SelfInvestors - Trading Small/Mid Cap Stocks: Technical Analysis/Research; Market Commentary

Jim Rogers Discusses Agriculture, Inflation & Commodities

Jim Rogers is a legendary international investor who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros in the late 70's, producing huge returns.  Needless to say, when he speaks, people listen.  Here are some recent thoughts  and quotes from Mr Rogers:

"The dollar will collapse. The bond market will collapse."

A currency crisis is coming this year or next

"I'm convinced farmland is going to be one of the best investments of our time"

The stage is being set for an inflation holocaust.

"Without giving specific names, most of the significant American banks, the larger banks, are bankrupt, totally bankrupt"

"The dollar is collapsing. I'm moving to Asia because moving to Asia now is like moving to New York in 1907 or London in 1807. It's the wave of the future."

The bull market in commodities will continue due to rising demand in Asia, India & Middle East

"Sell your houses, move to Saskatchewan, buy a tractor and some farmland, and start farming."

Yahoo Free Stock Quotes

I believe Yahoo has the best finance portal around and  their free stock quotes offer both a delayed feed and a new real time quote feed.  The real time quote is just below the company name in the image below.

Free stock quotes aren't the only advantage of Yahoo.  They also offer headlines from Seeking Alpha, the best message boards (if you like trash talking) and thorough data on sec filings, ROE, margins, analyst estimates, insider transactions, balance sheet data, company profile, interactive charting and much more.

The Investing Halloween Effect

It's not too much of a secret in stock market circles that the winter months are typically suited to much higher returns.  I thought I'd do a bit of research and find some articles discussing the effects sometimes dubbed the Halloween Effect. 

According to CX Advisory, a paper titled Seasonal, Size and Value Anomalies by Ben Jacobsen, Abdullah Mamun and Nuttawat Visaltanachoti examine the Halloween Effect and determine that in fact  in the period between 1924 - 2004, the market returns on average are nearly twice as high in the period following Halloween through the winter.

However, according to Mark Hulbert of Marketwatch in an article written in 2005 he claims that the Halloween Indicator has problems prior to 1970.  According to his research the Halloween period from Halloween to May day returns on average 8.36% after 1970 but prior to 1970 this same period returned 3.62% compared to 2.71% in the summer months.

There are a few problems with such a wide period.  I'd like to see studies done on the quarterly performance of Nov - Dec which I'm willing to bet far exceeds other other quarters.