Archive - Jul 13, 2009

Expanding on Cornelius' early piece on China, here is an analysis out of some BNP quants who for one reason or another are convinced the end's in sight. For those who are forgot where they put their Ritalin, here is the punchline:

"By the very nature of the model, this result gives us two conclusions. Firstly, there exists a bubble in the Shanghai Composite Index. Secondly, it will reach a critical level around July 17-27, 2009. This will lead to a change in regime which may be a crash or a more gently bubble deflation. An extended version of this note, with a careful assessment of the confidence intervals and comparisons with the previous Chinese bubble ending in Oct. 2007, will be released soon."

Another educational clip out of FORA TV, this time Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, presents examples of cognitive illusions that help illustrate why humans make predictably irrational decisions - lately that would include purchasing stocks.

Client-User interaction doesn't get any more appropriately informative than this.

To all who think the pushing, shoving, rudeness and lines of Eastern Europe are bad, I suggest checking out the local airports on a Monday night (where ironically there are more Eastern Europeans than in Eastern Europe).

Downloading some amusing pics now for your enjoyment.

The China bubble continues unabated but is finally starting to show signs of resistance.

The last of the upgrades appears to be complete.

Nick Gogerty of Designing Better Futures has come up with another of his highly entertaining and educational videos, this time focusing on a longitudinal comparison of housing prices by geographic area compared to household income.