Post Eve

A good, solid report.

Eric and the boys should be very proud. Jonathan Rosenberg, too. Listening to him on the call, it's obvious these guys know what they're doing. Smart guy, Rosenberg. I wouldn't be surprised if he gets to use the hot tub when Larry and Sergey are out of town.

Of course, there was the anti-GOOG constituency. Mostly traders, walking wounded zombies, who nodded off when Rosenberg stood up. To my wife, I cursed them for selling Google short in the after-hours. Clumsy louts with no appreciation for the longer term.

My wife said, "If you're in for the long term, what do you care what happens tonight?"

She had me, there.

Google Eve

I almost forgot about Google Eve.

Not much to say, this time.

In search of a theme, I googled "Google Eve" and got last year's post, from a darker clime, swept up with confused alarms of struggle and flight.

It seems an ocean away now. Back when I was interested in money.

My Wife's iPod Playlist

How long has the iPod been around? Five Years? I don't know.

Over the weekend, I bought my first iPod.

My wife, who prefers to go unnamed, had a birthday. For years, I've been trying to talk her into an iPod. She always said she didn't want anything that was a device. This year, she mentioned iPod before I did. So I got her one.

First, I had to learn how to do it and then I could show her how to do it. I got iTunes and turned it on. It was brilliant. But I didn't know what to do first, or how. I'm always like that with new things. I struggled and did everything the hard way.

Eventually, it clicked and I saw iTunes in the Sky, there to help me in every way.

So, now, I'm teaching my wife and she's getting it.

Today, I came home and she said she'd bought 20 tunes for 99 cents each. I began to see the dark side of iTunes.

Luckily, our kids had thrown in an iTunes Gift Card, along with their best birthday wishes, so there was no shortage of funds. But, you know how it goes. A Gift Card here, a Gift Card there, and when they run out, you're talking about real money.

Anyway, I asked my wife if I could publish her playlist, but she declined.

Another hard luck story that you're gonna hear

Interviewer: "Mr. Blumen, it's been said that, lately, you have been writing more about things you did years ago, before most people were born, and less about all the stupid investing things you've done."

Blumen: "I haven't done them all."

Interviewer: "Yes. But there are some who would like to see more stupid investing things."

Blumen: "I'll make a note."

Interviewer: "Yes. And some have observed that, when you run out of things to write about, you post another fraudulent interview with yourself."

Blumen: "That's right."

Interviewer: "Yes. And a few have accused you of harboring literary pretensions."

Blumen: "Well, I'm not doing it to make a living."

Interviewer: "No?"

Blumen: "Yes."

The Power

Even today, I'm told, there are wild regions of Ireland, beyond the pale of Dublin, or any other fair city, where rustic folk still adhere to the old ways.

The story is from the Clancy Brothers, about the time, just after the bumbershoot had been invented, when the Bishop came riding up to the little house of Shamus and his brother, in a driving rain.

Shamus was looking out the window as rider and horse approached, and he called out for his brother to come see.

"It's the Bishop," the brother said.

Shamus said, "Aye, but what's that thing that's got hold of him?"

"It's a contraption."

They watched intently until the Bishop arrived at their door.

The brother said, "Look, he's dry as a bone."

Shamus said, "He'll never get that thing through the door."

But, when they opened the door, the Bishop stopped outside, raised his contraption to the sky and appeared to wrestle with it, whereupon the contraption collapsed with a whooop! until it was thin as a stick. He then walked through the door and propped the thing up in a corner.

When it came time to go, the rain was still coming down. The Bishop retrieved his contraption and got back on his horse. Then he held the thing up with both hands and suddenly, with another whooop!, it swelled out again like a great, black, menacing bird.

The brothers watched in silence as the Bishop rode away.

Finally, Shamus said, in a hushed tone, "They have the Power. "

I thought about that last week, when I watched Obama, intent upon a fly. He regarded it with a look of total concentration.

What followed was a feat of ordinary mayhem, of such skill that few possess it. Obama not only killed the fly with his bare hands, he knew he could do it. If he had not been certain, he would not have tried. Because he was on camera. And he knew the press would report it, with glee, either way.

As a moment, it was sublime. And not without a larger purpose, a chance to convey a message to every hall and hovel in the world.

He has the Power.

And he's not afraid to use it.

What it was like in the war

During the late sixties and early seventies, when it looked like the war was going on forever, a generation of Harvard's brightest and best, fresh out of medical school and eager to serve their country, signed up for the USPHS Commissioned Corps.

It was an acceptable and worthy way of getting through the next few years. Of course, sacrifices had to be made. They had to work in Government offices. But they found out it wasn't all that different from Harvard. Still, there was a revolution going on, and their fantasies were all on the barricades.

There was a bunch of these guys where I worked. The halls were alive with beards and sandals, where white shirts and ties used to be. It was the first time I'd ever seen doctors that young. To them, I was a civilian, but they didn't care. They were living the life.

I didn't care either. When I first got there, the buzz was all about another guy - a civilian named Rick Curtis. Curtis was maybe 25 years old, with breezy good looks and a confident smile. He had a style that was effortless and unforced. He didn't require attention, but he commanded it. Even though he had no real standing in the organization, he mingled easily with the bosses, chatting them up like one of their own.

I learned he was from a modest background, but had been sent to a prestigious academy for his education and, by all appearances, a good job had been done on him. His knowledge of things and goings-on in the world was very broad, although it was hard to tell at what depth, since he had a way of throwing little comments into conversations that gave the appearance of high wisdom to people his own age. It might have been possible to dismiss him as a lightweight, except for one thing.

He was a computer genius. In those days, that meant knowing everything about mainframe computers and the software that ran on them. Of course, he knew about minicomputers, too. And he was cognizant of the micros that were beginning to pop up. Any suggestion, to him, that his knowledge might be stronger in one area than another would invite a polite demur.

Where and how he acquired all that knowledge, no one was sure. But the Harvard medicos went nuts over him. They rebuked themselves for being plumbers, and esteemed Rick Curtis as a god. They all wanted to hang out with him.

The story was that he and his boss, Don Eddins, who had a knack for finding computer geniuses, had conspired together to establish and operate the first minicomputer in the history of the organization, over the dead bodies of the mainframe-hugging Directors of the Computer Services Bureau. Eddins liked nothing better than a nice coup and Curtis gave him the muscle to bring it off.

And then there was the dandy little piece of software that Rick put together that let you enter a bunch of data and then run correlations and chi squares on it 'til the cows came home. It was so easy, even the Harvard Docs could use it by themselves. They saw right away that they could turn out papers twice as fast with this thing. Rick Curtis earned their everlasting praise. They fell prostrate before him. They worshipped the motherboard that had given rise to him.

I liked him, myself. I got to know him because I was working for Eddins, too. And I had an itch to become a programmer. Rick took me under his wing, even though my wing was several years older than his. I had tried reading the manuals, but that didn't work. Rick would say a few words and things would become plain. He pointed me in certain directions and I began to understand.

Once, I told him about a menu routine that I was working on. He said, "You might try putting the menu items in the data, rather than the program." I took it all in.

After a while, I went off on my own. I was interested in creating a kind of software system that would act as a guide for a person through a complicated process. And the system would be constructed so that all the difficult work would be done by the computer, and all the person would have to do is supply the information that the computer didn't know about. Most computer programs, I observed, were not written that way.

Anyway, for this to work, the person and the computer had to be able to interact with each other back and forth, and the kind of microcomputer that could do this was just then being introduced by IBM. I found out that a nearby military base had bought one and I got them to let me practice on it, a couple of afternoons a week, for over a year. I read the programming manual till the pages were tattered, and I wrote code.

After a year, Eddins was getting curious about what I was up to, so he got Rick to ask me about it. I was tickled, because I felt like I was ready to show it to somebody.

So Rick and I drove down to the military base where the computer was. Rick was in a chatty mood. I think he had an idea about what he was going to see and he figured he'd make a few suggestions, and then encourage me to keep at it.

At the base, we sat together in a small, dimly lit room in front of a screen about the size of a piece of Wonder Bread. And I gave him a tour through a process, organized around the functions of an immunization clinic. Immunizations were recorded as they were administered and maintained as a retrievable record for each child. Inventory was reduced, a dose at a time, and re-order points were established for alerts. And finally all the loathsome monthly reports of how much of what was given to how many at what age came rolling out. Everything was integrated and customizable by the user. It took me two hours to cover everything.

At the end, I realized that Rick hadn't said a word during the whole show. He seemed lost in thought. Finally, he said, "You should be very proud."

On the way back, we didn't do much talking, as I recall. But, a couple of months later, he made mention of it again. He and a few of the Harvard Medicos had their feet up, one afternoon, shooting the breeze. I was in the room.

One of the guys, a PhD epidemiologist from New York, asked, "Where is the good work being done these days? I don't see anything innovative going on."

Rick said, "Blumen's doing some interesting stuff."

The guy looked over at me and said, "Him?"


A number of years later, after Rick had gone, I ran into this PhD epidemiologist in the men's room. I had been working in the Computer Services Bureau for several years, so our paths had not crossed for a while.

He said, "You still working in the computer office?"

I said, "Yeah."

And he said, "When are they going to replace you with somebody who knows what he's doing?"

Now, it might seem indelicate, but it's germane to understand that we were standing up, side by side, at the urinal.

So I thought, this might be a good time for the joke about the rabbi who, at bris, always cut on the bias.

So I said to this guy, "Do you know Rabbi Glusman, from Cincinnati?"

Death of the Salesman

On the Internet, concepts are born, live, die and evolve, just like everybody else. Not just concepts, but ways of thinking about things.

Shopping, for example. One of the fundaments of capitalism and modern life. Where the buck passes. By which I mean, old fashioned stores with salesmen and buyers. Thousands depend on them. Thousands more are dependent.

Buyers get pleasure and satisfaction. And things. Salesmen get to feed their families at night. A mutually beneficial situation.

So what kind of havoc will the Internet wreak on this inoffensive arrangement?

First, all the salesmen are killed. Buyers don't need them anymore. But the stores are kept open. The buyers come and all trip off each other, buying things that they see others buying.

Transactions occur. Everybody gets paid.

Eventually, the very concept of a salesman disappears. But it's OK. Everybody lines up at the door. Everybody buys and sells. Everybody gets paid.

Rappelling, anyone?

GOOG: 417.23


Wait a minute. We've been here before. Except the roof is now where the floor used to be. But we went through it today like poor insulation. Goog has now re-achieved a promontory from which we used to peer into the abyss. Only we didn't believe it was really an abyss, back then.

We'd look down and say, "It might go to 410, but if it does, it'll surely bounce. But if 410 doesn't hold, 400 is a big round number that will be all but impossible to penetrate." It was beyond our imagination then to be worried about 300. Or worse. Sufficient to the day was the magnitude of our concern.

We've reached a level now where I begin to tap into my inner Cramer, thinking that I should schnitzel a few shares and lock in a profit. But, in the past, I've always gotten in trouble when I sold GOOG. Schnitzeling doesn't become me.

Besides, the Fast Money crew, without Macke, was uncharacteristically kind to GOOG today. A guest came on - I think it was Mahaney - saying GOOG looked good over the summer.

The bearish case is that, Sunday, Schmidt is going to be on Meet the Press.

Against advice, I'm going to hold. But if it gets close to 500, before its time, I'll do something. Maybe.

Life in the Comfort Zone

Tonight, my wife said, "When was it that we got 16 percent on our money market?"

We were taking out the garbage.

I said, "Sometime in the early eighties."

Later on, we were looking for something to watch on TV.

She said, "When do you think it'll get that high again?"

I had to be reminded of what we were talking about.

I said, "I don't know."

She said, "If it gets that high again, we'll be doing well."

I said, "You don't understand about money."

I told her we would be worse off.

She said, "If I'm getting 16 percent, I don't care."

And so to bed.

My New Financial Advisor

The period of the last 18 months, like all of Joyce, has been a series of epiphanies. I won't dissemble - I have not experienced all the epiphanies in Joyce. But I know they're there.

What I have experienced is the epiphanies of the last 18 months. The true nature of the investing game has been made plain to me. Some say trading stocks is gambling. And the way I do it, it is. I can see that now. And I'm over it.

The need to buy and sell stocks is killed in me now. I may buy and sell stocks in the future, but I'll never need to again.

Right now, I'm sitting comfortably on the sidewalk, with 70% cash and 30% Google, watching the rally go by. I could do this from now on.

It's time to listen to the flowers and smell the birds.

Accordingly, I have selected a new financial advisor. One who is in tune with my new-found understanding.

My wife.

She is conservative by nature, but not afraid of extreme positions. Her advice for the last 25 years has been unvarying: 100% cash, all the time. Kept at interest where it will be safe as houses. Still, her philosophy allows for a small portion to be set aside for the occasional high-flyer that might hit it big.

Last week, she was thrilled watching Rachel Alexandra win the Preakness. Especially at $5.60.

Grinners and non-Grinners

When I was late in school, I distinguished all the types of people in the world by their general manner and aspect of behavior. That is to say, I studied Psychology.

And I propounded theories. One of my theories divided all people into two groups, grinners and non-grinners. Regardless of language or culture, if you look at a grinner, he or she will always grin. They grin all the time, at everything. Even when nothing is funny. Non-grinners never grin. Even when something is really funny.

It's not hereditary. Both my parents were grinners, but I am not. My wife is not a grinner, either. Only after a moment of sober and strategic reflection, will we react to your entreaty.

In this way, you can evaluate the people you meet.

Katie Couric is a grinner. Bernanke is not. And so on.

I'm working on an application for the G-Phone. You hold the phone up to somebody and it will tell you if they're a grinner or a non-grinner.

It should come in handy.

Deuces and Treys

My father never had any money. He grew up in the streets on the wrong side of town. In his younger days, he was a Blackjack dealer in roadhouses. He liked to say, "I never gambled. I worked for the house."

But he didn't want that kind of life for his kids. He said to me, "Go to college, become an engineer and make five thousand a year."

But when the time came to go, there was a question of some up-front money that was needed. Tuition at Vanderbilt University in 1957 was $600 a year. It was in this connection that I found myself on campus, with my father, in the office of James Buford, the Registrar of the University. We sat across a large desk from him. My father seemed a little uncomfortable. For once in his life, he was on the wrong side of the table.

But he started out talking about what a good student I was and how I carried a paper route too, morning and afternoon. Buford listened politely with a pleasant smile, and when the subject of possible scholarships came up, he leaned forward and said to me, "Son, I think you'd better hang on to that paper route."

We thanked him for his time and left. I wondered what my father would say, but he didn't say anything. Not then, or on the way home.

So I kept my paper route and paid my bills. The tuition went up every year I was there. When I graduated, it was $900. All I did, the whole time, was study and throw papers. When I came out, I had over a thousand saved up.

Then I got married, had children and, for the next 40 years, I didn't save a nickel. But it was fine. I got as much money as I needed.

Now, for the past five years, I've been retired, but still working full-time. We're saving a lot of money now. Look at the chart. That's me.

I figured out, the other day, that I have made no money at all from my investments over the past five years. What I have is entirely from savings. I'd have been better off buying five-year CD's.

I don't know what my father would think about all this. He's no longer available for comment.

But I do know one thing: if there's a Heaven, then James Buford is in it, sitting at a Blackjack table, while my father deals him deuces and treys all day.

