Random Stuff for Fun

It was a tough day at work and I ran out of gas big time after lunch. Still not feeling all that well, but getting better. Only 4 weeks to go until I will be in Antigua for a week getting warm and tan. So soon.

Good Position Day
Had a pretty good day in the markets with some of the positions I took last week:
YGE

TAN

RPM

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day!

The Robots are Still Marching
I have not had a robot story up for a bit, but here is your regular warning about humans being taken over very soon.

A robotic bird?

THE HORROR! This thing is creepy!

We have talked about the Uncanny Valley here before. Here it is in chart form:

All I know is that as I watched the video I wanted to shoot that abomination out of the sky with a huge shotgun.

Small Crowd
From Geekologie, the countries that do not use the metric system:

Wow, I actually had no idea it was that bad.

Taxes Suck
The accountant called today and told me where we stand tax wise. Seems between raises at work for the wife and I, and the killing I made on the SLV trade last year, we have moved up to the next tax bracket! Well that's just aces really. Wunderful. Anyways, it put me in a mind of a film from way back, Kidco.

I wrote this last year about this time, but it still fits:
Paying taxes on money I made when it is done using after tax money I already paid on reminds me of a scene from an obscure film "Kidco". The set up is the owner of the all kid fertilizer business is taken to court on a charge of not paying sales tax on his product, which is horse manure. The lead kid represents himself and calls as a witness the man that sells hay and oats to his father to feed the horses that make the manure he uses as fertilizer. The exchange goes like this, but it is from memory so I may be off:

Kid: Mr. Jones, does my dad buy all his feed from your store?
Mr. Jones: Yup.
Kid: Does my Dad pay you sales tax on said items?
Mr. Jones: Yup.
Prosecutor: Your honor, the question is not whether the defendants father paid sales tax....(interrupted)
Kid: Good. Good. Your honor, you see all Kidco sells is manure, which used to be hay and oats! Don't you see!? We are getting taxed at both ends!!!
Court erupts with laughter.

A funny film if you can find a copy.

All There Is?
I still cannot believe the only copy of Craig T. Nelson's speech in the film "All the Right Moves" is this cruddy quality one. Must be copyright issues. Ugh.

Have a good night.

Want to Double Your Money? Fold it in Half!

I am feeling a bit better today, but that is not saying much. I probably should have taken today off from work, but I thought it would be better to be up and about. Great idea.

In the Money?
Tonight in the Massachusetts Lotto game Mega Millions, the jackpot is around $315 Million dollars! When lotto jackpots get over $100 Million I always buy 20 quick picks just in case. When I win I will handle it very calmly.

I plan on blowing about a million in Vegas, handing out millions to my close friends (there are not many) and with the rest I would try and get either Josh Brown or chessNwine to manage for me. It's all planned out. Wish me luck.

JP Morgan and Silver - The Story Never Ends
I do not want to get all into this issue, either you believe JPM has silver games going or you don't. I do. For some interesting commentary I would point you to today's post over at The Golden Truth:
The COMEX goes "Extend and Pretend" on JP Morgan's Paper Silver Short
Whatever you think about the JPM/silver connection the move to allow JPM fast track access to silver storage (by the CME) cannot be dismissed as nothing.

Market Operations
I was ill most of the week, but I did open some positions:
-On Tuesday ,after something my wife said
put an idea in my head, I went long SHW (Sherman Williams) and RPM (RPM International). I also bought TAN (solar ETF) but that was a rip off of chessNwine.
-On Thursday as I waited for my doctor's appointment I went long YGE (a solar company) again ripping off sir Chess, and KCG (Knight Capital) which was a chart I liked before and I wonder if all the volatility and trading volume might just make it's way to their next earnings report.

As always, not investment advice. Just telling you what I am up to.

Friday Night Entertainment
Some non-financial related items for a change of pace.

Old but Weird
Somehow I do not think this was the original title for Mary Wollstonecraft's book "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman":

see more Historic LOL

Now I want to bowling after seeing this vintage ad:

see more Very Demotivational
Sometimes I get this feeling that the 1950's were more fun than people think.

Fishing Flu
I may be sick, but it is that time of year to get ready for fishing season! Time to buy a license and do that most sacred of all outdoors man ceremonies; cleaning your gear and buying new stuff!

It may be a bit before I can get out there, all the snow has raised the Merrimack River to dangerous levels for a Kayak and the cold meltwater may delay the fish waking up. Here are a few posts that show EonomicDisconnect out on the water. There is even a post with a real picture of me! I still am able to remain anonymous/mysterious/afraid to show my face:
Quabbin Reservoir 1
The Mighty Merrimack
The Kayak Rigged for War
Quabbin Reservoir 2
Can't wait to get back out there.

Film Clips
Well sort of.

I just got the new Star Wars book "Deceived" by Paul Kemp via Amazon. This novel covers the origins of the upcoming game "Star Wars: The Old Republic". If you have not seen the game trailer, well you should remedy that:

SICK! Better, clearer version here. Second trailer here.

