I would think so too, but apparently reality suggests otherwise. Even among these forums, populated with most people sortof "blessed" to be among the more fortunate ones.
I made some money trading the FTSE during the London terror attacks. When I looked back initially I felt uncomfortable but as soon as I told myself it was my job I was ok. Remember that thanks to daytraders there's ample liquidity in the markets; and liquidity is necessary during market crisis. Investors are mostly relying in daytrades to enter and to exit their positions, and moreover so if during a crisis.
that is the sentiment of most traders. my 9/11 experience was at a former prop firm on wall st. that morning, i decided to try to get out of downtown as quick as possible, but to my surprise more than half the traders were scurrying to post up bullets.
I think you guys are exactly right. What would happen to public markets if there was no other side to a MSFT trade? Now, that's a disaster in my opinion. As long as capitalism is alive and thriving we have to do our part to guide it along. As traders this means taking the other side when John Doe decides to sell or buy. That's life. The stuff about controlling weather. It is already happening. Dig around.
Just out of curiosity is it OK to buy a stock when its slumped due to an unethical external event? Surely in a moral sense this is the same as selling stocks on news of the event. I'm a brit and obviously affected by the bombings we recently experienced. Stocks lost value incredibly fast, as no doubt all of you are aware. Many companies bought back their stocks making huge profits. Does this make the very companies you trade on unethical, they are still directly making profit from the disaster? I don't buy they were trying to inject confidence into the stocks which someone out there may argue, at the same time they didn't try to justify the buys as this. As they said: a quick profit was to be made, they made, were open about it and wern't ashamed of it. How much of their profits went to charity..............erm............0! I can't see how a persons conscience should be affected by the profit you make from any aspect of the stock market. If you don't sell when it's time to sell, or buy when its time to buy because of sentimentality that has surely got to lead to bankrupt ally! For all you affected by guilt in such scenarios your just helping the fat cats get richer while you go broke. If you think a stocks crashing you sell, if its climbing you buy, regardless of reason that's trading!
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1567318,00.html 'Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster,' said Connaughton. Oh yeah, yeah... "natural" oh yeah, yeah, it's due to Global Warming and of course military experiments on weather has nothing to do with the weather deterioration, how many brainwashing will there be in the medias ?
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1567318,00.html 'Hurricane Katrina was a natural disaster,' said Connaughton. Oh yeah, yeah... "natural" oh yeah, yeah, it's due to Global Warming and of course military experiments on weather has nothing to do with the weather deterioration, how many brainwashing will there be in the medias ? This has been planified since a long time: http://watch.pair.com/hurricanes.html In 1968 Gordon J. F. MacDonald was an associate director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the UCLA, a member of Pres. Lyndon Johnsonâs Science Advisory Committee and is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. In his 1968 book, Unless Peace Comes: A Scientific Forecast Of New Weapons, MacDonald wrote a chapter titled âHow to Wreck the Environmentâ in which he stated that the seeding of hurricanes was in the experimental stages. MacDonald predicted that it would only be a matter of time before man would be able to steer hurricanes: âModification of storms, too, could have major strategic implications. As I have mentioned, preliminary experiments have been carried out on the seeding of hurricanes. The dynamics of hurricanes and the mechanism by which energy is transferred from the ocean into the atmosphere supporting the hurricane are poorly understood. Yet various schemes for both dissipation and steering can be imagined. Although hurricanes originate in tropical regions, they can travel into temperate latitudes, as the residents of New England know only too well. A controlled hurricane could be used as a weapon to terrorize opponents over substantial parts of the populated world. âIt is generally supposed that a hurricane draws most of its energy from the sea over which it passes. The necessary process of heat transfer depends on wave action which permits the air to come in contact with a volume of water. This interaction between the air and water also stirs the upper layers of the atmosphere and permits the hurricane to draw on a substantially larger reservoir of heat than just the warm surface water. There may be ways, using monomolecular films of materials like those developed for covering reservoirs to reduce evaporation, for decreasing the local interaction between sea and air and thus preventing the ocean from providing energy to the hurricane in an accelerated fashion. Such a procedure, coupled with selective seeding, might provide hurricane guidance mechanisms. At present [1968] we are a long way from having the basic data and understanding necessary to carry out such experiments; nevertheless, the long-term possibility of developing and applying such techniques under the cover of natureâs irregularities presents a disquieting prospect.â (1097)
Hurricanes seem to love concentration of oil refineries : http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050923/ap_on_re_us/rita "one aimed at a section of coastline with the nation's biggest concentration of oil refineries." Remember shutting down electricity to inflate price ? http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33611&highlight=shutting And what about shuting down oil refineries using hurricanes ....
