By Stacey Ravel AbarbanelFebruary 21, 2013Category:
Arts & Humanities, Campus News
'Vote for Democracy,' Hamilton Budaza (1994)
In April 1994, after years of protest, oppression and dissent, the eyes of the world were on South Africa and its first free elections. Would some 16 million people voting for the first time select the African National Congress as the ruling party and Nelson Mandela as president? Would the National Party, the architects of apartheid, be defeated?
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Nineteen political parties, representing the country's diverse constituencies, and 91 percent of the electorate participated in this important, tension-filled election,?which would also usher in a new parliament and the creation of a non-discriminatory constitution.
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"Fowler in Focus ? Mandela for President: South Africa Votes for Democracy," on display at the Fowler Museum at UCLA from April 7 through July 21, documents this landmark moment in South African and world history with election ephemera, textiles, posters and works of art created in response to the end of apartheid. Works include colorful commemorative cloths emblazoned with Mandela's likeness and Hamilton Budaza's print "Vote for Democracy."
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This exhibition complements "Ernest Cole Photographer," which features 125 original, rare black-and-white silver gelatin prints by one of South Africa's first black photojournalists and runs from April 7 through July 7 at the Fowler.
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The Fowler's South African election art and ephemera, together with Cole's images of the life?of black South Africans in the mid-1960s, provide a look at both the earlier years of apartheid and the emotion and anticipation of freedom during the 1994 election.
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"Fowler in Focus ? Mandela for President: South Africa Votes for Democracy" is curated by Betsy Quick, the Fowler's director of education and curatorial affairs. The exhibition will be on view in the Fowler in Focus gallery, the central space within the long-term exhibition "Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives." Fowler in Focus is dedicated to rotating installations of new acquisitions, sub-collections and particular artistic genres in the Fowler's permanent holdings. The Fowler Museum at UCLA is one of the country's most respected institutions devoted to exploring the arts and cultures of Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and the Americas. The Fowler is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. and Thursday from noon?to 8 p.m. The museum is closed Mondays and Tuesdays. The Fowler Museum, part of UCLA Arts, is located in the north part of the UCLA campus. Admission is free. Parking is available for a maximum of $11 in Lot 4. For more information, the public may call 310-825-4361 or visit www.fowler.ucla.edu.?
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Women seeking infertility treatment can be reassured that in vitro fertilisation is unlikely to increase their risk of breast or gynaecological cancers, say the authors of a large study of Israeli women.
Data from nearly 70,000 patients who had IVF treatment from 1994 to 2011 and a further 20,000 who sought treatment but didn?t have IVF showed no difference in their chances of being diagnosed with breast or endometrial cancer.
The risk of both in situ and invasive cervical cancer was actually reduced in women receiving IVF, the authors said.
But there were marginally higher odds of developing ovarian cancer among the IVF group, with that risk rising slightly with increased rounds of treatment.
However the authors said that due to the rarity of ovarian cancer, with only 45 cases recorded among the study participants, it was hard to link it compellingly to IVF treatment.
Previous research on IVF and cancer has produced mixed results with one recent Australian study claiming early IVF ups breast cancer risk. But other studies have found little evidence of a link.
Fertility and Sterility 2013; online
Women seeking infertility treatment can be reassured that in vitro fertilisation is unlikely to increase their risk of breast or gynaecological cancers, say the authors of a large study of Israeli women.
Data from nearly 70,000 patients who had IVF treatment from 1994 to 2011 and a further 20,000 who sought treatment but didn?t have IVF showed no difference in their chances of being diagnosed with breast or endometrial cancer.
The risk of both in situ and invasive cervical cancer was actually reduced in women receiving IVF, the authors said.
But there were marginally higher odds of developing ovarian cancer among the IVF group, with that risk rising slightly with increased rounds of treatment.
However the authors said that due to the...
SUMMIT, N.J. (AP) -- Cancer drug makerCelgene Corp. said Wednesday it will buy back $600 million in stock from an investment bank over the next three months.
