Little Sisters Of The Poor Made One Big Mistake

Trigger

See my previous blog post. This is a continuation and more in depth.

A Bit Of History

Once you start getting to know more about the Little Sisters you will be amazed.

They are affiliated with or are in the tradition of the Brothers Hospitallers of St. John of God, a religious organization approved in 1572 by the pope, which was and still is involved in creating and running hospitals for the poor and mentally ill all over the world.

The story of St. John of God is an Amazing Grace like story of a boy who was perhaps abducted from his impoverished parents, raised by foster parents on a farm, joined mercenaries for over two decades criss-crossing Europe, but then devoted the rest of his life to caring for the poor suffering from illness and mentally ill. He became the patron saint of hospitals, the sick, nurses, firefighters, alcoholics, and booksellers. Civil society or humanity would be inconceivable without people like him.

Then there is the foundress, i.e. Jeanne Jugan, of the Little Sisters. She became the patron saint of the destitute elderly. This is an amazing story as well.

Beware Of The Camel’s Nose

The Little Sisters like e.g. so many colleges in the U.S. could not resist the temptation of easy money from the federal government.

According to their website page aptly or ironically titled “Tradition of Begging”, the Little Sister’s mention “As government funds continue to dwindle it is getting harder and harder to make ends meet. Medicaid and Medicare cover only about 60 percent of our operating expenses.”. For a religious order to depend up to 60% from big government largess is a disgrace.

Now, the Little Sisters had to find out that big government in the form of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) better known as Obama Care is coming to their doorsteps imposing dictates, which violate their Christian faith.

U.S. Supreme Court Has A Lousy Search Function

Trigger

Associate Justice Sotomayor just (12/31/2013) granted a temporary injunction to the Little Sisters of the Poor against ObamaCare (a.k.a. PPACA, ACA). Seer e.g. here, here, and here.

The actual order of the SCOTUS can be found here.

Lousy Search Function Of SCOTUS Website

I conclude the court’s search function is perhaps only useable for attorneys!

Just visited the courts website and searched for all kinds of terms (e.g. “little sisters (of the poor)”, “sotomayor”, “injunction”). Nothing came up related to the Little Sisters of the Poor. This more than surprising because the court’s order is captioned “LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR HOME FOR THE AGED, DENVER, COLORADO, A COLORADO NON-PROFIT CORPORATION, ET AL.”. Thus, it is inexplicable why the search function does not return anything.

Worse, you can not even sort the search results by date or anything.

In this day and age, this is totally inacceptable!

The Unconditional War On Poverty By President Johnson

The Democratic Party Should Be Deeply Ashamed!

As we look back on 50 years of this absurd war, I would like to remind the reader that President Lyndon B. Johnson said following in his first State Of The Union address delivered on 1/8/1964 (Emphasis added):

1. “Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; … as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States”
2. “For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington.”
3. “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.”
4. “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it. ”

Had anyone else but the President of the U.S. spoken these words, the person would have been declared insane or a warmonger on his own people.

Previous, Related Blog Posts

Here.

Unmanned U.S. Air Force

Impending

From today’s development and achievements with drones or UAVs it is almost inevitable that most of U.S. Air Force combat planes will be unmanned within the next 10-20 years like today’s drones.

This is probably far cheaper than the current top of the line Lockheed-Martin F-35 fighter planes and it saves lives.

Military history is a centuries long progression from hand to hand combat to virtual worlds and robots. What comes next?

The next Top Gun is likely a nerd!

Caveat!

I am probably way too optimistic. Here is a critical article published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute blog.

Dog Fights

Via joystick or human computer interface remote from the actual theater! The Red Baron is begging to come back.

Air Superiority

The strive for air superiority will continue! Will the Europeans be ready or fall further behind?

Software Will Win

Hardware is still a key component of military readiness and strength, but it is more like a commodity than software.

Next Arms Race

It is looming in quantity and quality of hardware for offensive and defensive purposes.

Software alone can probably not successfully offset counter being outnumbered in hardware.

The Fascinating Language Of Plants

Trigger

Article “The Secret Language of Plants” published by the Simmons Foundation.

Smarter Animals

In recent years, we have learnt more and more about how many animals are much more intelligent and much more able to communicate even complicated things than a majority of humans ever expected.

Plant Communication

Have we not heard stories before where some people were saying that plants at home would talk to them or plants could get lonely or plants would respond to human suffering/happiness etc.

It appears in recent years more evidence has been discovered that there is something like chemical or even electrical communication going on between plants of the same kind or other kinds (inter and intra plant communication) or between plants and insects.

A Plant Brain?

Since we still do not understand animal or human brains very well how can we rule out that plants have no brain?

Does a plant brain have to function similar to an animal brain?

Wrong Big Government Approach To UAVs

Trigger

I have just read this article (German).

The FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) embarked on a lengthy and comprehensive top down approach to regulate UAVs (a.k.a. drones or unmanned aerial vehicles).

A Better Approach

The FAA should stay out of the way as much as possible. Like the Internet, this new technology should develop on its own without much government meddling.

The FAA should limit itself in the beginning to impose only some very limited safeguards to prevent accidents such as few off limits areas, perhaps overall size of drones etc.

Hypertension And Cognitive Impairment

Trigger

I have just read this article in the leading German language Swiss newspaper.

A Silent Threat

Hypertension is one of those medical conditions that too many people do not take seriously enough until it is too late. Another one is macular degeneration.

