I am pleased to announce that I will be participating in the Invest Like a Monster Trading Conference in San Francisco during October 25-26. The two-day event brings together experts from across the financial landscape who will improve your understanding of markets by a quantum leap and measurably boost your own personal trading performance.

Tickets are available for a bargain $399. If you buy the premium $499 package you will be invited to the Friday 6:00 pm VIP cocktail reception, where you will meet luminaries from the trading world, such as Trademonster?s Jon and Pete Najarian, Guy Adami, Jeff Mackey, and of course, myself, John Thomas, the Mad Hedge Fund Trader. All in all, it is great value for the money, and I?ll personally throw in a ride on the City by the Bay?s storied cable cars for free.

Jon Najarian is the founder of OptionMonster, which offers clients a series of custom crafted computer algorithms that give a crucial edge when trading the market. Called Heat Seeker ?, it monitors no less than 180,000 trades a second to give an early warning of large trades that are about to hit the stock, options, and futures markets.

To give you an idea of how much data this is, think of downloading the entire contents of the Library of Congress, about 20 terabytes of data, every 30 minutes. His firm maintains a 10 gigabyte per second conduit that transfers data at 6,000 times the speed of a T-1 line, the fastest such pipe in the civilian world. Jon?s team then distills this ocean of data on his website into the top movers of the day. ?As with the NFL,? says Jon, ?you can?t defend against speed.?

The system catches big hedge funds, pension funds, and mutual funds shifting large positions, giving subscribers a peek at the bullish or bearish tilt of the market. It also offers accurate predictions of imminent moves in single stock and index volatility.

Jon started his career as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears, and I can personally attest that he still has a handshake that?s like a steel vice grip. Maybe it was his brute strength that enabled him to work as a pit trader on the Chicago Board of Options Exchange for 22 years, where he was known by his floor call letters of ?DRJ.? He formed Mercury Trading in 1989 and then sold it to the mega hedge fund, Citadel, in 2004.

Jon developed his patented algorithms for Heat Seeker? with his brother Pete, another NFL player (Tampa Bay Buccaneers and the Minnesota Vikings), who like Jon, is a regular face in the financial media.

In order to register for the conference, please click here. There you will find the conference agenda, bios of the speakers, and a picture of my own ugly mug. I look forward to seeing you there.

Cling! Cling!

Jon Najarian

The Trade Alert service of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader has posted a year-to-date gain of 40.53%, a new all time high. Performance since inception 33 months ago soared to 95.58%. This pegs the average annualized return at 34.75%.

Some 71% of all Trade Alerts since the beginning have been profitable. Carving out the closed 2013 trades alone, 41 out of 50 have made money, a success rate of 82%. It is a track record that most big hedge funds would kill for.

The performance spike brings to a close months of sideway action when the markets provided no clear trends. This summer seemed quieter than most. But I have had a hot hand since returning from my European Strategy Tour. Anticipating seasonal strength in the US dollar, I piled on short positions in the Japanese yen and the Euro. A long position in gold proved profitable. My short in the oil market has been volatile, and now sits close to my breakeven point.

The coming autumn promises to deliver a harvest of new trading opportunities. On the menu are the taper, a new Fed governor, a debt ceiling crisis, a possible war with Syria, and the death of the bull market in bonds. The Trade Alerts should be coming hot and heavy.

Global Trading Dispatch, my highly innovative and successful trade-mentoring program, earned a net return for readers of 40.17% in 2011 and 14.87% in 2012. The service includes my Trade Alert Service and my daily newsletter, the Diary of a Mad Hedge Fund Trader. You also get a real-time trading portfolio, an enormous trading idea database, and live biweekly strategy webinars, and Jim Parker?s Mad Day Trader service.

To subscribe, please go to my website at www.madhedgefundtrader.com, find the ?Global Trading Dispatch? box on the right, and click on the lime green ?SUBSCRIBE NOW? button.

 

When anyone starts lecturing you that the US has the highest tax rate in the industrialized world, just turn around, walk away, and pretend you never heard them. This person is either ignorant about this country?s taxation system, or is deliberately trying to deceive or mislead you.

According to a report released by the Internal Revenue Service, America?s tax collection agency, the top 400 individual tax returns filed in 2009 reported an average gross income of $358 million each. The average amount of tax paid by these individuals came to under 17%, less than half the maximum Federal rate of 39.5%, which kicks in on annual income over $388,350 (click here for the 2012 tax tables). This explains why Warren Buffet pays a much lower tax rate than his secretary. It really is true that in America, only the poor people pay taxes.

Look at any international comparison of taxes to GDP, and one can always find the United States at the bottom of the table. Low American taxes are one of the main reasons why I moved my company here from England 19 years ago, fleeing their hellacious then 15% VAT tax. Take a look at the Fortune 500, where one third of the largest companies pay no tax at all, and many that dominate the top of the list, like the oil majors, pay only token amounts. In 2010, General Electric (GE), one of the most profitable companies in the world, paid a 3% tax rate. However, if any politician wants to pander to voters during election time on a tax cutting platform he will only bluster on about ?tax rates?, not actual taxes paid.

What the US has that other countries lack is the 100,000 pages of the Internal Revenue Code. It is a 100 year accumulation of deductions, accelerated depreciation rates, tax credits, and other tax breaks that are the end product of intensive lobbying efforts and bribes by special interest groups, corporations, unions, and even religious groups. Take a look at the oil industry again. The oil depletion allowance permits drillers to deduct a substantial portion of the cost of a new well in the first year, while spreading the income over the extended life of the well. ?(Click here for its fascinating history, Oil Depletion Allowance.) When I first got into the oil and gas business a decade ago, after reading the relevant sections of the tax code, I couldn?t understand why everyone wasn?t drilling for Texas tea.

I have a very simple solution to the country?s budget deficit problem. Hit the reset button. Eliminate the Internal Revenue Code. Just set it on fire. Keep the existing progressive, hockey stick tax rates on income, but eliminate all deductions. And I mean everything; deductions for dependents, home mortgage interest, medical expenses, charitable contributions, the works. There are no sacred cows. My revised Form 1040 would have only three lines on it:

Income?????? ______________
Tax Rate??? ______________
Tax Due???? ______________

 

The budget deficit would disappear overnight. Government spending would shrink dramatically, because you could ditch most of the 100,000 who work for the IRS. Some 1.3 million auditors and CPA?s would have to hit the road in search of new work too. The amount of money that is wasted on tax collection in this country is truly staggering. This is not some pie in the sky concept. This is how taxation already works in most countries, and they seem to get along just fine.

In fact, the whole scheme might even pay for itself.

I Think This One Should Be Income, Here