I've been doing a lot of reading recently. Here are Django books I've finished:

• Python Web Development with Django
• SAMS Teach Yourself Django in 24 Hours
• Django 1.0 Template Development
• Pro Django

Here are general web development books I've read:

• High Performance Web Sites
• Even Faster Web Sites
• Designing Web Interfaces

And a book on Git: Version Control with Git.

In addition, here are the books I am currently reading:

• Beginning Google Maps Mashups
• Building Scalable Web Sites
• Practical django Projects, Second Edition

I particularly recommend Pro Django for django developers. It is advanced and offers a lot of insight into django and the python techniques it is built on.

A website which specializes in photographs of the Earth from above. Also available as a coffee table book.

Lean Software Development

Seven principles of lean thinking (when applied to software development):

1. Eliminate waste
2. Amplify learning
3. Decide as late as possible
4. Deliver as fast as possible
5. Empower the team
6. Build integrity in
7. See the whole

The Secret Science of Price and Volume: Techniques for Spotting Market Trends, Hot Sectors, and the Best Stocks is yet another book on trading that I came across at Amazon. I'm familiar with looking at price and volume and I've seen top-down methods of stock selection, but I haven't seen a really integrated method. In particular, I haven't seen something that gives a good idea of where the market is heading, and that's one of the things this method relies on:

• Gauge the sentiment of a market to determine if the trend is bullish or bearish, and whether a possible high or low is nearby
• Evaluate breadth, volume, and momentum in order to identify triggers to enter the market
• Find the best performing sectors that are aligned with the market
• Select the strongest stocks within those sectors

I saw Sell & Sell Short at Barnes and Noble the other day. Naturally, I returned home and ordered it from Amazon.

I've shorted a couple of times, but I think that I have to do it more often to make money in all markets. There aren't a lot of good books out there on shorting, so I am looking forward to working through this.

Here are some topics covered in the book:

• How to control risk by linking the placement of your protective stop with your money management and position size
• Where not to put your protective stops
• Why using moving averages as profit targets works well in the early stages of an upmove
• Why channels or envelopes are better targets when you are riding a trending stock
• How to use support/resistance areas for profit targets and stop losses in long-term position trades
• How to adjust your targets when market conditions change or your stock blows through the initial profit target

The Wisdom of Crowds

Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations

On prediction markets

Does this idea seem ludicrous? Since 1988, the University of Iowa has run the Iowa Electronic Markets, which allow people to bet on the outcome of presidential elections. As a predictor, the Iowa Electronic Markets have produced extraordinarily accurate judgments, often doing better than professional polling organizations. In the week before each of the last four elections, the predictions in the Iowa market have shown an average absolute error of just 1.5 percentage points, a significant improvement over the 2.1 percentage point error in the final Gallup Polls. Or consider the Hollywood Stock Exchange, in which people predict Oscar nominees and winners, as well as opening weekend box-office successes. Here, too, the level of accuracy has been exceptionally impressive, with (for example) correct predictions of thirty-five out of forty Oscar nominees in 2002.

[...]

Surowiecki might object that some crowds can be wise even when ignorance is widespread. Consider the astonishing accuracy of the Iowa Electronic Markets (and other prediction markets), in which good judgments come from groups of investors that include many people who know little and are perhaps more likely to be wrong than to be right. But we cannot easily generalize from prediction markets, because they have several distinctive features. Most important, they do not simply rely on the median or average judgment of a randomly selected group of people. They are genuine markets, in which people voluntarily choose to participate, presumably because they think they know something. In addition, people are permitted to buy and to sell shares on a continuing basis. In these circumstances, accurate answers can emerge even if only a small percentage of participants have good information.

In the Iowa Electronic Markets, it turns out that 85 percent of the traders aren't so smart. They hold onto their shares for a long period and then just accept someone else's prices. The market's predictions appear to be driven by the other 15 percent--frequent traders who post their offers rather than accepting those made by other people. The broader point is that to work well, prediction markets do not require accurate judgments by anything like the majority of participants. In this sense, prediction markets are very different from judgments by ordinary crowds. Surowiecki's claims about group wisdom don't adequately emphasize the unique characteristics of these markets.