One Man's Tweet

I saw George Harrison on TV once. The interviewer asked him about his experience with LSD. Harrison said, "I only needed to do it once." The interviewer leaned forward and said, "You only did LSD one time?" And Harrison said, "No, I did it many times. But I only needed to do it once."

That's the way I feel about Twitter and I've only done it once.

I like the idea of followers. But I don't like the message length. Haiku is not my literary form of choice. Facebook has the same thing and I don't like it there either. I don't want to operate at that speed.

Tweeting may be all right for the young, but it feeds too fast for us old folks.

The Year of the Swine

1976. The generation of public health professionals who eradicated Smallpox were still around. They hadn't eradicated anything lately. AIDs hadn't hit yet. It was a slow year.

Somebody noted that flu epidemics come in 11-year cycles, but that pandemics, like 1918, come in 60-year cycles. Somebody else did the math and said, "We're due now for a big one."

A search showed that two individuals in the United States had been infected in the previous couple of years with Swine Flu, the same flu that was thought to have caused the pandemic. Both of these individuals, however, had been in close contact with pigs and that cast the matter in doubt. It was generally agreed that we were OK as long as the victims had been with pigs.

Then, at Fort Dix, New Jersey, healthy recruits started coming down with the flu. Swine Flu. A quick surveillance revealed that no Fort Dix recruit had been with a pig. People in Atlanta started getting excited.

I found myself in the State of Delaware, running a state-wide Swine Flu Immunization Program. It was part of a national campaign to vaccinate everybody.

I marshaled resources and gathered troops and organized meetings. Everybody was in favor of the program, except this one guy who came to all the meetings and kept asking questions about how I was doing everything. And why.

After one of these meetings, I asked him if he worked for the Health Department. He said, no, he was unemployed. I asked him if he wanted a job. He said, sure. So I put him in charge of running the program. For $12,000.

His name was Allen Kagel and he did a top-notch job. When the program began, people started lining up all over the State. All I had to do was appear on the local news.

On December 16, Kagel invited me up to an elementary school in Wilmington to observe the operation he had set up there. When I arrived, the parking lot was full. Lines of people snaked around and through the halls back to the school clinic where the vaccination stations were. I saw one man, inching his way up on a pair of wooden crutches. He grinned at me when he passed by.

A little while later, I got a call from Dover. My office had reached the Principal's office at the school, where Kagel had his command post. He took the call, but then handed it over to me. I listened to the message as it had been transmitted from Atlanta. And then I said, "OK."

I looked at Kagel and said, "The National Program has been terminated."

As I considered my next move, Kagel seized the microphone of the school intercom and bellowed, "THE NATIONAL SWINE FLU PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELED."

What happened next was a rush for the exits.

I said, "What are we going to do with all these people?"

Kagel said, "What people?"

The hall, which had late been full of eager vaccinees, was empty. I went to the window. The parking lot was empty.

And, a block away, I saw the figure of a man, with crutches akimbo, making it around the corner.

Sufficient to the Day

I'm tired of the stock market. I'm tired of the stock market channel. I'm tired of being told I could be rich if I only had VectorVest.

I'm tired of Google. How long does it take to conquer the world, anyway? I'm tired of Apple. I'm tired of Apple doing better than Google. I'm tired of thinking about how I almost pulled the trigger on Apple when it was 85, but didn't, because of Steve Jobs. I'm tired of Steve Jobs.

I'm tired of hearing about the first 100 days. A hundred days ago, Google was 282. Now, it's 389. Great. Let me know when it gets to 460. I'll throw a party.

I'm tired of swine flu and it's not even here yet.

I'm just tired.

I don't even know what day it is.

Hey, Now

I've reported on Facebook before in these pages.

When I first joined, I had no friends. My home page was peaceful. I sent a message to James Altucher. To me, he was a famous person. He sent me a message back. I thought that was nice. But we didn't become friends, or anything like that.

I tried to get my high school class to join, but they didn't want any part of it. They sent me nervous clippings from newspaper stories.

Then, people at work started talking about Facebook. They said it's a tool. We need to make use of it. I got a couple of friend invitations from people I knew in the office.

I also got a friend invitation from a beautiful, 21-year-old Peruvian girl because we have the same last name. I thought, does this happen to people named Jones?

I started sending out a few invitations of my own.

More people from the office popped up. Then, a few people from my high school class joined. Because their friends invited them. Of course. That's the way Facebook works.

The family - daughter, son-in-law, grandchildren, wife - joined a few weeks ago.

And now it's a crowded house. I see all these people on my friend list and they don't seem to go together.

I'm not sure I want to see pictures of people at work and my high school class and my grandchildren all in the same list with a beautiful, 21-year-old Peruvian girl.

Stand and Shout Hero

We've had a run of heroes, lately.

We've had Chesley in the Hudson. And we've had the boat captain in the small boat.

Now, the world is going nuts about this woman in Britain. She stood on stage just like Andy Kaufman doing Mighty Mouse. Everybody had the picture. They knew what they were gonna get. Then, just like Andy, she extended her arm out, and opened her mouth up, and sang.

The audience stood up and cried. The judges all cried. Now, the whole world is crying.

Something had happened.

Yahweh was in the building.

Google Eve

The villagers in Brigadoon come to life one day, every hundred years, and start looking for Van Johnson.

And so it is with Google. One day every quarter, it comes alive and speaks its earnings. For an hour or so, the world is confounded. And then it all disappears in a fine mist.

Last time, you may recall, was Google's last good quarter. This time will be Google's last bad quarter. Or maybe its first bad quarter. Or just its next good quarter.

I don't care. If they do anything at all, it will be a moral victory. I think I speak for all shareholders when I say that, if they do well, for recompense we will commend them and wish them well in all their future endeavors on our behalf.

My mood is calm. My blood pressure, low. Dover Beach, itself, is receding. For the while, I have my livelihood, fetching clams from the sea and marching them up to my counting house. And, for the while, the world, as we know it, suffices.

Rock Star

Hardware can kill you, if it falls on your head. Software is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Back when IBM was big, hardware was the thing. If you bought Big Iron, it was up to you to make it do something. Later, IBM developed operating systems and gave them away free with the machinery. Software was nothing to them.

So little was software on IBM's mind and culture that, when they invented the personal computer, they sold a license to Bill Gates to put the software in. They probably laughed at him.

The truth is, hardware is nothing. Software is everything. Eventually, software breaks loose from hardware and floats free.

At Google, hardware gets no respect. Thousands of cheap PC's crammed together in overheated box cars like loads of bricks, while software breaks across the world like a rock star.

The Hard Part

The difference between Google and Microsoft is the difference between Larry and Sergey, on the one hand, and Bill Gates, on the other.

Gates was a college dropout. Larry and Sergey were graduate school dropouts.

Gates and Jobs and Wozniak all came out of West Coast garages. Larry and Sergey came out of the academic world of Palo Alto.

Gates was a smart programmer, but he never imagined anything bigger than a PC. McNealy said, "The network is the computer," but he didn't know what that meant. Larry and Sergey took the idea seriously and solved the problem of scale with creative architecture and parallel programming.

The programming was easy. The hard part was taking the idea seriously enough to do it.

I guess it must be up to me

Somebody ought to slap Macke.

Not Finerman, she wouldn't do it. Maybe Janarian, you can tell he gets nettled by the never ending innuendo that comes out of Macke's maw. But Pete's such a decent joe that he usually blows it off with a little frown for the camera.

Today, Jon Najarian, so unflappable he would never slap anybody, because he knows his big little brother will take care of him, that same Jon Najarian said something good about Google today. A guest had said that Google has rallied well, but every move is faded, and that's held it back. Jon said that kind of set-up looked good to him.

Macke threw a fit. He let loose his classic Google rant, in the space of five seconds, mentioning outer space, PhD.'s doing whatever they want, free everything, and migawd it's just an advertising company.

He needs a good slap. Ratigan would have done it. If everybody else did.

I guess I'm going to have to do it myself.

Next time I'm up there.

hill of beans

I can't get excited about GOOG these days. They're still going to rule the world. I'm sure of that. But the problem is, in these crazy times, ruling the world doesn't command much of a multiple.

How many times now have we skirmished on this same ground? Too many.

I remember the first crossing.

I had bought GOOG just under 200, and it seemed like a great struggle to achieve that level and hold it. Getting to 300 took more of an effort the closer it got. The law of round numbers was in effect.

On October 20, 2005, GOOG closed at 303.20. It had been a sleepy Thursday all day. After the bell, Google's earnings for the third quarter were released. The results, by universal regard, were stupefyingly incredible. In the after hours, the stock shot up 50 points to the mid-350's. The air was thin at that altitude, but the next day, GOOG held, handily. It didn't stop until it hit 475, by the end of the year.

Then, the foot of pride came down and it was the better part of another year before it would see that level again. But then, after basing for a while, GOOG made its final assault on the mountaintop.

All who owned GOOG at that time were beatified. It seemed our natural birthright.

Now?

We're just waiting for Muley.

In nothing flat

My wife is the last person I would imagine watching "Dancing with the Stars", but she's downstairs, watching it now.

I'm upstairs, trying to get it together. GOOG's up two bits in the after hours. What can I make out of that? Nothing.

Desperate for material, I go to the Google Message Board. Everything is in upper case. All posted by the same guy. I go to Advanced Search. I search for "Moron". My name comes up.

I need a title. I can't even think of a stupid title. How about, "Ennui Having Fun?" That's truly disgraceful. Maybe I can use it as a comment. Better google it first.

Two million hits.

Great.

Postal

The Liberty Man is gone from his post on Highway 61, which is what I call the road between me and work.

The guy isn't there anymore. He's off to some uncertain future. Like me and all the blessed rest of us. He and I connected for an instant there, but epiphany has no cash value.

Just think. If I had millions of readers with a tremendous buzz, that guy would be famous right now, and his people would be trying to contact my people.

I may not post this.

I don't care if it is Sunday.

Diplomacy: A Country for Young Men

Obama's abroad, showing his teeth to everybody. Michele is looking good. How do they do it?

I remember what the pundits said about Kennedy when he came out of his first face-down with Khruschev. They said he looked shaken.

But I'm not comparing Obama to Kennedy. I'm comparing Obama to myself.

Years ago, this young doctor and I were sent by our superiors to Guatemala City for a week, because they thought we could speak Spanish. There was some occasion going on down there and we were trusted to represent the Government. We had diplomatic passports. We took ourselves very seriously.

We arrived on Sunday afternoon. Monday morning, we met with a man named Hector who was the Director of the Communicable Disease Bureau. He introduced us to the Minister of Health and we all rode in a taxi to another big building where we met with the Prime Minister, himself.

Only it wasn't just himself. All his Department Heads from across the whole country were on hand to greet us. We met with them in a very large ceremonial room where a vast number of tables had been arranged in a rectangle. We were seated near the Prime Minister.

There were introductions and welcomes all around. We got through that pretty well. Then the Prime Minister asked each of his Department Heads for a report, describing his region and his Department's operations.

I think it was somewhere around the third guy starting his spiel that I realized I wasn't understanding anything that was being said. I looked at my compadre. He wasn't getting it either.

All I got was a general impression that these Heads of Office, though they stood at the pinnacle of their country's government, seemed like a pretty raucous bunch of fun-seekers. I didn't understand much of what they were saying, but I recognized all the words I remembered from my "Spanish Slang and Dirty Words" book.

Somehow, we got through it. But when we came out, Hector said we looked shaken. He took us to a bar nearby.

After a couple of rounds, we got up the nerve to ask Hector how we did.

Hector leaned forward and, in a low voice, said: "There was a serious breach of protocol."

The doc and I both said, "Really?"

Hector grinned and said, "No! It wasn't you. It was the Prime Minister. He farted!"

We said, "Really?"

Hector banged the table, "No! Have another cerveza!"

We laid back. This was a country in which we could not fail.

Liberty Man

The market's been doing good lately. I think I'll worry about losing my job now.

At work, they're getting rid of the mainframe computer. That's where all my stuff is. Where all my eggs were hatched. It's been my meal ticket since I retired. I know things nobody else knows. I can do things nobody else can do. But nowadays there's little call for the things I know and can do, so they're getting rid of the stupid computer.

Something to think about on my way home.

Something to distract me from the usual distractions on Highway 61. For the past couple of weeks, I'd been noticing the kids waving signs out in front of the H&R Block office. Dressed up like the Statue of Liberty, with a little headpiece of Statue-of-Liberty rays coming out, and a pale green Statue-of-Liberty dress flowing down, almost covering their jeans. There were boys, and girls, too, of every gender, but no more than two on any given day, waving their signs, paid as it were to act silly for the benefit of H&R Block.

There's been a pretty high turnover, but most of them come back at least once. In the beginning, I think they thought it was cool, but I believe it got old fast. Toward the end of last week, the kids were holding the signs up in front of their faces, so nobody could see them. I can imagine the tweets not going in their favor. Sic transit gloria.

Yesterday was something different. A grown man. With a light beard, possibly in his thirties, wearing the Statue-of-Liberty suit, with the rays coming out, and jumping up and down and waving the sign. He grinned at me when I went by.

Today, in my distracted mood, I wasn't looking for him, but there he was. Again. Jumping up and down and waving at the cars going by.

I thought, maybe it's the Manager of the H&R Block office, and he couldn't get any more kids to do it, so he had to get out there himself.

But I wasn't in the mood for humor. So I decided that he's probably just another joe who's lost his job by the grace of God and now he's just out there doing what he can.

As I passed by, he grinned and gave me a thumbs up.

You gotta love this country, man.

Cueless in Redmond

In the eighties and nineties, I was a grunt programmer and that qualified me to put in some quality time at Microsoft University, where in those days all us hacks got educated.

Microsoft was cool, then. I went there several times. The Snickers were free. I saw the Big Rock Candy Mountain flowing. And I ate the hamburger in the hamburger joint. I did Redmond.

But the time I remember is when Louis Kahn and Greg Johnson went with me. I don't remember the year, but it was when everybody on campus was saying that "Microsoft was betting the company on NT."

At the time, both Louis and Greg worked for me, although that's what you might call a euphemism. Both of them were smarter programmers than I was. Louis, in particular, was a wunderkind who became financially independent in the computer business when he was 17.

I once went to a computer networking conference with Louis back when networking was the coming thing. On the first day, we walked into the conference room and were immediately surrounded by at least 20 people. They all wanted to talk to Louis. That's when I found out that Louis was famous. A guy next to me said, "Who are you?" I said, "Louis works for me." The guy edged away. After that, if anybody asked, I said, "I'm with Louis."

But when Greg and Louis got together, they were like big kids. The first thing they wanted to do, when we got in to Redmond, was go to a local arcade and play the video games and drive the racecars.

Then we hooked up with Dave Edson, a Microsoft programmer Louis knew, and we all went to a fancy pool parlor, which, we were told, was a classy place to hang out in town. Now, in those days, Dave Edson was known for being the guy who ported Tetris to Windows, but he made us go all the way to his place first so he could get his cue stick.

I said, "Don't they have cue sticks at the place?"

Edson said, "This is my cue stick."

I stood rebuked. He brought a little black case from his house and showed it to me. The cue was inside, and it came in two pieces that screwed together. All in all, a precision instrument. I was impressed.

At the pool parlor, Edson said to me, "You want play a game?"

I explained that I was a terrible pool player. The truth is, I watched my father once take two bills off a couple of slicks by running the table while holding his cue in one hand, but I know nothing of the game. And, especially, I told Edson, I did not wish to play anyone of such a high calibre as himself.

