**Disclosure:** Some of the links below are affiliate links and at no additional cost to you, I’ll earn a commission. When you purchase a product or service using one of my affiliate links, the company compensates me, which helps me run this blog and keep my content free of charge to you. I finished reading Gene Callahan’s, Economics for Real People, a while ago but never had the chance to write a blog post about it. I can sum up the book in three words, I loved it! ...

This is just a friendly reminder that I'm hosting the first RapidMiner User Group Meetup next week in New York City! So far three people have RSVP'ed and I know of one more that's checking his schedule to see if he can meet us at Hurley's Saloon! If you're free after work on Friday March 21st, we'd love to see your face! You can RSVP by following the link above! See you then! ...

I roamed around a lot when I lived in New Mexico and I came across several ghost towns. I loved finding them out in the middle of nowhere and poking around in them. If I had more time I would probably researched the reason why they were abandoned but we didn’t stay too long at them. Usually they were on private property and had big “KEEP OUT” signs and we had to always watched out for a Rancher with a big rifle. Still though, the sign and the lure of ghost town adventure didn’t deter my friend Kevin or me! I mean, how could you not be deterred? ...

Yes you read that right, I'm working on a new set of RapidMiner tutorial posts (I'm bagging the videos for now). I hope to share with my readers two new tutorials over the coming weeks/months and I expect to post the first installment this week. The first tutorial will be about using RapidMiner's Evolutionary Weighting and Genetic Algorithms to build a Market Timing Model. This tutorial will follow the same methodology I used to build my S&P500 Market Timing Model. If you ever wondered how to build a timing model using RapidMiner then make sure to check back often for these free and valuable lessons. ...

Ugly posted this interesting LA Times article his Del.icio.us link role a few days ago. It seems that people with upside down mortgages (where your mortgage is greater than the value of your house) are voluntarily letting their properties be foreclosed on. A homeowner who can’t sell his house tells the L.A.Times, “Foreclose me. … I’ll live in the house for free for 12 months, and I’ll save my money and I’ll move on.” ...

I’m going to spend some time updating this old post from 2007 where I had a banner year trading Forex. Granted, this was for a tiny account but I wanted to see if I could really make the returns that everyone was shouting about. The short answer is “YES! but…” There’s always a ‘but’ in when investing, trading, or speculating in any traded market. As promised, see the PDF link below for my entire 2007 Forex trading log. These were actual tickets and trades generated for my $100 Forex Experiment. You can see I had a few ups and downs but my trading equity grew over 50% this year, amazing!!! ...

I stopped taking Resveratrol per my Doctor’s orders. About a two weeks ago I noticed my ankles were starting to swell slightly and they went crazy over the Christmas holiday. I finally had to go to the ER this past Wednesday (12/26) because my ankles looked like Grapefruits. I couldn’t walk and it hurt to stand for more than a few seconds. The initial blood test results show that my kidneys are spilling proteins into my urine and my Doctor is referring me to a kidney specialist. ...

Babak posted about a possible double top forming in Gold (and Oil) in his blog a few days ago. While I agree with his technical analysis on the daily charts, I disagree with his conclusion that Gold has topped out. In my mind, Gold is driven 80% by fundamental reasons instead of technical analysis. If you look at the weekly chart, Gold looks poised to possibly make a run higher after this consolidation. ...

I recieved my audio equipment in the mail last night and I'm looking forward to setting it up and working on my first video tutorial. To prepare for the first video, I whipped up a VIX volatility model that tries to predict weekly volatility (I'm sure Bill would be interested in this video). I plan on going through the tutorial step by step and explain how the new RapidMiner is laid out. ...

I live in a semi-rural area of NJ with lots of trees, open space, and great neighbors. My wife has gotten into gardening over the past few years and learned that you can “trade” plants instead of buying them at Lowes and Home Depot. She met this old German couple on the other side of town who transformed their 1 acre property into a virtual Garden of Eden and did so by trading plants with neighbors and friends. They were preparing for the Winter and digging up some of the more temperature sensitive plants when they called my wife and asked if she wanted a few of these plants. Not wanting to pass up anything free, we drove up to their place with a few buckets to collect the tubers. ...