capitalism *is* fun :-)

 
Reading through today’s news, something very interesting caught my attention.
Commercial prospector Ma’aden has invested $5.5 billion in equipment and development to prospects the sands of Saudi Arabia … for gold!

It appears that the sand in those deserts is nothing more then the topping of a huge sandwich consisting of various level of desired and expensive commodities, such as oil and gold. I wonder what’s next? Uranium?

People worrying that they will hit the bottom of the oil barrel soon, and run out of the good stuff, should rest assured. The bottom of the barrel is actually made from gold. They do have to sustain all the good life that was once built on crude oil, isn’t it?

This is a bit of an older news, but I loved it:
“Angry investors have attacked the Karachi Stock Exchange in Pakistan, after share prices plunged.“

I love these guys. Investing their money in stocks, in a country which barely has something to be called “an economy”. I wonder what do those people think? That stocks are something which can always be bought for cheap and sold more expensively? And that stock prices are driven by governments or the people who operate the stock market? Did those guys imagined that after trashing the KSE, investors from London would simply start placing BUY orders for huge prices? I think they enjoyed their afternoon tea watching this on satellite TV.

Somebody should create a Stock Plunge Protection Team, to help suffering investors. This almost resembles the US gas price caused, “pain at the pump”. People’s birthright of making tons of money without working (or thinking), must be protected at all costs.

These “investors” looks like they have hedged their portfolios well:

I would love to post more on this one, but I almost spilled Coke on my laptop a few times, laughing, while writing this post.

Best quote from a Pakistani investor:
“I am upset because I am constantly losing money and there is no one ready to help me.“

Please give this guy a hand

I guess you know how oil reserves were formed. I am not going to explain it again. It’s not my fault you skipped school and missed this one.

Penguins don’t do anything all day long. They just sit there and get fat every day. Until they get so fat, that they can’t move there asses and freeze to death. Due to the extreme conditions in the arctic area, things happen at a faster pace, and all those billions of penguins died and got covered with snow. And this is how arctic oil was formed. In much larger quantities then oil which was formed from dead dinosaurs. Dinosaurs used to live long and didn’t get that fat, since they were running around all day after something to kill and eat.
This is how we are about to discover the largest crude oil field ever. And all we have to do, is drill into the snow. Which is easy.

It has taken governments, almost 100 years to figure this one out. Now, my dear readers, you might be wondering how such a discovery just happened. Who are the richest people on this planet? The Arabs. Why? Because they have all that oil to sell. But wait … actually it’s Santa Claus, who is the richest person on the planet. Being able to finance gifts for everyone, for hundreds of years. Offcourse he can. He has all that supply of arctic oil

And now we are about to invade Santa Clause to bring some democracy over there, and take away all his oil to be burned in our Hummers

I open today’s Wall Street Journal. On the front page, there is some article about oil. On the second page, there is another article about oil … and China. This is happening on every news site. There is a fixed set of items, such as: oil, China, Iraq, Obama and some more. Everything is somehow related to these things.

Why aren’t there any articles reporting about the advances in studying swearing in Latin? Or something else? It’s the same crap, fed by the media, every day. Oil has become a major word in everyone’s dictionary. I think that every issue that occurs somewhere, has a simple answer: "You know mate, I think it’s because of the oil"

Oil prices are down. Please enjoy and engage in useless driving, gouging up as much fuel as possible, paying for it with a credit-card, like there is no tomorrow. Please do it with a big engine, not some little white van or some 4 wheel can called eco-friendly car. There are no environmentally friendly cars. Telling people to drive a car that is environmentally friendly, is like asking a child to smoke a cigarette because it’s healthy.

With a staggering 1025.9 Euros per square meter! You have to sit on a pile of crude oil or natural gas, to be able to afford those prices.

but a good indicator
I wanted to do something different tonight. I made a nice Win32 console application. The code takes the historical data for a blue chip stock, and tries to predict it’s price based on past performance. The application simulates trading based on these predictions (buying and selling).
Here is the outcome:
Initial portfolio: 25 USD - the price of 1 share (1 share in the portfolio)
Final portfolio: 166 shares + cash, with a total value of 68.91 USD
The timeframe is 10 years. That’s 275.64% of the initially invested amount

The stock is a pretty volatile one, and the 10 years include several price corrections, etc.
When I get some time, I am going to try this with different share values.

The math behind all this is pretty simple, and it’s based on some abstract theories

I stopped at a gas station while driving home, to buy some juice. When I am about to pay with my Visa Gold credit-card, I noticed that some of the plastic started to get damaged around the edged. I guess I have been wiping it too much lately. It’s then, when I realized why the American Express Centurion card is made from titanium. It’s the only metal that can withstand the great amount of wiping it endures. Plastic can withstand a few wipes a year, however

Once again,  Mercer Consulting has elected Zurich (Switzerland), as the number one city in the world, to live in.
Well, I have been there and all I can tell you, is that they are 100% right.
The mix of old building, swiss banks and overall welfare, it’s truly an expression of capitalism, in it’s purest form.

I love the morning news on Bloomberg. "The dollar declined against the yen and euro after Iran’s state television network said the nation test-fired a long-range missile capable of reaching Israel." I guess they can’t yet reach Japan or the European Union, so they are safe. If Iran wipes Israel off the face of Earth, this will seriously hurt the dollar and the US economy. Why don’t they "relocate" Israel to a safer place? It worked for the first time, so why not do it again? Let’s find some decent land, claim with the bible in one hand, and call it Israel. The South Pole looks safe from here

This is Jonny Gladwell from Auckland New Zealand.
He is special. He is the world’s first owner of an Apple iPhone 3G. It just brakes my hearth to see the guy having camped outside the Vodafone store. Doesn’t this guy have a job? … yes he does … he has Steve Jobs!

I bet he spent the time in his tent, watching porn on his MacBook Air, while waiting. He could have made a better deal by simply putting a jar outside the tent, with a tag: Spare 1 dollar (NZD that is) to save up towards my iPhone 3G.

Somebody please give me one serious reason for camping outside a store to get an iPhone, as soon as it’s released? It’s a great phone … but what’s with the desperation? Is he hoping to get laid?

This is so sad…