My Move

I've moved to wordpress now. You can follow me and leave nasty comments there at mloylo.wordpress.com.

My Psychic

My sister was in town the other day and she wanted to go see a psychic. I told her there was a psychic a co-worker had told me about and maybe she'd like to go pay her a visit. Emphasis on the pay there... I later found out she's now charging $75 for a 30 min. reading sessions. I don't want to blabber her private business all over the www, but let's just say she was seeking some marital advice. She then told me she made an appointment for me and I thought, what the heck, we'll see if this lady is full of crap or not.

The name is Yanie Brewer in case anybody is interested. She gave me a recording of the session on cassette tape, which I thought, seriously... who the fuck owns a cassette players now? This is clearly not iPod compatible and I doubt they have an app for the iPhone for this. I don't think I've had regularly used a cassette tape since 1997. Anyway, I finally went to my car and play back the tape. There were some pretty cool stuff that just made me dropped/dislocated my jaw.

I had my doubts but then one of the first things she said that made me feel like she might be for real was when she went "do you have two careers?" Which I replied yes but in my head I was thinking "Did my sister tell you that in her session before me? How could you know about that?" Towards the end of the session I asked a few questions about my family and she asked me if it was just me and my sister the two sibling and I said yes, but she said "there should've been a third." At that point I remembered that my mother actually did have an abortion way younger before my older sister was born. She also told me she sees cars, and asked me what that means. Well, our family business is revolved around car related products like AC, tire repair, engine oil or different kind of fluid.

A lot of these are kind of like I had to attach the meanings myself, but I thought it was pretty cool that if someone can really hear or feel and clairvoyant.

As for the future, I don't know exactly how much salt to take w/ what she said. It sort of just reflected a lot of what I know about myself or what I've been thinking. The topic of education came up a lot, which I have been thinking about going back for my MBA (pretty much like everybody else my age). It definitely seems like my journey here in Austin is about to end (and just when I decided to put a swimming pool in at my house, too...). There are some new beginnings. She says that I'm talented and have interest in many things and I have to find what my niche is and what will give me the most fulfilment is where I feel like I'm helping people. I mentioned about marketing but she said something even more people enough.

Apparently I'm also put on this earth to travel and I'll make very good money. She mentioned about going to Hawaii and golfing there (hmm...) and business travel in British Columbia, although I couldn't tell if she was feeling B.C. or regular Columbia. There's a big difference in Vancouver and Bogota. She keeps talking about some opportunity, I don't think she meant schools, in Florida and how being around the water is very good for me. I will also meet my best relationship, very vivacious and energetic person, on a trip and she even says that I'm going to have two boys, one of water and another w/ fire sign (really... c'mon). She even asked me how I feel about dogs b/c this person will have a small dog. Right, let me just go travel the world and ask every girl that sits next to me on the plane what kind of dog she has. St. Bernard, oh sorry... nice meeting ya. What? A Yorkie? What did you say your name was?

Basically, she has just told me what I've been feeling since sophomore year, which is what is my passion, what is my niche? I thought my path might be w/ the family business but she actually says that my footsteps won't be the same as my dad and in the long run I'd have to do something that's more me. Either do things more my style or take the background and experience to move on to another venture. Sigh... got a lot to think about.

My Peacock

I've been working from home lately. With the trading volume being so light I basically had decided to put my account on hold for a month, maybe two. It was good to hear at least I won't incur any variable fees in the mean time.

Well, I was getting ready to leave the house on Tuesday and as I pull my car out of the garage I see this creature at my front door. Upon further review... it was a peacock. Yeah, I know it's random, but a damn peacock is just sitting at my front door. When I came back it was still there. Weird... it was not dead. Definitely alive and moving. Was this a present? It doesn't have a note tied to it or anything. I went to the formal dinning room and snapped this picture.


It looks like it's there to collect rent... Funny that my Asian friends, and the one French one after I told them about it all say to eat it. Oh the foodies. I tried to get it to open up a few hours later and that's when I noticed that it's actually a peahen.

