Some things are just too funny or irreverent to pass up, taken, copied, stolen and enjoyed from the reverse cowgirl’s blog, copyright by Susannah Breslin, who happen to be the same person.

There are few people whose judgement I  trust on the stock market because analysts arguments are ususally full of holes and mostly garbage. Moreover, most people tend to be fairly inconsistent in their advice, lacking conviction and changing quickly as the market changes. There are two analysts that I have a lot of respect for, because their arguments have been always logical, but most of all they have been consistent and full of conviction, they are Don Hays, who has a service I subscribe to, and Ken Fisher who has written some good books and writes for Forbes. In his latest article Fisher calls this market “A beautiful market“. He had been bearish for the last two years or so but changed his stance roughly two months ago. Among some of the things he is saying that impressed me about his conviction:

“This market is sheer beauty–the most stunning I’ve ever seen clearly. Maybe not as beautiful as 1974, but perhaps as a young man I didn’t see that right.”

“This bear, with a 48% decline in the S&P 500 at its worst point this summer, falls in the middle of the range of the seven big bear markets of the last century. With the exception of the Great Crash, which took the Dow down 89% between 1929 and 1932, big bear markets have sliced stock prices 42% to 55%. But if you think this is like 1929-32 you are delusional: Absent are the 1930s’ massive global trade barriers, the massive worldwide destruction of the quantity of money and the massive economic dislocations.”

“Following all the big market drops came 12-month advances, ranging from 29% to 65%, with a 50% average. That’s big. And beautiful.” 

Well, there you have it, is one man’s opinion but he has been fairly consistent, I wish I had listened to him more two years ago. By the way Don Hays has been bullish for a while, but he always seems to be early, he was bearish since about late 1998 or so.

Digression 7: Affinity:

Somehow when I saw this cartoon I identified myself completely with it, that’s exactly how my mind looks when I relax:

Digression 6.1: Google Experiment

My google experiment is not as succesful as I expected, but mostly because I dont quite understand how Google really works. I would have thought that once a page was catalogued, it would clearly not be removed from the cache. Well, as noted below, after 24 hours my blog was no longer referenced and then it magically reappeared again, only to dissapear again. So here is a list of the number of references for Phragmipedium kovachii and how they have evolved in time, as well as whether my blog (D.E.) is present or not. By now I am so intrigued by the results that I will continue the experiment and report periodically. Interestingly enough the Yahoo search engine has also dropped to only 8 references from 13:

08/16                  33 references D.E. present

08/17                  33 references D.E. not present

08/17 PM             28 references D.E. present

08/18                  28 references D.E. not present

08/19                  22 references D.E. not present

Would love any suggestions on possible explanations.

Digression 6.01: A strange one

While checking to see if the count for Phragmipedium kovachii had gone up in Google today, I noticed that my blog no longer appears….Go figure…..there goes my experiment!!

In addition, the count remains at 33 despite my reference not being there. Later today, the count dropped to 29 and my site reappeared!!!!!!! Mysterious Google….

Digression 6.01: A strange one

While checking to see if the count for Phragmipedium kovachii had gone up in Google today, I noticed that my blog no longer appears….Go figure…..there goes my experiment!!

In addition, the count remains at 33 despite my reference not being there. Later today, the count dropped to 29 and my site reappeared!!!!!!! Mysterious Google….

Digression 6.01: A strange one

While checking to see if the count for Phragmipedium kovachii had gone up in Google today, I noticed that my blog no longer appears….Go figure…..there goes my experiment!!

In addition, the count remains at 33 despite my reference not being there. Later today, the count dropped to 29 and my site reappeared!!!!!!! Mysterious Google….

Digression 6.01: A strange one

While checking to see if the count for Phragmipedium kovachii had gone up in Google today, I noticed that my blog no longer appears….Go figure…..there goes my experiment!!

In addition, the count remains at 33 despite my reference not being there. Later today, the count dropped to 29 and my site reappeared!!!!!!! Mysterious Google….

Digression 6: Blogging and Google: Is it good, fast or both?

When I wrote Digressions 5 and 5.1, I was aiming it as a general comment on our planet and an interesting bit of information on orchids and species to those that know little about the topic. Today, I noticed that I had a surprising number of referrals early in the day and when I looked at the referers I was also surprised to find that they were mostly (80%) coming from google, but no other search engine. Thus, I decided to perform an experiment to try to answer the question of whether google is simply good, fast in time or simply both. I will repeat the experiment at a later date to test whether time is the important variable or not. I did two searches and the results are posted below. First I searched for my blog, simply searching for The Devil’s Excrement (D.E) in a variety of search engines. Then I searched for the term Phragmipedium kovachii (P.K.) and recorded how many times that searched engine found it and whether my blog was recorded or not.

Clearly, Google is much superior. I understand Yahoo uses Google, but it is clearly programmed differently. The question to me is then whether Google is better or faster. It appears to be both, as the discovery of the orchid Phragmipedium Kovachii has been around longer than my site (12 days) or my posts on the discovery (4 days), while the report of the discovery of the orchids is almost two months old (June 18^th.). A separate explanation might be that Google has some sort of special cataloguing for blogs that simply distorts my conclusions. I will revisit the searches in one month or so to try to clarify these issues.

Obviously by now my own experiment has affected my numbers, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle at work in experimental blogging, cool!!!!!

Digression 5.1: A new Orchid Species

Well, things are more complicated than they appeared from the NYT article according to this article from the Miami Herald, people are ready to make a quick profit. Unfortunately it appears the plant does not propagate very well, somebody is already doing it!!! There is also controversy about scientific claims….how juicy. Friends tell me that what is more impressive about the discovery is how purple the flowers are and the fact that they are twice as big as other species. Neat!!