Who would have thought this was a fraud?

 

 

my one and only invention

Posh luncheterias should wrap their takeaway toasted sandwiches in goretex to eliminate the inevitable sogginess.

Thank you

 

A man is known by the company he keeps (part 2)

15:32:40  JL : to be honest though today is the first day all year i have not been fundamentally bullish on the long term picture for equities--mainly on news that Obama was creating a "Car Czar"

15:33:05  PM : please please please let it be someone called Gabor.

15:33:12  *** JL  rang the bell

 

Please don’t think any less of me…

 

For the record

I just want it to be known that I think Keynes was a dick. And his investments were nearly completely wiped out by the first great depression (GD1) so his advice is exactly what I don’t need right now. And he was probably smelly too.

 

How fooked is the UK?

Many people will tell you that the last time the UK base rate was 3% was in 1955. What they won’t tell you is the last time the rate was cut by 1.5% was in 1854….

 

We have a new winner

Welcome to the biggest company in the world

 

 

Giving you the Viennese finger

This is the intra-day chart for Erste Bank, the biggest bank in Austria. Somebody bought a share for 3,709,279,716,994,000,000 euros. And then a couple of hours later, somebody sold a share for nothing – just gave it away.

 

Now this could be some new-fangled trading strategy that I’ve not come across before. Alternatively, the Austrians couldn’t be bothered to go into work and let a bunch of cats do their trading for them today.

Did you know that...

…Iceland claims to have invented the concept of “Buy One, Get One Free” in the UK? It’s done so well that the whole country is now pioneering “Buy One, Get Nothing Back At All”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland_(supermarket)

 

 

Look more closely at the dates....

 

Stealth Inflation

Hooray! Zimbabwe is experiencing inflation at a rate of 0.0000465% per second. Doesn’t sound much does it? Compound it by 60 and it’s 0.0028% per minute. Still sounds pretty pathetic, huh? Compound by another 60 and it’s 0.2% per hour. Pah! I spit on your 0.2%. But keep going for a year and you’re up to 231,000,000% per year….

 

there is nothing I can say

If you note the time on this post, you will realize what just happened….

 

Hey, at least it's still positive...

 

 

New slogan for the Myanmar Tourist Authority

“Visit beautiful Myanmar. Less corrupt than Somalia”

http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table

 

 

Welcome to your new banking powerhouse

 

Okay - now I'm getting scared

http://tenminutesyourenotgettingback.blogspot.com/2008/09/fat-finger-or-freudian-slip.html

 

Juvenile Brokers

Thank you Paul

 

 

Number Twos

The American pronghorn antelope is the second fastest land animal in the world, capable of speeds up to 86km/h.

At 629 metres, the KVLY/KTHI TV mast is currently the second tallest structure in the world.

The Chloe diamond is the second most expensive diamond to be sold at auction. It cost £8m and is the size of an eyeball.

The second oldest tree is a great basin bristlecone pine, known as Methuselah, at 4,844 years old.

 

I like to acknowledge the also-rans in the big game of life. Not everyone gets to be a winner.

It's not the end of the world

Well, the LHC fired about 40 minutes ago and we are still here (well, me and my dog are – can’t see anyone else around though). I guess this means those hundreds of scientific brains at CERN are rubbish. Can’t even cook up a decent black hole. How long does it take for a black hole to swallow the planet anywa…….

 

 

 

 

 

 

Haha! Fooled you! You thought I was swallowed by a black hole, didn’t you? If so, you’re an idiot. If not, just move along to the next blog – nothing to see here.

 

Fat finger or Freudian slip?

ewwwww........

First, the blogosphere jumps on the theory that Trig is Bristol’s son (since Sarah Palin couldn’t possibly be the mother under the circumstances). Then the revelation that Bristol is already pregnant and so Trig couldn’t possibly be her child. Let me point out that there are two teenage daughters in the Palin family and allow you to draw your own conclusions….

 

Context

Wachovia’s $8.9bn loss for the quarter is equivalent to $70,000 spunked every single minute for the last 3 months. You’ll need one of these working at 50% capacity 24 hours a day to count that lot.  http://www.moneycountingmachine.co.uk/html/cpc-993h1.html

Pop quiz

This man has;

a) no eyes

b) just got married

c) the most ridiculous hair

d) all of the above

 

 

Get Norris McWhirter on the phone

In the history of predictions there are many that stand out for the magnitude of their incorrectness;

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers” - Thomas J. Watson, 1943, Chairman of the Board of IBM

“640K ought to be enough for anybody” - Bill Gates, 1981

“With over 50 foreign cars already on sale here, the Japanese auto industry isn't likely to carve out a big slice of the U.S. market” - Business Week, 1958

 

However, last night I witnessed a prediction that will stand in the pantheons as the quickest to be proven wrong. At 49 minutes and 47 seconds into the Spain v Russia football game, George confidently stated that “Russia would score an equalizer soon”. At 50 minutes, Spain scored their second goal. And that is why George is one of my favourite people in the whole world…

 

 

 

 

A man is known by the company he keeps

“if mechanical rabbits could be trained to eat curried pizza, we'd have a natural man-made market for our takeaway shop”

Even if these words have ever been used together in a sentence, it is unlikely that they will have been in this order. This means that the perfect way to navigate to this blog if you have forgotten the url is to enter the sentence in google.

