The Art Of Chairing - Chf Canada: Fill & Download for Free

I am not a pure economist by profession, although I studied economics and often write about it, have occasionally reviewed academic papers, and it's an important skill for what I do, and on occasion one gains greater insight into the economy by not being a pure economist.I was quoted in the New Yorker piece on him in 2009, and spoke to the journalist for several hours as deep background, some of which found its way into the article. I didn't take this step lightly, because it takes courage to risk saying something positive in public about a man who was then in prison. Another manager at an established fund was also quoted in the article. I should say that although people in finance do not always have the most positive experiences when dealing with journalists, the author of this piece, Nick Paumgarten was outstanding and that, if nothing else, the New Yorker has certainly maintained its standards for accuracy and fact-checking.The Secret Cycle - The New YorkerIn full disclosure, a couple of years ago another friend of mine (that became aware of his work through my own interest in it) wrote a piece on real estate for him, but no money changed hands, and there was no benefit to my friend beyond having an interesting outlet for writing. (My friend has not been involved as a practitioner in real estate, or indeed any business, for some years now).As I said then, his work stands or falls on its own merits from a scientific perspective. The movie had no choice but to address his past legal difficulties, which are interesting and important but have no logical connection to the merits of his work. To clarify the point by means of example: Michael Milken is not generally thought of as having done absolutely nothing wrong (there is disagreement about his case), but nobody doubts that he was (and remains) a brilliant mind who achieved much in the domain of finance and has continued to contribute much in his new career.I don't think the cases of Armstrong and Milken are in any way similar (I said in 2009 that I did not know if he was guilty or not, and if he was guilty, what of), but my point is that it takes a real effort of objectivity to recognize that the value of someone's work - if one has the ability and skill to assess it oneself and not be forced to depend on conventional wisdom - is independent of everything else. I am myself much more interested in economics and financial markets than I am in the life story aspect (which is not to say that one can or should ignore questions of justice and due process - these are just out of my area).My friend who was nominally his number two (or something like that) and went on to run a successful fund of funds could not be certain, but he certainly didn't have the impression Armstrong was rotten to the core. Lest it seem that I am biased by having a friend who once worked with him, I should say that he became my friend because I become curious about Armstrong's work back in 2005, and I found him after a period of searching on the net. So I have no axe to grind in this matter.I find it psychologically highly implausible that he (Armstrong) specifically stole money (I suspend judgement on anything else, since I don't have the facts), and my impression is that the government has not really set out a proper case, let alone proven it. Even were he guilty as hell, it is simply plain wrong to hold a man in prison for seven years for contempt of court under those circumstances. Justice must not just be done, but be seen to be done, and that certainly wasn't the case here. Whatever one may think of conspiracy theories (or theories that have a tinge of such), the rotation of regulators between supervising the system and working for the companies they supervise has a problematic aspect to it, and I am far from the only one to think so.I saw a preview of the movie in London, and the German director answered questions afterwards. You really have to admire the manifestation of Teutonic virtue in this man (as well as the movie itself, which was rather well crafted). He read the whole transcript of hearings cover to cover. Then he gave it to a colleague to read again. Then he still wanted to be absolutely sure, and concerned that as a non native speaker of English (although he speaks English very well) he might be missing something gave it to a third person in Canada. Everyone came to the same conclusion.So to return to his work, which is the most important thing. Cycles are important in life and markets, and he must rank as one of the leading figures in the history of this field. Bear in mind, too, that this work was accomplished with much less help from technology than is available today (although Armstrong seems to have been at the forefront of using the technology then available).The Pi cycle he identified is certainly something real. It was utterly eerie to see it play out, with credit markets and financial stocks peaking pretty much to the day in Feb 2007 as his cycle peaked. That doesn't mean that it is a shortcut to personal prosperity, because this is a highly complex field and there are always many influences at work at any time. (In particular the polarity doesn't always work quite according to that neat little diagram).Martin Armstrong's Economic Pi CycleQuote from the New Yorker piece (not me speaking):“Here’s the thing that gets me—what makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” a former employee of Armstrong’s, who now manages a hedge fund, half-whispered to me over the phone not long ago. “So December ’89 is the high of the Nikkei, which he called. Go back 8.6 years. May 10, 1981.” He ticked off some milestones—Mitterrand, Volcker—and then went back another 8.6, and then another. “There’s a high-to-high-to-high rhythm here.” He said that he had counted forward from July 20, 1998, to the next major date: “February 23, 2007. I thought, This could be important.”February 23, 2007, quietly came and went, and the Armstrong skeptics sneered. But it turned out that that day had seen some of the tightest credit spreads ever (that is, the easiest credit); home prices, meanwhile, had begun a sharp decline. It was the peak of the easy-money bubble—the edge of the precipice, the lip of the recession. That this became clear only in retrospect says as much about the perils of prediction as it does about a propensity to see, as the past recedes, patterns and narratives that flatter our particular angle on the world.Still: “Something turned and you could feel it,” the hedge-fund manager said. “But you couldn’t find much of anything about it in the papers.”One must also understand that making an important breakthrough in a field does not always mean one is the best representative of the field as a whole; and furthermore in the field of investment even more than with others, theory and practice are different things and one should bear this in mind and be very cautious when considering the value of new ideas, taking