Category Archives: Uncategorized

I know that am destined to burn in the after-life, but there’s probably a special place in heaven saved for those that fuel the eternal flames so needed by the underworld.

Without evil, there would be no good, so you’re welcome.

27 years to the day of the attempted subway robbery heard around the world, one of the 4 assailants took his own life in the squalor of a Bronx motel.

The fact that he didn’t bring his own towels either told you that he wasn’t staying long or that he wasn’t leaving.

I’m from The Bronx, so I know of what I write.

It seems odd not to qualify an earlier paragraph with the word “alleged.” No one was fooled by the claim that the 4 young men were just trying to panhandle from the meek “electronics” expert that day on a New York City subway car.

Everyone knew that they meant to rob the defensless guy just minding his own business on an isolated subway car.

On the day before Christmas, these guys clearly didn’t believe that the meek were going to inherit the earth. And if they were, they were just going to take it away from them.

You may remember 1984. It wasn’t a very good year as far as crime statistics went in New York City. Assaults and violent crime were commonplace and the city was truly at a low point. Even during its fiscal crisis in the 1970’s there was never that feeling of fear to simply go about routine activities.

Like going to work, or going for a walk.Or just riding on the subway.

There’s absolutely no excuse for drawing an analogy between those events 27 years ago, culminating in this weekend’s suicide death of an inveterate criminal and a stock market investing strategy.

The road to hell is paved with people using such analogies for their own personal gain.

Like many others, I was greeted with the news that one of the 4 assailants of Bernhard Goetz, later known as the “Subway Vigilante” had died and had a quick journey back a generation.

As real evidence of a generational gap, neither of my two kids, who have 46 years between them, had ever heard of Bernhard Goetz, but there was a time when he was both reviled and revered.

In fact, you could easily go back and forth yourself with those two opinions on any given day and then do precisley the opposite the next day.

Racist, citizen standing up for his rights, vigilanate?

When confronted by 4 men on a New York City subway, with intent to rob him, Goetz did the completely unexpected. Not only did he pull out an underpowered gun, but he shot and wounded each and every one of the four.

Shades of “grabbed from the headlnes” only in reverse. Goetz recreated the fictional “Death Wish” role played by Charles Bronson a decade earlier and transformed it into real life, only he didn’t disappear into the ether seeking out more evil-doers.

Another decade later and Rudy Giuliani was elected mayor of New York CIty.

Racist, citizen standing up for your rights or vigilante?

Giuliani is widely credited with turning New York City around. His first act was to eliminate what he referred to as “quality of life” crimes, like banishing the homeless guys that would make your windshield even dirtier with their squeegies, in the hopes of getting some spare change.

Truth be told, it was Bernhard Goetz who turned the city around and got its citizens to leave the fear behind and retake the greatest city on earth.

Without Goetz, there would be no Giuliani.

You see, I’m a big fan of “Game Theory“.

You may also know it as  “The Prisoner’s Dilemma”.

I believe in it because I’m cycnical. Most people will only do the right thing if there are consequences to mis-reading the boundaries. It took an irrational act by Bernhard Goetz to get rational behavior to return to its rightful place in society.

The essence of the theory is that the unknown leads you to act prudently and to minimize risk. If you believe that in some way your fate may be determined by the actions of another, who has the same self-interests as you, but doesn’t have your interests at heart. It causes you to think like you’re going to potentially be a victim to a criminal, because he’s equally likely to become a vicitom of a criminal.

You.

Criminologists talk about how the certainty of punishment is the best deterrance. The death penalty, for example is never going to be a deterrent if never carried out.

Empty threats? Worthless.

Threats? Worthless, unless occasionally carried out.

Behavioral psycholgists will also tell you that the best way to effect change is to have a variable reinforcer. Keep the subject on their toes. Never let them figure out a pattern.

With Goetz’s action the rules of the road were changed.

No longer was it a sure thing that a seemingly meek guy riding the subway was going to be a sitting duck. Now there was a channce, maybe small, but still, a bit of uncertainty, that the next guy was going to be packing as well.

All of a sudden, the risk-benefit ratio had changed.

