Behind the Form
4/12/2005
Briefly Speaking: Behind the Form, by Victor
Niederhoffer
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The market awaits the minutes of the Fed meeting of March 22 with bated breath to see how hawkish they were on inflation. Since March 16, and March 22 , the CRB index has gone down 6% and 3% respectively. Talk about the public's being behind the form.
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The market is down today additionally on a record trade deficit of 61 billion compared to a 59 billion estimate and concomitant weakness of the dollar. But the dollar is actually up about 3/4 percent on the news. Reminds me of all the times that market went down on fixed income rate hikes when interest rates actually went down.
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I reflect on tax payment week of April 2000 when the market dropped 160 points. That's S&P points. Many other years were grotesque also to a non-random extent. Reminder of who owns most of our lives.
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Interdisciplinary studies often give most insight to a field as they bring up universal factors and fresh perspectives. The book Regression Methods in Biostatistics by Vittinghoff et al, Springer, 2005, I find helpful. Nice discussion of exploratory techniques for physicians including the LOWESS Smooth and survival statistics, the most neglected useful method for our field.