A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

So I’m laying here in my sister’s guest bed in Morristown, not having the good sense god gave a horse to just sleep when tired. Naturally the news and conversation for the last 18 hours has been “all bailout all the time.”

And I don’t like it.

A big part of being a full-time trader is keeping an ear to the ground and an eye on Erin “Commie Cutie” Burnett, Melissa “Been Naughty and Knows It” Francis, Maria “It’s cute you think you can handle me” Bartiromo, and Julia “Death by Redhead” Boorstin the news.

And, in the 10 minutes I’ve spent coming up with those quoted aliases I’ve totally forgotten what the hell I was going to write about.

But it was something about the Paulson Plan, which I really fucking disdain.

Yes, the capital markets need the liquidity badly.

No, I don’t give a shit who started it right now (I will. but solving it is more important. Someone should tell pelosi.) The two election year monkeys can point at each other all they want, neither one was cause or had enough impact in the last two weeks to matter one whit; so I’d really appreciate it if they’d both shut the fuck up about the economy.

HOWEVER:

• I’m not paying to bail out someone’s fucked up lending practices
• It’s not my fucking problem if someone can’t read mortgage papers and understand they can’t afford the loan they’re being given.
• If this is an “investment” you people need to tell me what I’m getting, when it’s going to be PAID and how you’re going to determine how much before I get on board.

I refuse to be bullied by panic mongering going on in the media and on cap hill into agreeing with this crap.

Look, it may very well be that this is the One True Plan. But I doubt it.

For all the verbiage, I haven’t really heard anything more substantial than “Holy Shit! The commercial credit world is in shambles, you need to give me 700 billion dollars to go fix it. I’m not really sure how I’m going to spend it, how this is going to work, if it’s going to work, or if I’m going to need more. But trust me. I know, I know. I’ve been beating the ’the fundamentals are fine’ drum for almost a year. But no no really, there IS a wolf.” from Paulson.

Then of course, the Dems get the bill and they say ”well ok, but we want this to go through normal government contract approval channels (which I’m led to understand is a process that takes 6 to 9 MONTHS) and we want to deeply regulate all the financial institutions and their compensatory packages along with this.” You can almost hear them frothing at the mouth at the prospect of nationalizing the banking system.

You people keep telling me this is some kind of extreme fucking emergency. But ya know what? I’m not sure that’s true. I think what we have here just might be a deeply painful shakeout.
The more Ihear about public reaction to this, the more negative it seems to be. Now, maybe I’m just some fucking plebe who doesn’t know jack shit about the depths of the economic system (let me nip this in the bud: I’m pretty sure that’s exactly who I am.) But if you expect me to support it, you need to give me a good reason to do so; one that’s more than a veiled threat.

One of the bobbleheads today quoted a 30 to 1 figure of congressional contacts against to for this bailout by their constituents. 30 against to 1 for.

At some point what is important is that these elected officials do what they’re fucking told.

And today, by a margin too goddamn narrow for my liking, that’s what we got.

Paulson? Congress? Mr. President?

GO FIND ANOTHER WAY

Obama “Truthsquads”

See, if you keep calling it the truth people will start believing you.

“We want to keep this campaign focused on issues,” Joyce told me. “Missourians don’t want to be distracted by these divisive character attacks.”

The truth squad’s plan is to indentify false attacks and respond immediately with truthful information, Joyce and McCulloch say.

Truthful information like: Obama is a Christian who plans to cut taxes for anyone making under $250,000 a year.

(from: kmov)

Which is of course… a lie.

I could survive for 1 minute, 41 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

(h/t to Joan ;-)

I woke up this morning and was chuckling. I must’ve been dreaming something quite strange because the first words out of my mouth were, well…

more animals

I went to the bagel/sandwich place on court street next to McDonalds and got a “Roast Beef Supreme” or something like that.

Large hero with roast beef, onions, mushrooms, cheddar and gravy.

I ate 3/4 of this thing and sat on the couch. That was over an hour ago.

I’m still a little woozy.

I was walking around Brooklyn Heights last night and, needing a pick me up, saw Tropic Thunder.

It’s exactly what I needed and expected. While I think he really needs to disappear from, well, everything, Tom Cruise was hilarious. Robert Downey Jr. seemed to be having SO much fun pretending to pretend to be black that he forgot who he was (which was the joke.) I did as well. Mission accomplished. We could really have used an awful lot less Jack Black and Ben Stiller though.

I had this tendency to laugh at the jokes that were coming a fair bit as it was all pretty lowbrow. And, in true Wilsonian form, I was frequently the only one in the theater laughing.

But it was cute. Some real gem one-liners and subtlety nowhere to be found, definitely worth having seen.

Once.

Finally coming down off the high of this week I realize that I’ve been awake for 10 hours so far today.  I ate nothing yesterday except some potato chips and a bagel.