In investiing, it’s all about modifying that risk benefit so that you don’t carry all of the burden.

Invest like Goetz.

To one extreme you may have someone like Raj Rajaratnam. He didn’t want to carry any burden and in that regard, he’s just like how we all should be thinking.

Risk is bad, reward is good.

Again, we can do away with the word “alleged” when discussing Rajaratnam, although I continue to believe that insider trading is a victimless crime.

On the other extreme is the kind of person that does nothing to protect himself and just gives in to the whims of the market as it bounces wildly from subway car to subway car taking whatever it needs to fuel its movement.

But let’s face it. You may be honest and well intentioned, but the next guy, maybe Raj Rajaratnam may not have your interests at heart.

I know. Hard to believe. But even if what he’s doing may or not be criminal and may or not leave victims in its wake, you can become a victim by your own apathy.

To get the best deal, you have to think like a criminal confronted by other criminals also seeking to get the best deal.

But just imagine that while you’re talking to the police officers your doing it submerged in a tank of water. Your sound waves travel at only 550 feet per second in your tank, while your compadre in the other adjoining holding cell has unfettered access to sound travelling at a full 1100 feet per second.

He gets to cut his deal first and you lose, because you were a flounder. Don’t blame high frequency trading for your problems, just do something about it, like not worrying about being whip-sawed.

The point is, don’t trust the next guy and don’t come unarmed to the party, even if it is only a snub-nose. The one on the other side of any stock transaction is a faceless and nameless soul, although more than likely “he’s” a fund.

Although the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people, it hasn’t extended that largesse to investment funds, they don’t really have souls.

Instead, take the deal. Use hedges to better define your reward and potential punishment. But, you still can’t screw the other guy, because that’s what greed is all about and it gets in the way of rational thought.

Prisoner’s Dilemma shows that a reasonable person realizes that if his counter-part tries to screw him over, he would be met with the same response.

By virtue of the game, that would result in the worst outcome for both, a lose-lose situation

So instead, the aim is to escape only slightly tarnished, knowing that the chances of escaping unharmed is tiny, while the chances of getting hit with a ton of bricks is great if you try to outsmart the system.

Where the analogy falls short is that in Game Theory you assume that your opponent is a rational thinking entity, with a drive for self-preservation.

That’s why the U.S. and Soviet Union never fired those nuclear warheads at one another.

Enemies or not, they weren’t crazy and were too smart to take a risk that had little assurance of reward.

Nuclear arms in the hands of a terrorist, especially one that believes that a better world awaits if the ultimate sacrifice is made puts us in the realm of the irrational, at least by most rational people’s perspective.

The market is supposed to be rational, but lately it hasn’t necessarily been behaving that way.

When faced with an irrational or unpredictable opponent, you have to abandon the Goetz Princple, and instead have to be proactive. Just assume the worst and you’ll be right.

When faced with the dilemma and you will be, just ask yourself, WWGD?

 

Check out Recent PortfolioTransactions

 

 

I’ve never done well investing in the technology sector, with a couple of notable exceptions

Let me list my failures: Intel, Dell, Hewlett Packard and Yahoo. There may be some others, but there are times when I buy stocks in companies without even knowing what it is that they actually do.

Probably not a good idea.

Nearly 30 years later, I still recall a close call in the technology sector.

I received an allocation in the IPO for  hot company called Eagle Computer. It was perceived as a real competitor to the IBM PC back in the very early days when a PC cost about $5,000 or more, if you wanted a second floppy drive for storage.

Funny story.

Its charismatic CEO was killed in a car crash on the day of the IPO.

Only an oracle could have foreseen that.

The underwriters actually refunded money to IPO investors and ran their next IPO a few months later without me. Eventually, the proprietary Eagle Computer, bereft of its guiding light, morphed into an IBM clone and then was sued out of existence by IBM along with some other early players.

In hindsight, maybe that’s not such a funny story.

I was spooked by the reliance on a single individual and continue to be so.

Technology seems to be highly linked to charismatic individuals.

Okay, sometimes, like Bill Gates, they’re not really charismatic, but in his own way, he was. Who else could turn mosquito netting into a sexy way of saving lives?

