S&P Index At Inflection Point – WTF Does That Mean
The chart below is from JP Morgans Guide To The Market and it says that the S&P500 is at an inflection point – this obviously means something to someone but I for the life of me cannot work out what. The current upswing as defined by the trend line that has been drawn could have been…
The League of Extraordinary Assholes
WHO AMONG US has not felt the affront? Macadamia nuts arrive in a bag, not on a dish, and something shrivels in the soul. Are we animals? Did we execute the challenging task of being born insanely wealthy only to eat in-flight snacks from a bag? We did not. And that is why, when Korean…
Champion Cyclist Who Never Grows Old
It’s two days after Ned Overend’s 60th birthday, his back hurts, and he’s staring into the weeds at Suicide Six—billed as one of the oldest ski areas in the East—puzzling out how to avoid a broken hip. He pushes his gray carbon cyclocross bike up a 30-degree slope, noting ruts, loose dirt, a toad, and…
Well At Least He Was Honest
But I’m not primarily interested in the main story. Instead, I’m struck by a line of testimony offered at trial by then-Bear CEO Jimmy Cayne that does not even show up in subsequent court opinions, despite extensive recitals of the facts of the case. The generally “cocksure” Cayne apparently thought that his firm could be in…
Courage
I have often written that courage is an underrated commodity in trading. In fact it is rarely mentioned. Most of the time the psychological toughness required to trade is ignored by people in the trading education business. It is spoken about by actual traders but those on the sell side of the business rarely if ever…
When You Should Worry About Failure
We all fail, all the time. We might miss a call with a client because of an emergency work meeting, or miss that meeting because another project has suddenly become urgent. And then we (or our families) get sick, and we have to shift priorities around again. These unsystematic failures are benign, though. They reflect…
The Delusions Of Others
Last year (been waiting a few days to say that) I wrote about the lies we tell ourselves in order to successfully navigate our lives. Unfortunately, the propensity we have towards delusion means that we are also subject to the delusions of others. My guess is that this is part of the the in-built crowd…
A Real-Life Trader Talks About “The Big Short”
What surprised you the most in the movie’s portrayal of the impending financial collapse? It was surprising to me that some people, portrayed by Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale and others, actually got to the bottom of some of those mortgage products—figuring out that they were being fundamentally mispriced—when so many others didn’t. We had…
Absolutely Clueless
Occasionally you come across someone who is so clueless about probability as to leave you dumbfounded.
Lies, Damned Lies And Ouselves
We all lie to ourselves – it is part of the human condition. Sometimes the lies are a simple mechanism design to protect our ego’s. Sometimes they are to create a more palatable or interesting narrative about our lives ala Walter Mitty. Occasionally they are designed to protect our psyche during turbulent moments when we…
