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I know that my short term memory is degraded, but I still remember what 2008 was like. It wasn’t very good.

Even if I didn’t remember, I could just dig up an old spreadsheet or look through my Quicken archives and would be reminded of the pain.

Every now and then, even though I don’t pay too much attention to stock charts, I’ll pull up 5 year charts just to see how low we coud sink when times get tough.

Stocks, like people, can sink to unimaginable depths.

Luckily, and totally serendipitously, that was the time that I started a strategy of aggressively selling covered call options and sticking to a relatively tightly controlled universe of stocks, so the pain wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Always solid companies, never any speculative plays.

I’ve always thought of speculative stocks as being Zombies that could come back and devour its master if guard was ever let down.

Back then, though, I also worked for a living and actually made lots of money. In fact, by my estimation obscene amounts, particularly relative to my actual degree of effort.

I like to think of it in mathematical terms, except I’m reminded that the divisor can never be “zero”.

Now, I sit and try to generate income from my holdings by selling and re-selling call options on the portfolio’s holdings. It’s been a really good alternative to the alternative.

As each monthly cycle begins I find myself in an optimistic frame of mind.

This past week, the beginning of the October cycle was no different. In fact, if anything, I was even more optimisitc after coming off an absolutely stunningly good last week of the September cycle.

During that week the market fought back from early day losses on a couple of days and rallied on other days in the face of no news, or even bad news.

Does it get any more bullish than that? Even more so when the markets appeared oversold in previous weeks. Like that wound up coil some people like to use in their attempts at imagery.

Funny how things work out.  I questioned my own sanity based upon last Friday’s rally going into the weekend. There were so many open questions remaining in Europe, I never did understand where the optimism was coming from. Despite that, I was still looking forward to a great month coming and lots of new options income.

Did I mention “funny how things work out?”

Despite the terrible market in 2008, I never felt any desperation, even on a day when I may have lost the equivalent of 200 Color TV’s (using 1964 Color TV Index).on paper. Having a job and employment income was probably a factor in maintaining a calm demeanor.

A few weeks ago, on the day the NYSE commemorated the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, we had a 300 point drop, yet it was just an ordinary day as far as drops go. No stress and no worries.

Yesterday and Wednesday had very different feels to them. Sometimes it’s not just about the magnitude, sometimes there’s a qualitatively different feeling. Yesterday, in fact, it was the FOMC report, that led me to believe that they need to measure their words more carefully and perhaps consider “qualitative easing” for a change.

Adjectives can be really hurtful.

Gloom. That’s the feeling. The same kind of feeling back in February 2009, which was the last time we’d had a week like this. It was just a couple of weeks later thatthe “Haines’ Bottom” was called.

I actually shuddered to look at my largely unhedged positions today. Were it not for the plummet in silver and the subsequent rise in the ProShares UltraShort Silver ETF, which slowly has come to be about 9% of my portfolio, there really would have been some frightening numbers .

I actually have images of the short silver ETF’s being my portfolio savior, if we can shave another $3-4 off the price of the metal.

And I don’t really believe in saviors, but am willing to accept delivery from my misery. When I’m knocking on the door, I’ll take all rites.

Just another form of hedging, that’s all.

Unhedged, those shares were really easing the pain. Seems appropriate, as silver is also the antidote to a Zombie attack when forcefully thrust.

But one week into this 5 week options cycle, I was so woefully unhedged that the blows were all full body and the options premium income was much lower than I typically expect. Considering that September was the second worst income month of the year, I was feeling the pinch.

The other night we were watching some show on the National Geographic channel about cocaine. They profiled a Chicago addict who was going through a couple of hundred dollars each day.

Sugar Momma and I both wondered where he was getting the money from and then we found out, even though we both had a clue.

It was from that bad kind of crime that I covered in Wednesday’s blog “7 Reasons Why Criminal Life is Great“.

But sometimes you do what needs to be done. When faced with your personal stress test you do things that you may not be proud of.

So I looked at my babies and I do love them all and wondered which ones to sacrifice in order to generate some income.

Unfortunately, there weren’t any really good prospects. In fact, the only promising position was the UltraShort Silver ETF. Just about everything else was deeply in the red.

Loving all of them equally, but loving the ETF most, it was a difficult decision, but Daddy needed some money.

Sigh. Like an addict going after that crack rock, I sold call options on about 30% of my ETF’s. Almost like Abraham ready to sacrifice Isaac for a chance at the unknown.

However, instead of selling in the money or near the money calls, I sold the October 2011 $17 options, at a time when the ETF had already been up about $1.80 to $14.40

Sort of like Abraham using a magician’s trick sword.

I’ve been confident that the metals would realize that gravity was an important contender and haven’t been selling the covered calls in anticipation of that realization.

Until now.

I just needed that fix. It really did feel like selling your last remaining kidney for just one last crack rock.

Self-respect is pretty unimportant.

Dennis Gartman, that ubiquitous CNBC contributor must feel the same way, as he told people to “go out on the street and raise cash”.

I think he was exhorting people to panhandle. I don’t think Mayor Bloomberg is going to be a fan of that strategy. But at least that clears up the question of why Gartman spit on my windshield yesterday morning as I exited the Holland Tunnel.

To his credit, he was the only one out there with a magnetic credit card reader and a Skype connection.

Personally, despite my desperation, I am still the guardian of my dignity and would sooner sell apples or jump out my first floor window.

For a brief moment there was a 100 point climb off the lows when a FInancial Times report was misinterpreted. When the realization came that the report indicated that the European banks needed capitalization yesterday, those 100 points were gone in a flash.

I did take that opportunity to close out sold call option contracts on Transocean and DuPont, in anticipation of some kind of a bounce.

That may be overly optimisitc, as I don’t expect the same kind of week closing rally as we had last week.

But at least I didn’t take it quite to the lengths of the Greek banks.

The fact that Greek banks were offering lakeside villas for every new account deposit in excess of 50 Euros was not likely to create the kind of extra capital hordes that would be necessary to forestall collapse.

Can you imagine the size of the crack rock that it would take for Greece to pass that stress test?

Interestingly, the Greek banks may be in better shape than our very own Bank of America, where a new account deposit of $50 now gets you a major equity position, as shares have now fallen to a new all-time low point.

Moynihan, stop bogarting that crack pipe.

As bad as today was and as regrettable as the actions were, extending the metaphor, at least I can grow a kidney back.

We’ve all done it before and will likely all do it again.