Ballmer?

Yeah, I’ve had Google, Apple and even Research in Motion but I seem to remember the failures more vividly.

The investing successes in technology include a company that I really don’t have any idea of what they do and have happily been in the dark for years.

Riverbed Technology.

The “Technology” part of their name gives me some idea of their sector, but that’s all I really need to know.

When it comes to technology, there really is a powerhouse and it’s Oracle Corporation.

As a powerhouse, Oracle is the baby of another powerhouse, Larry Elllson.

Oracle is involved in absolutely everything and they compete furiously with absolutely everybody. Ellison never pulls punches and isn’t really known as a diplomatic sort.

He qualifies as charismatic and he certainly lives that manner and portrays himself as such. He lives hard, plays hard and competes like there is no tomorrow.

I used to have an Uncle, that whenever I introduced him to a friend of mine, would reach into his pocket and pull out one of those free little calendar books that he would get each year from the Jewish Funeral home, to whom he had pledged his business.

He would go to the back of the book and look up where that friend was from and would announce something to the effect of: “Calcutta? 10,000 Jews.” or “Pittsburgh? 60,000 Jews.”

He wasn’t much into popular cilture, but would have loved the game “Dead or Alive, Jew or Not?”

People don’t like Larry Ellison, but he probably foresaw that as he continued to fine tune his personna.to make himself even less likable.

My uncle would probably have liked Larry Ellison purely on the basis of heritage and business success.

Investors may have liked Ellison’s results, but some of the more recent ones may take exception to that.

Despite his known penchant for cars, add to his credit not sharing the same fate as Eagle Computer’s Dennis Barnhart.

In fact, I found it surprising that he would partially share the stage with another high profile technology person Mark Hurd, fresh off the controversy at Hewlett Packard, even though it was clearly a finger in the eye of HP.

But Ellison was an Oracle. The Oracle of Redwood Shores.

He clearly knew that the wall was approaching and there had to be someone else to pin the blame upon.

In fact, at an earlier earnings report, even though Mark Hurd had only joined Oracle a very short while earlier, Ellison credited Hurd with the great quarter.

Magnanimous, no?

No. Set up, yes.

Easier to share the credit than to take all of the blame. But still, it’s unlikely that Ellison would turn too quickly on Hurd, becasue memories are still too fresh and remember the circumstances with which Ellison bought Hurd to Oracle.

Too much personal aura at stake to put him out to dry.

Instead, today, Oracle spread the pain by predicting that technology spending was suffering from delayed business spending.

In other words, macro-economic issues rather than company specific.

Well, that’s one way of deflecting responsibility and perhaps shielding the executive offices from criticism.

Oracle’s prediction spread gasoline on the sector and I got a burn along the way.

A past trading success of mine was VMWare.

Actually, I should correct that, and as Larry Ellison so graciously gave credit to Mark Hurd, I should give credit to my son for turning me back onto VMWare a few years ago when it was hovering at about $18.

I saw “back onto” because I recall when VMWare was spun off and was never able to find an entry point to buy shares. Then, I remember watching it do the 2007 plunge along with everything else.

But one Thanksgiving Friday I picked up those shares and eventually parted ways at about $45 plus a fair amount of option premiums.

Today VMWare, my beloved RIverbed Technology, of which about 70% of my shares are hedged, and another of my son’s favorites, albeit unrequited, CommVault got felled in the quake of The Oracle’s prediction. In fact, my son picked up some shares of VMWare this afternoon, hoping to ride it back to $90.

Not me.

Today wasn’t a good day for “The Cloud,” which has to also include Amazon, just as this hasn’t been a good year for oracles.

The world famous Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett has had a few mis-steps.

Bank of America comes to mind, but Buffett takes much larger steps and has a much broader time frame. I don’t think the Oracle of Redwood Shores shares the same perspective.

A loss isn’t a loss if it’s only on paper, so I doubt that Buffett is fretting too much. Even I know that paper doesn’t matter, especially if the printing presses are heating up.

Oh, actually another technology investment decision now comes to mind after checking through my archives. Seems that in my managed investment days, about 5 years ago, I owned some Oracle and racked up a 5% gain over two years, well underperforming the market during that time period.

