你好！我十月搬台灣住。

[Bison]

Take care Mark and don't be a stranger.

[Gusington]

Welcome...and goodbye?

[Nefaro]

Keep an eye out for those new "stamina" pills.

Like having eggs for breakfast!

Except, instead of chicken fetuses - it's human ones!

;)

[Gusington]

It's people!!

[W8taminute]

Good to hear from you Markshot and I hope you find success and happiness out there.  I'm really impressed at your progress with Cantonese.  I wish I could learn it as fast as you in order to talk to my good friend in his native tongue.

[Martok]

Markshot, you SOB!  I'm glad you found us.  Most excellent! 

[undercovergeek]

only thinking about you yesterday Markshot - sat playing Port Royale and wondering who was that guy that did all the stock trading with the railways - ive forgotten before, and ill forget again!!!

take care

[MarkShot]

Let me tell you as hard as 1830-PC AI was, there was a logic to it.

Ah, but when it got to real stock trading ... a friend, Pocus (who develops for AGEOD/PI), had warned me, "the markets will have more randomness than any game you have ever played".  He was right.

I studied math, trading strategies, macro economics, micro economics, fundamental analysis, technical analysis, market indicators, software tools, wrote my own code, etc... and still the movements in the markets could be totally baffling at times.

Additionally, gamers talk about AIs that cheat.  Well, let me tell you that that you can clearly see cheating in the markets.  The fair market says that all investors have access to the same information; because trading on anything else is against the law and called insider trading.  But you'll see a stocks break up or break down for a day or two, and then, there will be some key announcement.  You're not going to convince me that some hedge funds weren't tapping information that the general public doesn't have and rebalancing their portfolios.  Over the last year, 60 Minutes did a very nice report on how the US Congress and staff were not prohibited from trading in stocks while privately meeting to make policy that would impact millions/billions of dollars worth of corporate P&Ls.  You can win at the game, but it is rigged.

I found out that Jim Cramer (who I always found very amusing to watch on CNBC) isn't right all that much of the time.  However, you rarely see his bad calls get much air time.  What I learned is that if you can't make the write picks having a TV show, Web site, and selling a new book every year also can be quite profitable.

Another one of my favorites was Investors Business Daily (much more detailed than the Wall Street Journal).  Everyday, they publish the "Big Picture" ... almost a pseudo-market weather report letting you know if it is safe to go long or should you start closing positions.  I ultimately saw that trading based on these forecasts always had you lagging to market.  By the time, you got in, the mini-rally was done.

Finally, there was MetaStock from Equis International; an extremely impressive analytic tool for technical analysis.  If you play chess, it was kind of like having the power of a chess engine and opening database analysis ... that was user programmable.  Anyway I back tested (applied historically) a lot of different trading strategies.  My conclusions.  In a real bull market, despite any strategy you were better off picking the right stocks (like APPL, GOOG, AMZN) and simply holding than trading them in and out. l also found out that in a sidewards trading market most of these algorithms performed poorly.  Traders hate sideward markets, because they are very hard to make money ... you really need a trending market to take a position.

Well, I learned a lot.  I probably got out too soon.  Should have kept playing longer and learning.  Another thing about the markets ... there is no beginner mode.  When you fund that trading account, you're playing on Deity Mode.  Of course, there are paper accounts you can practice with, but still there is no simple mode.

Finally, one of the most amazing things I found about technical analysis was that for the most part, there are very few inputs:  open, close, low, high, and volume.  And yet you wouldn't believe the amount of indicators and plots that can be built on those five inputs.  We're talking hundreds here.

It was all very educational and I only scratched the surface putting in 14-16 hours days.  But I think I like war games better.  In fact, I know I like war games better.

[LongBlade]

Nice insight, Mark. Thanks.

[James Sterrett]

Good luck in Taiwan, Mark!

My son has started to get interested in 1830...!   :)

[MarkShot]

One of my greatest regrets is that Apple's police state management of the App Store caused the expulsion of DOSBOX for the iPad.  There are just so many great DOS games which would be perfect for the iPad.  Of course, I know you can jail break, but I don't want to go that route.

Nice to hear from you again, James!

[MarkShot]

Good to hear from you Markshot and I hope you find success and happiness out there.  I'm really impressed at your progress with Cantonese.  I wish I could learn it as fast as you in order to talk to my good friend in his native tongue.

Actually, most Westerners think Chinese is very hard, but not really.  I know 6 languages and Chinese is quite approachable.  However, reading and writing is really hard.  Here is an excerpt something I posted someplace regarding Chinese:

Personally, I think spoken Chinese is very easy to learn. In many ways, it is similar to Haitian Kreyol. There are no conjugations or alterations of subjects. Everything depends on word order.

Mandarin (written in a Pin Yin, a phonetic system used in the PRC):

Wo = I, me, mine
Ni = you, yours
Gei = give
Shu = book
Zuo tian = yesterday

Wo gei ni = I give you.
Ni gei wo = You give me.
Wo di shu = My book.
Zuo tian, wo gei ni = Yesterday, I gave you.

Kreyol (written in a phoentic system popular in the 1970s, but it has been replaced/modified)

Mouin = I, me, mine
Ou = you, yours
Ba = give
Liv = book
Ye = yesterday

Mouin ba ou = I give you.
Ou ba mouin = You give me.
Liv mouin = My book.
Ye, mouin te ba ou = Yesterday, I gave you.

Of course, Chinese is much, much harder to learn to read and write. Kreyol after a few simple rules, if you can say it, then you can read and write it. BTW, I used to teach Kreyol literacy to Haitian peasants and fishermen in NYC (English too).

The hardest part with learning Cantonese is that Mandarin is the official dialect of Chinese.  Mandarin instruction in the USA (assuming that's where you are) is much more prevalent these days.  However, there are not that many universities which teach Cantonese.  You'll find Cantonese spoken in Hong Kong, Macau, Canton (Southern China), and many overseas Chinese communities.  In 1932, Cantonese had lost by one vote becoming the official dialect of China.  (something that my wife will forever hold a grudge for)

[Arctic Blast]

Hey, MarkShot. Sounds like you're having quite the fulfilling adventure.  ;D

[W8taminute]

Interesting read MarkShot.  It sounds like there really is no grammatical rules to process?  Merely learning words and putting them in correct order?

[MarkShot]

Well, syntax (word order) by linguistic standards is still grammar, but you don't have to deal with a lot rules that are fairly common in Western languages.  So, if you ask me which is more complex to learn to speak German or Mandarin?  Then I would say German for sure assuming you don't already speak a language which is quite similar.

I just Googled, there are a couple of universities offering Cantonese in NYC (Colombia and Baruch).  Then, you can go downtown to Chinatown for some good food and practice.

However, if you are going to invest the time and unless you have a real pressing need to speak Cantonese, I would recommend learning Mandarin instead as it is the official language.  If you ever plan to use your language skills professionally or travel in China, you'll get a lot more mileage out of Mandarin.

Even in Macau ... 10 years ago, you could barely find anyone who spoke Mandarin.  These days with the surge of economic growth in China, the lifting of travel restrictions, ... you'll find many Chinese working in Southern China (culturally Cantonese) who are Mandarin speakers.  Besides those transplants (public school education and the presence of so many Mandarin speakers) has also caused many of the younger Cantonese to know Mandarin.