The biotechnology company did not disclose the name of the bank. It said the accelerated share repurchase will be complete by May 20.
Celgene approved the repurchase of $2.5 billion in company stock in June, and said it has bought back around $550 million in shares since then.
Celgene shares advanced $2.77, or 2.8 percent, to $103.23 in morning trading. Earlier the stock reached an all-time high of $103.50.
Russia has offered to step in and broker a peace agreement between Syrian opposition groups and the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, according to the Associated Press .
As the 23-month civil war continues, the United Nations is also warning that humanitarian agencies are unable to access civilians and deliver needed aid in rebel-held northern Syria due to onerous government restraints, as reported by Reuters .
Here's a closer look at recent developments in the Syrian civil war.
Negotiations sought by Assad-ally
Russia and the Arab League are trying to reach both the opposition and the regime for direct talks as a means of ending the ongoing civil war.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that "neither side can allow itself to rely on a military solution to the conflict," according to the AP, "because it's a road to nowhere, a road to mutual destruction of the people."
The opposition denied the possibility of talking with Russia. Abdelbaset Sieda, a senior member of the Syrian National Coalition, said that Assad must step down before any talks could begin.
However, Russia has served as the primary international support for Syria and by suggesting negotiations may have already received support from the regime for talks.
The AP also reported that a government airstrike on a Damascus suburb had killed 20 people. The suburb of Hamouriyeh is rebel-held and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was quoted by the AP as saying it was believed there could be more people buried under the rubble.
Another group, the Local Coordination Committees, suggested the death toll was closer to 35.
Aid groups have limited access to provide relief
The U.N. News Center said on Tuesday that Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos called the situation in Syria a "humanitarian tragedy unfold before our eyes. We must do all we can to reassure the people that we care and that we will not let them down."
Amos is also the also U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator.
Access to areas in the north has been severely limited, she said, and according to Reuters the Syrian government is refusing to permit aid groups to enter the country through Turkey.
The only routes permitted are Lebanon and Jordan, far from the northern border.
Shawn Humphrey is a former contributor to The Flint Journal and an amateur Africanist, focusing his personal studies on human rights and political issues on the continent.
PARIS (AP) -- It?s crunch time in Mali for the French military.
Radical Islamist fighters spent weeks on the run from Malian cities under a French ground and air assault -- but they?re brazenly fighting back this week at French troops. The French, meanwhile, are tightening a dragnet against the al-Qaida-linked militants in one of their last remaining redoubts, mountain sanctuaries near Algeria?s border.
France?s government said Wednesday it?s still hoping to pull out of its thorny Mali operation in the coming weeks. Defense analysts say that if France wants to make that work, and avoid getting bogged down in a protracted, Afghan-style occupation, now?s the time to hit hard -- dismantling the hideouts and killing all the insurgents they can -- to crush what it fears is a growing terrorist threat that could spread to Mali?s African neighbors and even as far as Europe.
Six-hour gunfight
French and Malian authorities on Wednesday sifted over the fallout from a nearly six-hour gunfight Tuesday, when about 30 jihadist fighters surprised a 50-troop French reconnaissance patrol about 50 kilometers (30 miles) south of the town of Tessalit in the Adrar des Ifoughas region, and opened fire with machine guns.
The far-more-muscular French called in support from Mirage fighter jets, helicopter gunships, and armored vehicles firing 105-mm cannons. By the end, more than 20 insurgents and one French legionnaire were killed, French officials said.
The French operation in the area, code-named "Panthere," or panther, is continuing for a third day Wednesday.
President Francois Hollande insists that France -- eager for African forces to help stabilize the impoverished West African country and its wobbly central government -- is entering the final phase of its operation. But he says France will "go all the way -- that?s to say, arresting the last terrorist chiefs in northern Mali."
Defense analysts are blunter.
The extremists "have their backs against the wall," said Francois Heisbourg, president of the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, and adviser to France?s Foundation for Strategic Research. "They have been clobbered. And the best time to hit a guy is when he?s on the ground on his back."
