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Guest Post: The Real Testosterone Junkies
Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics,
I especially enjoy reading things that I disagree with, and that challenge my own beliefs. Strong ideas are made stronger, and weak ideas dissolve in the spotlight of scrutiny. People who are unhappy to read criticisms of their own ideas are opening the floodgates to ignorance and dogmatism. Yet sometimes my own open-minded contrarianism leads me to something unbelievably shitty.
Zero Hedge is a financial news website. The writers all write under the pseudonym of “Tyler Durden”, Brad Pitt’s character from Fight Club. Each post comes with a little black and white icon of Brad Pitt’s head. On Zero Hedge you can read news, rumors, facts, figures, off-the-cuff analysis, and political screeds (usually anti-Obama, anti-government, and pro-hard money). On the sidebars, you can click on ads for online brokerages, gold collectibles, and The Economist.
The site is a big fat hoax. And if you read it for anything other than amusement, you’re almost certainly a big fat sucker.
That’s a bold claim! Why do I make this claim? Well, in one sense, all financial news is a hoax. Financial news, by definition, is public information — if you’ve read it, you can bet that thousands of other people have too. That means that if the market is anywhere close to being efficient, any information in any article you read will already have been incorporated into the price of financial assets. Reading or watching public information should not, in theory, give you any “alpha”.
If the writers of Zero Hedge really knew some information that could allow them to beat the market,why in God’s name would they tell it to you? If they had half a brain, they’d just keep the info to themselves, trade on it, and make a profit! Maybe then, after they had made their profit, they’d release the news to the public (and collect ad revenue), but by then the news would be worthless. Financial news sites, you should realize, are not in the business of giving you insider tips out of the goodness of their hearts.
As you might expect, it’s not hard to look back at Zero Hedge’s predictions and see that a large number of them are junk. For example, here’s a bunch of posts from 2009 predicting imminent hyperinflation. Hope you didn’t make any trades based on that bit of wisdom!
So how does Zero Hedge get away with this hoax? Barber & Odean (2001) give a big hint. Tyler Durden, whose name and image grace every Zero Hedge Post, is a symbol of masculinity. More specifically, he is a nerd’s imagined vision of what a really masculine nerd would be like. In Fight Club, Durden says: “All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”
In other words, you are a young smart (i.e. nerdy) guy sitting at your computer with rivers of testosterone coursing through your veins. And now here comes Tyler Durden, your generation’s Platonic ideal of pure masculinity, telling you that Real Men Take Risks. At the top of the site, there is a Tyler Durden quote: “On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” In other words, gamble. Bet that you’re the smart guy and not the sucker. Because hey, you’re going to die anyway, so there’s no use hedging your bets. Zero hedge, right?
I wouldn’t be surprised if “Tyler Durden” were actually a bunch of behavioral finance grad students, snickering behind their hands at everyone who takes their site seriously.
This is what passes for financial analysis today? Let’s ignore the obvious fact that Zero Hedge has never pretended to offer investment advice. We should take all financial news with a large grain of salt (anyone who has read the latest uber-bailout rumours out of Europe should know that). Anyone who bases their trading activity on blindly following the pronouncements of one site, or one trader deserves to lose their coat. Blindly following a messiah-figure or (even worse) the herd is a surefire recipe for disaster.
But Smith has got his facts wrong. While there has been no hyperinflation, those who traded their hunch and bought gold — pretty much the archetypal Zero Hedge trade — have not done badly. Here’s the price of gold — contrasted against the S&P500 — since Zero Hedge was born in January 2009:
Drawing a meaty profit and significantly outperforming the S&P500 is hardly what you’d expect from a “big fat hoax”. Certainly, you’d have made a loss, not a meaty profit, from betting with Bernanke’s pronouncement that subprime was “contained”.
Smith is spinning loose psychoanalysis spiced with conspiracy theories and schoolboy misunderstandings in order to generate pageviews. He obviously hasn’t read Zero Hedge enough to realise that ”on a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero” reflects the reality that calamities and resets happen, and that — given the level of mess, corruption and perversity in finance today — a systemic reset could be just around the corner. And the last thing i would want to do in the face of a systemic reset — or any kind of large-scale financial calamity (a la 2008) — is gamble. The smart thing is to hunker down and robustify, by minimising exposures to all forms of connective risk and financial fragility . Zero Hedge is not about having no hedges and gambling as recklessly as possible; it is about having hedges against the system going to zero.
