Handcuffed, but not in a Good Way

I neither understand bonds, nor bondage.

Maybe it's just the fact that I'm not really wired to think in terms of inverse relationships.

Or any relationships for that matter. 

Although, maybe if I understood bondage better Sugar Momma would change her opinion about my understanding of relationships.

I do better with correlation. For example, I do understand that over the past couple of months, whenever Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has spoken, it was a clear opportunity to make money by buying gold or silver before he spoke. Today was no different.

Direct correlation.

In the case of bonds (and currencies) I get confused thinking about whether I would want values going up or down. Just way too much thought seems to be necessary. Besides, I still have that belief that bonds are for the feeble and infirm and need to be held for a long time.

I have the attention span of a gnat and maybe the life expectancy, as well, so I really don't want to be overly involved with anything that's going to require me learning its name.

It used to be that if you held onto something for a long time, that was a good sign. You held onto winners and cut your losers.

Although I don't understand inverses, I do just the reverse.

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Weekend Update

If I do say so myself, the nice thing about my blog is that you really don't have to read it very often, because I'm constantly repeating myself. Imagine being married to me. Suddenly the unlimited supply of amusing stories and anecdotes reaches a limit, as long as your memory or hearing is intact

Best of all, this still being a free society, you don't have to read it at all, as long as you continue to pay the monthly subscription fee to have it delivered to your Kindle.

Imagine, just $0.99 a month to have it electronically delivered to your e-Book reader.

I think Amazon should adopt the old Telephone directory strategy for having an unlisted number and charge $2.50 a month to not get the blog delivered to your Kindle.

But if you have been reading on a regular basis you'd know that I've been bemoaning the fact that so far in 2012, I've been trailing the S&P 500.

Ever since I've been doing this dogmatic approach to covered call writing I'm not accustomed to seeing myself behind the eight ball.

The real kiss of death probably came when Barrons Magazine called the covered call strategy the only winning one for 2011.

It's exactly the same as when TIME magazine puts something hot on the cover.

It fades and fizzles.

Or like when Sugar Momma finally got herself an iPod Mini.

The day that she gives up her Kindle and exchanges it for an iPad is the day I start shorting Apple shares with every last bit of my soul and portfolio.

But finally, this week was back to normal, though not in trading activity. I still made relatively few trades this week. Having made such few trades, some dumb ones, in hindsight, really stand out.

Like grabbing a few pennies by selling calls on all of my Research in Motion holdings on Thursday, the day before shares inexplicably go up 7%.

I say inexplicably, because the purported reason was first given that there was some sort of Samsung alliance rumor, which was then followed by the contention that the fact that RIMM didn't offer a "profit warning" report had to be a very positive sign.

I don't know very much about SEC rules, and by that I mean that I don't know anything, but are they required to give profit warnings?

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I'm mit Mitt

I'm mit Mitt.

No, not politically, but I just like the sound of the not quite palindromic expression that uses the comedic flavor of the Germanic language family to play off of an unlikely name of a Presidential candidate.

"I'm mit Mitt."

Now that's funny and has tested off the charts with the Bavarian demographic in the Little Naziland neighborhood, that sits uncharted, just outside of Boise.

But unless CNN was being sarcastic, we are doomed as a culture, hearing them describe Mitt Romney as the "stand-up comedian" within the group of this years' Republican Presidential hopefuls. Whereas we're all used to seeing Anderson Cooper giggling like a middle school aged girl, you rarely see Candy Crowley lose it and give away the joke.

So we'll never know whether they were serious about Romney's comedic skills and talents.

I'm going to vote for "sarcastic" as the tone of that  description of Romney. He's had lots of time over the past couple of decades to establish the "lighter side of Mitt." I don't think anyone can blame the left leaning media for shielding the American public from that view of Romney, the man.

What is it with Massachusetts politicians that have national political aspirations? Why can't they return to the days when a Massachusetts bred President could casually bed a teenage intern and still be lovable, funny and charming?

All while steering the world through a showdown with Armageddon

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Back to Life

Fiction is great. Real life? Not as much

In the world of fiction, re-animation is real. Anything can come back to life, even things that never had a spark of life before.

How many years and through how many on-screen versions have we celebrated the life of Frankenstein, perhaps the most well known of the re-animated beings.

He's dead, he's alive, he's dead again. And so on.

In some versions he was never alive to begin with, then he's alive and evil and then becomes charming and sophisticated.

See? Fiction. Try it.

Vampires, talking broom sticks, dancing teacups and even mummies. You name it and they can breathe life into it or in the case of the gentle giant in "The Green Mile." summon some kind of energy to reverse death.

Fiction is easy.

Sometimes the re-animation is endearing, like the vision of Nat King Cole doing a duet with his daughter.

There are times when the re-animation is totally unnecessary, like the appearance of the late, not so great actress Dixie Carter continuing to appear in the Public Service Ad for Spasmodic Torticolis, two years after her death.

Creepy, but understandable, since there's probably not another D-List celebrity willing to front for that cause, worthy as it may be.

At other times the re-animation is the result of morbid curiousity, such as when sales of music skyrocket after a stars' unexpected, yet fully anticipated death.

The "death bounce" in sales is well established and is matched by the sudden appearance of an unending supply of lost studio tapes and recordings.

Even the most explored band in the history of manking, The Beatles, had lost recordings become unlost.

Death will do that. But without death you can't have re-animation.

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Anticipation

There was a time when a singer named "Carly Simon" was very popular.

She rarely performed in concert because she reportedly wasn't comfortable in the limelight.

Although she was very attractive, you couldn't help but notice that she could fit a microphone into her mouth sideways. And to top it off, she must have been happy, because she was always flashing that incredibly wide smile, that may have actually been larger than most New York City studio apartments.

Her song, "You're so Vain," is still discussed by aging baby boomers who continue to wonder whether the song was about Bob Dylan, Warren  Beatty or anyone else who may have been alive at the time.

These sort of things matter.

She was also part of the 70's rock royalty, since she was married to James Taylor, the king of soft and non-threatening pop during that time period. He was the kind of singer that even your parents could like.

"You've Got a Friend," was everybody's faorite song for the 5 years or so that it seemed to be getting perpetual airplay.

I saw Carly SImon in concert, only because she and James Taylor were surprise participants in a Jackson Brown show a long time ago in Providence, a city so small, that I was able to find on street parking right near the venue.

Obviously, those sort of things matter, too.

She could probably avoid the glare of the concert hall, as she was part of the SImon-Schuster empire, sold lots of records and otherwise, had it all.

Not only did she have it all, but she was everywhere. Strange for someone who shunned the limelight. Her song "Anticipation" was the theme for an iconic TV commercial of a child waiting for the ketchup to come out of the Heinz bottle.

I don't recall if the kid was patient or impatient, but I'm suffering through a great period of impatience.

Three days worth.

Peope anticipate all sorts of things. Many have strategies to deal with the anticipated event once it arrives, but few have strategies to deal with the situation if it doesn't

You can include me in that latter group.

In general, I like to be prepared for all possibilities. And like everyone else in that generation, I wasn't prepared for the Carly Simon and James Taylor divorce, nor the news of James Taylor's deep depression, but most of us moved on.

But now I've been caught totally unprepared these past few days.

As opposed to Heinz ketchup, which took about 35 years to deal with the "problem" of slow moving ketchup, I don't think I have that kind of time left.

That's true for a number of reasons, predominantly the fact that I don't have that kind of time left.

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Hello, My Name is Bernanke

The CNBC morning show, Squawk on the Street, has a daily Tweet prompt asking viewers for their opinion on a wide range of topics.

Most of the time it's an attempt to inject a little bit of humor into the news of the day.

Today's thought surrounded yet another appearance by Ben Bernanke, this time in front of an august collection of elected officials far more genteel than those Philestine Congressman.

Senators. They're the higher and more refined form of elected official. They are usually less likely to be involved in petty scandals or felonies. They very often have better hair than their counterparts, as well.

What if you were Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, what parting words would you like to leave with the Senate committee that you were appearing in front of today?

You just know that he can't always have the highest regard for the questions coming his way and probably even less regard for the lengthy and rambling preambles to each question.

I'm sure there's a cottage industry somewhere that has Cambodian laborers painting thought bubbles over Bernanke's image as some clever humorist then finds the words to make the photo chuckle provoking.

Since I have lots of time on my hands, especially given the boring nature of the markets for the first two days of this week, I responded to the prompt, as I do a couple of times each week and ultimately had my Tweet glow in its 3 seconds of fame.

I guess they won't accept two "winners" on the same day, because I sent a second one while listening to the testimony, questioning and answering:

"Hello, my name is Bernanke. How do you thank me?" I think was actually better than the "winning" submission.

I think that most everything in life can have a parallel drawn to something Johnny Cash sang.

Maybe they just have something against homages to Johnny Cash, who has also inspired my investing philosophy.

Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe the drugs, not likely the adultery, but there's certainly an anti-Cash agenda.

Bernanke himself seems to have an anti-cash agenda, at least as it comes to personal savings.

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