Weekend Update

This has been a busy week, but not so much for me.

It figures that on the week that the blog begins its apperance as an offerng by Amazon Kindle Subscription services that I would miss two days worth of blogging.

But only in America can you choose to pay for a subscription service to have a blog delivered directly to your Kindle when you could just as easily opt to not read the blog online.

And for free.

What really doesn't figure is that there are actual subscribers.

First of all, special thanks to Tony Vahl of The Original Daily Skew for authoring a guest blog this week. I had enough foresight to arrange for that, but not enough to consider the fact that I might be somewhat under the weather. So much so, that I barely even made trades for two days and when I did, I think they were through the lens of a Percocet fueled analyst.

As if I ever practiced any form of analysis.

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The Hype

There were two big stories today and even if you don't follow business news, you couldn't possibly escape either of the stories.

They were almost like radiation. You might wish that you could escape, but you can't. You can't even feel safe.

Chances are pretty good that you're a Facebook user to some degree and chances are pretty good that you're an Amazon shopper.

There are reportedly 800 million Facebook users worldwide. No one really knows that much about Amazon, though, as it tends not to release very specific data regarding  itself, other than what is required by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sometime today Facebook is expected to announce details of its IPO. Following the model so well popularized by the likes of Linkedin, Groupon and Zynga, Facebook is only going to release 5-10% of its outstanding shares, with a reported valuation approaching $100 billion.

There's no way you could have avoided any of that news over the past couple of days.The hype has been incredible. In fact, Herb Greenberg of CNBC did an interesting piece the other day of a "respected" broker-dealer huckster perhaps skirting regulations and hyping the need to invest in the pre-IPO ownership of the next Facebook, which now happens to be Facebook.

This one will be among the hottest IPO's known to mankind and we'll undoubtedly hear lots about the inequity in the process of distributing shares, as anyone that you're likely to know will be shut out of that process.

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That's what Makes a Market

There are a lot of insipid expressions out there.

I know, because I was the one credited with the 2012 CNBC word of the year, "Eurosis," replacing last years' "Hopium."

Lately things like "catch a falling knife" a "rip your faceoff rally" and "kicking the can down the road" have been used to describe one thing or another. Some of those expressions seem like good ideas, but most fade away, never having the cultural staying power or applicability to other situations.

Of course, there are always the tried and tested expressions that have meaning through all eternity.

"Bulls and bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered."

RIght? You know that one.

A polite way of expressing the fact that someone did something stupid or the fact that the action was incomprehensibl3e is to say "Well, that's what makes a market."

That observation is always going to be correct. There has to be someone on both sides of any deal. Theoretically, depending on the time scope, they could both be on the right side of the trade, but let's be honest.

No one cares about the other guy. Win-win is another of those insipid expressions.

Yesterday, I got a glimpse into the incomprehensible.

Following a minor procedure for which I had some sweet, sweet sedation, I began having some significant pain.

May the Good Lord have mercy on Dr. Conrad Murray, but I think I see what Michael Jackson found appealing about Propofol.

From the time of the onset of my kidney stone and its few  moments of intense pain, I've had a prescription for the narcotic analgesic Percocet. In that three week period I hadn't taken any of those pills until yesterday afternoon.

About an hour after popping a pill, the pain was gone, but a strange feeling came over me at about the same time.

I felt as if I had no affect, at all.

None. Even less than I usually am in possession of and believe me, there have been times that Sugar Momma has poked me to see if I was still alive, despite my eyes being wide open and speaking.

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Hope to Survive the Change

Although it's highly likely that my post sedation delerium would turn out a daily entry far more coherent than usual, I turned to the kindness of guest bloggers to preclude the chance of typing out some long held family secret.

Today's guest blogger, Tony Vahl, may be known to many as the co-founder of the popular DailySkew.com, no stranger to an irreverent look at events pretending to be serious. An accountant by day, he finds the time to put numbers aside and focuses on letters and punctuation marks to the delight of his readership. Follow Tony on Twitter and help support a life giving cause

I am not an Options Trader.  Never traded options in my life.  I hope some personal eyewitness testimony will suffice.