One of my favorite scenes of all time: Uther Pendragon (Gabriel Byrne) embeds the mythical sword Excalibur into the stone (skip to 1:50 mark on):

That rocks I don't care who you are.

Rock Blogging
Low on energy, low on concentration, but EconomicDisconnect always delivers on Friday night.

The last time I had "Green River" by Creedence on, I also featured a DNA based puzzle in this post. Check out the puzzle and see if you would like more, and of course check out this tune:

Love that tune.

The yearly appearence of "Libera Me":

So nice.

Ok, for all you "Princess Bride" maniacs out there (I am one of many, 'My name is legion for we are many') here is "My Love is Like a Storybook Story" by Willy Deville:

Mega points for who can source the quote above.

Still going strong, Bon Jovi with "Who Says You Can't Go Home":


Two left and that's it.

Please enjoy Anthrax with "Black Lodge":

HA, you had no idea they could play that kind of tune!

Last call!

Closing up shop with Depeche Mode and "Wrong" with a great live show:

See I can stay off the heavy metal at times!

Have a good night.

Overloaded

Just one of those days with too much going on. Quick hits.

Overloaded
My wife had a second interview for the kind of job she has been wanting for a long time. It went very well and I am so hopeful she gets this position. I know it's goofy, but if anyone wants to throw a little hope for my wife's prospects for the job this way, I would welcome them. It is a perfect fit and a real leg up.

It was super busy at real work today, so that added to it all.

Where to start?

Earnings Lotto
I held AMRC for earnings lotto today for two reasons. One, it is a very small position. Two, I wanted to play! I can say it was wild waiting for the wires to show the numbers then see market reaction. Well, both sucked. How a company has interest rate issues in a ZIRP world (anyone explain that one??) I have no idea but that thing gapped down 12% plus at the open. I had no stops set so I was like "well, it's not 20%!" and stopped looking at it. By days end, AMRC was down a whopping 4% and I am down 6% on the position. What a ride. I will hold for a dead cat bounce but I am done with AMRC. I missed this call (strange pattern I had seen that would either be very good or very bad) so I made a lotto bet. I lost. It happens.

Stellar Solars
I exited my two solar stock positions before lunch today:
JASO +9.2%
YGE +7.3%
These two were large positions and I am not playing earnings lotto with things in size. Thanks go to chessNwine for the scalped picks, nice call!

I am still holding COCO and PRSP, both up around 3.5% and watching.

What Else?
Did you all see that the Stardust program caught amazing pictures of another comet? So wild.

Ok, I am done.

Have a good night.

Quotable Wednesday

I am running way late tonight so just a few items I found today.

In Communist China, Data Not Needed to be Seen by You
I wrote the other night about China changing their basket of weightings for the CPI as food prices are making it run too hot. I read around and saw that many felt lowering the food component made sense, as China is a maturing as a society and thus food becomes a lower part of the basket. I get the logic, but seems to me like this could have been done 3 years ago, or three years from now. Why right this very minute when prices are rolling higher? Exactly.

Not one to learn from my own mistakes, I saw today that China will now scrap a national housing price index that is closely watched because, well they did not say but I think you can guess. As a society matures they use less housing and all after or something. In any case, here is Trader Mark's take:

As the world leaders, other countries look up to us. We have taught them well... the Chinese are getting very inconvenienced by the data coming out of their property index reports. Now let's be honest, just about anything coming out of China has to be taken with a dump truck worth of salt, unless you are a CNBC commentator. Or HFT computer which must react to data in 1/4000th of a second. So in no way am I implying this report was very accurate.... even with the best of intentions trying to measure a country so vast, with such variances in development would be difficult. But it was watched by both the masses of people (who apparently were getting frustrated with what they saw) and outside observers, considering the genesis of the Chinese economy is "property building".

Solution to a report where you don't like the answers?

No more report. That will teach the statisticians to put out data the central command does not like.

Epic.

Limited Attention Spans
Monopoly Live gets a special treatment by Kid Dynamite today. The new game uses, what else, automated game runner so you don't have to be too involved in the game. Nice. Here is Dynamite letting it rip:

Oy vey – indeed – because American ingenuity, financial awareness and reinforcing capitalism would be terrible things to teach our children these days. (Sarcasm alert again!) Monopoly Live is indeed perfect for our times – press a button and watch as things are done for you. You don’t even need to strain yourself rolling the dice. What will the kids do when they Mighty Tower runs out of batteries or malfunctions? Complain about it on Facebook I guess…

-KD (Angry Old Man – all of 34 years old)

I have been saying this sort of thing for a long time.

Be the Burger, not the Bun
Over at iBankCoin, The Fly has the leading "quote of the year" candidate going in my book. Here he is:

The only logical thing to do, when faced with such egregious forms of “non-inflation,” is to milk the farmer, ahead of the planting season. Farmers will be spending money like rappers this spring. Count on that. Just going off the back of a napkin here, I reckon the shares of AGU, MOS, DE, CF, TEX, CAT, BG, MON, ANDE, LNN, VMI, just to name a few, are going a lot higher. Ya’ll fuckers need to recognize this shit right here and stop thinking you are outside the bun. You stupid motherfuckers: you are the bun and Bernanke is hungry for some burger. All of you are simply afterthoughts in the big scheme of things.

