Failure by design

Traditionally and even in some macroeconomics courses, it is said that individuals act rationally and consider all known information in the decision-making process. Traders today know this is not true. In a world where financial institutions and hedge funds use 200-300:1 leverage and markets swing wildly, there is plenty of emotion and irrational behavior to go around. Winning traders and investors make money by consistently exploiting irrational behavior, whether is it shorting a stock that just got ahead of itself, or by buying dips that happen when people panic sell.

Human emotion is a major factor in the stock market, as you have probably felt all of these:

Hope: I hope it goes back to where I bought in, I just want to break even

Fear: It has gone down everyday for the last week, I don’t want to lose everything

Greed: It just keeps going up, I should double up. How can I lose?

Despair: I just keep losing money, maybe I should quit. (more…)

Every night in this quiet western Indian city, 15 pregnant women prepare for sleep in the spacious house they share, ascending the stairs in a procession of ballooned bellies, to bedrooms that become a landscape of soft hills. (more…)

Ok so using some of the money I got from selling my GM calls, I bought a D-link DIR-655 802.11n router and wireless PCI adaptor. Now the benefits of wireless N are numerous: 4x the range, 300 Mb/s throughput, and less interference. How does it do this is MIMO (multiple in, multiple out), which basically opens multiple channels of communication with the router and allows each adapter to process multiple channels simultaneously. Interference is reduced since if any channel has interference there are other channels to provide bandwidth.

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