Category: Futures

When one acquires a certain amount of stocks, based upon the market price, one is entitled to an equivalent amount of certificates entitling one to the aforementioned investment. When the market value of these stocks increases, you can sell your stocks for the market value, entitling you to the difference. Hence, when yours stocks \”go up\” you make a profit. But, when your stocks lose value, you quite clearly lose value as well.

Hard stocks, however, lead to hard losses. You may prefer the softer margins of the futures market. To begin this volatile career as a futurist, you need only pony up to the margins set by each commodity on the market. So, for instance, you like that the margin (think of margins as ante in a poker game) for wheat — or let\’s say sugar. The initial investment margin for a commodity, therefore, may be $5,000 or so.

With the initial margin satisfied, you may begin to speculate using the more versatile futures increment, known the e-mini. For the sake of reference, it may help you to think of this margin in term of your own home. Imagine putting down 20% of your home\’s value in order to steer its potential open market value. Heady stuff, to be sure. But be wary and stay focused or you will suffer the fate of many a day trader in the 1990s.

What would you use sauna heaters for? Sauna heaters are great for relaxing muscles and joints. Many people use them to rid the body of toxins. Some use it for an overall body and mind therapy. This was one way the sauna was used in an animated series King of the Hill.

On the program a new age native American has a sauna set up where he charges people to enter the sauna and allow the steam to release the toxins from the body and the mind. As the men are in the sauna sweating they all start having dreams or even hallucinations.

One man sees how he thinks he is going to die, riding a motorcycle through a giant donut. The steam has shown him his weakness for food will be his end. The sauna steam show one man, a pest exterminator, dying at the hands of a large insect. The other man is simply at peace at his job in his hallucination selling propane grills.

His mind is clear and there are no toxins to drive out by the steam and heat. The old man in the sauna heaters is a World War II vet who killed many enemies in the war. His guilt comes back to haunt him as he sweats in the sauna. He sees the men he killed in the war as he hallucinates. He runs out of the sauna blaming his son, the propane grill salesman, for taking him into the sauna.

There is no shortage of evidence that many of the major problems of the world can be blamed on modern technology. Mass production of goods and mass transportation together with the factories and vehicles that enable all this devour the planet’s resources and pollute on an epic scale.

A central issue is that we have been burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil to provide the energy that powers our modern technologies. The fact is that more has now been burned than remains in the ground, and if that isn’t depressing enough, all the fuel that has been burned to date has been relentlessly pumping surplus CO2 into the atmosphere.

The party’s over – the bottle (or barrel) is all but empty and a toxic hangover and a vague recollection of reckless merriment are all that await. The last ironic gasp of this bygone age of technology might yet be a global pandemic of some new disease or virus, spread around the world in just days or weeks thanks to widespread access to easy travel.

But how likely is this scenario really and can the blame all be laid at the door of technology? The fact is that this is hardly a first offence – as a species we have a pretty poor record when it comes bad behaviour leading to unfortunate consequences. But every time we’ve somehow managed to survive and emerge stronger.