CheetahhhhhhhBlog Mark III

The Bug has become a demanding little critter. He will take me by the hand and lead me to whatever he wants (usually juice boxes or pudding). He has also become a climber, climbing up the sofas and tables. Nothing is safe any more. We used to be able to hide stuff if it was about 4 feet off the ground. Now there is nowhere to hide.

The Wall Street Journal writes today:

In a press conference today, President Bush reiterated that “we believe in a strong dollar policy,” but he could have fooled us, considering what’s happened to the greenback.

The dollar’s ravaging continues today, and the news only seems to get worse.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has clearly sparked more selling with his comments about potential bank failures and judgment that current challenges exceed that of the 2001-2002 slowdown period. Standard & Poor’s earlier today said the U.S.’s credit profile could come under threat if consumers and businesses continue to pull back on spending, and analysts say certain central banks around the world are welcoming dollar weakness as a way to offset higher commodity costs.

Let’s say it this way — it was a big deal a while back when the Canadian dollar reached parity with the U.S. dollar. But if the current trend continues, pretty soon the Australian dollar will buy $1 as well — it was lately at $0.9484. The euro, meanwhile, was closing in on $1.52, and the dollar is in danger of falling below 105 yen.

This is all a bit depressing for me, as I’m paid in petrodollars, but as loyal readers will know, I’ve been depressed about it for 3 years now, so I’ll survive another battering. Sad though, because the dollar had a short rally for a while.

The stock market has been very sideways for a long time now, which makes it difficult to make a profit. I was starting to get very frustrated with myself until I realized what the problem was. I’ve spent a lot of time adjusting myself to a sideways market. ANyway it looked for a while like the US stock market might break out of its doldrums, I will not go into technical reasons why, however it did not and I would anticipate some declines in the near future.

I have been enjoying the Showtime series The Tudors. It’s really good. I’m a big fan of historical drama actually but the show has Sam Niel, among others.

There’s really not a lot of news here in Yanbu. We’re still in money saving mode, so we’re not going to Jeddah or ordering things off Amazon, or taking vacations, which means we’re sitting here in Yanbu, and that means we’re pretty much doing nothing worth mentioning.

The front page of the Wall Street Journal reports that the USA faces a period of “stagflation”, ie inflation with economic stagnation. This is curious because usually inflation is actually associated with prosperity (counter-intuitive perhaps but true), such as we have here in Saudi at the moment. Anyway this raises something I’ve been thinking about a bit lately. I am leaving a booming economy with lots of job opportunities (Saudi) and going into an economy that is grinding down (US). Doesn’t seem like a good move when viewed in this light.

Don’t worry, we’re still going.

Anyway classes started this week. I have a fairly easy schedule, thank God, and don’t have to be in to the office at 730AM any more. I complained a bit last semester about having to do all the advanced classes. It was way too much work for one guy. The net result was that I cut down on actual work for each class and each student, which is not good actually from an educational perspective, but I had to do it to manage my schedule.

The Bug is on the verge of talking. The verge–not quite yet, but he actively imitates. It’s cute that everything not human is (according to the Bug) a dog.

Vanessa, after almost 3 years in this country, has started to go outside. She’s doing it for the Bug. I encouraged her to go out at first but she never would, so I gave up. For almost 3 years she has never gone outside without me. The Bug is getting restless and wants to go out, though. One day he took his toy cart and ball and put it by the door to tell us. Yesterday Vanessa and the Bug went to the local store and the playground and had fun, meeting some other babies and an Indonesian yaya (nanny).

The Bug has started eating at the table with us. He likes to eat with his own plate and fork too. When I sit down at the table he will go stand by his high chair and say “Daddy?”

Anyway that’s the news from Cheetopia, cheers mates.

I have never really used the iTunes store until recently, because I was a BitTorrent downloader. The problem with BitTorrent and low bandwidth such as we have here in Saudi is that it takes 3 months to download a movie. I am a patient man but not that patient. Just for the hell of it I started using iTunes and I can download a movie in about 2 days, which is quite nice. We are watching one of our favorite shows, The Riches, and we are also tremendously excited for the first episode of Lost, which aired last week in the States. Anyway I also downloaded “California” (Phantom Planet), the theme to my long-lost fav show The OC, loving it…

I can’t wait until we’re back Stateside and have decent-speed uncensored cable internet. What a luxury.

