…meanwhile, I’m not surprised our boys at NASA are snorting coke in the hanger bay, hell, if my employer just kept me around for the illusion of looking useful I’d want something more fun to do as well.  You know, I don’t mind the money that we are wasting at NASA doing absolutely nothing as much as I can’t stand that we have wasted so many years making next to zero progress with our space program.  This failure comes straight from the top of our government, it is a failure of imagination and understanding that science, for the sake of science, and not anything else, often leads to the most ground breaking discoveries that push our society forward and envigor our economy.  We spend 20% of the money we should be spending on getting us nowhere, wasting it just to say we are supporting a space program that our politicians don’t believe in, for some reason we’re ok with that.

Every couple of weeks I run through my whole universe of stocks looking for momentum.  It’s really a very simple process, freestockcharts.com has an excellent feature that allows you to move down a list of stocks produced by a scan just by hitting the space bar.  I’m not quite sure exactly how many issues I cover, but the scan is very simple, over 300 million market cap, average daily volume of at least 200K, over 2$, and above the 200 day moving average.  I click through rapid fire looking for the best trends, put them in a list, and comb through them with a finer brush afterwards.  90% of the stocks are already on my watch lists, the others I dive deeper in to, looking at fundamentals.  I then go very quickly through another scan, with the same parameters, except this time stocks trading under their 200 day moving average.

I get two main things out of this process, the first is a list of stocks exhibiting the best trends which I watch on a daily basis and trade.  The second is a great view of overall market strength and breadth.  I’m going to make a long story short and just say this, the market is going higher.  Yes, we might pull back 3 or 4% here, to the 50 day moving averages, or maybe even to the 20 period weekly moving averages.  Absent a dramatic move which interrupts the bullish pattern in so many issues, I don’t see an end to this rally in the near future.  One off events are always a possibility and we must be able to change course at the drop of a hat, but outside of this, higher we go.

A few years ago I took a few months to travel around South East Asia.  My trip took me from Thailand to Cambodia, through Vietnam, and on to Japan, before returning home to New York.  Let me just say quickly that it was an amazing trip, a complete culture shock, and a nice hard slap in the western face.  I’ve been all over the world, but this was an eye opening cultural experience.  Here’s the main thing I took away, these people are amazing merchants and have a huge entrepreneurial spirit.  I would say this is the case in Vietnam above all others.

I traveled into the very most northern part of Vietnam, to a town called Sapa.  I noticed there while using my Blackberry that I was on the Chinese cellular network Chinacom.  It’s amazing that in this completely isolated place up in the mountains that I would get perfect cell service with data and everything, I was never out of touch with the world for a minute.  But while I was there, I was in contact with an old college professor who had significant experience traveling within the region, especially China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.  She warned me sternly when I was there, that I should not connect to any data network, be it on a cell phone or a lap top, where I had sensitive information stored.  This lady has worked closely with defense and state department officials in the region, a well as having a vast network of local contacts.  According to her, the Chinese steal any and every piece of data they can get their hands on, and they get their hands on everything.  It goes even to such an extent that you shouldn’t be using a cellular phone in Vietnam on the Chinese cellular network.

The reason I bring this up has to do with $GOOG pulling out of China due to hacking, I don’t blame them.  For everything that China is, and it is many great things, it still has not excepted the idea of personal property and intellectual property as we see it in western law.  Remember that this is an open society, one that values the whole far more than the individual, it is deeply ingrained into their thinking.  I won’t opine on the positives and negatives of such a philosophy right now, but what you should understand is that there are some serious issues to be ironed out if we are to become true partners with China as they ascend the economic, social, political, and military ladders.  Right now we are at best reluctant trading partners, both unwilling to allow the global economy to collapse.  China, similar to the US (cough cough) may be fudging the data to some extent, I’ve got no doubt about that, but the first half of this century will belong to them.  Google leaving china is no big deal, I highly doubt this turns into a trend, but certain divides must be crossed in terms of rule of law.

First game of the Fall / Winter season playoffs for me tonight.  I’ll take some inspiration from Redden who actually got into a fight and showed some blood flowing through is veins last night in a rousing Rangers victor over Les Habitants.  It was an old time hockey game, really fun to watch.  Oh yea, and by the way, J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!

Here is your belated weekend reading:

This is rather long, but a good overview of global tactical asset allocation going into 2010, a good read (Zero Hedge)

According to Friedman, we can either obsess about another underpants bomber every few months or spend the money on math, science, and research, I agree (Thomas Friedman)

What does the fundamental picture look like for oil and natural gas and why are their prices diverging (WSJ)

We now have the same number of private contractors as military servicemen in both Iraq and Afghanistan, this is the new norm (Washington Post)

This is going to be an amazing book in 20 years, Israel doing what it does best, covert opps (Washington Post)

Brazil has the western world by the balls, and deservedly so, how can we help you Mr. Lula (WSJ)

It’s such a sad fact that we finally get Americans to start saving, at a time when they have every disincentive to be doing so (NYT)

An interesting look at how quantitative hedge funds fared versus their black box brethren (CXO Advisory Group)

China is no fake, get that through your head (The Economist)

Rail traffic still hasn’t picked up, neither has sea traffic, the global economy is still not working correctly (Calculated Risk)

If you aren’t surprised that Goldman and all the other banks are completely corrupt in how they handle their prop trading, please go and smash your head against the wall for 30 seconds (NYT)