I didn't know if this was an auspicious or ominous sign so I went to look up what peacocks symbolize. Apparently it represents royalty and immortality among other things in different culture. Overall, I took that as a positive thing. I've actually been thinking about a name for a new company that I'm planning to form for a new venture that's going to be strictly my effort and this gives me a few ideas. C'mon, a bird symbolizing immortality, as in always in never go out of business is pretty cool.

My name is in our family business's title and every time I meet a new client I gotta explain the story of how my dad couldn't come think of a good name while he was filing the paperwork. One thought I had was to use our last name but I am concerned about the marketability and confusion it might come up b/c, well, it's not the easiest last name to spell or pronounce. I just feel it's a little unprofessional. So far the best I've come up with is maybe somehow related to Expeditus, the patron saint of merchants, navigators, expeditious solutions and against procrastination.

My Tweet

I'll be trading today and tomorrow for the Russell rebalance. Pool construction has started at my house and it woke me up @ 7:30am this morning. Sadly there's no snooze button on these machines. I'll be working out of the office even if I'm not trading.

I'm still not fully sold on this whole Twitter thing. I don't like it. It feels like there are some elements or narcissism going on here that you feel somehow what you are doing is so important that everybody must know about it. Little did you know that it's totally trivial. And what's the deal w/ following celebrities and what they (or their assistants/publicists) write about. As if their lives are really that much more interesting. Go out and live your own adventures and get into trouble or do something LENGENDARY. Except for the very few people that I follow the rest is just extra noise to me.

I tried tweeting a little bit about the trades I'm getting in this morning and it's... distracting. It's not really real time, I don't have the time to put in my stop or profit target that much, so I doubt anybody will actually find it useful. I might spot some really nice trends and I'll comment on that but overall I think it's a little silly and waste of my energy.

If anybody's interested there's a site call stocktwits that a lot of people comment on there through out the day. It's really noisy and I pretty much just tune it out unless there's really nothing going on during the day. I need to find the ones that are actually worthwhile following on there.

My Spinning Plates

Haven't been updating lately. Been pretty busy. I'm actually feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. I constantly feel a tightness in my lung, not in a way where I'm in pain or anything wrong with me physically. It's probably just that I'm constantly thinking about the business and trading. Not to say that I've never had to worry about money, but I've never felt monetary pressure like this before. Plus we're building a pool right now, which estimate is about $70k that will most likely end up in the 6 figure area in my opinion.

I really should be doing a better job at managing this, after having gone through Dale Carnegie training and all that. In fact, I was so out of whack and not myself I called up JT for lunch. I kind of wanted someone that have no idea what I do and just chat for a bit. I'm not sure how to describe what I'm going through. The best analogy I can come up with was the circus act you see where they spinning many plates on a stick. Under the optimal condition, everything would be spinning and you just have to occasionally walk over to a plate and give it a little extra spin. Right now if feels like as if all of my plates are wobbling and about to come crashing down.

Trading hasn't been that well either. The volume is pitiful. On top of that I think I'm probably trying to make up for lost time and trading much bigger for the hours that I'm actually trading. It's just really hard to focus, at least for me, to take yourself away from the market for a while and then expect to jump back in and be completely in tune and able to read what the market is telling you. I've adjusted to trading a lot less and much smaller position size and it's gotten better.

I tend to have these little Mik Matusow-esque blow-ups. If I'm trading that entire day, I usually just do what I do and be up maybe a thousand dollars at the end of the day, give and take a few hundred. But from time to time, seems like prior to the close I'd jump ahead of the volume and might get whipped out or take a loser on a big size and just lose my mind from that point on where I feel like I need to make that money back and revenge trade or just not thinking clearly at all and getting into trades w/out clear rational reasoning and risk/reward behind it.

Expensive lesson... I really just need to leave all the baggage at the door if I'm going in to trade and stick to my trading style. We hear about some of the people that swings really big size here and in reality it's probably just a small minority of the traders and totally not representative of how people trade here. It's funny that when I feel the need to make money or when I'm trading to MAKE money that's exactly when I don't do well... I know it almost feels illogical but when I'm put myself in the position where I'm just looking for my set ups and not caring if I make money or not that's when I'm seeing the market well. That's when I actually make money. This echoes a little bit of what Mark Douglas writes about in his book I think.

