La clé de la finance personnelle optimale

Mon attrait pour le monde de la finance n'est pas d'aujourd'hui, j'avais 13-14 ans et je faisais déjà des simulations en lisant les pages du journal de mon père. L'appât du gain, l'autonomie, le rêve, l'illusion d'une richesse facile sont souvent cités pour démontrer l'intérêt des gens envers ce milieu. Mon angle à moi c'était de vouloir avoir un contrôle absolu sur mon temps et mes passe-temps. Le travail ne me faisait pas peur et ma détermination à trouver des stratégies serait éventuellement récompensée.

Depuis mon véritable investissement à la bourse à l'âge de 18 ans, dans cette startup technologique du nom d'élastic qui faisait dans la fibre optique et rattachée à Nortel, c'était une valeur sûre! Emportée dans le krach des technologies en 2000, c'était ma première leçon, et beaucoup d'autres s'en sont suivis, mais aussi beaucoup d'autre succès où je me suis raffiné de fois en fois où j'ai pu connaître mon véritable apogée en 2008-2009 et 2011 dans des marchés très volatils. Une stratégie basé sur une peur irrationnelle des marchés et rationalisé par des éléments fondamentaux, j'étais en croisière, tout allait pour le mieux. Mais, quelques raccourcis m'ont fait mal et m'ont ramené à la réalité. 

Quelques questions me sont venues en tête à ce moment-là, comment prouver que la corrélation entre le retour sur investissement et le risque n'est pas absolument toujours reliée? Comment puis-je en soutirer un quelque profit, si je ne peux en faire la preuve? Et finalement, une dernière question accablante, qui suis-je pour voir les minces opportunités que les autres ne voient pas?

Cette dernière interrogation m'a amené à beaucoup lire et de sortir quelques règles qui vont désormais guider mes investissements et entrevoir la finance beaucoup plus simplement.

Les voici :

1.  Ne pas avoir de conseiller financier et faire tout soi-même. Ainsi de payer le moins de frais possible.
2. Mettre son argent dans des etf*  à peu de frais. (e.g. les etf de vanguard)
3. Investir en continu (acheter des etf chaque mois avec une somme prédéfinie)
4. Investir tout dans des etf d'actions jusqu'à 10 ans avant la retraite
5. Diversifier les etf dans des actions du monde entier , le plus diversifié possible.  e.g. S&P 500, Marché émergents, Europe, asiatique, pacifique, Amérique du nord etc... et le plus également possible sur la Terre. (un portfolio de 6 etf avec chacun 16%, c'est parfait)
6. 10 ans avant la retraite, commencer à transférer l'argent dans des obligations gouvernementales.

* ETF : exchange trade fund, FNB en français pour fond négocié en bourse

C'est simple, c'est optimal, c'est scientifique et ça finit par être le plus payant!

Des livres captivants sur le sujet et qui font réfléchir:

·                      A walk down wall street de Mankiel 

·                      Fooled by randomness de Taleb

·                     When genius failed de Lowenstein

My journey to the "West Memphis 3" truth.

Introduction : 

On May 5, 1993, three 8-year-old boys, Steve Branch, Christopher Byers and Michael Moore, went missing in the early evening hours in West Memphis, Arkansas. Their bodies were found the next day submerged in a creek in a park-like area known as Robin Hood Hills. About a month later three suspects, Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, were arrested and charged with their murders. All three were convicted in early 1994. Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences, while Echols was sentenced to death.

On August 19, 2011, the three men were released from prison after entering "Alford pleas," meaning that they pled guilty but did not admit to the act, and are allowed to maintain their innocence. In return they were sentenced to time served and set free. (http://callahan.8k.com/)

My experience :

2 years ago, I watched Lost paradise trilogy, then west of memphis and I was really upset by the way 3 innocents people were convicted by the system to fill the society needs to condemn someone.

1 month ago, I watch Devil’s Knot with my wife. Telling her all the insights I saw previously in the documentaries, persuaded of Terry Hobbs guilt.

Here I am today (2 am in the morning) after 3 weeks of reading 24 hr/24hr all the confessions from Misskelley, Buddy Lucas, affidavit from bennie guy, Terry hobbs, Jacoby, looking on satellite maps the crime scene, trying to clock the distance in bike between stevie branch house where witness Ballard saw the kids with hobbs around hobbs house to the blue beacon woods around 6:30 pm. I was all on Terry Hobbs, … But I wanted proof so I search by myself. I was starting to feel that I will find nothing that will convince me of someone guiltiness. But I found something about me… I was biased, strongly biased by the documentaries.

Starting to remove all the prejudice in favor of wm3, I was starting slowly to read everything around them, theirs alibis, theirs witnesses, theirs interviews, and to my surprise I feel relieve after weeks of obsessive reading about the case that the wm3 are probably guilty. (suddenly troubling that they are now free).

I won't explained the reasons why I found them guilty, but if you read around Misskelley confessions, William Winford Jones, Michael Carson, Ken Watkins, Buddy Lucas, Brent Davis interview with Misskelley and Stidham (http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/jmfeb.html), then Narlene, Anthony and Tabitha Hollingsworth all saw Damien Echols in muddy clothes around 9:30 pm with probably Jason (who look alike Domini Teer). All the Damien lies relative to his walking paths from his house (Broadway trailer park) to the Jason house (Lakeshore). Look at the polygraph results... If you believe in a big conspiracy like the government implication in 9/11, maybe you'll believe a conspiracy against the wm3.

