How my Wife’s Bra Saved us Money

I’m essentially retired.
I work on rare occasions, today, coincidentally being one of those days. I have another 4 days lined up for the rest of 2011. If it weren’t for the varied attendant body aches and pains, I’d be very happy, instead of just very happy.
Besides what Sugar Momma brings home, it’s just me, my computer and my discount broker.
Today, she bought home a squirrel and some acorns, while I try to catch elusive trades. It would be nice if she actually bought home a pay check. Instead, it gets electronically deposited, which takes away a little of the excitement of fondling the money proxy.
I miss the days when I used to be paid in gold fillings. I admire the integrity and conviction of a toothless by personal choice Ron Paul.
So after giving up a very substantial income when I was on the dark side, we’ve had to learn to economize in all aspects of our lives.
First, we sent our youngest son to a state university. Much less expensive than our previous attempts at educating one of our kids. Although during my initial consideration of Altucher’s treatise on why college is a waste, I dismissed his theory, now I’m not so certain.
Next, we insisted that he enlist in the army. Any army, as long as they had a tuition benefit. He’s currently in basic training, having decided on the United States Armed Forces. They will be paying for his senior year of middle school.
Then we stopped checking the mail box and answering the telephone. I also conveniently forget to sign checks. There’s alot you can get away with if you blame it on age.
Of course, you already know that I use a discount broker. No need to splurge there.
But even during times of belt tightening, man needs a respite from the daily grind, so in that mindset, Sugar Momma and I decided that we needed a vacation.
Rather than out typical luxurious retreat and pampering, oh how I loved the chocolate hydrotherapy of our past life, the hot and cold running prostitutes and other regal amenities, we decided to be one with nature and went camping.
Among the things that I love and respect about my Sugar Momma is her ability to see outside the box, even if that’s no longer an accepted hip consulting expression.
The one thing that I would like to change about her is her inability to get out of the box when she accidentally gets entrapped.
Can’t tell you how many times she’d been unknowingly placed out with the recycling.
Anyway, instead of buying an expensive tent, she suggested we use one of her bras for shelter. She was always good for such thoughts. Unfortunately, the royalties on her patented use of bras as 2 chinstrapped Yarmulkes for conjoined twin Orthodox Jewish people with hydrocephalus had by now gone dry, along with their CSF.
(Too many obscure references?)
Regardless, another bra was a sleeping bag for two and a third one was used as a fishing net and it helped to feed an entire village.
Priceless.
You’ve probably already figured out that Sugar Momma doesn’t read my blog.
What prompted that line of thinking was her discussion with a neighbor last night regarding an upcoming “girls day” when they were going to go shopping for custom made bras.
I have no clue what a custom made bra costs, but I’m guessing that her material costs alone will be substantial. Much less so for the neighbor.
The two joked that they would tell the salesperson that they were sisters. I don’t dare post their pictures, but trust me, they’re not spitting images.
So as a result,  I’ll have to trade more for those luxuries in life.
Trading more has come as a by-product of weekly options. The weeklies have been so nice to me, although they’ve complicated my life and made it harder to keep track of my holdings.
As has Twitter.
Specifically, its been a little more difficult to keep track of what positions have been hedged, which ones are weeklies and whether split priced positions were priced at different strikes.
Since I’m new to the weeklies, I haven’t yet designed a simple color coded spreadsheet to help me mindlessly be aware of my envoronment. At home, I know to match my crocodiles with crocodiles and my lion clothes with other lion clothes, but it’s not so easy when it comes to trading.
Yesterday was another one of those near perfect days that have been fewer and fewer recently, Although we had one of those jjust 3 trading days ago, it still seems so distant.
WIth the exception of a very small and new position in Bank of America and the predictable laggards AIG and RIMM, everything else was up today. Somewhat disappointingly, so were some of the positions I was hoping to pick up next week.
But there’s still plenty of time. After all, whereas we had the great day 3 days ago, the very next day more than erased the jubilation.
What seemed different today was that there really was no jubilation. None of the talking heads seemed to be saying that we were heading even higher, or the typical “we’ve turned the corner”.
That has to be bullish, but in my own proprietary indicator, I saw bearish signs.
So I did what I usually do when the market has a strong upward move. I try capitalizing on the bullish sentiment and sell those call options while the premiums move higher on bullish sentiment. As many as I can.
That’s what I did today. Resold the Transocean options that I bought back yesterday and then sold calls for shares in Freeport McMoRan, British Petroleum and, yes, wait for it, my small position in Google.
Finally, “Mission Accomplished”
However, was not all joy, as I took a very small loss as I closed out my short put position in Yahoo.
But you’re wondering what my proprietary indicator is, aren’t you? No you’re not, because in all likelihood you haven’t even made it this far down in today’s blog.
Who are you kidding?
Well, just for my own satisfation, that indicator is the number of clicks on Google ads on this site.
The more clicks I get, the more likely that we’re at some kind of a top. Who clicks on these kind of financial ads anyway, unless they think there’s an opportunity awaiting them?
Oh yeah, that and tomorrow’s Pandora offering. Somehow, this great service, but lousy business model, got the much coveted single letter stock designation of “P”.
No short term or long term prospects of profits, but just as with LinkedIn, the offering size and price per share have ratcheted upward.
That can’t be good either.
But once again, I don’t really care, since I don’t play that game of chasing hot stocks. Even solid companies like VMWare, after a meteoric post-IPO rise cooled off pretty fast after liquid nitrogen got poured over it. A little too fast for normal people to bail.
Instead, I’m just going to take one of those idle bras and fill it up with today’s trading profits and wait for the next boring opportunity.
Then I’ll just perch my lazy boy on the La-Z-Boy to watch my wife run around the house trying to find all of her bras.
Priceless.