Creature of Habit

I really am a creature of habit.

If you have any doubt just do a search of this blog for "creature of habit" and you’ll see just how many times I’ve mentioned that personality characteristic of mine.

Although it's convenient to blame redundancy on memory lapses that accompany advancing age, that's really not the root cause.

That would be me.

It wouldn't take you 27 years of marriage to realize that I'm a repetitive sort.

The last time I wrote a blog was from 2007-8 and it was in memory of my father and appropriately, was named after him in a manner that was understood by those who knew him.

Szelhamos.com

It ran for precisely one year. What gratified me about that year was that over 10,000 hits came specifically to watch the fairly crudely designed PowerPoint slideshow that tried to provide a glimpse into his life. Certainly far more people than he would have met during his lifetime came to know him and his signature invitation to all, as well.

After that one year period, writing about the same topic as now and with the same non-sensical perspective that only a delusionally knowledgeable person could have, it was time to hang it up.

The second incarnation celebrates its first anniversary today.

This time around the Szelhamos.com site was resurrected in order to find an outlet to publicize my book, Option to Profit, that, as a creature of habit, I’ve name dropped about 10,000 times, as well.

Option to Profit. And make that 10,000 and one.

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Love Stinks

I know that "Love Stinks" is not exactly an original sentiment. It's either wildly appropriate or inappropriate of a sentiment on Valentines Day.

The other day as those who were not watching Oprah Winfrey's show on a behind the scenes look at life in an Orthodox Jewish were watching the Grammy awards, they got to see songstress Adele receive six awards.

By now, everyone on the planet knows the stories of personal and emotional pain behind some of her songs, such as "Someone Like You." Great story for sure, but I'd really like to know the story behind the J. Geils Band song "Love Stinks."

Yeah, yeah.

But as long as it is Valentines Day, it's obligatory to search for things that you do love and express those feelings.

Among the things that I love is how egalitarian Twtitter is, allowing everyone to rub elbows, as long as they maintain some kind of decorum and don't show excessive skin on their Avatars.

You also get to see communication, exchange and banter between and sometimes among reasonably well known people. That is, if you happen to travel in a highly defined circle. The love of my life, my Sugar Momma, doesn't travel in that circle or even its outskirts, where I hang out, but even she now knows the name Herb Greenberg.

Even the "hoity toity" of Twitter will occasionally respond to the "hoi polloi." Greenberg is not among the "hoity toity," he's a big advocate of engaging the masses and does so on a very regular basis.

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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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Judgment: Flawed or Impaired?

As I get older, I often find myself questioning very basic beliefs more and more.

I do, however, understand concepts such as why humans must have a mechanism to register pain.

For example, while it seems meaningless to have a kidney stone associated with pain, perhaps the utility of the pain is to send a message that you have to change some lifestyle choices.

That assumes, however, that human beings have the desire to practice preventive medicine or that they even have the ability to learn from past experiences.

Our judgment is often flawed, even in the presence of compelling data. I know and am constantly being told by Sugar Momma that I need to drink more, yet I continue a camel's existence, coffee notwithstanding.

That kidney stone example may be stretching it a bit, just as it needlessly stretches that ureter, but more concretely, it's probably a good idea to sense pain if you put your hand inadvertently on a hot stove burner. You really want to have some feedback mechanism that would give you the incentive to remove your hand before it became completely roasted.

Delicious, yet destroyed.

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What a Week

I love extrapolations and projections, so based on this past week, I'm getting ready for a great 2012.

Even though this was a holiday shortened trading week, I definitely got my fill of thrills.

I'm not exactly certain how I should categorize the kidney stone that helped to welcome in the New Year. I guess that not all thrills are positive ones, but at the very least it didn't cause me to miss anything other than some pain free stretches of time. It also seemed odd sitting in my usual perch on the La-Z-Boy without being able to extend the leg rests.

At that point, it's just a chair, so what's the point of a La-Z-Boy?

The unexpected probing was also an unwanted thrill, but this time the prober did not at all look like Woody Allen and had no sense of humor about him.

Slam, bam, than you man and that was it. No dinner, no drinks and certainly no conversation.

What I found somewhat unusual was not paying in cash to have my asets handled so unemotionally.

Sort of like the relationship with your stockbroker.

I suppose that the kidney stone is something that I'd prefer not to extrapolate. The thought of giving birth to a 7 pound bundle of crystal by years' end isn't as appealing as it may sound.

But how could you not love a week when inserted between every verbal comma was mention of the Hungarian currency, the Forint? With all of the discussion of how trivial the Greek economy is in the big picture, imagine where Hungary sits.

