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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.

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