Bleh.

And thent here was the decision to buy calls ahead of earnings almost years ago, just as I was getting started on my own.

Double bleh, but at least I learned something from that, which was that it takes an idiot to try and guess which way the market will react to earnings.

Especially when you know nothing about the stock. Although knowing retailing, movie rental and coffee, didn’t seem to shield me from the effects of purchases of Amazon, Netflix and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, respectively, a few months ago.

Did I mention that those were bought right before earnings? But at least I had the call option sales to cushion the body nlows

So I guess I can put Oracle into the historical failure camp.

As far as oracles go, my hope would be that when giving guidance they could have foreseen the technology spending slowdown, but just as my own crystal ball is fuzzy, I suppose that even oracles have bad days.

The difference though is that my bad days don’t cause about $20 billion dollars of lost market capitalization.

My ability to see into the future is as good as anyone else’s, but on this one issue, I am by far in a position of superiority.

I can predict that I won’t be fooled into acting upon the thought that Oracle is now value priced.

Even though it may very well be, my Chevy Vega doesn’t let me take those kind of chances.

 

Check out Recent PortfolioTransactions

 

One of the great tragedies of American history is that an incredibly talented Communist, comedian and comic, Zero Mostel, was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era.

If you’re pretty young or just historically challenged, being blacklisted meant that anyone hiring you was at risk of becoming the same unhireable outcast that you had become, because that would be construed as being a communist sympathizer.

There are probably other bad things that happened then, but Communists really were swines among pigs. As bad as the Czars and the Cossacks may have been, Marx’s heirs took their interpretation of the maniifesto to some pretty nasty places, like Minsk.

Communists were our enemy and they were an anathema to everything our freedom loving and capitalistic society stood for. The only thing that was a bigger anathema were the anti-Communists.

By virtue of that blacklisting, the world was deprived of so much of Mostel’s unique talents for so many years. Luckily, we did get “Fiddler on the Roof,” in Broadway and movie releases of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” “The Producers” and coincidentally enough, “The Night they Raided Minsky’s.” before the end came.

“A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” was one of my favorite movies. It also starred fellow blacklister Jack Gilford and was Buster Keaton’s final screen appearance.

The the song “Comedy Tonight” pretty much sums up all of the ingredients that can move our capitalist markets.

“Old situations, new complications….something erratic, something dramatic…”

Notice, not a single word about “The Beige Book.” or the “Michigan Consumer Sentiment Report.”

Yet today, there were none of those market movers in the mix.

Instead it was “losses tomorrow, profits tonight.”

Forget about red herrings like “Spanish bond sales receive better than expected reception” or “unexpectedly positive multi-family new housing starts.”

No one cares about those things anymore.

Seriously, we’ve gotten so far removed from actually caring about real economic data. I don’t know why they even bother with that stuff. We all know that the real Ben Bernanke was entombed years ago, as there’s no longer a need for central banking, but we still go through the motions of questioning his hologram a few times each year in front of congressional committees.

Today, the reality was that there was only one thing responsible for the sustained 300+ point gain.

And that was the news of the death of an anachronism.

The leader of communist North Korea, Kim Jong-Il, who was reportedly the single greatest customer of Hennessey Cognac, something that clearly would have bought a sneer of consternation to the eyes of Comrade Lenin, was dead.

As news came of his death, it also became known that Great Leader’s son, Dear Leader,  will repose in the same manner as Vlad the Czar Slayer, in a glass enclosed case. Actually. by all reports Kim Jong-Il was small enough that perhaps he could fit into a cognac bottle.

That would make the roadshow for the Initial Public Offering of the Great Leader much easier and would have been perfect time for the release of Zynga’s new game “Kim Jong-Ilville.

Delightful image. At least the Russian heirs to the Soviet Union had the good sense to finally remove Lenin from his display of honor.

But with a 300 point gain in the market on Tuesday there really was nothing besides an historic death that could be pointed toward as being the culprit for the much whispered and anticipated melt-up.

