John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics was interviewed in the 3rd hour of the Feb. 18th Financial Sense Newshour. During the segment, Williams made some very strong points about how one set of corrupt statistics can ripple through to the reporting of a larger set of economic numbers. You can listen to the interview by clicking the Newshour link and choosing your listening format.
Today we continue our series, "Lessons from Hedge Fund Market Wizards" , with a look at Jack Schwager's interview with Scott Ramsey of Denali Asset Management. Ramsey, a futures trader and CTA who works on the island of St. Croix, spoke to Schwager about his first foray into the markets, his evolution as a trader, and the process he stands by to protect and grow his clients' money. 1) . Ramsey started trading in college. He was roped into the OTC metals market via a broker's ad in the Wall St. Journal. The broker charged customers a flat fee to buy and sell as much as they wanted in a particular market for six month. At the time, Scott was a novice and didn't know about futures, so he traded metals in this fashion through the inflationary run-up of the late 1970s. 2) . Scott had to rethink his trading strategy after he bought silver at $50 an oz., only to watch it collapse to $26 following a long string of limit-down days. He sold as soon as the market...