Ironically, Smith is accusing entirely the wrong segment of the financial world of wild recklessness. While there are surely many day traders who lose their coats on the pronouncements of analysts (especially the Crameresque stock-picker — something which Zero Hedge has never done), the real danger is surely the testosterone-Red Bull-and-cocaine-fuelled TBTF trader or 21-year old PhD-wielding quant working for a bailed-out bank with an implicit taxpayer backstop on zero-interest government money. The level of moral and financial hazard is simply staggering, and of course this has bred much reckless behaviour; from the evident criminality of manipulating LIBOR, to Corzine’s destruction of MF Global (and theft of customer funds), to the absurd market-cornering London Whale’s speculation using customer deposits, to the off-balance-sheet activities of Kweku Adoboli, to Goldman’s quote stuffing. And — I am sure, much much more — these are just some of the scams and scandals that are known; there is much more darkness beneath. Zero Hedge has been a powerful journalistic force and clearinghouse in bringing the light-of-day onto these corruptions and criminalities, something that Smith seems entirely ignorant of.
No day trader or goldbug stacking gold eagles has ever blown up the nation’s pension fund, but the protected TBTF banks funded by earth-shattering leverage and taxpayer guarantees have again and again endangered retirement funds, and lost their clients’ fortunes.
It is not unusual on Wall Street to see massively leveraged double or nothing Martingale trading strategies where traders take a position and push leverage and counter-leverage to create a favourable outcome. In theory — with unlimited funds — such an approach always wins, but in reality this approach usually ends in traders running out of counter-parties or running out of leverage, and ending up with a massive loss. It’s picking up nickels in front of a steamroller, and is of course made much easier thanks to the new and manipulable world of high-frequency trading.
It’s ironic (and jaw-dropping) that Smith castigates Zero Hedge as the home of testosterone junkie traders when in fact the vast majority of Zero Hedge writers and readers are angling for better regulation of high-frequency trading to prevent market manipulation, an end to nickels-in-front-of-steamrollers strategies (the best way is to end the taxpayer guarantees so that traders who blow up the system will reap the consequences), and the return of Glass Steagall (or similar) to keep depositors’ funds out of hyper-fragile shadow intermediation chains and the derivative casino.
The financial system is being regulated by clueless schmucks — many of whom would also castigate Zero Hedge as a “big fat hoax”, while ignoring grift and degeneracy within the financial establishment and the TBTF banks. In the face of such grotesque incompetence who can blame market participants for wanting a hedge against zero?
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10BTC to the best deface before midnight eastern. GOGOGOGOGO!
EDIT: 20BTC if it includes Goatse and a rederict to lemonparty. I'm feeling lulzy. Let the good ship sail.
Zero Hedge readers are lighting up Noah's page with arguments against his nonsense.
Likely the traffic he seeks - troll a high traffic site, and wait for hits.
ZeroHedge stock picks ? Where's the stock picking section I missed it somehow ?
I'm disappointed that Aziz didnt connect
"Ironically, Smith is accusing entirely the wrong segment of the financial world of wild recklessness. "
with what's going on with Egan-Jones ... ZH is not alone in this
Noah is right. I traded on the advice of Graham Summer and now I'm bankrupt to the tune of $10 million.
What?? You mean I wasn't supposed to take Graham seriously?
Fuck the Glass Steagall. Fuck it up the ass! My Freedom shall not depend on an Act! Free money, Zerohedge, Free fucking money, can you get that in you head? No regulation whatsoever, None! Just hard cold heavy fucking cash! Free Banking! Whats so hard to understand about the concept of liberty? Gold standard? Fuck the gold standard! Let people make their mind up. If they want to use worms as money, they should be fucking able to do so! Im tired of this double-faced call to liberty/ call to regulations. Fuck you all! Suck my dick.
http://vaevictis.me/
Ahahahahah! Cmon people gang up. Zerohedge is the new mainstream! Ahahah! :P
"Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!"
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Fuck you all!
Freedom!
Freedom!
Suck my big fat dick!
