Mahant!

Ever despaired at not being able to access your private e-mail ids becuase of your company network policies. Relax. Now you can access the mails using a simple site www.logu.in . (thanks to SD) The usual company policy is to ban urls with some keywords in the url. Logu changes the url into gibberish and you can access your mail ids. It may not work with all the mail service providers. But it does work for prviders like Gmail.

1. Do your homework Do all the necessary analysis required for the trade. The main objective is to have lesser number of factors to catch you by surprise. So, if you don't know what to look for, read or try to analyze everything related. When prepared and in case an event pops up, there is good likelihood you would have considered it in your scenarios. A word of advice - don't read too much. Too much analysis can paralyze. 2. Why? - Have a good reason When you have analyzed a situation thoroughly you will have good solid reasons to base your trade/investments. A foundation to base your commitments on. It is very important to have objective reasons, than taking decision based on gut-feel or some advice. The analysis will gives you good understanding of the merit of the trades/investments. Understanding the investment/trade to the maximum extent possible prepares you for the risk and uncertainties of investment. Off the shelf advice does not help you when the things go wrong. 3. ...

This is one of those "O My God!" moment. I have no idea what prompted me, but early this morning had me thinking if there was a "Market like" affect in imaginary society. I might have been thinking of different civilisation/context. But I thought, it is easy to check up with ideas like Second Life. And guess what, OMG! they have a full fledged stock market up and running in there, with real money traded, with Reuters too! O MY GOD! WOW! This couldn't get better. I was stunned to realise that Reuters has a full fledged web-base for Second Life. Complete with Linden Dollar-USD charts and exchange rates! Check this: Metaverse Stock Exchange in Second Life has 851 members and has seen 4076 trades and 659,781 shares traded (as of now). The equity trade commissions are in the range of 1% to 3%. Cyberland the first publicly traded and virtually held company is traded with 1.2million outstanding shares, book value of Linden$7.79 and has a cool order book. A...

Chaos is so captivating. It is probably because in confusion lies the unseen harmony, making it so inestimable and at the same time so estimable. Markets are the third most beautiful example I can think of, first two being the universe and nature. I just came across James Gosling's interview. The creator of Java was talking about the Java in the past and in the future. Two sentences were worth noting for their harmony and chaos respectively. "Yeah, and a bunch of years ago, I think that (compatibility) was a fairly valid concern, but it's become pretty clear that the market really values compatibility. If people start doing incompatible forks, market pressure is probably going to be a more effective enforcer of compatibility than a license would be." Now, that is something market-efficiency whiz would love. Gosling promptly goes on to add chaos to the discussion, when he is asked about future of Java. "Well, it's kind of a chaotic community; there's no un...

A very good ride/presentation of housing market from 1890-present. Gives you a different perspective. A must watch. :) Falkor

Wow! I absolutely adore this. Here comes my saviour, after a day when Bloomberg scared wits out of me saying computers will start trading. In the contest between a super computer and a mouse, Mr. Stuart Little wins. A super computer cant beat a mouse! Huraah! Three cheers to Mr. Mickey! Contestant Vitals: In the blue corner to the right - Mr. Blue Gene - The SUPER computer IBM's BlueGene/L supercomputer contains 4,096 processors, each with 256MB of RAM. It crunches out 360 trillion floating point operations per second. That is Trillions dudes. In the yellow corner to the left - Mr. Mouse Cheeselover - The CUTE little fella The mouse cortex has roughly 8million neurons and 8,000 synapses per neuron, firing rate of 1Hz, the entire memory must be refreshed every second, each neuron must be updated at every simulation time step, and each neuron communicates to each of its targets at least once a second. Result: Mr Mickey knocked out the Big Blue in 10secs flat. Details: Even this huge...

Having just written a post on Carbon trading , a tiny news item piqued my interest. The idea behind the experiment is very simple. Iron is one the vital ingredients for the phytoplankton growth. But iron is a mineral of short supply in the oceans. So, a company named Planktos are dissolving about 100 million tons of powdered iron in the ocean, and hope the plankton growth surges. The plankton uses the carbon-dioxide during its lifetime, and it is hoped when the plankton dies the carbon sinks to the bottom and is buried there forever. About 20% of the plankton 'fed' are expected to be 'buried' in the seabed. The entrepreneurs hope to prove the experiment of iron-fertilization and then sell the carbon-offset to industries that are eager to buy carbon-credits. The rallying pitch of the experimenters is the cost of carbon offset in very low compared to growing trees and other cleaning technologies. This is precisely the point we had mentioned in the yesterday's post. ...

