Saturday, January 31, 2009

My New Favorite Show

A colleague of mine recently told me about this show on PBS called "Spain - On The Road Again." I have to say, I absolutely adore this show. The premise is basically Mario Batali, you know, the guy w/ the orange Crox, going on a road trip through Spain with Mark Bittman, a food writer for The New York Times, Gwyneth Paltrow and this Spainish actress I haven't heard of Claudia Bassols. I must say that normally I don't turn to PBS now that I don't watch Sesame Street, This Old House, or that dude that does the painting show but after a few episodes and I was immediately hooked. It's really funny, not in an intentional scripted way like on a sitcom where there's a platoon of writers working. They show a little bit of food, the sights and history of the places they go to, yet somehow in a balance like your favorite bottle of wine. The thing I can't stand about some of these travel shows is that the selling point of the show gets a little old after a while. Yeah, Andrew Zimmern, we know you're going to eat weird shit, and yeah Samantha Brown, we know you're going to talk about whatever fabulous hotel you're staying at that's out of most people's budget especially in this economy.

I am beginning to have more and more problems with Sam Brown... she's just getting annoying, a little too "white girl from Northeast", especially after watching the episode of Paris where she keeps pronouncing Arc de Triomph "trai-awnf" instead of "tree-awnf." Who cares about the $400/night hotel room you're staying in unless it is what defines the city? Maybe there is one that I'm not thinking of off the top of my mind right now but when was the last time you hear someone said that Hotel Bordeux is a must see in Paris (I don't know if there's really a Hotel Bordeux in Paris, I just made that up). She's got a new series now on China... I have a feeling I won't like it and I'll be incredibly offended.

Some other random thoughts:
  • Claudia Bassols is really quite beautiful. I have a mad crush on her right now. She's just turned 30 so it's not like age wise it's out of the question. I think she's even more beautiful than Penelope Cruz.
  • Who takes road trips in two Mercedes convertibles? When I think road trip I think like Honda Element or just something easy and comfy. I guess after all this is celebrities we're talking about. And it's so funny they always seem to be find a parking spot right in front of the restaurant or whatever destination they're going to. They never happens to me. Oh... the magic of television.
  • My gosh! Gwyneth Paltrow knows Spanish? I had no idea! Not only is she a great actress, taken after her mother Blythe Danner, you know, the mom from Meet the Parents, good looking, married to Chris Martin from Coldplay, whom I assume have made and will make more gorgeous babies, she's really quite well traveled and knows her stuff.
I really fell in love with Spain from my visit last year. Part of me secretly wish I could be reborn a Spainard. The food is just full of color and flavor. They have combined the influences of its neighboring countries and cultures flawlessily into another unique idenity (unlike Canada... there's a joke that say Canada could've had the British culture, French cuisine, and American technology but instead they got the American culture, French technology, and British cuisine). I want to take the time and visit more cities in Spain. I want to go to Bilboa, San Sebastian, Valencia and Madrid and have my own version of the Don Quijote adventure.

If any producers out there are interested, I'd happy to pitch the idea of doing a road trip show through the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Australia and different regions of the U.S. That's at least maybe 6 seasons. All sponsored by Honda Element. Go ahead, whore it up. I don't care about product placement.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

My New Year

Happy Chinese New Year everybody! It's the Year of the Ox. Ox = Bull so giddy up market! 900 pt rally!!! Well.... I'm afraid it's not quite that simple. I've flipped to more bearish now judging by the action the past few days even though it seems pretty stupid to get short right now. If the market rally huge on something Obama does or positive sentiment from China you can be sure I'll be trying to fade it. I believe Obama was the better candidate compared to McCain but until I see him walk on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool or put on a cape and fly away I'm still going to look at him as just another human being.

BAC looks like it's been poisoned by all the toxic assets it swallowed up from Countrywide and Merrill. It could very well die... and I wouldn't be too surprised if it. Of course, Uncle Sam would not allow that to happen.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

My Big Decision

Two back to back very positive days thanks to Obama and I'm right back in the groove. The psyche is totally different now. Hopefully tomorrow stays the same b/c I'm going to be up for a while.

I find it funny that depending on how reference it, a monetary amount either sounds like a lot or a very little. It could totally due to the fact that I haven't had to buy a lot of things before. I would be the world's worst contestant on The Price is Right just FYI. For example, I had no idea that a washing machine or a dryer cost so much. At the moment I'm struggling with this opportunity that I came across to own a share of a bar. It's uh... let's just say 5 digits (again, I'm a little uncomfortable publishing absolute numbers out to the WWW). If you think about it, it's really not that much with a good solid month of trading. On the other hand it's no chump change, either.

