A Famous Investor Falls for Confirmation Bias

It is human nature to selectively focus on the evidence that supports one's position and to ignore the rest. This is a layman's explanation of what behavioral psychologists refer to as "confirmation bias". It is also a very common reason why inexperienced traders lose money - they get "married" to their position and hold it long past the point at which their reason for entering it has lost validity. 

In his CNBC interview Financial ‘Armageddon’ Will Happen Despite EU Deal Jim Rogers holds the view that despite the large one-day rally, the agreement at the EU summit on Friday is

Commodities Super-Cycle Revisited

Back in January we wrote a post highlighting that money has now started exiting commodity funds for the first time in the past ten years. (See Commodities Super Cycle Reversing Course.) This event has proven quite significant, as can be seen by observing the price action of most non-agricultural commodities this year. Gold and Oil are down significantly year-to-date, despite continued calls for a rebound by commodity bulls.

It is quite clear that something fundamental has changed. For example Oil is still very much correlated with equities, but despite Friday's massive bout of short-covering, it tends to go down

Better Late Than Never - Chinese Data Is Publicly Questioned

We have thought for some time that data published by the National Bureau of Statistics and other official organs of the Chinese government should not be taken at face value. See for example Can One Trust China's Economic Statistics? written in early February. A week ago The New York Times came out with a detailed account of much of the mounting evidence in Chinese Data Mask Depth of Slowdown, Executives Say.

There are many reasons to suspect that, even without having actual evidence that falsification is happening. And we don't always need evidence, because in order for an investor to be profitable

Follow Us on Twitter

Just a quick reminder that those who only read the blog and not the twitter feed may be missing important timely changes of our market calls. For example on Jun 19th we called for the Australian dollar to appreciate following the RBA statement. Aud/Usd did indeed rally to 1.02 on June 21st, after which we reversed our position with a tweet calling for a sell-off. To avoid missing up-to-the-minute commentary and view changes, follow @WhatifEconomics.

AUD to Appreciate on Hawkish RBA, Resilient Economy

Before the June RBA meeting, the market was predicting even chances of a quarter and half point cuts. This was despite the fact that relatively speaking Australia's economy has been faring quite well despite the recent weakness in China. Well so much for that, as the minutes of RBA's monetary policy meeting showed today.

The Board considered whether the recent information warranted a further reduction in the cash rate. The arguments were finely balanced.

Cutting aggressively was apparently not even discussed. The question was whether to cut at all.

The Gold Bubble has Burst

By now it is clear to everyone that there is nothing fundamentally "safe" in Gold or any other precious or industrial metals. As a non-productive asset its value is only based on expectations of future demand. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, if the demand was real - say for jewelery or industrial uses. However when an investment's value is only derived from expectation of even more investments chasing the same asset, it becomes pure speculation. Or to go to an extreme, even a Ponzi scheme.

Social Networks - a Bubble but Just Getting Started

Facebook's acquisition of Instagram has raised a few eyebrows but also has plenty of VC's and entrepreneur-wannabes salivating. If a 2-year old company with 13 employees and no revenue can be worth a billion dollars, well then the sky is the limit! As long as you are in the right space.

Since any of the staid cashflow or income-based models do not apply to this amazing growth sector, we need a brand new way of valuing such companies. One way people are looking at the recent acquisition