Wednesday, September 11, 2002

BBC reports Altavista trying to look for a solution to the Chinese block. The BBC reports that Altavista is looking for a way to guarantee that Chinese surfers can access their Search Engines. No indication on a solution. Isn't there any trick that would allow bloggers to put a no-name search engine on our pages so that the Chinese can visit our blogs and flow through Google or Altavista without being blocked? Might be a dumb question, I just dont know. 8:48:05 PM    comment []

A beatiful market? There are few people whose judgement I  trust on the stock market because analysts arguments are ususally full of holes and mostly garbage. Moreover, most people tend to be fairly inconsistent in their advice, lacking conviction and changing quickly as the market changes. There are two analysts that I have a lot of respect for, because their arguments have been always logical, but most of all they have been consistent and full of conviction, they are Don Hays, who has a service I subscribe to, and Ken Fisher who has written some good books and writes for Forbes. In his latest article Fisher calls this market "A beautiful market". He had been bearish for the last two years or so but changed his stance roughly two months ago. Among some of the things he is saying that impressed me about his conviction: "This market is sheer beauty--the most stunning I've ever seen clearly. Maybe not as beautiful as 1974, but perhaps as a young man I didn't see that right." "This bear, with a 48% decline in the S&P 500 at its worst point this summer, falls in the middle of the range of the seven big bear markets of the last century. With the exception of the Great Crash, which took the Dow down 89% between 1929 and 1932, big bear markets have sliced stock prices 42% to 55%. But if you think this is like 1929-32 you are delusional: Absent are the 1930s' massive global trade barriers, the massive worldwide destruction of the quantity of money and the massive economic dislocations." "Following all the big market drops came 12-month advances, ranging from 29% to 65%, with a 50% average. That's big. And beautiful."  Well, there you have it, is one man's opinion but he has been fairly consistent, I wish I had listened to him more two years ago. By the way Don Hays has been bullish for a while, but he always seems to be early, he was bearish since about late 1998 or so. 10:50:25 AM    comment []

My not so virtual reality Today was the fifth month anniversary of the march on April 11th. which led to the brief departure of President Cahvez from office due to the deaths of 18 people. To date, the Government has blocked all efforts to establish an independent "truth" commission which would establish what happened that tragic day. While the opposition did not agree on the tactic, somebody suggested creating traffic jams today in the city as a way of commemorating and protesting the deaths on April 11th. Because people are quite mad, the idea took hold and even if there were threats and opposition to the idea by most political parties, numerous groups created serious disruptions of traffic. Imagine how Kafka-like it feels then to have Government spokesmen saying all day that this demonstrated the illegal ways of the opposition, who have no respect for the law or rights of others, only to have these same Government supporters  block with an illegal demonstration a main avenue in downtown Caracas in the afternoon. Moreover, since the beginning of the year crowds have ilegally gathered repeatedly around the Presidential Palace without any attempt to remove them. Today however, the opposition protest was met by large presence of the National Guard, the intelligence police and even the Army in some places. Such is the way of this virtual reality created by Chavez and his supporters in which everything is twisted around, changed and reinterpreted to support the whims of the Chavez "revolution". We all say it can't last much longer, but it does and we continue immersed in this surrealistic virtual reality day after day...... 10:13:39 AM    comment []