As welcome as the death of a pariah may be, at least equally welcome is yet another day of absence of European news and rumors of news. Another day of respite from discussion of Hungarian mortgage arbitrage with the Forint and Swiss Franc and the fear that Germany would withdraw from the EU.

In the absence of anyything interesting coming from the other side of the pond lately, I’ve been finding myself in a ranting mood even though I’ve been pretty pleased with the portfolio tally at the closing bell.

The need to rant has been so strong that I couldn’t even bring myself to write about today’s trades.

If you have the slightest interest you’ll have to go to the Portfolio Transaction page to see what I was up to today.

Last week it was all about Dennis Gartman and his position on Gold.

Today he clarified his position by announcing “I’m neutral on gold at this point.”

Not to beat a dead horse, but “at this point” doesn’t do his clients any good for that wonderful period before “this point” when he cut them at the kneecaps.

Today, what really fascinated me was all of the discussion about how great the breakup of the AT&T buyout of Deutsche Telecom’s T-Mobile division was going to be for American Tower.

Fortunately, despite the fact that I often joke about my failing memory, that’s not really the case.

During my first week of blogging, back in April, I mentioned how I had cash available from having had my shares of American Tower assigned.

What was also mentioned was what spurred me to purchase shares of American Tower, which was a stock that I’d heard about in previous years from listening to Jim Cramer during the early days of Mad Money.

What spurred the purchase was the unanimous opinion among the experts that the proposed buyout was going to be very bad for American Tower, due to the presence of both T-Mobile and At&T dishes on many cell towers.

The obvious conclusion was that there would be no need for duplication of dishes, so American Tower would be losing leasing revenue.

Sure enough the conventional wisdom casued a kneejerk reaction and shares plummeted and stayed at those depths for the better part of a day.

On that day I purchased shares and immediately sold calls. The shares were assigned a few weeks later and I never had reason to pick up shares again.

In fact, as much as I hate to shamelessly promote my book, Option to Profit, the AMerican Tower events was used as an example if an opportunity created due to a market over-reaction.

What was most amazing was that just a few days after the consensus opinion, Morgan Stanley came out with an “overweight” position on AMT shares.

Aren’t you glad you pay for an expert?

Well, wouldn’t you know it, now that the buyout is scuttled, the same “Talking Heads” are pushing the thesis that this is great news for American Tower.

Same thesis. Different direction.

Today, American Tower was up about 4.5% compared to 3% for the S&P 500. Pretty impressive, although on Monday American Tower fell by nearly the same amount, well outpacing the S&P on that day.

Obviously, unlike the Dear Leader, I have no clue what the future holds, but i do know that the thesis was wrong the first time around, so I don’t have exceptionally high hopes for a turnaround performance this time.

The other thing that I know with great certainty is that if this had happened on the Pyongyang, after Gartman received his just punishment, something quite severe would have been meted out to the analysts and to those responsible for the analysts having their jobs.

There’s a good chance that whoever supplied the paper on which the analysis was printed would have been punished, as well.

Zero Mostel on the other hand, would have sung a song, cracked a few jokes and then proceeded to sell your shares back to you and those same shares to 20 of your closest friends.

So you tell me. Capitalist or Communist?

In the many years following the death of Zero Mostel the tragedy of the injustice toward him has receded into memory while his art continues to entertain, even though he was never officially rehabilitated.

Kim Jong-Il’s rehabilitation started today and he’s off to a great start for which your portfolio can be grateful.

Long die Dear Leader. 

 

 

 

I first started watching Jim Cramer when he was teamed with Larry Kudlow. Their show, interestingly enough called “Kudlow and Cramer” for a reason that has been lost to history, was an evocative blend of financial and political analyses.

I used to watch the show with Szelhamos. He really enjoyed Cramer. Partially that was due to the Lenin-like appearance and probably to some degree owed to the raw emotion and enthusiasm.

I think he also liked Cramer’s teeth.Szelhamos judged everything by its teeth. Horses, people, watches.

He would have loved Mad Money, but never got the opportunity. I can actually just picture the look on his face had he ever had the privilege of watching a chair get flung across the studio.