 

The Federal Reserve is said to be ready to announce the implementation of “Operation Twist” some time on Wednesday.
Fueling speculation that something big was brewing, former Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan was seen entering the building, albeit with Elvis. AS it turns out, he was there for a haircut and sometimes a haircut is just a haircut.
Ultimately, by exchanging its short term portfolio of holdings for longer range debt instruments “Operation Twist” is hoped to bend the yield curve.
Although I’ve seen the visuals many times over the years and can probably understand the concept behind “inverted yield curves”, it’s like “contango”. I know what it means, or at least am capable, but due to my disinterest in the topic, I choose to not clutter my mind with the meanings of those terms and phrases. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve actually looked up the definition of “contango”, yet it still has never taken root. It’s almost as if the my future memory bank is more highly respected than its current state would give it the right to be.
Contango. The word itself brings giggles to mind. I just can’t remember why. 
In an earlier blog, I admitted that “I don’t understand currencies“. I can just as easily say the same thing about debt instruments and bonds. I’ve never really tried to understand this very important aspect of investing. Sometimes its hard to know whether my disinterest in bonds and currencies comes from lack of intellect or just true lack of interest, as I perceive them as intangible and somewhat boring. I don’t worship at the feet of the PIMCO altar and I don’t find stamp collecting all that exciting.
I know that they are anything but, yet I can’t find anything persuassive about them to garner even faint interest. But there is probably hope, because last night I watched the premier episode of the new “Two and a Half Men”, never having been interested in the original version.
This “Operation Twister” though, has caught my interest.
During Jim Cramer’s interview of Treasury Secretary Tim Giethner last week, Cramer asked why such a strategy wasn’t being pursued. taking advanytage of historically low interest rates. At that point, the clever name hadn’t been publicly applied. It was just another conceptual approach to managing debt and markets and really meant nothing to me.
Cramer then seemed genuinely surprised and for a brief second seemed to be speechless as Geithner indicated that such a strategy might actually find its way into the arsenal.
You neither see that, nor the resultant silence from Cramer on very many occasions. It’s true when they say that silence speaks volumes.
The concept does seem to make sense, as long as there are buyers for the long term notes, but yet, it’s an untested strategy, at a time when the Federal Reserve seems to be running out of things in its quiver.
The problem with most ideas, whether they are economic issues or otherwise, is the occurence of unexpected consequences.
No one really knows what will happen if the yield curve is drastically altered. Certainly, no one buying a 30 or 40 year note has any clue as to what the rate environment will be at that time, much less next year. Hell, you don’t even know who the lead in Two and a Half Men is going to be.
I know that I wouldn’t be investing in a 30 year note during a period of all-time low interest rates.
Now flip the scene, and make believe that it’s 1979 and interest rates are 17%, then I might have a different opinion on locking into those kind of rates.
My attraction to Operation Twister may be solely related to its namesake, the game “Twister”, which made its debut during my childhood.
Talk about unintended consequences.
I think my first sexual encounter may have been on a spin of blue, but it’s difficult to say who exactly the reciprocal party was.
Although “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has officially gone into the sunset, I might be inclined to invoke it for that long ago game of Twister.
Since I don’t really understand the world of interest rates, I have no idea what the unexpected consequences might be, but drawing from the game, collapse is the end game.
Collapse is exactly what seemed to happen today and turned a 150 point gain into one 140 points less.
Instead of selling lots of call contracts as I had envisioned, I only sold a few and added to my shares of the ProShares UltraShort Silver ETF and Riverbed Technology.
From my perspective, there never was a 150 point gain, as I had one of the worst days ever, compared to the indices. It didn’t help that I was now more heavily reliant on the likes of Freeport McMoran and Mosaic than ever before.
The source of the collapse was said to be “The Troika” and its inability to come to some agreement that would have released the $8 billion traunche that Greece needed to help it further into the hole as it prepares for its inevitable default.
You know, the one that everyone seems to be happily ignoring because that can is maybe as far as 3 months down the road.
The so called “Troika” consists of the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank. They hold the cards, but apparently can’t decide whether to deal in a clockwise or countere-clockwise direction.
As Operation Twister comes into play, some Troika members may regret treating Treasury Secretary Geithner so shabbily during his vist to their recent meeting in Poland. They could have listened to his wise and sagely advice and could have switched over to a spinner and let the cards fall where they may, as they could then watch the arrow determine Greek’s destiny.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether you spin the wheel clockwise or counter-clockwise, so certain areas of dissent are immediately resolved.
The groundrules could be very simple and definitions readily agreed to.
Blue for no more government hiring
Red for increased retirement age and so on. They may even want to throw in that taxes should not just be levied, but they should be collected, as well.
But no matter what, every game of Twister does end the same. I don’t remember whether there was a “winning” scenario. Surely Twister was first popular long before Charlie Sheen, but even then the concept of “winning” must have existed.
Instead, every game ended with the inevitable collapse accompanied with lots of laughs and the feigning of embarrassment by some.
Some actually reached their peak maturity level in the pile.
In this case, I don’t think there’ll be any laughing. I doubt that there’ll be any embarrassment either, as certain egos, particularly those associated with politically appointed positions, don’t allow public displays of embarrassment.
They do allow for finger pointing, though.
No matter what, those fingers will probably point in our direction, as undoubtedly our banking crisis just greased the pole for southern Europe and Iceland, Ireland and others, as well.
Ultimately, only a winner take all game of Twister will be able to sort it out at the highest levels.
A repeat of the Berlusconi – Hillary Clinton match would be interesting. It’s just so unfortunate that Dominique Strauss-Kahn can no longer suit up (or down) in preparation for game match. You could probably get enough people to pay good money to see him in a good healthy game of full contact Twister to make a dent in the EU economic mess.
Happy to help.

 

 

In polite company, you never refer to behavior as “dumb”. Instead, it’s simply inappropriate or unexplainable. Just like really wealthy people are never crazy. They’re eccentric.

There are lots of reasons for unexplainable behavior, that’s why they’re really not “unexplainable”. They’re just dumb.

If you watch shows like “Dateline” often enough, you’ve seen every bizarre act and the reasoning behind the act. You’ve also learned that there’s never a shortage of unexplainable behavior.

Television ratings seem to do particularly well when the reason behind the action is passion. When it comes to motives, greed is also a big favorite in the  gawker community.

We like hearing stories that have greed as an underlying factor.

Murder for insurance money is very popular, especially if unrequited passion was also involved. How great is it to watch an episode about a wife that allegedly killed her husband for the insurance money so that she and the cabana boy could retire to the Dominican Republic?

Greed is also a big factor in investing. People do really stupid things because of greed. But greed is nothing more than great passion for money or other items of value.

Everybody’s heard the axiom that “bulls and bears both make money, but pigs get slaughtered”, but when it comes to battling with human nature, axioms don’t stand a chance. It’s a lot easier to spout them than to heed them.

Another investing axiom, although not encased in such a short memorable saying, is that you don’t stay long going into the weekend if there’s uncertainty in the mix.

This past weekend was one of those that you would have expected smart investors to have been on the sidelines.

After all, the previous week saw gains every day, even though some of those came in the very last hour of trading. The rally was fueled by speculation that the European Union was closing in on at least a short term solution to averting a Greek default.

