Baseball Book from One of our Contributors

This "Teach to Fish" book introduces concepts of math & baseball to share interesting baseball lore & history, teach math - and develop ratings of all-time great teams & batters. The authors devise games, including a baseball simulation game in the style of Strat-O-Matic & APBA Baseball - complete in this book. The book's foreword, by William Keat, PhD, professor at Union College on Carlton Chin: "The predictive power of mathematics … along with his joy of competition, underpins his unique professional journey from predicting material behavior as an engineering student at MIT, predicting human behavior as … nationally known financial analyst, to predicting athletic performance as author and contributor to the New York Times." "An athlete is his own right, numbers and statistics are Carlton's means to a greater understanding of the sports he loves. In my own experience as a teacher of engineering, I know that the converse is also true, that sports can be used to inspire a greater understanding of science and mathematics." Cover illustration: Julia Chin's rendition of Elysian Fields in Hoboken, NJ, the birthplace of organized baseball in the 1840s.

Stock System Model update (8/23 after the close)

At current levels, our stock model indicators are as shown below.  Note that at our last stock model update, the S&P was at 1296.  The S&P closed today at 1162.  Not to state the obvious, but the market has been extremely volatile and has been difficult to trade with relatively large whipsaws.

• Our positions have been dominated by the short-term movement of the markets.  Over the long haul, the combination of time-frames is typically helpful, but this market environment was extremely difficult -- creating whipsaw reversals.  
• At current levels, our long-term model is very slightly bearish.  This is the first time the model has dipped to the bearish side in quite some time.  
• Our intermediate-term oversold/overbought models are moderately bullish.  

Thus, we have a mixed bag of indicators -- where positions will remain driven by the short-term systems we employ.  Traders should be cautious -- but look for tradable moves.  Long-term investors should be cautious but may think about adding to positions on dips.  

   

Quick reminder: "falling knife"

Just a quick blog post about the old saying, "Don't try to catch a falling knife."  Most good trading systems will use this kind of approach -- because you can never tell how far emotions will carry a big market move.

Although our intermediate and long-term stock market indicators are long, our short-term model has us on the sideline (although not before taking some losses -- less than the general market's decline.).

We will continue to follow our trading models -- and depending on how the signals are -- will trade accordingly. Long-term investors may look to add to their positions at some point -- and traders should be cautious due to the high volatility.