Freedom!
you know , i have been on this ride for 55 yrs now. ive signed the fronts of many checks, i would like to think my life time resume demonstrates honesty loyalty integrity hard work , owning or running companies....ive been around a little bit...their is only one thing left that i am willing to have any faith in....and thats the hedge....if the hedge turns out to be anything less than as presented...what would be left to hold on to?....zero hedge opens a can of ideas on topics that run thru the chat boards...were most knowledged is obtained....if your not smart enough to understand alot of articles, just keep reading as it comes up..this site is a college course with no end, it will continue to have life forever...with this being said ..... i will spend my very last trust card on the "tylers" ... if zero hedge is not legit than their is only a few things that are left to beilieve in.... some stuff and yourself. .....
What if I just like predicting, reading about, commenting on, and contributing to the best economic calamity porn site on the internets?
yeah, that Smith guy is doing what all pundits of a failing system do: When they can't refute the message (with valid counter arguments) they attack the messenger (ZH).
So obvious....
If that were the case, I'd expect to see a plethora of ads. But there are no ads on his page ...
Who in the hell is Noah Smith? I've been in "the biz" for quite a long time and have never heard of him.
Noah Smith is exactly the kind of pompous ass who needs a good punch in the face and kick in the nuts.
Hey Noah, I haven't lost a penny asshole (other than what the FED and government have stolen).
I'd rather be a moral and ethical person than a worthless financial terrorist fit for hanging.
Thank you very much.
Got rope?
Dude, advocating violence against someone for expressing their opinion is a very bad idea and will make ZH look like a mob of crazy people. Noah Smith is not the problem, he just wrote a bad article, and usually I mostly find him to be an entertaining writer. Banks and regulators and policymakers deserve your anger, not Noah Smith.
Meh, he's a cock gobbler looking to rattle the cages in a desperate effort to bring eyes to his worthless meanderings. This is like the financial blogging version of battle rap.
Well, if he was looking for attention he got it. I am fairly sure he wanted a ZH response, which I am all too happy to give. But let's not be cruel.
Noah Smith thinks that safe sex is with animals that don't kick.
Noah Smith bases his debunking of ZH on the proposition that the market is "close to being" efficient. Huh? He is a self-pronounced fool by his own words. He has elected to expound on things that he doesn't know very much about. One is ZH and another is market efficiency.
If you attack hard, prepare for a counter. Hence the gloves of ZH and its readers are off.
Mr. Smith try to elevate your standing by the quality of your own writings and advice rather than criticize what others write.
Noah Smith. No, that's the joke.
Aziz said:
Noah Smith's dad should have pulled out.
Grunts are so easy to troll. You can't tame it. The frustration. The mob.
You stepped up. Association happens. I hope it doesn't dissuade you.
“Live never to be ashamed if anything you do or say is published around the world -- even if what is published is not true.” -messiah's handbook
No doubt he will add "And I attacked ZH!" to his c.v.
There's a spot in CNBC for him now ...
you are right....how bout we just hope he gets a bad dose of the herps ?
We're not a mob of crazy people ??? Shit, I did not know that !!!
More specifically, I have been told for many years that I am crazy for purchasing gold, that you can't fight the fed. BULLSHIT, Hulk says, and then Hulk thinks, PUNY HUMANS !!!
Weeeeee, this investing stuff is easy !!!
(made that up myself)
Oh shit, somebody done woke Hulk up and this nigga looks ready to SMAAAASSSSHHHH!!!!
I'm green dude...
Super green.
...Grigger?
Green shoots?
i'm black, BiCheZ
aziz is importing trollery?
dooty free!
i gotta go see what angela has arranged for herself...
see ya!
That's cause you ate your peas!
what happened to the mogambo guru?
No idea. Hopefully relaxing on the beach somewhere...
Blowback
http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/Responsible.pdf
ZH is a mob of crazy people. Would you like me to give the names of six totally serious guys with all the credibility of Million Dollar Bonus?
And Tyler has been predicting hyperinflation a week from Tuesday since 2009.
For all the loathing of strawman fake Keynesianism here, it was Keynes that pointed out that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Please repost post collapse; and when you aquire a moral compass.
Aziz,
Thanks for the article; I enjoy your writing.
I wonder what will change the utterly corrupt status quo besides violence (?)