Stocks climbed and precious metals took big dives.

But on this Friday, one of those quadruple witching Fridays, even in the face of unsettling news on the EU front, th e market still went higher.

In the last hour of trading on Friday I posted on Twitter questioning my intelligence, as I would have expected a sell-off heading into the weekend. Least of all, the bad news that went counter to the rumors and hope should have put a damper on things. Add to that the 5 straight days of gains and it would seem that profit taking would be in the cards.

Sure, maybe the smart guys took their profits on Friday, but I sort of doubt it. Who then was behind what happened on Monday? Definitely not the little guys like me.

Of course, I had a vested interest in seeing some profit taking, as I stood to lose nearly 50% of my holdings to assignment unless the market reversed course.

It didn’t.

As I wondered why it didn’t do the obvious, I learned of a new psychiatric disorder called FOMO – Fear of Missing Out.

It actually refers to the need to be constantly plugged into social media. It helps to explain why people would risk their lives to text a meaningless message while driving. It also explains why I kept breaking into a cold sweat on Monday as it was again one of those infrequent days that I had to work outside of the house.

Bad enough that I was cut off from CNBC, but Twitter was nowhere near as ubiquitous as its become in my normal life. The need to responsibly attend to work saw to that.

All I knew was that the market opened down around 250 points.

From my perspective that was what I’d been hoping for. It gave me a chance to buy back shares of British Petroleum, Textron, Dow Chemical, DuPont and Triple Q’s at less than they had been assigned to me.

But why did the market go up on Friday when it seemed so obvious that it should have done just the opposite?

FOMO.

Fear of missing out on more irrational upward price movements. Given that most of last weeks’ price increases were based on rumor and hope, what reason would anyone have had to actually go against the flow? History and common sense were no match for unexplained price action. Axioms were meaningless when there was still the prospect of more inappropriate price climbs.

In this context FOMO is greed.

Otherwise smart people fall prey to FOMO all the time. I suppose that it’s really a normal reaction. I feel it every time I sell shares or every time I decide to buy shares in one company and not another.I definitely felt it Monday morning as I went on a wild shopping spree in the first 30 minutes of trading and then wondered whether I missed out on even better bargains because I didn’t wait longer to blow through the money.

It’s hard to imagine yourself being the only one with nothing to party about, so yougive in to the FOMO.

This morning I’m back at my usual perch and will be so for another month.

Twitter and CNBC will be fully engaged. I won’t miss out on a single opportunity to say something irrelevant in 140 spaces or less.

In the meantime, as the market reversed much of its downward trend in the last hour of trading on Monday I decided not to sell any call options.

Yet.

But I have no FOMO.

There’ll be plenty more opportunities to miss out on and there’ll never be a shortage of them, either.

Tweets and texts come and go but FOMO is here to stay.

 

 

 

 

Here it is, Sunday afternoon.

Watching football, having already gotten my week’s fill of cholesterol in just one night and feeling pretty good.

Whenever I hear that phrase. “Feeling good”, I always think of that great Eddie Murphy – Dan Aykroyd film, “Trading Places.”

I can just hear the lines: “Looking Good, Biily Ray!” and in response,  “”Feeling good, Louis”.

And what’s not to feel good about? After all, Eddie Murphy is trading frequenting transvestite hookers for hosting the Academy Awards.

Life really is good.

And it’s especially looking good for the United States, at least as far as our emotionally beaten down egos are concerned.

After a few years of the world thumbing its nose at us and deriding us for our dysfunctional political system and profligacy, it now seems that we’ve traded places with Europe.

On top of that word has just come out that Dominique Strauss-Kahn has admitted a “moral failing” with regard to his tryst with the hotel maid. As a result we may not need to feel terribly badly about an injustice being done to the ex-IMF leader and may be shielded from some overseas criticism of our justice system jumping to conclusions.

Imagine, it’s been a few hundred years and they still can’t cope with the little squirt of a brother growing up.

Not that I had felt terribly badly, anyway and not that things are running along entirely smootlhy on this side of the Atlantic. With the exception of baby kidnappings and other trampling of human rights, things still seem to be better with our Chinese “friends”, who gve us a market lifting gift just by being part of the rumor that they might purchase Italian debt instruments.

I hope the Italians do better with the Chinese than they do with me.

I just received 5 mailings regarding traffic violations from a trip to Italy 3 years ago.

That was the same trip that the car rental agency tried to hit me with a $2,500 charge for damages.

Oh those whacky Italians. Wouldn’t trade the experiences for anything.

But watching economic events in Europe unfold is the true definition of “schadenfreude.” It’s one thing to have the twp predominant political parties in the US act in a dysfunctional manner, buut when you have the EU’s 27 member states trying to figure out how to divide the bill and who deserves how much vacation, you’re talking some real dysfunction.

At least they’re all agreed on retirement age and loan collateral.

It was funny hearing Treaury Secretary Geithner characterize his trip to Poland for the EU Finance Ministers meeting to be on the basis of an invitation, particularly since all news outlets reported that his “hosts” greeted him rather cooly.

European Finance Ministers apparently don’t like to be told how to run their economies by a guy sipping directly from a box of red wine while dining on trout meuniere in his ripped boxers.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but so far I haven’t seen or heard anything to contradict that characterization of events, so I’ll stick with it. Given what could have happened on Geithner’s watch and what didn’t happen, maybe they should try the red wine instead of the Kool-Aid.

So with all of that as a backdrop, last week was a great week. Stocks traded places with precious metals. I own stocks and am short precious metals, so iy was a great week.

Surprisingly, perhaps surprisingly only for me, Friday was yet another up day in the markets given that there really wasn’t any encouraging news coming out of Europe. In fact, if anything, even though the news raised prospects of a breakdown in the agreements necessary to temporarily rescue Greece, our markets shrugged it off.

Gold and silver on the other hand reacted precisely the way you would have expected in the face of uncertainty and the potential for a Greek default heightened. Earlier in the week, they also reacted according to script and had dramatic moves downward as an agreement appeared to be in the works.

No matter, so what if people felt confident going into the weekend holding large positions?

But I was happy.

Most of all and best of all, for me, a devoted call contract seller, Monday starts the October options cycle.

In that regard, September was nothing to remember. It was the second worst option premium month this year, fresh on the heels of the second best options month I’d ever had. Still, using my patented 1964 Color TV metric, I needed to find room for 39 new TV’s.

But as a good sign, despite the feeble option income stream for the Septmber cycle,  I’ll have plenty of opportunity to redeploy funds form assignments. Almost half of my holdings will be turned over, with most of them closing Friday within 1% of their strike prices.

When that happens, I love to see a down open on the first Monday of the cycle. There’s nothing better than getting those same shares back at less than their previous strike prices. But beyond that, there’s nothing like selling call options during a market peak. Grab those higher premiums, then close the lopp and start again.