I wanted to express my gratitude about how it feels to go through a journey like that and finding the truth by yourself and trying to remove all the prejudice (for or against wm3) and being the more objective and truthful about your reasonings.

Now I’m almost sad to have the “job done” kind of feeling knowing that tomorrow night I’ll probably doing something else than reading the callahan documentations!

More info:

If you want to know a little more I suggest :

Movies :

The movies are really creating prejudices, be aware...

The paradise lost trilogy documentaries movies (biased towards wm3)

West of Memphis (biased towards wm3)

The devil's knot movie (biased towards wm3)The websites I selected seem to be truthful and rational about theirs point of view :

Readings:

http://www.jivepuppi.com/   (biased towards wm3)

http://wm3truth.com/  (biased against wm3)

http://praguerevue.com/ViewArticle?articleId=3261  (biased against wm3)

Devil's knot book by Mara Leveritt (biased towards wm3)

Blood of innocents book by Guy Reel (biased against wm3)

http://callahan.8k.com/   (documentations, confessions, affidavits, ect.)

Interesting facts :

Damien Echols interview is really incriminating : http://callahan.8k.com/wm3/dwe.html

Bitcoins : my milkcrates server farm

This is where I spent most of my free hours during some cold nights of winter :) I though building just one of these, but when you start you can't stop. Sorry for the mess with all the wires, I was just finishing it...it looks better now.

• 12 GPU R9 280x, R9 290, HD7950 totalling 4400 watts
• 4 PSU on 3 motherboards all remotely controlled
• 8500 KH/s of scrypt decryption

Build a wifi coffee maker in few steps with the Netduino.

Certainly useless but not worthless.

Materials :

• Netduino plus 2 (60$) 
• Simple coffee machine (25$)
• 3 Male-Male jumper wires
• 3 Female-Female  jumper wires
• Or 3 Male-Female jumper wires
• Ethernet cable
• Pololu Basic SPDT Relay Carrier with 5VDC Relay (4$)
• Usb cable
• VS.Net 2010  (or the free VS.Net express)
• (Optional) Wifi N Range Extender (DAP-1360) (60$)

Intro :

Here I am, creating a new blog on a premise to show how simple it was to build a wifi coffee machine. I had no intentions to post a "How-to" on that, but some dudes suggest me to share it and I found this was not a bad idea.

I want to clarify that practically anyone can do it easily in one weekend, even if you have little or no experience in coding or soldering. For my experience, before I started that "Weekend" I had no experience in soldering and 2 weeks of experimentations with the netduino. For the programming part, its my job so I have tons of it! But don't panic if you don't, I'll post my programming code.

How-to :

1. You have to find a simple coffee maker, ideally with just one push button or switch. Like this one or my old one on the right. 

2. Then remove the switch, and disconnect the wires link to the switch.

3. In my case, 3 wires connected to the switch, two browns (positive) for interrupting the circuit and one blue for illuminating the led on the switch when current running in the circuit. In the majority of cases, there is only 2 wires connected to the switch, one (+) in and one (+) out.

4. Now, this was the most difficult part for me, the soldering. Open the Pololu pack with the relay and solder the parts together, or you can use you're own switch, transistor, diode package. I use the pololu pack because it was easier for me to do it, but build your own its not that tough, lots of tutorial on the net. 

         If you need help to solder, here's a nice tutorial on youtube. Thats the one I          
         watched before I soldered the relay.

5. Now you should have your relay switch ready.

6. You have to screw the wire from the outlet, one of the two browns wires (you have to look inside your coffee maker to have the good one) in the COM port of the relay. The other brown wire, you have to screw it in the NO (normally open) port of the relay.

7. The wires schematic is pretty simple for the netduino part also. 

• Relay GND to the Netduino GND port
• Relay VDD to the Netduino 5V port
• Relay EN to the Netduino 9Pin port

8. I presume you got your Netduino firmware updated and your Visual Studio.Net or express ready for the .Net MF 4.2. If not, I will not enter this subject. Go to this page to get further information. Or post your questions or find your responses there on the forum.

9. Here's the coding part. The easiest part for some the hardest one for others ;)  

• In Visual Studio create a <NetDuino plus 2> project and add these 3 files to the project.

         Program.cs

         CoffeeTask.cs
         IExecute.cs

         Theres lots of comments in the programs files to help you out.

• Plug your netduino to the usb port on your computer and press F5, for compiling the code and uploading to the micro controller platform.

10. Plug the ethernet wire from the wifi extender or the router in the netduino.

11. You can look in Visual Studio for the ip adress of the netduino or look into the router configuration.

12. When everything is hook up you can try these commands

• http://<your ip address>/START 
• http://<your ip address>/STOP
• http://<your ip address>/STATUS 

13. You should see your coffee start and close with a response in your browser saying that your coffee is brewing or in standby.

Enjoy a good cup of geek coffee ;)

*Part of the coding lines is from "Getting started with the Netduino" from Chris Walker.