How to make money by just having some “Patience” …

As predicted, today FOMC - Federal Open Market Committee left federal funds rates unchanged at 1%, and also surprised the market when decided to change the wording “considerable period” for “can be patient in removing its policy accommodation". Instead of sending signals for a change in policy they sent the message for a possible dollar defense sometime soon, especially against Euro, in fact USD rallied 2% vs. EURO late in the afternoon. US Stocks felt almost 2%, so portfolio managers playing short on CBOT:DJ Index future must be taking profits now. The end of dollar decline seems to be close but will depend on 4Q GDP announcement, and manufacturing and labor reports coming in the next days.

Second Opportunity…

The second Mars Rover named Opportunity landed last Saturday 24 on a region called Terra Meridiani (Meridiani Planum) which is believed to have sedimentary rocks and could have some surface water formations. The rover named Spirit landed on the opposite side of mars. Here is the first high-resolution picture taken by Opportunity. Surrounding rocks are gray hematite which is found in three places on Mars: Meridiani Planum, Aram Chaos and Valles Marineris, most theories propose that hematite was formed by a hydrothermal process.

Now we are 6,344,153,755 living on Earth …Confirmed: water found in Mars…

As we reach more than 6 billion souls on Earth according to projections of the US Census Bureau thoughts about how to deal with overpopulation come to our heads. In 1750 Johann Peter SuBmilch estimated that Earth could feed up to 10 billion people, later Malthus’s prophecies on population and food supply sent a relevant message to make us look for new ways to change this fate. SuBmilch and Malthus never imagined how biotechnology and genetic engineered crops could help, nonetheless, even with the extensive application of these technologies the problem will still be here, as economic growth, geographic distribution of the population, age and productivity, access to resources, and many other issues are part of the equation.

Could it be possible that the solution is not here on Earth?. Mankind has always wanted to reach the stars. This old romantic idea is hopefully to become part of the solution in the years to come, now that the Mars Express mission from the European Space Agency has confirmed the existence of ice water in Mars. This image contains three
views, from right to left of one region in the southern polar cap: ice (H2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), and visible light.

MIT: Top ten emerging technologies

MIT Technology Review has published the top 10 emerging technologies that most probably will change our lives in the next 10 years. The nominees are:
-Universal Translation: real-time natural language processing tools that allow people to communicate in any language.
-Synthetic Biology: using DNA manipulation to create or alter cell states and responses, building synthetic organs, programming bacteria to create living sensors for almost any purpose, and so on.
-Nanowires: are microscopic wires that allow building small scale solutions, such as medical devices, future Intel processors, and flat panel displays.
-Bayesian Machine Learning: allows programs based on Bayesian probabilistic approaches to process data and deduce dependencies. Possible applications are on robots, building new drugs, gene regulation, Web search engines techniques.
-T-Rays: or terahertz radiation that enable to penetrate materials without the hazards of the X-rays. Applications are on production lines inspection devices, scanners, and identifying skin cancers.
-Distributed Storage: this technology will allow users to manage, store and retrieve data across multiple sites and machines without worrying about location. Using Internet as a filling cabinet for files is the fist step.
-RNAi Therapy: using RNA to treat diseases or gene behavior. Possible applications could be on pharmaceuticals, and special medical therapies.
-Power Grid Control: is a software-based control created by ABB engineering that allows to sample power grids 30 times per second and to determine when adjustments due to peaks, overload, or failures should be made. Power disruptions will be 100 times less likely.
-Microfluidic Optical Fibers: by pumping fluids into optical fibers it is possible to change its physical properties, correct distortions due to material properties, and boost bandwidth of communications. The adoption of this technology will depend on next generation of Internet applications and the associated demand for speed.
-Personal Genomics: the dream of personalized medicine in 3 billion DNA letters. Genetic test to determine the effects of certain drugs are among many possible uses of this technology.

Bush @ State of the Union Address

After listening Mr. G. W. Bush third speech at the State of the Union Address I was surprised on how weak Mr. Bush presented his points. With emphasis on homeland security, and Irak, failed to "bring the nation together", as Bill Richardson put it, and was short on domestic issues. Interestingly, as a prevention measure in case of possible terrorist attacks on DC, four members of the Congress and one of Bush’s Cabinet did not attend the address.

Summary: no big new proposals, unfinished issues, health care and insurance, no steroids, economy doing good??, appeal to conservatives, tax cuts permanent??.

Funny: If you still need more arguments against Bush reelection next November, check this automatic Conspiracy Theory Generator....

