Dan Druff, This is what created the monster

This is the specific piece of deregulation that torpedoed our economy


A milestone in the deregulation effort came in the fall of 2000, when a lame-duck session of Congress passed a little-noticed piece of legislation called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. The bill effectively kept much of the market for derivatives and other exotic instruments off-limits to agencies that regulate more conventional assets like stocks, bonds and futures contracts.

Supported by Phil Gramm, then a Republican senator from Texas and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, the legislation was a 262-page amendment to a far larger appropriations bill. It was signed into law by President Bill Clinton that December.

Mr. Gramm, now the vice chairman of UBS, the Swiss investment banking giant, was unavailable for comment. (UBS has recently seen its fortunes hammered by ill-considered derivative investments.)

“I don’t believe anybody understood the significance of this,” says Mr. Greenberger, describing the bill’s impact.


http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/business...amp;oref=slogin

Oh and if you think Bill Clinton is a liberal, you are living in a fantasy world. Only damn thing that guy ever did that was liberal was gays in the military and blowjobs in the WhiteHouse


and starring deregulation as the bad guy

i wouldn't worry too much about this being the cause for most of the recent market turmoil. derivatives and futures weren't their downfall, it was the fact that traders in the organization didn't have enough capital to handle the swings of their leveraged bets. commodities/futures are good for the market when used properly IMO. farmers and mining companies can hedge their expected income with these tools by either buying or selling futures against their expected crops/mining deposits. the most important thing is that they do not overexpose their leverage with these tools. the error is human, not the commodity or derivative that is used.

as far as regulation goes, i don't think it's necessary. wall street is about one thing and one thing only; to make as much money for the exchange and its members. it's nothing more and nothing less. the money moves in cycles from one sector to the next and extracts as much money from the producers as it can before taking a shit(and plenty of peoples money) and going on to the next market. in the late 90s it was the tech sector and recently the housing market. the only way you're going to beat the market averages is if you make solid trades and know when a specific market's days are numbered. all the fancy explanations, market valuations that they teach you in school and the like is a bunch of garbage.

they make it sound like a complex game but in reality it comes down to simple supply and demand. when there are buyers, prices increase and when there aren't prices fall. you just have to figure out when to enter and exit and you are gold. a buy and hold strategy and dollar cost averaging is going to get you your 10% a year but only because new issues are thrown into the averages once the lagtard stocks don't perform anymore(where are all the stocks from decades past now? many are busto obv). sure some were merged but how have they performed once taken out of the dow or s&p index? buy as prices increase and take your profit and sell short or hold cash when prices fall. don't let the street take you for a ride and don't worry about fundamental analysis or whatever cnbc is feeding you, the market prices/volume/direction will tell you everything you need to know. all you need is ten positions in your trading portfolio, don't worry about diversification; they(exchanges and members) just want you to make more trades to make more commission and profit with the bid/ask spread. markets don't collapse overnight and if it were to happen, the trading will tell you. i've said this before but a good trader will make 50%+/year without a sweat if he/she knows what they are doing and it will not mater if the market is up 30% or down 20% for the year.







http://www.neverwinpoker.com/forums/conten...ment-Palladium/

this was a fucking solid suggestion gamble but you should have went balls deep and just picked up a futures contract and you would have picked up a 15k profit in a month if you would have put up 5k margin on one contract instead of buying the actual product. the 1k price target was a bit out there. were you looking at the 2000-2001 chart for your price target? if so you should have noticed that the 600 mark was a major support/resistance mark and waited to see what happened around that level. after you recommended palladium it almost reached the 600 mark before the volume slipped and the price slumped. you could have made mad bank in just over a month with futures if you followed this play. the volume is down and imo 1k isn't happening anytime soon but that was one solid run up in one month when you recommended it!

anyway, sorry for the ramble but i don't get to chat about this stuff on the boards.

Ya, I still own the Palladium, its sitting at the bank and sadly I paid 6% over spot for it including shipping and insurance

I had no idea I could buy a precious metal on margin. Where do I even go for this. Certainly not my Scott trade account
Let me know ASAP.


Oh, and by the way, there is reason the rest of our banking is and has been heavily regulated, why give exotics a free pass and a chance to succumb to greed? I might half way agree with you if it wasn't for the federal bailout. That reads lets get greedy, cut corners and when everything goes to hell and we have pocketed millions in profits, the government bails us out. That isn't free market. That sounds like the airline industry.

http://www.lind-waldock.com/

you can trade a bunch of different futures there gamble. u can also google futures brokers and can look into others. for palladium fututres you get to control 100 troy ounces with a minimum openning margin of ~2k and the maintinance margin is 1,500. obv you will want to put up more than the 2k margin because you will get a margin call with a $6 move(each dollar change in price=$100) in the price of the contract but you can leverage pretty sick if you're gonna gamble.

i agree on the government bailout bs. i'm for no regulation and no bailouts. let them go under and let someone else will take their place imo.

Thanks, im gonna