Author: Serkadis

(This guest post originally appeared at the author’s blog)

JP Morgan continues to like the risk trade. 

They see the economic recovery continuing into 2010 and forecast that many of the trends that have driven equity markets higher in 2009 will continue into 2010.   They see a very strong outlook for corporate earnings and margin growth as the primary driver of equity prices.  In fact, they see profit margins expanding to their recent record highs:

“Equity markets should rise again next year driven by strong earnings growth. Our $80 S&P 500 EPS forecast for 2010 is 27% higher than this year’s $63, implying a much faster rise in earnings than nominal GDP, i.e., an expansion in profit margins. Our forecast suggests that by the end of next year, US profit margins are likely to approach the historic highs reached earlier this decade.”

The primary beneficiaries of this continued growth in the risk trade will be emerging markets.  JP Morgan is the most bullish bank I’ve seen on the street so far this year and forecast a very bold 30% increase in emerging market share prices in 2010:

“EM equities should continue to outperform next year due to stronger growth and inflows. Our 2010 year-end forecast for MSCI EM is 1,300, an upside of 30% from current levels versus an expected 15% return for developed market equities.”

JP Morgan now says the world economy is reaching “cruising speed” and should grow at a healthy 3.5% clip in 2010.  Credit markets should remain healthy and fixed income markets will slowly experience an upward drift in yield.  This will keep trends in the forex market largely intact.  All in all, look for a lot more of the same in 2010….

Read more market commentary at The Pragmatic Capitalist >>

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See Also:

• How To Bet On Emerging Market Banks
• Goldman: Why You Should Go Gaga For Emerging Markets
• Morgan Stanley: Emerging Market Earnings Will Soar 40%

It was just a week ago — yes, last Friday — that gold was plummeting, the dollar was rallying, and everyone was getting nervous about the end of the greate liquidity-filled, de-recession rally.

Then Bernanke spoke earlier this week, convinced the world that money would not be going anywhere, and since then it’s been smooth sailing.

Stocks were up solidly yesterday, and today the party looks set to continue.

Asian shares wre up nearly 1% across the board. Europe was up a little less. Gold is back above the $1135 mark, while US futures are solidly in the green, with several hours before trading. Thank you Ben!

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Bernanke Tips Hand On FED’s MBS Purchases: More Quantitative Easing Straight Ahead
• Goodbye!
• Trading The Dollar/Stocks Correlation Is Complete Bunk

There’s a great trend to move everything online these days. It’s not exactly clear if this is a good thing in all circumstances, but everyone’s getting on the bandwagon and there’s no reversing it at this point. One problem, a big one, with doing everything in a browser is that the performance and functionality sees a significant dive. On the performance front, there’s been a lot of attention to JavaScript speed in browsers, and on the functionality one, we have the WebGL project which aims to bring hardware-accelerated 3D graphics to browsers. Development is moving fast and the standard has been released in draft form with a finalized version possibly coming in early 2010.

“Even without a draft specification of WebGL in circulation, we’ve seen some promising 3D content using WebGL appear on the web, put together mainly through developer ingenuity and the fact that Firefox, Chromium, and WebKit are open source projects with early support for the technology,” Arun Ranganatha, chairman of the WebGL working group and standards evangelist at Mozilla, wrote. “Today, the WebGL Working Group at Khronos released a provisional public draft of the WebGL specification, and we are very excited for what this means for the web.”

The WebGL standard is under the supervision of the Khronos Group, a consortium of indust… (read more)

A few days ago, the UK’s Met Office (short for Meteorological Office) released a large data subset containing a record of global temperatures. The subset is one of the global temperature records that have underpinned IPCC assessment reports and numerous scientific studies. The data show monthly average temperature values for over 1,500 land stations.

Both Manuel Lima (of Visual Complexity) and Jer Thorp (of blprnt.com) have called for the “data community” to step in and use this opportunity to create meaningful data representations. Accordingly, an open online forum titled “#ClimateData“, has been created where data visualization enthusiasts are invited to participate in a constructive dialogue towards this goal.

In the meantime, some early visualization results have already trickled in.

– Information is Beautiful (of the book The Visual Miscellaneum) has developed a very detailed infographic depicting the different arguments in the ongoing debate between the Global Warming Sceptics versus the Scientific Consensus.

– Flink Labs mapped the temperature readings of more than 200 years on an animated 3D globe.

– Lastly, blprnt has created 12 monthly data representations, visualizing all 1,670,354 released Met Office Climate records.

Is this a worthwhile initiative? Are there more visualizations around? Are you planning to make one? Let us know in the comments below!