STARDUST Flying by Comet P/Wild-2

On Jan 2 the STARDUST Team at Jet Propulsion Lab captured these images of the Comet Wild-2 nucleus at 100 Km. from the comet. STARDUST mission began on February 1999 and will be returning sample debris from the comet to the earth in 2006, after flying by the comet's tail at 13,600 mph.

Dell: The next CISCO challenge

Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) is looking into new sources of revenues. Michael Dell is now focusing on a real complex market, initially on Layer 2 and 3 switching devices threatening Mr. John Chambers from CISCO (NASDAQ: CSCO) with a business model that continues to be difficult to imitate.

Dell success is related to the value and quality delivered by a direct model based on a per-unit inventory system, and with extremely optimized supply chain processes that provide 20% gross margins and 10% operating expenses.

JP Morgan Chase + BankOne = No. 2 Financial Institution in US

JP Morgan Chase (Nyse: JPM) will be paying approximately a 14% premium over the market price to acquire BankOne (Nyse: ONE). This merge will create the second largest financial institution in the US after CitiGroup (Nyse: C) with assets around $1.1 trillion. This will allow JP Morgan Chase to achieve a balanced business mix by diversifying into retail financial services to account for 33% of its business operations.

The Knowledge Worker and the 2015 Corporation

Dave Pollard presents us a vision of how will workers and companies operate in the future. Technological advances in information and knowledge management will drive intense structural changes on how companies will operate and how managers will develop their strategies. After learning lessons from early-years outsourcing experiences, companies will tend to get rid of processes that no longer offer value added and differentiation to products and services, focusing instead on what the knowledge worker can do and what the conscious-consumer requires. Adjusts on the corporate side will create preference for protecting reputation and small business will take market share from the big ones by applying a sort of "judo strategy" based on knowledge and agility.

Links are the currency of the Web

Traffic on web nodes and pages are related directly to the relevance of the content, or simply to the number of links pointing to one particular Web page. The former model was used by the first generation of search engines, while the second one, based on link analysis independent of the content, is currently used by Google. With this in mind then we can say that web links have monetary value in the Web economy. Using this fact Boris Galitsky and Mark Levene from the School of Computer Science and Information Systems at Birkbeck College, University of London, have simulated an artificial world of Web links where you can buy and sell web links as a way to increase visibility, concluding that control of over links in the equilibrium state is polarized, as most agents end up with no resources to buy more links, in a classical example of the "rich get richer" phenomenon.

MARS: Spirit's first panoramic

On Jan 12, The Jet Propulsion Laboratory received the first 360-degree panoramic of the reddish Martian surface. Hills Complex on far east are 3 Km. away from the rover, this picture depicts details as far as 27 Km. Notice that an even red sky is predominant. Shadows of the rocks nearby the rover tells us that this panoramic was composed early in the "Martian afternoon" with the sun located somewhere around 310-degrees azimuth. Also check this interactive QTVR from NASA.

Novell and the new Linux market

On Jan 13, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) completed a $210 million cash acquisition of the SUSE LINUX. IBM (NYSE: IBM) is also investing $50 million on Novell to cover arrangements for commercial use and distribution of Linux on their eServer series.

Low Carbs: "Offering you less, for the same price!"

For those interested on diets and healthy options, low carb hamburgers are finally here: giant fast-food chains McDonalds (Nyse:MCD) and Burger King are now offering bunless burgers.

Central Bank of Venezuela and reserve assets…

The last controversial request from the Venezuelan Government of 1 Billion USD in reserves from The Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) has created lots of reasonable thoughts and opinions against it, as Central Bank’s Reserves exists not to finance government policies and social programs but to act as a collateral to sustain the country's legal currency. This is not about politics and neoliberalism as the Government followers claim, the reasons are rooted in the definition of what is the role of any Central Bank on managing reserve assets. What will be the destiny of Venezuelan reserves and its Central Bank under the pressure of the regime? Time will tell…

USD: another opportunity?

I should have played some speculative short on US-Forex derivatives last November when the bullish dollar started to show its face. Now is too late, as some may argue that the 1.30 EUR/USD resistance will be the point to adopt a strong dollar policy. How will the G7 policy makers deal with this situation? US rates at 1% for a “considerable period”, according to Mr. Greenspan are likely to create conditions for a recovery to happen. It is very soon, but some numbers are not helping, check the last US unemployment reports for instance, or read this interesting paper by Mr. P. Orszag, R. Rubin and A. Sinai from the Brookings Institution on what can happen under huge budget deficits in the years to come. Good news for an electoral year, chances for new promises?

In the beginning...

After reading Dave Pollard’s ideas about blogging as a social phenomenon I decided to take a walk in the blogsphere and started this window. So let's see how it goes...