Heisbourg estimated there are about 1,200 to 2,000 radical Islamic fighters in three extremist movements in northern Mali: Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and its allies; the Movement for Unity and Jihad in West Africa, or MUJAO; and Ansar Dine.
The groups controlled northern Mali for 10 months until the French incursion began Jan. 11. Heisbourg cautioned that if rebel fighters headed south to Niger, home to higher mountains than the Ifoghas, it could present longer-term problems for counterterrorism forces. The French have backing from Malian soldier, as well as forces from nearby Chad who are seen as battle-hardened and used to operating in harsh desert terrain and working with local Tuareg tribes.
French authorities are not yet clear if the zone between Gao, northern Mali?s largest city, and the Niger border has been fully scrubbed of the insurgent threat, officials say.
Officials in France are aware of the perils of trying to predict a quick end to counterterrorism operations, which can foment suicide bombings and other guerrilla tactics that defy resolution through military force.
One comparable example is the eastern African country of Somalia, where it took a U.N.-backed force of African troops -- backed by U.S. drone and aircraft strikes on targeted militant leaders -- many years to degrade al-Shabab insurgents enough to allow the formation of a functional transitional government.
Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told France-2 Television on Wednesday that France hopes to start moving out its 4,000 troops in Mali within weeks but, at the same time, he acknowledged that the counterterrorism operation in the Ifoghas range will continue "for a while."
Even as France talks about an eventual handover to Malian and other African forces, French troops are greeted warmly in Malian cities by waves from women selling their vegetables in piles on the street, and children who cheerfully shout "Mali! Mali!" as the soldiers pass.
Gao Mayor Sadou Diallo said about 1,000 French troops are in the Gao region, along with about 3,000 Malian and African soldiers. He said he hoped the French won?t leave the job half-done.
"I am optimistic that they won?t leave without finishing their work," he says. "We don?t want them to stay for years. We hope that MUJAO is wiped out, that elections can be held and that development can begin."
At the Nour mosque in Gao, Imam Alassane Maiga puts the French intervention in the plainest of terms: "If they had waited until September, we would have been dead" -- referring to the initial timetable planned for international troops to start fighting alongside Malian forces.
U.N. discussions about an African force for Mali have been under way for months, alongside efforts for a European Union training mission to help the Malian military. But while the world was waiting for those to come together, the extremists who had been imposing strict Islamic law on northern Mali started moving toward the capital in January. So France struck back, sending troops into help Malian forces push the radical fighters back.
As the markets once again approach historic highs - the overly exuberant tone, extreme complacency and weakness in the economic data, bring to mind Bob Farrell's 10 investment rules.? These rules should be a staple for any long term successful investor.? These rules are often quoted yet rarely heeded - just as they are now.? Bob Farrell is a Wall Street veteran with over 50 years of experience in crafting his investing rules.? Farrell obtained his masters degree from Columbia Business School and started as a technical analyst at Merrill Lynch in 1957. Even though Farrell studied fundamental analysis under Gramm and Dodd, he turned to technical analysis after realizing there was more to stock prices than balance sheets and income statements. Farrell became a pioneer in sentiment studies and market psychology. His 10 rules on investing stem from personal experience with dull markets, bull markets, bear markets, crashes and bubbles. In short, Farrell has seen it all and lived to tell about it.
The 10 Rules Of Investing
1. Markets tend to return to the mean (average price) over time.
Like a rubber band that has been stretched too far ? it must be relaxed in order to be stretched again. This is exactly the same for stock prices which are anchored to their moving averages.? Trends that get overextended in one direction, or another, always return to their long-term average. Even during a strong uptrend or strong downtrend, prices often move back (revert) to a long-term moving average. The chart below shows the S&P 500 with a 52-week simple moving average.