It is preferable for adults to apply morality, ethics, and the rule of law to arrive at equitable markets and society; however, my observation is that we passed that tipping point decades ago and have arrived at the point where the malfeasant and delusional use equivocation and sophistry to delay the justice that they and society so desperately need NOW.
Damn yes we want banksters and their shills to meet the guillotine. Fuck their opinions. They talked enough already.
Because Marketwatch is sooooo much better.........
Yeah right. TD Rocks. Fuck you Noah.
ZH you know you are successful when they are attacking you! LOL
The 15 minutes of fame from this stupid fuck will be counted in milliseconds...
I never heard of this guy before Aziz wrote this piece. Gladly I'll forget his name after I go for a nice long bike ride.
I'll be much more interested when someone like Paul Krugman or Brad DeLong attacks Zero Hedge and Tyler, in print, for advocating such dangerous, partisan, insane ideas like sound money, fiscal prudence, and the end of the welfare/warfare crony fascist state. That will mark the point when ZH has acquired critical mass.
First they ignore you. Then, when they can't do that anymore, they mock you. Then they attack you; then they try to shout you down; then, in desperation, they go back to ignoring you.
Then you Win. The Bullshit Kings are dead, Long Live ZH.
Beat me to it, my thoughts exactly
Me too, and like you, I was beaten to the punch. Apart from all the accusations aimed towards ZH and its readers, it is a clear sign of fear on the part of TPTB.
I hate saying this, but I hope that the Tylers have bulletproof vests, because they are going to need them.
U Mad Noah?
Noah Smith = irrelevant bum looking for free hits.
Where is Noah's great list of information, advice and predicitions?
Exacatly.
Reading that tripe was an excercise in penis envy. Noah, don't hate the player, hate the game son.
Slam with the best or jam with the rest.
R.e the penis envy. It was an interesting description about the masculinity...ha ha, what a devilish attack. And, if it makes some people feel masculine, what’s the big deal? Is feeling masculine a crime? Oh i forgot, it is; men are silly beasts, brutes devoid of reason, emotional intelligence, incapable of the truth as we're so blinded by our earthly desires. What a ridiculous ad hominem - men are fundamentally wrong because they have a subconscious need to feel like men. This is very revealing about the author. If I were to perform a rough psychoanalysis on him, I would say his mom probably harboured virulent feminist/man hater tendencies throughout his childhood. That, or he dissatisfied with his own masculinity(as a lot of Americans are because they are constantly bombarded with corporate symbolist bullshit)...but he has to admit, sometimes our attacks reveal more about us than the receiver.
congrats, you took the red pill
i'm with you 100%, what's wrong with testosterone and masculinity?
noah is the typical emasculated/feminized man modern society has created.
he'll probably get married without researching the contract he's signing, then get cleaned out and financially destroyed in divorce court and be totally blindsided.
feminism is deeply rooted in modern society, everything is biased toward the female, from media to the legal system, divorce court etc...
a group of women laughing and making jokes about a man who got his penis cut off and thrown in the garbage disposal is on national TV and considered "humor"... if it was a group of men laughing about a woman's tits/clit getting thrown in the garbage disposal, it would be a full blown media outrage and people would be getting sued.
men need to embrace their masculinity. don't listen to the bullshit societal forces that attempt to emasculate you.
Hold on, hold on, hold on....
You mean that work which we thought was nothing short of fantastic pastiche, and which we got a hearty chuckle out of, was not a self-satirical, sarcastic grotesque?
You mean to say that a 6th year Econ Ph.D. student can come up with numerous extended paragraphs worth of "conclusions" based on a google search as the only primary source data?
You mean that instead of doing some actual due diligence like clicking on our very prominent conflicts/full disclosure policy (featured on the front page for about 3 years now), the author decided to take a stab at coming up with a (far less witty) one?
You mean that he was not writing about StockTwits, which actually pumps trading recommendations every second based on whichever way the wind blows, but was in fact writing about Zero Hedge, whose actual "recommendation" on the stock market since the summer of 2009 has been a simple one: "stay out" as anyone who has actually read it would know...
... You can not be serious man.
Oh wait... This is what the author himself says:
As yes: nothing like confirming all our fears about the frail state of the Keynesian dogma indoctrinated into young, impressionable minds, where one derives conclusions based on a "casual glance" about what one is actually writing about.