I lost portions of my Bank of New York, Textron, Dow Chemical, DuPont, Williams Sonoma, British Petroeum, Deere, Home Depot and Transocean shares

If the past is any indicator, I’ll probably end up getting some of those shares back.while I also look at opportunities in Sallie Mae, Mosaic, SPDR 500 and adding to poisitions in JP Morgan and Chesapeake Energy.

With that much to spend, I’ll try to control my investing equivalent of premature ejaculation, but that’s always been difficult.

I was going to say “but that hasn’t always been hard,” but then it would have been unclear whether I was referring to investing behavior or the metaphoric equivalent.

On a sad note, I’ll be working tomorrow.

But that sadness is quickly replaced with the knowledge that I have only 2 more work days scheduled in 2011.

The work thing tomorrow does potentially interfere with the trading thing, but I’ve never let responsibility get in the way before, so I don’t really think I’ll be starting tomorrow. It may, however, help control the need to spend by keeping me otherwise occupied.

But still, that possibility is tempered by the fact that if I had to work, it couldn’t be for a better cause. I’ll be trading places with my friend tomorrow, who is on a golfing trip with his father.

I’d love to have the chance to have one of those trips with Szelhamos, but then I’m reminded that the most athletic thing I’d ever see him do was to bpwl one time.

As an 8 or 9 year old, I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone roll the ball as fast and ghard as he did and barely ever hit a pin.

Still wouldn’t trade that memory for all of the perfect 300 games on China.

 

 

 

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In the real world, we marvel at how salmon swim upstream, back to their own birthplace, in order to perpetuate their species’ life cycle

Then they die.

As opposed to a long ago blog article about Michael Dell, but just as easily could have been about Jerry Yang, Ted Waite and some others, it’s really hard to go back home, unless you’re Howard Schultz or Steve Jobs.

In general, it’s always easiest to go with the flow and become one of the crowd, unless you’re a lemming.

They take exactly the opposite approach of the salmon. They go with gravity and are disciples of Thomas Malthus, thinking that their species would have its best chance of survival without them taxing the limited resources available to the next generation.

I saw Meatloaf in concert a couple of years ago, in a relatively small venue. Bat out of Hell, arguably one of the greatest rock albums ever, dared to ask the querstion “What’s it going to be boy? Yes or No? Yes or No?”

And that was the question for me on Thursday. Be a lemming or be a salmon.

The problem with that analogy is that either way you die and they both depend on some strange fascination with herd mentality.

The real question then becomes: “Go with the flow or fight the tape.”

In general, those are the two basic categories in society. Are you a Goth or a preppy?

There’s no question that the tape has been decidedly up the past few days, even if a few of those were limited to only the closing hour. But ever since that boring 300 point Dow down day on the day that the NYSE commemorated the 10th anniversary of 9-11, there have been only good feelings.

Market Kumbaya with everything being carried upstream as there’s an expectation for less than horrific news coming out of the European Union has been the rule. That was definitely the case with Thursday’s trading as the market nicely bounced back from an early day retreat of gains and went on to close at highs.

In general, I tend to be an optimist as far as the longterm direction of the market goes, but right now my longterm horizon is limited to the end of the options cycle, which happens to be today.

Based on what I’ve done the past couple of days, including the sales of call options on Dow Chemical, Textron, Home Depot, Transocean and more Freeport McMoran during the first phase of Thursday’s rise, it says that I don’t expect follow through for the last day of the cycle.

Now that’s a pretty stupid position to take, trying to predict market movement for a specific day in the absense of any real news and in the face of an obvious trend.

I base that on one thing and one thing only.

Watching Chrisitne Lagarde, the new head of the International Monetary Fund, I realized that she looked just like comedian David Brenner’s older brother.

There’s was just no way I was going to be soothed by economic forecasting from her once I couldn’t get David Brenner’s vision out of my head.

Any of you of my generation understand the difficulty of balancing thought and action when something displeasing is part of the equation. That’s precisley why sex counselors used to advise men suffering from premature ejaculation to think of Willie Mays at critical moments.

With that in mind, I decided to keep swimming downstream into the face of a gusher. At least when it came to stocks.

When it comes to those UltraShort Silver ETF’s, I decided to go with the flow and exercised judgement based on greed. No matter what our stock market does in response to the EU crisis, I expect gold and silver to give up much more of their entirely unwarranted gains. So there was no way I would sell call options on those holdings. The reward of picking up a few more crumbs wouldn’t even remotely cover the costs of missing out on the plunge, thanks to the gift of ETF levereging.

Today may turn out to be the day that might Austria gives its thumbs up to the EU plan to bail out Greece, so there may be even more of an upward bias to come and then the obligatory letdown.

The plan, if approved, gives Greece a few more months before defaulting, by freeing up some $8 Billion Euros to help its banking rescue.

Sounds like a great idea, mostly because I missed hearing the word “traunches” repeated every fifth word.

The problem will become obvious though when the rest of Europe sees that Greece ends up using that first traunch to buy cigarettes and book vacations to Thailand to make up for the vacation time missed while striking.

In the markets the only real news was from Netflix which lost nearly 20% of its value. They showed just how easy it was to swim downstream today. But they had good company in gold and silver, although their density alone made it much easier to work against the upward stream.

Although I neither hold shares, nor use Netflix’s service, I’m beginning to understand the madness behind their model change and increasing dependence on, coincidentally enough, “streaming” media.

Just imagine if you were a Netflix user. You could have been streamed the bad news well ahead of when basic cable investors would have gotten it. Talk about a great advantage.

Obviously JP Morgan gets its news the old fashioned way, as it decreased its price targets after the 20% drop.

You’d think that for whatever advisory fees they’re paid by their clients, they’d at least be streaming Netflix.

After the close, Research in Motion joined Netflix with a 20% drop in the after hours trading once their disappointing earnings were released.

I’m not really certain that you can call anything RIM does these days “disappointing”.

A few short years ago bad news from RIM would have cast a pall over the market. It’s not too likely that will be the case as the market opens on Friday. But at least RIM has been consistent regardless of short term market direction. Since its last earningss report, its been all uni-directional.

On a positive note, the RIM executive officers were certainly able to much more easily and quickly e-mail news of the disappointment, owing to the great Blackberry keyboard. Imagine how much more time it would have taken to disseminate the bad news on, say an iPhone. 

Say what you will, but there’s something refreshing about a technology company basing its fortunes on a mini-keyboard.

The way I see it, RIM has gotten the best of all worlds, as long as those worlds place a heavy emphasis on oblivion.

It’s definitely in a lemming march, yet it’s also trying to swim upstream. No matter how you look at it, that’s a losing combination.

Sort of like the European Union.

 

 

 

 

 

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hoco blogs

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

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The other night, the NFL record for longest field goal was tied for the second time.