World Bank states the global demand for carbon emission credits will exceed supply by 2012. [ 1 ] The total trading of emission credits reached $30bn (£15bn) during 2006, three times as much as in 2005. The growth in 2004-2005 was 240%. Carbon Credit One Carbon credit is equivalent to one tonne of CO2 emissions. This credit can be sold at market price. The exchanges that deal with carbon credits are Chicago Climate Exchnage and European Climate Exchange Kyoto Protocol Under Kyoto Protocol, the countries hava a emission quota while siluataneously having to take steps to reduce the emissions. The countries can tackle their obligations by implementing clean projects (usually in developing countries taking advantages of costs) or by buying other countries'carbon credits. Absolution Carbon Credit, a hotly debated issue before being ratified at Kyoto, seeks to put a price on the activities of pollution. The basic idea is to penalise the polluting country/company. Carbon Credit was hotly ...

Yen has crossed above 120, which was our agressive stop-loss. USD has not been able to hold above the levels convincingly yet, I mean, there are not impulse waves yet. Possibly this is a just a test of supports and it is likely to move up. But the most bearish case for USD seems to be fashioning in EURUSD charts, inspite of possiblity of some correction. The channeled uptrend of EUR is still unbroken. USD on the whole seems to be weakening, with it having surprisingly weakening against AUD. For the next few days, I would be looking at this retest of supports by USD and also for a likely false breakout by USD. In other words, I would not be taking a positive position in USD unless I have a strong evidence of strength. Will be looking out for Yen to lead the way, any sign of positiveness would have greater impact on EUR.

There are instances where a firm possess a prime property and yet looking for capital infusion. Even though the business would be very much benefitted by infusion of capital, the firm does not have any choice of utilising the property's leverage. In such circumstances, firms can use "Sale and Lease back". The method is very simple, the firm sells off its prime properties like office complexes at important areas and leases back the property from the buyer usually on a long lease. This can be used for any type of assets but is best used for assets that are at risk of depreciation of values. This is very profitable for old firms with good asset value, as it gives a strong one-time cash flow. Some of the advantages of this Sale and Lease back are: It frees up the capital Tax benefits on the lease expenses Seller continues to use the property Ability to sell at peak realty rates The companies have begun to take advantage of high real estate prices to cash in on thier assets at...

Just when I was getting claustrophobic of being the only realty bull in the room, with steady defecting of my friends, somebody comes and beats me hollow. Too hollow. What beats me are not the numbers (bah..they are just spreadsheets), it is the way they put confidence in and caution out with these statements. Read the following estimate from International Business Times article (from Kaushik ) "The market for real estate in India will grow five-fold to $60 billion by 2010 and $90 billion by 2015, the Dubai-based organizers of a major realty fair in the capital has announced." It goes on to add one organizer state "In mature markets of advanced countries, developers can at best hope for 5-7 percent return. But in India, real estate investment yields are in the range of 20 percent". This is simply the nuttiest statement. All I have to do is ask "for how long dear" and "what will be the margins by the time you come in?" "The main purpose of ...

The charts of Eur and Yen seem to be signalling a divergent tone. Being in the crux of new ranges it is hard to say which one will finally win - Dollar or others. Euro on hourly and 4-hourlies is showing some good divergences in momentum. This is for great part because of it being at the all time highs. Yen seem to be holding the 120 levels as I write. The way I look at yen is either a break above 120 indicating dollar strength or a crack for dollar. But I would like to consider one middle ground in this case. That, the strength in Euro may not necessarily result in the strength of Yen against Dollar. Some of the fundamentals affecting the markets right now, it the possibility of the Fed keeping the rates constant. That is as good as dipping rates, as no body expects the rates to dip so early in the cycle. Stopping of hikes is itself a victory. Even, if the hikes come, and other major banks (japan) keep their rates steady, the USD will benefit. The M3 growth of Euro is 10.5% mom. That...

A snippet from AFX quoting Bernanke A move to protect threatened American industries and workers from foreign competition would be a serious mistake that would jeopardize the sizable benefits of free trade, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said Tuesday. "Restricting trade by imposing tariffs, quotas and other barriers is exactly the wrong thing to do," Bernanke said in remarks to an audience at Montana Tech in Butte, Mont. "In the long run, economic isolationism and retreat from international competition would inexorably lead to lower productivity for U.S. firms and lower living standards for U.S. consumers," Bernanke said. Succinct explanation for opening up. Hope the "swadeshis" are reading. Falkor