Thanks, but Joining the Darkside

Effective April 13, 2012, pages maintained only for historical reference and do not reflect current opinions nor events.

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To all my past blog readers, you know that it's always been about the money, so now I'm off to the Darkside, where money talks, and everyone else? Well, you know what they can do. But in the meantime, thank you so much for giving me a piece of your day. It has always been very gratifying for me, and thanks to the modern miracle of website analytics, I know where all of you live and get your dry cleaning done.

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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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Price Points

I really don't know anything about "Price Points."

I'm certain that there's a fairly well established discipline that melds economic theory with behavioral science to explain at what point people will be spurred into action.

Call it cost/benefit. Call it risk/reward. Whatever.

I'm not much of a consumer, but I do occasionally get feelings that have to be requited.

Oh, and I buy things, too, sometimes. That desire tends to be inelastic, as opposed to the diminishing elasticity related to the other desires.

I'm not really certain that I've ever been intrigued to buy an item from a retailer just because it dropped its price, other than that DiGiorno Pizza and chicken combo that was on sale a few weeks ago, yet wasn't last week.

Last week, I chose not to buy it, as I made a decision, on some level that's not entirely clear to me, that the cholseterol hit wasn't worth the retail price du jour.

Or is it Di Gior?

Actually, it wasn't the sale price that got me to buy it initially. In fact, prior to that day, I'd never tried one of their products. It just happened that on the day in question the product was prominently displayed and the price seemed reasonable. I never had any idea what the usual price was.

Best of all, both the pizza and chicken actually tasted good. Despite the fact that I'm very far removed from my Bronx roots, I really enjoy good pizza and accept both the short term consequence of heart burn and the longer term consequence of death.

There must be some kind of price point buried in there somewhere, especially when it comes to those longer term considerations.

What I discovered today, though, was that there was a clear price point for my "Option to Profit" book.

Until about 12 AM PST today, you can get it for free to read on your Kindle.

Amazon must know what they're doing, because in just the first 8 hours, more people have demonstrated that their price point is "free," at least when it comes to what I'm offering.

That seems odd, not because there's any great value to what I'm offering, but because at the very same time, for some inexplicable reason, people are signing up to get this blog delivered to their Kindle. They're willing to pay a monthly fee for what they can read for free, or more than likely, choose not to read at all.

This shouldn't come as a complete surprise, since a couple of months ago, the book became enriolled in Kindle's lending library program, where Amazon Prime members could download the book for free.

Free.

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As if Yesterday Never Happened

This is precisely why I need to get out of the house more often. Either that or do something to diminish my ability to understand, comprehend and discern the babbled word.

Or maybe just learn how to work the "Mute Button," but I've never been very good with technology.

Oh, and add recall to that list. Sometimes being able to remember details is a bad thing.

The past few days Microsoft has been on a roll, above and beyond the market.

You remember Microsoft. You know, the company that was everyone's whipping boy. Although, to be fair, it is enirely possible that I've misinterpreted the expression "dead money" and the snarky tones and sneers may have always been completely unrelated to the stock.

Back when I was younger, it was incredible how popular you could suddenly become if you had a Spalding rubber ball, when one was desperately needed for a stickball game.

If you dont know what stickball is (or was), think basketball instead.

Suddenly, Microsoft is everyone's favorite stock and no one is owning up to their past.

Instead of "dead money" it's "undervalued." All of a sudden Talking Heads are taking note of its dividend, the very same dividend that has long been decried as insufficient and not enough to make purchase of shares appealing.

The jokes.

Zune, Bing, WIndows cell phone, Vista, Clippy, Ballmer, Skype. It just goes on.

No one wants to admit that the own, want or need a Microsoft product. You never hear anyone sing "Oh baby you, you got what I need'" when it comes to Microsoft. People are ashamed and embarrassed.

It's like admitting you crave veal or sauteed infants.

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Commitment or Death

We've always been lead to believe that commitment was a good thing. It often is cited as the only real thing that distinguishes us from animals, although that's clearly an exaggeration, as most animals are incapable of ever winning two games of checkers in succession.

Curse that capuchin, especially for not agreeing to best out of five.

We all marvel when hearing of a couple's impending 50th wedding anniversary. What a wonderful show of commitment.

In fact, as well all know the commitment is "until death to us part." Commit or die. Commit and die. It's all the same.

Using the new Google "Translate" module made for this blog, you can now understand that when I say "marvel," I really mean "shudder." and when I say "wonderful," what's really meant is "terribly sad and confining."

"Shudder" of course, is just further code for" violently puke."

Obviously, Sugar Momma has better things to do than read my drivel.

For many, the end to commitment came when the unwritten social contracts providing lifelong employer-employee relationships in Japan came to an end. If the employer-employee relationship in a land that the overwhelming majority of us will never visit, nor know is no longer sacrosanct, what else could be left for the rest of us?

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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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Party Like its 1999

I don't remember much about 1999.