I still remember when Tom Dempsey, the otherwise unheralded kicker for the 1970 New Orleans Saints, beat the Detroit Lions with his 63 yard field goal.

What I remember most about that is Alex Karras, the Detroit Lion defensive tackle, who was a oretty funny guy, appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show and put a great comedic touch on describing the tragedy of that kick in his team’s eyes. Mind you, his team’s eyes were also seeing the fact that Dempsey, who had a congenitally malformed foot and wore a special kicking shoe, had less than an athletic physique.

Tom Dempsy’s professional life span didn’t last much longer following that kick, but it’s been an inviolate part of football lore for more than 40 years.

The nice thing about have a finite lifespan is that kicking things down the road is a great strategy.

It works for people and governments, too.

My guess is that people that can kick the can down the road without any real guilt probably extend their lifespan by greatly reducing stress. At the point that they realize that the “jig is up” and the end of the road is figuratively approaching, its time to literally approach the end of the road and kick the can.

People that are protected from the overhang of stress usually make better decisions, as well.

Maybe not better decisions when assessed with regard to the longterm, but at least better decisions for them, which in turn leads to even less stress.

Talk about a real win – win situation.

There have been lots of movies made about people returning to earth from the after-life to make amends for the lives they’ve lived.

Although I’m not a cinematic expert by any means, I don’t think that any of those movies have ever examined the guilt associated with taking advantage of passing your financial responsibilities to your unseen great-grandchildren’s grandchildren.

My personal hero is the father of a friend of mine who actually took out school loans in his son’s name, used the money for himself, and then saddled his son with the debt.

How is that not a great strategy?

It’s so good, in fact, that governments and leaders, whether elected or otherwise do exactly the same thing, finding great inspiration from the alternative life form band, Devo.

Dependence on foreign oil? Kick it.

Social Security Trust Fund problems? Kick it good.

Rising deficits and debt? You must kick it.

Chinese own too much of our debt? Issue more, preferably a long Sebastian Janikowski kick on that one.

So when I heard Treasury Secretary Geithner this morning at the Seeking Alpha Conference sponsored by CNBC, emphatically say that the European Union would not see a repeat of Lehman Brothers, it gave me great cause for concern.

He seemed to be saying that the problem wouldn’t get kicked down the road and that tough, but responsible actions would be taken by the world banking community to ensure that  the Lehman debacle wouldn’t repeat itself.

As you look around the European Union that can has been kicked around alot, but it always seemed to end up in Germany’s backyard. But then again, we’ve had some bad experiences when Germany’s ventured out of its backyard in the past, so maybe it’s for the best.

Yet, just when it seems that there will be some way to quench the flames without a great deal of hardship, you get Finland, flexing its influence and introducing such responsible banking concepts as “collateral”.

Actually, if Finland really had any influence, you’d see Nokia phones being used by others than just unemployed elves. As Finland realized it really didn’t have quite the bandwidth it thought, they acquiesced, besides how much feta per capita did they really need, anyway? Given Finland’s location, just about anything can qualify as a much needed chill pill.

The market then tanked earlier today when word came out that the other EU powerhouse, Austria, was against the Greek bailout. It’s no coincidence that chill pill and buzz kill rhyme.

Funny thing about those Austrians and their language. Apparently, it’s hard to understand those Germanic languages, as somehow Austria’s intentions were not reported properly and when clarification was made the market started a voracious climb.

My own experience with that group of languages is that it’s much easier to comprehend when it’s being yelled at you in very close proximity to your face. Even if you don’t quite understand the words, the tone gives the real message.

Austria needs to scream more. Maybe even some hand gestures.How do you say “Nein” in Austrian?

When everyone eventually realized that Austria, in fact, didn’t come out against a bailout, only delaying until Friday some sort of vote, the market did a 400 point turnaround.

With options expiration on Friday I looked for more opportunities to pick up some crumbs and there were plenty as the price trend was going higher.

So I took the opportunity to sell call options in DuPont, British Petroleum and Riverbed Technology.

On top of that, I sold some more January 2012 Sirius-XM Satellite Radio Puts.

Although I’m not likely to get all of my remaining positions hedged, I’m reasonably happy, as my shares have been handily outperforming the S&P 500 during this recent 3 day climb.

I was especially happy to see that my troika of environmentally disasterous stocks, British Petrolueum, Transocean and Halliburton have also fared nicely, especially in the wake of today’s report which scolded all three for last summer’s rig disaster.

As the afternoon started wearing on I began having some doubts about foraging for crumbs, because the market had climbed 270 points and suddenly every talking head was exuberant about the market’s future.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, just as the unbridled enthusiasm got on the air, the market cut its gains in half during the last 30 minutes of trading.

I didn’t mind. For me, the ideal end of an options cycle is having my positions close out right near their exercise prices. For my part, I wish this had been Friday.

I love kicking the same stocks right over into the next options cycle and then selling at the money options on them.

For me, kicking them down the road is a strategy that can never go wrong, regardless of life expectancy.

On the other hand, things may start getting serious in Europe. They may actually address the issues instead of kicking them down the road. That raises the questions as to whether our markets have already discounted that and will drop upon the reality occuring and whether precious metals will reverse their climbs, as fiscal responsibility enters our vocabularly.

Nah, that’s not going to happen. No one ever  got re-elected by making the responsible decision.

The EU should just follow the lead of Americans everywhere in dealing with financial crises.

They need to get a new credit card and take those 0% Cash transfer offers

 

 

 

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hoco blogs

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

Find  OTP Book at Amazon, B&N or now you can also Order direct  from publisher. Use 10% Discount Code P4S2ZD8H

 

  

 

It’s that time of the month again.

No, I’m not being visited by Aunt Flo, as the euphamism would go, if indeed it were germane.

No, it’s the end of the September options cycle in just a few short days. Time to see if there are any crumbs left out there just waiting to be taken. And you do have to act quickly, because before you know it those crumbs get smaller and smaller, before they disappear entirely.

I suppose that since I now try to find as many weekly options opportunities as possible, that third Friday of each month has lost a bit of its significance. Now its more or less like any other Friday.

I’ve never had a visit from Aunt Flo, but I can’t imagine that her dropping by on a weekly basis would be very good.

In a way, I guess that’s as sad as when you know that Aunt Flo won’t be visiitng anymore. Fortunately, that single long hair on my chin that popped up after Flo disappeared is obscured by my full beard.

By the same token, most people I know no longer deal in euphamisms, anyway. They get right down to brass tacks, no sense beating around the bloody bush.

Hmm, now I’m not certain if the preceding itself was a euphamism for something, but no matter, I just like using uniquely British adjectives.

As I looked back at the monthly statistics for the past few years, I should have been tipped off that this wouldn’t have been the kind of month to e-mail home about.

It seems that the month following what turns out to be my best options premium month of the year is a dog.

