Portrait of a Total Dick – Luis Caselles Perez

This is probably the only time that OfSinope will make a personal judgement on a person. Our aim is to provide our readers with the best of whatever’s circulating on the web, but that should also include the (hilariously) worst, such as Luis Caselles Perez’s personal website. It’s fools like this who are responsible for financial crises. If you do work in financial circles, please circulate this asap to your HR departments.

“Being in my last year of Business School education, I have a great opportunity to become the man I always wanted to be: an Investment Banker.” Read on…

And don’t forget to click on the Contact page. Hehehehe…

UPDATE: It seems that Luis Caselles Perez has now opted for a more demure look on his website. Gone are the Zoolander-like portraits, and the pose in front of a vintage Porsche, which were 99% of the fun of this post. Instead, we now have three classy pictures of major international financial centers: Hong Kong, London and…er…London.

The Hindenburg Omen

While it sounds like the title for a bad 1970s disaster movie about German satanic cults (starring Michael Caine & Jacqueline Bisset), the Hindenburg Omen is actually a financial prophecy, based on very specific statistic conditions, which has occurred in the past two weeks. And what, pray tell, does the prophecy foretell? Nothing less than a major stock market crash (akin to the disastrous 1937 crash of the Hindenburg Zeppelin, for which it is named)

What constitutes The Hindenburg Omen? Essentially, 2.5% of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange must reach a 52-week record high, while simultaneously 2.5% of other stocks on the exchange must reach a 52-week record low. This occurs extremely rarely and has always preceded major stock market crashes. In order to be considered a more solid predictor and to prevent false signals, the Omen requires that the index be higher than 50 days prior, while volatility indicators must be negative. Finally, the Omen can only be considered valid if all these components occur twice in 35 days.

The Omen has occurred on August 12th, 20th and 24th…

(Now, before this humble blog sparks off a massive market panic, it must be said that the Hindenburg Omen has numerous detractors who say that it is just a statistical anomaly, which predicts nothing at all.)