Tom at Neural Market Trends asked:
Nice, I was planning on using Excel to build an interface with their API as well. Was it hard to do? Do I need to learn Visual Basic?

What I want to do is address this question from a trading perspective.

Kudlow, and a few others have chimed in on how having the fed ease would be good for the economy and the strength of the dollar. Since I thought that this is an interesting thought experiment and why not do some research.

WallStrip is touring the Google campus today. I just opened a position in GOOG a few days ago and have some more money slated to invest in it if the price drops from here or breaks up from here (and forces a MA crossover). Christian asks why I feel the need to invest in GOOG. The simple answer is that I think the price is going to go up… a lot.

People are scared off by the $500 price tag, but GOOG is actually a value play by my calculations. Let’s try this. E*Trade has GOOG’s 2006 EPS at $10.58. So what would GOOG’s EPS growth rate and average PE need to be to warrant a sticker price of $515? The answer is a 20% growth rate and average PE of 30. Here’s the math:

Rating: Two Thumbs Up, Required Reading, with a note of caution.
This book review is hard for me to explain. On the one hand I want to say, go, go, go buy this book. On the other hand this book is not like Fooled By Randomness. Fooled By Randomness I feel was a book written because Taleb had some interesting musings. A book to amuse. The Black Swan is when Taleb gets on his soap box, explains, teaches, and rants.
It was funny at one point in the book Taleb points out how Merton …

I find it amazing that with a 10% drop in the market reached it is now time to buy? Why? Because P/E ratios are good? Because cash flow is good? The economy is still good and strong right? And therefore there is no recession?
It’s a time to buy right? After all it seems all the professional traders are buying… (It seemed somebody was buying today)

…the next low (read: the next support level) is 1222 of June 13th, 2006. (!!!)
We appear to have bounced back off that level, but that support level is not holding strongly. Don’t be suprised if it falls over.
Countrywide is all but gone. That is the last of the non-bank lenders.
What is even more shocking is - bigger resets are going to hit in September and October! You could argue that we are now pricing in these resets, but that would suggest the market is efficient. Don’t …

On CNBC Europe there was this guy from Saxobank who talked about how the models of today are illustrating that computers will yet again fail. He was saying how good traders will save the day.

I shorted down a burning ring of fire
I went down down down
And the flames went higher

Today on CNBC American Squawk box I heard one of the most straight talking individuals I have listened to in a long while. The panel was Steve Forbes, and a woman called Janet Tavakoli, and they were talking about Quant funds and their models.
Janet’s comment regarding quant model’s was, and I quote:
Model Masturbation

I cracked up howling…
Otherwise she made some very good comments. This is definitely one individual that I will be looking up to see what else she is thinking about.

Many, including myself are wondering who is responsible for this mess. Many point at Greenspan, but I think it is not so black and white.
One problem that we have is that people don’t understand the mathematics and dynamics of mortgages. I even get the feeling that mortgage lenders are pretty clueless. In particular I would like to quote the following from Housing Bubble.
“One was a waitress who made decent money at a high end restaurant, but couldn’t prove it because so much of her pay was in cash tips. Another was a …