And that was this month because that was last month.

Since options premiums keep me afloat, I have a need to trade, but times like these offer the biggest dilemmas.

Holding on to so many positions that are significantly below their purchase prices, it’s hard to justify trying to optimize options premiums by writng near the money contracts when their assignment would result in meanigful capital losses.

Although I always check my spreadsheets to see how much in accumulated premiums each position has captured, I still have a reluctance to take the loss, even when it is mitigated or even fully offset by those premiums.

I’m not beyond rationalizing my actions, though.

On days such as the first two trading days of this final week, you see the clock ticking away on the one hand, but you also see the possibility of that silver lining in depressed stock prices, or at the very least the lack of support in silver prices, as I own unhedged shares of an UltraShort Silver ETF.

Will there be some good news coming out of the European Union sending our markets for a nice climb? I sure wouldn’t want to miss out on recouping some of those paper losses, but those crumbs, those 0.5% options premiums, do I really want to leave those on the table?

The answer to those questions are “who knows” and “not really”

The full answer to the latter question is actually “not really, but I don’t want to feel like a schmuck”.

But you do have to eat, you can’t really let pride get in the way. As small as they may be, those crumbs can add up.

And so, in a measured reaction to a meandering day, I did get the opportunity to sell call options on JP Morgan, Freeport McMoRan, Halliburton, Williams-Sonoma and the Triple Q’s.

Actually, with the exception of Williams-Sonoma, if the others do get assigned, I’ll still be taking capital gains on the underlying stocks, so the risk will be determined by how wildly they may explode upward between today and Friday’s close.

Opportunities potentially lost. That ends up being the performance metric, but since I don’t harbor regrets, I also rarely learn lessons. You can fool me over and over again as long as those premiums add up and losses have some strategic value in reducing tax liability.

When I did add the crumbs up it was worth the risk, given the reward and the need to be able to feed Laszlo the Dog.

It’s either crumbs or go back to work, not to mention the shriveled carcass of a wiener dog.

Hmmm. Weiner dog.

If anyone reading this is old enough to remember Bob Denver’s character, Maynard G. Krebs, you would know my reaction to the very thought of “work”.

Whatever optimism there’s been in the markets during the last hour of each of the two past trading sessions it’s a little frightening to thank what it’s been based upon.

First, the rumor of Chinese intervention to buy Italian debt turned Monday’s market on a dime.

But you know that we’re really in trouble and living a life of deep delusion if we think that Chinese benevolence is going to be the remedy that saves the European Union’s financial systems.

Today’s good news was that there wouldn’t be a Greek default.

At least not today.

The other good news was that somone had interpreted something that Angela Merkel said as being of a positive note, regarding satisfying Finland’s need for Greek collateral.

When I wrote about what was wagging the dog the other day even in my wildest dreams I never would have guessed Finland.

But Finland, too, was just in search of crumbs. Whatever assets Greece actually has rights to, Finland wants it. After all, with its dying Nokia enterprise, what else does it have going for it? And besides, those reindeer need to eat, too.

So I know the feeling.

Wherever you can get those crumbs, get them.

Tomorrow? Who knows what tomorrow brings. New rumors, maybe some actual news, maybe not.

No matter. This week ends in a few days and a whole new world of opportunities comes along.

This time, I’m hoping for the whole loaf and will gladly take the crumbs, too.

 

 

 

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Today was the kind of day that it paid to be patient.

Sometimes it’s worth hanging around to see how the story will end.

As it turned out there were so many twists and turns that had I fallen for the first one and gone with that as inspiration for this blog entry, I’d have missed the real story.

As it turned out, the downgrade of Societe Generale was just an irrelevant way station.

Same with the next series of twists and turns. It was just that kind of day. One with no unifying hypothesis, just a series of crumbling European economies and maybe a reluctant German savior.

So I patiently watched and waited for some message that might signal the opportunity to take action. Buy something, sell something. Anything. After all, I’m not making any money by blogging. I need to trade something now that I’m out of Beanie Babies.

I tend to be a fairly patient person with most things, although Sugar Momma has just come to the realization that I’m much more nervous than I let on. Those two may be connected.

If that’s true, she’s really patient, because it took her more than a quarter of a century to say anything.

Although the words “uber” and “cool” have never been used in juxtaposition with my name, the only possible explanations for taking such a long time to make that diagnosis is that she was blinded by love.

Or maybe she just never paid attention.

I guess she was just waiting for the right time and it somehow popped up when I found myself watching a football game that I had absolutely no interest in, but nonetheless, must have been exuding some pretty obvious stress.

What stressed me out was how the place kicker, who was the son of a past professor of mine, might get cut once again, this time because it didn’t appear as if he made any real effort to tackle the kick off return guy enroute to the end zone.

Steve Hauschka, late of the Baltimore Ravens, in fact, the guy that made Matt Stover expendable, is the son of Peter Hauschka Ph.D who was a giant of a man and one time placekicker for the Dallas Cowboys. He was also one of my favorite professors and was every bit as nice as he was big.

But still, I like to think of myself as being patient and above the stress that makes most people have moist underarms.

This weekend, even before the meaningless football game, my patience was tested.

Each year the past 10 years or so we have belonged to the Columbia Film Society and have dutifully gone to the newly renovated Howard County Community College auditorium, for what may be one of the best entertainment bargains around.

They are obviously doing something right as this season is their 43rd.

With each year comes the wonderment of how the campus has changed during an impressive expansion. Beyond that, there’s also the wonderment that they just keep adding more and more showings each season as more and more people want to see films with sub-titles.

Now, even the English speakig films will have sub-titles, although admittedly, some of the Briitish films have been nearly unintelligible.

Somehow, despite the consistent increase in membership, we still seem to be the youngest in the crowd, although that may be a skewed observation as we now go to the early bird Friday showing.

This years’ premiere movie was “Of Gods and Men”, a French film set in Algeria, following the conflicted lives of a small group of monks who grappled with the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism invading their peaceful village and cloister.

The movie was terrible, unless of course you’re a fan of Gregorian like chanting and multiple crescendoing scenes that have no crescendo.

I’m guessing that the $3.9 M in box office receipts wasn’t matched by CD or bobble-head sales and almost definitely was the least favorite Happy Meal Toy of 2010.

But patient as Sugar Momma usually is, she just couldn’t stand sitting and watching any longer. She actually walked out after a bit more than an hour.

I stayed.

Until the bitter end.

But I didn’t stay because I was patient. Nor did I stay because I had an unjustifiable sense of optimism.

I certainly didn’t stay for the singing or the consistent disappointments as various scenes seemed to be approaching a signifcant turn and twist.

I stayed because I don’t understand the principle of “sunk costs”.

For some reason I have a difficult time admitting that I’m wrong and moving onto something else.

Maybe even something better.

