TraderPlanet.com :: TWSInvestments's Commentaries

So Long, Farewell My Loyal Readers!

Brandon Rowley — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 16:37:00 +0000

goodbye.jpg
After 2.5 years of writing, my participation in the Trading Wall Street Investments blog is now officially ended. My career has taken a very exciting turn and my blogging days are finished for the foreseeable future.

Thank you to all my loyal readers over the last few years reading along as I've developed and honed my understanding of financial markets. I've been right sometimes, wrong plenty of times but always striving to deepen my knowledge of how markets really work.

I would reco...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Recap of 2010 Market Performance & ETF Tracking Error

Brandon Rowley — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 16:36:00 +0000

Father-Time.gif
After a couple weeks off from posting through Christmas and the end of the year, I'm back to recap the year. Santa Claus showed up at the end of 2010 to add to the gains while the economic calendar and geopolitical environment presented no impactful news to derail the advance. The primary US index, the S&P 500, mounted a solid 13% advance for 2010 closing a volatile year that included a 17.1% correction from high to low mid-year. The last four months of the year alone offered a...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Greatest Jeopardy! Champions vs. Watson the IBM Supercomputer

Brandon Rowley — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:25:00 +0000

ibm+watson.png
On February 14th-16th next year, Jeopardy! will hold a contest between an IBM supercomputer dubbed Watson and two of the show's greatest winners of all-time, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. This is the first man vs. machine contest in Jeopardy! history and after 4 years of development, Watson promises to showcase man's most sophisticated computer programming to date. This match comes 13 years after the world chess champion was successfully defeated by an IBM computer. Yet, "analyz...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Slowing Productivity Growth Portends Private Sector Hiring

Brandon Rowley — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:21:00 +0000

ManPullingHairOut.gif
Does your company have you pulling your hair out because they fired all your colleagues and expect you to do all the work? Perhaps relief is on the way.

The latest issue of Bloomberg Businessweek had a great segment titled "Seeking the Number That Explain It All: Four economists discuss their favorite indicators as they try to gauge where the U.S. economy is headed". Dean Maki of Barclay's Capital weighed in citing Real Consumer Spending as his primary tool. Dan Greenhaus ...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Facebook's 'Visualizing Friendships' Maps the World

Brandon Rowley — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 18:19:00 +0000

Paul Butler, an intern on Facebook's data infrastructure engineering team, put together a fascinating graphic titled "Visualizing Friendships". With a random sampling of 10 million Facebook users across the world, Butler plotted arcs between friends based on the longitude and latitude of each person.

What emerged from a black canvas background was a captivating replication of the world map. The most advanced technological countries and areas see their borders outlined very clearly while other...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

McDowell Bests Woods, Bernanke Explains Monetary Policy

Brandon Rowley — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 17:08:00 +0000

Tiger Woods Graeme McDowell
Golf is fun to watch again

Tiger Woods is back...almost. For the first time in 2010, Tiger looked like the competitive, hungry player of the past. Granted, he was playing in the Chevron World Challenge, an 18-player event sponsored by the Tiger Woods Foundation and not an official PGA tournament, but he looked good. He took Graeme McDowell to a play-off after letting his 4-shot lead to start the day disintegrate by missing a couple key putts early. McDowell eventuall...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Google's (GOOG) Android Flourishing

Brandon Rowley — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 00:08:00 +0000

Android logo
The latest data from comScore was released today on the mobile phone market and shows Google's Android platform flourishing, rapidly gobbling up market share from competitors.

Smartphone ownership overall jumped 14% for the three months ended October 2010 over the previous three-month period with now fully 25% of cell phone users owning a smartphone. While Research In Motion still dominates the market with 35.8% of the market, its share is continuing to erode as Apple and Googl...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Doctor Copper (JJC) Challenging All-Time Highs

Brandon Rowley — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 17:52:00 +0000

Water-Copper-Pipe.jpg
Doctor Copper is one of the best indicators of global growth given its ubiquitous use in products we make all over the world. Copper has the characteristics of malleability and ductility while being one of the most efficient conductors of heat and electricity locking in its spot as a commodity with broad usages. From wiring and circuits to fittings and pipings, copper is useful in a wide variety of products .