We watched a bootleg of The Hunting Party with Richard Gere. Not a Richard Gere fan myself. Indeed I generally find him a bit annoying. However he war really good in this movie. I remember when the Bosnian war was raging in the 90s. I followed it daily and got really worked up over it. This was doing my political phase (thankfully long-abandoned) and I could sympathize with the characters as a result.

As per my last post, we have very little to report, since we’re sitting on our arses here in Yanbu. I really wish I had something to report because this has been an irritatingly dull vacation. It has, however, served to fortify our resolution to leave Saudi. We have reflected once or twice that it will be a shame to leave our nice apartment, and I am well aware that I will never find an easier or more secure job. Eh, it’s too bad. Because the sheer lack of ANYTHING WHATSOEVER to do is really chipping away on us. It’s not as if Vanessa and I are young punks who need action all the time. Far from it. But a nice walk, or going out to eat in a restaurant… is this too much to ask? I don’t think so. Thus our resolution to leave.

I spent about 2 weeks tinkering with Ameritrade’s StrategyDesk in the interest of automating trading. In the end I have concluded that I need to hire a mathematician or something. That might be a possibility in the future actually. The thing is, nobody who has a good formula for trading will actually put it on the web for others to use. (I wouldn’t either.) Thus there is very little to glean from a google search.

So the Cheetahhhhhhh has been on vacation for a while now, and since we’re spending it in Yanbu, there is nothing much to report. I’m reading a lot on my Sony eReader, I have about 4000 novels I downloaded, so I have plenty to read. I’m also playing Syphon Filter on my PSP and loving it.

Little Chris has learned how to run. He loves to run around everywhere.

We’re going to spend some time on the beach this coming week, so the Cheetahhhhhhh can try fishing directly in the Red Sea. Previously I had fished in a large bay. We’re not going to go until Saturday, though, because right now it’s the weekend, and that means the beaches will be teaming with Saudis. This isn’t a problem for me, but it is for Vanessa, who will be leered at continuously by every man within a mile. It’s quite upsetting for her.

I gave a warning a few posts ago that I anticipated a sharp drop in US stock markets. This was delayed for a week by the Fed’s foolish intervention. Yesterday the stock markets had their biggest decline in a year. I anticipate it continuing.

I read in the New York Times that Fed chairman Bernake (sp?) has received low performance reviews, and I agree. His interventions are ill-advised, to say the least, if only that it is his responsibility to control inflation, but moreover, the Fed should not give knee-jerk reactions to the stock market.

I have spent a lot of time tinkering with Ameritrade’s Strategy Desk, which theoretically enables you to automate trading. This is a very appealing concept because computers make much better traders than people. Indeed more than 50% of the trades on the stock exchange are computer-generated. Computers make better traders than people because they can always keep formulas and charts in mind, whereas sometimes people get tired or forget. Also computers are much quicker, which helps profit. Also computers are not emotionally attached to their money and so do not make emotional decisions, which are almost always a disaster.

This being said, I’ve had a lot of trouble figuring out how to automate Strategy Desk acceptably. It’s a quirky program, to say the least. Now if anyone searches on the internet and finds this discussion and has something useful to tell me, please email me at teggatz@gmail.com (this blog doesn’t actually accept comments).

Here’s the gig. If we wish to send buy/sell signals based on the fast stochastic, we have the following formula:

BUY on open of 5 minute bar when K crosses D:
Stochastic[StocK,14,3,1,5] > Stochastic[StocD,14,3,1,5] AND Stochastic[StocK,14,3,1,5,1] <= Stochastic[StocD,14,3,1,5,1]

SELL on open of 5 minute bar when D crosses K or at the end of the day:
(Stochastic[StocK,14,3,1,5] < Stochastic[StocD,14,3,1,5] AND Stochastic[StocK,14,3,1,5,1] >= Stochastic[StocD,14,3,1,5,1])
OR ((Bar[Hour,5] = 15 AND Bar[Minute,5] = 55))

In a backwards study this is, of course, quite profitable. The problem is then making this into an alert that triggers trading is how to insert the time frame into the formula, so that it fires on open? The triggers tend to pop up anywhere except the open of a 5-minute bar. I have tried for days to add a good time trigger into the formula.

Perhaps I need to think of it in terms of the close of a 5-minute bar, though, of course, this is far less profitable. The problem with the open is that a price shift and subsequently shift the stochastic.

I think, with the stochastic at least, I need to view StrategyDesk as something that semi-automates the trade process, ie, I think I still need to watch and confirm trades.