Jul

29

Branch Rickey

July 29, 2021 | Leave a Comment

nobody asked me but the professor is in the catbird seat and branch rickey is the founder of sabermetrics. tom wiswell had a weekly checker game with branch rickey.

Branch Rickey: Baseball's Ferocious Gentleman

Jul

29

at the B&N on Market Street in Philadelphia which i visited over the weekend, i explored the business section to augment my recap of chapter 6 of Quixote.  i found all the finance books to be about panic or the decline of capitalism or the need for regulation to reign enterprise in, except for a book by ellis which, like all the other finance books, espoused the out-of-place-and-time methods of the Sage and his philandering  mentor.

i bought a big selection of them but the fire department picked me up for unsteady walking. (i wasn't wearing shoes and had my sneakers in my book bag so i fell.) and i left my books on a bike and they were stolen within 5 minutes which made my story seem not valid.

thus i can't relate to all the titles that espoused the graham & dodd, sage line, or the hoped for destruction of capitalism.

Vic's twitter feed

Jul

29

subscribe to Laurel Kenner on Substack

Jul

28

Market pullback, Covid and Fed. BTFD? BABA buy? 07/27/2021

Jul

28

i recommend Brett Steenbarger's book The Psychology of Trading. it contains all sorts of fixes for emotional trading and reads like a mystery novel.

Brett's book is like a Paul Harvey story. it starts with a life or death situation from his counseling. then it shows how he solved the problem by applying trading wisdom.

i like his technique of talking out all your trades — and moving away from the market when it's going in your favor. also, all the wise words about the function of markets

Dr. Steenbarger's other works

Jul

28

good article on what is ruining baseball and why the Yankees lose so much when ahead and turn to analytics. they don't take account of ever-changing cycles and rely on one metric rather than the panoply.

State Of Analytics: How The Movement Has Forever Changed Baseball – For Better Or Worse

Jul

28

If I had 300mm in used cars and I wanted to protect the losses of a sudden drop in prices or book values banks use….
 
My solution is to not use options as learned by listening to Mr Vic on the vigorish.
 
If a stock's price was tracking current tick data of aggregate mean car prices, wouldn't it be best to sell a line of that stock against the inventory?
 
If so, how do we quickly calculate how much in stock in total vs the 300mm of inventory. 
 
Yes I'm aware of the joke.
 

Someone said there is no way to hedge this, and I said why not sell some used car companies stocks just in case and….

A reader writes:

Yes, the difficult question is to find the correlation between the used car inventory and hence their aggregate values with the used car sellers' stock prices. I don't know which publicly trade companies only sell used cars. Once one knows the equivalent delta value of the inventory, then one can hedge the delta risk using various strategies as you have suggested.

James Lackey writes:

After a day, I think of ways I could as a day trader blow this trade up. The risk is car prices crash as they should and the used car big box store's stock goes up big on a squeeze. Therefore the way to protect that is to buy call options. Buying options is not businesslike as the vigorish is unbusinesslike. I do believe others must be in this trade as I'm always the last to know. I'm sure I'm not the only guy that thought of this trade. Yet so far the dealers and the vampire squid isn't pitching this trade.

Someone said to me there is no way to hedge this book. I laughed and called bs and said there is.always a way. Problem is the cost.

Duncan Coker writes:

The only part of Dalio's book I found readable was the first section where he
talked about his early consulting work prior to Bridgewater. One of his first
major accounts, McDonalds, needed to hedge chickens. Dalio came up with an
elegant solution with ratios of feed, energy and land. Futures were not a
ubiquitous as they are today and his ideas were quite good.

A reader adds:

Jake Powell also commented on the recent high prices of used cars shall come to pass in his congressional testimony this morning. Similar to the Dalio methodology, then perhaps auto parts stores like ORLY an/or AAP could be affected then.

Jul

28

I’ve been reading up about Charles E. Sorenson as someone who I missed on his contribution to Ford.  There’s a lot of lessons in/on his life.  One is, the #2 defines the #1 man much more than is commonly assumed.