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Does it Pay to be Mean?

Probably from even before the time that ancient cave dwellers were able to make wall drawings people have been asking the question.

"Why does it seem that the evil among us thrive?"

The corollary, "Why do bad things happen to good people" is frequently asked and was the topic of a very popular book in the early 1980's.

That particular book may in fact be the last one that I've read, but I'm not certain if there's a connection.

Whatever version you take or don't take your Ten Commandments, it's clear that good behavior has to be spelled out as do the choices that should be made.

Don't kill.

Oh. Don't. Don't kill. My bad.

I'm not a particularly deep or profound thinker although I took many more than my fair share of philosophy and theology classes in college. In all likelihood I owe my inability to recall any discussions of good versus evil due to an everpresent fog.

Watching episodes of COPS week in and out over the past quarter century it's clear that the likelihood or high probability of reward is not what drives people to do evil things.

In those cases it's probably stupidity mixed in equal parts with alcohol that's responsible for the repeated journeys down the wrong path.

Sometimes it's profit motive.

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Not Feeling It

Maybe its the fact that we just came off a 300 point climb.

Maybe it's because its been nothing but rainy and dreary all day long, but despite what was looking like nearly a 100 point run up on Tuesday, I just wasn't feeling it and couldn't really get in the game today.

Maybe it was because Silver wasn't exhibiting its recent paroxysmal and alternating direction behavior.

More than likely, though, my lack of enthusiasm today was probably strongly related to the fact that my portfolio under-performed the market all through the day.

That was thanks to Amazon, Netflix and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which, wouldn't you know it, led the portfolios to out-perform the markets on Monday.

You can have Yin or you can have Yang, but not both, unless their conjoined twins, in which case they might be more appropriately referred to as "Siamese."

Whatever the root cause, I was antsy.

Not only was I not feeling it, but it may have been contagious.

The news that the parent of American Airlines was going into bankruptcy wasn't terribly interesting, either. The only thought that occured to me was that at its closing stock price, it would take about 25 shares of AMR to purchase an in-flight alcoholic beverage.

Even in boredom I amuse myself, but no such luck with AMR shareholders. I suppose they just weren't feeling it.

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Mile High Club

I’m no longer at a stage in my life that I fantasize about becoming a member of "The Mile High Club."

As I look around the bleary eyed passengers of a 6:15 AM flight to Phoenix, Sugar Momma’s present company excluded, no one really appears to be Mile High appropriate.

Part of that assessment may also be related to the fact that Sugar Momma is peering at the screen and another part may be related to the very cramped spaces in the airplane lavatory.

America is not a thin nation. Airplane lavatories that may have sufficed a generation or two ago just won't do it anymore.

Combine that with the fact, as I’ve previously made clear, that I don’t use public restrooms and you’ve got a non-starter kind of situation.

If I had the ability to read minds, my guess is that anyone on board thinking about entertaining in a Mile High fashion is equally disinterested in me, although to my credit, I don’t take up much space.

But that’s not the Mile High Club that I was hoping to be part of this morning.

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Now What?

Like most people who have a vested interest in life, I woke up this morning to the apparent good news that some kind of an agreement had been reached on the Greek crisis.

Most other natural laws were not being violated, according to the early morning news, but this was a real shock to the sytem of universal truths that we count on to make it from day to day. Otherwise, we'd all be stuck to the ceiling.

You'd be more inclined to believe that had Newton discovered the parachute before the Law of Gravity, things would be very different today for all of us.

Reportedly bond holders of Greek debt will take a 50% haircut. I still don't completely understand what that means, especially since I've always been a bit mystified by the world of bonds and currencies. (See: I Don't Understand Currencies)

Britain, which is putting up nothing in the bailout, simply called the EU's key players "morons", offered their advice and went back home. Much like Geithner did last month, except without the bangers and mash awaiting him at the airport.

That I understand.

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Do you Know Where Slovakia Is?

About 5 years ago Sugar Momma and I, together with our kids were travelling on a sleeper train from Venice to Budapest.

What seemed like every 20 minutes through the night, there was a loud knock on the door of our berth.

Border patrol guards.

The one nice thing that you could say about Marshall Tito, the now long dead ruler of Yugoslavia, is that while he was a live, there really wasn't need for all of these border guards that came into being after Yugoslavia got split up into its forced component pieces.

I'll always remember one specific guard who responded to Sugar Momma's dreary eyed question, "Where are we?", with the answer, "Slovakia. You're in Slovakia. Have you ever heard of Slovakia?'.

He didn't look pleased when she told him that she'd never heard of his country. He then said something in Slovak to his compatriot.

