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“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” Abraham Lincoln

An extensive FX training program is being created for a college investment club as I write. The creator is a Junior in college. A bright young trader visited SMB for a Tradecast from the Midwest during a summer vacation. He had just graduated high school. I get an email every week from a developing trader who is killing the market this year. Not a month has passed without him netting 30k. He is entering his senior year at college. @zmoose12 has caught the eye of the best @stocktwits and will be attending Bentley college in the fall. One of the rising stars in the trading community and a young twenty something @ldrogen has been trading since high school.

Right wing, monetarist economist Andrew Lilico of the Policy Exchange think tank in the UK sees that country’s inflation rising to ever higher levels, and the UK’s central bank having to act by dramatically raising interest rates, according to The Telegraph.

Lilico sees the result of all the government’s quantitative easing programs and fiscal stimulus in rising inflation in the country, now above the 2% target rate for CPI for several months, heading to 6% in the next two years.

This is in opposition to Mervyn King, the governor of the UK’s central bank, who sees CPI heading back to 2% by 2012.

Hey, Android users — what’s the best Android news app?

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Here’s today’s roundup of tech news in case you missed ‘em:

• FourSquare added an apps page to their site Wednesday; take a look at the 20 coolest apps being offered.

• HP shareholders are suing the HP board over Hurd’s forced resignation.

• The Wall Street Journal investigates whether Demand Media is profitable, citing contradicting interviews with co-founder Richard Rosenblatt and papers from Demand’s IPO filing from last Friday claiming otherwise.

• SAI takes a look at Apple’s latest iAd for Citibank and what the effect will be on future ads.

It’s now wonder Australia’s economy is doing so well right now.

The nation’s export prices just spiked, in Q2, by the highest amount ever recorded.

Roland Randall @ TD Securities:

The export price index increased 16.1%/qtr in the June quarter, up from 3.8%/qtr for the prior period.

This is the biggest rise on record (since 1974), outpacing the 15.9%/qtr increase recorded in December 2008, the peak of the last terms-of-trade boom.

The year-on-year rate has turned positive, with export prices rising by 7.1%/yr. This will explode in coming quarters as we move into the period where the base effect is GFC affected.

Sharp inflation for a variety of Chinese commodities is leading many in China to suspect investment speculation as the underlying cause, rather than simple consumption demand.

When commodity prices are volatile, farmers become traders:

Caixin:

This harvest season, Cao decided to wait for higher prices. And thanks to a wave of speculation and farm commodity-flipping in China’s agricultural market, his waiting game was likely to pay off.

“The price of new wheat this year has risen to 1.04 yuan per half kilogram,” said Cao, who plows the land in Hebei Province’s Zhengding County. “It was only a little more than 0.8 yuan last year, and it will likely go higher in coming days.”

Everyone’s talking about a new age of austerity and increasing productivity. But that won’t be easy for a country that prefers lazy consumption: America is the world’s fattest country, getting fatter every year, according to a report from Trust for America’s Health.

Costs of an obese workforce for employers include:

• lower productivity costing $506 per obese worker annually
• over seven times higher medical claims for obese workers
• obesity related absenteeism worth $4.3 billion annually

The costs for state and federal government are also startling, with obesity costing nearly $150 billion in annual health care costs.

Do you lead more like Captain Kirk, or Liz Lemon? Find out what kind of boss you are by taking the fun quiz they’re offering over at Rypple.

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Shout out to Ken Griffin’s grandma, may she RIP. She was a farmer, a businesswoman, and she paid Griffin’s way through Harvard. Griffin said the cause was old age >>

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Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster: “We do not believe the iPhone 4 hardware antenna issue will impact our unit estimates, but a potential fix from the company could impact operating income by 1%.”

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