Is that All it Takes?

The day started with a nice surprise for me.

Still upset about the bad luck I'd had when my computer froze during the final minutes of FrIday's trading session, I was prepared to start the week with most of my Freeport McMoRan shares assigned from me after just having sold those calls earlier in the day on Friday.

Compound that with only a net $8 profit from the big mega-Millions drawing and you've got some blood pressure raising seething going on that can be internalized for only so long.

Sometimes, though, the system is neither perfect in its execution nor in its pricing.

For example, sometimes really stupid people win really big lottery prizes.

They can be safely assessed as having been stupid on the basis of blowing through tens of millions of dollars and more in just a few years and being left with nothing but memories of days of grandeur.

That reportedly happens fairly often, so there may be an inverse corrrelation between jackpot winners and IQ. I still don't understand all of the testimonials of past jackpot winners who claim that their lives became worse in so many untold ways after their good fortune.

Seven out of ten people that I polled on that issue agreed that it was a sign of stupidity at its greatest height.

Sometimes the system gets it wrong too, as shares are expected to be assigned if they closed more than a penny above their strike price.

But the surprise, the yawn of a system taking a break, was right there, staring at me this morning.

I felt as if I'd gotten a gift when only the smaller lot of my Freeport shares was assigned, leaving a bit more than 75% of the shares still safely stored in my portfolio.

Not quite a Mega-Millions jackpot, but I gladly accepted it.

Of course had those shares not taken a well deserved climb well higher this morning, I'd be muttering about the inequity of the system letting me down and would be raging against those 1% fat cats that comprise the 1% of the 1%.

Instead, move over and make room for me and my boys, Mac and Moran.

Click to read more ...

Weekend Update

I had a hard time getting myself out of a deep blue funk in order to write this week's "Weekend Update."

No, not because of a gut wrenching week in the market, the week treated me just fine.

For you see, it turned out, as I awoke this morning, that I had not won the $640 Million Mega-Millons Grand Prize.

Forget the fact that I won a $2 voucher at the time of my ticket purchase and chose to cash it in rather than re-invest and forget the fact that I won another $7 by virtue of having 3 of the numbers,

Believe it or not, it was the $640 million that I'd set my sights on.

Sure, the $8 net return on the $1 investment was good, but still a far cry from real triumph.

But, not to let a good thing go to waste, I may pick up a few hundred million shares of Sino-Forest.

This past week, I actually started looking for the coming week's potential plays on Thursday and was hoping certain depressed prices would hold, because I was anxious to re-play some previous positions.

One of those was selling puts in Focus Media again, a distant relative to Sino Forest, although at some point we're likely to find out that the distance was never really terribly great.

Unfortunately, it only offers monthly options. Too much can happen between now and the three weeks until expiration. Equally unfortunately, it's one of those Chinese companies, so you never can really tell what's going on. But that is what helps to explain very enticing premiums.

If you dare.

Click to read more ...

WWGD?

As we enter into Day 2 of the Greg Smith inspired crisis, once again, for those who have faith it's often very helpful to look at one of the many bracelet reminders on their wrists.

WWGD?

It's no surprise that should be a natural topic title, as I've already covered various crises from the perspectives of Johnny Cash and Moses, always asking the same question, which in this case is, "What would Goldman Do?"

In general, it's my belief that if you follow the basic behavioral principles established by either Cash or Moses, you'd be on pretty good footing, as long as you were able to maintain your faith and keep your cool in the face of mounting stress.

Oh, and stay off that cocaine. It's a nasty drug. Not everything that Cash did may be right for your situation. Consult with a pharmacologist before initiating any new strategies.

On Tuesday, in the last hour of trading shares of Goldman Sachs soared about $7 as results of the Federal Reserve's "Stress Test" were released.

Released? Well, sort of.

Actually, it was Jamie Dimon, CEO of America's bank, JP Morgan Chase, heir to the Morgans and Rockefellers, who jumped the gun by two days and as result speculation flowed regarding every other major bank's stress test standing. They were all bid up quickly in the absence of corroborating data in a perfect example of investors exercsing their "FOMO."

My guess is that Jamie Dimon, though perhaps well regarded, isn't terribly well liked within the administrative circles of the Federal Reserve. There's probably some residual disagreement over who helped who when it came to the "rescue" of Bear Stearns. Dimon certainly has used JP Morgan's role in that transaction to his public relations credit, if not also to his bottom line credits.

I know that people pay lots of money for the opportunity to have lunch with Warren Buffet, but I think I'd rather donate the money to charity for the opportunity to spend a day doing a pub crawl with Ben Bernanke and finding out how he really feels about certain things.

I'd start by asking about Ron Paul and Jamie Dimon.

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Experience is Meaningless

Everyone knows that "history repeats itself."

That must explain why we keep making the same mistakes. After all, since we all know that you can't change history, why even bother?

Unless you're Newt Gingrich. In that case revisionism seems to work, as long as he remains the victor and in charge of re-writing history.

For example, Newt's current position, which seemed to make hostess candy Crowley's eyebrows rise about 5 inches, is that his congressional reprimand for ethics violations occured only because he convinced Republican members to vote for the reprimand so that they could get back to the business of working on a balanced budget.

He credits himself with getting the Congress back to work and selflessly sacrificing his reputation.

After all, is there any politician that wouldn't put nation before self?

History tells us that the victor writes history until the next victor comes along.

Once you call yourself an "historian," you get a free pass and can alter immutable laws of time and place and make the details of the past fit nicely into the current version of the past. Again, being ascendant helps.