Carry on then (and don't forget to name drop #Zerohedge now and then: think of all the clicks to your website you are not getting)
I just come here to pick up chicks.
I mean guys.
Very agile Howie, very agile.
give the BiCh a sand wedge and stand back!
oh, doctor, look at that wiggle!
you have exceptional taste
How many you got so far ???
But seriously, in addition to the incredible articles, quite a few posters are just as good as TD
The hyperinflation articles were penned by GL, and he was just wrong on that call. Doesn't imply that everything GL writes is wrong, just the hyper call...
And what is most ironic, actually, is that this is what ZH wrote on March 18, 2009, when full blown QE1 was announced:
Still a great chart...
http://images.mises.org/ZimbabweIndustrialIndex.jpg
The brilliant thing about Zero Hedge, and probably the reason why I have learned so much is that it is written by actual practitioners who have lived in the financial system awhile, and who are precisely not people like Smith who seem to have spent their lives hanging around college economics departments where they can learn a lot of staid theory with practically zero applicability to the real financial system.
Smith demonstrates what a rank amateur he is with this pathetic attempt to invoke efficient markets theory:
Reading or watching public information should not, in theory, give you any “alpha”. If the writers of Zero Hedge really knew some information that could allow them to beat the market,why in God’s name would they tell it to you?
It's precisely the process of publicly analyzing, discussing and disseminating information that is supposed to make markets efficient (although, in reality, it doesn't). Smith is denigrating the very mechanism which is necessary to make his simplistic theory operative.
The writers of Zero Hedge may or may not know some information that will help us beat the market. But Smith is not even a market participant. He's just a smart-ass little kid watching the parade go by, sticking out his tongue and wagging his fingers in his ears.
GET A LIFE, NOAH! ISN'T IT TIME FOR YOU TO GRADUATE, MOVE OUT OF YOUR MOM'S BASEMENT, AND GET A JOB?
Smith is equivelant to the waterboy/jock sniffer in the college locker room
The author has only played himself with his lowgrade paper-thin lack of analysis, and zero comprehension of what ZH may actually be about, or not. Cursory analysis is the best case scenario of these phony econ/finance/opinion piece writers. They are the frauds. Due diligence akin to fundamentals and P/E ratios is a thing of the past for these mainstream assholes -- they only function on levels of hype and bombast.
I think I got it now.....ZH is a gambling den. I liked it better when we were labelled an intellectual monoculture by the people who can't see the junks.
google searches and casual glances.
where do i sign up for these deep insights?
(so... rumor is casual glances of noah smith by searching TSA workers are cause of hilarity among the ranks.
see how easy it is, noah?)
i've been doing google searches about the FED's job description under dodd/frank
i write stuff all the time; tyler is an asshole! L0L!!! i'm here for his fucking abs, ok?
i finished my 6th year of post-graduate dope-smoking 35 years ago; the pay sucked but the fringe benefits were outstanding
some things never change
slewienomics is at the fringe, BiCheZ! tyler is our publisher and he can count on me to blow the whole fuking place up whenever he wishes...
Slewie, eminent economists like Noah Smith will denigrate Tyler's site on their blogs if you post such inflammatory, profanity-laced comments.
tippy!
that's rayciss!
Thats what passes for PhD Econ research these days.
If the writers of Zero Hedge really knew some information that could allow them to beat the market,why in God’s name would they tell it to you? If they had half a brain, they’d just keep the info to themselves, trade on it, and make a profit! Maybe then, after they had made their profit, they’d release the news to the public
Noah 'Brains' Smith doesn't even understand that to frontrun, you buy/sell before you announce your pump de jure, then close your position after the muppets have joined in and driven prices your way.
What a fantastically clueless Econ PhD he will be. I foresee an enormously successful future for him in The Fed.
Here's the information to beat the market: buy gold and silver. I see China has taken my advice. Hmm, could they know something Noah doesn't?
cheap shots at zh are about nobodies looking to raise their shabby profiles in the media....
so terryfuckwit says "zh big shower of wordy shite writers".
thats me in the world hall of fame...
Noah's idea of a look-see: tl;dr
Noah Smith = Krugman 2.0
He can lobby for his own column at the NYT - "Conscience of the Status Quo"
Tyler, as one who has spent way too much time in academia I can tell you it's all about publications. Your peers look first at the size of your list, not what you do with it. Quite literally a bad pub plus a retraction count as TWO publications. The dude wrote a term paper and someone said "You should try to get it published".