In the past two days I’ve drank about 5 liters of diet mountain dew, a red bull, and a chai tea protien shake thingie.

I’ve lost 9 pounds in the past 7 days (not that you could TELL.  But that’s a different issue.)

I think I really need something to eat, then a few hours of catch-up time.  Maybe I’ll put something in the bread machine so I can have something yummie when I get back up.

Yeah, sounds like a plan.

I should feel better about this than I do, I know.

So this week I’d been holding a substantial position in AIG.  I appreciate that sounds like utter lunacy to sane people, as it perhaps ought to have for me as well.

It started on Monday with the “AIG won’t be allowed to fail.  It’s tendrils are too wide and deep” thesis, which I hold to.  I scalped $0.25 on 2000 shares at about 3:45, dangerously close to the close, but then the equity price dropped below the initial buy point so I purchased a few thousand to hold overnight.

The idea at that point was that everything was in flux and SOME kind of plan would be announced, most likely overnight and the stock would react accordingly.

Well, nothing happened from Monday to Tuesday.  So I spent all day Tuesday white-knuckled, watching the equity price (having gotten home at 1:30 in the morning and talked to Stevie for something over two hours before bed at 4:30.  Go me!)

The thesis still held even though the need for a deal was merely being talked about fast and furious, so I put on another 2000 shares in the morning, then it fell like a stone.  I was down several thousand dollars and I set about trading it back.

I succeeded wildly, making about $7,000 by scalping nickle/dime and quarter moves on 2000 to 4000 share lot sizes all day.  By midday I was up a couple thousand dollars.  But the more I looked at it the more the overall thesis made sense, so I held the position.

After hours the deal is announced and I watch the extended-hours action white-knuckled, as the days gains largely evaporated.

Enter Wednesday morning and it took another hit, leaving me net down about $6,000.

Mostly on Wednesday and Thursday I just stared at the screen.  But it had clearly bottomed out.  The price was remaining fast at above $2 despite the market pressure, which can only be a good sign.

Then last night was all the foolishness announced creating the heroin hit for the market started sending things up in late action.

From 4:00 this morning I’d been watching the price of AIG raise.  I missed the biggest spike, but took 4000 shares off at $4.17; a move that seemed smarter and smarter over time.

Worn out I watched it plummet today back down to $2.50, and start to spike up.  Not having the faintest idea what was going to happen (though believing the long-term idea still held) I backed the rest of my position out at about $3.15.

It leaves me up about $9000 for the week; a price level it held for about 3 hours.

Until a few minutes ago, when it shot up to $4, which would’ve nearly doubled my gains.

But the attitude that would’ve been required to hold the equity to that spike would have also required the “wait and see” attitude that would’ve watched the subsequent slow downward slide that’s beginning.

So I took the money off the table in the face of uncertainty which, despite the equity performance since then was the right thing to do.

I don’t feel particularly successful about the move with a couple exceptions:

• Trading back from the first substantial loss on Tuesday was a wild success.  Not a perfect one, but scalping very quickly was working quite well.
• The original idea held true.  Of course it wasn’t MY idea, which is where a lot of nail-biting came from.  Not that I disagreed with it.  I wouldn’t have bet the farm on it if I thought it was a long-shot.  But I’m a day trader and anyone who knows me knows that having to sit and watch the ebb and flow of something for days instead of seconds to watch a long-term trading thesis to be borne out knows it would drive me quite batshit.  But it was right and I took their money off the table because of it.

But instead of a successful trade, this feels like a reprieve.  I’m not up more than I’d been down by about $1,000.

I’ve gotten my mulligan.  Now I just have to figure out what to do with it.

noun;  This motherfucker:

(h/t Joan)

This bailout of the entire stock market is a fucking travesty. The dow is up over 400 points before 25 minutes of trading has completed.

Yes, the bad debt needed to come off the books. But I have a hard time believing that having the taxpayers foot the bill for the missteps of congressional policy and years of indiscriminate, inappropriate lending is the right solution.

Then there’s the prevention of short selling on the banks for the next 3 weeks serves only the purpose of boosting the confidence artificially for the next three weeks.

If the momentum of this move doesn’t infuse the market as a whole with real, substantial confidence then on October 2, when this prevention of shorts on bank stocks expires, the world is going to fall off a fucking cliff.

This isn’t a cure for cancer.

It’s a heroin overdose.

Aye, it’s drivin’ me nuts, ARRRR!

Avast ye bilge rats, land lubbers and rumsoaked wannabe seafarers, it’s that day again?

“What day is it Mad William?”

Arrrr, It’s International Talk Like A Pirate Day.

So a hearty ahoy and avast to me maties Dirty Grace Flint, Venomous Kate, Haggis and the most lovely lovely Dirty Rose, captain of the Belladonna (who shall remain linkless pending permission to the contrary.)

