At the hump in the week and the market is flat. The VIX is in a nice, easy place, say in the mid-14 zone. The S&P 500 and DIJA are floating around the zero line. My trades are mixed; some are up and some are down, but all are behaving appropriately for current market conditions.
- Anybody who follows the market closely knows that when the VIX spikes, stock prices go down. And vice versa; when the VIX falls, stocks go up.
Even in the midst of the Russia/Ukraine event last week, the VIX did not freak out. Sure, players took the fear gauge up into the 18 zone, but that is hardly a worry. No, when the VIX moves above twenty or it begins to act irrationally, say up and down quickly in one day or several, then it is time to reconsider your current strategy. Right now, though, it appears investors are telling the market that the next 30 days are clear sailing.
For me, over the next 30 days, I will be looking for new plays. It appears my fuel-cell strategy is played out, at least for the near term. True, they have come down in price and the crazy volume is gone, but I question whether they have reached the bottom, as each day a few more traders try to push the prices up to squeeze out a bit more profit.
I tend to lose patience with these scenarios. Yes, I will keep an eye on them and when they are ready, I will play with them again. They do have a bright future and there is still plenty of money to make trading them, but, for now, it is time to search out new dance partners.
- Starting next month, many car buyers will be getting a novel feature: Internet connections with speeds similar to those on the fastest smartphones—and even a few early dashboard-based apps, engineered to be as dumbed-down as possible.
It is interesting to watch the automobile evolve into something so much more than a gas-guzzling ton of metal lugging folks and things from here to there. Watching it move from the wired world to the wireless world is fascinating, true, but it also intriguing.
- Backseat passengers could get streaming movies and fast Wi-Fi connections to smart watches and tablets in (and near) the car. For drivers, high-resolution navigation maps would load quickly, and high-fidelity audio could stream from Internet radio services.
It appears the automobile is heading toward some type of entertainment center. Now, the above is nothing new, really, if you have the capability to set up a hotspot with your wireless carrier. When we travel, we use laptops in the car, listen to Internet radio, and use GPS and have been doing so for a while. The problem has been the unreliability of wireless 4-G networks. Often the signal drops into the sluggish 3G network, or it drops out completely. So, the question becomes, how do the car manufacturers deal with this issue? How do they make the existing 4-G networks more reliable?
- They also suggest that connectivity can lead to new safety features, and that using these onboard services will be safer than furtively glancing at phones.
The above, of course, is the natural response to the idea of making automobiles more, well, informational. Automobile manufacturers are putting forth rigorous safety standards for apps, but even with the tough standards and the requirement that the apps be “dumber,” app makers are signing up.
- Despite the hurdles, 4,000 developers have registered with GM’s app store, because the payoff could be large for them: getting their apps included in a car could help them market versions that work on smartphones.
I am not sure yet how I make money here, but I will look into it. I will piggy back off my existing “smartphone” watch list. Perhaps it is the manufacturers of screens that work in automobiles? I will keep you posted.
- Motorola’s Moto 360 smart watch looks a lot like a regular watch but can still act like a computer.
When I read about the smart watch, I can’t help but be drawn back to my childhood. Does anyone remember the erstwhile and persistent police detective Dick Tracy? If so, you will remember his futuristic wrist-watch radio. Yup! That’s the one.
Trade in the day; Invest in your life …