Cramer blocks my tweets, probably due to a misinterpretation of the title of a blog entry “Why I No Longer Watch Jim Cramer.”  Although it may also be related to the ill-advised combination of toilet paper and egg home decor that I provided one drunken morning when he got the booth I had my eyes on at The Olive Garden.

Because of that, I won’t include the photo of me at what would go on to become the Mad Money studio set, when I auditioned for the part years ago. To see that, you’d have to actually click here.

In hindsight, I should have gone with the goatee, chucked the sports jacket and not sat down.

Regardless, his transition over to Mad Money came at a very critical time during my own investing development and subsequent plunge into managing my own portfolio after 25 years with a trusted broker.

I think that I learned a great many things during the years that I watched the show. In fact, as I used to travel quite a bit back in those days, I actually recorded shows to DVD to carry along with me.

There must be a word for that, but I’m not going to dig up Sugar Momma’s copy of the most recent DSM-IV diagnostic terms.

Crazy is crazy.

Among the things that Cramer preached was doing your homework. He always recommended one hour per stock, per week. Because of that heavy time load, he also had a corollary recommendation that you shouldn’t own more than 10 stocks at any time.

As he used to say, “What are you? A mutual fund?”

Point very well made.

But on deaf ears.

Even though I was always a good student, those deaf ears weren’t really physically incapable, they just had a hard time listening.

You know the kind of person that I am.

The kind that always thinks that they’re right and always has a better way.

Guilty. And annoying.

Actually, in that regard, I certainly don’t think that I have a better way. Beyond that, when it comes to actual performance and credibility, it’s obviously laughable to even entertain the comparison, unless you’re actually looking to accumulate DSM-IV diagnoses.

Here’s the thing.

Even though I always did my homework as a child. And even though I always completed all professional tasks that could be thought of as “adult homework,” I don’t like homework.

It was with that kind of insincerity and hypocriticism that I would exhort my kids to do their homework.

Clearly, they knew what I was all about, as they were able to see right through me and could basically care less about things like homework, practice and all of those other bogus endeavors that are supposed to strengthen your mind, body and skillsets.

When it comes to investing, or more appropriately to trading, I’m an idiot and seek to do nothing to bring myself toward enlightenment. I certainly don’t do homework.

I’ve said before that I’ve owned stocks in the past, including at this very moment, that I have no clue as to what product or service they provide.

For example, Focus Media Partners, which I first sold puts upon, then bought shares and sold calls upon, after taking another cue from Muddy Waters.

Again, a case of not listening, as Muddy Waters’ advice was to flee ownership of shares due to more Chinese accounting improprieties.

Don’t know. Don’t care. I’m agnostic as to that information, but I do like the profits from the hedge trades.

Anyway, at the moment, I own shares in 21 different companies.

One of those happens to be Riverbed Technology, which was first put on my radar screen by Jim Cramer a long time ago.

I didn’t purchase shares when he first recommended, but did so some time after. It is still a mystery to me as to what it actually does, even after about 5 years of reasonably steady ownership. WHat I do know is that shares could go to a negative value and I’d still be in profits because of all of the great option premiums.

I just had some of my Dow Chemical and ProShares UltraShort Silver ETF shares assigned, as well as all of my Sallie Mae holdings. I happen to know what all of those are about.

So there.

With the cash in hand, I picked up shares in JP Morgan Chase and Halliburton at prices lower than at which they were assigned to me two weeks ago.

Funny how that happens.

But I also picked up replacement Sallie Mae shares and became reacquainetd with General Electric, as I hope to double dip on its upcoming dividend and option premium this week.

By my count I lost shares in 3 companies and bought shares in 4 companies.

After a few years of doing that kind of an exchange, you do tend to accumulate stocks in different companies.

Among the many things that I learned from Cramer was to avoid the arrogance of thinking you know exactly when to buy and when to sell. Buying and or selling your entire position at a single time is an exercise in arrogance.

So often, when picking up new shares, I do so in lots, as long as a single lot is large enough to warrant the profitable sale of call options.

So when I may see a position assigned it may not be unusual to see more than one stock take its place, especially if the assigned shares were high priced, as my Amazon and Goldman Sachs shares (used to be.)