He said, "I'm not that good. I'll show you how."

I said, "I left my cue at home."

He showed me the cue rack.

As it turned out, Dave Edson was no better at playing pool than I was. We fumbled our way to a draw, if that's what it's called.

The next day, he showed us his office space in the part of Microsoft that students usually didn't get to see. He told us that everybody in the area knew it was his space because it had all his things in it.

Later on, in the break room, we talked a little shop.

I said to Dave, "How do you think NT is going to work out?"

Dave said, "Microsoft is betting the company on NT."

Greg told us how Louis had stood up in a national meeting when he was still a kid and told a big company that their technical architecture was all wrong. Everybody on the dais was confounded, but Louis was right and they were wrong.

Greg said it was like baby Einstein, tugging on Newton's cape.

Edson then paid homage, saying that Louis was a genius of networking, while he, himself, was "network clueless."

I said, "Me, too."

And Louis laughed out loud.

Wooters and Finckner

For all I know, they're still out there somewhere, going around on "Cripple Creek".

Billy is posing. Eddie is playing. I took the picture.

Blue Yodel

The sixties started in 1965. I watched the thing go by from the sidewalk. My hair didn't get long until 1972.

That's when it got down to me. Square-toed boots and jeans, hair all messed up. At work, I hooked up with a bunch of kids, half my age, because one of them was going with my secretary, Janet. These kids were into playing guitars and getting messed up. They let me go along because I had once stood in the presence of Hank Williams, Sr.

We'd go to somebody's farmhouse, at night, deep in the woods of Maryland or Delaware, I never knew which side of the line we were on, but there'd be a crockpot going and we'd get inebriated and all stand around playing guitars, except me. I couldn't play. They'd run through the chords of "Cripple Creek" over and over again. What you have to understand is, there'd be nobody singing. Just a bunch of guys, going through "Cripple Creek". It always seemed a little funny to me at first, but as the evening wore on, it would start making perfect sense.

I'd begin to think I could almost sing. I knew this song pretty well, but in my condition, I could usually only remember the first verse. Anyway, later in the evening, I would find myself looking for a point of entry to come in with the verse I knew and, when I did that, it always got a reaction from the group. I couldn't sing very well, but they were nevertheless grateful for it.

On weekends, we would get in cars and go to local music festivals, way out in the country. There was always the fantasy of entering the band contest. I strongly discouraged the idea every time it came up, but that didn't stop them from standing out under a tree and running through "Cripple Creek" one more time.

You'd see all kinds of people at these affairs, in different stages of consciousness. I saw a young, very pretty girl in a thin cotton dress, walking around with her arms hanging down limply, one hand holding on to a bottle of Jack Daniels that was half-empty.

The guys begged me to sing a verse with them, but I told them I couldn't do that in the light of day. Billy Wooters was the one Janet liked. Eddie Finckner was quiet and shy. He didn't have a girlfriend, but he had real musical talent. Billy just played guitar and a little banjo, but besides that, Eddie taught himself mandolin, fiddle and piano, too. Billy said the band ought to be called "Wooters and Finckner". That was OK with Eddie. He didn't care.

Hard Times

In 1971, I was a young man at the very edge of the world. Everything beckoned. Fortunately, I didn't need much.

In January, 1972, I was in Boston at a conference. It was bone-cold and snowing. I'd been reading in different places about the show that George Harrison had thrown for Bangladesh. And the record was being released that week. In the U.S., I read in the paper, it was being released first in Boston. I was in Boston.

At lunch, I excused myself from the bunch I was with and walked five miserable blocks from the hotel to a record store that I had looked up in the Yellow Pages. I gave $12.50 for the album and walked back.

Of course, I couldn't listen to it until I got back home. But, when I did get to hear it, it was overwhelming. Gods of our time, Harrison and Dylan and their lesser angels, Billy Preston and Leon Russell. Dylan did a long set and sang everything wrong. Two months later, I couldn't hear those songs any other way.

A year later, I escaped from the stock market with $274 left in my stake. But I had a good job, paying $15,000 a year.

In December, 1978, I was at a conference in Washington. It was a two-day affair, but after the first day, I excused myself from the bunch I was with and flew back to Atlanta so I could see Dylan perform at the Omni. There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air.

Hard times.

Pardon my enthusiasm

Now that I've started up, you're gonna get tired of hearing me going on about Obama.

Have you noticed how he is, unabashedly, putting on a strong, moralistic tone with us, the nation? He's telling us we're gonna have to start being good. When was the last time you heard that from a sitting President? Memory fails.

Clinton could have been that way when he was in. He had the charisma, the right slant of eye and crook of finger. He could have been a contender, but he threw it all away for a little personal development.

But Obama. You know. You just know.

World Without End

I never saw the movie, "Wall Street".

I didn't have to. Back in the early eighties, I watched the local news and, now and then, high school seniors were interviewed about what they wanted to do when they grew up. To a one, they all said, "I want to get rich." The best minds of that generation all had hippie parents and they all said, the hell with it. They wanted to be shown the money.

Michael Douglas said it was all right and the race was on. Get the money and wallow in it. And so we did. I, of course, arrived late, just as the pumpkin was pulling up outside, but I got my share.

Now, folks are saying the party is over. They might be right. Good piece in the New York Times, today, by Thomas Friedman:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/opinion/08friedman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

Friedman gets paid to take the long view, forwards and backwards, and, in a few paragraphs, he lays out the forehead-slapping thesis, that we should have known we couldn't keep doing all that stuff forever. He calls it "The Great Disruption." Starting right now. Tell your grandkids, when they ask you why they have to keep working in the field.

I accept the thesis, but I'm not so pessimistic about it. It's time to roll up our sleeves again and get to work. Forget about the money. Fix Gaia. Stop blowing everything up. Make a place for everybody at the table.

Amazing that, at this juncture in history, we get Obama.

Yahweh's up to something.

A World without Windows is like a Door without Knobs

People used to talk about the next Dylan. For a while, John Prine was going to be the next Dylan. Nowadays, to be the next Dylan, you'd first have to pencil a mustache over your mouth. I don't know what Dylan is thinking about these days with this look he has, but it's brilliant.

I used to think about the next Microsoft. I couldn't imagine Microsoft ever being dislodged from its perch. Whatever the next thing was, I thought, Microsoft would buy it or steal it or destroy it.

I was wrong. It's clear who the next Microsoft is. We're witnessing the slow historic movement of tectonic plates against each other, with one moving up and one going under.

The PC is taking its place on the shelf with the polaroid camera and the portable typewriter.

Within ten years, Microsoft will be a backwater company, like Adobe.

Ballmer is the perfect Peter Boyle Frankenstein to ride the Slim Pickens rocket into the ground. His engineers will reproduce all the technology, but they still won't get it.

They won't be able to see what's happening.

No Windows.

I dreamed I saw da Vinci

Back in the renaissance, Leonardo was a very smart man. But, in my dream, I was trying to explain to him what an IPhone is. It wasn't easy.

He didn't get the concept. Finally, gesturing with my hands, I told him it was communication at long distances.

He said, "Oh. A miracle from God."

I said, "Exactly."

The Redemptive Power of Regret

Picture this, if you can. You may have seen it. Henry Blodget, last Wednesday, in his Tech Ticker video, exclaiming, "I'm a huge fan of Obama! I thought his speech last night was tremendous!"

It gave me a warm feeling all over. I had the same reaction Henry had. I was glued to the tube.

And now I'm sorry that I may have been unkind to Henry in these pages.

I'm sorry that I've made fun of him. I'm sorry that I compared him to Anthony Michael Hall in the boy's room. And I'm sorry that I said his tie was way too long.

Forgive me, Henry. It's Sunday.

Far Away, You Rolling River

I kinda hate seeing our boy getting his hands dirty with the day to day. It's clear he's channeling a pure intelligence. Something we may have never seen or heard before. I'm thinking maybe he should have held out for Spiritual Leader.

He brings to speech-making what Gale Sayers brought to broken-field running. You don't sense the spirit welling up in him, the way you did with King. It comes out of his astonished mouth. Not dark and biblical, like Lincoln, but crisp as an engineer's blueprint.

And then he said, unexpectedly, "we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist." And that tickled the better angels of our nature.

Fred and Henry

Henry Blodget and Fred Hickey were walking down the street one day.

Henry said: I was talking to Macke.

Fred said: Yeah? What'd he say?

Henry: He said the Dow is going to 5000.

Fred: How does he figure that?

Henry: They're gonna put Google in.

Fred: Cheez 'n' Chraackers!

Screen Doors

Today was balmy for a change and now a little rain has come.

I'm thinking about the theory of everything.

A little while ago, I opened the door to the back patio and got a whiff of the breeze. It brought back a very particular feeling about summer nights, long ago, when you could stand in a doorway and feel the wind blowing the rain around.

But it was different back then, because there'd be a screen door between you and the night. The screen door was part of the feeling, somehow.

My house now doesn't have any screen doors. That's because doors today are not meant to be opened. So the feeling I get now is good, but it's different. I'm a little too lazy at the moment to think about just what the difference is.

But I'm thinking that, somehow, the theory of everything is going to have to account for it.

Beautiful and bright he stood

You don't tug on Superman's cape, and you don't tell Obama what to say.

He's put all the speechwriters out of work. Writes his own stuff. You know he does. If he does have speechwriters, they're all channeling him. He holds them in his thrall.

I could never sit still before, listening to Presidents speak. When Presidents speak, I leave the room. I'm funny that way.

But I do allow myself a peek, now and then, at Obama. He's on all the time! And he's chewing 'em up, out there. He's Muhammad Ali. He's Tiger Woods. He's Sidney Poitier.

Just wait until he gets a real crisis. Then you'll see. He'll be our boy on the burning deck.

But didn't that boy perish?

He was unlucky. Obama, of course, will rewrite the ending.

Carpe Domingo

In my youth, I never considered the religious profession. For one thing, I had no religion. My father was Jewish and my mother was Church of Christ.

I never figured that out. But I went to Hebrew School and got Bar Mitzvah'd, and at the reception an old man of the congregation took me aside and said, "You're a man, now. You can make your own decisions." I took his advice and never went to Shul again.

I liked science. But then I realized that science will only take you so far. That's when I got interested in religion.

I got my religion from Bertrand Russell and Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. And cosmology articles in the Scientific American.

I was into Russell early and Kierkegaard late. And Nietzsche was crazy.

I liked Orson Welles preaching the sermon in the whaler's church of New Bedford. But I wanted Queequeg's faith and understanding.

Finally, I gave up on receiving The Answer. I started concentrating on getting The Question right.

I wouldn't be going into all this if it weren't Sunday.

In the Year 2039

Interviewer: Mr. Blumen, how does it feel to be so old?

Blumen: I never much thought I could get very old.

Interviewer: I see.

Blumen: You know, I used to work at Google. In the old days.

Interviewer: Your name doesn't appear in any of the official Google annals.

Blumen: Right.

Interviewer: Google disavows any knowledge of you.

Blumen: If I was them, I would too.

Interviewer: What did you do at Google?

Blumen: I was in charge of finding out how much information there was and how much it would cost Google to store it. I had PhD's working for me.

Interviewer: What did you find out?

Blumen: I found out that we could keep up with the input for about 100 years, but after that we would fall behind in future centuries by an exponential amount.

Interviewer: Did Google incorporate that into their famous Algorithm?

Blumen: I dunno. They fired me.

Interviewer: Was that when you turned to blogging full-time?

Blumen: Could be. Who want's to know?

Interviewer: It's well known that you are the world's oldest living blogger.

Blumen: I didn't know that.

Interviewer: It's true.

Blumen: It's a kick in the pants.

Twitter and the Google Man

As if I didn't have enough to worry about, I now have to worry about real-time search, patent pending.

I thought I was up-to-date because I know what David Hume did in 1742. Now I find that I need to know who said what, two seconds ago. Great.

And it's gonna kill the Google Man.

I'm getting a visual. Larry and Sergey, sitting in their empty hot tub, because the Water Department has turned their water off.

Great.

Oh, didn't he ramble

It's Saturday night and I have no date. But that's all right - neither does my wife.

It's Saturday night and I have nothing to say. I feel I have a great notion, but I can't think of what it is.

I had too much wine, tonight, with dinner. It's throwing me off my rhythm.

I'm listening to the Jim Cullum band on "Riverwalk Jazz". Somebody's talking about Lester Young, telling about when he got upset while he was performing, he would get a little whisk broom out of his pocket and brush his shoulder off. It was a sign.

I feel that I have been informed.

Which puts me in mind of the story I heard James Dickey tell one time at Emory about the old boy from south Alabama who drove the Governor's car for him. That boy polished that car every day and kept it up real good. But he didn't have one decent suit of clothes for himself. The Governor told him to get some clothes, but he didn't do it. Finally, when his friends started laughing at him, he went downtown to the Men's Store.

The salesman welcomed him in and, quick as a whistle, laid out a fine suit of clothes to try on.

He said, "You could get buried in this."

The boy tried on the coat, but one sleeve came down over his fingers and the other one just barely cleared his elbow.

The salesman said, "Don't worry about that - that's the way they're wearing 'em this year."

And he showed the boy how to stand, bent over just a little with one shoulder held back while the other one advanced, and the sleeves evened up perfectly.

The salesman said, "Hold it right there and I'll help you get into the pants."

But when he got them on, one leg was hiked halfway up to his knee and the other one was covering up his shoe.

The salesman said, "You're not standing right." And he showed him how to stand so both his cuffs lined up within a gnat's bristle.

The salesman said, "Now hold on to that posture. I'll just take forty dollars out of your wallet and you'll be all set."

Later that day, two guys he knew saw him walking down the street.

One of them said, "You see who that is?"

And the other one said, "I sure do, and look how crippled up he is!"

And the other one said, "Yeah, but don't his suit look good!"

What to do if you win the Lottery

Don't tell anybody. Not your wife, not your mama, not your in-laws or the TV Station.

If you do tell somebody, remember you're rich enough to have them killed.

But it's better not to tell anybody.

If it does get around, and there's too many to kill, then get rid of the money as quick as you can.

Give it to Blagojevich.

Then let everybody know that you gave it away. You can keep a few thousand for expense, but you have to tell them that you gave it all away.

Google is a Vacuum Cleaner as big as Wyoming

They got scale. Miles and miles of scale. The triumph of programmers. Did GM ever figure out how to get to everybody who was in a Chevrolet? Not hardly. But Larry and Sergey figured out how to get to everybody with a computer. Er, phone.

Thirty years ago, Bill Gates famously told his programming buddies that they should be paid for their software. Twenty years later, Larry and Sergey said, "Naw, let's just give it all away!"

It's easy to imagine them in their hot tub at night, looking up at the stars and listening to that whooshing sound, coming in from every direction.

Larry says, "I want to be as rich as Bill Gates."

And Sergey says, "Me, too."

It's Friday and I work for Google

Today, on my own time, I have devised a variation on the Word Morph game.

In the Word Morph game, you start with a word and try to transform it into another word of the same length by changing one letter at a time. Another real word must be the result of any letter-change. For example,

Transform MISS to HITS.

MISS
HISS
HITS

Simple. Notice that the words are short, usually less than five letters.

Now suppose, you can either add a letter or subtract a letter, instead of changing a letter. This variation of the game allows words of different lengths to be morphed into each other.