As you would expect, I discovered him through his boat.

Bud Conrad writes:

Fantastic photography, especially obviously surreptitiously boarding the Helene and the waterways around.

I have often been captured by the faded grandeur of some of Detroit, and this is magnificent. I am also shocked by the abject destruction of many areas and buildings that show an ugly turn for humanity.

I wonder how this happens in America, as I live in ever-changing Silicon Valley; where for example Robert Noyce's house (Inventor of integrated circuits and founder of Intel) with 4 acres, two lakes and vineyard sold for $11.4 million last month. My worry is that Detroit may be the model of future USA. San Fran ain't what it was to the flower children of the 60's. 

Silicon Valley pioneer’s former home expected to sell for $14 million. Take a look

Jul

28

it is one thing to lament how much rigidity we see from the progressiveness - and it is another thing how much un-necessary rigidity we are subject to.    eg. self-sabotage is another way of saying it - in particular in trading. see also Brett Steenbarger on it.

Jul

25

Risk of another market pullback is high. 2021/07/23

Jul

25

the duckworth-tukey test for differences between medians is useful and interesting and novel. i will give an example later. test 93 from 100 Statistical Tests by Gopal K. Kanji is unusual, useful for testing diffs between medians. consider the smallest observation from one distribution and the largest observation from the other. then take the overlaps

Jul

25

Deep Blue plays Jim Sogi's original songs, Puuo and Waiilikahi

Jul

25

lawyers have been effusive in cross examining the niceties of witnesses in political testimony but I wonder what the appropriate cross examining questions are when a witness says he doesn't know if laptop with dates and places and pictures are his own
 
one of dr. brett's techniques for better trading is to laugh at yourself.  ridicule. i am ridiculing myself for not racking up for new highs
 
anti-capitalism, anti-private-property, capture by the atlanta 100.  attempts at divisiveness and lockdown, pro marxism, agreed what could be worse?
 
let us not forget list of marxism that will lift the S&P to new constructal. the handling of the cuban revolt. they are not allowed to come to us (250000 fine for helping them) but the red carpet is laid out for those who likely vote blue for handouts
 
now while we're at it, the virtue signaling - no more cleveland indians and the general destruction and decryinig of our history

Jul

22

Bitcoin breaks 30k, what's next? Markets rebound. 2021/07/20

Jul

20

Vic's twitter feed

hopefully one side will have a better defense against marxism than that it creates  inflation
 
mentioned marxism in a bad way and lost subscribers.  the loss of subscribers had been much allayed since various suits and complaints
 
it's ironic to see masters 1000 and big tech rooting for marxism as in cuba or venezuala or russia — or are these just anomalies? presumably this idea is captured
 
keys to game. will sp make a dive before breaking the round, will crude turn around after 50-day low.  will compromise on infrastructure show complete nothingness of one side's agenda. how will big tech profit from the red herring of cancel and suppression
 
with all the anxiety and bearishness of the reacent declines, nasdaq is 1.5 from all time high after 3 down days in row
 
yesterday's move from 3:30 to 4:15 was 14th largest in history and the sixth largest from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. will it repeat or disappoint?
 
dare i say wihtout being canceled that news of pandemic increasing revals news of infrastructure as the fastest and most assured way of losing money to the bigs
 
one thing for sure is that the prodigal son is the perfect liar and is a model for the perfect lie

Jul

18

Is stock market pullback over? Crypto? 2021/07/16

Jul

17

Vic's twitter feed

weak longs are margined out or scared out i think
 
why did not sogi have his day today after the 930 open? there was too much non-anti-government. the visceral reaction of every thinking person has to equate the suppression of views as a negative. the crime situation was non-anti also: a NYC attempted kidnapping
 
as the market refused to cross the sogi level after the open, one was reading bill browder's Red Notice and the situation is so similar
 
i have been inspired by chapter 6 of don quixote and wish to find the books that wanted to bring back the good old days of chivalry with don's critique of the bad old days. any suggestions as to which should be burned or saved would be appreciated
 
here's a pretty kettle of fish: bonds at a 5-month high, but stocks 4 days and 50  points from an all-time high. 1 day away from a non-quarterly expiration. becoming  clearer every day that suppression reigns supreme, and things are not what they seem in potomac
 
just a question of time until bonds pull stocks to new high. a guess: within 5 days

