Category: News

Simple decorations and basic table settings are perfectly fine for dinner parties and little gatherings. But when we’re throwing a big party, we love to go the whole nine yards and give the night a special glamour! The online store SaveOnCrafts has become our first stop when looking for affordable party supplies.

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Venezuela may be setting itself up to be the next mini financial crisis such as Dubai. has become

That’s because Hugo Chavez has decided to start nationalizing Venezuelan banks, which so far have mostly escaped his expropriating ways.

Venezuelan credit markets weren’t been happy about this at all.

Reuters: With rumors swirling about stability after the government closed four failing banks, Chavez twice this week stoked fears, threatening to nationalize banks involved in malpractice or failing to aid development in Venezuela.

But on Thursday he cooled his rhetoric after investors dumped Venezuelan bonds and the bolivar. Business groups and banks also released statements saying the system was solid.

“The government is putting out fire … We are fixing the problem,” he said, saying both the country and the bank system will benefit from his measures. “We will all emerge stronger.”

Read more here.

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See Also:

• Out of Capitalist Scapegoats, Chavez Asks Venezuelans To Prepare For Colombian War
• Hugo Chavez Jokes That "Comrade Obama" Is Making Him Look A Right Winger
• Chavez: Oil Is Going To $80

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

IF the title has you confused, I am referring to your trading station’s monitor(s) screen space. *Remember the more monitors you have the more $ you make* (J.k -trader joke).

Truthfully though, most day traders have many windows open (order entry/level II charts, executions, browser etc) taking up every available sq. inch with only the most important windows getting a parcel.

I only have the most pertinent data windows showing so I do not have to maximise and or dig for buried windows. (I utilize four monitors on my machine in addition to two screens shared with the trader next to me. *shared screens display index spot futures charts along with all our screeners)

Trust me, there is nothing worse than digging for an order entry window when your in a pinch.

SO why a Golden Slacks chart?

For the last two years or so I’ve been using Goldman’s trend as a leading indicator, in addition to all other real time leading indicators. I have found if Goldman’s relative weakness and or strength is contrary to the overall market trend the market will ultimately follow the golden boy’s.

Why is this? My thesis: the smartest money is involved with this stock and the smart money always shows up to the party first and ALWAYS leaves before the party is over. i.e. first ones in and first ones out, buy the dip and sell INTO the rip.

Supporting facts:
1.The chart above shows a clear reversal in GS’s long term trend with continued selling contrary to the S&P’s.
2.Goldman without a doubt is the strongest out of all the large cap financials
3.The financials have been leading this storm, the S&P’s will react to any major financial move

These might not be the most scientific supporting facts, but the fact of the matter is sometimes simpler is better in this market. Smart money/dumb money is a very simple concept in theory,but when applied to trading people miss the ball. Remember smart money leads. Lets take that phrase, apply it to my 1 min GS chart parcel to make some profits. The common most scenario I have seen plays out as follows:

The S&P’ futures are sitting on highs with the $PREM failing to make highs preceding the spike higher signaling a possible reversal. I glance up at my GS parcel, low and behold this thing is quietly selling through key support points as the cash market trades with no reaction. This is a good enough signal for me to start thinking about taking longs off and or get short a heavily weighted S&P component, possibly financial, so I can catch the move down before the sell program commences. I dip a feeler into a short by way of puts looking for a NYSE TICK reading of -1000ish indicating heavy business on the bid, this tells me the sell program is running. I add to the short and let the trade play out, if the trade works i will book the profits as i normally would with any trade, of course tight tops because program trading can really move the markets.

Of course this is not the only way you can use GS as a leading indicator, fool around with it. I guarantee you will find very interest correlations I might not have even discovered yet. The key correlation is, if Goldman is moving up or down without the market following chances are the market will end up moving in that direction.

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See Also:

• How To Set Up The Ultimate At-Home Trading Station
• The Retail Day-Trader Comes Out Of The Woodwork (MON, PCLN)
• The UUP Trade: Speculation Meets Supply & Demand (UUP)

If you’re a bull, what are you hoping to see when the unemployment number is released at 8:30?