How is the game to be played? An assumption is made that everybody has access to a gadget that will check the degrees of separation between any two words and then show the solution. If any. It is recognized that there may not be a solution for a given pair of words. In either case, with the gadget, it is a trivial matter to solve the puzzle, or demonstrate that there is no solution.

The game, then, will be played by searching for word-pairs that have solutions. It's a process of discovery. Many, if not most, word-pairs will have no solution. Solutions for big words and for words of different lengths will, therefore, be sought as holy grails. Elegant solutions and those having interesting word-plays will be prized.

A further variation of the game, which could become an area of research by serious word mongers, is one which would allow multiple words, phrases or sentences to be morphed into other words, phrases or sentences.

The game will be endlessly fascinating, because a general solution for even modest languages would require a computer bigger than the Earth.

But not bigger than the Solar System.

Let's do a little bidness

GOOG made a good showing today. The trend is up. It fooled around a bit, around 325, just like Fitzpatrick said, but once it set foot firmly on the other side, the shorts gave up and here we are almost to 350. The unbearable lightness of GOOG.

Some would say it's been a big run from 250 and now it's time to unload. I don't see it that way. The way I see it, the whole area below 300 is a nether region that our GOOG should never have achieved. None of that counts. We're starting from scratch right here. Everything is looking good.

I see 355 easy.

I haunt myself

GOOG is not a fave with the Fast Money crew.

Macke ridicules the company and the stock. He says Google is cockamamie because its founder wants to go up in space. And employees get to work on their own stuff every Friday.

Seymore is contemptuous of GOOG. When CNBC had its Championship of Stocks contest, last year, GOOG was seeded near the top of the tech group. Seymore said, "Who let those jerks in?"

Adami has nothing against the stock. It would just never occur to him to buy it.

Ratigan likes GOOG, because he likes the story. He would buy it, if everybody else did.

Karen said she was interested if it got low enough. When it got low enough, she bought a little and then sold it quick when it went down a point. Like a hot horseshoe.

Terranova likes GOOG and owns it. He said it was a core investment to him. He shares his pain with us.

Najarian likes GOOG at the right time. He said he bought some futures at 598. He probably held to about 650 and then sold. At night, he probbly dreams about investing for the long term.

So what do these yokels really like? They like AAPL.

Which sells things you can dig out of the ground. Like IPods.

Which I bought two years ago at 67 and sold at 73. This is all about me. No matter where I start out, it always comes back to me. Me, me, me.

I could smash me.

I believe everything I read

Don't put my faith in nobody
not even a scientist


I read a blog the other day by a cosmologist turned quant who was going on about a thing called the Hickey Event Horizon (HEH). Apparently, anything that gets close to the Hickey Event Horizon gets stretched so thin it almost goes to nothing.

There must be something to it, because last year GOOG came right up against the Hickey Event Horizon and became a shade of its former self. Luckily, it didn't go all the way through.

If there's an original thought out there, I could use it right now.

Google Eve

I'm not ready for Google Eve.

After learning yesterday that anything can happen in this blessed world, I'm not ready to worry about Google making its numbers. Either way, I don't care.

Wake me up in twenty years. Tell me how rich I am.

Apologia Pro Domingo

When Martin Luther King gave his speech at the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, I wasn't there. I didn't even hear it on the radio.

A few days later, a guy I knew told me he thought it was the best speech he had ever heard. I still didn't get it. I wondered how many speeches this guy had heard.

I came of age in the sixties, but I wasn't of the sixties. I remember seeing some graduate students sitting on the steps of the bookstore across from old Stanford Union. They were playing a radio, real loud so everybody could hear it. Something about Vietnam. It was 1961. I didn't know what Vietnam was.

When the Cuban Missile Crisis hit, my professor, who was a refugee from World War II, fled to the Oregon woods to hide until Armageddon was over. I didn't go with him.

When King died in 1968, I heard his "Mountaintop" speech on TV and was struck dumb. After that, I sought out all the recordings of his speeches and sermons and found them wonderful.

I was a little slow, but I got there.


It's Sunday, a time for reflecting on one's shortcomings.

Watch your step, he said

So far, I see nothing in Obama not to like. I wasn't looking for anything bad. The whole country is clearly in love with him.

Today, a camera was behind him at the train station where he was shepherding his family on-board the Inaugural Special. One of the girls was a little hesitant in making the transition from platform to train with the tracks just below, and Obama cautioned her to be careful. Then, in an off-guard moment, he looked out at nobody in particular and said words to the effect that a slip here would ruin everybody's inauguration. He started to smile and then caught himself. This guy's going to be good.

One thing I really like is the way he's leveling about the shape that we're in. The last bunch was all about finding a spin that the rubes on Main Street would swallow. Obama expects us to be intelligent. Brilliant.

But I'm not surprised. I expected it of him.

A Ramble

I always thought I was a person of variegated opinion. Now, late in life, I see that I'm a creature of habit.

In 1967, I gave $5000 for a custom audio installation, consisting of a brand new McIntosh C22 tubed Preamp and the 2505 50-watt amp with another Mc component just for a cathode ray tube, all feeding through Bozak speakers, with a pair of matching Tandberg tape decks just for show.

My boss at work got tired of hearing everybody talking about the unbelievably fine set-up I had, so he decided to come out and see for himself. He stood in front of it and looked down. There were so many components it took up two cabinets.

He said, "It looks like a damn Cape Canaveral. Blumen, you're a fool."

The next day, at work, he told everybody that I had paid $5000 so I could hear Bob Dylan in stereo.

I haven't changed.

I hauled that rig all over the country during the next twenty-five years as I moved from town to town. Then, a few years ago, I arranged to meet a guy in a parking lot on the seedy side of town. He had come from Tennessee just to see me. I opened the trunk of my car and showed him what I had - a McIntosh C22 tubed Preamp, a 2505 50-watt amp and a thing with a cathode ray tube. All in the original boxes.

He said, "I'll buy everything you've got for more than you paid for it."

We made a deal. I gave him the stuff. And he left me standing in a parking lot in a bad neighborhood with a stack of hunnerd dollar bills in my hand.

Is Anybody Happy?

When I was a lad, I used to tell people that I got Playboy for the pictures. Not much has changed since then.

I don't get Playboy anymore, but I've still got a smart mouth. They can't take that away.

But lately, around the house, it's been getting harder to come up with the good ones. I'm off my game. My wife doesn't throw it up to me, but she knows, if I had taken her advice, we would have been all in cash since 1973. And, with interest compounding, we would be better off today. By a mile.

She knows it. And she knows I know it. It's hard to get a laugh out of that.

Kingdom Come

I don't read books. I read book reviews. Just now, on Amazon, I read several reviews of Nicholas Carr's new book, "The Big Switch", that were really good. One kid gave a long video review that was excellent, I thought.

I got the general idea. It's good to think about Edison and Larry and Sergey in one breath, but I want to think about what we're going to be doing up in the cloud, besides rolling around heaven all day.

I think we have to recreate the institutions of the world and all its commerce, public and private, in pretty much the same way that we have them now. Procedures that have evolved over centuries. Start with The Bureau of Vital Statistics.

You won't be able to be anonymous, anymore. You won't be able to hide behind your avatar. If you have to go in a bank today, you don't wear a clown suit. That would be dangerous.

It'll be the same, up there. In the cloud, as it is on the Earth.

2008 - Wild Days!

"Hope" is the thing with feathers


As last year began, I still had my faculties. The drummer I was marching to kept me in step. On January 23, I bought into the maw of the panic. I made money.

Back in October, 2007, I'd speculated about a global recession, but I didn't act on my surmise. In January, I decided we were in it. Clearly, I had no idea what a global recession would be like.

It seems centuries since I sold a paltry amount of GOOG at 650 and fantasized about buying it back under 550. But I couldn't wait for that. I bought it back, three weeks later, at 628.

In April, I went completely to cash. No GOOG, no nothing. But, as mid-year approached, everybody was saying that Hallelujah Land was just around the corner. I was down 9% on the year and my inner Dundee was screaming, "That's not a crash!", but I decided that the nonsense had gone on long enough. I bought value funds. I bought Heebner.

Then all the wheels came off and I learned what it must have been like to be on the Titanic and slowly come to the realization that we weren't going to just limp back to Southampton. It was like buying Heebner. All the charts went vertical. I started selling into the maws of panics.

Now, like everybody else, my fortune is greatly reduced. And now, the sea has suddenly calmed and I'm leaning the wrong way again. I have only myself to blame. I did the right things. And then I undid them.

There are many ways to screw things up. This is just one of them.

CC Rider

Even the bloodhounds of London
Couldn't find you today


I check Google Analytics almost every day. It's a pond of information.

Back when I used to advertise myself on the Yahoo! Google Message Board, I could get 30 or 40 certified visitors a day, most of whom were in and out pretty quickly. Then I figured, why go to all that trouble, when there's probably three people out there who really enjoy what I'm doing and check it out regularly. Even when I don't advertise.

So I stopped going on Yahoo! and, since then, I've been getting three to ten visitors a day, certain, and one of them is always me. That's a pretty exclusive club.

I can see the same people coming back again and again. I don't know their names, but they live in Nyack and Irving, Texas, and Franklin, Tennessee, among a few others. I recognize them from their screen resolutions and Flash version numbers. And their network locations.

Sometimes, I might get visitors from several locales, all within 100 miles of someplace like Nyack. So I check their network locations and find they're all getting my blog on their phones. It's probably the same person. It never occurred to me that people might be moving around.

Now, I'm watching somebody who seems to be moving in a circuit between Dallas, Denver, Florida and then a long chill in North Metro, Georgia, before starting out again. I know it's the same person because they all have the same screen resolution and Flash Version. That may not mean much to the Tall Tail guys, but to me, with my small-cell population, it's like fingerprints.

I'm wondering if this might be "CC", who left a nice comment for me a few posts back. CC said that he was "just a schlepper" in a rock'n'roll band, which is a badge of courage where I come from, but it got me thinking about bands on the road.

So my theory is that CC has a tour that takes him from his base in Georgia to Texas, then on to Colorado, back through Florida and then home to North Metro. Some kind of country honky-tonk circuit.

If that's not him, then I don't know who it is.

Everybody Knows Your Name

Being in Facebook is not without risk.

A girl I went to first grade with invited me to be her friend. In Facebook, you don't accept friendship, you confirm it. So I confirmed friendship with this girl.

When I did that, all her friends and all my friends were notified. And I was reminded again that, when you do anything in Facebook, everybody gets notified. Now, I don't care who gets notified about me. They can talk about me plenty when I'm gone.

But I was raised on the need to know basis. My father told me never to tell anybody anything about myself. Back then, I didn't care. I told everybody everything. Now that I'm in Facebook, I can see what my father was talking about.

I want a system that knows who I am, keeps track of all my worldly commerce, and let's me decide who gets notified about what. Like E-Mail.

I noticed that my schoolmate has recently become friends with Nancy Pelosi. I like Nancy Pelosi. I think she's really cute. But I don't want to become her friend. Not on Facebook.

FAQ

Q: Mr. Blumen, why don't you write something every day? It seems as if you run hot and cold for days at a time. Why is that?

A: I don't think of something worth writing every day. I have to be in the mood, and sometimes I go for days on end without being in the mood. You might say, I run hot and cold.

Q: I did say that.

A: Well that cinches it. It's been my unstated policy to refrain from posting anything that's not worth writing or reading. Sometimes it's hard to tell. Sometimes there's a fine line between sparkling words and self-humiliation.

Q: So how do you tell the difference?

A: I don't know.

Let Us Now Praise Peter Schiff

You know this guy - he's appeared on the Stock Channel regularly in the past few years. All during the boomtime, he was slouching toward Armageddon.

There were a few others - Kass, Roubini, Gary Shilling - who saw the trouble coming, but Schiff was different. His smooth demeanor never flickered. The shape of his little smile never moved a fraction of a degree from its designated arc. He did not respond to logic that was outside his syllogism.

Now, he's right as rain. And now, when Kass and the rest are beginning to look at the next turn in the road, Schiff continues to peer into the abyss.

I looked him up and found that his father was Irwin Schiff, the famous tax protester. That explains everything.

Woody Allen had a problem with authority. I have a problem with impenetrable minds. I shouldn't let Peter Schiff get to me.

We shouldn't be encouraging him. In the fulness of time, we'll see that, even when he was right, he was wrong.


I know it's Sunday. I'm sorry.

Real Good for Free

A few years ago, I found myself in an Embassy Suites Hotel in Orlando. The good thing about an Embassy Suites is that they provide breakfast, every morning, for free. Not the mini-me-muffins and Raisin Bran that you get everywhere else. This is a real breakfast with eggs and bacon and sausage, cooked to order by real chefs. They always drew a crowd.

The time I'm thinking about, there were three chefs, all with vague European accents, maybe brothers, moving around like tummlers and working the crowd while producing breakfast out of smoke and fire.

They shouted: "Whatever you want! You got it! It's America! Everything free in America!"

It brought a tear to my eye.

That's what I like about Google. Everything's free. They let me write this blog and publish it myself. For nothing. They handle everything. I just have to come up with the words.

I'm nobody special. They don't even get any revenue from me. But I have the same rights as important people like Paula Abdul.

And when I write my blog, I get a good feeling, like I'm out on the street with a clarinet and I know how to play it.

Dreams where the umbrella is folded

A while back, I thought I wanted to start a blog about Bob Dylan, and I did start one. I posted one item - a review of "Modern Times" - and then never came back to it.

And yet, this blog, ostensibly about Google, is shot through with Dylan. Maybe I will just sneak a Dylan post in, now and then, and nobody will care.

Right now, "Bob Dylan the bootleg series, volume 3" is on the Bose and it's set to repeat the last track until I turn it off. The last track is "Series of Dreams". I have on my Quiet Comfort headphones and I have listened to "Series of Dreams" all the way through about four or five times, now.

When I haven't listened to "Series of Dreams" for a while, it always makes me cry. Always at the same line. But after listening to it five times through, I don't hear it anymore. Because I anticipate everything. I will stay refractory, like this, for maybe a year.

Just Like Muley

I used to tell myself that I was lookin' out for things, so that when the money come back everything'd be all right. But I know'd it wasn't true. That money ain't coming back. It ain't never coming back! And me, I'm just an old graveyard ghost.

Thus Spake Larry and Sergey

In my youth, I read a lot of Nietzsche and I thought we would be beyond good and evil by now.

Tonight, I tuned in to the middle of a radio program which featured a debate among several professors and other well-known people on the proposition that, despite its motto, Google has done evil on several occasions.

A survey, taken before the show, showed that most people in the audience didn't care about this, one way or the other.

One guy, against the proposition and for Google, said Google did good when it came out with its motto and got everybody thinking about being good. Good point.

But Esther Dyson, also against the proposition, and arguably the smartest person in the room, gave the best brief in Google's defense. She said Google does good by providing people with services they want, and it does good by increasing the flow of information everywhere, making it tough on tyrants.

Those for the proposition were pitiful and shrill. Militant idealists. They said that good is good and evil is evil and black is black and there's no room for Mr. In-Between. Google, in their estimation, was evil when it acquiesced in keeping Chinese people from seeing YouTube, and there's no chance for redemption. Censorship is evil, Google did it, and that was good enough for them.

Well, censorship is not evil. It's unconstitutional, and then only if the Government does it.

