For those of you who don’t like using YALE, now called RapidMiner, I offer you neural nets in Excel. A few years ago I came across a slow, but really cool neural net application written in Excel by a PhD student, Angshuman Saha. I’ve used this little spreadsheet to make quicky models and see curve relationships. It’s easy to use and the instructions are straight forward. Check out the author’s website, he offers a classification spreadsheet and other fun models. ...
When I was in MBA school, I had a professor who was always looking for a “hot stock” tip. He knew that I had my ear to Wall Street and asked me if there’s anything good to buy out there. At the time I remember reading something about Toyota and liking it alot. I told him that I was thinking of buying Toyota (TM) for my 401K. He did, I got distracted and didn’t, that was Fall 2003. This trip down memory lane was jogged when I went through Wallstrip’s archives and came across their Toyota video. I thought to myself, what ever happened to TM after my tip? The short of it was Toyota took off like a rocket, er car. ...
In my Random Thoughts About Trends post from a few weeks ago, I wrote about my belief that Alternative Energy will become a long term trend. I did say that I didn’t know enough about this industry to pick a future winner. It’s rather confusing when you have all sorts of forms of alternative energy such as: solar, wind, bio-fuel, and who knows what else. I then stumbled across an old episode of Wallstrip that profiled Solar Energy. I thought to myself, this might be a good starting place to get some information about solar energy related companies trading at all time highs. Wallstrip highlighted First Solar (FSLR), Ascent Solar Technologies (ASTI), and Trina Solar (TSL). I did a quick check of these companies and found that First Solar has a PE ratio of 300+ and trades at $68, Ascent Solar has no earnings and trades at $7, and Trina Solar has a PE of 50+ and trades at $46. FSLR and TSL, from a valuation stance, are way too rich for me and they probably have a lot of a “hate oil” premium added to their share prices. ASTI has no earnings so maybe $7 is about right, then again maybe it should be lower! So what to do? Well I’ll do more DD (due diligence) on these three and work my way into this market place. Perhaps there’s a better and unloved company out there, waiting for its day in the sun! ...
The month of May has turned out to be a painful one for me and my Forex trading account. I didn’t trade as much as I did in previous months, instead I opted for more of a “swing” trading strategy by buying on dips. That strategy proved to be a bit hazardous to my profits. The EURUSD sold off from its second test of its all time high and then dropped down to the $1.34 level. I began to average down and prune some over-leveraged losers in the process. I continued with this crazy strategy because my neural nets continued to flash “BUY” signals. I didn’t become concerned until last week when the model started flashing “RANGE.” This signal indicates a possible price holding pattern in the currency pairs OR a possible trend change. Right now I’m still long 603 units of EURUSD at an average price of $1.35377; the currency pair is trading at $1.34885. :) [tags]Forex, AI, NeuralNets, Currencies, Trading, Euro, Dollar[/tags] ...
If the world follows the typical supply and demand economic theory, we are about to witness the beginning of a major global rally. The Chinese government recently loosened laws allowing its banks to invest indirectly in foreign equities and derivative products. China currently sits on $4.8 trillion dollars worth of reserve assets, of which it wants to slowly inject a percentage into the global markets over the next several years. The end result will be more money chasing fewer assets and prices going through the roof! I’m glad I’m long all the way in our 401K’s. The trick will be to get out right before the party ends. Related: China grants Blackstone $3B to invest abroad (via CNN) ...
As a way to continue to make Neural Market Trends a great place to visit on the web, I’m going to post development details and notes of a new trend model that we will create. I want to, over the course of a few weeks, engage my readers and myself into building a new trend neural net model of our collective choosing. We will use the 9 steps to success in neural net model development as our outline and we’ll detail the progress and thought process of building this model on this blog. We will use the open source YALE data modeler and free data sources to build this model. This is a great way, in addition to my “Build A Model” lessons, to build something totally from scratch and truly learn how take your investing to a new level. Does this sound like a good idea? If you’re interested, drop me a comment! PS: I’ll resume posting next Tuesday as I’m taking a few days off to celebrate Memorial Day! Have a good one! ...
Congratulations to Howard, Lindsay, and the rest of the Wallstrip gang! CBS acquires Wallstrip for an undisclosed amount but the rumor on the street is $5 million. Not bad for a video blog less than a year old!
After my Random Thoughts About Trends post, I decided to take a deeper look at one of the Water ETF’s available. I did a quick check on the Powershares Water Resources ETF (PHO) and its holdings. Despite a small correction between March and June 2006, PHO has been steadily marching upward. I might consider adding this ETF to my 401K account. In case your wondering, here’s what the ETF seeks to accomplish: ...
My wife chides me for thinking too much and spending too much time observing things. I must admit, its certainly fun to observe trends and then think of the possible outcomes if and when the trend bursts. Here are my random thoughts for this slow Sunday morning on a few trends: Peak Oil - Although I believe in the concept of peak oil, I just don’t know when its going to happen. It could be 2010 or 2510. Still though, China will consume more oil as they catch up to us. It’s probably a smart idea to be long oil but you didn’t need a neural net to tell you that! Alternative Energy - It’s a good idea and I’m all for it. I’m just wondering if the trends we’re seeing in this market will collapse just like it did in for the dotcom companies. Usually, a handful of the companies survive to make it to the next round after a bubble crash. Amazon and Ebay made it, did Pets.com? I don’t know enough about the players in this field to be able to pick the one that I think will survive. Water Resources - As a civil engineer, the keystone to growth of a civilization is clean water. After water is sanitation and food production but it all starts with water. Expect more strength in the water trend as I’m sure we’ll see water wars one day as one nation builds a dam and deprives a downstream country of their water. Crocs - I don’t get this trend but people love them. I expect Crocs to go the way of the dinosaur one day as some company will come up with a better shoe/sandal. Maybe they’ll call it O’ shit, get it? Croc O’ Shit. Never mind. China - China’s growth will continue to trend higher as this nation emerges as the new super power. I worry about its fast growth but then again I worry too much. They’re growth reminds me of weeds that grow so fast that their root system can’t support them and they collapse. I just don’t know if a possible collapse would come from the inside (strife, rebellion, pollution) or externally (war). I very well might be wrong with my assessment and China could emerge into a nice cuddly Panda Bear instead of an aggressive Dragon. US Elections 2008 - The Flying Spaghetti Monster wins. [tags]Crocs, China, Water, Oil, Energy, FSM[/tags] ...
Let’s look at mutual fund trend today, BRSIX has been on a nice trend up since late 2001. I think it was at that time I wanted to buy BRSIX but never did, boy what a mistake! Well hindsight is always 20/20 and with the risk of being called a performance chaser, I’ll wait a bit before adding this bad boy to my 401K. Although it made a new high recently, it seems to be bumping into resistance at $20. ...