Yahoo Search isn’t dead and buried just because Microsoft pretty much bought it outright. No, Yahoo can be an innovator even if it’s running Bing and putting a big purple Yahoo sticker on it, or, at least, that’s the official version. And just to show everyone that it’s not out of the picture, it has added tweets to the search results because real-time search is “where it’s at.” But not only is it last to add this functionality, it also looks very much stitched together for the sake of it. What’s more, people are starting to wonder if this entire real-time craze isn’t going a little overboard in the first place.

It’s interesting to point out that Yahoo has been adding tweets to its searches for about a month now but they were confined to the News Shortcut search integrated in the main search engine and relegated to their own “Twitter” tab. Now, tweets will make it into the main search results page but only for select searches, the ones Yahoo deems as trending yet not trending enough to make it to the news section. It should be nice to know how exactly Yahoo determines that, where it draws the line.

“When we launched a Yahoo! News shortcut with Twitter content integration earlier this month, we said more was coming. Starting today, you will see recent tweets directly integrated on… (read more)

Childhood years are the best times to learn. Somehow, a person’s comprehension is at its peak during childhood. Parents should take advantage of these learning years to ingrain the values of life in their children.

If you’re a parent, teach them positive habits so that they will know and see the beauty that life has to offer. Make them enthusiastic about life. Instill into their hearts and minds all the wonders and magnificence of being alive by living life to its fullest in a positive way.

There’s a startling difference between children learning through self-discovery, and children learning through self-discovery with proper guidance. The first things that children learn are usually the things that stay with them and mold formative years until they reach adulthood.

Let us suppose you let your children learn through self-discovery. To a certain extent, self-discovery is good since it develops full independence and self-reliance. However, the learning process might be slow. In a sense, it is like a trial and error experience for children. They have to segregate the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, what they like and what they don’t. It is most likely that what they will like are the ones that come easy to them or the ones that they enjoy the most. And the ones that they enjoy the most might not necessarily be the good ones. Without proper guidance, what they like and enjoy the most might actually be hurting them although they are not aware of it. Perhaps later, if they find out that they picked the wrong choices, it may be too late.

With self-discovery through proper guidance, you will be able to leave room for them to develop independence and self-reliance. At the same time, show them what is right and what is wrong. Explain to them why. If possible, cite instances or examples based on true-to-life events to make them more convincing and realistic. The more realistic they are, the more easily the children are convinced. Likewise, try teaching them in a friendly and humorous atmosphere. Children are more attentive and eager to learn when all (both teachers and students) are in an easy mood. You will know and feel their eagerness to learn through the sparkle in their eyes and by the way they answer your questions. You can be sure that what they learn from you is acceptable to them and will stay with them. That is why, as a parent, you must show enthusiasm in life to your children.

There’s a third method of making children learn. That is through proper guidance leaving negligible room for self-discovery. But there are drawbacks. You take away from them the benefits of self-reliance and independence. The guidance you devote to them may be good and well intended, but they must not rely on you on almost everything they do. They become decision-dependent on you. There are instances wherein this type of guidance might be worse than giving no guidance at all.

There are parents who underwent hardships during their childhood, strived, and became successful financially. Although they are financially in the position to guide and assist their children to a better life, they prefer that their children undergo the same difficult experience they underwent during their younger years. Their reason: so that their children will value and experience the same things they went through. This may be applicable to stubborn and rebellious youngsters, but not to disciplined ones. Why must their sons and daughters repeat the same difficulties? There’s no reason to. This is like punishing the innocent. Instead of repeating the experience, they should learn from it. Life is too short to repeat unsavory experiences.

One of the best ways to broaden your children’s knowledge about life is by traveling. The world – its varied people, places, and cultures – has a lot of information to offer. It is perhaps as important as the conventional classroom. If you are financially able, traveling is one of the best educational experiences you can give your children. Look for exhibits or world fairs, and take your children there. Books are the next best things. It’s traveling by reading.

Fill your children with thoughts of self-importance, confidence, and positive attitude so that there will be no room for negative thinking. More importantly, fill their world with laughter, love, and understanding. You‘ll never go wrong.

In November...

1) Industrial production spiked 19.2% year over year.

2) Urban fixed asset investment soared 32.1% year over year.

3) Planned investment in new construction exploded upwards by 76.6% year over year.

4) Retails sales grew 15.8% year over year.