With emerging economies exploding as the global credit crisis a...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Differentiating Between Trending vs. Mean Reverting Data

Brandon Rowley — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 21:31:00 +0000

pendulum-swinging.jpg
Derek Hernquist had a great post out a few weeks back titled "How I Use Mean Reversion" in which he discussed the stark difference between two types of data: trending and mean reverting. While these ideas are not rocket science, it is crucial for success in markets to understand how these two types of data differ.

What are mean reverting data?

Hernquist points out some typical mean reverting data: sentiment, valuation, profit margins, asset class popularity. I like to view ...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Christmas Time: Light the Tree, Buy Stocks

Brandon Rowley — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 19:15:00 +0000

Rockefeller Christmas Tree
I'm back in New York and back at my desk after a nice, long Thanksgiving break. The market is on speed today with the Dow up 250 points right now after Monday's big intraday reversal marked a significant change in the action. It seems to me that stocks are primed for a Christmas rally to tack onto this year's mild 8% gain in the S&P so far. November was a healthy 4.4% pullback and buyers are back to start December. Overall I'm not all that concerned with the market i...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Intuitive Surgical (ISRG) Growth at a Reasonable Price

Brandon Rowley — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 17:46:00 +0000

A great investing model that attempts to combine the best of the growth and value worlds is the GARP model, or growth at a reasonable price. This strategy seeks to find companies growing at above market rates yet selling with moderate price tags. Often these stocks are previous momentum crowd favorites but have been rejected because of some overhang or disappointment along the road that caused the weak holders to dump shares and move on. Intuitive Surgical, Inc. may be a great fit for this i...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

N. Korea Pissing Everyone Off, Stocks Give Back Yesterday's Rebound

Brandon Rowley — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:51:00 +0000

bernake+cartoon.jpg

Source: The Week

Kim Jong-Il pissed off the world again last night as North Korea fired 100 rounds of artillery at Yeonpyeong Island in the Yellow Sea killing two soldiers and wounding 16 soldiers, three civilians. South Korea responded by shooting 80 rounds back. This sort of provocation always seems to lead me to some sort of existential exasperation where I think: "Why does this guy still exist? Can't he just not be anymore?" His people live in desolate poverty yet he rem...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Solution for the Full-Body Scanner Controversy

Brandon Rowley — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:18:00 +0000

full+body+scanner.jpg

Here's a solution to all the controversy over full-body scanners at the airports:

All we need to do is develop a booth that you can step into that will NOT X-ray you, but WILL detonate any explosive device you may have hidden on or in your body. The explosion will be contained within the sealed booth. This would be a win-win for everyone. There would be no racial profiling, no discrimination, and the device would eliminate long and expensive trials.

This is so simple it's b...

Thanksgiving Week Means Christmas Shopping!

Brandon Rowley — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:32:00 +0000

thanksgiving.gif
Thanksgiving week is here and the Christmas shopping season will soon begin. While the American consumer still seems to be struggling, they are expected to hit the stores anyway in full force. The S&P 500 2.4% off highs and questions swirl of whether we'll see a further pull-in or the always fun Santa Claus rally.

Volume will be light and action will likely be muted this week but all we need are some promising Black Friday and Cyber Monday numbers next week and the floor could...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »

Google May Buy Groupon

Brandon Rowley — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 16:51:00 +0000

groupon
Google is in talks acquire popular retail deal site Groupon, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Friday.

Groupon, which was launched in November 2008 and is reportedly raking in nearly $50 million a month in revenue, was one of the first sites to offer online consumers the option to rally together to purchase products and other services at fire-sale rates.

Groupon is growing rapidly and would likely be a wise addition to the Google empire. Looks like this may be another s...Read More at TraderPlanet.com »