

Effect of Wind on Stock Market Returns - india
http://improbable.com/2010/04/21/effect-of-wind-on-stock-market-returns/

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fnid2
I believe the stock market is a measure of human consciousness. It measures
our expectations, our emotions, and our perception of reality. I once had a
job in a finance department, before I knew anything about stocks, and I said,
"I could build a computer program to do this..." The finance guys around me
laughed.

Years later, when I had capital, I built that system. I found many
correlations between words in the news and fluctuations in stock price. I
developed algorithms to filter out future winners from over 8,000 stocks. Over
the course of the two years I used this system, I looked at many stocks a day
and even after two years, I had only examined about 1,600 stocks. The system I
built tracked every time I viewed a stock and let me put notes in there, so I
could remember why I looked at it the first time. It's almost impossible to
rationally decide which among 8,000 companies to buy. Most of the great ones
aren't even _looked_ at. How many great winners of today hid among the 6,400 I
never even saw? Most of the ones we see are the ones someone _else_ wants us
to see -- why?

When Katrina hit, I knew there'd be a lot of work on the coast and used the
system to quickly find companies that would be employed to fix the mess. Over
the next two years, these stocks beat the market substantially.

Point being, the weather, wind, words -- everything -- affects the stock
market. Little of it is rational. Little of it is p/e, om, revenues... so I
have little doubt that the wind has a big impact on share prices. Hurricanes
_certainly_ do.

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bryanh
Insightful comment, I'd be very interested in hearing more elaboration on the
subject (specifically about your or other algorithms and some of the
correlations that they found). There is a major dearth of information about
algorithms that can be so readily used to generate profits. Very proprietary
and hush hush as I am sure you are well aware of.

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jakek
On a related note:

"Lunar Cycle Effects in Stock Returns"
<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=281665>

Abstract: "We find strong lunar cycle effects in stock returns. Specifically,
returns in the 15 days around new moon dates are about double the returns in
the 15 days around full moon dates. This pattern of returns is pervasive; we
find it for all major U.S. stock indexes over the last 100 years and for
nearly all major stock indexes of 24 other countries over the last 30 years."

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jsmcgd
Kind of related: a relative of mine started a teaching degree in the UK and
they were taught to expect the students to be less behaved when it is windy.
Go figure.

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GFischer
I guess weather forecasting and stock forecasting are equally "hard" problems?
... Too many variables.