Otherwise I would have written this blog after the first 100 point drop in trading, moaning about how the European banking system was dragging us down with them.

Or maybe I would have written about how that drop was erased for about 30 seconds about an hour into the trading session.

But I stayed and lingered, watching the ticker descend further into the territory that we’ve known all too well lately.

But then it changed. The crescendo came and it didn’t disappoint.

All it took was a rumor to turn things around, and we really didn’t see this one coming. Almost like an M. Night Shymalan kind of twist, at least back when he knew how to twist.

The rumor was that China was seeking to purchase Italian debt. Despite the fact that it seems that Greece is going to be the nation to default on its debt, the Italian economy is so much bigger. Additionally, the fear of contagion is lessened if an intermediary block is fortified.

The problem is that while the market made up about 200 points, as it did a number of times last week, this time it was based on a rumor. That’s even more stressful than when moves are based on nothing at all.

I’m preparing myself for the “Breaking News” announcement that Chinese officials were actually meeting with Italians not to purchase debt, but rather to discuss 1300 years of back royalty payments owed for the Chinese patent on pasta.

But no matter. It was worth waiting to see how this day would play out.

I’d thought of selling some call options on Halliburton, JP Morgan and some others as the market was recovering, but as I kept watching the market build on the rumor I decided that this story may go into the next trading day.

Unlike “Of Gods and Men”, which never did get any better, I’ve got high hopes for Tuesday’s market.

I have no stress about the outcome, nor do I lack in patience. I know that sooner or later things will get better. I’m not walking out on this one.

At the very least, maybe gold and silver will take their rightful paces with the other bottom dwellers that I currently own. Since I’m on the short side of those precious darlings, days like today, with another $40 drop in gold and $1.40 in silver helped to ease the day, even when the rest of the market was decidedly down.

Unfortunately, I can’t say the same about “of Gods and Men”. It’s never going to get any better. It’s not very likely that there’ll be any pre-quels or sequels in my lifetime. By the time the next Columbia FIlm Society film rolls around, the South Korean “Poetry”, I will not have learned anything.

I’ll still sit through the entire showing and will still wait for an ending that will justify the time investment.

When it doesn’t work out that way, I’ll just shake my head and tell myself that next time it will be different.

It won’t be.

But at least I pulled it off today. I waited and it paid off.

Oh, and see you at the 44th season.

 

 

 

 

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hocoblogs@@@

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

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The answer is easy.

This past Friday the market closed down 300 points.

For some reason, it just didn’t seem that way. That sense of disbelief and denial just wasn’t there, but I don’t think it was desensitization or numbing.

Although news is no longer pre-requisite for big moves, we did have news that was painted as being the root cause of the drop. That was the resignation of Jeurgin Stark from the European Central Bank, ostensibly over a disagreement between northern and southern European nations over how to handle the Greek crisis. This came on the heels of the German Supreme Court ruling that it was constitutional for Germany to participate in a Greek bailout.

Of course, Stark’s announcement pointed to health considerations.

For me, I thought that Juergen Stark was a character in the 1960’s cult comedy “Get Smart” ad that the market had 40 years to respond to that news. So much for that worthless aphorism that the market looks forward by 6 months and discounts the future.

Also turns out that was “Shtarker”

Maybe the day didn’t seem like any other 300 point drop day because it was the day that the NYSE commemorated the tenth anniversary of the September 11th tragedies.

There were moments of silence preceding the opening bell and then throughout the first 2 hours of trading, each representing a specific event on that horrible day.

There were many of those events, each one more unbelievable than the preceding and still hard to believe could actually happen to us.

Or to anybody.

Throughout the weekend there were ceremonies and special broadcasts.

The human mind may forget some of the details of that day, 10 years will do that, but the emotions were still there each and every time that the fall of the Towers was replayed.

Beyond that, the poignant personal stories in New York, the Pentagon and aboard United 93 still evoke tears. There’s no numbness, it’s still very fresh and painful to think about those personal stories.

Nearly everything elicited moist eyes. Paul Simon’s slow and somber rendition of “Sounds of Silence” was perfectly appropriate and gave an opportunity to interpret the meaning of each and every word.

I didn’t know anyone that was directly impacted by the death of a loved one or friend that day. I know that fellow high school and college alumni were victims that day, but I knew none of their names.

I happened to be in New York of September 10, 2001, having driven up early that morning upon receiving news that my mother had a stroke.

I’d made that 200 mile drive many times, very often as a day trip.

As it turned out that day was no different, as the stroke was relatively minor and I felt confident enough to return home, while already beginning to map out our family’s next steps.

I still recall seeing the Twin Towers as I entered New Jersey on the return trip home, but just quickly glanced at them, as I had always done, never lingering, unless traffic was stalled.

This time, the glance was perhaps less, as I recall being on the phone with a friend, trying to stump him with a piece of baseball trivia. I knew he would know the answer, since he was a sports trivia savant, even more so when it came to the Pittsburgh Pirates, his boyhood hometown.

The question was whose pitching record was Roger Clemens seeking to break for best winning percentage in a single season.

I just needed someone to talk to and joke with after a long day. He was just the tonic. The trivia question was just an unnecessary excuse.

He’s gone now, too, but I can still recall every word of that converstaion, coincidentally etched in time.

As it turned out, Clemens never broke Roy Face’s best winning percentage record, but who cares?

The next day, of course, is now one of those very few of our collective experience that people will always remember where they were and what they were doing as the news came through and then unfolded.

Two weeks later I was back in New York, this time to move my mother down to live with us.

The Towers weren’t there on the horizon and the air was still thick. That was the very last time she’d ever see New York, the city that gave her refuge. Freed from the Nazis, freed from Soviet Communists, orphaned and alone, but like so many others, discovered incredible inner strength and helped to defeat evil.

Now it was time to escape, one last time.

Thinking about a 300 point drop reminds you how meaningless some things are. Most things we can recover from. In fact, a 300 point loss, for most people, is just an event marked on paper. Unless you close out positions in panic, they’re just unrealized losses.

Not so for the events we’ve just commemorated. Even if there is no direct connection, there is a direct connection and a grief that will never go away.

Following Friday’s 300 point loss, there’s every reason to believe that the market will return to life on Monday, every reason to believe that at least there is a potential for rebirth.

For those that perished on that day that potential has been extinguished. Yet, much has been said about what that horrible day and its events has given us as a nation and as a people.

3,000 victims murdered on a single day, 2,000 orphans, 1,000 children that never met their father, another 5,000 military fatalities and, yet, Americans have rebuilt their lives and nation.

Amazingly, there never really was an endemic sense of panic. There was the immediate “fight or flight” adrenaline rush of those that due to their unfortunate destiny to be in a certain place at a specific time, but that’s a response that we’re wired for.

When it came right down to a rational assessment of the immediate hour and then the future, it is incredible how quickly individuals, businesses and our government started to move forward.

