Ho John Lee’s Weblog

• Mark Gilbert - Granddad, Did You Believe in Central Banks Once? - Bloomberg.com - Opinion
  A future fable on life after the Gigantic Global Bubble Burst of 2008, a world in which hedge funds are banned and the RMB is the global currency
  (tags: economics global investing finance future trends)

• Tales of a Ninth-Grade Fund Manager - WSJ.com
  At 14, Brandon Conley shorts stocks, meets CEOs, sleeps little; why mom is ‘terrified’
  (tags: finance investing money culture society trends parenting)

• YouTube - Steely Dan - The recording of Josie.
  One of several video clips about various how various tracks from Aja were recorded
  (tags: music aja steely dan musicians culture)

The Budget Graph poster is a visual depiction of the United States Budget. The online pan-and-zoom browser is fun too. If you want a general sense of where the money goes, this totally beats plowing through the official federal budget documents.

Both CNBC and TheStreet.com have separately reported problems with their respective stock trading contests.

The CNBC contest site apparently had a coding flaw that allowed traders to open an order entry window before market close, then wait until after hours to actually enter the order, which would be executed the closing price.

The more interesting comment from CNBC is this:

In addition, there have been allegations that one or more contestants may have engaged in illegal market manipulation to affect actual prices of stocks represented in their contest portfolios.

With a million dollars at stake, this seemed like a plausible scenario even before the contest started. It’s unclear to me whether “illegal market manipulation” here actually means “illegal under contest rules” or “illegal under SEC regulations”, but it seems quite feasible.

Along similar lines at TheStreet.com, which offered $100,000 in their contest:

• Bespoke’s International ETF Cheat Sheet - Seeking Alpha
  Another one page summary of ETFs, this one is for global/international funds.
  (tags: etf global international investing finance planning)

Since last February’s market gymnastics, I regularly take a glance at the wacky Shanghai market in overnight trading to see if that particular financial asteroid will be landing in the morning. This evening I noticed that the free quotes on the US Yahoo site lag the quotes on the China Yahoo site:

Here’s the Shanghai market as seen on the US site:

Here’s the Shanghai market as seen on the Chinese site:

In both cases, they’re free, delayed quotes, and are correctly time stamped. I never noticed that the overseas Yahoo sites provide more current data for the local markets before, though. Now you can all impress your non-trading friends with your nearly psychic ability to call intraday turns in the Shanghai market.

This is the first weekend in quite a while that Emily and I haven’t had soccer committments. Her spring soccer team played at the Davis World Cup last weekend to wrap up their season. The team got knocked out in the elimination round in a very close match that was settled in a penalty shootout to break the 0-0 tie. Even the shootout was close, it went to 1-1 on the 5 kicks for each side, which brought the game to sudden death. Eventually it went to 10 kicks for each side (and U10 plays 9 on a side) before the winning goal for the other side (which went forward to the end of the tournament).

So this weekend has felt a little different, with no practice and no game. This afternoon we went to see Gracie, a soccer-themed movie which Emily saw a trailer for this spring. It’s about a teenaged girl who wants to try out for the boy’s soccer team after her brother (also a soccer player) dies in a car accident.