responding to requests. Sometimes it just takes a minute or two. Sometimes it takes hours, providing a formula, a tutorial, a chart, a spreadsheet. Some take the form of a jillion byte spreadsheet with the demand request:   fix it so it works. Half the time I never got so much as a thank-you. Once I got six requests in a single e-mail. I replied to all six, but got no response. Several months later the same guy sent me eight more requests. I started a response with several words known only to me and Mephistopheles. I often get requests that ask me to reproduce expensive software that downloads and analyzes stocks. Once I was asked to join the Motley Fool. I did and within a month had twenty six requests. I answered sixteen ... then quit. My opinion of Homo sapiens was diminished. I still have little respect for the species: Click! In March, 2009, we went on a cruise. When I returned, there were over two dozen requests. It would have taken me days to respond. That's when I really I felt my age. What used to be fun was now a chore. I decided that this must end ... hence the notice on gummy-stuff. Since then I get very few requests ... and the downloads from my web site have increased dramatically (from 25 GB in Feb/09 to 65 GB in Mar/09). I am one happy 75-year-old. I can spend more time writing and painting and still maintain my interest in things financial (without the headaches). </rant>

 

Whither Willow?

Once upon a time I wrote a novel: Whither Willow?. Soon after, the publisher went belly-up. Last night I was told that there's a "free" (gasp!) mechanism for self-publishing. So I reformatted the novel (according to specifications), designed a (silly) cover, etc. etc. and submitted the manuscript. I was asked: "How much do you want to sell it for?" I typed: "$1.00" They replied: "It has to be at least $22.17." Huh? So it's $22.17 which (I guess) is their cut. My cut is (I guess) $0.00 It'll be fascinating to see if anybody actually pays $22.17, eh? P.S. Whatever you do, DO NOT BUY IT! It's here (along with others) for free! Novels

 

DOW vs the World

Every morning (when the local markets are about to awake), I check the foreign markets. At 4:30 AM, this is what I got: Note that the Asian markets are already closed. So, does the DOW affect the foreign markets ... or vice-versa? I played with this a while ago: here and here. Then at 6:30 AM I check again and find this: Now what ... ?? The DOW opens UP 72 points even though foreign markets are all down:

 

the Himalayas are melting

Remember when I talked about Global Warming and the massaging of data? Well, it's happened again! A recent report claims that: "... Himalaya glaciers could vanish by 2035". Mamma mia! It turns out that a climatologist from India (who's received several hundred thousand dollars in research grants) admitted that this claim is not based upon scientific data. Indeed, the climatologist seems to have read the claim in some non-peer-reviewed journal (maybe Readers Digest?). There also seems to be earlier work (by Russian glaciologist Vladimir Kotlyakov) that notes the drastic melting of all "non-polar" glaciers by 2350. In fact, Prof Graham Cogley (Trent University, Ontario) suggests that (in the Himalayan report) the digits have been rearranged. I'm currently applying for a $100K research grant to further my studies on the movement of the polar ice cap and the devastating consequences. I'm sure I read it ... somewhere.

 

Milankovitch Cycles

Remember this chart? Click on the chart. I was wondering why the temperatures on Planet Earth had a period of some 100,000 years. What sequence of Earthly events repeats every 100,000 years? Then I discover Milankovitch Cycles I'm happy!

 

Santorini

In a few months, Heidi and I will celebrate our 50th anniversary with a cruise to several Greek islands. We visited Greece on our 25th anniversary, too. One of the islands we visit, this time, is Santorini: Delightful! Then I learn one of the most massive volcanic eruptions happened (about 1600 B.C.) ... in Santorini !! Huh? It (probably) wiped out the Minoan civilization, is (perhaps) behind the stories of a lost Atlantis civilization, had a Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) of 7 and is still active. Huh? I reckon I gotta learn about this VEI stuff and when the next eruption might occur ... P.S. VEI is a measure of the amount & height of material ejected in an explosive eruption. Like the Richter scale for earthquakes, VEI=7 is 10 times greater than VEI=6. The Santorini eruption ejected some 100 km3 of material!

 

VDX

Many, many years ago I played with the Directional Motion Indicator DMI, one of a jillion rituals for deciding when to Buy, Sell or Hold a stock. I was intrigued by the logic behind the method and extended it to include Volume Weighting of stock prices (where prices associated with greater volume had greater weight). This modified ritual I called VDX. Anyway, after ignoring the method for some ten years, I happened to run across the spreadsheet and decided to apply it to a gaggle of DOW stocks. ^DJI  HOLD ^IXIC  HOLD AA  SELL AIG  BUY AXP  BUY BA  BUY C  SELL CAT  BUY DD  HOLD DIS  SELL F  BUY GE  BUY HD  HOLD HON  BUY HPQ  HOLD IBM  BUY INTC  HOLD JNJ  HOLD JPM  HOLD KO  HOLD MCD  HOLD MMM  HOLD MO  BUY MRK  BUY MSFT  BUY PFE  BUY PG  SELL T  SELL UTX  BUY VZ  SELL WMT  HOLD XOM  HOLD I never actually used VDX myself, but I did follow its signals for some time to see how well (or poorly) it worked. I found that it worked sometimes and didn't at other times ... sorta like tossing a 3-sided coin. The spreadsheet gives pretty pictures. I checked out my coal stock and got this: If'n you're above or below the red lines, you Buy or Sell. See? It said BUY over a month ago. Then I checked my Lithium stock: It says I should have bought it 3 weeks ago ... and now, I should hold it. Somehow that makes me feel warm all over. This is for my brother-in-law:

 

Haiti (again)

I read that cruise lines, such as Royal Caribbean, are making scheduled dockings at a Labadee resort** in Haiti. Royal Caribbean (which, in the past, has provided significant tourist revenue to Haiti) is also providing food and donating $1-million in aid. Some passengers object to "enjoying themselves" while thousands die, nearby. I think a better response (by passengers) is to not enjoy themselves while visiting Haiti, but to give generously to Haiti aid. ----------------------------------------- ** Labadee is leased by Royal Caribbean. They've spent $55-million fixing it up. They give $6 per passenger to the Haiti government. Royal Caribbean International has contributed the largest proportion of tourist revenue to Haiti since 1986. Other cruise lines are rushing to donate aid.

 

Time Machine revisited

I decided to add that neat addition to the "compare to historical" spreadsheet, to display the four "best" matches with historical months. For "best", I minimize the maximum absolute value of the deviation over 25 market days. This is what I get: Best match: Max|error| =11.63 2nd-Best match: Max|error| =14.46 3rd-Best match: Max|error| =17.76 4th-Best match: Max|error| =19.23 So, based upon this elaborate analysis, I confidently predict that, in 25 market days, the DOW (currently at 10,725) will be 10,337. Or, maybe 11,364. Or ... maybe 9,981.