Friday, February 27, 2009

Venice 21/02/09


Last Saturday I went to Venice on a tour organised by Bocconi's exchange students organisation. Venice is a really nice place; exactly as you would imagine it to be. A quaint, laidback island-village in north Italy, Venezia (apart from being known as a brand of extremely excellent ice-cream back home) is the sinking land of canals, gondolas and the Carnevale.



Here's a good picture of life in the canals of this famed city of bridges.



And the masks were crazy! There were so many costumes, ranging from the elegant to the downright lunatic, and the colours were such a sight to behold.


So many people came in masks. If this were a darker and crazier world, there would be plenty more murders, rapes, and kidnappings in such a gaudy and hauntingly faceless city. Can you imagine encountering this guy in the middle of the night?



I'll be back to Venezia again. A day trip wasn't enough. But before that, Torino, Firenze and Roma.

Sunday, February 22, 2009

USD/JPY Update

Nope, no breach of resistance. USD/JPY has fallen some 100 pips back down into the 93's (and at one point the 92.4's). Lucky I got trailing stopped out of my USD/JPY trade, with profit of about 10 pips (lol 10 pips; but 10 pips is still positive, better than negative anyday!) My trading plan for next week will probably be to buy EUR/USD or EUR/GBP. Sudden invigoration in the last few hours of Friday trading.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Double Bottom


USDJPY, Daily, 26 Nov 2008 - 8 Feb 2009

Double bottoms are a repeated test of a support after a long downtrend. We've all seen how the USD was ravaged against the Japanese Yen at the end of 2008. The double bottom formation has formed cleanly, price now looks to break resistance as marked. If it does, this is a home run.

Go right on ahead.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Berlin!


Berlin was crazy! It's a great city! This is the group of us against the Berlin Wall. (L-R Linda, Maggie, Danielle, Tanya, Melissa, me, Andrew)

There were so many things to do. This city goes down in history as one bathed in energy, suffering, intrigue, diversity and kegs upon kegs of glorious German beer.

We saw cars. Mean, cutting-edge, authentically German machines built for speed, power and intimidation.


We saw the sites of unspeakable horrors. Camps and rooms and chambers where you unmistakably feel temperatures drop further to deathly chills despite the winter your body has numbed itself to.


We saw the stuff that sweet dreams are made of. Images you never thought could leap out of the pages of fairy tales. Things that in another place would only be possible with the aid of tequilas and space cakes.



We saw the electic mix of whites and blacks and bratwursts and bockwursts and currywursts and pommes frites and yellows and the result that is the G-8 mainstay known as Deutschland. And if you don't see the reason for the colours of the German flag in the picture below, you're a moron!


Now this is a great candid of Melissa and I, courtesy of Linda. Melissa is my apartment mate and she was the one that made this trip possible.



So, about Melissa:
1) Awesome navigator
2) Atrocious cook
3) Into fingernails
4) Can't differentiate a Ferrari from a bicycle
5) Adores white boys. Tall and long hair please thank you very much.

And finally, without the train network of Germany, we would all probably still be trudging along to the hostel now on foot just to check in, and this entry would not have been written.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Mercedes Benz


Berlin was awesome. This is German engineering in its element. More updates when I have the time. Chew on this picture first!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Triangle again


EUR/GBP, 15m, Today

This just in. New triangle has formed. Orders above, orders below, let's see what fate will leave us with.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

IL DUOMO


Today was an awesome day. The weather was nice. In this picture you can even see the snow-capped alps in the distance. Wonderful way to begin a day.


I went exploring because Antonio and Melissa had exams in school and I was free the whole day. This is Bocconi University. It's a nice place.


Then I took a tram down to Duomo by myself because it was too perfect a day to waste sitting around at home Youtubing. Duomo means cathedral. Il Duomo just means The Cathedral. Take a look at this and realise for yourself why it is The Cathedral. It even has Scarlett Johansson as arm candy.


This is the first Italian King, the one who united the nation. This is a pretty good picture of the square. I love this place. I could stand around in the square all day and just admire. Honestly. This picture and that of the Duomo don't do any justice to the magnificence of that which I saw.


Now let me introduce you to Antonio, my apartment mate. Eat your heart out girls. We met on Facebook when I responded to his room-for-rent advertisement. He was the one who first took me down to the Duomo, so I asked him in what I thought was very natural order for the conversation: Are you Catholic?