This service to mankind was performed by George.

 

Ruining "Hancock" for you

She’s a superhero too. Hahahahaha. Oh, by the way, spoiler alert. Oops. Many thanks to John for picking me over George. And many thanks to Vanessa for picking John over a long list of “proper” investors. Oh, and many thanks to Charlize Theron for dressing up for the occasion.

 

With a stock ticker like this, it's bound to end in tears

 

The real market movers

Stock market participants have super-powers - that’s why they get paid so much money. And these are no ordinary super-powers like super-strength or x-ray vision. They are incredibly subtle. John, for example, can make the market go up by eating. The more delicious the food, the quicker and further it moves up. Phil, on the other hand, moves the market down with his eating but the impact is correlated to the sweetness of the food.

 

Unfortunately, all these superpowers being thrown around tend to make the markets very messy. The picture shows a typical day in the DJ Stoxx 600 with some blow-by-blow commentary from yours truly.

 

So the next time you hear someone talking about how the market is up because of something that Bernanke said, you can smile knowingly and tell them that John has just finished his foie gras and moving onto his Kobe steak.

 

Oh, and just in case you were wondering, my super-power is the ability to shouting naughty words at my screens.

 

 

 

Don't be tempted to bottom fish in the equity markets

You may find that you’ve bought the worlds most expensive toilet.

 

Shocking results of new scientific survey

People who exercise a bit and don't eat their own weight in biscuits everyday are a bit healthier.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aaHEC90xhsvk

More importantly, the identified studies prove conclusively that being a scientist in Scandinavia is just about the cushiest gig going.

 

 

Technical Analysis 103 - laughing buddha

You’ve learnt the basics – now it’s time to move onto the hard stuff. Just like in ancient Thailand, the Buddha may be laughing but no-one else will be – UNLESS you heed the warning.

 

Financial word of the day: Pantherflation

“It’s like regular inflation only it sneaks up on you and bites your head off.”

 

This word was first coined by a man who owns one blue and one red flip flop, so it’s unlikely to enter common parlance for some time.

 

 

 

who wants to be a trillionaire?

 

The rumour that George can only have 2 beers at a time are greatly exxagerated

 

When two worlds collide

A faithful reader (well, actually a friend that is questioning my sanity) has asked whether the “abandoned baby” is stronger than the “inverted bat”. Since they are both very powerful trends that move in opposite directions, anticipating the outcome is crucial to the direction of the market.

 

If the two trends attempt to reinforce themselves at the same time, then we may end up with the “abandoned bat” or, much worse, the “inverted baby”. Otherwise, the bat wins every time. Have you ever tried to fight a baby?

 

Technical Analysis 102 - the abandoned baby

 

Fancy a trip?

Spitzer Roasting

Sometimes, things just seem so easy that it’s not even worth bothering. This is one of those times.

I will say though that $4,500 per hour is the most damning evidence that I have seen of inflation running out of control.

The hysteria of crowds

I received this email from a close friend that this happened to so I know it isn’t a hoax. Pass it on – it may save you from being a victim.

------ Original Message ----

From: Victim of carjacking
To: ‘the inscrutable chicken’; ‘fat bloke I met down the pub’; ‘the third of my three friends’
Sent: Fri Feb 08 15:36:22 2008
Subject: BEWARE OF NEW METHOD OF CAR JACKING!!!!!!!!!!! (NOT A JOKE)

Guys,
car jackers have gotten increasingly sophisticated – from grabbing your keys at traffic lights, or hiding in your back seat when you go in to pay for petrol, to putting bits of paper in the back window of your car in parking lots.

The new method is to wait until you have parked your car and gone into your house. When the coast is clear, they can open your locks with a master device known in underground circles as a “key”. If your car has an alarm or immobiliser, they can disable it with an advanced electronic infra-red emitting device called a “fob”.

“But wait”, I hear you say, “I have a super-duper expensive car that has 3 million key permutations and an alarm that uses 1,024 bit encryption that will take a modern computer 19 days to cycle through all of the possible combinations. They can’t possibly succeed without my keys”. This is where the car jackers get really sneaky.

They masquerade as single people in nightclubs and bars. Having spied their victims, they ask them out on a date, where they exercise their charm to secure subsequent dates – ultimately leading to cohabitation and marriage. After a while, they pretend that nothing you do is good enough for them. They whine about how you can’t hold down a job, that your collection of dirty mags is cluttering up the living room, and the stench of beer in the toilet is overwhelming. Finally, they pretend there is a snapping point where they walk out and take your car. YOU HAVE JUST BECOME A VICTIM!!!!!!!

This happened to me last week. Don’t let it happen to you. DO NOT go to any nightclubs. DO NOT go to any bars. DO NOT go on any dates. DO NOT engage in any social interaction that may lead to intimacy. Follow these rules and you can avoid becoming another victim.

You’re welcome.

Fire in the hole!!!!!!!!!!

Let’s just say that you can never own a curry, you can only rent it by the day….