Global Investment Strategy - Asia

One of the recent suggestions I have received from several investors is to adopt a global investment strategy. What is it, you may ask. In short, it is a strategy that divides the investment into multiple markets, making use of globalization in order to do so in low rates, giving the investor the opportunity to reduce his risk by depending on multiple markets instead of one. In most global strategies that I have heard so far there is a clear weight to the Asian markets, namely China and Japan, but not only, the Turkish market also show good signs.
The domestic consumer demands in China causes it to overtake the US roll in that section in the short coming months. As for Japan - The last year might be a turning point in Japanese economy which suffers for more than a decade now. The unemployment is at the lowest rate in the last 7 years, real-estate value starts to rise in some places, which is a rare situation in the last 10 year, there are some economical signs that can be observed as an initial process to build an inflation - after a decade of deflation. All the above might be interpreted as a signal to put more attention on the Japanese market. Due to the fact that the Nikkei already soared 36% this year and since the local currency also soard to a level that is expected to influence on export gains, it might be a time for a short turnaround in the Japanese market for the coming months, however, it seems that for the long run it is an interesting market even today.
How to invest in Japan? The most easy way is to use an index that follows this market. EWJ for example is a stock that represents the Japanese Index and follows about 85% of the market share of most of the public companies in this market.
Other options are to trade Japanese companies that already traded in the west stock exchanges, for example Sony, Honda, Canon, Kyocera and more. However, these stocks represents each a portion of the segment that they are belongs to, and this should be taken into account.

FOREX Starter kit sample

In the process of finding reference manuals on investment markets I have found the following link to be useful for giving a nice overview of the FOREX market. I believe it to be a nice starter for those who are not familiar with FOREX at all.

The Money Machine exists!!!

Silly me. My initial assumption was true, there are MANY financial companies that are using money machines out there. They are using advanced mathematic methods for the sole purpose of generating accurate predictions. You can read a sample description of such machine in the following link: FatKat.
Another company that works in a much lower profile is Financial Algorithms (Final) Inc.
The mathematic methods in use are Fuzzy logic, neural nets, genetic algorithms, Markov models, fractal methods, and clustering techniques.

Technical Trading Jump-Start

There are many sources for information regarding technical trading. A friend of mine just gave me a list of more than 30 books on the subject and now I have to decide which of them are the important ones. I’m going to build a plan for “getting-back-into-business” which include the reading material, the tools to be used and some milestones. I will also go over again on the course material I have from the technical course I took 2 years ago.
The following are the steps that I will implement, and will write about:
[1] Choosing the books and listing some of the important insights.
[2] Choosing a trading system – probably TradeStation, but not sure.
[3] Open an account.
[4] Learn the trading system mechanics. Learn the programming language.
[5] Start trading in low profile (Paying the education fee).
[6] Share my insights in this blog. Gain more knowledge and learn new tricks.
[7] Go-No Go – Decide whether I can make a living with it or not. Which market should I work on, and many other questions.

The philosophy of a Trade Machine

It is a long time now that I'm playing with the idea of making a Trade Machine. I'm a novice technical trader, using technical analysis tools for making on-the-spot buy/sell decisions. There are plenty of people worldwide that are doing the same, some are more experienced and professional and some even doing it for a living. I am not doing it for a living, but wish I could, and recently circumstances made me some extra time that might help me to get closer to that dream of mine.
So [1] what is a trade machine, [2] why should I want to have one and [3] are there any on the market today?
A1: In simple, a trade machine is an investment "guru" that is programmed to identify potential opportunities in the market and perform actual trade activities in order to take advantage of these opportunities. The trade machine performs "day trading" activities in most cases. Some types of trade machines may be less proactive and more suggestive. Instead of running as "daytraders" and performing the actual buy/sell the machine can suggest you to do it and you will take the final decision. Such machines are more suited to end-of-day analysis since they are not required for on-the-spot decision (the human factor can not be assumed to act at once).
A2: Obvious. Having a trade machine that is callibrated with algorithms that works out is a money maker that no-one would like to loose. Such machine can make you financially free, leaving you the decision what to do with your time. I'm not a lazy guy, but having the option to choose is something that is rarely available ever.
A3: No one would admit it since it might motivate others to try building their own money machines. Too much machines in the market will reduce the potential profit for each one of them and will not do any good. This is why when you are talking with people that have anything close to it, they does not show their cards.