Fisher has been one of the few at the Fed who has a clue.

lt cap,

Interesting to watch Fisher ping and pong between defense of what the fed did (the 'wealth effect' was a net 'accompishment'? I don't know that that story is over yet), and wisdom about China being too narrow a focus. And yes, it does feel somewhat like a 'storm' is gathering in the market, altho, yes, I did hear him say something equivalent to 'flat at first' while the market digests the (artificially induced) gains.

China as the 'whipping boy' makes me wonder why NOK, which I think you said has a considerable stake in China, isn't being sold off enough to be terribly noticeable since the fall started with the new year. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. My stance is, as I've said, I'd like to accumulate more NOK but there may be better prices if the market continues to stumble. I think  CIEN has some 'repair' and 'proof' to do to show that the long-term thesis is correct, so I'm just going to sit with an underwater position for a while and be patient. I'm undecided on INFN - If it goes below 17 (yes, it did it again today, but not while I was awake), it would seem like an awfully compelling covered call play. 

On Occulus rift - personally, yes, I'm quite interested. But probably not at $599 if there isn't much content and they're working out the bugs. A bit like 4k tvs,perhaps. I just don't know how far along they are, and whether they've got a completed product. Saw a survey that had way high numbers of people who are interested in VR and would like to own such a product, and I do think it'll be the 'next big thing' in videogames and such. But timing and product are everything - I just watch it peripherally, but the Nvidia Shield seems like a good idea on paper. I just don't know anyone who is interested in it, and I think I keep seeing the selling price eroding.

Unlike Jester, I am a pc gamer. I just built my first system, with parts cheap enough so that if it blew up upon firing to 'on', it was a learning experience. And it was, as it appears to be working perfectly, much to my surprise. I haven't gamed with it yet, but holiday sales had me picking up a Haswell-E 5930x chip and Nvidia 980GTX on the cheap for the next machine. The Haswell-E's  a reasonable alternative to a system based on Intel's new Skylake processors.

Jamok,

 

Re Fisher:

I certainly agree that it is too soon to fully assess what the Fed has done to get this country (and the global economy) from the brink of a depression and to re-inflate asset prices.

 

However, for the sake of doing an early assessment exercise:

1.- Avoiding an outright depression – so far so good, I could argue this is unlikely in the next several years.

2.- Re-Inflating asset prices – so far so good, but from where I sit, the market may be a bit pricey, not overly but it needs a decent 10% to 18% pull back.  Housing Market is recovering but lending is not available to all who would like to buy a house, it probably will take a few more years to fully normalize.  I also think that the Fed stayed on an easing mode longer than it should have and has had the effect of widening the ongoing wealth divide.  While I was a direct beneficiary of the Fed policies, I too have trouble seeing so many people still struggling mightily.

 

3.- Normalizing Inflation – Not there yet.  The ongoing commodity crash is troubling because there is a lot of over-capacity, we are in the process of very heavy CapEx contraction which will likely overshoot and create the opposite.   When China was humming and over building, it had the effect of encouraging those in the commodity complex to expand capacity much beyond where it would be needed when the inevitable slow down arrived.  Boom and Bust in this sector is the norm I suppose.  With the dollar strong, it also keeps inflation low since we import so much from abroad.

lt cap,

All unimpeachable logic. And you did cite some of the negative effects of QE. I am simply puzzled by how can we print so much money, with no backing, and the 'price' is some rather mild effects, rather than huge downstream problems as a consequence. Did we play with fire and somehow avoid getting much blowback beyond a little 'singeing'? Is 'timing' everything, so that a strong dollar and commodities over-supply has avoided the bullet of runaway inflation that one might expect from pumping so much money into the economy? I'm sure I could use some more sophistication in my understanding this. But it feels like someone declared that 2 + 2 = 5. And damned if they weren't right :-)

If the futures hold, this market may be down some 9% already from the S&P high of 2132.  Oil is getting crushed, it declined some 5% yesterday and is down 4% this morning. Ditto for Chinese stocks.

It is all coming down hard in unison across the globe, it could really get ugly out there in the next few weeks

lt cap,

Interesting to watch Fisher ping and pong between defense of what the fed did (the 'wealth effect' was a net 'accompishment'? I don't know that that story is over yet), and wisdom about China being too narrow a focus. And yes, it does feel somewhat like a 'storm' is gathering in the market, altho, yes, I did hear him say something equivalent to 'flat at first' while the market digests the (artificially induced) gains.

China as the 'whipping boy' makes me wonder why NOK, which I think you said has a considerable stake in China, isn't being sold off enough to be terribly noticeable since the fall started with the new year. Doesn't make a lot of sense to me. My stance is, as I've said, I'd like to accumulate more NOK but there may be better prices if the market continues to stumble. I think  CIEN has some 'repair' and 'proof' to do to show that the long-term thesis is correct, so I'm just going to sit with an underwater position for a while and be patient. I'm undecided on INFN - If it goes below 17 (yes, it did it again today, but not while I was awake), it would seem like an awfully compelling covered call play. 

On Occulus rift - personally, yes, I'm quite interested. But probably not at $599 if there isn't much content and they're working out the bugs. A bit like 4k tvs,perhaps. I just don't know how far along they are, and whether they've got a completed product. Saw a survey that had way high numbers of people who are interested in VR and would like to own such a product, and I do think it'll be the 'next big thing' in videogames and such. But timing and product are everything - I just watch it peripherally, but the Nvidia Shield seems like a good idea on paper. I just don't know anyone who is interested in it, and I think I keep seeing the selling price eroding.

Unlike Jester, I am a pc gamer. I just built my first system, with parts cheap enough so that if it blew up upon firing to 'on', it was a learning experience. And it was, as it appears to be working perfectly, much to my surprise. I haven't gamed with it yet, but holiday sales had me picking up a Haswell-E 5930x chip and Nvidia 980GTX on the cheap for the next machine. The Haswell-E's  a reasonable alternative to a system based on Intel's new Skylake processors.