But we're also said to be able to learn from history and especially to learn from our mistakes. In fact, "fool me once...." speaks to the expectation that we won't make the same mistake a second time.

Sometimes, though, the past may lead us down the wrong path.

My guess is that it would be a grave mistake, perhaps literally, were Newt Gingrich to ask Callista to accept an "open marriage." The fact that she reportedly supported the concept before their marriage probably has little predictive capability in 2012.

There's no greater indicator of our pre-occupation with the concept of changing the past and our mistakes than the fact that the single most aired movie on broadcast television and cable is "Groundhog Day."

I may have made that statistic up, but right now, I'm the one re-writing history.

Had we really been able to learn from the past there would have been Stephen Tobolowsky film festivals competing with Sundance and Cannes.

So clearly, we are all idiots, but at least Tobolowsky is front and center on Twitter and forms the basis for a more hopeful view of the future.

Not so long ago, only the spoken word was available to document our history and experiences. Life spans were short and there were people whose sole reason for existence was to maintain a culture's hold onto its past and pass it on to the next generation.

During those days mistakes were often fatal. That's a strong motivator to not repeat some dead guy's mis-step.

Click to read more ...

We are All Sinners

I have no business giving advice to anyone or making predictions. My track record is pretty abysmal.

I'm also a sinner.

Years ago, when running for the Presidency, Jimmy Carter, the Governor of Georgia, a gentleman peanut farmer, Naval Academy graduate and nuclear engineer (there's a combination you don't hear often) showed the good judgment to submit to a Playboy interview.

Probably the most memorable part of the article, beside the full frontal view of the future president in a man thong, was his admission that he had  lusted in his heart and "commited adultery in my heart many times."

If you're unaware, the adultery thing is big. Big enough to have made it into the Top Ten Sins list.

Just imagine that if coveting your neighbor's wife made the list, just how badly adultery must trump coveting.

To this day, no other Presidential wannabe has submitted to a Playboy interview, not even Bill Clinton, of "boxers versus briefs" fame and other things..

The point of this is that in 10 presidential election cycles, I've only correctly picked the ultimate winner just 3 times. So you really don't want to follow my path.

I'm completely agnostic as to political party when it comes to national elections and have always voted along a "who has the best chance of losing?" platform.

I've even been known to vote for a third party candicate if it meant preserving my voting record.

Click to read more ...

I Hate Homework

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.

Click to read more ...

The Spilled Milk Bounce

I grew up in a household where in my early years English was decidedly a second language.

Even as my parents quickly became fluent in speaking and reading the language of their adopted country, one thing that they didn't adopt was the use of classically American idiomatic expressions.

Although I'm certain that most such expressions have their counterparts in other cultures, our household, at the very least was idiomatically deprived. Adages were never tossed about as part of casual converstaion, nor were parables frequently used to teach life lessons.

Well, other than the obvious "Never let a Cossack into your home while your daughters are there alone."

In fact, while I did quite well on the SAT exams, I'm certain that what kept me from having an asterisk next to my name was the fact that deciphering the meanings of such expressions as part of a multiple choice exam was somehing beyond my naturalized ability.

The exam was just culturally biased against me and probably even against those that did the actual marauding, raping and pillaging. Those poor Cossacks never stood a chance.

Over the years, though, I've learned some of the very basics, although I don't seek to apply them under any circumstances, except maybe to illustrate a point, almost like what an idiom tries to do.

Silver Lining? Got it, every cloud has one.

Don't s**t where you sleep? Got that one too. Damn good advice.

But last week I was following a path opposite that advised by another popular expression: "Don't cry over spilled milk."

I suppose that in the affluence of America that certainly holds true, but how could you even think to say that in parts of Bangladhesh? Or how can you even remotely suggest that to someone who's let stock profits disappear into someone else's pockets?

For them, it's the end of the world as they know it.

But I get it. It's done. It's over. Move on. Sunk costs, etc.

But there I was last week moaning the losses of some favorite stocks as they closed above the strike prices at which I sold their call contracts.

One, which I only passingly mentioned over the past few days was Halliburton.

Halliburton, like my other favorites is such, because it predictably spins off a nice options premium. Unfortunately, it's not one of my triple threat stocks because it has only a pathetic dividend.

Click to read more ...

I Want to Testify

There comes a time in all of our lives when we've behaved in one of those really annoying Holier than Thou" kind of ways.

People who do so on a regular basis, and I include myself in that category, come in various shapes, sizes and flavors. The world of faith, that of politics and certainly the world of finance have all seen their fair share of characters espousing the kinds of attitudes that have most people praying for someone to be taken down a notch or two.

Jerry Fallwell, John Edwards and Bernie Madoff come to mind very quickly.

There are so many more of the one time high flying, but then fallen angels, than I could possibly ever fit into the pages of this blog.

But in America our fallen stars can recover and become rehabilitated so quickly. Probably no  nation in the world practices the concept of foregiveness as well as we do in America.

Either that, or our collective short term memory has taken a really big hit from way too many ganja hits over the years. 

How else do you explain the phenomenon of Newt Gingrich?

Along with the late Henry Hyde (R - Illinois), no two were more vocal and critical of Bill Clinton when his literal and figurative peccaddillloes came to light.

Hyde trumped them all by having a 'baby momma" hidden from the public's views for all those years, although Gingrich wasn't far behind.

Gandhi was reported to have said "I like your Christ, but I do not like your Christians."

Of course, these days, that quote would be artisitically toyed with a bit by the likes of Jon Stewart to something like "I like Christ, but Christians? Eh, not so much."

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...