The Big Picture |
- Is China or India More Financially Open?
- Mark Cuban Hates Stocks
- Markets at New Highs: Now What? (Open Thread)
- 10 Monday PM Reads
- Map: Terror Attacks in America Since 1970
- Art Cashin: Austerity Out in Europe
- Fusion Research Equity Market Review: April 29th 2013
- 10 Monday AM Reads
- The Interns Are Coming! The Interns Are Coming!
- Week in Review: Global Trend Indicators Overbought/sold Markets
- Calm Down: You Are More Likely to Be Killed By Mundane Things than Terrorism
Is China or India More Financially Open? Posted: 30 Apr 2013 02:00 AM PDT |
Posted: 30 Apr 2013 01:00 AM PDT Mark Cuban, AXS TV co-founder, says he doesn’t think there is vulnerability in Twitter systems — but rather — the way people are using it is where the vulnerability is at. Mark Cuban on Tech |
Markets at New Highs: Now What? (Open Thread) Posted: 29 Apr 2013 04:30 PM PDT
Markets set new closing highs today with S&P500 hitting 1593.61. What does this mean? Are people still under-invested, over exposed to fixed income? Have to many people plowed into health care, staples and utlities? What is the next likely move from here: Summer swoon or rally continues? ~~~ What say ye? |
Posted: 29 Apr 2013 02:00 PM PDT My afternoon train reads:
What are you reading?
Its 2013 — and there is STILL no MS Office for iPad or Android! What its MSFT waiting for? |
Map: Terror Attacks in America Since 1970 Posted: 29 Apr 2013 12:30 PM PDT Click for interactive graphic: |
Art Cashin: Austerity Out in Europe Posted: 29 Apr 2013 09:30 AM PDT
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Fusion Research Equity Market Review: April 29th 2013 Posted: 29 Apr 2013 09:00 AM PDT |
Posted: 29 Apr 2013 07:00 AM PDT My Monday morning reads to start the week:
What are you reading?
Billionaires Flee Havens as Trillions Pursued Offshore |
The Interns Are Coming! The Interns Are Coming! Posted: 29 Apr 2013 04:19 AM PDT I hear them on the trains — cracking their gum or chatting excitedly on their OMG! phones. I see them in the streets. I find them gunking up my Twitter feed. And soon, they will be in my office, looking for a place to sit, asking what the WiFi password is, and wondering how does this scanner work? and other assorted questions. The good news is we are very fortunate to be able to offer positions to several outstanding college students. We pull together two types of work specifically for them over the summer — shorter term projects that is additive to what our crack staff is working on, and longer-term research projects. The short-term work helps them get a feel for what life is like in an asset management shop week-to-week. The longer term projects let them do a deep dive into research, see their names on a published work (in the acknowledgments). I always cringe when I hear some companies think of interns as free labor — unpaid grunts that do very little of substance. If that is what you find yourself doing over the summer, you picked the wrong firm to work for. (Too bad there isn’t a Yelp for intern programs). The best news is as I start pulling together their work assignments, I know the Summer is not far off. |
Week in Review: Global Trend Indicators Overbought/sold Markets Posted: 29 Apr 2013 03:00 AM PDT The Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price moves. The RSI moves between zero and 100 and is considered overbought with a reading above 70 and oversold when below 30. Note the RSI can sustain an overbought (oversold) reading in a strong up (down) trend.
