I am still here but I have been busy with work and trying out some new things in regards to the market. A couple of quick takes for perusal.
No One Asked Me Facebook Full disclosure: I do not have a position in the company (not a GS client) and I do not have an account. My wife has one (bejeweled blitz is an issue) and so does my pug (don't ask!).
With that out of the way here are the main Facebook users such that I can figure from real life interviews: - 20% People with kids that post endless pictures that only they and their immediate family will care about plus a few weirdos - 50% Men (married, single, on parole) that are looking for long lost loves, former flings, and just some action. Plus they are scanning all the pictures and doing who knows what - 20% Women (married, single, on parole) doing the same as above - 5% Normal people with accounts addicted to the games offered - 4% Advertisers looking for data - 1% Other
Indeed, amazing stuff! It is like, well, the Internet only somewhat smaller. Look, I get it. It's hot, it's smoking. Great. In 5 years all the ads will be kiddie stuff and porn. Where is the money coming from? This thing costs close to zero to run (like Google) but it is also easily replicated and may suffer first in class fatigue. Didn't everyone have a My-Space at one point?
50 Billion net worth? Why not 100 Billion? Why not make it like Apple Inc? People getting in touch with people is a novel idea after all. Otherwise you could go out and talk to people or meet up with folks. Maybe you could even meet new people in a social setting without your entire ISP and address showing up! This thing is built to last! Sorry for the snark.
What You Talking About Willis!?? When things get nuts they tend to proceed toward absolute entropy it seems. All I will submit is a Business Insider headline: The Truth Comes Out: Paul Volcker Was Forced Out, Because The White House Is Going More "Pro Business" Not sure how more "Pro-Business" this government can get and by that it means PRO-BANKING and we all know it and accept it like meek wounded in the basement in "The Road" waiting to be eaten but whatever. Indeud.
Any more Banker, I mean Business friendly, and they will uproot all the trees around DC to make an army of Orcs and Uruk-hai to battle us for credit card fees and minimum balance transgressions. Geez.
Have a good night. And a sword by your side may come in handy!
I got home a bit late tonight so no time to post. Just a quick laugh I saw today.
Housing Is Saved by Free Trade! One of my ideas for 2011 was for a new home buyer tax give away to entice people to buy a losing asset. Maybe I was wrong. It seems the housing market will indeed be saved and start an upward trend and here is the best reason why (via Business Insider):
Don't Bet on Lower Housing Prices in 2011 Despite the deteriorating trend, don’t bet on housing prices to fall this year. The Case-Shiller Index has a two-month lag and the most recent report is for the month of October. Since that time, we’ve had a power-shifting midterm election, an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, an arms treaty with Russia, and a possible trade agreement with South Korea. While there is good reason to assume that housing prices could fall further, there are also encouraging signs that prices might strengthen instead because of a growing economy.
OMFG!
I am going to ask anyone thinking about buying a home if a possible free trade agreement with South Korea will be their tipping point for buying a home pronto. Classic stuff.
Usually a Monday after a long break is a tough day but it actually went by pretty fast. Maybe tomorrow reality will strike! Maybe it was this story that made me smile: Ex-Treasury chief Paulson loses $1 mln on DC home poor guy!
Think Christmas, Part 2 I had a long thoughtful post about what I was thinking about looking at 2011 in an economic sense. Kid Dynamite of course beats me to the punch with a post today:
Well, for now, the (S&P) trend is higher. I wrote a post 13 months ago about momentum vs. mean reversion, and I am going to try again, even harder in 2011, to follow my own advice on that front. Don't fight the Fed, don't fight the tape, don't try to call the top. They say that stocks take the stairs up and the elevator down - watch out when that cable breaks. I do believe that the backdrop for a rough correction is still in place, since I don't think we solved the problems that caused our crisis in the first place, but I'm not short at the moment.
Read the whole thing.
I don't feel like I missed out on a "generational" move in the markets from 2009-end of 2010 like Barry Ritholtz likes to say. I have not missed any of the gold and silver bull since 2002 and played those metals quite a few times for plenty of gains well over my target return rate of 10% a year over time. What I have come to accept is that nothing I do or say will ever have any effect on what should happen. Not one iota. A few voices in a whirlwind of noise are impossible to hear, especially when nobody wants to hear what you have to say.