what is good where one can, and not succumbing to buy into someone else's research programme wholesale.To take an example where things are simpler because there aren't the questions people have about Armstrong: Robert Prechter is certainly a genius when it comes to his work on social phenomena (which includes applications to the investment domain). The proof the pudding is in the eating, and some very successful and prominent investors do use his work, or have done in the past. See the now-withdrawn documentary with Paul Jones, as one example. (Incidentally, it is a matter of record that the today highly-respected and senior figure Peter Borish, his colleague in this documentary, was involved with the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, which Armstrong also at one point chaired).In any case, Prechter is a genius, and he has the most profound insights about markets and the economy. It does not follow that I would want to give him money to manage, or that I will be influenced by what he thinks about markets today, or that I suggest others should be. Some people may benefit from studying his research work; a few may benefit incredibly. But that only can come by studying his ideas carefully, observing what seems to work and what not, and taking what seems good.It's the same in any other field when it comes to financial markets and the economy - for example, Austrian economics may help you understand the world better, but it is no magic ticket to profits - except when it comes to certain kinds of approaches people tend to jump from one extreme to another - from thinking it's all complete nonsense (since what could be the mechanism) to drinking the Kool-Aid. Kool-Aid is not a beverage that leads to satisfactory investment performance.Returning to Armstrong, I personally have found I learnt more from his work pre 2000 than the recent stuff, but your mileage may vary. Not many people told you a couple of years back the CHF peg likely wouldn't hold, and some people today might wish they had had the stimulus to the imagination that he offered (since it did break, as he said it would).Hedge Funds And The CHFI found it interesting that Jim Rogers, who is a man of integrity and weighs his words carefully said on CNBC that he esteemed Armstrong's historical knowledge and insight.Parting thought. It's too early to assess the nature of Armstrong's contribution to the field of cycle studies. It's not always the most collegial field, and opinions amongst practitioners differ. Personally, I think that supposing that the Pi cycle alone were all that is valuable amongst his work, that would already be enough (and probably there is more). If that's the case, then one needs when thinking about his case to consider the words of Professor Bruce Charlton on the typical response of modern society towards genius, particularly the one who makes certain kinds of discoveries (and the relevance here is not to shenanigans in the gold market, or the full background to what happened in Russia in 1998, but the role of cycles in shaping economic and financial developments):Why are modern conditions so hostile to genius? Because those in power are zealously protecting the web of liesWestern Modernity is hostile to genius, in a way that contrasts strongly with the history of the West.This is not a matter of merely failing to reward geniuses. That is true, but does not really matter; since genius is (and must be) internally motivated; so genius does what genius does (unless it is actively prevented from doing it).So modern geniuses do what they do - but whereas Western societies of the past eagerly seized-upon the products of genius and exploited them (with or without the geniuses consent - and often while denying the genius any reward or even credit for their discovery) nowadays the West not merely fails to benefit from the activities of genius; it actively attacks the breakthroughs of genius.This seems hard to understand - because in principle there is power and money to be made from the breakthroughs of genius; but this is in fact why attack is necessary - so as to prevent people spontaneously exploiting the insights of genius.In general, the breakthroughs of a genius are paradigm-busting; they tend to break-down and re-make structures of knowledge. In the past this was not usually resisted because there was an implicit aim of basing our lives upon truth, beauty and virtue.But 'reality' as perceived by modernity is NOW a vast and interlocking web of selective facts, distortions and outright lies - sustained by a powerful, enveloping, pervasive and addictive mass media.Any insight or breakthrough in understanding of any kind threatens the entire edifice of the web of lies; whether that breakthrough is in ethics (virtue), science and technology (truth) or the arts (beauty).Therefore, for modern leaders, the most dangerous people in the world are those who threaten the web of lies - the geniuses; therefore genius will be fought, and their insights denied and suppressed, by whatever means are most effective: denigration, mockery, misrepresentation, demonization... whatever works.Thus, Western Modernity has become more actively and comprehensively and systematically hostile to genius, and the insights and discoveries of genius, than perhaps any previous society; and no matter how much they are needed, the breakthroughs of genus cannot (and will not) be used - for fear of triggering a meltdown in social order; a domino-effect in which one truth leads to another, one beauty or virtuous act leads to another, and another... until the universal web of lies suddenly snaps, and gives way... and then what?It's a good movie. I think it will be a hit. And if you are interested in the work, look at the data for yourself and make up your own mind. Just don't reach intellectual closure too early - one doesn't gain much from doing a hasty backtest without thinking exactly what it is one is trying to understand.=== AddendumIt certainly didn't predict every major financial event so far, as far as I am aware, and I am also not aware of any serious people amongst those who find his work interesting who have made that claim.Nonetheless, he certainly has made some outstanding calls on the basis of his model and other work, and it was rather eerie to see credit topping (and many investment bank and financial stocks too) as the Feb 2007 date approached.He has identified some kind of natural phenomenon to be sure. If you try to trade it mechanically without doing the hard work of research and thinking, you will certainly eventually receive the results one would expect. The fact that he has identified something real doesn't mean it's a quick ticket to easy riches.=== Second Addendum (Oct 2015)Those interested in Armstrong's life and work may find the following book to be interesting:Not My Grandfather's Wall Street: Diaries of a Derivatives Trader - Kindle edition by David von Leib. Literature & Fiction Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.