Consensus is that the jobless rate remained steady at 10.2%, and that a payroll decline of 125,000 will prove to be the slimmest fall since March 2008.

Others, like JPMorgan see the jobless rate hitting 10.4%.

The JPMorgan number may be more bullish, medium-term, if it means more stimulus, and looser money out of the Fed.

In fact, the latest economic data has not been particularly pretty, and we may see cheap money and stimulus no matter what. The services sector is contracting. Global manufacturing activity is slipping. The Case-Shiller number disappointed.

As John Hussman recently noted, we’ve definitely gone from reports that surprised on the upside, to reports that surprised on the downside. Granted, we don’t want a severe double dip. But a tepid, in-and-out recovery may be just what the doctor ordered.

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See Also:

• Hussman: Beware The Oncoming Tanks
• Case-Shiller: Home Price Recovery Stumbles, Results Worse Than Expected
• JPMorgan: The Global Recovery Stalled In November

Deflation doesn’t only cause Japanese consumers to hold back on retail spending.

It also causes large corporations to delay capital expenditures as well, since they anticipate lower prices in the future.

Thus crushing deflation in Japan has led to a shocking 24.8% drop in capital expenditures during the third quarter, according to latest government data. Worse yet, this was an acceleration of the previous 21.7% drop during Q2.

WSJ: Capital spending, which accounts for around 15% of GDP, isn’t likely to recover much while managers are worried about falling prices and the yen, analysts said.

“If I were an executive in charge of capital expenditures at a firm, I wouldn’t increase spending much for the time being as the recently rising yen makes the outlook very unstable for the export-reliant economy,” said Norio Miyagawa, an economist at Shinko Research Institute.

The finance ministry’s data showed that investment in the manufacturing sector fell at a record 40.7% pace, while outlays by automakers, whose bottom line is highly sensitive to exchange rates because of their reliance on exports, tumbled 59.7%.

Now you know why Ben Bernanke is so intent to stave off deflation in the U.S.

Read the whole thing >>

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See Also:

• Japan Denies Reports About It Dumping Treasuries
• Traders Freaking Out Over Rumors That Japan May Dump $100 Billion In Treasuries
• IEA: Japan Will Need 85 MPG Cars To Survive

Herb-infused olive oil is fantastic for making a special salad dressing, drizzling over a dish of pasta, or simply as an appetizer with chunks of great artisan bread. Making it yourself is super easy – and can make a great DIY gift to share with your friends!

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Ready to kick ass and make a boatload of money in 2010?

Goldman Sachs strategist Jim O’Neill recently unveiled his top trading picks for the coming year. O’Neill and his team hunted all around the world — from currencies, to pair trades to foreign equities — for the best moves.

As for what the global economy will look like, these are his basic premises:

–A benign (above-consensus) global growth outlook, alongside falling CPI inflation and ultra-
low US (and G3) real and nominal rates.   

–More differentiation than the market discount in growth and rate views, with a US growth
deceleration that puts our forecast well below consensus, but above consensus views in the
BRICs and in significant parts of the G10 (Australia, UK, Norway, Sweden) and increased
divergence within Europe – a theme Erik Nielsen and team have been focusing on.

–Ongoing concerns about the sustainability of growth in the US, more worries about deflation
than inflation and lingering credit issues in pockets of the market, associated with the high
amortization schedule of corporate securities.

–Risk and liquidity premia which are less extraordinary in the first half of last year but in
many cases still above average. An expectation from our Portfolio Strategy teams of positive
equity returns, but lower than this year and higher in Europe/Asia than in the US.

–A continued search for ‘carry’ in credit and beyond given low rates and a more balanced
macro outlook but with more differentiation across issuers as blanket policy stimulus is
removed. 

–Continued cyclical Dollar weakness for most of the year, alongside a view of positive, but
not extraordinary, commodity returns.

