October, 2003

At the age of 14, Irshad Manji was expelled from her Canadian Muslim school for asking too many questions. It was the catalyst for a 20-year journey by the self-styled 'Muslim Refusnik' to study the problems she felt plagued Islam, with it all culminating in an explosive new book, 'The Trouble With Islam: A Wake Up Call for Honesty and Change.' Manji is seen here in this undated publicity photo. (Mark Bartkiw via Reuters)

Of course, she received death threats.  See a very interesting article.  Militant Islam is the major threat to civilization.  No other religion in modern times has produced the kind of fanatical psychotics as the suicide bombers.  There is a dark and irrational side to that religion, such as those bombers and such as specifying stoning for adultery. Then there is the comic side, such as defending the adulterous woman by saying that under Islamic law a fetus can gestate for 5 years, or claiming that if you memorize the Koran five generations of your family will go to heaven.  In addition we see from the recent arrests of Muslims in Buffalo and in the military that we cannot count on the loyalty of some American Muslims.  Of course, there are many more secularized Muslims who are quite decent and rational.  

October 3, 2003

Well, this sell signal did not work out - at least not so far.  I was getting killed in my short index funds, and also in BEARX.  I had a very strange thing happen at Brown.  They never posted a trade of $125,000 of BEARX.  When I called to see what had happened, they just said that the trade did not exist.  Then they suddenly posted the trade.  So not only did I take a loss on that, but I now have to take a loss, most likely, on the shares of BEARX that I bought because I thought that the first trade did not occur.

This makes me very annoyed at Brown and Co.  I ought to be able to get good information when I call.

Meanwhile, the AGEM5 system's rankings currently say to be in China, the far East, Eastern Europe, natural resources, and real estate.  Fairly conservative, and the charts look good.  So I have moved into those things, when I did not already own them.  I kept a couple of good growth funds, both of which avoided losing very much in this turn-down.  If the market keeps on moving up, we should get buy signals shortly.  MICROC2 seems to have been right in not going to a sell, but it was the only one.  The reason it did not go on a sell was that it will not go a sell so long as the Nasdaq new-highs/new-lows looks good.

Unfortunately, gold, and therefore gold funds, dropped significantly today.  That puts me at a loss.  

October 8, 2003

Arnold Wins in California

California's governor-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger (news - web sites) and wife Maria Shriver kiss with the bear of the California state flag as a backdrop as they celebrate his win in the recall election at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, Oct. 7, 2003. (Robert Galbraith/Reuters)

I don't know if he can really do much there, what with the Democrats wanting him to fail at every turn.  Still, it is always good to see a jerk like Davis get booted out.  And maybe the Republicans will unite behind Arnold, instead of the right-wing nuts that they have put forward previously.  That was what got Davis elected in the first place.

October 9, 2003

The problems with BEARX continue.  I have been told that the sale of the remaining BEARX will happen, but it has not and instead there was a partial sale which was reversed.  This is inexcusable.  BrownCo has tied up my money for too long, and I have told them to fix this immediately.

October 10, 2003

Well, finally yesterday afternoon the BEARX situation was fixed, and I was able to use the funds that BrownCo had tied up for several days.  Between the whipsaw on FUBAR and this BrownCo problem, this has so far been a pretty poor month.

I added the NSNH0 no-sell condition already in MICROC2 to FUBAR5, calling the result FUBARN.  This avoids this last whipsaw.  Don Bell (who came up with the idea) must be a genius.

October 11, 2003

I took some profits in one of the gold funds, and bought UMEMX.  Not in any of the systems, but it has a high rank.  The emerging market funds are doing quite well.

October 12, 2003, Anniversary of the Bali Bombing

Relatives and friends of those killed in the Bali bombings attend at a memorial in Sydney's Coogee Beach, October 12, 2003, for the 202 victims, including 88 Australians, killed one year ago. Hundreds of people gathered for the unveiling of the sculpture that is situated on Dolphins Point in Coogee, named earlier this year in honor of the members of the local Dolphins Rugby League club, that were killed in the bombings. REUTERS/David Gray

Candles spelling PEACE are lit at the former site of the Sari Club in Bali.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad

"The Jews Rule the World by Proxy"

October 16, 2003

As if to verify my comments about the psychotic nature of Islam as it is practiced in many places, we have the Malaysian Prime Minister making absurd comments at the Organization of the Islamic Conference summit, and getting a standing ovation.  "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million, but today the Jews rule the world by proxy," Mahathir said. "They get others to fight and die for them."  Furthermore, the prime minister, who has turned his country into the world's 17th-ranked trading nation during his 22 years in power, said Jews "invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy" to avoid persecution and gain control of the most powerful countries.  

