Excellent move Bill!

Comments were beginning to be overrun with off-topic, though mostly very good, posts & links.

In the spirit of the new "Daily Planet", here's John Mauldin's "Outside the Box":

http://www.investorsinsight.com/otb.aspx

From the article:

"Suppose that there was a high 80% chance that the market will rise 10% over the coming year, and just a small 20% chance that it will decline 15% over the coming year. Sound like good odds? Well, given those odds, the expected return would be [.80(10%) + .20(-15%) = ] 5%, which is the same as you'd get in risk-free T-bills. A risk-averse investor wouldn't take the bet."

I'm willing to compile Cara-reader estimates on expected return (through year-end say), and see where we are as a community. If you want to play, send an email to jcstmp-trading@yahoo.com with the following data:

Upside Probability:
Upside Percentage:
Downside Probability:
Downside Percentage:
Comments:

I'll rollup the overall Cara-reader expected return and a summary of your comments.

Please DON'T reply to the blog.

t4k

PS: nit question to Bill - why to you write "pct" for "percent" instead of using the "%" key?

Steve Saville at his best.
"In a world where counter-cyclical monetary policy dominates and where "Keynesian economists" are well respected, more inflation will always be the prescribed remedy for the problems caused by inflation. This is partly because so few people recognise the underlying cause of the problem and partly because many of the ones who do perceive the true cause think that it's better to implement a 'bandaid solution' that allows the game to continue for a while than to implement a long-term fix."

http://www.321gold.com/editorials/saville/saville091206.html

U.S. Economy: Trade Deficit Unexpectedly Increases to a Record

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aYnC1g76fLvc&refer=us

Back in the saddle again. I see a lot has happened.

Came across the following from Everbank:

It is from Doug Casey who wrote an article in the latest Review and Focus. I think you will enjoy reading his opinion on the fate of the US dollar:

"Similarly, foreign owners of the big green mountain of U.S. dollars have become uneasy and generally are looking to sell. There's no dumping, at least not yet. When it comes, the flight from the dollar will start slowly, then gain momentum before moving into a blow-off. Like a glacier sliding toward a cliff, movement that seems inevitable may take a puzzlingly long time to get underway. But once it does, things speed up at a surprising rate. Most of what happens happens rapidly, toward the end of the process.

Given the choice between (A) a dead housing market and scorched-earth depression in the U.S and (B) a collapsing currency, which at least has the virtue of reducing the real cost of paying off all those Treasury bonds, I'm forced to believe the U.S. government will choose (B) and sacrifice the dollar."

Money leaving US markets?

Sept. 18 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. dollar may fall to a 10- year low as American pension, mutual and hedge funds increase their purchases of overseas investments.

Three quarters of the money flowing into U.S. mutual funds in the first seven months of the year, or $113 billion, has gone into foreign securities, according to Boston-based Financial Research Corp. Pensions, hedge funds and endowments are also shifting from U.S. assets, lifting investments in international stocks by 72 percent to $1.05 trillion in the year through February, a Greenwich Associates survey showed.

The dollar, measured against the currencies of the U.S.'s largest trading partners, is close to the lowest since 1995 and Stephen Jen, head of global currency research at Morgan Stanley in London, says about half of the decline in the past three years can be attributed to U.S. investors moving money overseas.

``That does make us bearish on the dollar,'' said Michael Metcalfe, senior currency strategist in London at State Street Global Markets. State Street, the world's largest custodian of investor assets with $10.1 trillion, has seen outflows accelerating, he said. ``The home bias of U.S. investors is continuing to unravel.''