Why do so many people act like trading should be ethical? The world isn't a fair place, and shit happens. Business is business and trading is trading. For those that wouldn't short a hurricain related stock, would you get out of it if you were long? and get back in once the storm passed? Trading is not ethical, so why treat it that way? You buy pfizer because you think the price will go up, any thought to how they are making their cash by patenting drugs much needed in the developing world? Cigarette companies already mentioned, Nike sweat shops paying 12 year old kids peanuts etc etc etc A trading chance is a chance and there is nothing you can do about the shit that goes on in this world. Any single player won't change the shit that happens by trading, so unless you are going to get off your butt, and rebuild SE Asia, or sign up to help rebuild New Orleans why not trade the storm? Just my thoughts. FGBS
The brainwashing machine for the masses is now started : "natural" disaster is due to UFO and the Mayan Prophecy sure the Human Scientists from Gov have nothing to do http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/features/20051110-9999-1c10ufo.html He sees Maya link in UFOs, natural disasters By Pablo Jaime Sainz UNION-TRIBUNE November 10, 2005 New York Times Jaime Maussan will speak about prophecies of the Maya, an advanced civilization that built temples such as the ruins of Tulum in Yucatan. Katrina. Rita. Wilma. The earthquake in Pakistan. These devastating natural disasters are part of the change the world is undergoing, something the Maya foretold thousands of years ago. That's according to Jaime Maussan, a popular investigator of UFO phenomena in Mexico. What's more, he said, a Maya prophecy predicts radical changes for the year 2012 that will alter the history of the planet. Maussan will be at the California Center for the Arts, Escondido tomorrow to present a conference titled "La ProfecÃa," where he said he will explore how the Maya predicted the future through their knowledge of astronomy. "There are indications that the Maya had knowledge of this 5,000 years ago," he said, referring to the natural disasters. "The question is: Who told them?" He theorizes that extraterrestrials somehow contacted the Maya, who were able to develop an understanding of events to come. Someone looking at Maussan's résumé would not have prophesied his involvement with UFOs. The Mexico native received a bachelor's degree in radio and television studies from Miami University in Ohio. In the 1970s and '80s, he was considered one of Mexico's leading investigative journalists, working in that country's version of "60 Minutes." In 1991, he became interested in the wave of UFO sightings Mexico experienced after that year's solar eclipse. Since then, the 52-year-old has become Mexico's most popular UFO investigator, thanks to his weekly television program, "Third Millennium," and interviews in popular variety shows like "Otro Rollo." Maussan said his interest in the Maya began after he investigated the mysterious designs that had been carved into fields in England, designs similar to Maya symbols. Why does he think the Maya can predict the future? The subject is a little complicated, because it is based upon codices and the Maya calendar, he explained from his home in Mexico City. The first Maya prophecy is about "no-time," a 20-year period called the "katum" â part of a great solar cycle 5,125 years long, he said. This "no-time" period stretches from 1992 to 2012. The Maya prophesied that at that time, ever more intense sunspots would appear on our stellar neighborhood and that, starting in 1992, humanity would enter a last great period of introspection. He said the natural disasters around the globe are delivering lessons about the power and limits humans have to control their world. "We have to prepare for the climactic changes that are on the way. San Diego and other coastal cities could be lost. We face the possibility of a catastrophe in this sense," he said. "We are in a period of very great and important change." So what's the use in knowing all of this? "We must show more loyalty to one another, more solidarity among ourselves." EDUARDO VERDUGO / Associated Press In 2004, Jaime Maussan watched a video about Mexican air force pilots who identified 11 UFOs. Not everyone in Mexico buys Maussan's message. Some plainly call him a fraud. Dino de Labra is a journalist and investigator, who hosts the Tijuana radio program "Cosmic Sphere," which deals with UFOs and paranormal phenomena. He said Maussan's work is nothing more than marketing. "He's only succeeding in titillating the audience. UFOs are a great business," said De Labra, whose program can be heard on both sides of the border. "When someone investigates these matters, it's not just about making money, but also nourishing people's spirituality, of awakening their conscience. Maussan shows only blurry videos. It's nothing that nourishes people's spirit. "Maussan is an entertainer," de Labra concludes. Pablo Lonnie Pacheco works for the Astronomical Society of the Alfa Planetarium in Monterrey, the most prominent such facility in northern Mexico. He has debated Maussan several times on television. Pacheco said what bothers him is that Maussan is creating a panic to make money. "He's a charlatan," he said. "He takes advantage of people's ignorance. He sees UFOs everywhere. Maussan lost a great deal of credibility last year, when he maintained that the asteroid Toutatis would crash into the Earth, Pacheco said. "Most people are ignorant about astronomy. Maussan presents it in a fun and creative way, and that's how he gets them hooked," said Pacheco, who has a column on the Astronomical Society's Web site titled "Las Maussandas," dedicated to refuting Maussan's statements. Advertisement There is little dispute that Maussan is a draw. He virtually sold out four presentations he made Oct. 28 and 29 at Tijuana's Centro Cultural. Maussan's work is well known by investigators in the United States. Mel Podell, director of the Mutual UFO Network in San Diego, an organization that investigates sightings in the region, said he has followed Maussan's career for several years. "Maussan is a believable person, a serious person we can rely on," said Podell, calling Maussan Latin America's pre-eminent UFO researcher. "The work he is doing to keep people informed is good." Maussan himself said he leaves it up to the audience to decide what to believe. "I am just a journalist trying to find answers to these phenomena. I present the evidence. Each person must decide what they believe and what they cannot." -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pablo Jaime Sainz is a contributor to the Union-Tribune's weekly bilingual newspaper Enlace.