Fireworks may be harder to get.

25 essentials for networking success. 

North Dakota Oil Rush.

The Financial Wisdom from Fight Club.

3 ideas that are pushing the edge of science.

The good the bad and the ugly of $7 Gas.

The vicious cycle of staying up late.

The problem with Banks.

How to find stocks which make a big move.

Shocker of the day: Intraday price action.

The ratings racket.

Stock market trend analysis.

How big a contribution could oil speculation be making?

Coaching hedge fund and portfolio managers.

Lessons in productivity.

1. A slug’s life.
2. SIT happens
3. So many headaches
4. The bobblehead syndrome
5. Hurting Hands
6. Relax Harder!
7. Noxious invaders
8. Eye Strain
9. Heavy lifting
10. Something in the air

This is defiantly food for thought as a lot of traders spend countless hours in front of their computers and Bloomberg terminals. I have assembled some useful links on various health topics that might be of interest to traders. Remember your health is the most important thing and all of us should take steps to ensure we maintain a healthy balanced lifestyle.

Health Links

• 23 simple health tips for bloggers.
• 25 health and fitness tips that the health professionals wish we all knew.
• Stealth health get healthy without really trying.
• Do your eyes hurt now?
• 10 essential health tips.
• How to go from sedentary to running in five steps.
• Four best and worst health habits. 
• 15 tips to restart an exercise habit.
• All the best tips on getting in shape in one handy list.

What are you still reading for? get off the computer and go out and get moving. It might just save your life.

Contents

Prologue 

Part One - Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary, or how we seek validation

• Chapter One: The Apprenticeship of an Empirical Skeptic
• Chapter Two: Yevgenia’s Black Swan
• Chapter Three: The Speculator and the Prostitute
• Chapter Four: One Thousand and One Days, or How Not to Be a Sucker
• Chapter Five: Confirmation Shmonfirmation!
• Chapter Six: The Narrative Fallacy
• Chapter Seven: Living in the Antechamber of Hope
• Chapter Eight: Giacomo Casanova’s Unfailing Luck: The Problem of Silent Evidence
• Chapter Nine: The Ludic Fallacy, or The Uncertainty of the Nerd

Part Two: We Just Can’t Predict

• Chapter Ten: The Scandal of Prediction
• Chapter Eleven: How to Look for Bird Poop
• Chapter Twelve: Epistemocracy, a Dream
• Chapter Thirteen: Appelles the Painter, or What Do You Do if You Cannot Predict?

Part Three: Those Gray Swans Extremistan

• Chapter Fourteen: From Mediocristan to Extremistan, and Back
• Chapter Fifteen: The Bell Curve, That Great Intellectual Fraud
• Chapter Sixteen: The Aesthetics of Randomness
• Chapter Seventeen: Locke’s Madmen, or Bell Curves in the Wrong Places
• Chapter Eighteen: The Uncertainty of The Phony
• Chapter Nineteen: Half and Half, or How to Get Even with the Black Swan
• Epilogue: Yevgenia’s White Swan
• Acknowledgements
• Glossary
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index

This unexpected event occurred over a week ago and my regular readers may have noticed that I was not posting, responding to mail or calls. Last Saturday my health took a turn for the worse and I have spent some time in hospital and am still recovering at home. My focus over the coming weeks and months will be on health and doing everything I can to ensure a speedy recovery. My posting will be very sporadic if at all over this time. Thank you to all who have emailed me and posted comments. With any luck I will be fitting fit in no time and back to posting on a regular basis. This has been a great time for introspection, self-examination and re-evaluating life goals.

Many Thanks

Mark

The Dollar

The Yen

The Euro

When it comes to writing computer programs or in this case automated trading systems translating English into programming code can be fraught with danger. Pseudo Code on the other hand refers to a more structured English for describing a process or program. It is important that you learn to write quality pseudo code as it will make a big difference when you come to coding your system your self or hiring a programmer.

There are many benefits in writing your algorithms or trading logic in pseudo code these include:

• You will gain a detailed understanding of the program or algorithm you are developing.
• Errors in logic picked up early.
• Not constrained by a single programming language.

Below is a brief example of pseudo code:

IF movingAverage1 = movingAverage2 THEN
    SEND buyOrder
END IF

If you wish to learn pseudo code these links will be very helpful:

• The pseudocode guide.
• The pseudocode standard.
• The pseudocode programming process.
• pseudocode Wiki page.
• The use of pseudocode in development.

If you are new to programming you may be interested in free for (educational use) program called P-Coder. P-Coder allows you to define the structure of a program in a graphical context and then you will be able to generate code automatically. This program is not intended for production use but is a good tool that can help in the learning process. The program will automatically generate code for java, C++, VB and Perl. Some screenshots highlighting the features are attached below.

Designer View

Code View

Class View

Text View

Afraid to trade has a look inside transports.

Expected credit losses vs mark to market losses from Alea.

Sales Tax declines in most states from calculated risk.

GDP still growing (barely) from Econbrowseer.

What MBA students really want from Finance Viewpoint.

Crude Oil hottest commodity on the planet.

Four Mega dangers international finance markets face from Naked Capitalism.

Quant jobs and the Middle East.

S&P500 index and sector vs 52 week highs.

When traders press to hard to win.

Timothy Sykes go’s live with his updated site.

Dance of the damned.

Trading lessons from Nicolas Darvas.