Google's a corporation and it's run by a couple of guys who knew exactly what they were saying, but probably didn't realize how it would be taken. You can throw it in the same bucket with John Lennon's comparison of the Beatles to "Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing..."

Of course, Lennon was evil.

Hallelujah, I'm a bum!

I believe in owning up to the things you've done.

So I sent an E-Mail, today, to my financial advisor. I informed him that everything he told me would happen, happened. I said that, if I had taken his advice, I would be a richer man, today. And then I told him that I would be looking for another financial advisor in the coming year.

To Have and Hold

Today, on TSC, Rev Shark and Rothbort were pissing at each other in the Columnist Conversation. The topic for debate was "Should people buy-and-hold, or not?" Both gentlemen brought their grandchildren into the fray. It was not pretty.

My opinion is that we all buy and hold. The difference is in the way you qualify the hold part.

Minnie Pearl told the story about the old boy who wandered into the blacksmith's barn and picked up a horseshoe, still warm from the forge. Well, he laid it back down in a hurry.

The blacksmith laughed and said, "Burned your fool hand, didn't it?"

And the old boy said, "Naw, it just don't take me long to look at a horseshoe."

By this exemplar, I argue that Rev Shark, himself, buys and holds. He just doesn't hold it long.

Myself, I'm a little bit country and a little bit Rock'N'Roll. I do a little of both, which has been my undoing on several occasions this year.

I have bought and sold GOOG repeatedly. I won't tell you where that's gotten me. I'll just say that I would be far better off if I had never sold a single share of it.

During the 2000 crash, I never sold anything and lost 40%, but by 2004, I had made it back. Without doing anything.

This year, I have been selling with a vengeance. Lately, at the wrong times. Even though I have held substantial amounts of cash this year, I'm still down 35%, with no confidence that I'm going to ride it back up again.

The worst thing is, my financial advisor was right. He told me this would happen.

More from the Bottom

This time of year, when the chilly winds start to blow and the day gives up early for the night, every rat starts thinking of his hole and what he's got to eat and where he'll lay his head down tonight.

The rascally days of summer are fading in the distance. The pig is spare. The bull lies down with the bear. No more fear. No greed. No happiness.

No joy.

Thoughts from the Bottom

As I reflect on the year, it seems to me a cascade of small epiphanies, giving way to bigger ones, each one more horrific than the last, as we try to grasp the size of the thing.

I've been beating myself up for continually going back in too soon, but it's not just me. Nobody saw this coming. Everybody's beating up on themselves for not seeing how big it was. We still don't know how big it is.

I'm reminded of a short story I read as a kid about a young couple who found a great apartment in a nice building for half the normal rent. It had a creepy janitor, but everything else was just what they wanted.

They moved in and everything was fine for several weeks, except sometimes at night, they could feel and hear a low, rumbling hum and vibration that seemed to come from everywhere in the building. They went out in the hall and downstairs, but they could still hear and feel it. It seemed to come from the walls and the floors themselves. Once, they went down in the basement and discovered some huge, shiny metal engines that seemed to be attached to the building itself.

They went back to their rooms and went to bed.

The next morning, the man said to his wife: "I think that this building is some kind of spaceship."

She looked at him and said, "The whole building?"

"Yes."

They didn't talk anymore about it, but one night, when they were in bed, the hum and vibration started up again, but this time it was louder than ever before and the floor and the walls were shaking.

The young couple woke up in alarm and decided that they should get out of the building as soon as possible. They ran downstairs and out into the street. But the vibration and hum was still there. It was coming from the sidewalks and the other buildings.

The man looked at his wife and said, "My God! It's the whole block!"


That story was written in the fifties. We're way past the whole block stage, now. Yahweh, himself, may have to underwrite this deal. God help us.

The Year of Living Dangerously

Money can't buy everything,
That is true


In the summer of 1975, I was detailed by the Federal Government to Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, to take a turn at overseeing the medical surveillance system that had been set up there to process Vietnamese refugees into this country.

Every refugee had to be tested for every disease known to man and given all manner of shots and other injections, plus physical examinations by military doctors. Everything had to be documented, which meant, in those days, recorded on paper. I was in charge of a huge paper mill.

Everything revolved around a xerox machine which copied out a set of medical forms for every refugee who came through. With forms in hand, these hapless exiles were directed through a gauntlet of medical stations where they were abused by modern medical practice. At each station, one form was selected from their handful, and written upon and then placed in a hopper. An army of summer college students - boys and girls - had been hired to run around to all the stations, collect the forms and deliver them back to the Xerox machine where countless copies were made of everything, and sorted and filed, or delivered to some other place.

I remember it being hot that summer. The Pennsylvania outback had the feel of a tropical outpost, like San Juan or Rio. Everybody was running around in shorts. I confess I didn't have much to do. The operation had been set up before I arrived and was running smoothly. The kids did everything. I spent a lot of time in my motel room, catching up on my reading.

I didn't make any money that year, but it was a good year, nevertheless. The IMSAI computer was first introduced in August. And Larry and Sergey were running around in their nappies.

Snappy Story

Larry and Sergey were walking down the street one day and they ran into Eric Schmidt.

Larry said, "Hey, Bubba! What's happening?"

Schmidt: "I've been looking for you guys. I have a question for you."

Sergey: "Great - we love questions."

Schmidt: "How much money would we make if we had everything?"

Larry: "Aw, we figured that out the first day."

Sergey: "Yeah, including Mars."

A Case of Nerves

I watch a lot of TV, so I happened to see that photo op of Obama, meeting with his Technology Advisors. I saw it three times. They were all sitting around a table, with Obama in the middle, the convergence of everyone's attention, including mine.

But on the third viewing, my interest began to shift to the Captains of Industry assembled. A motley group in expensive suits. And in the middle, right across from Obama, was our Googlemeister Schmidt. He's the one, rocking back and forth in his chair, with the loopy grin on his face.

There was no sound so you couldn't tell what was happening, but I figured he was either having a really good time, or he was really nervous.

Then they showed Obama, speaking to the group, and he seemed nervous.

Then I got nervous.

I was already nervous because, last Friday, I bought some SPY and VTI, after I had decided not to. All weekend, I plotted the means to escape from this wily predicament. But then I got lucky - the futures were up big, this morning. I put in orders for the open at the market price, and escaped by the skin of a small profit.

Now, all I have to worry about is, what was making Schmidt so nervous?

Obama Eve

I'm sitting here, watching and waiting, as though the result meant anything to me personally. Actually, it does.

Somebody said, this election would be a rout, if Obama weren't black. I said, Obama's not black, and we're not white. Not anymore.

So, it really doesn't matter how it turns out. Except, one way we'll see the hand of Yahweh, making a rare appearance in human affairs, and the other way, we'll just have to keep muddling through by ourselves.

On Leaf Blowing

Outside my window, the subdivision landscaping crew is blowing leaves down the street.

Who told them to do that?

I like leaves, outside my window. They look nice, in keeping with the season. I think those leaves belong to me. I had plans for those leaves.

Who wants a neighborhood with no leaves?

What kind of country am I living in?

I shun the In Crowd

Apple gets better press than Google. Cramer's girls don't gush over Google.

Last night, Cramer said that Apple was the key to the universe. And then he said it again, and again. And again. At the end, he said, "Oh - Google's good, too".

So today, AAPL goes up and GOOG goes down. It's a law of nature.

Great.

A Google Opinion

Let's pretend that I'm a knowledgeable person.

I might think to myself, "What is it with GOOG, then?"

I think very much about GOOG. Quarter before last, wise persons were saying that GOOG had saturated the market for clicks. Henry Blodget was running up and down, screaming, "The GOOG has fallen! And it can't get up!"

What happened then was, the Short Squeeze Heard 'Round the World. The earnings were up. Way up. New reserves of clicks were being found every day. In the time it took me to go to the bathroom, GOOG was up a hunnert. Which sent me back to the bathroom, for I had nothing in the game. In a moment of terror, I had sold everything.

I asked myself, what would Cramer do? So I bought it all back, paying up. Way up. I told people I had missed a $30,000 opportunity. Since then, Yahweh has shorted GOOG all the way down to 300. My squandered $30,000 opportunity quickly became a real $50,000 loss.

This quarter, GOOG was due for a big one. And they got it. But the response was tepid. Probably because nobody was short this time. Perhaps, I thought, Yahweh has relented.

So now I am at peace with GOOG in the middle 300's. Probably, GOOG will always be undervalued.

I mean, traders know about charts and balance sheets, but they don't understand software. They don't understand what Google is trying to do and they don't appreciate how well they have been executing. Plus, most traders accept the principle that the World should not be ruled by two young, goofy-looking guys.

But GOOG will get there. My feeling is that next Quarter GOOG's earnings will defy gravity. A perfect storm of everything, kicking in at the same time - mobile, display, YouTube, and several things we don't know about, yet. Overcoming the long, withdrawing tide.


I want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Plastics?

No...

Scale.

Love in the Time of Diminished Expectations

"Are we still going to get rich?"

"I don't know. Possibly."

"Possibly?"

"If we live long enough."

"Oh."

"We might not be able to get into the nursing home of our dreams."

"I wouldn't mind that, as long as we could be together."

"Definitely. In the same room."

"Definitely."

"I might have to grease the guards."

"Oh."

There is a Yahweh

Or maybe there isn't. There was none of that trickster stuff this time. A clean beat.

But the rush for the ticket line was orderly. GOOG just ambled up 50 points. We'll look back on this one.

Cramer posted: "...Google is a general unto itself. That's why it is good. Because everything else is bad. So enjoy the gap up. Treasure it, even."

Ay, Cramer is Cramer.

Google Eve

It's Google Eve and the world is filled with exuberant pessimism. I'm strangely cheered, however. What more can they do to me? What fresh humiliation can they visit upon my corpus delicti? Whatever happens - blowout? blowup? - GOOG goes lower.

Is Fred Hickey to be vindicated, at last?

Well, then, I'll stand in line to give him his due, saying, "Fred, my boy, you're a better man than I am!"

Off the Golden Gate Bridge into China Bay

Cramer says, in 2000, technology stocks all fell off a steep cliff and then kept on falling off other, steeper cliffs. Message: Cramer is through calling bottoms. He has reformed. He must be in therapy somewhere.

But I can relate, having bought JDSU all the way down, congratulating myself at the bottom for reducing my cost basis to $60. I rode MSFT from a double at $58 to despair at $15.

But I think Cramer is wrong to say, as he did, that it could happen again to the same bunch of tech stocks plus GOOG. I don't think so, and everybody is entitled to an opinion.

Back then, the tech stocks were way inflated by the Internet mania and Y2K. PE's were astronomical. I rememember hearing somebody on the Stock Channel say, "Maybe Microsoft deserves to have a PE of a hundred because of its Internet Division." Back then, these stocks needed to be taken down. But not now. There's no air in any of them, now.

If you want air, we've got it. This time around, its the financials who've been letting out the funk of 40,000 years. The most unusual suspects - Bear Stearns, Merrill, Goldman, AIG. And the poster child for geometric compression, Lehman, doing the honors from 66 to nothing. So we're seeing the horror, but it's not tech.

Last time, a lot of companies came through OK. Bloody, but unbowed. Tech will get its lumps, this time, like everybody else, but it won't be singled out for execution.

But I wish Cramer would stop talking about it. He's giving me the willies.

Are you ready, brother?

Rev Shark and Doug Kass are both saying that the bottom is nigh. Cramer is screaming, sell everything! Surely, these are the last days. Forget the bottom. I suspect that the Rapture is imminent. I'm giving all my worldly possessions to those who are short and needier than I. I'm getting ready.

Sunday Homily

Forbear ebullience. I read that somewhere, today.

It's no longer an economic problem. It's religious. Boom and bust, ordained by God. And we must all forbear ebullience or we will fall like the high and mighty.

Shoot. It's not religion. It's an engineering problem. The fastest way to get the dang machine going again.

Aldrin was asked what he would do on the moon if the LEM rocket motor didn't fire. He said he'd start learning everything there was to know about that motor.

Markets have failed. Now, astronauts everywhere are studying that motor. A great global buzz is going up. If the Internet is ever going to get its chops as an empowering device, now is the time.

I feel better already. Hallelujah.

tremulous cadence slow

Son, this ain't a dream no more
It's the real thing.


Capitulation is near. I can feel it in the air, tonight. Dover Beach, ringing in my ears. The tide goes out, but it doesn't come back for a long time. I'm ready. Hand me my confession. Tell me where to sign.

There Goes The Election

Lost in the After Hours

The Dow was up a couple a hunnert today, but it didn't feel good. Nothing feels good anymore. We're all just waiting for Godawful.

GOOG was up a half a buck at the close, but then gave it all back plus change when RIMM went over the edge. And then, Heebner. Well. Heebner is Heebner. Beware Heebner. My mind wanders....

I wandered into Coney Island and read a thing about singers covering songs recorded by other singers. How great or terrible they are. I looked at the comments. All the comments had little cartoon pictures on them. I should have known.

The commenters were all disputing everybody else's faves. I decided to add a comment of my own. I wrote:

"My favorite cover is Bob Dylan's version of 'Precious Memories', on the 'Knocked Out Loaded' album."

That should lift the level of discussion, I thought. I looked for my prose in the list. There were 17 pages of comments, each one saying how many minutes ago it was posted.

I went to the end of the list, but didn't see my stuff. Then I saw it wasn't the end of the list anymore. The end was now page 21. I was standing on a moving sidewalk!

I decided to catch up to the end page. But, no matter how fast I clicked, I kept losing ground. The comments were saying "Posted 1 minute ago," when I realized that I had posted my comment over 5 minutes ago.

I was going in the wrong direction. I backed up to page 10 where the comments were posted 6 minutes ago. This was the right strategy, I figured: get out in front of it and run it down. But I didn't see it anywhere. I must have underestimated how long ago I'd posted. I started out in the other direction. I skipped around. At some point, I realized that I would never see my words in print.

I looked in amazement at the other comments. There were people having conversations in there! How did they do that?

I thought about a dream I had, years ago, where I got lost in a cemetery. It was the night before my father died.

He Ain't the Only One

This got my attention today:

"Heebner pukes his positions!"

A gripping read. Thousands have wondered what Heebner was up to at any given time and now this guy has devised a simple heuristic, that even I can understand, for making an educated guess.

But why would anyone care what Heebner is doing behind the curtain? I just want to know how much I lost every day.

http://humblestudentofthemarkets.blogspot.com/2008/09/heebner-pukes-his-positions.html

Through the Looking Glass

Both Microsoft and Google have a view of the heavens. Microsoft is Ptolemaic and Google is post-Copernican.

I looked at Chrome. But it's not about building a better browser. The thing is not to use a browser at all.

Click on Chrome and get taken immediately into full-screen, streaming, bit-torrent live video, 24-7, with a non-windows interface superimposed over your cockpit window. You're in a video game and, around every corner, there's a wall with ads all over it. All the things you want.

And if you want to know how it used to be - down at the bottom of the wall, there's a little Windows icon you can click.

What's wrong with Google?

Nothing.

Is that you, Mac?

Wouldn't it be great if we could handle all our affairs on the internet?

You don't think so?

The reason you think that way is because the internet, right now, is a bar where nobody knows your name. That's got to go. When we get rid of anonymity as a principle of the 'net, everything's gonna get better. And we'll be able to handle all our affairs in the cloud. It'll be the next best thing to Hallelujah Land itself.