Then he laughed and returned our passports. At least he didn't point his rifle in our faces.

My wife and I returned to our sleeping car room and she said, "You know, that soldier boy was sort of cute".

Now before you start getting on my back, I know that Slovakia was never part of Yugoslavia, but for purposes of the above illustration, let's just assume that it was.

Fast forward those same 5 years and all of a sudden Slovakia is as big a deal as Malta had been last week.

On Tuesday, all the remained for the Euro rescue to go forward was final approval from the Slovakian Parliament of the plan to expand the Euro Rescue Fund.

Whereas the likes of Malta and others didn't take the opportunity to flex its muscles, Slovakia jumped at the chance, befitting its role as home to Zdena Nazarejova, winner of numerous Women's European Bodybuilding and Fitness Championships.

Only in a world defined by the oddities routinely found in the "Twilight Zone" would you have seen a Reuters headline that read "Latin American stocks little changed before Slovak vote".

As it turned out, today was a very eventful day.

For starters, after the market's close, word came out that the Slovakian Parliament failed to approve their nation's participation in the EU fund expansion. As the poorest of all the EU nations, they probably felt they had less to give and besides, they had already gone through years of fiscal resposnibility and austerity just to gain EU entrance.

So while we await formation of a new Slovakian government in the aftermath of this rebuke to its leadership, there was opportunity to see what else was going on in the world.

The fact that there seems to be significant movement on the release of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held for more than 5 years by Hamas was noteworthy.

Myanmar releasing 3000 political dissidents? Wow.

The arrest of an Iranian-American for conspiring to asasinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US and then bomb the Saudi and Israeli embassies? Get me the screenplay.

Ukraine sentencing its previous Prime Minister to 7 years of prison after having been found guilty of negotiating with Russia over natural gas prices? Same old. Same old.

Herb Greenberg making a triumphant appearance on Jim Cramer's MadMoney after a much too long absence.

Now that's newsworthy.

But with all of this going on, all the market was thinking about was the start of earning's season, as Alcoa was poised to announce after the closing bell.

It was so bizarre to have essentially no trading range through the day.

I did purchase shares of Alcoa on Monday and promptly sold calls. I don't usually buy shares right before earnings are announced, especially if there's already been a 20% run-up in price.

But given the fact that Alcoa had been serially projecting earnings downward, my thought was that we should have been prepared for bad news.

Which in fact came after the close.

Did I forget to mention that I also sold some Alcoa weekly puts right before the close?

In the after hours, Alcoa slid to $9.79 after having closed at $10.30.

I also purchased some more shares of Mosaic, using some of the options premium proceeds from the past couple of days.

By the time I logged the purchase into the Portfolio Holdings and Recent Transactions page of the site, Mosaic had jumped up about $2, apparently over some buyout rumors.

I like capital gains as much as the next guy, but I hope the rumors aren't true. Mosaic has been one of my most reliable stocks in terms of generating great options premiums. At first it was month after month and now, life is even better as its week after week.

I look at Mosaic as my annuity plan. I'd hate to see it disappear from my screen.

But for me, the big news continued to be Greenberg's return to Mad Money.

At one time as an addicted viewer to Mad Money, my favorite segment was the East vs. West, when Cramer would take on Greenberg via satellite from San Diego. They would discuss their differing opinions on the merits of stocks in the news.

Probably by coincidence, Greenberg's audio feed would always seem to get abruptly cut off, giving him the next to last word. The look on his face upon realizing that he was silenced was priceless.

What are you going to do?

But what really made this event so special was that my Sugar Momma gave me a special dispensation to watch Cramer's Mad Money in our family room.

Cramer had been banned many years ago, because she complained that he gave her a headache.

Sigh. The things you'll give up for love.

But this time she allowed it.

She came back downstairs near the end of the segment and asked who the "other person" was.

"He's kinda cute. But is he always that hyper?"

After having seen the movie "Contagion" a few weeks ago, I would have thought she would have realized that this was more a case of environment exerting its predominance

For some reason her question reminded me again of the Slovak border guard incident, but at least Greenberg was neither there to hear the comments, and as far as I know, he doesn't carry a rifle.

But in the event that he does, I won't comment about what appeared to be matching shirts.

Muted Plum, I think.

That's a color that never would have existed in Tito's Yugoslavia or in any of the former Soviet satellites, but it's an entirely new world.

To welcome in that world, I'm going to see if I can get away with catching tomorrow's Mad Money episode.

If I get a rifle pointed to my face, I'll know that my Parliamentary body has chosen to flex her muscles.

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

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