I believe that hit piece was written as a response to calling out J Brad DeLong for being a wordclown.
The guy is writing a thesis on the persistance of individual perceptions in the marketplace. ZHers were just hit by information contrary to our views and how we respond to that information is what he's after. These comments are all being tallyed and will be incorporated into his graphs. You can mess with his mind by generating random responses.
e.g.
I for one, can see that the soon-to-be Dr. Smith is on to something. He has opened my mind to see that I may have a fool to follow Tyler's posts so closely, much less believe them
I've always hated dodging the wierd experiments found at a University with a large Psych department.
Pretty, handsome, Doctor Smith.
Noah Smith has a name. In FC only the dead have names.
Short Noah Smith. Long kosher food.
I would say this idiotic criticism is a classic case of penis envy
Ps: Unbelievable that this guy is a Phd student in Economics ... Oh my God... THis is INSANE... I just posted on the 4th of July the debate i had with one of these sad little creatures... Truly there is a cockroach infestation in the Econ departments...
Next week: Smith reviews the latest non-fiction bestsellers after skimming parts of their tables of contents, Broadway's newest plays after overhearing a comparison by a vacationing retired Iowa couple, and Midtown's trendiest eateries after smelling the farts of exiting diners.
Zero Hedge is all about the strategic view of the Financial Markets and the Economy, the big picture, the exposing of how slowly but surelly, through pilling up of short-term hack on top of short-term hack and increasing political and regulatory capture the whole world of Finance has painted itself into a corner and is about to blow up and take us all down with it.
Frankly, if you're coming here for day-trading advice or even trading on any horizon shorter than a year, you're at the wrong place.
"We especially enjoy reading things that we disagree with, and that challenge my own beliefs. "
very strange cult like opening sentence - clearly there is the belief of the one that all the we people enjoy agreeing with.
How is that a "very strange cult like opening sentence". If you don't spend time challenging your own beliefs, you run the risk of being that guy/gal that lives in a bubble. I've seen countless times a group of people praise one another for being correct on something without having their facts straight. I'd rather look for my own faulty arguments or missed facts than insulate myself with people who think I'm right.
Interestingly enough, Noah Smith, in this summary, did not mention the most valuble part of ZH, the posters and the discussion, and the debate, and the vetting of all the facts, and the many useful links.
This is not a serious and thoughtful analysis. It is purely an attemt to invalidate.
Those who do not know the truth fear it, and fear is an inhibitor to understanding.
To speak the truth is a crime in the Kingdom of Lies.
.
.
.
Tyler,
I'm surprised you were compelled to respond.
Punching down for sure .......kinda funny tho
Obviously the author failed to taken into account that Tyler Durden is an anagram of Lend Red Yurt.
Thanks to Zero Hedge, I've been lending Red Yurts for over two years now, and have made a small fortune.
Yeah, but you neglected to mention that you have to leverage the HELL out of them.
Are you a chick or a guy ? Your previous post has me confused, perhaps you have both organs ???
Organs are so 20th Century.
I'm pure Synth, baby.
Yes, but Noah Smith is an anagram for Oh Shit Man, which means that one must continue their PhD candidacy ad infinitum, lest they have to get a real job and pay off their decade+ student loans.
LOL to both of you +++
too fuuny
heart ZH
I see that Tyler has also been "Ruled Trendy" LOL.
Aziiz, there is economics and trading trends. Economics is important to understand in terms of general trends, Many discuss trends at Zero Hedge. But TRADABLE trends? I don''t see many trade secrets being discussed.
Anger at the idiocy of government? To be sure. Overreaction? Perhaps, But markets overreact every day.
Zero Hedge is great for the quick assessment of information and better than Joe Lavorgna at DB or Mark Zandi at Moody's/Obama.com.
I come for the LULZ. A cursory review of the ZH headlines with my morning coffee usually confirms the world is still nucking futs and provides clues as to what I'll be reading in the "library" later.
The LULZ is about all we have left. I mean, how many times does it have to be proven that the system is corrupt and collapsing in upon itself ??? Still interesting to read the ongoing financial shenanigans though, but they are no longer a shock...