I wrote a whole blog on this subject once, in blog-poetic style. I got my wife to read some of it.

She said, "I feel so sorry for you."

Boring, Boring, Boring

GOOG is boring. Heebner is boring. Cash is boring. I've been in this funk now for a couple of weeks.

I'm way past reading TSC.com for information. I read it because there's nothing else to read.

It takes me 39 seconds to go through the Barrons that comes to my driveway every Saturday morning. I look at the Market Laboratory. The short interest is not interesting.

By accident, I tuned into the Stock Channel the day Eric Schmidt came on Cramer's afternoon show. It was boring. Cramer asked him all the stupid questions that we would have asked if we'd been on.

Schmidt's answers were boring. But Cramer hung on every word like he was Moses, getting it straight from Yahweh.

It didn't have to be boring. It could have been interesting....

Cramer: "Why don't you split the stupid stock?"

Schmidt: "Why?"

Cramer: "Well - you know, man!"

Schmidt: "Wouldn't it be evil?"

Cramer: "No! It's evil if you don't split it!"

Schmidt: "I never thought about it that way."

Cramer: "It would be great, man!"

Schmidt (getting out his Blackberry): "OK. I'll call Larry and Sergey right now. How about 500 to 1? That way, we could be a penny stock. We'll have it out in Beta by tomorrow noon."

Cramer pops a vessel and faints on national TV. Medics are called. The Stock Channel switches fast to Becky Quick, interviewing Warren....



What can I say?

It's Sunday.

E Pluribus Heebner

I got out my pencil a while ago. You know what that means.

Yesterday, we were down 3 cents. Today, we're up 4 cents. So, between yesterday and today, I figure I'm up a penny on Heebner.

If I put that penny together with the 49 cents that Larry and Sergey sent me, I'll be able to buy half of anything at the Dollar Store.

Enough about Heebner

I'm sure he's unhappy with the situation himself.

I'm down 19.5% so far. But that's nothing, compared to what happened in late December last. Right after Christmas, there were two bumps down from 63.55 to 45.08. Almost 30%. Glad I wasn't aboard then. I wouldn't be enjoying this nearly as much.

It's bad luck to buy high. It puts you in the position of becoming a long-term investor or a momentum player, depending on which way it breaks.

I'm now looking through my long glass at the far horizon. My White Whale is swimming in another ocean, on another side of the world. It'll be new moon in April before we meet up again. har.

The Devil and Ken Heebner

I don't buy the theory that, just because I bought the fund, Heebner is going to lose his touch. The universe I believe in doesn't work that way.

But I could be unlucky. Or I could have some character flaw that makes me always late to the dance. These are imponderables.

The last couple of days, he was down less than a dollar each. Today, down 88 cents. A few cents here, a few cents, there. Pretty soon, we're going to be talking about real money.

I dreamed that Heebner met the Devil, at the corner of Wall and Broad, twenty years ago, and he bought a license to be the best fund manager alive for the next twenty years. And so it came to pass. But now the license has expired.

"For a sign," said the Devil, "look for a time when Blumen buys in. Then you'll know you've had it."

I don't believe that.

The Once and Future Heebner

Every time I look up CGMFX's closing price in Yahoo! Finance, I see the same old stories from last month:

Heebner's CGM Continues Winning Ways; Holdings Beat Market Handily in Q2
Ken Heebner: Best Fund Manager Alive?

I'm tired of reading these stories. I'd like to read what Heebner is doing now. So, this evening, I was pleased to see this new post, datelined today:

What's Next for Ken Heebner and CGM?

Wherein, alas, the question is asked, but not answered. Of course, nobody knows what Heebner is up to. But whatever it is, he did it back in June. Probably when we were all sleeping.

All I know is, I bought the fund a few weeks ago at 58.50, watched it flutter briefly up to 61, and then drop like a rock to 48. There was one day when it was down 3.56. But now, it seems to have found purchase somewhere because it's just going down pennies a day.

I figure he's out of that hot commodities trade he was in, since they're still going down and he's not. Something slapped him the day he was down 3.56, but he landed on his feet and appears now to be looking for a place to dig in his heels.

T. Boone

It's no secret that The Stock Channel loves T. Boone Pickens. When he comes on in the mornings, Kernen and company shut up and listen. Not so much for what he says. They just like to hear him talk.

Of course, they listen to what he says, too. A couple of years ago, he came on and said, "Fifty dollar oil." They were on the floor. All of them.

I like Boone. He's made a good commercial, not being an adman all his life. He comes across well. Very believable. He has a plan which will be good for the country. And good for Boone.

I don't have a problem with that. I know he has windmills installed over half of Texas. Good for him.

Boone's plan doesn't call for him to be in charge of anything. He doesn't want that. That's what I like about him. He wants to be the thinker-upper. Doesn't want to be the decider. Anybody can be a decider.

Google's Quarterly Earnings Problem

I've given this a lot of thought and I think I have the solution for Google's quarterly earnings problem.

Seriously.

Google offers no guidance with its earnings releases. I don't know why. Maybe they have a really smart reason, such as: Giving guidance is stupid. Or something like that. Maybe Google wants to be a company of mystery.

Personally, I admire Google's stand. I never give guidance about myself to anybody. Still, it's a problem for Google because analysts don't like it when you expect them to guess your earnings, without getting any hints. This produces unintended consequences. Like today.

Anyway, I said I had a solution to the problem, and I do. I have made an analysis of Google's earnings for the past four quarters in relation to analysts' estimates and the surprising differences between them. And I have found that Google has a negative surprise every other quarter, and it is these negative surprises that cause all the trouble.

With this in mind, I propose, for consideration at the next shareholder meeting, that Google, henceforth, release its earnings twice a year, instead of four times. In this way, Google's earnings would be rendered entirely free of negative surprises.

This is no silly statistician's trick. Every company has its own particular rhythm and Google's is decidedly semiannual.

Don't mess with Larry, tonight

First of all, Heebner is down $2.75, today. That's after being down $1.35, yesterday. I know, they told me there'd be days like this with Heebner. I'd buy some more, except I'm afraid he'll have an up 6 day, tomorrow.

And what's more, Google embarrassed all the GOOG analysts today. That's got me pretty choked up. I'm worried about these guys. They've all got families. What are they going to do?

The fact that I'm down 8% is purely incidental. My puny problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.

Not when you think about the two guys the Stock Channel had on the air when the news came out. They were devastated. They fell all over themselves, trying to see who could praise Google the most. One of them got so energized, his rug almost came off.

The only thing I remember that he said was that Google's prospects, going forward, were "saturnine and dyspeptic."

I looked up "saturnine" and it means "suffering from lead poisoning". That's kinda the way I feel, tonight.

Google Eve

I'm getting in that Dover Beach mood, again. My plain is darkling o'er. I'm living on Google Earth, under a black Google Sky. Background radiation from last quarter's restaging of Krakatoa still licking around the fringes.

The analysts are saying good things about Google's chances this time. These guys are not as stupid as they used to be. The fact that they can guess Google's earnings to within a penny is remarkable.

Still, a tiny fear grips my bowel. At my back, I hear the whispered mantra of the picadillied short seller: "Gap gap gap..."

Yahweh or the Highway

I was wrong: the broad market did not rally yesterday. On the other hand, the bottom did drop out of Heebner - down $2.28.

I don't mean to be disrespectful of a deity who has a way of dropping in around mealtime, but I had to laugh. With one hand waving free. There must be some distinction in being targeted for divine intervention by someone who doesn't work for the government.

But this is not cause for despair. There is, after all, a natural hedge for omnipotent foofaraw - time. In time, the squiggles of Yahweh's little giggles will be made smooth and the chart will show more of the hand of Heebner than that of His almightiness.

Of course, eventually, the Old Bugger will yank that rug out from under us, too.

Hee Haw

There's something I don't understand. Everywhere I look, there's another story about Ken Heebner being the hottest fund manager in the universe and his Focus Fund being the next best thing to Hallelujah Land itself. Even Cramer likes him.

What I don't understand is, ordinarily I would not be allowed to get in on such a good thing. I'm usually ineligible for success. Luck is not one of my talents.

I know it's a stupid attitude to take. Why shouldn't I get lucky, now and then? Well. I don't know. It's like I sense the hand of God in my investments.

The God I'm talking about is like Yahweh - omnipotent, wrathful, and something of a trickster, but not necessarily with my best interests at heart.

I'll try to explain. A couple of weeks ago, I bought a little Heebner. It went up, so I bought a little more. It kept going up for several days. I was happy, but I knew it could turn south at any time. So, I decided, when it did, I would buy more, but would stand pat while it was rising. It was a plan.

Almost immediately, it dropped $3.56 in one day. The next day, it declined again, but not so much. I was in the hole, just enough to get my attention, but I looked on it as a bargain in the making. In this market, I reasoned, everything is tanking. So I laid low, and waited.

Immediately, or so it seemed, it went up for a couple of days, so - at $56.42 - I wasn't in as big a hole as I had been in. Not wanting to squander my opportunity, I put in an order today to buy some more. Today, it closed up $2.08. My purchase was recorded at two cents under my cost basis. I'm basically flat on my whole stash of Heebner.

Now, I'm waiting for the other boot to drop. Tomorrow, the broad market rallies, and the bottom falls out of Heebner. It's a dumb joke, but I never said Yahweh was smart.

Dear Landlord

So I was talking to my Financial Advisor the other day, and he showed me this chart that proved, over a period of forty years, I could pile up a ton of money. I told him I didn't have forty years.

He said, you have a thirty-year mortgage, don't you?

I said, indeed I do.

He said, well then.

I said, what.

He said, does it bother you that you might not be around to pay off that mortgage?

I said, frankly, yes. But I depend on the future kindness of some stranger to take over the payments, preferably when I'm dead.

He said, of course.

All in all, a very constructive conversation. We agreed to do it again. Someday, I'm going to do something he tells me to do.

Nothing Happening Here

Can you tell me what we're
waiting for, Senor?


I saw a commercial on TV, the other day, which showed a couple of people, dropping like rocks down this big hole, and the people were screaming, "We're still falling!"

I thought I had somehow been switched to the Stock Channel. But no. It was just another hard-luck story that you're gonna hear.

In the real world, nothing's going on. We've stopped going down, but we're not going up yet. We're stuck.

Everybody's waiting for the big whoosh. Until we see that big whoosh, we can't start moving up again. The big whoosh is the all-clear Klaxon we've heard tell about.

You can't make a big whoosh just by putting your lips together. It has to happen. There has to be pain and weeping of teeth.

But all the pain and weeping has been packaged and sold, and there's none left in the body economic.

Other times have seen the big whoosh. And it always cleared the air and set off the damndest stampede to the Pari-Mutuel window you ever saw.

Why can't we get our big whoosh? We, whom it would do the most good. When are we gonna get ours?

After Hours

I got up this morning to the news from the Wall Street Journal that Google was mighty disappointed with the production of YouTube so far. Great, I figured. Now it will tank at the open and we'll have to deal with that for a while.

But it didn't tank. It dithered around, but held its ground all morning. And in the afternoon too, until the market went nuts to the downside. Only then, did it give up 13 points. Hardly seems fair.

But then, just now, I checked the price again and bedamned if isn't up 13 points in the after hours. For half a second, I had the mad thought that Yahoo! had sabotaged its own Finance System, making it work wrong so that Microshaft couldn't use it. But then I regained my balances and decided, of course, you can't keep a Joad in jail, and you can't keep a good GOOG down.

Bless the after hours! In celebration, I put a little Erskine Hawkins on the old YouTube. It's playing now, and it's taking me back to a time when "after hours" was a whole different thing.

Wake me up when it's time to go to bed.

Just Don't Focus

This was a day when Helene Meisler said that stocks have been going down lately because people have been selling. Doug Kass, a charmer from way back, called her "The Divine Miss M".

What else went on, today?

Actually, that's not exactly what she said. But if I told you what she really said, it would be merely interesting, and not funny. My aim is not to educate you. I just want to make you laugh.

GOOG has been quietly levitating, lately. Not drawing too much attention to itself. That's good. Not a short in sight.

CGM Focus is down a buck-eighty. And I sold the rest of my NUE and bought some more of a Vanguard fund that I own.

Did I say that CGM Focus is down a buck-eighty? I'm trying not to focus on that. I'm trying not think about Bill Miller.

Just Askin'

Everything today: do you really want to know?


Yesterday, I told you about all the good things that happened to me in the market. Would you like to hear about my day, today?







I didn't think so.

The Big LeGOOGski

GOOG today: Back to where it once belonged.


I'm not ashamed to say it. I bought back the GOOG that I sold yesterday. I decided that I wanted the full position, after all.

I got up this morning and found the futures in the toilet and GOOG down around 519. Good. I thought I would let it soak, down to the vicinity of 500. But then it started going back up and I, impulsively as always, put an order in to buy at 525. And got it. And then it kept going up, almost to where I'd sold it yesterday.

The other thing that happened today is that I bought some more Golar LNG. This is the stock that Karen Finerman likes. I bought some a while back a few points higher, and yesterday, I wanted to buy some more. I put in an order for 15.40 and came up empty. I checked it again this morning and it was available at 15.91. I took another batch. And then it kept going up the rest of the day.

It's amazing. I'm motivated by greed to sell and fear to buy. I trade in the moment. There's no science or art in it at all. And yet, today, I made a little money.

I'm beginning to look forward to Google Eve in three weeks. The charthuggers are saying that the Gap must be filled. I'm not so sure. The Gap was all short-covering, in my opinion. The shorts got no skin in the game anymore. I think they're gonna stay home, this time.

Meanwhile, I'm studying my trading skills. I'm working on getting scared sooner.

GOOG the Eskimo

GOOG Today: down $1.65 to $526.42



Full disclosure: I sold half my GOOG today. In the name of capital preservation and sleep preservation, I did it, but only if I could get my cost out at $535. So I put the order in yesterday and got it today. At close of business, I declared napalm.

Then, on Fast Money tonight, this guy from UBS comes on and says Google is going to be the big story of the second half. And their channel checks showed the mighty GOOG sucking in dough at a prodigious rate. GOOG makes the buck-sixty-five back in about two minutes. The outlook is bright.


Everybody's in despair
Every girl and boy

There Must Be Some Way Out of Here

When I need inspiration, or just want to feel dirty all over, I check out the Google Message Board.

The Google Message Board is a real place to me. It's like Casablanca, if Casablanca had been an Indiana Jones movie. Bizarro market place, filled with sub-terrestrial creatures, and camels. Everybody selling, nobody buying. Much confusion, no relief. Give me your sick, your slimy, your depraved of heart. That's the Google Message Board. To me.

Every time I go there, at first, I'm offended and put off, not by the sub-animal obscenity, but by the stupidity displayed. Then, after a while, I want to wallow in it, and I start firing off posts, replying to those most in need of one.

My aim, to be not subtle, but plain-spoken. To say things that can have more than one meaning. To play the fool in earnest.

I might say, "The offal is awful in here, don't you think?"

Or I might not.

Is Everybody Happy?

In my neighborhood, all us neighbors are good neighbors. We accomplish this by never going outside our houses, except in a car.

But, once in a while, something happens which, at least, raises the possibility of direct, neighborly interaction. So it happened, last Thursday night, I was reading TSC.com and my Internet went out.

I looked at my broadband modem and it looked dead. Two steady, unblinking lights, replacing the animated flickering it had when alive. I tried various ways of resetting or recycling the beast, but it was beyond recovery.

