I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I don’t read very much.
My daily ritual of reading DIlbert and The New York Times Obituaries was recently complemented with James Altucher’s blog. I actually thought long and hard about whether to refer to it as being in “complement” to or in “supplement” of my daily activities and realized that there really wasn’t a word to convey both impacts.
I’ve linked to it a couple of times and bored readers of this blog have clicked on that link, which has also activated a small hidden webcam near their laptops, in addition to any resident webcams you they already have.
I like my fuzzy clandestine streaming to be in 3-D.
For those who read this blog on a regular basis it doesn’t come as a surprise that I don’t read much. In fact, there’s really not a strong body of evidence that I even read my own blog, much less proof-read it.
And forget about reading for the sake of getting my information right.
When I was younger, I was horrified to find some ham in our refrigerator since it’s not Kosher, as you may be aware.
My mother, in response to my pointing this out to her, said “if it tastes good, it’s Kosher.”
What a great philosophy.
I use that philosophy with my supportive facts. If I believe them to be true and accurate, then they’re true and accurate.
A “Kosher pig” is an example of an “oxymoron” until some moron ruined it about a decade ago with the discovery of a species of pig in some god-foresaken rainforest that might just satisfy all of the criteria necessary to be considered Kosher.
I wrote about Oxymorons a few months ago, but with an emphasis on the “moron.” The thought was rekindled a few days ago reading one of Altucher’s blog entries.
He was asking whether there could really be anything such as an amicable divorce.
In a world of delusion there probably exists such an entity, but then again delusion and the real world are themselves mutually exclusive.
In the real world you end up in “divorce court,” which, wouldn’t you know it, is itself an oxymoron. Just for fun, see if you can find all of the highlighted and hidden oxymorons in today’s blog’
Today, I watched what was called by many a “stunning reversal” in the price of silver.
In fact, they were correct as silver one upped gold and not only cut its earlier steep losses, but ultimately had a nice gain at the end of the day.
One of the things that I’ve come to like are “tag clouds.”
For someone who doesn’t like to read, tag clouds are just great, unless you get bogged down by the concrete concept of tagging a cloud. Or having physical contact with an etheral concept.
Thinking too much isn’t an oxymoron, it’s just an impediment sometimes.
Through the tag cloud by simple virtue of font size, boldness or color, you can immediately know what’s important to the author. You may not know whether it’s love or hate, but at least you know about the intensity of the apathy.
In my case, the tag cloud lets you know that I have some recent passion about silver, more specifically in the prospects of silver prices doing poorly, as I own the leveraged silver ETF that appreciates in value as silver prices drop.
Before I owned the shares my interest in silver was neglible, other than as an historically important treatment for gonorrhea and vampires, as well as syphilitic vampires. You would have known that as the words silver, gonorrhea, syphilitic and vampires never appeared in the blog’s tag cloud.
During the course of the day as the Dow closed up 135, at its high for the day, the ProShares UltraShort Silver ETF closed down $2 from its intra-day high. That drop represented about a 12% move, which was of course exaggerated compared to the actual movement of the underlying metal, due to the leverage.
Think of leverage as being a financial tag cloud, only in reverse. The less you put on the line, the bigger the potential risk or reward.
In that way, think of Jon Corzine as being about 13 times larger than the most leveraged ETF currently approved for trading. The difference being that the leveraged ETF is typically highly sector focused and doesn’t require much in the way of thought process.
Math? Yes.
Thought?
Well as Dennis Gartman might say. Thought on and thought off.
Moron.
On the other hand, under Corzine the focus was placed on an aspect of finance for which resident expertise at MF Global Financial was missing. Yes, that’s right. Your local MF Global Financial knew nothing of international currencies and swaps.
Moron.
Actually, to be totally fair, both are exceptionally intelligent morons, based on my archival research.
“Stunning reversal” doesn’t really qualify as an oxymoron in the classic sense, although there are many variety of “Oxymora,” but just like doing a treatise on what makes something funny is immediately not funny, so too is an encyclopedic look at Oxymora less than intellectually amusing.
No one should ever be surprised by “stunning reversals.”
Have you ever been to a 25 year high school reunion? Just look at the gut of the guy that was on an athletic scholarship.
Have you ever looked at every stock chart ever?
Unlike last month and the one before that, so far during this entirely unsatisfying January options cycle, I haven’t had the opportunity to benefit from the recurrent big spikes in silver prices.
In those months, just as today, the stunning reversals were predictable. What was certainly unpredictable was the inability of thr talking heads to portend the past.
And so here we are, about to enter the last trading day of 2011 and very possibly having survived the single most roller coaster year ever in trading.
True, we didn’t have a “flash crash” nor did we have any memorable declines or rises, but that’s only because there were so many.
And just like a roller coaster you end up exactly where you started, just feeling a bit more queasy for having been intimately involved in the sausage making process.
But man, is that sausage “damned good” or what?
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As her bifocals were keenly balanced on the perch of her nose and, of course, that long chain anchored those bifocals, I remember thinking “if only they had laptops in these glory days.”
Sears Holdings or Goldman Sachs.
