The Tom Hanks film, Bridge of Spies, portrays the capture and exchange of Rudolf Ivanovich Abel (1903-1971). He was known as the spy who would not break. You must understand that if you break under duress with an adversary determined to abuse you, there is no way to dance with the devil. Abel stood his ground for […]
QUESTION: Hello Martin: I was quoting you while speaking to a friend from a similar recent post where you stated that interest rates were at 5,000-year lows. They asked me where you got data going back 5,000 years and of course, I was at a loss to explain. So my question is: does such actual […]
QUESTION: Marty, Any thoughts/comments regarding the impending water shortage in Capetown? As a person who has much historical knowledge, are you aware of a major city such as Capetown ever running out of water? Or is this truly a historical first? Love your blog as it covers so much information and isn’t just corporate financial data […]
The mood was a little down this afternoon, that Asian equity markets could not produce more enthusiasm than we saw today. With all core markets opening on a positive note, following the late US rally, it was less than encouraging that they could maintain that theme. Shanghai was the first market to turn down after […]
The Socrates site where the results are posted is on the Amazon Cloud. We had an urgent meeting today to run analysis as for why the system could not hand the massive traffic to the site over the past two days. We found out that it was pushed to 97% CPU capacity. We have come […]
QUESTION: You do not believe in wide diversification? ANSWER: No. Wide diversification is only required when the investor does not have a clue about what is going on in the markets. We have asset allocation models for Institutions who simply believe they must have some diversification. The main objective is to limit the areas they […]
QUESTION: I have heard first hand from some significant players that do speaking engagements for very large pension funds that a product was being offered to the pension funds as a yield enhancer that was based around selling the VIX. First off, why would anyone trust a product that is being offered by a big […]
QUESTION: I have heard first hand from some significant players that do speaking engagements for very large pension funds that a product was being offered to the pension funds as a yield enhancer that was based around selling the VIX. First off, why would anyone trust a product that is being offered by a big […]
Politicians just do not get it. They have convinced themselves that they can tax whatever they desire and people have no choice but to pay. Missing in their analysis are two influences (1) people just stop earning income for it reaches a point it is not worth working anymore, and (2) you simply pick-up and […]