And have we heard one word from any American Islamic leader to condemn this nonsense?  Not so far as I know.  Perhaps somebody can tell me otherwise.  All I know is what I see on the news.

October 25, 2003

All of the major signals except MICROC2X were on sells as of Thursday, and MICROC2X was close.  I decided that if Friday was a down day, that would trip MICROC2X to a sell.  Friday was a down day, and so I sold all of the U. S. equity funds except for UMREX, which I thought should do well even in a down market.  Besides, there is a penalty for holding less than 30 days on Excelsior funds.  I kept the gold and foreign funds, although LAPSX does not look good right now.  I did go ahead and take the profit on SASPX.  What with the good move in gold, the value of my account actually went up on Friday.  I switched the AXA funds to the Long/Short funds.

We are moving into the time when seasonality counts.  But will it this year?  We have had such a good move since March that the market may have topped.

Rats!  It turns out that MICROC2X was not as near to a sell as I had thought.  There was a mistake in the Fasttrack database in the calculation of the new highs and new lows for the Nasdaq.  MICROC2X was not near to a sell.  Now it comes down to whether MICROC2X was right or not.  Next week will tell.

Note than in any case, the long-term trend is up.  This can be seen (as noted by Dave Serbin) by looking at MACD (34,233) of FUSMX, or any average of good growth funds.  Trading this MACD would be a mistake, but when it is positive it is very difficult to make money in purely short funds, and when it is negative it is very difficult to make money in purely long funds.

October 26, 2003

Meanwhile, men in the Sudan think that they are having their penises stolen by foreigners.  This is another instance of the psychotic ignorance so rampant in the Mulsim world.  From Steyn:

The telling detail of the vanishing penis hysteria is that it was spread by text messaging. You can own a cell phone, yet still believe that foreigners are able with a mere handshake to cause your penis to melt away.

Aside from its doubts in its collective manhood, Sudan is no laughing matter. Two million people have been slaughtered there in the last decade. The Christian minority is vanishing a lot faster than that fabric merchant's privates. Osama certainly found the country fertile ground for his ideology: Sudanese mujahideen have been captured as far afield as Algeria, Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. An economic basket case with a 27 percent literacy rate has managed to find enough spare cash to export revolutionary Islam to many other countries. And they've got half-a-billion dollars' worth of state-of-the-art Chinese weaponry from Iran.

A handshake-fearing guy with a cell phone is one thing; what happens when the handshake-fearers have cell phones and a suitcase nuke? It's at the intersection of apparently indestructible ancient ignorance and cheap, widely available western technology that the dark imponderables of the future lie.

Yes indeed.  I really don't care about how ignorant and superstitious those idiots are, since we cannot do anything about it anyway.  Attempts to cure them of this sort of psychotic superstition would fail, and doubtless there are some idiot liberals that would call out attempts a form of cultural imperialism.   And yes, I do think that our culture is superior over any culture where such claims of penis-snatching are taken seriously.  But I do worry about what they might do to us.

October 27, 2003

While the sale on Friday may not have been justified by the signal, it did take me out of a number of funds.  Earlier I had constructed a number of systems which use a family that contains all of the funds that I know about that can be traded.  I then constructed systems which hold 3, 4, 5, ... 10 funds at a time.  The system that holds 5 funds had, as its top ranked funds as of Friday, SCGDX, UNWPX, USERX, PSPFX, and USCOX.  I had kept all of those funds, and today I added to them so that there would be a substantial amount in each fund.  As other things sell, assuming that they do, I will add a additional funds to this system, bring up the total to 8 funds.  Since many of these funds have $100,000 minimums, I need to target at least that much for each fund.

October 28, 1003

Well, today I am going to do a rather risky thing.  For funds 6 and 7 in a 7-fund system, we choose KSCOX and EUROX.  I already own some EUROX, and it tanked big time yesterday, probably because of Putin's arrest of one of his enemies.  Or something.  Anyway, I am adding to EUROX and buying KSCOX.  Target approximately equal amounts in each fund.  Later bring the amount in each to over $100,000, assuming that it does not continue to tank.  Adding to EUROX could be one of my best or worst moves ever.  The funds in the new system are marked with an M.

October 31, 2003

Not bad for all the problems and mistakes.  EUROX may have been a mistake, but the fund manager has done a good job of damping the wild swings in the Russian stock market.

Happy Halloween