The bar in discussion is The Parish down on 6th Street. I personally have visited the place on numerous occasions. There's a Cajun restaurant downstairs and I don't care for it. Now that I know the management is making changes to sell/re-do the restaurant portion I feel a lot more comfortable with the idea of putting my money there. I got a few financial statements and I'm going to do some Excel work later. Given that this is my first major investment I'm having some reservations. The worst case scenario is that I lose all of my investment... the slightly more likely and still not very favorable scenario is that I don't see a return on my money for a long while.

Now I'm a die hard music fan. The idea of owning a piece of one of my favorite Austin venues is fantastic. The ability to go to all the shows for free and get a 25% discount on my tab is flat out awesome, not to mention meeting the band. At the end of the day, it's still a business decision no matter how much I want to romanticize about it. If I want to get a return on my money by just going to free shows I'd have to go to about 1,000 shows (LOL!!). Say that if I go to two concerts a month, I'd break even in about 3 and a half years. Honestly, I don't even know where else to put my money as far as investing or retirement planning goes since it's not technically "earned" income by IRS' definition so we can't really do IRA or SEP. I want to say our real option is CD's and life insurance even though life insurance has a good chunk of fees.

I'm going to crunch some numbers and see if it's a viable business and what the P/L would look like after the some of the changes that's going to happen.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

My Frustration

January hasn't been that well so far trading wise. I've been taking bigger size which has worked out sometimes but occasionally I'll get hit for a loss on these big size and I guess I'd loose my head. Also, with bigger size I've pushed the price against myself sometimes when I need to get out. It definitely requires a little bit of fine tuning. Plus with the bigger size I'm not holding my winners as well. It might also be that they're not that good of a set up to begin with so I'm not getting much upside getting into a trade. This is all the same back when I was still a rookie, increasing share size say from 100 to 200, 200 to 400, and 400 to 800. From now on, take only a little bit more than I normally would for typical trades, maybe scale slightly. On the setups that I really like and if it's thick like a big cap or ETF where I wouldn't have too much problem getting out, go ahead and take couple thousand shares.

January is far from over though. I've got time to make up some ground. Obama takes office on the 20th and the 25th is Chinese New Year. We should begin to see some real actions then. I need to just forget about the past trading days, especially the bad ones and just focus on each day and break them down into each little segmenets. I think I should be just fine if I can do that for the rest of this month.

I started reading Liar's Poker. I don't know if it counts as a fiction because it is about Wall Street and banking back in the 80's and the author's account of his tenure there. So far I'm loving it. I finally found the lamp for my bed stand that I couldn't locate after the move so I've just reading a little bit of it each night before I go to sleep. I love the language Michael Lewis uses. It's casual, funny, yet it paints a vivid picture. There's a part where he talks about the traders in the firm that make a lot of money and the refer to them as Big Swinging Dicks (yeah, excuse the language but I'm just quoting the book) and he links them to elephant trunks. He calls the female version Big Swinging Dickettes. It might just be a guy think but I think that's hilarious. This books has the whole Boiler Room feel to it and I love Boiler Room. It's one of the few movies I actually own. Normally I don't buy DVDs and I don't watch movies twice. I only buy the DVD if I truly love the movie, that it speaks something about me or I just can't get sick of it. If they were playing one of the movies I own all day on a channel, I swear I wouldn't mind watching it over and over again for that entire day and quote all the lines in that movie.

***Oh, and I would love to become one of the BSD's at work. That would be lovely

It's been a relatively warm winter for me and I went out to run today. I don't like to run. It used to be that I would run only if the bus was about to leave the stop and I need to get on or that somebody is chasing me with a weapon. From time to time I would go for a jog around Town Lake (or Lady Bird Johnson Lake now... that name's too long). I went today and brought my Garmin Forerunner 305 with me. It tracks my lap time and my route along with other stuff. I haven't played with it that much yet but I believe you can also import your data onto your computer. My time wasn't too shabby. I did three miles and it was actually 10 minute less than the best time I can remember back in college (or I just remembered wrong). I know I could do better too b/c I slacked off and walked a lot of it even know I wasn't feeling that out of breath. I don't really have the endurance yet but hopefully I get someone to go w/ me next time and push me to go farther without stopping.