And this is what he told me: Well not really, though I was baptised. It's just tradition. But realistically, baptism is a great reason to throw a party, that's why all of us are Catholics!

Man, what a great country!

Timetable


Hmm, strangely, not as slack as I was told it would be. But I am looking forward to school anyway!

This is the view from Home


This is the view from my home. The red building with the GS on it is the supermarket. Very convenient, it's just across the street! You can also see the tram we use to get to the tube stations.


And this is how I keep in contact with Char. Through webcam and Gmail chat! Wonders of technology.

I'm sitting here now feeling really testy because my trade is going the opposite way. Yikes. But I'm on holiday! I love it!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Italia


Landed at 0530 hrs Milan time. No security scans, no spot checks, no customs declaration, no one was even around. Nothing. Just grab your junk and go. Antonio and Melissa got me from the bus stop and led me home. Didn't become a victim of pickpockets today, thanks to them. Poor fellows waited almost an hour for me at the bus stop because my bus ride took twice the amount of time estimated by the bus company.

Went to my school to get a lot of administrative things settled. Today I received my matriculation card, applied for an ATM (Azienda Trasporti Milanesi; their equivalent of our ez-link cards--not the cash dispensing machine as we know it), filled in some forms to get a permit of stay, and bought a new SIM card for my phone for local use. Melissa brought me around to do everything, so I needn't waste any time figuring out for myself what worked and what did not.


Amazingly, for all the Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Maseratis in this great country, almost every car I saw today was a tiny little hatchback. Streets were nice. Trams run all over.

Got to witness Italian efficiency at its best. Over the counter while doing some applications, the dude daydreamed wistfully, had a passionate chat with his colleague, stared vacantly at a spot behind me, and yawned painfully at least 5 times, all while in the midst of tending to me. Naturally, I was stuck at his counter for a good 45 minutes.


This is a famous landmark in Milan. Gorgeous isn't it? This church is huge, it's the Duomo. Beautiful weather today.

Cooked some carbonara and here I am, feeling really sleepy. Tomorrow's another day of exploring to do, with a considerable amount of junk out of the way.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

I won't be gone that long


Singapore City

Never realised how much I'd miss this place.

Also, good bye Ho Ching! Nothing to do with your performance!

I fly in about 8 hours. Keep coming back here, I'll show you Europe.

Friday, February 6, 2009

Noise and Signals


EUR/GBP, 1H, 29 Jan - Today

This chart tells a nice story, if you knew how to read it. I've put the turn of events in different colours, together with their respective annotations.

1) Cups and handles--see the black outline, it's meant to look like a cup and handle (duh right)--can be bullish. In this case, after the formation of a nice U-shaped cup and a slightly downsloped handle, a trader would wait for a positive breakout above the rim level of the cup.

2) In this case that did not happen, and the price tested the resistance (in blue) thrice. It then gave up.

3) Prices are strange creatures. When they can't go in one way, they'll gladly do the opposite. Since they couldn't break resistance, they went in the other direction and plummeted. Previously I spoke of flags in bullish formations; here, the flags (in dark green) are in reverse. As usual, the profit target for a flag is the length of its staff. You can see that happening here.

More than a week's worth of hourly candles for this story to unravel. Who knows what's to come in the next chapters!

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Stimulate to this!


Everyone wants a bailout by the Federal Government. General Motors and Chrysler got something, and guess who else wants a piece of the action too? The porn bosses. How much are they asking for? US$5 Billion.

Porn's such an American thing anyway; if the auto guys could use that argument (about being an industry that is decidedly America's own) to receive aid, why not the people that bring you Hustler?

"Congress seems willing to help shore up our nation's most important businesses, (and) we feel we deserve the same consideration."

"In difficult economic times, Americans turn to entertainment for relief. More and more, the kind of entertainment they turn to is adult entertainment."

Damn, this world is crazy. "Stimulus/stimulate" and "package" are words you so don't wanna use now, eh?

Sunday, February 1, 2009

They call it Karma

Dick Stanley of DBS got himself some leukaemia, and there were those who called it Karma.

They said things had come full circle for himself, for:
1) Retrenching 900 staff without any info to the union
2) Hawking immensely destructive Lehman minibonds
3) Throwing out weird rights offers

There's also Dick Fuld of Lehman Bros himself.

Man, there's all these dicks around.