1. Not Phil’s Stock World. It seems that someone has confused my PhilStock musings with a real (for-profit) stock-market site run by a guy named Phil. Phil’s Stock World, at http://www.philstockworld.com, calls itself  “high finance for real people,” which may distinguish it from being for the computerized  robots that conduct roughly 70 percent of all trading. These days the robots are reading their own reports, generating further “structured” data that are folded into “narratives” tailored to the target audience of the moment.

What I’d like to know is whether programmers endow computerized traders with the same superstitions as their human counterparts. [i]  When you consider that stock-trading “experts” are not accountable for predictions that don’t pan out, it is easy to see why superstitions are common among traders.  (Even a rare trader, such as myself, would need to take them into consideration simply because of the psychology of others.) You only need to follow what the 5-to-8 key market reports say about the same stock on the same day to see that they’re all over the map. Anyway, listen to Phil if you wish, but don’t forget my standard caveat for PhilStock: Never take any stock advice from me.[i]

2. Diamond Offshore (DO). DO, the stock metaphorically tied to this blog’s deep-drilling excursions into statistical foundations—and reported at $60 in my December 20, 2011 post—is now up to around $67! Continue reading →