Readings and Insights to Start the Weekend

* How the use of imagery can help in changing our patterns of thought and behavior; (Dr. Brett note: imagery techniques are especially promising in cultivating the still mind needed to attend to one's feel for the markets).

* Retail sales for back-to-school looking weak;

* Nice look at blogs that offer quantitative analyses, including some newcomers;

* Market Rewind continues a series of excellent posts; this one on a system for switching trading strategies; Jeff's member site (trial subscriptions available for his service) features a video on pairs trading. Sweet!

* Statistics make recovery look better than it actually is; one not so good stat: two-thirds of current home sales are either foreclosures or banks taking losses on sales;

* A prop trader's views on dark pools of liquidity; an article on why dark pools are not a particular threat to traders and investors; (Dr. Brett note: this is one reason I focus on transacted volume, rather than orders that increasingly aren't appearing/resting in the book);

* A growing professional class in emerging economies is a significant development;

* China continues to pursue acquisition of raw materials companies.
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