Knowing that, here are the top 10 trades >>

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See Also:

• Morgan Stanley: Here Comes A Brutal 2010

It’s not exactly a surprise that Google wants to be involved with everything that has to do with the Internet, even marginally, and so far it’s been building towards this goal. From the front end, the web browser and now even a dedicated operating system, to the very basics of Internet communications, the HTTP protocol, Google has its hands on everything. Now it’s taking it one step further by launching its own DNS service, Google Public DNS, which it says can be faster and safer than the ones provided by the ISPs or the other DNS providers.

The vast majority of users aren’t even aware what DNS (Domain Name System) is, not to mention why they would want to switch to Google’s offering. In a simplified view, DNS translates domain names like www.google.com into IP addresses which is what computers and networking hardware use to identify themselves in a network environment. Regular, everyday web browsing involved hundreds, even thousands of DNS lookups, but these are handled by the ISPs, most of which provide their own DNS services, so the process is invisible to the user.

“The average Internet user ends up performing hundreds of DNS lookups each day, and some complex pages require multiple DNS lookups before they start loading. This can slow down the browsing experience. Our research has shown that… (read more)

	LA 2009: Mitsubishi will bring an EV to U.S. in 2011, but it might not be the i-MiEV Really. Shoot.		LA 2009: First Fisker Karmas now expected to hit showrooms in Sept. 2010 Delays were expected, but this is still a disappointment.
	LA 2009: Bob Lutz keynote: “The automobile industry simply can no longer rely on oil” Quite a quotable guy, that Mr. Lutz.	Other news: LA 2009: Audi A3 TDI named 2010 Green Car of the Year in diesel repeat Tesla Brabus Green Package includes free electricity, at home and away LA 2009: The World’s Most Expensive Tesla Roadster

AutoblogGreen for 12.04.09 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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EU countries are the biggest consumers of chocolate confectioneries in the world. A technique developed by the JRC Institute for Reference Materials and Measurements (IRMM) to measure vegetable fats in milk chocolate has become the first such method to be adopted as a standard by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). It has been developed to enable the enforcement of the so-called ‘Chocolate Directive’, which stipulates that European chocolate must not contain more than 5% vegetable fats, other than cocoa butter.

European legislation allows the addition of up to 5% of vegetable fats other than cocoa butter in chocolate products and stipulates that consumers be informed by appropriate labelling of the product. The threshold of 5% is also an essential requirement for these products to move freely within the internal market.

Pearltrees [pearltrees.com] is a new online visualization tool that allows users to organize their favorite content found on the Web as a network graph, which then reveals the connections between the interests of people. Or, in other words, Pearltrees is a somehow alternative visual version of the social bookmarking concepts that drive delicio.us, or a “collaborative network” that let users create, organize and share the world of their interests. However, in contrast to a tag-based system, Pearltrees connects people by the real content that is shared.

Users can save their favorite websites, organize what they find interesting, and explore what others have saved and are saying about specific web destinations.

You can watch a documentary video below. Via Mashable.

Eco Factor: Battery-powered underwater glider tracks the effects of climate change in inhospitable locations.

Designed to track the effects of climate change in the most inhospitable locations around the world, the Scarlet Knight is about to become the first underwater glider that will cross the Atlantic. The Scarlet Knight is expected to arrive in Spain after being released from New Jersey in April.

(more…)

Scott Rosenberg has a column up at The Guardian where he discusses Salon’s experience with a paywall back at the beginning of the decade, highlighting how the damage from a paywall can be a lot more troubling than many people take into account. He points out that Salon’s various paywall experiments did bring in some revenue, but they then limited Salon’s growth potential, first by confusing users on how they could get access to Salon content, and then with the psychological belief that Salon couldn’t be read without paying:

More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it’s a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is “closed” to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it’s extremely difficult to get that word out.

Indeed. As an early reader of Salon, I used to read it all the time — and link to it. But as I got more and more confused over whether or not anyone reading Techdirt could read the links, I was less and less inclined to ever write about Salon stories — and eventually that resulted in me dropping Salon as a source I read as well.

