Trading and even more investing is a difficult business. The reason is not your stupidity – no it is the intelligence of the rest of the market. Either you have a good trading system that produces good trading signals or you need a good trading signal source. In the latter case it really doesn’t matter whether there is a human behind the signals, a completely mechanized signal system or a mixture of both. Important is that you don’t have to work and to sweat.

Right, sweating is part of the game if you are in the hot seat of making your own trading decisions. For many traders that is exactly how they want it to be. Generating trading signals with a software, or worse, buying them?

Complete nonsense – but think about it. Maybe these bought signals easily outrival your own trading arts. This would be hard to admit and yet, for so many this is nothing but the ugly truth. Half of all market participants are below average. Probably even more – many small fish must feed few bigger ones. And the biggest one is the quoTrader….

Yesterday Microsoft announced that their next Windows will be available for non-Intel processors also, i.e., the ARM architecture. ARM Holdings gapped up.

Nvidia ran up also, because Microsoft demonstrated a Windows version running on its Tegra processor line, which is based on the ARM architecture.

Even competing processor architecture licensor Mips Tech reacted, probably either because it is now seen as a takeover target or because Microsoft’s decision generally makes the way free for other processors than x86.

So, what does that mean now?

Foremost, this fine piece of news has to be seen psychologically. As soon as there are non-x86 Windows computers, even if they are pad or netbook-sized, there will be a market for other devices, e.g., powered by Linux on any more efficient processor and sized anywhere up to desktops or even to servers.

That is why Microsoft will probably not gain. The opposite is evenly likely. It is too late for them to catch up in the pad market, which is the direct idea behind this move and in their home turf, the desktop computer, this decision may ignite the Linux avalanche ;)

Sure, the iPad craze is still young, but for one, Apple and Google are formidable competitors. Secondly Microsoft’s operating system market share in these markets is zero. The old argument of MSFT being the late to the party coming crusher doesn’t hold here. For example, replacing Netscape’s browser with the Internet Explorer worked only, because they had the OS monopoly and Netscape was some orders of magnitude smaller.

Also, the biggest argument for Windows, the thousands of applications, doesn’t mean anything here. These programs need the current UI of Windows, mice and keyboards. Porting drivers is another time consuming hurdle. There is a long way to go for MSFT and their application providers to make a non-Intel Windows with a touch screen reality.

The direct winner, ARM Holdings, will probably see not so much revenue directly from computers with Microsoft, simply because MSFT will not get a significant market share in the pad computer market soon. Overall ARMH and MIPS and other smaller processor manufacturers should of course benefit.

Intel will be faced with even more competition from less power hungry and leaner processor lines. The old Wintel duopoly is beginning to sink.

Eventually the consumer could be the lucky winner. No more bloatware from Microsoft and Intel :)

Today China announced its new export quotas for Rare Earth elements. On the surface they cut planned export for 2011, but compared to the second half of 2010 it seems actually to be an improvement for supply.

Molycorp had additionally news about a reopening delay of one of its mines. Earlier this month good news about an investment by Sumitomo in the mining company propelled the fine restart of MCP.

Its peer Rare Element Resources jumped even more fulminantly without falling back so much on record volume.

How the spot market prices of Rare Earth elements will react to the new Chinese export quotas is still unclear. This move was preannounced from Chinese officials and insofar not unexpected. Perhaps the market discounted a bigger cut or the sell-the-news-effect may have set in.

Magic Software Enterprises makes a new high in a strong five weeks old trend. Breaking news seems to be an acquisition in South Africa.

This is a purely technical play. No fundamental guidance or idea. Magic Software offers platforms and services supporting internal enterprise software development.

Cramer mentioned yesterday MIPS Tech as something that one can’t get enough of and called it an Internet tsunami. Today MIPS soared and while it is not clear whether there is a direct connection of these two incidents, MIPS got back into the spotlight.

The long-term chart does not reveal the whole story. It looks more like a recovery of the company.

