Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Camper Van Beethoven, "Take The Skinheads Bowling"

(h/t bloggerdotcom)

Nightmares, Air Supply And Cat Pee, Oh My!

I made a point on my first trade of the day, and on my second trade of the day, I lost a point.

That was enough to give me pause.

I had just come back from surfing, and hadn't done much research or eaten breakfast. So I stared at the screens for a moment and just took a big breath. Let me give you a little background.

My alarm went off at 4:30, so I could pick up my friend and be in the water by 5:30. I was having this wild dream. I live not far from some water, and across from that water is an island. There are no bridges to this island, but in my dream, there were bridges, long rope bridges like the kind you see over gorges, and I was walking across one when a huge set of waves started rolling towards me. There was no way off the bridge since I was right in the middle, so I just wrapped myself up in some of the rope and hung on. The wave was about to hit me when I woke up. Anyway, I got my shit together and drove to pick up my friend.

A little while later, we were surfing. The sun had just risen and I was enjoying nice big breaths of the clean ocean air. Everything was perfect. But then, since the surf was on the small side, I said to my friend something like, "wow, we're out here making waves out of nothing at all." Not a second later, the Air Supply song "Making Love Out Of Nothing At All" entered my head and wouldn't leave. I mean, it had a real grip. I was trying to think of any other song, because it was ruining my beautiful morning.

That's when Pat Fucking Benatar and "Love Is A Battlefield" popped in.

At this point, I was rather beside myself. I mean, if you read this blog you know how I am about music. But then, in order to rid myself of Air Supply and Pat Benatar, I started thinking, "what could be the exact opposite of that shit?" And that's when I got the "America, Fuck Yeah!" song in my head from the South Park movie. That was in there for awhile, but eventually it disappeared and I was able to surf in peace. In fact, I had a great session.

I drove home in a big rush and was greeted at the back door by my daughter. "Daddy," she said, "Docky peed not in his box." In other words, our fucking cat, the same fucking cat that terrorized us last summer by making our house smell like a goddamn urinal, is at it again.

I stepped in, got a good whiff of that sour smell, and asked Judy, "Where's the cat?"

She said, "He knows he did something wrong. He's under the bed."

She told me that because she figured that because "he knew" he did something wrong that that was somehow punishment in itself.

Not so.

I ran upstairs (with my daughter following fast on my footsteps) and lifted the bed skirt. The cat let out a low growl and shimmied back a couple of inches, just out of my reach.

What happened next is really surprising, even to me, but it speaks to what your body can accomplish when enough adrenaline is flowing through it.

With one arm, I lifted the bed (it's low to the ground and not easy to fit under) and with the other, I made a grab for the cat's head. I got the scruff behind his neck and dragged him out. What he did to my arm is somewhat like this... it was painful. I threatened him in some crazy way (I told him I'd "ruin his face") and threw him in the bathroom.

I looked at the clock. It was 9:23.

Now, you must be wondering, why the fuck is he telling me this shit? It's simply because I wanted to lend some insight into what had already happened in my crazy head BEFORE 9:35 when I made, and then lost, a point in the same stock, on two successive trades.

In short, I was scared. Anything could have happened next.

Instead, all the excitement was behind me, and things settled down.

I made a nice trade in CMI, and scratched in everything else.



I'll take it.

Here's the stats:

P&L, $251
Best, CMI, $301
Worst, XCO, -$51

4400 shares traded.
6 stocks traded, 3 winners, 3 losers.

NOTE: That Air Supply video is perhaps the best music video ever... my question to you is, were they being ironic?

Virtual Office, $668. Dow, -207.05, 12,082.56

OBAT, $403 on 3200 shares traded.
Me, $251 on 4400 shares traded.
Denarii, $71 on 5000 shares traded.
Tokyo, -$57 on 3575 shares traded.


Damn, Lehman Brothers (LEH) is completely fucked, eh? It's never good when you drop 33% over 4 trading sessions on gigantic volume.

Volume was good again today, not a good sign for the bulls. However, I wouldn't be surprised to get a little "relief rally" tomorrow off of 12,000 should we get there. We may need to consolidate a bit before "testing the lows." We'll see.

We have two big events looming as far as trading is concerned. The Russell Rebalancing at the end of June and a (hopefully interesting) July earnings season. Remember how much last earnings season sucked?

I do. We had such low volume that I wanted to eat my television set.

Anyway, another decent day for the scaled down VO. I'm still trying to entice my "real office" members to report their stats to me. Without whores, blow, or money to offer, it's been tough.

Meanwhile, in my real office I was #7 out of 22 traders today. The office range (gross) was $1632 to -$3624.

A Relaxing Morning

This one kills me... I just like the way the kid sidles up to the horsies... sizes them up and then just goes for it.


Horse Takes Kid for a Ride - Watch more free videos

Anyway, I've had a sweet morning. I was in the water at 5:30 catching clean 2 foot waves that were breaking outside and moving all the way to shore. I was on 6 or 7 for the entire move. Great way to wake up.

I rushed home with my hair still wet and sand behind my ears, sat down at 9:25 and made a quick point on my first trade in CF. Great. Problem was that my next trade, also in CF, I lost a point. Still, I kept my cool and made a few decent trades to be up my customary $200. We'll see if anything develops for the afternoon.

As for now, I'm heading off to the local dump. A friend let me borrow his truck and I have it loaded with branches. Remains of the storm that ripped through here the other day. Also, I cleared out all my woodpiles, since they're good tick habitat. Naturally, I refuse to spray pesticides, so the only thing I can really do is reduce the habitat around here... fuck ticks.