Not that I was in a drug filled haze, or anything like that. If anything, that would have been many years earlier and I still remembered all of those times.

What I do remember is that we spent the most pathetic New Year's Eve ever welcoming in 2000 at our neighbor's house.

I can make those statements because they have since moved to Florida and I don't believe that they were literate.

For starters, just about everyone at the party was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers shirt. Mind you , we were in a part of Maryland that was not at all close to the Monongehela River. Most of the men and some of the women, I think they were women, were watching ESPN Classic Pittsburgh Steelers games from the past.

Happy New Year to you, too.

Anyway, the only music playing all night was the ubiquitous song by Prince, at a time when he was known as something else. It amazes me that an entire world had been waiting 17 years for that song to be relevant. But then again, these were the people watching an equally old football game that had at least as much relevance.

What I do remember about 1999 is that I sat on the sidelines when it came to my investments.

If you were a reader of the first incarnation of the Szelhamos Rules blog, you'll know that I had a wonderful broker, Bob Shapiro. If you read the Option to Profit book you'll also know that he passed away very unexpectedly.

Back when Bob was managing my account, I still followed the markets daily, even though he had full discretionary trading rights. I never micro-managed.

But on the sidelines I saw the wild amounts of money being made by people who weren't me. It didn't really matter that my own portfolio was performing well, because it wasn't performing dot com well.

The stories of excess were legendary. The money was coming in and was going out even faster. Unfortunately, the money that was coming in wasn't really from sales.

Long story short, I was spared the roller coaster rides of that era. I don't have any sock puppet momentos inthe closet, nor reams of class action papers as a reminder of the wild times. Bob stayed on a much more sedate path. Sure we had ups and downs, but I never puked on the way down.

And so yesterday the big news came. No, not the news that Goldman Sachs was served with a subpoena by the Manhattan District Attorney. We all knew that was coming.I've got nothing left to puke on that one.

It was the other news that we all knew was coming.

A couple of weeks after the LinkedIn IPO came the much awaited word that Groupon was going to go public.

Within minutes also came word that Pandora, the music service with the artificial intelligence algorithm was also coming public. Since both are Morgan Stanley offerings, you'd think that maybe they would have timed the announcements to let Pandora have at least a little glory that Groupon was gobbling up.

Now, for full disclosure, my son works for Groupon's biggest competitor, LivingSocial. He is responsible of overseeing the huge hiring spree that LivingSocial is currently engaged in. At least, that's what a proud father would like to believe. In fact, a silver lining in ADP's employment numbers was that LivingSocial accounted for 1/3% of all new hires in May. Not bad for a pretty small company.

A pretty small company that keeps company with Steve Case and Jeff Bezos.

Anyway, you remember Groupon. They spurned Google's $6 Billion offer.

You remember Google, don't you? They're starting a Groupon like sevice tomorrow, Google Offers, in San Diego. Interesting, just a couple of days after they announced Google Wallet. 

Have you seen Groupon's CEO?

'Nuff said. I'll let you scour YouTube for some clips, but yesterday's statement that the money losing Groupon would not measure its performance in the usual fashion, should be sending a bad message. But if you don't want to go the high tech route and search YouTube, just dust off your Funk and Waganalls and look for the illustration for the words "arrogant" and "obnoxious".

Remember, I'm biased, but I'm being objective on this one.

The fact that Groupon employs 400 full time staff writers should send another message. How much effort does it take to write the same tripe for every tooth whitening offer in the country?

But there was unbridled enthusiasm yesterday as the announcement came across the news wire at about 3 PM. LinkedIn was the teaser, Groupon just a tasting, with everyone waiting for the 800 pound gorilla.

Facebook, with a current valuation of about $50-80 Billion.

And if this really is 1999 redux, there'll be lots of drek coming along too, vying for your investment dollars.

What really makes me believe that we're already nearing a top in social media is that my son, who made his first stock investment about two weeks ago, had already read Groupon's S-1 filing and he was critiquing it for me, analyzing their dividend payments and compensation packages.

WTF?

Since I have an aversion to speculation, I won't jump in, even if given the chance.

Which I won't be.

On the positive side, I'm hopeful that my son's LivingSocial stake will get the benefit of a wildly bid up valuation on the heels of Groupon and others.

In the meantime, I see a different outcome, at least for LivingSocial.

Granted the Google alliance with AOL didn't turn out as planned, that alliance was with a Time Warner- AOL and not with a Steve Case led AOL.

Microsoft already has a small piece of the consumer market and no doubt that Google wants to keep Microsoft from gobbling up a big player in the daily coupon business.

After all, wasn't that why they picked up a stake in AOL in the first place?

So I see Google, Steve Case and Amazon coming together on this one and blowing Groupon out of the water.

The difference between 1999 and 2011 is that all of this froth is based on people to people businesses. No real technology, per se, just a better way to get the non-proprietary tangibles that we all need.

Food, recreation and 50% discounted bikini waxes.

Why didn't they think of that in 1999 and spare a generation that pain?