Spread

When a company changes its symbol, should it be a positive or a negative sign of the randomness Gods? The ask is for 56% more than the bid. Is it lack of knowledge of the market or just a hussle. Meanwhile, the volume traded is almost zero. Someone is hoarding and waiting like one of those big fishes that camouflage themselves at the bottom of the sea with their jaws open.

Market Data

Reuters is a great data provider with great API:
https://customers.reuters.com/Home/RMDS.aspx

There are also niche players focused on these type of testing. Technical Analysis Magazine lists and rates some of them.

Apple expecting to grow

More promises from AAPL. More sales of the iPad and now they seem to be able to run Microsoft Office. Bye bye mouse, keyboard, monitor, speakers, web-cam, and surge protector. Competition for leadership from the OS executive might have a longer lasting effect if chosen.

What about Now? By 5 o'clock, I am a dinosaur! Call Option expiring this week for a strike price of 435 (only 6 above today's closing is just $0.65.

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For a reason, there was consensus the stock was going to dip. It was priced right.

After deep decline, solar has seen a rebound

CSUND, the Chinese manufacturer and assembler of solar panels seems to have been chosen and completed an installation in India. Rose 13% in one day following a positive streak of positive momentum. Hoping it is not just someone unloading and cutting losses. 68% decline in shares sold short. Is the demand just to return the shares?

Meanwhile, it seems Germany is absorbing contracts from the leaders in the segment helping on a rebound. Either way, their hands are tied. Inventory is decreasing value as we speak. Materials are more expensive relative to the final product. There is a mini-deflation effect on the segment. Dollar per watt has emerged as the metric of choice instead of the complete deliverying of a product to the market. Rat race like the old Mhz per clock cycle. A breakthrough or a stable demand is needed.

The inevitable and steep learning curve of the rails

China's bullet fast train crashed in a head on collision. The blame falls on official corruption, low quality (Chinese) signal equipment, and political pressure to meet deadlines.

Even though the promise was great, historically it was expected. There is nothing worse than the American fatal rail history. The US lived through such a bubble and disasters in railroad construction that hordes of railroad companies defaulted on their bonds. The US solution to the problem? The bankers became more involved in railroad operations to assure returns to foreign investors creating the Trust as the logical solution.

But it seems the biggest lesson for China is that their amazing economic minds are ignoring a basic principle of macro-economics:  relative advantage. If they insist on building everything themselves, they will just have to take a number in the back of the line behind Latinoamerican countries after they fell in love with the notion of imports substitution.

NYSE and Frankfurt are joining and others following

Singapore is buying the Australian stock exchange. There is also the merger of London and Toronto.

And in latinoamerica, Chile, Peru, and Colombia are also joining their stock exchanges. The idea is to increase visibility and have access to bigger pools of capital.

It has been an over 200 years quest to unite latinoamerican countries. Populist governments, writers, poets, and dictators have all claim to fight for this higher purpose. At the end, it is capitalism by itself that finally brings the always sought integration of latinoamerican economies.

Laika and the Sputnik moment

This is our sputnik moment says the president. Somehow an event from 1957 doesn't seem as exciting anymore.

The question of whether China is really the future keeps invading conversations and interviews. In history, only a few trailing nations really became hegemonic. Surpassing the world power of the times is not a question of population, tall buildings, or currency. Something really transformational has to take hold and grow in a non-obvious way to the point that it can't be copied until it is too late.

China's economical growth has become the future for the rest of the world. This is not the same as the world's power.

The fact that the US political system survives every crisis for centuries just to come out stronger is an inexplicable phenomenon. The great majority of the countries in the world are not  built with the sacred check and balances on which the US was founded.

What will China do after its continued growth? Will it be flexible enough to allow new industries that never existed before? Would old industries that supply the power and wealth for decades be let to wind down as other new faces become the new centers of influence?

Bobbio is an Italian academic and philosopher that was given the honorary title of lifetime Senator. He was born in 1909 and died in 2004. This is enough of a life to have seen it all. He maintained his views, his political position and status throughout every type of regime: socialism, fascism, democracy, civil war, political strife, and occupation.

Bobbio lists the two major characteristics of a democratic system (economical or political):

1. The Will of the majority rules
2. The existence of the unstoppable possibility of a minority to become the majority

The US system has this natural foundation to withstand crisis and change. No matter how many cities have tall buildings, China is an economical power and probably the greatest example of economical growth ever seen, but China is still trailing on the ability to spawn a future we don't know.