I'm going to Dallas tomorrow to meet one of our customers. They represent about 20% of our sales revenue. I need to review some sales stuff and prepare questions and stuff for the meeting tomorrow.

My Omelet

The trip to Seattle was awesome. I ate so much. Thanks to all the walking I did around the UW campus and Discovery Park I think I only gained a few lbs. Prior to the trip I think I spent around 6-9 hrs on Yelp and different websites to research food places and I'm really glad it paid off. There are a lot of different specialty food shops around Pike Market for cheese and dessert stuff. If anybody wants recommendations feel free to drop me a line.

The main event for the heavy weight bout was me vs. the 12-egg omelet. Beth's Cafe serves four different kinds of omelet: veggie, American, bacon, and the southwestern exposure omelet. They also serve a 6-egg variety of their omelets. Let me just tell anyone that's brave/stupid enough to try the omelet, DO NOT get the southwestern exposure omelet. This happens to be the one Adam Richman ordered on the show Man v. Food as well, but that's not why I ordered it. I saw that it had chili and salsa and I thought the spiciness would help my appetite, but I totally did not consider the fact that chili has BEANS in it, which makes it extra filling.


















I gotta say, I had my doubts going in whether I could actually finish this. I know I could eat, but I'm no competitve eater. My friends weren't really helpful either and filling me w/ negative thoughts. When they finally bring this monstrocity out on a f-ing PIZZA PAN, I didn't even know where to start eating.

My friend and I actually talked strategy a little bit on our bus ride over to Aurora Village. Laugh all you want about how much of a dork we are, but it really helped. We debated a little bit whether to eat it really fast or pace myself. The omelet comes with some toast and hash so we decided that I should finish the toast and hash first since I don't like it as much. Well, the hash is buried underneath the omelet so I decided to change strategy and just mix everything all together.

I inhaled the four pieces of toast and cut my omelet into 4th's. I blew through the first half great, no problem at all. Then the grease from the hash, plus the sour cream and all the beans just slowly to trigger my gag reflex. Each bite was becoming more and more difficult to swallow. I mixed the remaining omelet and has together and then divide them down into 4th's again. And I think I did this one more time when I find it hard to slide the food down my throat again. Somehow the last fourth really wasn't all that bad... I guess I just hit a wall.

You know, when I watched the show I was wondering why Adam quit like a little girl with only maybe 3 or 4 bites left and maybe the producers had something to do with him throwing in the towel. I know now what kind of pain he was in. I mean, damn... that was some serious work. All that chewing and at one point I had to try to trick myself and think happy thoughts. But hey, I finished it, he didn't. Jason > omelet > Adam Richman.

My Day at Home

Didn't trade at all today. Woke up and my throat feels extremely dry and coarse plus a little tightness in my chest. I stayed home and talk with my dad about the deal we're working on with a potential partner in Memphis. Another good chunk of time setting up some communication stuff for my parents and our wireless network. I wish technology would just work the way they're designed. It's quite frustrating at times. It feels like these technology that's suppose to make our lives easier end up creating more hassles. And what do we do? Create something else to deal w/ that new hassle which ends up complicating things even more.

Last week was actually a pretty eventful week. I got to see Rent here in Austin w/ Anthony Rapp and Adam Pascal reprising their roles as Mark and Roger. Earlier that week I also went with my dad to Memphis to visit somebody we're thinking about entering into a partnership w/ and start negotiating some contracts.

Rent is definitely one of my top favorite musicals. Sure, some people might not agree with the subjects involved like homosexuality and drug usage but I think the emotional aspect of the relationships between the character is just beautiful and the music component is exactly what I expect out of a musical. It inspired other pop culture and spoofs (Ref: Lease the Musical in Team America: World Police) instead of having musicals "inspired" by other pop culture items lately like the Shrek and Dr. Seuss musical.

I remember during intermission when I saw it in NYC, this family was sitting near me and the dad was explaining to his two boys about the play. The boys looked no more than what... 12-yrs-old? I'm sure their young mind were pretty confused about why the two men or two women are kissing on stage.

I did a lot of prep work with my dad on who's going to say what so we're on the same page in front of the counter party. We talked a lot about the new project on the drive up to Memphis... it's about 10-11 hrs I think. I really think we should've taken a flight. I got to eat at Corky's as I wished. I knew it was right down the street from our meeting location. When we got there we actually got to meet the owner Don and his son. Turns out the guy we were meeting with went to school with Don when they were young in Memphis.

