Dow Jones Industrial Index Symmetrical Triangle

Symmetrical triangles are generally considered neutral, ascending triangles are bullish, and descending triangles are bearish. From a time perspective, triangles are usually considered to be intermediate patterns. Usually, it takes longer than a month to form a triangle. Seldom will a triangle last longer than three months. If a triangle pattern does take longer than three months to complete the formation will take on major trend significance.

Converging trendlines of support and resistance gives the symmetrical triangle pattern its distinctive shape. This occurs because the trading action gets tighter and tighter until the market breaks out with great force. Buyers and sellers find themselves in a period where they are not sure where the market is headed. Their uncertainty is marked by their actions of buying and selling sooner, making the pattern look like an increasingly tight coil moving across the chart.

A breakdown below the lower symmetrical support will trigger a test of the previous sub-trough at 12069.5. Support failure here increases downward pressure to break the next support at 11644.8 and retest the green parallel support line. The hammer candlestick formation needs a strong confirmation from the next candlestick bar to gain momentum to clear the previous sub-peak and trigger a challenge to breakout above the upper symmetrical resistance line. This will propel price towards the red parallel resistance line. Breakout here will result in a more positive outlook for the Dow Jones Industrial Index.

Options Bullish strategies

Bullish options strategies are employed when the options trader expects the underlying stock price to move upwards. It is necessary to assess how high the stock price can go and the timeframe in which the rally will occur in order to select the optimum trading strategy.
The most bullish of options trading strategies is the simple call buying strategy used by most novice options traders.

In most cases, stocks seldom go up by leaps and bounds. Moderately bullish options traders usually set a target price for the bull run and utilize bull spreads to reduce risk. While maximum profit is capped for these strategies, they usually cost less to employ. The bull call spread and the bull put spread are common examples of moderately bullish strategies.

Mildly bullish trading strategies are options strategies that make money as long as the underlying stock price do not go down on options expiration date. These strategies usually provide a small downside protection as well. Writing out-of-the-money covered calls is a good example of such a strategy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Options_Trading

Higher-Capacity Memory

A new type of memory could soon be available to device makers.

An alternative to the flash memory that stores and retrieves data with arrays of microscopic probes could soon be on the market. Nanochip, a company based in Fremont, CA, has recently raised $14 million to complete work on prototypes that it hopes to ship to electronics device makers for evaluation next year.

Nanochip's technology offers advantages to flash memory, both in terms of the amount of data that can be stored and the cost per memory chip, says Gordon Knight, the company's CEO. The first prototypes will store about 100 gigabytes, he says--more than the tens of gigabytes stored on flash memory cards today. Eventually, the devices could store terabytes' worth of data, he says. That's likely out of the reach of flash-type memory, says Stefan Lai, formerly the director of flash memory technology at Intel and now a scientific advisor to Nanochip.

In flash memory, information is stored using specialized transistors, each of which is addressed by a grid of conducting wires. The Nanochip technology, in contrast, stores information by writing data to a thin-film material using an array of microscopic cantilevers, each with an extremely sharp tip. The size of each bit will be 15 nanometers in the first devices, but it could theoretically be as small as just a couple of nanometers.

Nanochip's array-based memory provides an alternative to both flash memory and hard drives. In addition to storing more data than flash, it will be cheaper and can be about as fast, Knight says. What's more, it could last longer than flash. Compared with hard drives, the manufacturing processes used will make Nanochip's devices more economical for small portable electronics, Lai says. The company's memory devices would also be more rugged than hard drives and run virtually silently.

The idea of using microscopically sharp tips to store data is not new. In the late 1990s, IBM demonstrated its Millipede technology, which used arrays of a thousand such tips to write and read bits. (See "Bugged about the Future of Magnetic Storage?") The Millipede program is still active at IBM but so far hasn't produced a commercial memory chip. Nanochip uses a similar approach.However, while IBM's Millipede uses a polymer material, with data stored by heating and indenting the material with the ultrasharp tip, Nanochip uses a material that can be written electronically: applying a voltage through the tip changes the electronic state of the material at the point of contact. That state can later be read using a weaker voltage. Knight says that the electronic process is faster than a thermal process.

A remaining challenge is engineering a complete chip with thousands of cantilevers. The arrays will need to be mounted on a stage that can be moved, using electrostatic forces, over the storage material and combined with electronics that make it possible to control each tip separately. Part of the challenge will be writing the algorithms for controlling the device to optimize how to store data using the moving stage, says William King, professor of mechanical science and engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne. (King was part of the Millipede team at IBM and is a scientific advisor to Nanochip.) In both hard drives and flash memory, he says, bits can be accessed sequentially. But in this system, to take advantage of the parallel arrays of tips, methods of storing and retrieving thousands of bits at once will need to be developed.

"It's a big challenge, but it's something I believe can be done," Lai says. "And if you solve the problems, then you have a whole new memory technology that's available."

http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/20192/

Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance

Governance, Risk, and Compliance or "GRC" is an increasingly recognized term that reflects a new way organizations focus on and manage an integrated approach to these three areas.

According to Michael Rasmussen, an industry analyst at Forrester Research, the challenge in defining GRC is that individually each term has "many different meanings within organizations. There is corporate governance, IT governance, financial risk, strategic risk, operational risk, IT risk, corporate compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance, employment/labor compliance, privacy compliance . . . you get the picture."

According to Scott L. Mitchell, Chairman & CEO of the Open Compliance and Ethics Group (OCEG), there "are substantially more processes than governance, risk and compliance playing critical roles in GRC. But 13-letter acronyms rarely catch on

Typically GRC solutions are Enterprise Software that enables businesses to comply with legal requirements. Examples for such requirements are regulation like the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Basel II and local requirements for occupational health and safety. Failure to meet these standards can lead to severe legal penalties or civil liability.

Initial interest in GRC was driven by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, but GRC software requirements have changed and now are seen as a means to achieve Enterprise Risk Management. Specifically to evolve from managing risk as a transaction or compliance activity to adding business value by improving operational decision making and strategic planning.

GRC software becomes the governance platform for defining, maintaining, and monitoring risk.
OCEG, a non-profit organization that provides a performance framework for integrating governance, compliance, risk management and culture, is one of the leading voices for GRC.[citation needed] OCEG has developed a Measurement and Metrics Guide (MMG) for assisting in measuring and reporting on the performance of compliance and ethics programs. This measurement platform advocates that program objectives be aligned with and contribute to the enterprise objectives in a tangible way. In order to achieve desired program outcomes, an organization should design processes and practices that effectively measure program dimensions on three key dimensions: effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness.

i-flex solutions, is the first company to issue a GRC Framework for the financial services industry, according to BobsGuide, an industry news site.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governance%2C_Risk_Management%2C_and_Compliance

Oculus Power Breakout

Smashed gap resistance turned gap support zone now. Cleared both the red downtrend resistance line and 50 days EMA resistance line. Immediate resistance zone is 20 to 22 cents follow by 25 cents resistance. Immediate support is 16.5 to 16 cents gap support zone. Support failure here will trigger test of next support at 14 cents. Interesting Monday trading expected.