Finance Trends Letter

Stanley Druckenmiller , a hedge fund Hall of Famer, speaks with Bloomberg TV at the Robin Hood Investment Conference and shares his thoughts on IBM and Amazon, technological innovation, his trading methods, and the current state of the hedge fund industry. A few notes and quotes from Stan Druckenmiller's latest interview (watch the full interview below): On IBM : Druckenmiller is short IBM. Sales have been declining since 2009. The cloud and Amazon's AWS is "killing" IBM. Says Druckenmiller, "I think the truth teller in companies is free cash flow and the free cash flow [declined considerably] since last year.". Amazon : Thinks Jeff Bezos is an incredible businessman who "creates monopolies". AWS is killing it and the market doesn't fully realize how important this area is for Amazon's revenues. Notes that his Amazon long is not as big a position as his IBM short.  Note : You'll find a bit more about Amazon's stock and th...

Veteran stock trader and Market Wizard, Mark Minervini speaks to Traders World magazine and offers up key insights on trading success and why most traders fail.  First off, if you don't know Mark Minervini , you may want to check out his track record and read some of his previous interviews (he was interviewed by Jack Schwager in Stock Market Wizards ) to understand his trading philosophy. You can find some good interview links included at the end of this post.  Now if you've read some of Mark's previous interviews, you'll know that persistence plays a big part in his trading success . His latest interview opens on that note, as Mark is asked about the key traits of successful traders.  " Larry : What are the key traits for a successful trader? Mark : When I started 30 years ago, I knew stock trading was going to be exceptionally challenging and I knew success was not going to happen overnight. I made a decision that I was going to put as much time and ef...

Update (May 2017): Bitcoin has recently reclaimed the $1000 price level and moved on t o new price highs . As Bitcoin, blockchain technolog y, and altcoin s such as Ethereum have surged to new levels of adoption, we revisit our original 2013 posts on Bitcoin and the rise of cryptocurrencies . Bitcoin has recently zoomed past the $200 mark and is approaching its all-time highs. What better time to update you on the developing virtual currencies trend and to offer you new price data and insight into this growing market? Here are the latest Bitcoin charts using Mt. Gox data (denominated in US dollars) and BTC China (denominated in Chinese Yuan) via bitcoincharts.com . Note that prices are fast approaching the 2013 "pre-crash" highs.  I have been tweeting about B itcoin and its price uptrends on Twitter and StockTwits throughout the year. Those of you follow me may recall this tweet from March 2013 when Bitcoin was trading at $43.  Bitcoin quickly...