I'm also going to go shop for a bike this weekend. I've decided on a road bike. Maybe I'll get a mountain bike later if I feel it's necessary. I don't know what kind of shape I'm in really for climbing hills but it'd be cool if I can leave my house and then go down 360, head west on Bee Caves Road, up 620 and then back down 2222 to my house, or the reverse but I don't think I'd like to go up that big ass hill on 2222.

Sunday, January 4, 2009

My 2009 Goals

My mind has been active lately. I have a notepad or post-it note that I jot down ideas that are floating in my head or things that I need to do and every square millimeter of real estate has just been about filled up. I'm going to try to flush some of these stuff out and cleanse my brain.

The most important thing for me is my goals for 2009, both professionally and personally. I don't like making resolutions. They sound like promises you don't plan on keeping anyway. Quit smoking, lose weight, pay off credit card debt. I must say that we all could use more discipline in our lives. Instead, I'm just going to call these goals. Because goals don't imply that you can only make them at new years. Because goals can be big or small and they strive you do better, even just baby steps. Because goals are concrete and measurable.

Professionally:
  • Trading Profit: XXX,XXX. You'll have to forgive me if I'm not comfortable disclosing absolute dollar value here. I will say that it's 6 figures and I'm shooting for 20% increase from last year. I don't expect this year to be as volatile as the last but given how pitiful the first 8 months of the year was for me I think this is definitely achievable and a good stretch if I can put the discipline and skills I've learned from last year to practice.
  • Long Term and Options Profit: 20% of the the aforementioned amount. It's a little harder for me to set a dollar amount here because I'm still just a baby growing in these two arenas. I feel like my focus is still in the equities side first. People have always talked about the 80-20 rule, which means that for a business, about 80% of your profit comes from just 20% of your customers. There are other interpretations as well. I've heard someone saying that you can increase your result 80% by just focusing on 20% of your effort.
  • Write three tickers that I actively use. I have some ideas brewing using VWAP, moving averages, accumulation/distribution, pair trades but I have to think more about the set up and the probability of it working out. I plan on scanning the Insight library to get some ideas as well. I have one that I've been working with Jane a little on and I want to see which category she filed it under to potentially see some ticker ideas other traders are playing with that they've made public. I've been trying to plot the VWAP using our trading software to no avail at the moment; I'm gonna have to ask some of the tech guys or development team for help on this.
  • Come up with one autotrade model. It's possibly that I turn one of the tickers into an autotrade. It'd be more complicated just because you have to define your entry and your exit strategy. Of course there's also the problem of running it and testing it.
  • Hit HP status and become a coach. If I hit my monthly goals it should be no problem at all.

Personally:

  • Get out more! Even if just sitting on the patio reading. I'm planning on buying a bike, except I don't know if I should get a mountain bike, a road bike, or a hybrid. I've got one of those Garmin GPS watches that tracks your route for you. I'm still not big on running but biking I like. I've concluded that I don't spend enough time with nature. Speaking of reading earlier...
  • Read more fiction. Actually, I wouldn't mind just reading more. I have a lot of subscriptions coming through my Google Reader so I do read a lot, but there's just something to be said about sitting down and having an actual book in your hands. I tend to read more non-fiction stuff so I'm going to make a point to read more fiction from now on. I'm even planning on getting a library card... boy, I haven't had one of these since I was like 8.
  • Have lunch/hang out with one friend that's in Austin once a month and call two friends that moved away each month. I briefly mentioned in the previous post that I felt like I concentrated too much on work and neglected a lot of friendship from the college years. Many of them are in danger of falling in the category of "It's-kind-of-weird-you're-calling-after-X-years."
  • Take a photography class. I've been into photography for a while now and through fumbling around myself and reading a snippet here and there I have improved quite a bit. However, I do want to take an actual class to fill in any gaps that I should know in order to become a serious, kick ass photographer.
  • Learn a foreign language. I started feeling that simply knowing English and Mandarin is not enough. If I have my way I'd just install a program in my head like they did in The Matrix and I'll load the German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese program in my head. Since this is the real world, I'll have to do it the hard way. I'm leaning towards German since I'll be visiting Sarah. I actually just talked to Paul today and he said his wife was using Rosetta Stone to learn Chinese. It doesn't really teach the basic phonetics or any of the grammar stuff but just immerse you in the language so you can converse with other people. I'm curious. I think I'm going to get it.
  • Cook once a week. If I'm in Austin I'm going to cook something or try out a new recipe at least once a week.