I come at this as someone who saw the Housing Bubble bursting back in 2006, and felt like a lone wolf crying in the wilderness.  Smiling real estate salesman kept telling me at the time, "Don't worry.  The market will hold firm.  After
all, this is Florida."

Don't worry. Be happy. What could go wrong?

Yeah, right.

Two years later, I was told, "Buying a home now is like trying to catch a falling knife." This time they were right.  Even a broken clock is right twice a day.  A $120k home I purchased four years ago is now worth half that. Unexpected medical bills have put an employed individual in a stable career and his family on the brink of foreclosure. 

Anyway, since I'm not a trader, I figured I'd share with you what I'm seeing on the ground.  What I see is change.  Not just loose change. 

I'm seeing stores going out business.  Take Payless Shoe Stores (TIcker PSS), for example.  They just can't compete with Zappos, now wholly owned by Amazon. 

Isn't it funny that Zappos has an issue with the security of the credit cards of their customers after Payless announces store closings?  It's too late.  It's like that scene in Star Trek II, when Khan started the Genesis Wave.  He hit the "Commit" button, and then there was no stopping it.  You couldn't even switch stations, the force was that powerful.

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Scared Straight

Given the fact that we've never even been able to teach any of our puppies any trick at all, the saying "you can't teach an old dog new tricks'" while perhaps not true in every situation, is definitely true in my household.

Maybe I can blame that on "Low T," as it seems that just about everything else is being piled on its shoulders. Besides, that would make sense, especially if both trainer and trainee suffered from that malady.

In Laszlo's case, his descent into "Low T" came fairly suddenly, so I do  wonder whether his reluctance to learn any tricks is just a manifestation of his passive-aggresive behavior.

Although I'm at the point that I'm not likely to learn much new anymore, I'm getting increasingly proud of my ability to adapt, if not learn.

I've certainly recognized my advancing limitations as I've completely given up on the idea of learning even the most simple of technical analyses.

I don't even do cost averaging anymore, but I continue to be able to count by "fives."

But over the past few years, I've noticed the ability to make some behavioral changes as push would come to shove.

Monday was a good example.

Armed with lots of cash due to the assignment of about 60% of my portfolio, in the past, I would have felt compelled to burn through all of the funds, regardless of where prices were headed on that day.

If they were heading down, that often was fine, as given the market's behavior, there would be a predictable bounce upward sooner rather than later and then why not buy at a presumed bargain price?.

On the other hand, there really was no rationale reason to rifle through the money chasing rising share prices.

But I did, over and over again.

Not yesterday, though.

Restraint and judgment helped to start this morning with a decent amount to still play with, looking for what appeared to be bargains that weren't there yesterday..

Had retraint not been there, I would have picked up shares of Deere at about $2 more than where they were purchased today.

I felt good about that, although that's just a small step resuting in a small advantage. Mostly, I'm proud of that small step because I did it all on my own.

Learning how to exercise restraint to prevent premature speculation is a big achievement.

But sometimes you need others to help you and sometimes they have to take drastic actions to scare you straight.

In my case, I needed to be scared straight into inaction.

Do you remember that series of specials describing the seemingly drastic and harsh measures taken to deal with hardened bad boys. Lots of yelling, lots of crying and then success.

Okay, maybe a suicide or two, as well, but by the end of the episode, all we saw wa success.

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Under the Radar

This Monday morning, which was just a dreary and cold mid-Atlantic day, there wasn't too much to cheer about.

Over the past three years, I've been drafted into the culture of football and now find myself, somewhat uncharacteristically, actually caring about games.

Culture. Football. Talk about oxymorons.

Just a few short years ago my only foray into football would have been to watch about a half's worth of the Super Bowl and take the occasion to excuse the non-stop ingestion of deep fried anything.

I looked at the Super Bowl as being Saturated Fat Sunday.