New Results From The Maastricht Aging Study

Here are two links to sources:

http://hyper.ahajournals.org/content/early/2013/12/02/HYPERTENSIONAHA.113.02096.short?rss=1

https://mhens.unimaas.nl/div1/maas/

From the abstract or the paper above (Emphasis added):

“Midlife hypertension is a risk factor for dementia, but little is known about the cognitive trajectories of individuals with incident hypertension. … This study shows that incident hypertension predicts cognitive decline in middle-aged individuals, and those with poorly controlled blood pressure are most at risk. In newly diagnosed individuals, decline evolves gradually, possibly opening a window for early intervention.”

Sino-German Cooperation 1750-1941

History Is Stranger Than Fiction

This is a wild story! Just read e.g. following Wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-German_cooperation_(1911%E2%80%931941)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Bauer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_von_Seeckt

One of the surprising discoveries: Germany apparently helped China to fight the Japanese invaders after Hitler came to power.

Reminiscences Of A Day Trader

An Apology First

I hope, Jesse Lauriston Livermore will forgive me for adopting the title “Reminiscences of a Stock Operator” of his famous biography for my purposes.

And I have to admit, I have read this book only in excerpts.

No Get Rich Advice Here

Sorry to disappoint!

If you think, you can get rich quickly by trading you may already be doomed. As they say, trading can be a very humbling experience. Only under lucky circumstances you will make beaucoup money with one or a few trades. But then, you will have to resist overconfidence and greed.

More Fun Than Some Digital Games

Definitely more skills required and offers more thrills when you put your money on the line!

Beats Lottery Or Casinos Hands Down Anytime!

To be politically incorrect, state run lotteries are a racket to extract money beyond taxation from gullible people. The odds of a big win are totally stacked against you.

Casinos are probably not much better in terms of winning money!

Unlike lottery or casino, trading in financial instruments requires knowledge, skills, and a certain temperament.

More Active Trading For Everyone

I do not know exactly how many people actually trade frequently (like several times a week) and over a long period of time in any financial instruments. However, I suppose it is a minority.

I wish there were more traders. Trading should be taught in high school. Trading is a good tool to learn important lessons like discipline (e.g. follow rules), self-confidence, prudence, to retain composure when your money is at risk, resisting temptation and much more.

Well functioning financial markets are so important to the well being of humans everywhere. Thus, participating in the financial markets is a civic duty like voting.

Trading Platforms

Trading platforms have come a long way. They are much more powerful and affordable today. There is some tool equality between the big players on the financial markets and individuals.

I have always lived by the motto the best available tool is just good enough! (Must be my German background)

I have tried other trading platforms before I settled on Tradestation. But I do not claim to be an expert in any other platform.

I personally use the Tradestation desktop platform, but I cannot highly recommend it. It is a dated, convoluted, monolithic all-in-one platform. The scripting language and programming environment is being updated, but I believe it is still too limited and cumbersome. Tradestation platform is not modular, if you are trading only in Forex, you still have all the equity/futures/options trading functionality etc. Very annoying and bloated!

I would like to program a trading strategy, but unfortunately, Tradestation is not the best tool for that (see above).

Some Advice

1. Do not follow the latest fads or tweaks of existing indicators etc.!
2. Do not be fooled by fancy sounding trading strategies or indicators, e.g. Elliott Wave or Fibonacci or some Japanese named charting technique (forgot the name of it) etc.
3. Do not use stops! Yes, e.g. a flash crash can wipe you out, but such events do not occur frequently and there is usually a bounce back. In my experience, I would have lost too much money, because stops were triggered. However, if you trade a single company equity you may need a stop in case e.g. the company makes an unexpected announcement or a court of law comes down with a negative verdict affecting the stock price over a long time.
4. Tight stops are particularly useless. If you only feel comfortable trading with tight stops, perhaps trading is not for you.
5. Forex trading is comparatively cheap and 24 hours. Major currencies pairs are fairly stable over time. Very flexible in the size/quantity you want to trade.
6. Sit tight when the going appears to get rough! Always remember the generally mean reversing property of financial asset prices! Financial markets often attempt to take you for a ride like a bronco. Trading is not for the timid or faint hearted! Plus the big players have more money and they can sustain bigger losses than you can.

Technical Analysis & Indicators

Since I mostly trade Forex my recommendations apply foremost to this market.

To understand the long term performance of an asset I use 10 years of daily data to chart:

1. Bollinger bands with 1,2, and 3 standard deviations plus mid-points between these standard deviations
2. Simple moving averages (5, 10 years) plus multiple bands above and below the SMA at multiples of 5% or 10% around the SMA
3. Highs/lows plus 75%, 67%, 50%, 33%, and 25% levels between highs and lows

To understand the annual performance of an asset I use again daily data to chart:

1. Year to date highs/lows plus the above mentioned levels
2. 12 months moving highs/lows plus the above mentioned levels
3. A simple moving average (52 * 5 days) plus multiple bands above and below the SMA of 5% around the SMA

To understand the short-term performance of an asset I use again daily data to chart:

1. The five day highs/lows plus the above mentioned levels

For entry/exit I focus besides the above mentioned charts on:

1. 15 minute chart showing again highs/lows plus the above mentioned levels; plus open, close/high/low of current day; open/close/high/low of previous day
2. 1 minute chart showing showing simple moving average (24 hours) plus bands as described above, but using 1%.

Time Frames

Since I mostly trade Forex my recommendations apply foremost to this market.

Long term: Daily (not higher like weekly, monthly)

Short term: Hourly, 15 minutes, 1 minute