ZH is anti Obama? W inning T he F uture?
OK then, off with their heads :)
But really folks, ZH is the best site in the business. But to appreciate ZH, one needs to KNOW this business.
PS Socialism es muerte :)
If for no other reason than Obama is the current poster child for WFAU*. Come on, Hillary isn't exactly photogenic and yes, I'm being generous.
* What Fucking Ails Us.
--> Hillary more ridiculous w/makeup
--> Hillary more ridiculous w/o makeup
I'm just curious guys...
I suspect a lot of readers may have missed this...from no less an authority than Janet Tavakoli
Financial Journalism: “Sometimes Being Responsible Means Pissing People Off”
http://www.tavakolistructuredfinance.com/Responsible.pdf
In case you don't know who Janet is, here is a bit of background from her website
Ms. Tavakoli is a world renowned author and speaker on derivative products and securities and their systemic risks and granular rewards. She has appeared as an expert before forums of the International Monetary Fund, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Now Piss off Noah you uber-dweeb
pain and soros: thanks for the link. Gillian Tett is very cool it's no surprise she acknowledges ZH. i've often thought she might actually contribute.
The guy doesn't even have a wiki page. lulz
Try Facebook
Awwww... Noah's jealous.
I wonder if he'll wait for the second round of interviews at Goldman before he brings up this little gem.
one of McBride's pearls of wisdom from Calculated Risk. interesting mash of the Kanye "Ass state" line from 'Mercy'
YouTube - Investing Adventures in Real Estate with Bill McBride #7
And if you don't come to ZH for the epically ironic banner ads, you are a reincarnation of Lady Bird Johnson, and you should fucking kill yourself.
(sorry, these comments needed to be brought down a notch)
Not to defend LBJs policies, but you went too far with Lady Bird. Look at what she endeavored to preserve.
I was there last year, and was in awe.
You see pretty trees, I see pulp that can be turned into paper money.
Destroyer and usurper, are you? You won't mind that I see you as a Saruman-like figure then?
Be scared, be very scared financial regulator schmucks. The walls come tumblin down. SO SHITTY.
oh well guess i will go back to cnbc. now i feel stupid buying that 308 on sale today. and that bit of gold
"If the writers of Zero Hedge really knew some information that could allow them to beat the market,why in God’s name would they tell it to you? If they had half a brain, they’d just keep the info to themselves, trade on it, and make a profit! Maybe then, after they had made their profit, they’d release the news to the public (and collect ad revenue), but by then the news would be worthless. Financial news sites, you should realize, are not in the business of giving you insider tips out of the goodness of their hearts."
Spoken like a true selfish capitalist prick; taking care of numero uno; defender of the capitalist faith; fuck everyone else while I grab as much as I can for myself. Then attack every one who tries to criticize my rigged game. Since there are lots more people who think like him out there, it should be no surprise the whole thing is about to collapse.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
The posts could be accompanied by the avatar of Nathan Lane from "The Birdcage," for all I care. ZH is the closest thing to journalism, and closer to the truth, than anything else available.
Sure, the Tylers are selective when reviewing past predictions, but the list of wins is so long as to be unassailable.
+100 that cracked me up.
Never heard of Noah Smith, but imho, ZH is about exposing the lies.
PhD candidate in economics looking for a job with the FED
Haa! Have been appreciating ZH from Day-One.. never knew who TD was until now, never saw Fight Club. I was too busy being short the market since mid 2007 as I knew something big was up.
We are in un-chartered waters (obviously), and it has everyone EXTREMELY frustrated, including wanna-be pundits who are extremely late to the game.
What I like the most about ZH is the breaking news...get it, news as in FACTS.
Brad Pitt, eh!? LOL
I sure hope you've taken the time to watch it. You are missing out GREATLY if you haven't.
This Noah clown is why I don't even try to wake the sheep.
I can understand how some people may think ZH takes a pessimistic tone (Though I think its just reflecting the truth) but to accuse ZH of being some type of Cramer stock pumping pimp, is just asinine.
ZH is for sophisticated readers, not some piker looking for "hot trading tips".
I doubt this Noah clown could do the math to even post here.
Yeah, us sophisticated readers appreciate Zero Hedge.
Fuckin' eh!