Now, I even have four pro football games under my belt, although if given the opportunity to go to a game, the weather is still a factor in my decision process, as well as who's going to be singing the National Anthem.

I'm still far from a fanatic. I even turned off the New York Giants game last night during overtime and never even bothered to go down to the basement and turn on the big screen TV to get a more real-life feel.

It's not as if I had to be up early the next morning, it's just that I was probably depressed because Simpsons episodes had been pre-empted in favor of the football game and I'd already seen that eposode of Chappelle about 300 times.

I did take the Baltimore Ravens loss harshly, though, particularly knowing that my kids are big Ravens fans. The manner in which they lost the opportunity to tie the game and force it into overtime was especially hard to accept, as an easy field goal was not as advertised.

The big news this morning was that loss and the resignation of the co-CEO's of Research in Motion and the subsequent appointment of a new CEO.

The two items are not in any way related, but then did become so.

The question of the day on CNBCm tied it all together as they asked who likely got more sleep last night, Billy Cundiff, the Raven's kicker or Thorsten Heins, the new RIMM CEO?

Ordinarily, being named new CEO is a pretty positive thing, unless you're Leo Apotheker.

In this case the market didn't react terribly kindly to the announcement of Heins' ascension, especially since he was considered to be somewhat of an insider who may have also been asleep as the ship was sinking.

Oh, and the accent didn't help either as the prevailing joke was that RIMM hired Leo Apotheker's son.

I don't know what kind of jokes are circulating today regarding Cundiff's miss, but I doubt that there are many. People take their football more seriously thatn they do their stocks.

One was tragic, the other just business going about business.

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Life's not Fair

It doesn't take many cycles of watching the nightly news to realize that there will never be a shortage of unspeakable tragedies. As soon as you hear about some horrible personal or global event that sends chills down your spine, along comes another, giving you barely a moment to catch your breath.

Unbelievably, each successive wave of bad news just gets worse and worse, yet as we become hardened to the bad news experienced by others, we just channel surf to escape the burden of our emotions.

It's hard to deal with an unending flow of examples of how unfair the world can be, but the world became an infinitely better place for all that could afford a television with remote control.

For the ones who couldn't, it's just like a final nail in the coffin and further proof of just how unfair the world can be when you can't even shield yourself from news of the realities gong on around you.

By virtue of your birth place, by virtue of your DNA and by virtue of where you may be standing at the moment, you may never have had a chance in life.

I mentioned Woody Allen yesterday and his eminently quotable line from Annie Hall, a movie that had more than it's fair share of quotable quotes.

“I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.”

"Fair share?"

Actually, "fairness" had nothing to do with the surfeit of great lines from that movie. There was nothing coincidental about their occurence and nothing was there to pre-ordain their success or failure.

They were all earned.

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What's Next?

Most successful business leaders and individuals would agree that your business has to keep constantly moving forward and even re-inventing itself, if necessary.

In hindsight, some less than successful corporate shepherds will agree that moving forward is a better idea than just "seeing what develops" and then finally reacting.

As the case of Kodak has shown, nothing really develops anymore and no one really wants to buy cheap printers from among a plethora of cheap printers available from established market leaders

Treading water isn't a very good option, because sooner or later, you end up sinking or being eaten by a shark. As so poignantly stated in "Annie Hall," a shark..... has to be constantly moving forward or it dies.

Sears anyone?

But just look at IBM.

How much does the 2012 iteration resemble that of 1985? The change at IBM was more than just a move away from the obligation to wear white button downs.These days, if you seen an IBM logo on a laptop, you can be certain that it's not going to be anew ultra portable.

Been there, done that and moved forward.

Whether through acquisition or playing to the strengths of your key players, successful companies manage to be ahead of the curve and anticipate the movement of the marketplace.

They don't ask you for your zip code when you buy a pack of off-brand batteries

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Clarity of Purpose

There's an expression that combines "clarity of mind" with "clarity of passion."