But still 20+ different stocks?

Here’s the other thing.

Not only do I not like doing homework and not only am I lazy, but I’m a creature of habit.

I don’t like new things. I’m a terrible stock picker and happily admitted that when on Bloomberg Rewind last month. When I do venture out and about and try out a new stock, it always seems to be a mistake.

In Option to Profit, I talk about my “Old Reliables.” Those are the stcoks whose shares I go back to over and over again.

Why look for opportunities with new stocks, trying to find some hidden gem when your old friends are right there for you?

Like everyone, they have their ups and downs.

When the time comes and one of myr shares are assigned, there you go. Just look toward Old Reliables for one that has cycled down on its luck.

That’s a friend in need who will very often pay you back in gratitude.

How can you lose? You help out an old friend and at a bargain price for that matter.

That’s how JP Morgan and Halliburton made it back today after just a few weeks of being away from the portfolio.

I don’t want to complain or seem like a bad host, but so far today, Halliburton hasn’t behaved well after the morning’s purchase and I haven’t sold any calls.

As far as JP Morgan goes, just because I sold the calls an hour or so after it arrived back home and am hoping to see my shares assigned, there’s nothing personal.

I learned that from a friend many years ago.

Business is business and friendship is frienship.

He didn’t teach me anything about homework, so I took that as a sign of his disapproval, as well.

In the meantime, I realize that I owe Jim Cramer quite a bit. Believing so, is perhaps just a further manifestation of a contrarian attitude, as he’s pretty maligned.

Jealousy will do that.

Homework on the other hand, from my perspective, deserves to be maligned, as long as you don’t mind being an agnostic idiot.

 

Years ago I remember hearing a factoid that suggested the average person changed careers 3 to 4 times in a lifetime.

Not jobs, but careers.

I have absolutely no interest in trying to track the source of that tidbit down, nor do I care whether it’s really true or not. I’ve always believed that it was and for the longest time marvelled at how that could ever be possible.

The problem, with me, that is, was that I was looking at it with my own perspective. After all why kind of career change does a Dentist make? Sure some go on to specialize, as if that’s really a change.

In the past, I’d thought of pursuing a Law degree on an MBA, but the likelihood would be that armed with either of those, I’d probably still be involved in some aspect of healthcare, so it wouldn’t be much of a change.

In my own sort of smug way I could envision a guy pumping gas in New Jersey switching careers and perhaps instead loading shipments with funny sounding names in an IKEA dock,

Now that’s a career change.

The other day, as I do just about everyday after first checking the futures, the New York Times Obituary pages and Dilbert, I read James Altucher’s blog.

I’ve mentioned and referred to him a number of imes before, so I won’t do it all over again, except to say that his recent blog “My Lawyer is Dead” struck me with a single line:

“….this is what I do. It’s too late for me to do anything else.”

I don’t know how old the professionally unhappy attorney was at the time of that comment, but Altucher readers know that by age 49 he was gone.

As in “dead.”

I don’t really believe in coincidences, but all last week, one of my new favorite financial news shows, Bloomberg Rewind, hosted by Matt Miller had been featuring ex-Wall Street professionals who had left The Sreet behind, voluntarily or otherwise, in order to re-invent themselves.

The series was called “Life After Wall Street.”

One such story featured an individual that opened up a doggie day care center in Westchester County, New York. One of our best friends, who was also in healthcare did just that about 20 years ago, again coincidentally enough, in Westchester.

There must be something about high powered types living in Westchester, many of whom are probably employed on Wall Street, that engenders guilt about leaving the family pet at home while they and their 1% friends are at play or work.

That’s why I had to leave. And once we did, we got our first dog and left him at home all the time. Otherwise, the dog sitters would have been a total waste.

Our friend subsequently sold the business as it became incredibly busy and less joyful for her, albeit highly profitable.

The grass was green, as were the books but there had to be something else to life.

Time for yet another career change in her case she decided to pursue a lifelong dream of being a docent at the famed Bronx Zoo and giving guided tours to school aged children.

She reached that dream and has never been happier.

Maybe we should follow the routine outlined in that classic holiday movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” and just chime the bells each time a career is changed.