Basically my approach to 2009 is to invest, in myself that is. I want to feel like I learned something new everyday, whether it's a new photography technique or a new German word (or even English word for that matter). And I want to be more hands-on, more DIY instead of just watching it on TV or read about it.

Friday, January 2, 2009

My Strong Finish

"It doesn't matter how you start; it matters how you finish." This is a saying that I've inherited from my days with The Southwestern Company.

Well, having the worst day of your trading career isn't quite exactly what I had in mind. The close was pretty crazy and whippy. I was doing ok until my MOC order just decimated me. It should've worked out but all of a sudden it looked like the floor was just yanked out from underneath in the futures and a lot of these financials dropped a few floors like Tower of Terror ride at Disney World. I've had lost more money than that in the middle of the day and always manage to bounce back a bit but this was right at the close and who know what the first day of 2009 is going to be like and I just decided to take the loss... I won't say what stock it is, but it is a regional bank. It made me want to go out and burn down one of their branches.

I was over my goal for December by at least 20 or 30%, which I was really happy considering December is painfully slow compared to the few previous months we've had. I was proud of me adjusting and adapting to the market, especially on some of the play now that some stocks and ETFs have migrated from AMEX to NYSE/ARCA. After that swift kick to the genitals I think I'm just barely over my goal, which is still really good. I should be happy. Again, I should be happy.

Maybe I've been complacent and lost focus. Sure, things have been slower but there are still money to be made in the middle of the day. I've been playing Call of Duty way too much in the middle of the day, which does mean that I miss a few opportunities and in my opinion I'm not as focused heading into the close which is usually when I kick some serious ass.

Sigh... at least it gave me of an excuse to get crazier for NYE. There were so many things going on and my friends are spread all over town. I ended up going to Copa w/ Brett and some of his friends that came up from Houston. Brett's in from California, with his girlfriend-recently-upgraded-to-fiance, and decided that it's better to utilize the time to spend with a friend from out of state. I also made a few new friends as well, one of whom just recently moved from Houston back to Austin.

I have to admit, I try to game it too much sometimes but it's really amazing what you can do when you apply a little Dale Carnegie principle and simply take the time to learn a person's name. Everytime I go to a restaurant or a bar, if it's possible I learn the wait staff or the bartend's name. This is especially handy on a busy night that you know you'll be there for a while like NYE or even just a catered function. Call that person by their first name, maybe even introduce yourself, make some friendly chat, ask them how business is and sympathize/relate to them. From person experience, I know I'd get you what you wanted, whether it's a refill or the check a whole lot quicker if you call me by my first name instead yelling "hey waiter!" or trying to get the bartend's attention along with 20 other people at the bar.

Basically we got there when it's still not too crowded. I got my drinks, opened a tab, learned the bartend's name is Carlos and introduced myself. For the rest of the night, if he sees me standing at the bar, he usually get my order next, no matter how much cleavage the girl next to me is showing. Some people do this thing where they'll try to say your name as many times or whenever possible. That's a little tacky and people know you're just trying to game it instead of taking an genuine interest in them. I was doing this just for my benefits; I was being friendly and I wouldn't mind making a new friend. Let's just say that I was really glad I did that b/c I drank A LOT that night.

2008 was a great year for traders everywhere with the volatility up the wazoo. 2009 probably won't be as crazy but that doesn't mean there's no room for growth. I feel like I focused to much on "making it" as a trader this year and have neglected my relationships with a lot of friends from college. It really is harder though, now that everybody has a consuming job/career, most people moved away from Austin. For crying out loud, Sarah's in Germany, Nien is back in Taiwan and even though my best bud Jack's in Houston we hardly get any phone or face time. It's not like back in school where you run into people all the time either at classes or different organization meetings. It takes work. I found that relationships, no matter how casual, will atrophy just like muscles if you don't put in the time and work (speaking of atrophy... haven't been to the gym in a while after moving to the new house. Need to get on that).

My mind has been on hyperdrive for the past few days. There are so many thoughts floating in there that I feel like I need to reboot b/c the hourglass icon has been floating there for quite a while (or spinning beach ball if you're a Mac user). I would lie in bed trying to sleep but thinking about all sorts of things so I end up watching TV for a while. Funny thing is after watching for a few minutes I basically turn comatose since TV is just so brain stimulating and I fall asleep. It's probably best to break it up into several posts. Stick around for my goals for 2009 and what I'll be watching for trading wise.