Never thought of myself as sophisticated. But since I spend so much time here, mostly reading and not responding, maybe it's so. ;-)
Heck, even KarlGDenninger has an account here, and posts now and then. And yes, I do believe it is actually Karl Denninger, and not some troll using his name. Look at the posts and the infrequency of them for clues.
http://www.zerohedge.com/search/user_comments?name=KarlGDenninger
FUCKIN A MAN.
hell yeah!! sophisticated to the bone!
N. Smith, the model for the coming clampdown by dullard drones who think a site like ZH where ideas are critically analyzed should be first demonized, then shut down. He's a big fat fraud. Don't most phd programs basically throw you out if you can't finish in 4 years? What a dolt.
He didn't even mention the music, dilettante.
I like how the deflationists come out every time the stock market has a bad week or two and proclaim there will be no inflation. It is still coming. Deflation and recession are not the same thing. So Noah, the econ blogger who accuses all econ bloggers of being hoaxes, will have to deal with another ridiculous statement.
Slow Sunday? This guy is punching for clicks and nothing more.
Indeed gold is the ultimate tool to hedge against zero.
Gold and silver is my savings account for years now and
I am really happy to made the totall transfer from paper
or digital whatever to sound money.I am now buying
silvercoin for my son,nothing can stop me
from building real wealth.
ZH has done a lot for my financial education,special tnx to you
Tyler Durden.
I just wish you could have worked it out with Marla finem, whateva. I've wondered about you guy's....What idiot wouldn't? Your shit is good and because it is good that beg's the question regarding authenticity.
ZH would be a great honey trap.
You know that is true. NOT saying ZH is a honey trap, just saying it would be a nearly perfect one.
I buy in and I figure that if 'they' are smart enough to create ZH then I'm just out of my league anyway..
Still missing Finem/Marla.
That keeps me thinking.
It has also kept me quite a LOT!
"He who attacketh my Brother, attacketh me. Prepare your sword, wretch!"
Another useless PH.d candidate who after 10 years at university still lacks critical reasoning skills.
And based on his single post would probably be better off attending the "kardashian" school of self promotion.
Anyway another dude with $100k of student loans and no visable career path....brilliant.
It was the HFT call that convinced me zh is for real. Several spot on calls since then...
For me an AIG post on old blogspot about how AIG was dumping massive portfolio's and how the TBTF banks were making their Q1 2009 on the back of these wholesale dumps.
Funniest thing to me as a trader you own your PnL.....Whether you are doing prop (or whatever the heck they calling it now) or your own PA. My trade, my responsibility. Not a strategist, analyst or a website. And that is really the heart of ZH:responsibilty.
Yup. ZH reporting on NANEX reporting on HFT crimes turned me on to nanex. You know their feeds may not be free but their SOFTWARE IS OPENSOURCE? WTF? That's triple-bi-winning right there.
http://www.nanex.net/API_Explain.html
Nanex is also on twitter https://twitter.com/nanexllc
Check out the historical data http://www.nanex.net/historical.html
"Nanex currently offers historical market data from January 2004 to the present day."
Below the second but millisecond time-frames? Really?
If not for zerohedge I never would have found that. That's insanely awesome.
No such thing as bad publicity. ZH is going to get thousands of new unique users. Hyper ad space inflation is coming
Let's start with the obvious. ZeroHedge.com is ranked 1,833 globally by Alexa.com (the world's foremost website statistics source). noahpinionblog.blogspot.co.uk is ranked 2,004,514. So... I'd say Tyler's website is generating some content that keeps customers coming back, a sure sign the analysis, opinion and news has significant value.
And to quote HuffingtonPost recently, "Durden's work is cited everywhere from Tom Keene's radio show on Bloomberg to anarchist meetings taking place in parking garages and vacant lots across America. Whenever I meet people and tell them I'm a blogger, the very first question they ask (in whispered tones) is whether or not I know Tyler."
ZeroHedge.com is the foremost site for instant news and real analysis of the Euro Crisis. I read you five times a day Tyler. I'm not a trader, I am a corporate cubicle stooge but since finding your site I've learned an immense amount about stock markets, bond markets, globalization, economies, international banking and more. Keep up the excellent work.
Noah who?
For me ZH balances the bullshit and insanity going on out there . I've been here over two years, I don't even trade....go figure..