WINNER!

Market News
I played some names on Monday, here is where I sit:
JASO +8%
YGE +7%
COCO +3.7%
PRSP +4%
I am looking to unload JASO and YGE ahead of earnings lotto on Friday. COCO is doing just ok. PRSP looks like it may run a bit.

I have decided to play earnings lotto with AMRC tomorrow! Wish me luck, but you know these things tend to end badly.

Have a good night.

Just a Bunch of Stuff

Happy Valentine's Day! My cunning plan for surprise flowers and chocolates delivered to the wife's work was foiled due to heavy order traffic! It will be delivered tomorrow but it's not the same thing. Oh well.

ETF's - Save the Drama for Your Mama
Who knew ETF's can be so exciting? A couple of stories from today.

Kid Dynamite notes that the Egyptian fund, EGPT, is going to have some problems squaring the fund when Egypt's market re-open (whenever that is):
EGPT – The Problem With Cash Creations: An ETF Lesson Part IV
very interesting and thus you should be aware how any ETF you are buying is structured so you know the risks.

Last week news was out that the leveraged 3X bearish inverse types of funds were closing up because nothing goes down anymore anyway. That makes sense as the product has no value in this market of forever ascending channels. What is strange is the double long agricultural fund as that one has been on fire (via Zero Hedge):
Deutsche Bank Suspends New Issuance Of Double Long Agricultural ETF DAG
Anyone want to take a stab on why this is going on? I have a conspiracy idea that food commodity speculation is about to become the next "end the shorts against the banks" target! Call me crazy, try it!

Bubbles Are Everywhere and No Where
Maybe Alan Greenspan was right, a bubble can only be identified after it has burst. Before then people will bend themselves into intellectual knots justifying price and valuation. It never changes.

As a metal lover (long physical gold and silver) I am always amazed at the fury of screams that the metals are a bubble. The stock market is always correctly priced, but metals are off the reservation. Ok.

The Golden truth pens a nice missive on metal hysteria and compares it to a new era favorite, NFLX. Below is the graph comparing gold and NFLX since the summer of 2009. I suggest you click on over for the commentary:

NFLX: up 450%
Gold: up 40%
I know, soon everyone in China and India will be streaming 50 videos a day through Netflix and they will make a quadrillion dollars. When? Not now, and not in 5 years. NFLX and social media are the next bubble, IMO. I know it's different this time and all that. I think I will call it the Easy Service bubble or the Time Waster App bubble.

More metals? Click on over to Jesse's site for some great commentary on my beloved Silver:
James Turk On Silver, and A Possible Twist of My Own
I keep meaning to stake out some trades in silver, but then I already am carrying heavy in that area.

Market Operations
Last night I left my list or review stocks but I never updated it! I was running late and I was trying to narrow down some buys. I came across plenty of good chart set ups and I was really working them. I ended up going with 4 buys, and I do not like to have that many positions open at once. The mix is conducive to making easy decisions so I am ok with it. My buys from last night (click for larger view):


Look what Ben Bernanke has done! EconomicDisconnect is buying solar stocks for crying out loud! It's the end of the world for sure!

I recently switched my entire trading account over to TD Ameritrade and I love the service. My orders got filled in the early am (pre-market?) and so I was able to catch most of the run today in the two solar stocks! My old Bank of America/Merrill brokerage would have put me in at the high of the day no doubt.

The solar stocks were not my idea but the great work by chessNwine in the 12631. Chess is maybe the most sound and patient trader I have ever come across and I totally followed his play in this space. I am targeting a nice move up in both stocks, maybe even 10% or more. As always we shall see and no one should take anything written here as advice in any way.

New buy recap:
Solars
JASO
YGE

I found a couple of other quick hit type of trades on my screens and these two are either going to rip or fall flat so trading them will be easy:
COCO
PRSP

I am leaning towards holding my AMRC stock into earnings and playing lotto! It's only money (and a small position) so I think I will let it gap down 30%, I mean see what happens on Thursday.

I am Sure it is a China Only Thing
Make fun of Zero Hedge all you want but the site calls things better than most.

Two posts show how funny the world has become:
China Lowers Weighting Of Surging Food Prices In CPI
Not like the US CPI is from fantasy land, we call it like it is, hee hee. The Zero offered this:

As a result of this pre-emptive manipulative action, expect to see a CPI lower than the 5.4% consensus when the number prints later tonight.

Well, it is later tonight:
China CPI Comes At 4.9%, Below Consensus Of 5.4%, In Line With Zero Hedge "Pervasive Data Manipulation" Expectations
Wow. Inflation erased by the magic of decision. Love it.

Have a good night.