Meanwhile, I was thinking. That morning, there had been some kind of cable truck next door, for half the day, and now there's an orange cable running from the box out at the street into my neighbor's house.

My first thought was, a fly-by-night cable guy has diverted my broadband connection into my neighbor's house. But, seized with neighborly thoughts, I decided that an accident had more likely happened, which was not the fault of anyone, and which might have caused me some piddling inconvenience.

So, I called Comcast and initiated a process by which Comcast employees vied among themselves to see which one would actually try to help me.

But I am happy to say that, tonight, one week later, my service has been restored. Thanks to all who had a hand in it.

Now. What's been going on? I've been out of touch... OK, I know. We're going over the falls.

But I don't care. I got my new best friend - the Focus Fund. Monday, it went up $2.08. The next day, it went down $1.29. Meanwhile, the broader market was breaking down. Yesterday, it went down a nickel. Today, it went down $0.15. A quarter of one percent.

Let the chilly winds blow.

And it comes out here

When I think of all the things that Google will bring us in the future, I think of a thundo tag on the stock. Maybe, two. Is that asking too much?

Of course, there's all these other things that Google's gonna bring us, too. Like, everything we're doing now on our computers and the Internet will be buggywhipped in the future. It'll be gone.

All we'll need is a browser. And they'll be everywhere. Universal Gateway to the Internet appliances.

And the Internet itself. It'll be like a vast... mainframe.

Against the Wind

Wish I didn't know now
What I didn't know then

When I was young, I was ignorant about investing. By accident and happenstance, I made money. Now, I know too much. I have access to learned opinions of all kinds, but they are putting me off my game, which is "Making Money Through Neglect of Your Circumstances."

I tried paying no attention, but that didn't work. I thought about turning in my TSC subscription, but that would be too radical a move.

I think I'm stuck. The old days are gone. I'll never achieve that level of ignorance again.

Heebner

I have owned Ken Heebner's Focus fund for about a week now. Time enough to see some results, I'm thinking.

This is not as easy as it may seem. The fund doesn't release its closing price every evening until the next morning. So, when I bought my first batch, I didn't find out till the next day that I'd paid up from the previous close though, by that time, it was already down again, which I didn't find out until the next day. Heebner is a wily cuss, I'm thinking.

Anyway, I figured, if it went down, I would buy another batch. By Wednesday, it was down a buck-fifty from where I bought it. That wasn't much of a decline, but I was itching to buy another piece. So I placed an order mid-afternoon Wednesday, thinking I'd get the closing price of $56.30.

The next day, everything went nuts to the upside. CGMFX, as it is known in the trade, achieved a price of $58.94, which was better than $56.30 by $2.34. I rejoiced. Hallelujah Land seemed right around the corner.

Then I found out that the cutoff period for buying the fund, each day, is 11:45 AM. In the morning. I'd placed my order in the afternoon. So, the price I got was $58.94 which was worse than $56.30 by $2.34. And I was thinking that Ken Heebner, when he was a kid, probably hiked his britches up too high. I thought about it some more, and and then I got over it.

It was, I told myself, the spirit of performance yet to come. The future was bright. Friday, everything went nuts to the downside. All my Vanguard funds were down 2 1/2 to 3 %.

I had to wait until Saturday to get the news on CGMFX. I braced myself. I figured it would be worse than Vanguard. I looked it up in Barron's and didn't believe what I saw - it was down 31 cents. After being up $2.34, it was down 31 cents. Half of one-percent. I checked it several times on the Internet to be sure it was right. It was right.

And I'm thinking Ken Heebner can wear his britches any way he wants to.

Maxim and Counter-Maxim

Another of Cramer's principles that sticks in my craw is the one that says your money is gone, really gone, if your stock goes down, but if it goes up, your gain doesn't exist unless you sell your shares.

Any fifth grader can see a violation of parity, here. If your stock moves, up or down, then the money is either there or it's not, and the direction of the move shouldn't have anything to do with it. Goose and Gander.

But that's an academic objection. In the real world, anybody who rode JDSU into the ground knows what Cramer's maxim means. It means, the money is gone and it's not coming back.

I call that Post-Bubble Wisdom. A cautionary principle. But it's not very true. Most stocks that go down come back up again. And many stocks go up and come down and then go up again, higher than before. Over time, stocks in general go up.

So I was pleased to read a post on Real Money, last week, pointing out that a stock's price is only what some fool is willing to pay for it, at the moment. Everybody knows that, but saying it brings a little common sense into the situation. Sitting on a loss is not such a bad thing when you look at it that way. I always found it edifying.

If I believe in my investment choices, and they are not invalidated by the day's news, then I will benignly neglect them, confident that they will find their true level by the time that I need the money.

This applies to all stocks except old Just-Didn't-Stay-Up.

Forbes. Good.

I read a Forbes column last night that was really good. Actually, 19 articles by a dozen people I never heard of who are evidently well-known in the business. The Idea-Quotient was way over what we're used to.

I found myself thinking thoughts like, "To beat Google, Microsoft will have to give up Windows, and it won't."

I'm not one of these You-should-read-it people, but you should read it.

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2008/06/02/google-microsoft-showdown-tech-enter-cx_ec_0602msftgoog_land.html

Potato Man

Today, I read the distilled wisdom of J. R. Simplot, posted by Esquire, along with his picture. He's an old man. Made his money in potatoes.

He said,

"I got no religion in me. I could never see through it. Basically, I'm a facts man; if I can't see through it, I say it's not possible."

More importantly, he said,

"You want a potato big enough to get a long fry."

Useful information. And then, this nugget:

"Put bets down on the right people and give them responsibility."

The other thing I read today is a piece about Ken Heebner. Good thing, because I just established a position in his CGM Focus fund, last week. The first time in years that I've bought a fund that wasn't Vanguard. I'm betting Heebner is the right person, and I'm making him responsible for a piece of my money.

OK, I know that hot hands can get cold. My Vanguard Financial Advisor pointed that out to me. Several times. Better, he implied, to buy something that you know is cold. That way, you won't be disappointed.

I'm betting on Heebner. When CGMFX goes down, I'll buy more. And I'll never sell any of it. Until I need potatoes.



http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/ESQ0201-FEB_WIL

http://cnnmoney.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=America%27s+hottest+investor%3A+mutual+fund+manager+Ken+Heebner+-+May.+27%2C+2008&expire=-1&urlID=28758331&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmoney.cnn.com%2F2008%2F05%2F23%2Fmagazines%2Ffortune%2Fbirger_americas_hottest_investor.fortune%2Findex.htm%3Fpostversion%3D2008052706&partnerID=2200

Critique of Pure Cramer

I have said that I like Cramer. In 2004, he bullied me, through his columns, into buying GOOG. Besides that, he lets you into his trading head. He shows you the good, bad and ugly about himself. You can learn more from all that than from all the advice he hands out.

It's the advice that I have a problem with. It's all good advice, to be sure, but there's no way anybody's going to do all that stuff. Not us shlubs who listen to him.

He says, do your homework. Do an hour a week on each stock you own. What is he talking about? I could read balance sheets all day long and I still wouldn't know how to pick stocks.

But I'm sure thousands put in their hours religiously in the vain hope that success will be theirs. Cramer has told them so.

The central fallacy in his whole message is that ordinary people can get rich by doing what he did. As example, he maintains a model portfolio for all paying customers to see. What it shows is that not even he can do what he did.

But I admire and respect him, and I like him. I like his Pennsylvania, aw shucks act. They say he grew up in Wyndmoor, but he's got a South Philly swagger.

I like the way he enjoys everybody calling him moron, and how he calls 'em moron right back.

Restraint of Trade

Market down big, today. GOOG down big. OK. That's great. It doesn't matter to me, now. I have my long-term outlook back. Ask not what the next two days might bring. Ask what three years might do.

Yesterday, the market cracked, for all to see. The day before that, I was buying a couple of mutual funds. My Guinness World Record in Unfortunate Moves continues unblemished by success. But it's not a problem. Three years from now, it's going to look like, genius.

If I can just keep from selling anything.

An Exercise in Boredom

GOOG Today: (YAWN)


Question: How long can GOOG go sideways? Answer: 3 months.

Three months is a long time. Last week, I was out of town for a couple of days, and I toyed with the idea of not checking GOOG for the whole time I was gone. Two days. The malaise that came over me at the thought of not knowing the price of GOOG for that length of time convinced me that my trading motives are not pure.

I didn't even consider the ultimate scenario: five years. Total ban on GOOG. Take my stake out in stock certificates and put them in the safety deposit box. Put a filter on my computer to suppress any page that has the word "GOOG" in it. That should do it.

It's absurd, of course. To be able to go that long with no news of GOOG, I would have to be in constant communication with the Dalai Lama.

Avoiding the Plunge

I talked to a Vanguard Financial Advisor last week. That's what you do when you decide to stop your running around, get married, settle down, have kids and grow old.

Inside, I raged, raged. Outside, I tried to speak intelligently. The Vanguard Financial Advisor recommended that I put half of my investable funds into bonds. I thought, bonds are for old men! But I didn't say it. I knew he was telling me the right thing to do.

"Vanguard recommends that you sell your Google."

(My Google?)

"er, what about half?"

"Half would be fine."

(None!)

"ok."

(Never!)

And I'm not going to buy any bonds, either.

Gentlemen of the Realm

Every day, I have to look at GOOG's closing price in Yahoo! Finance. Then I check out the news items that seem interesting. Today, I clicked on a thing called, "Google Confirms Plans to Put Display ADs on Google.com."

Nothing really new.

But there were several comments, all from people who thought Google's use of display ads would betray its covenant with the universe. I know these guys. They're the same ones who used to dump on Microsoft for being evil. Then they wanted the Internet to be reserved for noble purposes. They stand for Purity. They express indignation. Display ads offend their nostrils.

In good fellowship, they exchange nostrums for warding off the evildoers. One said he had DoubleClick blocked by Mozilla Ad Blocker Plus. Another gave a link for a toolbar that enabled him to switch quickly to another search engine, without having to retype his query, if he suddenly discovered a display ad on his page.




http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/16358/Google-Confirms-Plans-to-Put-Display-Ads-on-Google.com

If p then q, or a consideration of causality

Instead of drinking Red Bull, I watch Fast Money.

And lately, I have observed, among several of the Fast Money traders, an opinion of Google that would appear interesting to anyone who puts out a blog called, "The Google Opinion". The feeling is that the Google brothers are nouveau riche flakes whose zany projects, like going to the moon, infect the whole organization with zaniness not to be tolerated by acceptable corporate governance.

Macke and that grinning snake, Tim Seymore, are the main miscreants who take this line. Ratigan doesn't care, of course, but if asked would probably say that he likes Google. Finerman would say that she would like Google, but it's not on her list. Adami looks at the camera in wonderment. But Najarian openly admits that he likes Google and will give you fifty reasons why. Bless his big bald head, he gets it.

Macke doesn't understand what Google is all about. He doesn't realize that all the cockamamie activities are directed toward one objective: capturing eyeballs, and charging advertisers for them. It's all about the buzz.

Macke frets because Google doesn't really make anything, like an IPhone. Seymore is contemptuous because Google doesn't sell something it dug out of the earth, like potash. To them, Google lacks manliness.

And that's why shlubs like you and me can still get into GOOG at decent prices.

The race is on, and it looks like heartache

GOOG today: 574.29 up 15.82


GOOG, the Heartbreak Kid, is coming from behind. AAPL, RIMM, BIDU and the other horses in the race all fell back, today. That's the news from Track Wobegon.

And good news it is. But what a strange race. There's no finish line. It's never over. Just a lot of relative moving ahead and falling back. You switch from horse to horse, hoping to stay ahead; or you pick one nag to leave the rest in his dust. And you can stay at the track until you have to go home.

Helpless, Helpless, Helpless

Misinformation followed us
Like a plague

Going to cash, last year, felt good. I hadn't done that since 1998, and back then I was too ignorant to get nervous about it.

Getting out of cash, on the other hand, is turning out to be messy. The cacophany of Klaxons is overwhelming. And they're all sounding different tunes. Between Jeremy Grantham and good old Grandpa Vince Farrell, I change my plan every five minutes. Somebody's fooling somebody somewhere.

It's gotten so bad that, last week, I called Vanguard and asked them for financial services.

A Lesson to Me

I've been beating myself up, lately, thinking that I'd mishandled my GOOG holdings to the tune of a $30K missed opportunity. That's the kind of opportunity you hate to miss.

But then I went over the sequence of events and my actions, and I think a case can be made that I acted rationally, for the most part.

First of all, I considered that I incurred additional risk by putting 20% of my resources into a single stock. But I believed that I understood the premise of the company behind the secular growth story, and I believed that it was worth making a big bet.

I wanted to be a long-term holder of GOOG shares. I thought that was the way to increase my wealth significantly. I still do.

But the size of the bet made me acutely sensitive to the stock's fluctuations. They made my bottom line tremble.

Right after I made the bet, a year ago today, the stock took off and ran to 750. When it started faltering, I was unconcerned. I had my eye on where it would be in 2014.

When it fell through 500, I became concerned. When it hit my cost basis at 489, the talk was that it would end up at 350. I decided, because so much money was involved, I should protect my original investment from a significant drawdown. So I sold the lot.

It started out well at first. I bought it back at 447 and 425, and it moved back up to 450. But the talk was that this was still one sick puppy. Josh Hayes said that he was going to short it.

So, I got scared again. This was when the buzz was that Google had run out of paid clicks and and the recession was going to cause everybody to watch television all the time instead of being on their computers. In his videos, Blodgett chortled.

I feared going into Google's next earnings with the number of shares that I owned. It seemed foolhardy. I reduced my stake. Then I decided that owning any shares at all seemed foolhardy, so I sold my remaining shares. I felt shaken.

But the worst was yet to come. The earnings release was a thunderclap. I know a lot of short money got lost that evening. I didn't actually lose anything. I just failed to gain $30K. I had to buy it all back, up a hunnert.

That was the cost of insurance for my investment, given that it was a time of great turmoil. In retrospect, I should never have sold it the first time, or if I did sell it the first time, I should never have sold it the second time. I should have just held it and let the drawdown draw down.

But, at the time, I believe, my actions were rational. To do anything else would have been to ignore the increased and substantial risk of loss. I preserved my capital, but it cost me.

You don't tug on Superman's cape. If I had, I'd be ahead of where I am right now. I should have no regrets, but it feels like a loss. Where do I put that on my tax return?

Meaningness

I was reading Cramer, a few minutes ago.

I like Cramer. Not because he's arguably a great stock picker, but because he tells the truth about himself. That makes him my role model. I want to be like that, in public.

So I was reading this end-of-the-day piece in TSC, today, where he was saying how tech was too hard, right now. Not following the script.

At the end, he said:

"... it's just too reactive, because it's pro-active to nothingness on the part of hedge funds that simply can't resist playing no matter what."

What is this? I like the way it sounds, but I don't know what it means. What do I buy? What do I sell?

What Am I Bid for this KeyWord?

These days, it's hard to escape the fact that I'm not the guy in the Schwab commercial who smiles modestly and says, "I do OK."

So it was, this morning, that I found myself in a glum mood and in need of a little ego salve. More in idleness than in earnest, I went to the GOOG message board and searched for "The Google Opinion."

A bunch of references came back and among them was a post, asking if there were "any blogs for Google like MacRumors or AppleInsider for Apple?" And there was a reply from google1000orbust who said, "Larry Blumen has the google opinion."