"Clarity of mind means clarity of passion."

Having watched enough episodes of Dateline over the years, I'm not certain that clarity of mind is a necessary pre-requisite for clarity of passion.

Given my current state of pharmaco-reality, I'm not certain that I can negotiate the thought process necessary for the whole "necessary and sufficient" exercise. Certainly, you can possess clarity of mind, yet find yourself without the ability to recognize the passionate nature of anything.

Anhedonism.

People, even smart people, seem to know exactly what they want, and often it is passion for passion's sake and they then concoct incredibly stupid plans in order to requite that passion.

If you have to look up the word "hubris" today's Daily Dilbert won't make too much sense, even if you look up its definition. Otherwise, it's very funny, as usual in its simplicity.

Clarity of mind is certainly not pre-requisite for clarity of purpose, either.

Take the past few days for example when a kidney stone was making its unwelcome re-appearance.

My mind, which is usually quite clear and reasonably analytical, refused to recognize the symptoms, even though I'd gone through the lovely experience before.

The mind muddled the purpose, though. My purpose should have been to take steps to avoid exquisite pain, rather than to ignore the obvious and expect the irrational.

I spent last night and this early morning in the emergency room of our local hospital. Sugar Momma happens to work in the emergency department of that hospital and it was she that convinced me, as I was writhing on the floor, that I should bite the bullet and make the journey.

Now, given that she works in the psychiatric section of the emergency room, deep down, I suspected that this was some sort of scheme for having me involuntarily commited.

I was ready to rally the rest of my family around me in my defense, but despite the pain induced delerium, I had enough reason left to realize that they wouldn't have a lot of credibility.

At least I think this is my family.

Maybe Sugar Momma was right. She was especially questioning of my sanity, when while laying on the gurney, I was able to let the FourSquare world know that I was awaiting the joy of giving birth to a 7 pound delight.

But you may not be able to fault her for otherwise questioning the screws.

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Starting the Year Right

Maybe I wasn't listening very carefully today, but this year in the stock market seems to be getting off on the right foot.

For me, that has nothing to do with a 200 point gain, but it has everything to do with platitudes and what is frequently assumed to be the "conventional wisdom" not making their annual appearances.

Okay, maybe the 200 point gain has something to do with it, but I like to think that I'm bigger than that, even though I know that my superficiality won't take me there.

Specifically, getting off on the right foot means that there was a noticeable absence of anyone getting on the typical first trading day of the year talking points.

In the years that I've been fairly addicted to business television the beginning of the year stories are always the same.

Dogs of the Dow, January stock rally, retail sales revisions come in better than expected, Super Bowl Indicator theory and so on.

There's usually also some human interest story, like the twins born in different years.

Great stuff.

I guess I'm so sensitized to these kinds of stories that the recent nightmare I had made so much sense.

Listening to Dana Telsey describe how thisyear, once again Chinese restaurants and movie theaters in major metropolitan areas saw 30% of their annual profits maerialize during the week between Christmas and New Years.

So far, there hasn't even been a summary of best and worst performers, although that has to be related to my inattention.

Although, still, its absence may be plausible. I guess when you can go an entire year and not see anything change in the S&P 500 level, it's almost as if the year had never happened, other than memories of the vomiting during the up and down segments of the ride.

That's exactly why you need to sit in the front row of the roller coaster. Staying ahead of the curve works. Sitting behind someone who vomits doesn't.

Now to be totally fair, I did hear someone refer to the "Dogs of the Dow" theory on Friday, but did so only in the context of pointing out that the list for 2012 looks pretty much like the list for 2011.

That's not the way it's supposed to work, so maybe that explains today's silence. Of course, that silence may make adhering to the theory a good idea, were it not for the stocks involved.

After the past week, which was so utterly boring, it really was nice to see a definitive move, especially in a higher direction, but I pretty much traded myself out for the day after the first 60 minutes.

I'm not usually prone to making New Year's resolutions, but I did so this year.

The first, has already been satisfied.

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