Together.

We still disagree. Just look at how long it took to get any kind of agreement over the New York memorial and rebuilding project, but we’re wired to do that as well.

In free societies, that’s what people to. They express themselves. Human expression is the bane of evil and of those that seek to promote evil.

Buildings get destroyed, innocent people are murdered, but our basic wiring is unchanged and we don’t cower in caves or behind women and children. We don’t attack places of worship, soft targets on non-combatants.

For me, watching thousands gather to commemorate the lives of those lost and the physical evidence of our monuments in respect of their lives and contributions is a greater victory than the death of a miscreant terrorist leader.

Bin Laden will be remembered as he died, even by those unwilling to admit the vision of him aged and prisoner in his own home. He grew old and pathetic. Our ideals and national spirit have not. They’ve become renewed, strengthened and resolute.

At first, I thought that a 300 point down day occuring on the day that we were commemorating the tenth anniversary of victims was an affront to their memory. Couldn’t we do better?

But then it dawned on me that the absence of panic and the focus on things far more important is a small, but fitting tribute to the legacy of those that have helped to carve out our newly strengthened national identity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Invest like TheAcsMan

Option to Profit is available as either an eBook or 300+ paperback. Take a humorous look at a serious topic and learn how to make your portfolio finally go to work for you in bull and bear market environments.

See a sneak preview of Chapter 1.  hoco blogs

More about the book and purchase options. Scroll down and read the Szelhamos Rules blog, updated every weekday.

Find  OTP Book at Amazon, B&N or now you can also Order direct  from publisher. Use 10% Discount Code P4S2ZD8H

 

  

I mentioned the other day that I was never very good at idiomatic expressions, maybe I’m not very good at spelling either. I’ve definitely become too lazy to look up the spelling of words, as I’ve been unable to get the spell check feature to actually function without crashing the installation.

Hononyms have always been the bane of my existence.

For want of a waywardly mis-spelled word, I’m certainly not going to bother with the headache of backing up my site’s data. A lot of good it used to do for numbers runners to have their data readily available.

The Szelhamos site may go down, but I’m not.

But I do know the expression “Tail wagging the dog” refers to an inappropriate decision making process or a case of mis-placed organizatonal structure. And I also know that it’s “tail” and not “tale”

Sometimes, though it seems that there is no head, just a couple of tails wagging one another.

On first re-read, that actually sounds like the premise for a gay pornography film, but that’s for the future to decide. But just in case, I just purchased the domain name “HesAllForeskin.com”.

Thursday’s trading was just another one of those days when, in the absence of any particular news, one of the tails got the upper hand.

I suppose that could be part of the film, as well.

As always, regardless of what is going on in front of our eyes, it then becomes a tale of another kind.

On dog’s of a day like those with triple digit losses, the tales start wildly wagging as each person tries to out-expert the next. Despite the fact that there is often no identifiable difference bewteen two successive trading days, there’s never a shortage of interpretations to explain the action.

After Wednesday’s 275 point climb and gold’s $60 drop it was a different story Thursday. A differnt story is actually the same old story.

At first, it looked as if Wednesday’s tail had overtaken the opposite wagging of the early morning. After nearly a 100 point drop on the open, within 10 minutes the Dow erased that in its entirety and actually made it to a gain over slightly over 40 points.

Gold, in the meantime, just ignored the $60 drop and recouped nearly that entire days’ loss.

While gold was staying on its singular course the market gave up its gain and then some in the 10 minutes before the Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke, delivered his speech in Minnesota.

Considering that President Obama is appearing before the joint house this evening, just prior to the NFL season kick-off, it probably shouldn’t have been too surprising that Bernanke didn’t really say that much.

In this case, one tail was bowing to the other. His may be a non-political position and independent from the Executive Branch, but the man is not a rude schmuck.

But still, it was surprising that the market would show any reaction at all. What were they expecting, something other than the obvious? Given the well established belief that the market is forward looking, they must have had their sights set somewhere well beyond the horizon.

The inability to expect the obvious was also evident in Wednesday evening’s GOP Presidential debate, although no one would ever excuse this sad group of being forward looking. After having just seen ex-candidate Tim Pawlenty on with Stephen Colbert, I have a new found respect for Pawlenty.

It all derives from his simple comment that he should have “put a sparkler up his butt” to bring some excitement into his now dead campaign.

As for the rest of the wannabes, clearly, these combatants were following two different tales.

After listening to Newt Gingrich, a strong 12th in the polls, chide the moderators, I’m not certain he understood what a debate is all about.

He faulted Brian Williams and the Politico guy whose name I never bothered to register for trying to get the debate participants to disagree with one another.

Perhaps the producers gave two different tales to the opposing sides. The moderators were told to ask insightful questions and the participants were told to sing “Kumbaya”.

Rick Perry and Mitt Romney did nothing to dispel the notion that they had no clue what a debate was supposed to be about, although right after saying that they weren’t there to disagree with one another, they each quickly forgot that sentiment and then tried to outdo one another with unsubstantiated “factoids”. However, I do have to give high marks to Romney for suggesting that Perry, when it came to signing an Executive order mandating Gardisil vaccinations, would have rather accomplished the same thing but through a legislative process, instead.

Of course, Ron Paul believed that the moderators should have no mandate, so he just answered whatever question popped into his mind. Not surprisingly, there was some gold and even silver, thrown in with his answer, in addition to the idea that the marketplace takes care of everything.

When asked about such specific issues as car safety regualtions, he again said that the market would decide and consumers would move away from less safe cars.

Of course, what was left unsaid was that without mandated safety regulations the only way to discover the spmething is unsafe is through the laboratory we call “life”.

Too late if that’s the way you have to find out. Condolences in advance.

The funny thing is that such a belief is no different from religious zealots that believe that God is responsible for everything that occurs in the world. God willing, God will provide or the market will decide are all expressions of blind faith and the abdication of responsibility.

Poor Rick Santorum. How does he reconcile the demand that government stay out of our lives when it comes to Gardisil vaccinations for young girls, but government should step in and outlaw abortions?

In one tale he tells the story of how parental rights shouldn’t be abrogated, and in the other tale personal rights should.

I imagine his head might explode if a parent actually supports their child’s decision to get an abortion.

Although as the old saying goes “If a head exploded and there were no brains inside, would there still be splatter on the wall?”

Like most things, I don’t pretend to know the answer to that question.

As the day just degenerated further I made a couple of trades adding to my ProShares UltraShort Silver ETF position, which has snuck up to 5% of my portfolio. Most of those holdings are not hedged, as I’m feeding my evil, but reasonably latent speculative side. That side is one that’s very differnt from my overall conservative approach that eschews greed, panic and envy.

If silver falls I will dedicate a room in my home to the Hunt Brothers and will pray to their alter.

But that’s another tale for another time.

 

 

Invest like TheAcsMan

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