Life is filled with difficult decisions. Fortunately it is also filled with “no-brainers”.
I don’t live in one of those open primary states, so I won’t get a chance to vote against Rick Perry.
That’s probably a good thing for the nation, as my track record for voting in Presidential elections is pretty abysmal. Not the voting itself, I always exercise that civic duty, but rather the outcomes. SInce 1972, I’ve only correctly selected a winning candidate 3 times. Based on that kind of history, a vote against Perry, would likley indicate a Perry victory.
If you’re an astute reader, you would have known that’s not voting for Perry would have been one of life’s “no-brainer” decisions. Given that a scant two years ago he was spouting the merits of Texas secession from the Union, it’s a little difficult to fathom how he could be running for the Republican nomination for the Presidency of all 50 states.
The fascinating thing about that is if he had been successful in his original endeavor, we would now be making fun of Haley Barbour, Republican Governor of Mississippi, for basing his international expertise on being able to see the Independent States of Texas from his bedroom window.
Perry’s very recent rant on the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, and suggestion that his “printing money” would likely be dealt with harshly back in Texas, indicates that Texas might have been a hostile neighbor under a Texas President Perry.
Amazing that Perry would call the “printing of money” treasonous, but not talk of secession. Although he did have a Sarah Palin moment and briefly referred to the action as “treacherous”.
Given how Perry appears to handle himself, I would think that he remains mired in “concrete operations”, probably thinking, incorrectly that Bernanke is usurping the authority of the Treasury to print money. Surely, you’ve noticed Geithner’s ink-stained thumbs. Presidential hopefuls need to have those kind of observational skills.
One has to wonder just how cowboy-like Perry would be behaving if he had not been Governor of Texas during the energy boom. My guess is that he should be kissing the feet of the Saudis, Iranian mullahs and Chavez. He should probably also give a wink and a nod to the money printers who showered Texas with the economic stimulus dollars that he was against, but happily accepted credit for when job creating projects got underway.
So, that’s not a difficult decision.
What I’m mulling now is my next step.
On the investing end, I am literally a single trade away from having my best options premium income month ever. I still have shares in ProShares UltraShort Silver, which I picked up yesterday, as well as some Goldman Sachs and PowerShares QQQ that do not have calls written upon them. At this point, I’m 0.4% away from that all time high, so There’s still a chance that in the remaining 3 days I can catch just the right premium.
That would be a good feeling, especially during this tumultuous option cycle.
Deciding whether to accept any price just for the sake of besting the previous “record month” is also a no-brainer.
Absolutely. How many records do you have?
But the real difficult decision revolves around my everyday life and how to deal with the volatility.
For example, during a 2 minute stretch in Tuesday’s trading, after the market had erased a triple digit loss, and was then down just 2 points, it proceeded to drop 75 points.
Root cause? What else. I was away from my La-Z-Boy perch.
They can see you through that TV monitor, you know.
So the big decision, and a difficult one it is, is whether to change my diet by significantly decreasing fiber, or getting a TV and computer monitor installed in the bathroom. So what if they can see through that monitor. I have no pride when it comes to protecting the portfolio.
If I were the kind that enjoyed puns, I could make a comment like “There’s nothing like placing a bid from the bidet”, but that would be as sophomoric as it would be heavenly.
On the flip side, you could be “getting your ask while wiping your ass”, but then that’s really stretching the bounds of civility.
Obviously, there are other alternatives. I’m certainly old and lazy enough for “Depends” or I could customize the La-Z-Boy.
Once again, I have no pride. After all, I write this blog.
I suppose it would be much easier if I had some algorithms to make the decisions for me.
What’s truly amazing is that now it looks as if we’re in an environment that one algorithm is likely to trip someone else’s algorithm into action. While some tripped algorithms maybe complimentary, others may act in contrast. In essence a single tripped algorithm is a simple yes or no decision, but the cascading algorithms may represent some rudimentary form of artificial intelligence, that kind that seems confused and results in bouncing around aimlessly.
As these software generated decisions are being made, I increasingly take comfort in the fact that I no longer need to make my own decisions. I can reasonably be assured that whatever unseen force caused the random “movement du jour” will be counter-balanced by some other unseen force at some point.
The need to depend less and less on brain activity appeals to me. All decisions would be devoid of thought in a perfect world. In fact, in a perfect world, there would be no need for decisions of any kind.
Based on my inability to negotiate a close in the bid-ask gap on some earlier trade attempts to break that all important monthly record, I know that such a perfect world doesn’t exist in the market place.
So today will be like any other day.
I’ve once again decided not to campaign fund raise for Rick Perry.
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