“When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.” —Warren Buffett Leverage refers to the use of various financial instruments or borrowed capital, such as margin, to increase the potential return of an investment. Over the past decade, there has been an explosion in the number of trading opportunities available to retail [...]

To new/old readers of our humble blog; In 2012, Chris and I will look to expand the scope, quality and readership of Learning Machine in order to develop a community of people interested/involved with the technical parts of finance (automated trading, development, etc…). Look for massive changes to the layout/design of this website, along with [...]

Learning Machine was always intended as a year-long project. Sadly, since I’m starting full-time work, I’m unable to continue to contribute to the site. However, James will be taking over — he’s far more advanced in automated trading R&D than myself, and I’m excited to see what he brings to the table. I hope the [...]

Rational, intelligent investors should not simply accept the fact that value investing works simply because it has been quite successful over the decades. Why should we buy “undervalued” assets and expect to sell them at “fair value” in the future? And what process, if any, causes the price to revert back to this “fair value”? [...]