But the segment that really caught my interest happened to be on the same day as Altucher’s poignant blog.

Appearing were Rob Symington and Mike Howe, two of the three principals behindf “Escape the City.” Actually, it’s altogether possible that one of those two was actually Dom Jackman, but as a typical male, I really wasn’t paying that much attention, given that those resources are limited.

What attentive resources I do still retain were just enough for me to learn that Escape the City is an organization formed on the basis of a simple thought “Surely there is more to life than this.”

Where have I heard that before?

That can also be in the form of a question.

Somewhat maddingly, the site uses the same spelling rules as does my Smartphone’s auto-spell, yet I still was impressed with their organisation, although I still dislike being referred to as a Paediatric Dentist, even if in the past tense.

Anyway, “Escape the City” is designed with helping people rediscover their humanity. Re-inventing themselves or just doing something completely different with whatever tools and talents they have developed in the corporate world.

Their past lives.

What I especially liked was a Tweet that I received in response to one that I sent following their appearance on Bloomberg Rewind:

In response to “Sigh. If I only had skills, motivation and life expectancy I’d sign up. Great concept to restore man’s humanity, ”  I received  “he he. I’m handing out free slaps to anyone who says they’re too old to make a change.”

And then there was this poor 49 year old lawyer. He could have used one of those slaps.

About 15 years ago a very vibrant and successful guy, who was about 20 years older than me, but infinitely more alive, told me that you have to re-invent yourself every 10 years.

Chinese publicly traded companies do it all the time through reverse mergers. Why can’t we learn from them?

Hard to understand, but who knows if that life lesson could have helped an unhappy attorney who felt trapped and who wrongly believed that it was too late to change.

I re-invented myself about 9 years ago to a lesser extent and then again, this time fully, 3 years ago. Despite a successful career it wasn’t necessarily what I wanted to be doing for the rest of my productive life.

I’ve never looked back. I’m 57 now and eagerly looking forward to the next re-invention, even though I haven’t the slightest clue of where that road will begin or take me.

What I’ve come to realize (realise) is that you become empowered as coming to the correct observation that you’re a better steward of your destiny than your job, employer or career will ever be.

Now what kind of a financial blog would this be if I didn’t extend that lesson to stocks?

This segue is easy. It’s as easy as the difference between investing and trading.

It’s as easy as the difference between buy and hold and anything but buy and hold.

I never really thought about it, but my personal re-invention was done on the back of a philosophy that continually re-invented a stock portfolio. One that did away with any kind of emotional attachment to a stock or the thought that my activities had to be done a certain way, because that was the way it had always been done.

Yes, I’ll take a capital loss on shares that I held for a week just becasue it gave me a great option premium for having sold calls to someone who may or may not hate what they’re doing, knowing that the odds of a successful call option purchasing strategy are small.

To quote my Tweeting friend from Escape the City. “he he.”

On Monday, we begin the first options cycle for 2012.

I will have lost a small portion of my ProShares UltraShort Silver ETF shares, half of my Dow Chemical and all of my Sallie Mae shares. Actually, as far as most months and weeks go, the re-invention will be somewhat lessened this Monday, but not by my choice.

It was an efficient market that now tells me what to do.

The shares that I’ll be losing were good to me and as with each cycle and facing assignment, I feel that I’ve learned something, gained more skills and am altogether happy with the experience.

But it’s time to move on.

Like the old saying “you got to leave the dance with the one what brung you there,” I’m certain that I’ll return to ownership of all of those someday, but with cash in my account and just a little more experience to boot, it’s time to restore just a bit more of the humanity and move on to something else.

I registered with Escape the CIty but then realized that I really don’t have any skills or talents that anyone else would want.

Then I also remembered that I enjoy not working, although Sugar Momma worries that the sloth, as it sets in, will never retreat.

It’s entirely possible that for me, re-invention has led me to a dead end, but at that dead end I may have found the “more” that there is to life.

The humanity. The freedom from a prescribed track.

Altucher and the crew at Escape the City have it right. There is more to life.

Re-invent yourself now. 49 is just right around the corner or maybe even a couple of blocks back.