The
International Forecaster and Chris Waltzek answer
listener's questions.
2nd
Hour:
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Hat Trick Letter:
Jim
Willie -
Jim Willie CB
Proprietor, GoldenJackass.com
Editor, Hat Trick Letter
The man behind the name Jim Willie has experience
in three important fields of statistical practice
in the 23 years following completion of a PhD in
Statistics at Carnegie Mellon University. He spent
time since 2001 in a private consulting firm in
Pittsburgh, PA. His work included pharmaceutical
and medical claim estimation, stratified sampling
for consumer packaged goods market share, training
seminars in advanced regression models, and consulting
toward various other projects within the firm. In
August of 2003, he became a low-cost solution at
his firm, and since then has focused exclusively
on the US and world economies, financial markets,
currencies, and the commodity fields. Gold and energy
have been a prime focus.
Jim spent five years at the corporate headquarters
of Staples in suburban Boston in the last half of
the 1990 decade. Work focused upon forecasting and
sales analysis for their retail business, but also
for the catalog and internet business. His retail
floor labor scheduling program integrated several
forecasts across the entire retail chain of over
1000 stores. Retail models, seasonality estimation,
marketing effects, price elasticity analysis, all
supported either the forecast process or profit
margin enhancement. During his time at Staples,
the company quadrupled in revenues and store count
nationwide.
At Digital Equipment Corporation in suburban Boston,
Jim worked for nine years in a unique zero-profit
center within the company, one totally dedicated
to marketing research on Digital products and the
computer industry. Large strategic studies and smaller
product studies were completed in the hundreds by
a staff of 12. Strategic studies incorporated orthogonal
fractional factorial designs, for evaluating various
product feature combinations and industry directions.
Product studies helped to enhance design and development.
All datasets were analyzed exhaustively for useful
information on perceptions, preferences, drivers,
trends, usage, and demographics. However, extreme
errors of judgment by senior executives resulted
in the rapid decline in the company, departure of
the best and brightest leaders, severe reduction
in its workforce, and eventual acquisition by Compaq,
then later by Hewlett Packard, which now manages
his defined benefit pension. Sadly, many younger
people have not even heard of the second largest
computer mfg firm behind IBM in the 1980 and 1990
decades. HP took a large portion of Digital’s
customer base.
Also at Digital, before the marketing research
post, Jim worked for five years as a quality control
consultant to the manufacturing organizations. He
authored a DEC Engineering Specification which was
integrated at all 28 mfg plants worldwide. It streamlined
the stress testing of units from the assembly lines,
with significant savings from reduced test time.
Over a seven-year period, its implementation reduced
mfg costs corporate-wide by between $250 and $300
million. Those were days of considerable fat in
the US mfg arena, however. A few of his colleagues
from Digital days remain trusted friends and analysts.
About GoldenJackass.com
The Golden Jackass website is designed to inform
and instruct in the complex ways of gold, currencies,
bonds, interest rates, stocks, commodities, futures,
derivatives and the world economy, with no respect
shown for inept bankers and economists, whose policies
and practices contribute toward the slow motion
degradation, if not destruction, of the financial
world.
The website provides an ongoing source of excellent
articles written by other authors, who make significant
contributions to the above mentioned topics, in
addition to a collection of news briefs filled with
critical data. A minimum of tools are also made
available for monitoring charts of important series,
such as the USDollar, gold, the CRB index, and the
US$ money supply.
For those who wish to pursue a deeper course, with
monthly commentary and essays, highlighted by strategic
forecasts, combined with potentially profitable
mining and energy stock selections, subscription
to the HAT TRICK LETTER is offered to members at
the cost of a low recurring fee.
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Consilient Investor:
Justice
Litle -
Justice Litle, an editor of Outstanding Investments,
has a unique background that has served him well
in the markets. In college, Justice studied literature
and philosophy in places as diverse as Oxford University
(Oxford, England), Pulacki University (Olomouc,
Czech Republic) and Macquarie University (Sydney,
Australia). Originally pursuing a PhD and a life
in academia, his career path changed forever after
discovering “The Investment Biker,” Jim
Rogers’ chronicle of macro investing by way
of motorcycle.
Justice Litle has implemented sophisticated trading
and hedging strategies for clients on a global scale
– a broad cross section including soybean farmers,
cattle ranchers, currency hedgers, energy consultants,
scrap metal dealers and everything in between. He
has worked with hedge funds, traded equities for
a private partnership, written multiple articles
for Futures Magazine, been quoted in the Wall Street
Journal, sought for market commentary by the likes
of Reuters and Dow Jones, and made contributions
to the book “Trend Following: How Traders Make
Millions in Up or Down Markets” (Mike Covel,
FT Prentice Hall 2004).
Mr. Litle’s personal interests include philosophy,
travel, and chess. He has also been known to hike
glaciers, scuba dive with sharks, and jump out of
perfectly good airplanes, though only on occasion.
Saturday,
July 28th:
