It's All About Appearances

As time goes on I've come to realize that what I once thought was my absolute grasp on the secrets of the Universe were just a prelude to the growing realization that I understand nothing.

Nothing at all.

What I'm also realizing is that during that period of your life when you are on the path of professional ascendancy or at least hoping to be on that path it's not about substance at all.

It's always about appearances. The appearance of substance is priceless.

Which essentially means that the world is divided into just two camps.

Those that are truly capable and those that aren't, but may look good as they feign their way through the system and up the ladder.

For purposes of maintaining a dichotomy, I conveniently overlook those that are in no way capable, nor ever perceived as being capable.

I suppose that there could also be those that had been fully capable but got thrown to the curb as societ and technology passed them by.

Reserch in Motion seems to fall into that last category.

Just a few short days ago, after ridiculing the Research in Motion CEO's performance on the evening of the earnings report that missed analyst's estimates of $0.80 by 7/10's of a cent, the shares recovered from their immediate plunge and actually closed the quarter, which happened to be the very next day, up $1.

It doesn't matter whether you're dealing with a $14 stock or a $600 holding, but a 7% move is a big deal, just as apparently a 0.875% miss in earnings estimates turns out to be and then doesn't

I don't own shares of RIMM, but I have to wonder how in the second day of the new quarter it could be back down to a point that it's now trading 5% below its weekly low, which was already pretty low.

Did anything change?

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I Need a Case of the Blews

After the first week of trading in 2012, I was pretty ecstatic.

I don't really recall the details anymore, but I was way ahead of the S&P for those first few trading days, but had I just matched the overall market's performance I would have been happy, as the year was getting off to a good start.for everyone other than the Godless short sellers.

As the prayerful believers intone during the Passover Seder, "Daienu" - it would have been sufficient, as God is thanked for each successive miracle that he bought to a fleeing people in the desert. One such miracle would have been enough, but two? Three?

There's nothing like a series of miracles to chase a bad case of the blues.

For what it was worth, I was also hearing the fruits of my laborious efforts on air at CNBC as the crew of "Street Signs" was continually referring to their new word of the year, "Eurosis," which coincidentally enough I had submitted in response to their request for viewer submissions.

It was going to be a very good year. Miraculously so? Probably not, but as Szelhamos would say "Good enough."

Money and ego. How can you go wrong with that combination? The former feeds the latter and then if you can independently build the latter as well, all is good, as long as the ego doesn't give you a false sense of invincibility.

Then along came Ben Bernanke.

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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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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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Everyone Needs an Escape Strategy

It's good to have strategies in most aspects of life.

Exit and escape strategies seem to be be especially important and have lots of attention paid to them.

Pre-nuptual agreements and Living Wills come to mind. I have only one of those two, because Sugar Momma wouldn't let me have both. My guess is that if I had pressed hard for the one that I don't have, there'd be no reason for the other.

She would have seen to it that there would be no lingering coma.

Being Monday, I had money in my pocket from stock assignments and as usual had an uncontrollable need to spend that money, just like a big kid in his own version of a candy store.

What made today a little different was that I had a minor procedure scheduled just a bit after noontime, so I felt a need to have that money escape my clutches in a very abbreviated period of time.

No problem with that.

My strategy was to spend money recklessly until the nearly 30% of my portfolio was redeployed.

I could have taken the easy way and escaped the responsibility of actually thinking and just bought some Berkshire Hathaway shares. But the big boy version doesn't have options trading associated with the shares, as if I was really able to pick up a multiple of 100 shares of those.

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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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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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Rumorville

As a relatively "unsocial" kind of guy, I've been very slow to adopt to social media. In fact, it was only at the advice, suggestion and arm twisting by my kids to use social media as a tool to sell books and get people to read this blog, did I reluctantly agree that they may be right.

Ego is an amazing thing.

Over the past 25 years, the only other things that I was slow to adopt was the one time ubiquitous "PDA" and the "mullet."

Palm, Treo, Handspring. Whatever the names and models were, it's all a blur, I never went that way although I may someday go for the retro look as nostalgia is due for its next generational comeback.

I'll think about that after tonight's Hall and Oates concert.

Today was just another one of those laughable days in the rumor mills. Good thing, because it was an otherwise utterly boring day with no news coming out of the EU and with Herman Cain out of sight.

As trades go, I sold Caterpillar calls, bought some more ProShares UltraSilver ETF and subsequently sold calls and that was all.

Boring.

As much as I took delight in my accurate prediction about retail sales, when it was reported that they were disappointing (in advance of the revised results after Christmas which will indicate that they were better than expected), it was still a tiresome day.

The best rumor and the one that got the most attention was about Netflix.

I own Netflix and have for about a month or so. In that time I've sold lots of weekly calls. Sometimes I've had the shares assigned and other times not.

Sometimes I've bought the shares back and sometimes I haven't.

This week started with a reduced holding due to an assignment of a portion of my shares, but as luck would have it, the rumor mill started early.

And often.

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Dusting Off Old Habits

I have a very cloudy crystal ball.

The cloudiness is internal and is just reflective of my own degrading and poorly capable neural mechanisms. It just doesn't know how to deal with data and apply appropriate weightings to streaming information. It also seems to be incapable of consistently recognizing when patterns are likely to reverse.

My crystal ball is also in need of dusting as lots of extraneous factors get in the way of rationally approaching the prediction business. Some of those external factors may be personal baggage, while others just represent the irrational world as it attempts to interpret facts and rumors.

Anyway, my crystal ball is in constant need of dusting.

So I don't begin to believe that I know what's going to happen by even the next keystroke. I'm envious of all of those that regularly appear on TV and are able to forecast the future.

I'm especially envious of those that don't care about the eventual outcome of predictions and who don't believe in the concept of "report cards." You can either look at predictions as being purely of entertainment value or as a guide for how to live your life.

I don't see them in either of those ways.

In a perfectly ordered world simple mathematical principles should help to explain all events; past, present and future.

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