The End is Nigh, Hopefully

Facebook sucks. I grudgingly joined a few years ago. My cousins first post on my wall was “welcome to our online cult”. Tell me about it.

Read more

Trading the 3rd Dimension

Ken Calhoun has been pumping my inbox trying to sell me his ADX Mastery course for some time. He threw me a bone the other day, as most of the trading gurus do from time to time, in the form of a free webinar with Tim Bourquin of TraderInterviews.com.

Tim consolidated what he considered to be a kit of common traits that excellent traders possess, from the countless hours of interviews he has done. Most of them were the standard fluff batted around like gospel. But scattered among the 20 or so bullet points were three or four nuggets that I thought I'd share.

Read more

The Right Stuff

One of my all-time favorite books (and movies) is The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolf. It is a detailed portrait of the early cold war space race and the “fighter-jock” subculture that was embedded into the first manned space program.

Read more

Going Rogue

I'm not sure whether this is nefarious or not. Once in a while I find it cathartic to put on my tinfoil hat and head over to ZeroHedge to see what I should be outraged about this week. I gravitate toward stories concerning specific instances of market manipulation so this headline, Were You Affected By Today's ICE DXY Order Cancellation? Let Us Know, piqued my interest.

Read more

Deja-Vu

 5 minutes on the clock and down by double digits. The Prophet takes the field and 60,000 Hoosiers become eerily quiet. The crackle of astro-turf under foot is the only sound as he walks to his 15 yard line. He takes one knee in the center of what will be his last huddle of the game.

The Prophet slowly shifts his eyes from face to face, taking measure for any lack of faith in the miracle that he is about to perform.

He bows his head and says these words, “Jesus take the wheel...READY, BREAK”.

Read more

Wild Things

When I was around 12 I was lucky enough to gain access to the issue of Penthouse containing the infamous Vanessa Williams sex pictures that got her booted as Miss U.S.A. I even remember who the centerfold was in that issue. Miss USA Beauty Pageant controversies have a special place in my heart.

Read more

Is Inflation a Lie?

SeekingAlpha.com recently had a very interesting article titled The Unsustainable Lie of Inflation. Paco Ahlgren writes compellingly about propaganda in the context of inflation. The “Big Lie” is that national economic policy promotes inflation with the motive of seducing consumers to believe that their possessions are worth more.

Read more

iS the AAPL Rotten?

I've had a bee in my bonnet about Apple for about ten years. Yes it may be sour grapes at not buying at $10, $20, $40 or even $80. Yes it maybe my nature to rebel against the current "IN" thing. Possibly I'm simply suffering from iEnvy. Yes I've thought about joining the club a few times but I always worried that I just wouldn't respect myself in the morning

Read more

The Emperor's Naked You Fool

Shh! Don't say it! Don't even think of it! I know you want to say the "C" word. Others are saying it. I've seen people on Twitter posting it. It's just a word right, it doesn't MEAN anything.

Now due to a case of writers block yesterday this is late to press but the "C" word was being tossed around like a pint of J.D. at after-prom just yesterday. All that is over now because the GDP number today puts the nail in the coffin of the Great Recession.

Humans are a really screwed up bunch. Yesterday THE SKY WAS FALLING, today LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL.

Read more

The Waiting Game

There's an old military expression - "hurry up and wait". Whether pulling KP (doing dishes) or embarking on a live-fire exercise there is a sense of urgency that accompanies the mission at the outset followed by an excruciating period of waiting. All the grunts sit around while their superiors hash out what exactly the mission is going to entail, and how best to keep anyone from getting killed. It usually takes hours.

Read more