Vado a Andare Trovare Italia Solo

For those of you who don't speak Italian, I'm heading to Italy alone next month. For those who do speak Italian, apologies for the inevitable grammar mistake(s) in my blog title.

Before I get to the trip details, I wanted to give an endorsement to the Pimsleur language series that I'm using to learn Italian. It's a three level audio series with 30 daily 30 minute lessons in each level. After only five weeks (I just stared level II), the progress I've made is incredible. Pimsleur certainly doesn't have the marketing muscle or cache of Rosetta Stone but I can't imagine Rosetta Stone being better. However, Pimsleur is actually a bit more expensive (unless you live near a library that has it for free like I do).

On to the trip. I've decide to tour Italy by bike alone next month (June 4th-23rd). I've already purchased the plane ticket so I committed at this point. The original route I was contemplating largely resembled the first Italy tour I did two years ago. However, after doing some research on the individual rides I decided some of the rides were too difficult/remote to do alone. If something were to happen to my bike while climbing a remote mountain pass I could be seriously screwed. Thus I'm going to stay out of the mountains and spend most of my time in the relatively flat Emilia Romagna region.

I'll post details on the route once I have it finalized.

All Aboard the India Express

If you want to play this global rally, there's no better place than India. India has the best demographic trends of any developing country so it's a great buy and hold investment. It's like buying into the U.S. or Japan in the 70s/80s. Of course everyone will argue that if the U.S. economy/market doesn't do well neither will India because decoupling was proven a farce. Well that's the trap. Decoupling didn't happen with Asian economies in the last runup because they were all riding the U.S. consumption wave. But now with the reset to their economies and markets and less external economic influence from the U.S., decoupling can truly happen as they build their internal infrastructures to accomodate their growing populations and desires.

This appears to be a great entry point.

Here's a long term LOG chart for IFN, the India ETF:


And here's the long term LINEAR chart for IFN:


Finally, the daily chart for IFN, which is forming a wedge and a big breakout to the upside appears imminent: