Intrade has shown to be deadly accurate. There is however almost 4 months until the end of June.

Some items you will need are as follows:
Compass (if you want a true north pointing star, who doesn’t?)
T-square large and small
pencil
concrete backer board if it is not downstairs
string for circle measurements

The first thing you want to do obviously is rip up your existing flooring. Here are some images of my floor currently.

Next what you’ll want to do is use your compass to figure out your true north. Nobody wants a compass rose that points in the wrong direction. All you basically need to do is draw your design on the floor after that is complete. You’ll want to find your image on the internet. This is the one that I used.

From that image here is what I draw on my floor.

I ended up using a marker because the pencil kept getting wiped away.

After you have drawn your design the next step is as simple as laying the tile over it drawing an outline and start cutting.

Since 2000 the COT reports are released weekly. However, you must keep in mind the reports are released on Friday but reflect data from Tuesday. As the reports are closed off on Tuesday but not published until 3 days later.

When it comes to the COT report there are a few different sections that are valuable:

Commercial: These are organizations that use the futures market to hedge their positions. They are not traders by nature. They only use futures to guarantee their profits for the future.
Non-Commercial: These are the speculators who trade the futures market for a living. They include hedge funds and other individuals who speculate the market and make the requirements that are set by the CFTC.
Reportable: Positions held above specific reporting levels set by the CFTC.
Non-Reportable: These are individuals or organizations who do not meet the minimum requirements set forth by the CFTC to be categorized.
Open Interest: The open interest is the amount of futures or options contracts which are not offset by another transaction.

The Whittaker COT Index Variant-A is an MT4 indicator.  Basically what it will do is go through the data from the COT report and extract the above sections.  It will then as a percentage let you know how many traders are long in each category.

To use this indicator you must visit the CFTC website and weekly download the updated report.  Here is a link to the report that must be downloaded, http://www.cftc.gov/marketreports/commitmentsoftraders/CFTC009781.html

Use the image below to make sure you’re downloading the correct link.  Save this file to C:\Program Files (x86)\Interbank FX Trader 4\experts\files.

Once you download this file it must be converted to CSV format for MetaTrader to read it.  You can do this by opening the file located at C:\Program Files (x86)\Interbank FX Trader 4\experts\files\annual.xls with Microsoft Excel.  Once it is open in Excel go to file>save as.  From the save as type window select CSV(Comma Delimited) (*.csv).  You will want to name the file annual.xls.csv  this by default is what Whitaker COT Index will be looking for.

The actual Whittaker COT Index variant-A can be downloaded here. Save the file to C:\Program Files (x86)\Interbank FX Trader 4\experts  Once the file is downloaded simply add it to your chart.

The biggest winners are the military contractors. Here they are in order.
Lockhead Martin $31.3bn
Boeing $20.9bn
Northrop Grumman $16.1bn
General Dynamics $15.9bn
Raytheon $15bn
United Technologies $7.1bn
L3 communications $7.1bn
Bae Systems $6.8bn
Oshkosh $6.4bn
KBR $4.7bn

Greece: 124.9
Italy: 116.7
Begium: 101.2
Portugal: 84.6
Eurozone Average: 84
Ireland: 82.9
France: 82.5
UK: 80.3
Hungary: 79.8

Download WVBI!

What this indicator does is as follows:

1. Takes the range(high-low) the last x bars.
2. Averages the range of the last x bars.
3. Displays as a histogram the percentage of change from the average.
4. Takes an average of the percentage of change from the average.
5. Allows you to set a horizontal line at your preference so you can see when the average is breaking out.

This indicator has 3 inputs:

1. “ATRPeriod” which allows you to specify the amount of bars to average out for the Average True Range of that period
2. “WVBIAverage” is a setting that allows you to specify the amount of bars to which will be the average of the percentage of the ATR.
3. The last setting is pretty straightforward it is “TooFar”.  This simply will draw a horizontal line across the indicator so that you can visually see where the percentage is in comparison to other bars.  Its purpose is to simply put things in perspective.

All of this might seem confusing at first. However, I assure you this a very useful indicator for detecting volatility in a market.

You can see from this example of above the bar in question exceed it’s 14 day ATR by 203.95%.

People have lost faith that the PIIGS countries can pull themselves out of their huge budget problems.  So to avert risk investors are flocking to US treasuries.  All of this has created huge one day drops in markets around the world.  Gold was down 4.3 percent closing at $1,062.  Greek equities felll 3.89%, Portugal’s stock market lost 4.98%, Spain 5.94%, S&P500 3.11 percent, FTSE 100 2.2% and the price of oil down 5%.  As another sign of problems for the EURO credit default swaps or the cost of insuring debt of soveriegn nations has skyrocketed in the PIIGS countries.  With no sign of stopping any time soon.

With all the outrage over banks lately I decided to write a quick summary of the largest banks in the world.  This is to help people put in perspective how large certains banks actually are.  All of these figures are based on the revenue of the bank.