Weekend Update

It's really amazing that this past week marked the single worst one of 2012.

With now nearly 25% of the year having passed, we can look back and say that a 0.5% drop is the largest we have had. Hard to believe, given where we had come from.

Reminds me of the comment a neighbor made when we bought our new long haired miniature dachshund home for the first time.

"I have poops that are bigger than that thing."

That's what I imagine 2011 saying to 2012.

You call that volatility? I'll show you volatility.

The two big stories of the week were undoubtedly the debacles surrounding the IPO of the BATS Exchange and plunge in Credit Suisse's leveraged VIX product, TVIX.

In the case of the TVIX Exchange Traded Note, there is nothing but misunderstanding regarding pricing and the risk. The details regarding the general misperceptions around TVIX is really well adressed by Kid Dynamite, who is part of the StockTwits family of bloggers, that includes The Reformed Broker and James Altucher.

Not a bad bunch, despite the fact that Phil Pearlman, one of the founders of Stock Twits hasn't added me as a blogger.

Tell Phil.

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Stunning Reversals

I've never made any secret of the fact that I don't read very much.

My daily ritual of reading DIlbert and The New York Times Obituaries was recently complemented with James Altucher's blog. I actually thought long and hard about whether to refer to it as being in "complement" to or in "supplement" of my daily activities and realized that there really wasn't a word to convey both impacts.

I've linked to it a couple of times and bored readers of this blog have clicked on that link, which has also activated a small hidden webcam near their laptops, in addition to any resident webcams you they already have.

I like my fuzzy clandestine streaming to be in 3-D.

For those who read this blog on a regular basis it doesn't come as a surprise that I don't read much. In fact, there's really not a strong body of evidence that I even read my own blog, much less proof-read it.

And forget about reading for the sake of getting my information right.

When I was younger, I was horrified to find some ham in our refrigerator since it's not Kosher, as you may be aware.

My mother, in response to my pointing this out to her, said "if it tastes good, it's Kosher."

What a great philosophy.

I use that philosophy with my supportive facts. If I believe them to be true and accurate, then they're true and accurate.

A "Kosher pig" is an example of an "oxymoron" until some moron ruined it about a decade ago with the discovery of a species of pig in some god-foresaken rainforest that might just satisfy all of the criteria necessary to be considered Kosher.

I wrote about Oxymorons a few months ago, but with an emphasis on the "moron." The thought was rekindled a few days ago reading one of Altucher's blog entries.

He was asking whether there could really be anything such as an amicable divorce.

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Re-invention

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."

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Rational or Emotional?

It's so hard to balance the emotional side from the rational side in all aspects of life.

Although I often write and talk about setting aside human tendencies like fear, greed and envy when it comes to investing, it's so much easier to say than it is to practice.

Life itself is no different.

The other day I posted a comment on James Altucher's blog. If you haven't read the Altucher Confidential, you really should take a look. He writes in an entertaining way and addresses universal emotions and trials by recounting his own life experiences.

However, in response to the comment, I received a reply that was interesting, to say the least and was the impetus for today's theme.

My initial comment was in response to Altucher's recommendation to author wannabes to consider the route of self-publishing.

Once, self-publishing was only for the wealthy, those not minding to waste their money and the delusional.

These days, it's a reasonable way to put out a product. Success is limited only by marketing efforts and ingenuity.

Speaking of which, take a look at an 11 year old's contibution to the theatrical marketing efforts of Option to Profit. We're still open to suggestions as to who to cast as the protagonist in the film version.

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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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Point your Crosshairs to the Right

Warning.

I'm starting the week off with a rant of sort.

When I first got started with Twitter about 6 months ago, one of my earliest Tweets was about Sallie Mae.

I really don't remember what that Tweet was about, but I did get an eye opener in the process of trying to find just the right tone for my stock related Tweet.

Not really being familiar with the world of "hashtags" and not knowing that a stock was represented by the "$" sign, I searched for Sallie Mae Tweets.

I wanted to know how to do this Tweet thing properly, after all. I wanted to do my research, make certain that I had appropriate references and citations and be cogent and poignant within the contxt of 140 spaces.

Oh, and funny, too.

I certainly didn't want the Tweet to be frivolous or to waste anyone's precious time.

I was stunned to see the venom out there about one of my favorite stocks. There was nothing funny about Sallie Me in the eyes of people Tweeting about it.

To me, Sallie Mae was beautiful. I wasn't really prepared to learn just how ugly it was in the eyes of some many others.

I had owned shares, on and off, for about 3 years, always selling call options in the process.

During that time, I'd gone along for the ride from about $6 to $16. It wasn't straight line, but that's how I like things. So much better to make money raking in call options that way.

But people hated Sallie Mae. Not the stock, but the company.

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