A Reality Check on Technical Trading Rule Profits in US Futures Markets

This paper investigates the profitability of technical trading rules in US futures markets over the 1985-2004 period. To account for data snooping biases, we evaluate statistical significance of performance across technical trading rules using White's Bootstrap Reality Check test and Hansen's Superior Predictive Ability test. These methods directly quantify the effect of data snooping by testing the performance of the best rule in the context of the full universe of technical trading rules. Results show that the best rules generate statistically significant economic profits only for two of 17 futures contracts traded in the US. This evidence indicates that technical trading rules generally have not been profitable in US futures markets after correcting for data snooping biases.Marketing,

Governance networks: Interlocking directorships of corporate and nonprofit boards

This study describes the interlocking networks of corporate directors serving on publicly listed corporate boards and those on the boards of nonprofit organizations in Western Australia in 2006. When this study was undertaken, the state was the beneficiary of a booming economy in resource development prior to the global financial crisis, yielding a substantial number of resource companies with their headquarters in Perth, the capital city of Western Australia. Through social network analysis using NetDraw, we trace the extent of interpersonal connections of prominent individuals who serve on these boards in this relatively isolated state in Australia. The network figures demonstrate the inner circle of companies and nonprofits with their interlocking directorships that suggest the growing interpenetration among the state, the market, and civil society. As a result of reduced government funding during the last two decades in Western Australia, nonprofit organizations have had to use market strategies to increase their revenues, which is one factor that has led to this greater interdependence between previously separate groups. Thus, market forces have blurred the boundaries that once separated private companies from nonprofit organizations, increasing the interlocking nature of their board directors

An Ecolinguistic Approach to Critical Discourse Studies

This article explores the recently emerging area of ecolinguistics as a form of critical discourse study. While ecolinguistics tends to use the same forms of linguistic analysis as traditional critical discourse studies, the normative framework it operates in considers relationships of humans not just with other humans but also with the larger ecological systems that all life depends on. Ecolinguistics analyses discourses from consumerism to nature poetry, critiquing those which encourage ecologically destructive behaviour and seeking out those which encourage relationships of respect and care for the natural world. The expanded context of ecolinguistics complicates power relations between oppressor and oppressed since it considers impacts on non-human subjects and future generations not yet born, necessitating both theoretical development of CDS and an application of an ecologically based normative framework for judging discourses against

Entrepreneurial Literary Theory: A Debate on Research and the Future of Academia

Across the world at present, researchers and teachers are being exhorted to become entrepreneurial. Universities are being restructured accordingly. The debate presented in this book considers what that involves and portends for academia. Literary studies are often regarded as the most resistant to – unfit for – entrepreneurial purposes. Literary research is therefore taken as a baseline for this debate. The uneasy place of literary research within profit-driven academia is revealing of the prevailing conditions for scholarship in all areas. Questions that are raised and discussed here include: What does doing research for the public good mean? What is the relationship between profits and benefits from research? What are applied and basic research? Are concepts of academic freedom and disinterestedness meaningful? What is the relationship between corporate and academic research? Are skills and knowledge different? Can pursuits like close reading and text interpretation be made profitable? What is literary value and how can it be measured? Can the literary system be modelled to profitable ends? Can university teaching be automatized? What are the differences between a standard publication agreement and a scholarly publication agreement? How can digital and open-access academic publication be made profitable? Does the academic monograph have a future? What sorts of knowledge and skills inform entrepreneurial leadership

The Lighthouse at Pharos - A Narrative

This paper seeks to tell a story, a story of the colossal lighthouse of Pharos built outside a grand city as acknowledgement to and evidence of the prosperity and significance of Alexandria. Detailed accounts of the wealth and role of Alexandria, Ptolemy 1, Sostratus, and other contextual information is provided. Additionally, a synthesis of the various accounts regarding the dimensions and features of the lighthouse provides readers an view into the significance of one of the seven wonders of the ancient world

SIGNS AND NARRATIVE DESIGN IN PLUTARCH’S ALEXANDER

Plutarch’s Alexander reflects the tendency among earlier Alexandersources to augment the life of the great Macedonian with asupernatural aspect. Plutarch himself selects from, dismisses andfashions this material in accordance with his own standards forresponsible biography, but also with his narrative purposes. Thispaper explores the relationship between signs from the supernaturalsphere (semeia / theia, including dreams, oracles, omens, portents)and Plutarch’s narrative line. In the initial section of the biography,Plutarch’s deliberate association of his protagonist with divineinvolvement provides sanction for his future success. Afterestablishing his character as ‘spirited’ (thymoeidēs), the signssupport his spirit (thymos) and ambition (philotimia) towardsfulfilling his allotted role. During the latter part of the narrative,portents tend to become ominous, so that Alexander is depicted asdejected (athymos), anxious (tarachōdēs; periphobos), despairing(dysthymos), and superstitious (deisidaimōn). In this way, the signssupport an ascending and descending line in Alexander’s biographyand hint at divine and psychological (in addition to moral) reasonsfor Alexander’s successes and eventual demise.Introductio

How to transform a ‘place of violence’ into a ‘space of collective remembering’: Italy and its traumatic past

This paper seeks to analyse cultural trauma theories and their consequences as well as their potential applicability to cases of collective trauma where access to the legal arena in the rehabilitation process is not possible. When ‘state terror’ occurs, such as in Latin America, or, more arguably Italy, access to the legal arena is systematically denied through a variety of criminal strategies. In these cases, the cultural working through of trauma takes place on the aesthetic level. What are the consequences of this process both for the inscription of the crucial event in public discourse and for its relationship with justice? Moreover, how do aesthetic codes affect the public definition of justice and a collective understanding of what happened?Publisher PD

Dark memories in the provincial words of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Federico Fellini's Amarcord

Dark memories in the provincial words of Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander and Federico Fellini's AmarcordThis article about Federico Fellini’s Amarcord (1973) and Ingmar Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander (1982) concerns one aspect of the directors’ childhood memories, namely how authoritarian institutions are used to disrupt otherwise fairly idyllic and nostalgic lives and worlds. The films blend detailed memories with playful fantasies, combine experiences of the directors’ alter egos, Titta and Alexander, with rituals of family and larger communities in the provincial cities of Rimini and Uppsala. In each film, bitter memories are given a central role. This article explores the similarities of these bitter memories, as they are imagined in the mature auteurs’ last exceptionally successful films