The bottom chart shows the percentage deviation of the current price of the market from the 52-week moving average.? During bullish trending markets there are regular reversions to the mean which create buying opportunities.? However, what is often not stated is that in order to take advantage of such buying opportunities profits should have been taken out of portfolios as deviations from the mean reached historical extremes.? Conversely, in bearish trending markets, such reversions from extreme deviations should be used to sell stocks, raise cash and reduce portfolio risk rather than "panic sell" at market bottoms.
The dashed RED lines denote when the markets changed trends from positive to negative. This is the very essence of portfolio "risk" management.
2. Excesses in one direction will lead to an opposite excess in the other direction.
Markets that overshoot on the upside will also overshoot on the downside, kind of like a pendulum. The further it swings to one side, the further it rebounds to the other side. This is the extension of Rule #1 as it applies to longer term market cycles (cyclical markets).?
While the chart above showed prices behave on a short term basis - on a longer term basis markets also respond to Newton's 3rd law of motion:? "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction."?? The first chart shows that cyclical markets reach extremes when more than 3-standard deviations above the 50-week moving average.? For the first time since the lows of the market in 2009 this has now occurred.? Notice that these excesses ARE NEVER worked off by just going sideways.
The second chart shows the price reversions of the S&P 500 on a long term basis and adjusted for inflation. Notice that when prices have historically reached extremes ? the reversion in price is just as extreme. It is clear that the current reversion in the stock market is still underway from the 2000 peak.
3. There are no new eras ? excesses are never permanent.
There will always be some "new thing" that elicits speculative interest.? These "new things" throughout history, like the "Siren's Song," has led many investor to their demise. In fact, over the last 500 years we have seen speculative bubbles involving everything from Tulip Bulbs to Railways, Real Estate to Technology, Emerging Markets (5 times) to Automobiles and Commodities.?? It is always starts the same and ends with the utterings of "This time it is different"??
[The chart below is from my March 2008 seminar discussing that the next recessionary bear market was about to occur.]
As legendary investor Jesse Livermore once stated:?
"A lesson I learned early is that there is nothing new in Wall Street. There can't be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again."
4. Exponential rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways
The reality is that excesses, such as we are seeing in the market now, can indeed go much further than logic would dictate. However, these excesses, as stated above, are never worked off simply by trading sideways. Corrections are always just as brutal as the advances were exhilarating. As the chart below shows when the markets broke out of their directional trends ? the corrections came soon thereafter.
5. The public buys the most at the top and the least at the bottom.
The average individual investor is most bullish at market tops and most bearish at market bottoms.? This is due to investor's emotional biases of "greed" when markets are rising and "fear" when markets are falling.? Logic would dictate that the best time to invest is after a massive selloff - unfortunately this is exactly the opposite of what investors do.
The chart below shows the flow of money into equity based mutual funds.
6. Fear and greed are stronger than long-term resolve.
As stated in Rule $5 it is emotions that cloud your decisions and affect your long-term plan.
"Gains make us exuberant; they enhance well-being and promote optimism," says Santa Clara University finance professor Meir Statman.? His studies of investor behavior show that "Losses bring sadness, disgust, fear, regret. Fear increases the sense of risk and some react by shunning stocks."
The composite index of bullish sentiment (an average of AAII and Investor's Intelligence surveys) shows that "greed" is beginning to reach levels where markets have generally reached intermediate term peaks.?
In the words of Warren Buffett:?
"Buy when people are fearful and sell when they are greedy."
Currently, those "people" are getting extremely greedy.
7. Markets are strongest when they are broad and weakest when they narrow to a handful of blue-chip names.
Breadth is important. A rally on narrow breadth indicates limited participation and the chances of failure are above average. The market cannot continue to rally with just a few large-caps (generals) leading the way. Small and mid-caps (troops) must also be on board to give the rally credibility. A rally that "lifts all boats" indicates far-reaching strength and increases the chances of further gains.?
The chart above shows the ARMS Index which is a volume-based indicator that determines market strength and breadth by analyzing the relationship between advancing and declining issues and their respective volume.? It is normally used as a short term trading measure of market strength.? However, for longer term periods the chart shows a weekly index smoothed with a 34-week average.? Spikes in the index has generally coincided with near-term market peaks.
