Dear Mr. President, I know it’s really easy to spend other people’s money but let’s face a reality here. No matter how much money you’re going to throw at the banking and credit system, it just won’t work. The banks are, for lack of better word, bankrupt. They went bankrupt because they were built on a shoddy financial foundation and took excessive risks. Now you want to continue to use MY TAXPAYER MONEY to keep feeding these pigs? Heck, you don’t even know [HOW]{.small-caps} [MUCH]{.small-caps} [MORE]{.small-caps} [MONEY]{.small-caps} it will take to solve the problem! Emphasis mine. ...

The only way we will be free from our current financial crisis is if we beat every politician to a bloody pulp with the corpse of every dead banker. How's that for solving the economic crisis?

Many readers know that I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand, objectivism, and of course capitalism.  I was thrilled to find this well written WSJ article a few weeks ago and it seems appropriate to share it with you now, given the current Obama economic bailout plan.  In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that? ...

Many readers know that I’m a big fan of Ayn Rand, objectivism, and of course capitalism.  I was thrilled to find this well written WSJ article a few weeks ago and it seems appropriate to share it with you now, given the current Obama economic bailout plan.  In the book, these relentless wealth redistributionists and their programs are disparaged as "the looters and their laws." Every new act of government futility and stupidity carries with it a benevolent-sounding title. These include the "Anti-Greed Act" to redistribute income (sounds like Charlie Rangel's promises soak-the-rich tax bill) and the "Equalization of Opportunity Act" to prevent people from starting more than one business (to give other people a chance). My personal favorite, the "Anti Dog-Eat-Dog Act," aims to restrict cut-throat competition between firms and thus slow the wave of business bankruptcies. Why didn't Hank Paulson think of that? ...

I decided to sign up for AAII a few months ago and only recently started poking around in there.  I have to say that I'm pretty impressed with the quantity and types of stock screens they have and I've been getting a lot of great ideas from there.  The most popular ones I like are the ADR, Piotroski, and O'Neils CAN SLIM screens.

Sorry my dear readers but I've been consumed with Go, work, and photography.  Sorry about that!  What I can tell you is that my timing model is showing a return to normalcy in the market (even though the market is down on average 40%). I'm still saying the bottom of the market is (was) in the 700 to 800 range of the S&P500.  On November 20th, we closed in the 750 range of the S&P500.  Famous last words, eh? ...

Now that the new year is here and we went through the greatest meltdown since the Great Depression, what shall I do?  Well, max out my 401k for sure and update my neural net models!!!  I'll be busy working on them but I'll probably starting moving toward more genetic algorithmic models this year as they tend to adapt better to the shifting market place. My market timing model seems to be holding up but I'm going to review it to make sure its still giving me the right signals.  The volatility indicator is showing a major pull back in market volatilty and if it continues to fall, I'll say we've made a bottom. ...

After playing around with Stock Neuromaster, I realized that it transforms the time series data into a zig zag line or moving average and then learns the relationship between it and the price & volume data. The zig zag line connects high and low points together based on a % retracement level you define or a time period you choose for a moving average. Once the data is transformed to reflect this, its fed into the neural net as your output variable and the time series data becomes your input variables. ...

I believe I've figured out, in concept, how the Stock Neuromaster product generates BUY/SELL signals and should be able to replicate it quite easily in Rapidminer. I'll have to fool with some stock data and use some of Rapidminer's special data pre-processing operators first and see where it gets me. I hope to produce a video about it right after I post my Evolutionary Weighting Tutorial this weekend (a continuation of my Genetic Feature Selection Tutorial). ...

Say what you want about Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad, but he’s a smart man. I could help but laugh when I read this line from an interview with The Street.com. “I haven’t been this bullish in years,” says Kiyosaki. “What a buying opportunity. … The stock market goes on sale, and everybody runs away.” But, he’s excited probably only for a short time. “When the market comes back, I go back to sleep,” he says. ...