Are markets hot? Sure. Trillions in government spending, endless now implicit removal of all risk via taxpayers, endless transfer payments, and a fixed interest rate environment will have that effect. So what if this is all wrong, solves nothing, and sets things up to fail even more spectacularly later? Who cares! And nobody does.
Of course I will still rail against all the garbage out there, but at this point the level of acceptance for the fixing of "free" markets is structural. This will have an severe impact later, but who cares. Too late now anyway.
With that all said, what kinds of trades will I be looking for? How do I make trading ideas? It's easy, I steal from movies!
In the 1985 film "Santa Claus: The Movie" the core of the story is an elf leaves Santa and goes to a big city to make a splash. He is taken advantage of by a corporate type guy and after the initial success of their venture on Christmas, the corporate guy (played by John Lithgow) has ideas for a follow up, a literal sequel to Christmas, CHRISTMAS TWO!!!! (skip to 1:18 mark):
And there you have it. We even get a date from the film, March 25th for the big move! This is almost too easy.
Ideas for Setups Homebuilders This sector is ridiculous and screwed for the next decade. So what? Somewhere around March (March 25th?) after the Case-Shiller data gets much worse we are going to get another monster home buyer credit. You may say that the Republicans controlling the house will stop this and I think you are a very funny person that would be fun at parties. With massive inventory of already made homes at lower prices, surely the homebuilders will not get much of the action, and that is true. That also ignores the fact that as soon as "homebuyer tax credit" flashes across a Bloomberg screen robot traders will push these stocks up big time. Of course even Tim Knight has seen constructive charts on this already. No hurry here, but by mid January I would want to be positioned.
Gold and Silver As market support becomes a long term structural part of markets, so must liquidity by the wheel barrel full. I see plenty of gabbing about how QE 2.0 will be the last of it, but that's just a silly rumor. Remember, everyone laughed when plenty of folks (myself included) tried to warn about the coming of QE 2.0 and then in the space of like 3 days it became all "QE 2.0 is a done deal". No kidding.
So, free money should add some lift to the metals but I have to say I am dying for a killer scary shake out to jettison a bunch of the momentum guys and weak hands here. One can go paper metals or get nasty with some junior miners for serious leverage to upside. Nobody I read knows more about miners than Dave of The Golden Truth blog. Of course waiting for any pull back in any sector these days smells like vomit in the backseat of the car in 110 degree weather but you never know.
Miscellaneous Over my vacation I played around with the iBankCoin tool, The PPT. I have to be honest, the thing is a serious tool and will take some time to figure out. I am very interested to see what I can pull up using the screen functions and how this will fit my own way of looking for setups. I have no idea what kinds of things will come up so I cannot say what sectors may be involved. I will try very hard to never, ever buy financials though!
So there you have it. That's what I am up to. Plenty of smart folks stop by here, so drop me an idea so I can rip you off and use it myself, or we can discuss it. As always nothing here is advice and should not be thought of as such. I am going to use a subset of my trading capital to make some moves mostly because I just want to. I don't need to, but I do enjoy thinking about and setting up positions. Let's have some fun this year, that is one of my New Year Resolutions after all!
The NFL regular season comes to a close! Here come the playoffs!
The New England Patriots had about as shocking a season as possible. I am amazed how well they are playing especially the young defense which has become better as the season went on. Things are shaping up and here are the match ups next week: AFC NY Jets at Indianapolis Colts (Saturday night 8;00pm) Baltimore Ravens at Kansas City Chiefs (1:00pm Sunday) I will have a more complete run down of these games near weeks end, but I like the Colts and Ravens in these games.
NFC New Orleans Saints at St. Louis Rams/Seattle Seahawks (4:00pm Saturday) Green Bay Packers at Philadelphia Eagles (4:00pm Sunday) We already know the Saints will murder the NFC West Champions whoever it is, they have already blown both teams out this season. The Packers beat the Eagles way back in week 1 and I think I will favor them in this game as well. More coverage later in the week.
Best Friends No worries this will not become an all animal cuteness blog like Kid Dynamite's doggie centered site! Still, I wanted to share the evolution of the pug dog Norman and the new kitten Jessie's growing friendship.
I will be getting back to posting this week. I have a few things I want to try out trading wise and will share my ideas. For some excellent longer term buy and holds, check out the charts over at Chessnwine tonight as they are very attractive. Most of my new work will be using my smaller short term oriented part of my trading capital.
