Meta-Trader - Slammed by Sandy

Welcome back Meta-Traders.

Its been a rough week for your humble blog author.  Hurricane Sandy came through the NY Metro area Monday evening, and I lost just before 7PM Monday evening.  As of Saturday, power still has not been restored and the indications are it may not be back for another week.

Soon after the power loss, I got the Forex robots laptop onto the Internet via cellular Wi-Fi and closed all open positions.  So Forex has been down hard all week.  Here's one case where I could have benefited from a VPS, but its cost would have only put me deeper in the hole on Automated Forex Trading.

The local municipal building has been open 24x7 and they have power and working bathrooms which is a plus since my house has no pressure left in the water system, so we can't even run water to wash hands.  Toilets can be flushed by only by lugging pool water in via buckets and dumping it into the toilet tank.

As if all that were not enough, gasoline is now in short supply and long lines are forming at stations wherever gas can be found.  We expect that situation to ease in the next few days however but some people are stocking up just in case which only makes the situation worse.

By all accounts, things are worse in New Jersey which took a direct hit from the storm and is more densely populated than where I live.  And the people who live in the high-rises is lower Manhattan are going to have some stories to tell since living in the city with no power has to be a major challenge. Where I live, many stores and supermarkets never lost power and getting food and drinking water has not been a problem.

But every crisis has a positive side.  Despite the loss of life and property damage, this storm will lead to an increase in economic activity.  The landscaping and tree repair crews are cleaning up, both literally and financially.  I will be making a few purchases when my power comes back that I would not have otherwise.  And those whose houses and properties were destroyed will rebuild - at the cost of the insurance industry and at the benefit of the housing industry.  And housing construction benefits everyone from the construction crews and their families to the suppliers via the invisible hand of Adam Smith.

That's enough for one week Meta-Traders.  Health and Happiness to all and a special congratulations to Daniel Fernandez who got engaged to his sweetie Paola Torres this past week.  All the best, Daniel!