I’ve been scalping AIG all day.

4 hours of sleep last night, per this

Looks like the AIG deal is solid.

I’m now going to go get 11 and a half hours of nighty-night sleepybye.

My target trade gross profit is $200. That’s a 2000 share lot size taking a dime off the table.

I just made a trade, took $0.15 per share on a 2k lot, grossing me at $300 to the good.

And it was a really shitty trade. I should’ve taken my dime and walked away.

While in the Manhattan the other day I picked up a couple CDs on a goof. Virgin was having their $10 sale (does that ever end?) and I was rummaging through the racks and boxes of schlock and dated music when I came across De La Soul Timeless: The Singles Collection.

Now, the only De La Soul I had was De La Soul Is Dead, which is one of the great albums of all time. So I figured wth; $10 is $10. I’m not so terribly likely to go backfill the entire De La Soul discography. Maybe, but… probably not.

I picked that up with Ice Cube’s new offering (which I’d given a sample listening and was on sale for $10.99)

For the last 4 days I’d forgotten about ‘em. I just saw the bag sittin on my couch and I started importing.

Plug Tunin’ came on as the import started.

He saw that it had been wrought with capital funkitude.

And it was good.

I always feel like I should do SOMEthing. But anything I come up with seems either too pretentious and whiny or insufficient.

At some point I’ll come up with a suitable way to mark the day, which I need to do somehow. In recent years, it’s simply been by posting something here as a hat tip to the past.

I’ll letcha know if I think of anything.

A couple posts from around the web from people that matter:

• Stevie
• Kim
• TUA over at SondraK’s
• Erica

Glenn Reynolds’ post stream from the day (start here and scroll up.)

Summed up best:

…is a day for mourning, for remembrance, and for cold calculated rage.

And my favorite reporting effort for the day was this from The Onion: Terrorists surprised to find themselves in hell

Record up day yesterday.

Record down day today.

Chinese food I guess.

o/

Haven’t posted a bread recipe in a dog’s age.  I made this last weekend when in Virginia and it was a rather impressive hit:

For the dough:

You’ll also need:

Topping:

You can go a few ways with this. What’s worked for me is the following:

As you can see, it’s actually a very simple bread. Because the focus of this is primarily on the topping and crust, you have some latitude in how much attention you want to pay to the bread proper. This is something I pull out as a crowd pleaser when I don’t have my kitchen, bowls, scales, measuring stuff and ingredients handy (my kitchen doesn’t exactly travel well.)

1. So as for technique you can really just combine everything, mix and knead, then set to rise for about an hour and a half. It should be close to doubled if not more.
2. Pan the dough into two well-oiled 8×8 “brownie pans.” I’m a big fan of pyrex for this. However, this past weekend I used a large piece of stoneware that was quite nice. Unfortunately I don’t quite know what the dimensions were. Let it rise in this form for a bit over an hour.
3. Preheat the oven to 375
4. Carefully dimple the dough with your fingers. You should push down a little more than half way with your finger tips. This isn’t the most precise of operations. At the end the dough should have a grid of dimples over the whole thing.
5. Pour 1/3 to 1/2 Cup of olive oil over the dough. What you’re looking for here is for an awful lot of it to slide down the sides into the bottom of the pan, with a bunch pooling in the little dimples you just added to the surface.
6. Add the Kosher/Sea Salt and the Rosemary. But do NOT top the loaves with cheese. That comes later.
7. Into the oven (at 375) for a half-hour.
8. Pull both loaves out and then sprinkle the top with cheese. I’m frequently surprised at how much cheese can actually be added without overpowering this, so don’t worry. (If you put the cheese on before they go in the oven then the cheese will burn before the bread is actually done and you’ll end up with an unavoidable mess. Different cheeses behave differently, but doing things this way is pretty safe.)
9. Put them back in the oven for the last 10-15 minutes. You’ll have to eyeball it. You’re looking for the toothpick test plus a couple minutes.
10. Take it out and let it cool a bit before cutting in to it. It’s not a baguette so I’m not going to suggest you wait until it’s completely cooled. But give it a minute.

The addition of the Olive Oil is quite nice as it essentially deep-fries the crust. This is why it’s important you don’t try to do this on a simple cookie sheet or (heaven forbid) a silpat.

It looks like a lot of steps, but there’s really not so much that can go wrong. It’s a nice crowd pleaser.

I’d also encourage experimentation with toppings.

Of course if you’re being persnickety you can doll up the process a bunch and you’ll no doubt get a great enhancement. So things like proofing the yeast and setting up a preferment so you can get a second or third rise out of it is strictly optional.

Catching up with my reading, I hit a post & a couple comments over at Erica’s and it occured to me that while I was previously planning on voting against the cult of personality obamalamadingdong and his wife omorosa, I am now voting for the first woman president of the United States and her presidential running mate.