Anyways, here are the two kids a few nights ago on the couch, very stand offish: Not bad, but still not really that comfortable.
Here is a nice picture from last night where you can see the love: Friends already!
I really am more of a cat person and little Jessie is a real lift up. I am also feeling very appreciative to the dog for being so well behaved. He has had plenty of extra treats to help things along and if you know Pugs this is both a mistake and will require diet food to counteract!
I hope everyone had a great holiday week. I basically took the whole week off from doing much of anything and it was very nice. Slowing things down can be fun too. I wanted to share a few recent items as well as a few words.
First off, the big snowstorm that came early last week turned out to not be too bad here. Maybe 8 inches of snow, but it snowed for like 18 hours so it seemed like more. Luckily it was the super light stuff, easy to move. Here is the House after the storm looking very pretty all wintered up: Don't bug me about the house color, it is atrocious and will be repainted next year I think.
For Christmas dinner I made a 7 pound Prime Rib on the Big Steel Keg. I had never cooked in the cold air before (it was about 20 degrees) and thus I had some temperature control issues as the cold air was like jet fuel for the lump charcoal! I had wanted to cook the roast for about 4-4.5 hours at 300 degrees, but it was more like 3 hours at 350-375! The meal tasted wonderful, but there was only medium done meat, no medium rare to rare was achieved. What can you do. Here is the roast before: And after it was done: Still looks great at least!
The last news item refers to the new addition to the family! A little kitten was adopted from our local Humane Society! Long time readers may know that I love cats very much. When my last cat died a while back I was seriously hurt and it had taken a LONG time to even think about another cat. After about 6 months of trips to the Humane Society (who do a great job!) I found a new companion, her name is Jessie and she is a torti mix who is as sweet as it gets: Of course all tortoise coat cats have a wild streak and she set out right after the Christmas Tree ornaments as fair game: Little monster!
Our Pug dog Norman was upset for the first couple of days with a new competitor, but he has settled in well now. It is fun to have a cat again.
I know I am supposed to say something memorable or uplifting going into the New Year. I guess I am going to come up short. 2010 was at times great, terrible, successful, a mess, fun, and sad. I would imagine most can say that about any year. All I know is I am committed to getting myself rolling in 2011 and that means some real work on my trading. I kept a bunch of models of various things I had wanted to work on and they would have done really well (what didn't in 2010?) but I was just not into it. In 2011, I want some money! I am looking forward to writing more as well. Who wants Friday Night Blogging back?
Most of all a fresh start is always the promise of New Years, and that is a good promise indeed. I wish everyone a wonderful 2011 and I would hope the promise of a fresh start will help you as well.
I wanted to extend a Merry Christmas to everyone today. For me the only thing bigger than Christmas is some one's birthday, but Christmas is my favorite holiday by far. It is almost enough to make me like winter just a little.
Our tradition here is to open all the presents between the wife and I on Christmas Eve after a Chinese food dinner and so it is again this year. We will have company on Christmas day and I have a nice 7 pound Prime Rib Roast going on the Big Steel Keg tomorrow. I will try and grab a few pictures.
I wanted to say thanks to all the great readers, visitors, and friends that stop by and make this site so much fun. Readers like Watchtower are one in a million and Gawains always can surprise you with his literary talents. I do plan on getting back into things in the New Years so we can all try and make a few bucks.
It was a classic day here in Massachusetts. Banner even, the kind of day that removes any doubt that this state has more idiots than any other two states put together (excluding Washington DC of course).
What happened? How about a quarter inch of snow that's what! While long time residents of the Bay State know snow, there must be a 95% population turnover here year in and year out because everyone goes all mega donkey stupid at the first hint of frozen water falling from the sky as a punishment from the weather gods.
I had a 3.5 hour commute home to move 29 miles! How's that for efficiency?
My only question for my beloved home state is this: Why are you all so stupid? It's a simple question though the answers promise to be complicated.
Heard of Gaussian Distribution? I love that science fact when viewed through the prism of asking people questions. Ask 100 people if they are dumb, average intelligence, or very smart and 9 out of 10 will say they are very smart. Of course we know that is not the case, but whatever.
Anyways, one work day to go. I am hoping for no weather related issues tomorrow.