8. Bear markets have three stages ? sharp down, reflexive rebound and a drawn-out fundamental downtrend
Bear markets often start with a sharp and swift decline. After this decline, there is an oversold bounce that retraces a portion of that decline. The longer term decline then continues, at a slower and more grinding pace, as the fundamentals deteriorate. Dow Theory suggests that bear markets consists of three down legs with reflexive rebounds in between.
The chart above shows the stages of the last two primary cyclical bear markets.? There were plenty of opportunities to sell into counter-trend rallies during the decline and reduce risk exposure.???
9. When all the experts and forecasts agree ? something else is going to happen.
This rule fits within Bob Farrell's contrarian nature.? As Sam Stovall, the investment strategist for Standard & Poor's once stated:
"If everybody's optimistic, who is left to buy? If everybody's pessimistic, who's left to sell?"
The point here is that as a contrarian investor, and along with several of the points already made within Farrell's rule set, excesses are built by everyone being on the same side of the trade.? Ultimately, when the shift in sentiment occurs ? the reversion is exacerbated by the stampede going in the opposite direction
Being a contrarian can be quite difficult at times as bullishness abounds.? However, it is also the secret to limiting losses and achieving long term investment success. As Howard Marks once stated:
"Resisting ? and thereby achieving success as a contrarian ? isn't easy. Things combine to make it difficult; including natural herd tendencies and the pain imposed by being out of step, since momentum invariably makes pro-cyclical actions look correct for a while. (That's why it's essential to remember that "being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.")
Given the uncertain nature of the future, and thus the difficulty of being confident your position is the right one ? especially as price moves against you ? it's challenging to be a lonely contrarian."
10. Bull markets are more fun than bear markets
As stated above in Rule #5 ? investors are primarily driven by emotions. As the overall markets rise ? up to 90% of any individual stock?s price movement is dictated by the overall direction of the market hence the saying ?a rising tide lifts all boats.?
Psychologically, as the markets rise, investors begin to believe that they are ?smart? because their portfolio is going up. In reality, it is primarily more a function of ?luck? rather than ?intelligence? that is driving their portfolio.
Investors behave much the same way as individuals who addicted to gambling. When they are winning they believe that their success is based on their skill. However, when they began to lose, they keep gambling thinking the next ?hand? will be the one that gets them back on track.? Eventually - they leave the table broke.
It is true that bull markets are more fun than bear markets. Bull markets elicit euphoria and feelings of psychological superiority. Bear markets bring fear, panic and depression.
What is interesting is that no matter how many times we continually repeat these ?cycles? ? as emotional human beings we always ?hope? that somehow this ?time will be different.? Unfortunately, it never is and this time won?t be either. The only questions are: when will the next bear market begin and will you be prepared for it?
Conclusions
Like all rules on Wall Street, Bob Farrell's rules are not meant has hard and fast rules. There are always exceptions to every rule and while history never repeats exactly it does often "rhyme" very closely.
Nevertheless, these rules will benefit investors by helping them to look beyond the emotions and the headlines.? Being aware of sentiment can prevent selling near the bottom and buying near the top, which often goes against our instincts.
Regardless of how many times I discuss these issues, quote successful investors, or warn of the dangers ? the response from both individuals and investment professionals is always the same.
??I am a long term, fundamental value, investor.? So these rules don?t really apply to me.?
No you?re not. Yes, they do.
Individuals are long term investors only as long as the markets are rising.? Despite endless warnings, repeated suggestions and outright recommendations - getting investors to sell, take profits and manage your portfolio risks is nearly a lost cause as long as the markets are rising.? Unfortunately, by the time the fear, desperation or panic stages are reached it is far too late to act and I will only be able to say that I warned you.
It's contest time again! With the seasons changing -- soon, we hope, as it's been a cold winter -- and spring fast approaching, we're teaming up with NVIDIA to award two Tegra-powered HTC One X+ devices (International edition) to a couple of lucky Android Central members.*