Click chart to enlarge. ~~~
Global Trend Indicators
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Calm Down: You Are More Likely to Be Killed By Mundane Things than Terrorism Posted: 29 Apr 2013 02:00 AM PDT You're More Likely to Die from Brain-Eating Parasites, Alcoholism, Obesity, Medical Errors, Risky Sexual Behavior and Just About Everything Other than TerrorismWe noted in 2011:
Let's look at some details from the most recent official statistics. The U.S. Department of State reports that only 17 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide as a result of terrorism in 2011. That figure includes deaths in Afghanistan, Iraq and all other theaters of war. In contrast, the American agency which tracks health-related issues – the U.S. Centers for Disease Control – rounds up the most prevalent causes of death in the United States:
Comparing the CDC numbers to terrorism deaths means:
(Keep in mind when reading this entire piece that we are consistently and substantially understating the risk of other causes of death as compared to terrorism, because we are comparing deaths from various causes within the United States against deaths from terrorism worldwide.) Wikipedia notes that obesity is a a contributing factor in 100,000–400,000 deaths in the United States per year. That makes obesity 5,882 to times 23,528 more likely to kill you than a terrorist. The annual number of deaths in the U.S. due to avoidable medical errors is as high as 100,000. Indeed, one of the world's leading medical journals – Lancet – reported in 2011:
That's just Medicare beneficiaries, not the entire American public. Scientific American noted in 2009:
But let's use the lower – 100,000 – figure. That still means that you are 5,882 times more likely to die from medical error than terrorism. The CDC says that some 80,000 deaths each year are attributable to excessive alcohol use. So you're 4,706 times more likely to drink yourself to death than die from terrorism. Wikipedia notes that there were 32,367 automobile accidents in 2011, which means that you are 1,904 times more likely to die from a car accident than from a terrorist attack. CNN's Fareed Zakaria noted this week: "Since 9/11, foreign-inspired terrorism has claimed about two dozen lives in the United States. (Meanwhile, more than 100,000 have been killed in gun homicides and more than 400,000 in motor-vehicle accidents.) " According to a 2011 CDC report, poisoning from prescription drugs is even more likely to kill you than a car crash. Indeed, the CDC stated in 2011 that – in the majority of states – your prescription meds are more likely to kill you than any other source of injury. So your meds are thousands of times more likely to kill you than Al Qaeda. The number of deaths by suicide has also surpassed car crashes, and many connect the increase in suicides to the downturn in the economy. Around 35,000 Americans kill themselves each year (and more American soldiers die by suicide than combat; the number of veterans committing suicide is astronomical and under-reported). So you're 2,059 times more likely to kill yourself than die at the hand of a terrorist. The CDC notes that there were 7,638 deaths from HIV and 45 from syphilis, so you're 452 times more likely to die from risky sexual behavior than terrorism. The National Safety Council reports that more than 6,000 Americans die a year from falls … most of them involve people falling off their roof or ladder trying to clean their gutters, put up Christmas lights and the like. That means that you're 353 times more likely to fall to your death doing something idiotic than die in a terrorist attack. The agency in charge of workplace safety – the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration – reports that 4,609 workers were killed on the job in 2011 within the U.S. homeland. In other words, you are 271 times more likely to die from a workplace accident than terrorism. The CDC notes that 3,177 people died of "nutritional deficiencies" in 2011, which means you are 187 times more likely to starve to death in American than be killed by terrorism. Scientific American notes:
Toxoplasmosis is a brain-parasite. The CDC reports that more than 375 Americans die annually due to toxoplasmosis. In addition, 3 Americans died in 2011 after being exposed to a brain-eating amoeba. So you're about 22 times more likely to die from a brain-eating zombie parasite than a terrorist. There were at least 155 Americans killed by police officers in the United States in 2011. That means that you were more than 9 times more likely to be killed by a law enforcement officer than by a terrorist. And – according to the 2011 Report on Terrorism from the National Counter Terrorism Center – Americans are just as likely to be "crushed to death by their televisions or furniture each year" as they are to be killed by terrorists. Let's switch to 2008, to take advantage of another treasure trove of data. According to the Council on Foreign Relations, 33 U.S. citizens were killed worldwide in 2008 from terrorism. There were 301,579,895 Americans living on U.S. soil in 2008, so the risk of dying from terrorist attacks in 2008 was 1 in 9,138,785. This graphic from the National Safety Council – based upon 2008 data – shows the relative risks of dying from various causes: If the risk of being killed by a terrorist were added to the list, the dot would be so small that it would be hard to see. Specifically, the risk of being killed by terrorism in 2008 was 14 times smaller than being killed by fireworks. Reason provides some more examples:
Terrorism pushes our emotional buttons. And politicians and the media tend to blow the risk of terrorism out of proportion. But as the figures above show, terrorism is a very unlikely cause of death. |
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