Bubble or not, there's still a huge growth engine for the world economy right now. Too many in the U.S. forget this when assessing the state of the world right now. There's a simple math to economic growth in developing nations -- simply transfer the innovations and more efficient technlogy from developed nations and apply it locally. That's instant economic growth, and there's still massive room for this simple tech transfer to happen through trade. Thus even without new innovations/productivity enhancements, there's still a very long way for the world's economy to grow. Want to make money from a developed nation? Facilitate this tech/knowledege transfer process, or create more of it.

See the full Chinese release here.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Financial Post: The Whole World Needs China's One-Child Per Family Policy
• China Unicom Only Sold 100,000 iPhones In 40 Days (AAPL)
• The US-China Trade War Is Here

Julian Sanchez has a fantastic post noting what a difficult job it must be to be in charge of figuring out what to “redact” in government documents that are being released to the public — because redacting certain information may actually reveal a lot more than if that same info had been left readable. As an example of this, Sanchez goes through some of the redactions found in the recently released documents from various service providers in how they comply with law enforcement requests for info. He walks through some of the documents, and actually has his attention called to one redacted passage in a template for requesting info. What caught his eye is that the redacted section was the statutory definition of basic subscriber info that could be requested by law. In other words, there’s nothing secretive at all — and, in fact, he notes that other similar documents include identical information that has not been redacted at all.

If the information had not been redacted, he would have skimmed over it without thinking. But the fact that a government official thought that the statutory definition needed to be redacted, actually called a lot more attention to questioning why that passage had been blacked out. From there, Sanchez does some educated and reasonable speculation, to suggest that government officials may be collecting cell tower info, rather than GPS info, requiring a lower standard to request — because they can easily get enough info from that to determine where a person is, even without the specificity of the GPS info. It’s no secret, of course, that you can triangulate location via tower info, if you have info on multiple towers — but, Sanchez points out that there are likely ways to get pretty close even with single tower info, and that can be requested at a much lower standard by pretending that you’re not trying to pinpoint exact location, and not even asking for the triangulated location info.

It is all speculation, of course, but it’s fascinating that what sent him down this path in the first place was the simple decision by a redactor to redact basic information that is obviously already public. Sanchez surmised that the really salient piece of info is the fact that information can be requested while a call is in progress, rather than after it’s done, which is what is used to determine a more precise location, if the subject is moving (and switching towers):

Now, did this possibility first cross my mind when I looked at these documents? No, not really–but thinking about this stuff breeds paranoia, and so a lot of possibilities cross my mind. The pattern of redactions above make me a good deal more confident that this is probably a popular method of getting moderately detailed location info on the “cheap” in terms of legal process. In the criminal context, anyway–for intel, who knows. They make it explicit in some of these documents that the Justice Department’s legal position is that they can get realtime full-GPS with a mere “relevance” court order, but they go ahead and apply for that kind of tracking under stricter rules because they don’t want to risk suppression. Probably they’re less worried about that when they’re operating under FISA pen/trap orders. But if this is right, they may be pulling a bit of a fast one on judges here. Because a lot of these applications to judges–and certainly the Justice Department’s legal briefs in the cases where courts have been reluctant to approve tracking on such a loose standard–imply that this cell site/sector data, why, it’s so rough and approximate that it vaguely counts as tracking at all. Certainly, at any rate, it’s not so precise as to invade any sort of privacy interest. Except that for a target in steady motion, it begins to seem as though they can probably get a substantially more precise fix.

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Lasse has now published the second part of his HTC HD2 review.

Lasse rightfully finds the HD2 to be a pretty fine device and crowns it “The Best Windows Mobile Phone” at the end of his review.

For part 1, see here.

The Calipers measure the thickness of the skinfolds. The thicker the skinfolds, the greater the amount of fat a person is carrying. Calipers are available for about $12 at most fitness stores where they sell protein etc. How to use the Calipers

1. When taking measurements, do so directly on the skin, not through the clothes.

2. Grasp the caliper in one hand and pull out the fold of skin with its underlying layer of fat with your other hand.

 3. Pull it out in the appropriate direction and continue to hold the skinfold as you apply the caliper.

4. The teeth should be about 1/4” (quarter of an inch) from the fingers of your hand that is holding the skinfold.

5. Do not release the skinfold while taking the readings. 6. You will need measurements from 3 different anatomic locations. Upper body, midsection and thigh. 

 I am giving you these specific examples, for which you don’t need anyone’s help.

1. Pectoral Measure about one inch below the colar bone and two to three inches out from the inside edge of the pectoral muscle. Pull the skinfold in a vertical direction. (women have to make sure to avoid breast tissue)

2. Abdominal Measure about one inch to the left of and one inch down from the belly button. Pull the skinfold in a vertical direction.