MIPS Technologies could challenge ARM Holdings, the leader in processor technology of iPhones and other smart gadgets. However, Intel also tries to get a better foothold in that market.

Molycorp got ignited by a rumor that Sumitomo is considering to buy a stake in the company.

The other Rare Earth company that is easily tradable in the U.S. markets, Rare Element, got dragged up today in sympathy with MCP.

Novagold Resources made a restart in its 6 weeks old sharp up-trend. Hard to tell whether this was an independent move or not. It started directly after the bell together with other mining stocks, while MCP and REE needed the first whisper of the rumor to get rolling.

Friday shares of China Shen Zhou Mining ran up almost 30% on positive revenues guidance for the next year. The company produces and deals with fluorite ores and metals like zinc, copper and lead.

It has not the psychological sex appeal advantage of their rare earth, gold or uranium counterparts, but it expects revenues to rise about 164% in 2011.

Today Cirrus Logic got upgraded by an analyst who reasoned that its spot in the iPhones and iPads of Apple is not at risk. Apple is Cirrus’ biggest customer and the company’s special hope is that it can excite other smartphone manufacturers for its chips in the wake of the rolling apple.

Specifically the analyst of Jefferies thinks that Cirrus will be able to land its chips into the next version of the iPhone. There is presumably work underway to make Apple’s mobile wonder compatible with Verizon’s and Sprint’s networks.

Moreover, Cirrus is viewed by Adam Benjamin to hold its competitors at bay and increase the average selling price per smartphone or tablet computer by integrating more discrete parts into its chips faster than the competition can. In short, Cirrus Logic seems to do a good job as a chip designer.

On Monday Sohu.com (SOHU) reported better than expected earnings. The market rewarded the stock with a formidable intraday run.

Sohu makes most of its money with online gaming in the Chinese market. While revenues grew moderately but better than expected in all areas, the relatively new search advertising section stood out.

With 134% revenues growth over the last year in that area Sohu may try to follow the success trail of Baidu, the leading search engine in China. For now Sohu’s search advertising accounted only for about 3% of its total revenues. Baidu is the clear market leader and Sohu is the tiny dwarf.

Number two in that market is tech-titan Google, also far ahead of Sohu. On Friday the leading Chinese ecommerce company Alibaba announced that from now on Sohu’s search service is, along with Bing, available to its users. Who knows, perhaps the dwarf is just going to put on its seven league boots.

The weekly chart of the last eight years shows two growth phases. Will it be possible for Sohu to start the third one?

Two weeks ago China announced a restriction of rare earth element export and coincidentally that was the day of my last post about Molycorp (MCP) and Rare Element (REE). That day both stocks ran up strongly.

Today the news suggest the opposite. The New York Times had a story about new shipments from China. So they seem to relax their restrictions. Molycorp reacted heavily with record volume.

Rare Element showed almost the same pattern.

All that on the birthday of the first rare earth element ETF. It is not a pure play, because there are simply not enough stocks mining rare earth ore only and so it is called: Market Vectors Rare Earth / Strategic Metals ETF. Its ticker is REMX and it started trading at $20.

The long-term uptrend of MCP and REE is still intact and the market is obviously expecting a volatile future but not an end of the speculative bubble.

China produces more than 95% of the global consumption of these rare earth elements, which are increasingly needed in high technology products. There are many places around the world with resources of these metals, but it takes time to ramp up a mining operation.

Low prices of these metals and environmental challenges have led the Western world to shut down one mine after the other in the last decades. Both Molycorp and Rare Elements don’t mine any ore yet. Essentially both companies are speculative plays on a price of these minerals high enough when they actually go into production.

So, there is upside potential, but the price of these rare earth elements, which shot up a few hundred percent for some of them since their low some years ago, could also drop back during the next years. In the meantime every indication for a different export climate from China will probably rock the prices of these stocks.

Market values in this business are often disconnected from fundamental values. These are momentum plays for the technical trader. Don’t try to be a value investor here and calculate stock market cap in relation to possible accumulated earnings until the deposits are exploited or whatsoever and then have the clever idea to short these hot shots.