Investors are always seeking for ways of getting some advantage relative to the market that can provide them with the ability to get alpha profits. Some dig very deep inside company financial statements, others look into all kinds of technical indicators in an attempt to identify some pattern, others break the insider trading rules, and some others trade on their emotions and impulses. One way or another they are deemed to fail if the efficient market hypothesis is valid, as many argue it to be. And if it is not valid?

(An original fictional work by Filipe R. Costa / Special thanks to Maggie Ayre for valuable corrections)

It was December 10, 2013, one of those grey and cold Tuesdays, as snowy days had already started in Moscow. It was early in the morning but there was already a lot of hustle and bustle in the streets, as the Muscovite prepared for another busy day. No one could suspect that such a Tuesday would be different from the previous Monday but Moscow was about to change the world, or the world was about to be changed from Moscow.

Daily Market Commentary for May 7: The hard-nosed ECB is finally willing to do something for the Eurozone. The move is welcomed but the motivation behind it is wrong.

Daily Market Commentary for May 3: With the US FED, the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan exhausting unconventional policy measures to drive their economies into growth, it is now time for the ECB to try some tricks. Negative deposit rates may be the next step.

Daily Market Commentary for April 10: George Soros and Jacob J. Lew were the last two adding to the already long list of austerity-opposers. Soros talks about a German exit, Lew is trying the best he can to convince a deaf Germany to engage in growth-oriented policies.

Daily Market Commentary for April 9: The EZ economy continues to sink pushed by itself. Besides being a political, social and economical issue, the EZ austerity is now also a legal problem with the Portuguese Constitutional Court rejecting government plans to cut personal income.

Daily Market Commentary for April 5: While the ECB added nothing to its current monetary policy, PMI data shows a sinking Europe, which now includes Germany. Will we be able to recover from this dormant state? Sure we will. I just don’t know when.

Daily Market Commentary for March 28: Cash is king! That’s something Cypriots will have in mind today as tight capital controls apply to their deposits. Banks reopened but the economy will struggle soon, as money will be drained from it.

Daily Market Commentary for March 27: A research study shows that austerity measures applied in peripheral European countries are undermining a long term decline in suicide rates, coupled with outbreaks of some worrying diseases including HIV and malaria. It’s like we have been on war.