3. Suprailiac Measure about halfway between the belly button and the top of the hipbone. Pull the skinfold in a horizontal direction.

4. Quadriceps Measure in the middle of the quadriceps. Pull the skinfold in a vertical direction. If the area is too tight you may need to go up one to two inches. Calculating Body Fat Using Skinfolds :

Women 1. Take skinfold measurements (in millimeters) from 3 different locations and add them together to find the sum of skinfolds.

Example: Pectoral measurement + Abdominal measurement + Quadriceps measurment = Sum of skinfolds 6mm + 8mm + 22mm = 36mm 2.

Take the sum of skinfolds and your age and plug it into the body density equation bellow.

a) 0.0009929 x sum of skinfolds 0.0009929 x 36 = 0.0357444

b) 0.0000023 x (sum of skinfolds x sum of skinfolds) 0.0000023 x (36 x 36) = 0.0029808

c) 0.0001392 x age 0.0001392 x 26 = 0.0036192 d) 1.0994921 – (a + b – c) = body density 1.0994921 – (0.0357444 + 0.0029808 – 0.0036192) = 1.0643861 My Body Density is 1.0643861 and now I have to plug it in body fat equation below to get my body fat percentage.

Bodyfat equation: ([4.570 ÷ body density] – 4.142) x 100 = body fat percentage ([4.570 ÷ 1.0643861] – 4.142) x 100 = 15% of body fat calculated that I have 15% of body fat

Calculating Body Fat using Skinfolds: Guys Chest measurement + abdominal measurement + Quadriceps measurement = Sum of skinfolds Example: 12mm + 16mm + 11mm = 39mm

a) 0.0008267 x sum of skinfolds 0.0008267 x 39 = 0.0322413

b) 0.0000016 x (sum of skinfolds x sum of skinfolds) 0.0000016 x (39 x 39) = 0.0024336

c) 0.0002574 x age 0.0002574 x 33 = 0.0084942

d) 1.10938 – (a + b – c) = body density 1.10938 – (0.0322413 + 0.0024336 – 0.0084942) = 1.0831993 Body density is 1.0831993 and now I plug it into the body fat equation below. Body fat Equation: ([4.570 ÷ body density] – 4.142) x 100 = body fat percentage ([4.570 ÷ 1.0831993] – 4.142) x 100 = 7.6%

 Always pinch on the right side, there are other methods this is just for the beginners who have the free calipers

Homebrew coder Jean-Philippe Prade has released the beta version DS submission, a homebrew remake of the classic Game Boy title “Radar Mission”.
 
 
Download: DS submission beta (http://dl.qj.net/nintendo-ds/media/ds-submission-beta.html)

Currency traders be warned. Japan could very well step into the currency markets any time now according to a December 10th note from Morgan Stanley.

Yen intervention risk is rising, and is now in the 'red zone', implying more than a 30% chance of intervention:

Morgan Stanley's Sophia Drossos: Updating our USD/JPY intervention model shows the probability of official action rising from 29% last week to 34% this week (Exhibit 1). The key factors contributing to an increased intervention risk include the mispricing of longerterm relative growth outlooks (Exhibit 2), the deviation of the real effective JPY exchange rate from its longer-term average (Exhibit 3), and a sharp rise in long JPY positions (Exhibit 4).

Check out the supporting charts here >>>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Morgan Stanley: Yen Intervention Risk Rising
• Morgan Stanley: The Dollar Has Bottomed, Time To Play The Yen Carry Trade
• With Dollar At 14-Year Low Against Yen, Japan Raises Hints Of Dramatic Intervention

Sometimes we want things we’ll really use and enjoy. And sometimes we just think we want things, especially at Christmas when friends and family start asking, “What do you want for Christmas?”

Can you think of a few things that you said you wanted, but later found annoying or boring? How often do you use Christmas gifts of years past? One thing I had asked for but never use is a CD of yoga music. I never remember to put it on or think it’s even necessary. I can’t remember whether or not my waffle maker was a Christmas gift, but I rarely use it. And, yes, I thought of asking for an ice cream maker, but I was honest with myself about how often I’d use it.

However, maybe you’re not the the best person to ask about how often you’d use a potential gift. According to a new study, other people are better predictors of how often we’d use a gift. Plus, the study showed that we tend to overestimate how often we will use a gift. The study revealed that 59% of gifts were used less often than the recipient had expected. The gift recipients in the study predicted they’d use gifts twice more often than they actually did.