Jul

17

101-year-old Maine woman may be the oldest person in the world still lobstering

Jul

15

Vic's twitter feed

bonds continue their response to buying of bonds by Fed and pronouns of Treasury. still  some groups-not getting handouts. buying of votes reigns supreme
 
miss sarah, one notes that crude is at a sane or almost a 29-day minimum at 7250 with the only lower price having occurred on wed june 7 at 7213.  would you say that crude is due for a rise?  the numbers and distance are fairly bullish
 
note to self: if you wish not to lose all followers, don't refer to atlanta 1000, don't refer to family grifters, don't talk about suppression, don't mention the unmentionable founder of multivariate statistics, especially vis a vis diversity and crime
 
burning of books here. bill gross on investing, back files of alan abelson's column, one book falls out: Justin Mamis The Nature of Risk: Stock Market Survival & the Meaning of Life. "life is like stock market, the fear of death causes you to exit too early the mid life crisis causes excessive trading". a keeper
 
don't throw out Justin Mamis books i exhort susan as she throws out all my books and says if we just waited for the all time highs as we did in the childrens' 559 trusts, we'd be much better. but then i read in the nature of risk: venturing is just a beginning 
 
venturing can be cut short by fear and worse by the settling for the ego satisfaction of having tried - "getting out too early us as if to avoid death by tiptoeing  away". another book refuses to burn and I find it life sustaining 

Jul

14

Has the market run up too high on optimism? 07/13/2021

Jul

13

Vic's twitter feed

an archetypical day so far we stand for assembly and rite for familys to profit and a series of all-time highs with a strong opening on Monday.
 
an archetypical day. inflation looks bad so stocks go down 1000 but bonds go up 10 ticks
 
but everything's infrastructure. nw it will be harder to promote unionization
 
which of these words will lead to greatest suppression, anti-americanism, the artistic son, the american flag raised in south, unionization
 
a certain economist from chicago noted that comerce creates freedom. no better example of this than the grey lady displaying a 1st page ad for patrick o brian works which are heroic and support the great contirbution of the English Navy to civilizatn in 19th century
 
finally the anti-americanism reaches a maximorum and by comparison its a maximum

Jul

12

S&P levels and Monday prediction. 2021/07/09

Jul

11

Red Notice

July 11, 2021 | Leave a Comment

the book Red Notice by Bill Browder provides an exciting introduction to starting a business amid many doubters. i recommend it for young people interested in starting a business and anyone interested in how a quant can realized his goals amid the infrastructure.

Jul

9

After 8 days of new highs, a pullback in S&P 500. Is inflation trade over? Crypto, DeFi. 2021/07/06

Jul

7

Vic's twitter feed

it can't get better than a visit by the post office, or their agencies to one's establishment. one hates to make money on this maximum of de-independence and will play the new all time high with trepidation and loathing.
 
one guesses that crude will go up and bonds and stocks will go down…there's a trifecta. lets see how many are wrong.

Jul

4

Steve Keeley: Golden Era of Paddleball and Racquetball

Jul

2

S&P 500 new highs over 4300, 6 up days, bullish? Employment report trade. Crypto chopping 2021/07/01

Jul

2

 The green building insanity had not started at the time Surfside was built (1980).
 
In the 1970s, some professors at Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champlain theorized about very well insulated and well air-tightened houses with energy-recovery ventilation to all rooms, and built six of them. The houses required a very small fraction of the energy of comparable houses. After much measuring and public tours, they sold the houses, which last time I saw them were still occupied. The houses were well publicized, including an article in Scientific American that called them “Lo-Cal Houses.” What happened as a result of all the publicity was…..nothing.
 

Comments on buildings and the Surfside collapse continued…

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