Corky's is really good, man! If anybody is ever in Memphis I highly recommend their tender juicy pulled pork. I tried the ribs as well. Memphis barbecue focuses on pork and dry rub while in Texas where I am it's more about beef and the sauce. I can appreciate all the spices they put into the pork, I think I just prefer the pulled pork more.

There's quite a few points to the deal and I won't bore you with that much details. We basically have another product that we have a patent on we have been trying to sell for a couple of years unsuccessfully due to lack of contacts and channels. The partner we're in talks with actually marketed the Chip Clip and couple other products. From our conversation I could tell that they were trying to sell us more on the idea of partnering up w/ them plus we have the patent. Sure, we could try to market it ourselves but it'll probably take longer and we won't sell as much. Their initial proposal was 50-50 profit split which I didn't like. I kind of feel them out to see if they'd go for something like a more commission based structure and it was obvious from their responses that was out of the question. At the end of the meeting to recap all the points my father sort of very casually and quickly agreed to the 50-50 point which I had asked him to not to agree on so easily. At the very least, save that for further discussion or even if he's ok w/ that act somewhat reluctant in order to set up leverage for other minor points in the negotiation.

That's basically what we talked about yesterday. I got on his case a little bit about leaving money on the table... but whatever, ultimately it's his decision. I still have some calculation and projections to run. If nothing else, it should boost our bottom a bit and gain valuable experience and contacts.

My Flight...

Oh... and I just found out that Meiko is playing in Seattle @ The Crocodile the same day I leave. I leave in the afternoon and she doesn't play until at night. Too bad I can't change my flights by just snapping my fingers. If I had known though I definitely would've planned around it. I have to say though, my crush for Meiko has waned quite a bit. Maybe it'll get back up there when she put out a second album. She also does the vocal for the last track of The Crystal Method's latest album called "Falling Hard," which I think is pretty cool.

My Emerald City

I'm heading to Seattle this coming weekend for Memorial Day. I'm really excited! Seattle is one of the few cool cities I've never been to before. My parents went with my sister a few years ago I think... I think I had to work so I didn't go w/ them. Honestly, nothing against my folks, but they're pretty boring.

God knows how many hours I've spent on Yelp looking at different restaurants and what not; probably somewhere in the 6-8 hours ballpark. I'm going w/my friend Craig and we're staying downtown close to Pike Market. I have a feeling that by the time we depart Seattle there's going to be a food shortage.

We're going to a Mariners game, and I'm going to be taking on the 12-egg omelet challenge @ Beth's cafe. I also kind of want to explore the UW area, or U-District I guess is what the local calls it. Check out Discovery Park and the Ballard/Fremont neighborhood and their Sunday markets. I want to try abalone somewhere. I don't think I'll be doing the whole museum thing that much this trip or even bother with the Space Needle. I have a lot of restaurants and little dessert or snack shops planned out but I'll report about the ones I actually went to when I get back. I'm already hitting the gym extra hard this week in preparation for all the eating coming up.

This 12-egg omelet... it doesn't look that big, but I'm kind of scared. Pray for me that I defeat this culinary beast!

My New Shop

I'm set up and ready to go @ Assent now. I've been away too long and I was getting itchy fingers, plus I wanted to trade after the stress test result... although I figure that it might just turn out to be a big non-event, that all this window dressing has already been priced in. Oh well, I want to at least take care of this before heading to Memphis next week w/ my dad to discuss a partnership contract.

There are some areas it's just the same as Kershner and some areas w/ pretty dramatic differences. It took me over the span of like two days to get up to speed where I'm comfortable w/ everything. It really could've been accomplished in a morning or afternoon but Assent only has one tech guy w/ multiple duties. Plus there are other new people starting (some ex-KTG traders) so he really couldn't spend too much time or attention with me.

Once I'm proficient with the new system I'll write a comparison between the two shop for the benefit of the readers. I'm not sure if this will burn any major bridges back at KTG. I hope it won't. And again, I hope this is only part-time and temporary anyway.