“… the reality of owning an object doesn’t quite measure up to our expectations. The cappuccino machine is a hassle to clean, the fancy navigation system is not necessary for most driving, and no one has time to play the new piano,” said study author Jeffrey Vietri, instructor of psychology at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania.

Vietri hopes that the study findings (particularly the part about consulting others) will help inform consumers so that they may lead more clutter-free and eco-friendly lives without overspending.

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

Will You Really Use That Ice Cream Maker?

Where Does My Money Go? [wheredoesmymoneygo.org] is an interactive data visualization tool that allows users to explore UK’s public spending patterns over the past 6 years using an array of maps, timelines and graphs. Relevant documents and datasets were scattered around numerous government websites as, in the UK, there is no equivalent to the US Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act, which requires official bodies to publish figures on spending in a single place.

Currently, the project is based on data retrieved from the HM Treasury, but the project is working to collect, aggregate and incorporate much more fine-grained information, including local spending. The graphs include trends surrounding areas such as Education, Health or Defence, which each can be further explored into more detail and over time as well as distributed over local regions.

See also:
– SubsidyScope
– California Stimulus Map
– DataMasher
– USASpending
– Socrata

I first told you about the SnoozePal Cat Hammock-in-a-Box last March. This comfy kitty hammock comes inside a sturdy corrugated cardboard box and now you can choose one of four fun fabrics for the hammock, including a special design for the holidays!

The SnoozePal from Cat Above measures 21.5″ x 15″ x 16.5″ and can hold up to 20 lbs. of weight. Your cat will love this sheltered hideaway with its comfy hammock and porthole windows. You’ll love how sturdy it is and that you can easily remove the hammock for washing. The SnoozePal ships flat and is easy to assemble.

ENTER TO WIN!

One lucky winner is going to receive a SnoozePal of their very own, just in time for the holidays! The winner will get to choose one of four hammock fabrics: Chestnut Dreams, Evening Chic, Kitty Cloud, or Pointcattia.

Please leave a comment on this post to enter. The winner will be chosen in a random drawing on December 17. One entry per person. If an international winner is selected, Cat Above would be happy to send the SnoozePal if you’ll pay the extra shipping.

As I mentioned, we’ve recently been threatened with a number of lawsuits. One of them is a threat from the UK — despite the fact that we are not UK-based and have no UK presence or business operations. The concern, as with most legal threats against us, was due to a comment someone made, making fun of someone who, despite haven spoken critically of others, does not appear to like being spoken about critically. The comments in question are certainly not libelous in the US, but with UK defamation law being significantly more draconian, the upset person insists that the comments are, in fact, libel and that a lawsuit is the only proper response. I still think that, even under UK libel law, it would be a stretch to find these comments libelous and a lawsuit in the UK against us would be meaningless, but we requested that the lawsuit threat be removed, and the person not only refused, but suggested the plan was to move forward. When we suggested that such a lawsuit would certainly publicize both the ridiculousness of UK libel laws and how this particular person responded to a random anonymous comment from someone on a blog page, we were told that we were being “bullies” for mentioning that such a lawsuit might look bad for the person. I find it odd that someone who threatens to sue us would then call us a bully for suggesting why such a lawsuit might backfire. Isn’t the bullying in threatening a lawsuit?

And, thus, we are left with serious consequences. We’ve discussed how these sorts of ridiculous libel cases in the UK are creating serious chilling effects for lots of people, and more and more folks are coming forward to point out that the UK really needs to change its laws. The latest is UK comic Dara O’Briain who is sounding the alarm against this “ridiculous system” which almost everyone has recognized is creating “libel tourism.”

“The libel laws which were initially set up to protect the reputation of individuals at a time when companies weren’t the entities they are now are being used by companies to essentially quash dissent and to destroy criticism.

“That’s a major problem. Companies can basically bully people out of saying bad things about their products and services.”

The good news is that these comments came at the launch of a campaign to reform the UK’s defamation laws to fix its backwards system, which is based on a different time. Hopefully the campaign moves forward quickly — and with any luck, the threatened lawsuit against us does not become an exhibit they can use in how ridiculous these laws have become.

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In case you’ve forgotten (or have been totally unaware of), your DS can also play your music. Where there’s music, it’s always better if there’s a might good pair of speakers. That’s what Datel Japan offers to

THANKS BLIZZARD! I bet Diablo 2 sales will beat Torchlight to a pulp after this patch gets released. The 1.13 patch was initially promised to be released back in June (2010)

Here are Diablo 2 1.13 details and Diablo 1.13 patch changes log
“We traveled for an eternity…” – Marius
Travel no longer my friends – the Diablo […]

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