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Following our decline yesterday, world markets sold off further, in sympathy. Some skittishness ahead of this morning’s jobs report (8:30 AM ET) may also be at play.

Bloomberg: Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Lloyds Banking Group Plc slid after the National Audit Office said the two banks are failing to meeting lending targets. Bank of America Corp. slipped in Germany after raising $19.3 billion selling securities. Greek banking stocks plunged after analysts at UBS AG cut their rating for Piraeus Bank SA, the nation’s fourth- biggest lender. Baloise Holding AG rose after UBS recommended buying the stock.

The Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index of European companies declined 0.4 percent to 245.42 at 9:20 a.m. in London, paring its weekly gain to 1.2 percent. The gauge has rallied 25 percent this year on signs government spending and record-low interest rates are helping to drag the economy out of recession The MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 0.2 today, retreating from a 15-month high.

The good news: US futures are ticking higher, though again, the jobs report renders most of this meaningless.

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See Also:

• JPMorgan: The Global Recovery Stalled In November
• JPMorgan: 10.4% Unemployment Coming This Friday
• Stocks Plunge In Final Hour Of Trading

Eco Factor: Energy-saving house relies on passive solar gain.

Don McLean of McLean Architects has designed a sustainable house for his family that offers green suburban living in a challenging site north of Glasgow. Dubbed the Beacon, the house is located on a south facing site, which maximizes passive solar heat gain to reduce overall energy consumption.

(more…)

Are you giving any food gifts this year? You might want to think about including a card with instructions or ideas about how to use your fabulous gift. You may use your signature spice rub or vanilla-infused liquor every week, but other people might not catch on so quickly!

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Eco Factor: Concept cellphone designed to be powered by solar energy.

Providing an answer to the growth in the number of cellphones and the energy they require to keep running, industrial designer Liu Hsiang-Ling has come up with a concept cellphone that runs on the abundant energy provided by the sun.

(more…)

Google’s self-proclaimed goal is to organize the world’s information and, for the most part, it sticks to that. Once in a while though, it’s not satisfied with what it finds or the way the information is available elsewhere, so it just builds its own resource. And when you’ve got thousands of the world’s brightest engineers and designers working for you, it’s no surprise if you usually get it right. There are maybe thousands of dictionary tools and websites out there, yet Google must have felt that the space wasn’t catered to very well, so it released its own full-blown dictionary tool complete with definitions, synonyms and everything else you’d expect.

Google hasn’t made any official announcement and it looks like the tool is just being rolled out in its current form. Things get a little murky as google.com/dictionary has been around for almost a year now as a stand-alone service. It was initially part of the Google Translate set of tools. However, up till recently it served as an aggregator of results from the various dictionary sites around the web.

The site is pretty much what you’d expect from a Google dictionary. A query will return all the usual info found in any dictionary, no surprises here. It also returns definitions from the web, like it has done for a while now, and … (read more)

BOSCH Elektrowerkzeuge adwarded the company of RÖHM with the title “Supplier of the Recognition 2009” in the fields of quality and technology/innovation. Already for the third time in a row the RÖHM GmbH succeeded, in contrast to its competitors, and received this important title as one and only supplier in the field of clamping devices.

Criteria for this award are the services rendered during the current business year. As a result of highest standards of quality and continuous research and development the RÖHM GmbH convinced for the third time in a row and is thereby the top supplier of BOSCH in the field of clamping devices. The solemn presentation of prices took place within the “supplier´s day 2009” near the Hungarian manufacturing base Miskolc, where the best suppliers of the electro tool maker were invited. With this award BOSCH honours the engaged and fair cooperation as a important module for the common business success. Thanks to the close cooperation with BOSCH, RÖHM is always close to its clients and in this way able to synchronise products and performances individual with their requirements.
Manager of the RÖHM GmbH, Dr. Michael Fried: “The award “Supplier of Recognition” for the third time in a row is a great honour for the company and confirms us in our conduct and in our decision pro location Sontheim.”

Going green is the motto with every product manufacturer including the cell phone producers. Heres an interesting list of mobile phones, your key to carrying out green communication.