I thought that was nice. I could use a few more like that. As it turned out, most of the references were my own posts, advertising this blog.

I decided to broaden the search by putting in just "Blumen".

At the top of the list that came back was, "BLUMEN is a moron."

Sunday is for Summing Up

Reading Warren Buffett's homespun homilies* concentrates my mind as I try to crystallize what, if anything, I've learned since last year.

I've learned that it's easy to go completely to cash, but hard to capitalize on it.

I've learned that it's possible to time markets and stocks, but it takes more time than I have to spend. Also, I may not be emotionally disciplined enough to bring it off, although I thought I was.

Short term trading seems de rigueur these days, but I've made most of my money when I held things for a long time. And I was more successful when I was less intelligent about what was going on.

So what'll I do now, my brown-eyed self?

I've got three stocks (GOOG, AEO and TEX). I'm going to try to stop worrying about their rips and dips. A little benign neglect is in order, if I can muster it.

I'm going to re-establish a position of mutual funds. But I'm moving away from index funds and toward actively managed value funds.

I'm going to remain cautious, keeping 35-50% in cash, but be ready to add to my existing positions as conditions improve.

And I'm going to keep my day job as long as I can.



*
(http://money.cnn.com/2008/04/11/news/newsmakers/varchaver_buffett.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008041410)

GOOG Again

Here's what happened.

Thursday night, my wife and I were going to hear Temple Grandin speak downtown. We had to leave at four-thirty to get there at six, and GOOG's earnings came out at four.

At four, I was glued to the Stock Channel. They had two guys there. One was a nice looking suit, who said his firm was advising their clients to buy this amazing money machine prior to the earnings release. The other guy was a smirking little jerk who said that Google had saturated its market and would soon go out of business. I hated being on that schmuck's side.

Then Jim Goldman came on with the news in his patented peppy style and I sat there stunned, thinking God really does have it in for me. I just sat there, watching a world-class short squeeze unfolding. I had no game plan.

I went to my wife and said, "Google. Earnings. Stupendous."

She said, "Why don't you buy it back?"

That was the last thing I was going to do. Before that, I would quit my job and become a priest. But then I remembered that Cramer was in this fix once and he bought it all back. Suddenly, I realized that I would have no chance to get rich if I didn't buy it all back.

It made perfect sense. When GOOG was down, I made a few bucks trading it between 425 and 450. So, now, at 505, I quickly figured that I could get back in, even, with the proceeds.

It was four-twenty-five and my wife was saying, "Are you ready to go?"

I said, "I'll be right there," but raced upstairs, turned the computer on, and went into my after-hours trading place. By the time I put my order in at 505, it was up to 509. I didn't have time to dick around, but Cramer says only chumps put in market orders, so I put in 510, thinking that would get it, and then I had to leave. I couldn't stay to see what happened.

Temple Grandin was great. The smartest, most successful and funniest autistic person on the planet. I forgot about what did or didn't happen back home.

We got back about ten. I checked the computer and the order had expired unexecuted. Of course.

But, after giving it up, I had seen GOOG again in my future. I knew what I was going to do. The next morning, before the market opened, GOOG was at 528 and still climbing. At work, I put in an order to buy 200. At the market. I got 535. It kept going up to 547, proving there are greater fools than I.

It settled back to 539 at the close. Next week, it will probably correct. I don't care.

The dream is back. Schrodinger's Cat lives.

Back in the High Life Again

Wednesday night and all day yesterday, I moved around like the dead. I lived in a world where ignorant hedge funds clash by night. A world now cracked open, with me on one side and GOOG irretrievably on the other.

Last night, I watched it soar to 500 and beyond. As it rose, my spirit sank. I knew that I would never own GOOG again. I had bad dreams all night.

This morning, in the office, by ten o'clock, I owned 200 new shares of GOOG. The price was exorbitant. I was wild with irrational exuberance. My life again has meaning.

Google Eve

My first Google Eve, since 2005, with no GOOG beneath my feet. You'd think I'd feel nothing for the game, but of course I do. What an exquisite moment in time.

I feel like Dover Beach tonight. The moon, the night, the coast, the salt spray.

My feeling is, I'm done with GOOG. Fairy tales, after all, don't really come true. Unless they do. Schrodinger's Cat curls up in the corner of my ceiling and draws its last, and future, breath.

The Sea of Faith
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
But now I only hear
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar....

What a Revoltin' Development This Is

It's always been my nature to take chances,
My right hand drawing back while my left hand advances


Why am I in cash at this late date? I, who was buying with abandon on January 23rd. And selling with abandon on January 24th. Have I abandoned my mind?

I should be buying now. In truth, I was buying, but it wasn't working for me. So I'm trying something else.

The situation is either clearing up or it's just getting started. One way, I'm hosed. The other way, I'm bound for glory.

But why can't I go halfies and hedge my bet? Because there's nothing worse than being hosed in Hallelujah Land.

Free At Last

Compulsive buyer and compulsive seller in the same cranium. I wonder if the New England Journal of Medicine would be interested in my case. Probably not.

But that's OK. Today, I cured myself. I sold everything for cash. I understand that I have done this before. It's true, but I always held something back. This time, I sold everything, including GOOG. I got a margin call on my sanity. I had no choice.

But it worked. In the past, when I went to cash, I was thinking all the time about when I would be going back in at a great advantage. Hence, the twin obsessions. Early anticipation, followed by early disappointment and eventual panic.

I'm different now. Like most people, I would like to have a lot of money. Great wealth has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I'm going to grow my wealth the old-fashioned way, by saving it. And collecting my 2 percent. The predictable result will be to increase my coffers by 8% per annum over the next few years. That projection compares favorably with my not too shabby performance over the past three difficult years, of 6% per annum. From what I'm reading these days, the next few years will be even more difficult.

But I don't worry about that, now. I am at peace with myself. I can hear the birdies singing. And I can smell the bees.

If you see St. Annie, please tell her thanks a lot

Did you ever get the feeling that you wanted to go?
And still get the feeling that you wanted to stay?

Last fall, when I went to cash, I thought I would wait until the Klaxon sounded and then traipse back into the market without a bruise. What they don't tell you is, there's not just one Klaxon. There's lots of them and, right now, about half of them are making a fearful noise, while the other half sit mute.

This is stupid. Somebody ought to know what's going to happen and let everybody know. Well, at least, the paying customers. But nobody seems to know. Or everybody does. It's pretty confusing.

Since the beginning of the year, I have bought and sold AEO three times, and I've bought and sold MSFT twice. Just today I sold VTI and SPY. It seems to me that I sold both of them a few weeks ago. When did I buy them back?

I have become completely risk averse. At the same time, I'm continually seized by an uncontrollable urge to buy something. So I buy something, and then I get an uncontrollable urge to sell it. My fingers are all in a knot.

I'm driving myself crazy, even though I'm only down about 6% from my all-time high on 11/5/2007, when GOOG closed at 741. What would I be like if I were down big?

Nate's Way

I'm thinking about my friend, Nate, tonight. He and I worked in the same outfit for a while.

Nate understood that the Man wasn't going to hand him anything, so he had to look after himself. He started laying up every buck he could find, and fifteen years later, he said, "I've got over a million put away." I asked where, and he said, "All mutual funds."

The next to last time I saw him was the year after 9-11 and he said, "I lost over 300 thousand dollars!"

The last time I saw him was the year after that. He anticipated my question with, "It's all fine, now!"

Sometimes, it was hard to tell what Nate was really saying.

Crying Time

So they gave Dylan a Pulitzer Prize.

For his "profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power."

Well, I guess.

If I was giving him a prize, I would say it was for the most glorious fade-out in the history of musical performance. At the end of the third track on Empire Burlesque, after he takes leave of his "dear, sweet friend," in "I'll Remember You," the instruments take over for one more time through, and then they go into the fadeout.

To appreciate it fully, you have to listen to it in a good set of earphones. Try not to anticipate anything. After the last verse, when the instruments start in, you might think that's the beginning of the fadeout, but it isn't. You'll know when the fadeout begins. There won't be any doubt in your mind.

Let the waves wash over you as it slowly fades. It'll make you cry.

Larry's Little GOOG

Today, the market was beneath contempt. I will not dignify the action, today, by discussing it.

Instead, I will ruminate on one of my financial whimseys, a GOOG version of God's Little Acre, which was not a particular plot of ground, but one that moved around so as always to be beneath the feet of a particular someone, in need of God's constant reflection.

Larry's Little GOOG is a hundred shares of Google stock that I have owned and sold and owned again, and sold again, through the years, and into the future. It's always the same hundred shares. Even though I may buy and sell many other shares of GOOG, I can always trace the purchases and sales of that original lot.

I first acquired Larry's Little GOOG in late 2004, in three separate purchases, and sold it a few weeks later, along with another, undocumented lot for a $200 profit.

I guess I couldn't stand not having it around any more, because I bought the lot back a month later and kept it close for over a year. By then, it had grown to 350. When it got to 366, I sold half of it. I didn't want to, but Cramer said I was a schmuck if I didn't, so I did. I regretted it immediately.

Then, in April, 2007, I bought those 50 prodigals back. They were included with a bunch of other GOOG shares that I got. The price was a lot higher, but it was good to have the whole hundred in one place again.

I determined to keep them together through thick and thin, but I didn't realize how thin it was going to get. This past January, I pawned them again - the whole lot, this time. For a couple of months I was totally without GOOG shares, with no prospect of ever seeing any of them again.

Nevertheless, through the kindness of strangers, I was offered my original shares back at a cheaper price. Actually, for a while, they were included in a batch of over 300 shares, but I soon pared them down, closer to the essentials.

Now, I have Larry's Little Goog back, plus 17 shares that I am holding for Somebody Else's Little GOOG. It's called Grid Investing.

A day for being bored

Sunday

For text, this day, I choose the place in Kierkegaard where, to satisfy the custom of his time, he begins with a principle, that all men are bores.

From this incontrovertible beginning, he proves that boredom, not idleness, is the Devil's domain and the root of all evil. And then he proceeds to distinguish two kinds of bored men: those who bore themselves and those who bore others. Those who bore themselves are the few, and they are highly entertaining to others, whereas those who bore others are the herd, and they are continuously entertained by the morose few.

I read these lines as a lad in school. I underlined many passages, using a straight edge for neatness. Beside one sentence, I wrote "Oh?" in the margin. By another, I wrote "Ha-Ha."

I'm different, now. I would not write "Ha-Ha" in the margin of anything today. I would not underline at all. And I wouldn't keep the book for forty years.

The difference is slim. Back then, I was not really interested in joining the ranks of the few, unless it was free. Today, I'm happy to be swept along with the herd.

Dogwood Afternoon

At the time, I didn't know much about Martin Luther King. I knew who he was. I liked his name. I guess I knew his story, but not in a way that drew me in.

I missed the March on Washington. I wasn't a marcher. But I didn't even see it on the news. I was out on the west coast, going to school, and a guy I knew who was from Michigan and who probably had never been in the south in his life, told me, the next day, that he had really been stirred by King's speech at the march. Later, I saw re-runs of the speech on television and I saw what he meant.

That was when I first took note of the man. As a speaker, he was clearly in the spirit, which is not something you can say about many preachers. But, clearly, King was. An American saint, right up there with Lincoln.

The night he died, my wife and I had been invited by a guy we knew, and his wife, to go to the Playboy Club in downtown Atlanta for a meal and some middle class titillation. As we were driving home, we heard the news on the car radio. We talked about it for a while.

Five days later, I stood in the crowd that watched the mule-drawn wagon pass by with his mortal remains. Back then, I worked in downtown Atlanta, two blocks from the procession route, so I brought my camera to the office that day and went out at the appointed time to see what I could see.

For a while there was nothing. The procession was late. Crowds of people lined the street on both sides, waiting restlessly. Then, before we saw anything, we heard it - a kind of far off hubbub. And then we saw it, coming toward us like a floodtide, held in its course only by the banks of spectators, on both sides of the street - a river of people.

The street full of people moved by us at a stately pace for a long time before we saw the wagon with the coffin, in the middle of the river, swept along in the flood, like some mournful Call me Ishmael on the bounding main.

When the tide had passed, I stood around looking for something to take a picture of. I saw some young black guys standing in the shade of a dogwood tree in full bloom. I took one picture.

It became one of my favorite pictures, although I wonder if I would have felt the same way if it had been a bunch of white guys, standing there.

I thought I was losing my religion

April Fool's Day, two years ago, I turned on my computer and watched it self-destruct. I called the Geek Squad and a guy came right out. I asked him what kind of words he could say. He said it's a bad day. Comes only once a year.

I asked him, could he fix it. He said, well, yes. I said, how much will it cost. He said, not much. I said, what about my data. He said, that's a bit more.

I seen he had me.

We made a deal and he went to work. He took out my hard drive and stomped that sucker flat. Then he put the windows back in and started to go. I said, thanks for nothing. He said, you'll never know.

Now every year, on April Fool's, I'm afraid to turn my computer on. So I don't. It's a religious holiday for me. Like Yom Kippur, except you can eat.

The Secret of my Success

I am my own contrarian indicator.

Whatever conclusion I draw, I invariably do the opposite. I do it consciously with the conviction that anything I would think is so correlated with the herd that it has to be disastrously wrongheaded.

So I'm loaded up with stocks and mutual funds. Because I decided that staying in cash is what everybody is doing, so I'll do the opposite. So if that's what I do, how right could it be?

The real secret of my success is patience and time. I stick with my mistakes until they pay off.

Don't Mess with Mr. In-Between

I'm terrified of becoming Rev Shark's poster child for losers. Every day - and I mean, every day - he says anybody who buys stock right now is a sorry sap whose money will go bye-bye in a hurry.

I read him every day and I believe what he says. The problem is, I'm also reading these other smart guys, like Dick Arms in Barron's today, saying that this is the exquisite moment, the inflectional cusp, on the crest of which all my dreams will come true. If I'm in.

I'm in.

Somehow, I have managed to commit half of my available funds to stocks and mutual funds, and they are now going down.

I was early getting out, last year, and now I'm early getting back in. Years ago, when I used to hang out at the Merrill Lynch office, I heard an old trader say that, when a stock doubled, he didn't care about getting the first 25 percent or the last 25 percent. He was happy to get the 50 percent in between.

I took that for wisdom. In my case, right now, I'm getting the 2 percent in between.

The Big Ledownsky

GOOG today: TGIF


I took the advice of a commenter and didn't sell all my GOOG this time. Now, whatever happens, I'll have something to feel bad about.

Since I sold, GOOG seemed to get tired of going down. At this rate, I can't see 350, or even 400. I know what's going to happen. I'll talk myself into buying it all back, down ten, just in time for the big down hundo.

Kudzu Blues

I'm worn out from managing my money.

I never used to think about it. I put money in mutual funds and checked it once a month. Now, I'm a lot smarter than I used to be, I get tons of information about the state of everything, I make decisions left and right, and I'm a little better off than I used to be. But I'm worn out.

Last night, the kudzu had my pasture again. In dreams, I saw Cramer, speculating about GOOG's multiple, saying, "20, 25...", over and over. I'm not stupid. Even in my dreams, I can multiply. I got up, went to work and sold 2/3 of my GOOG. I didn't want to go into the next earnings report with all those shares.

I got 445.29 and made $3,900 on the deal. But I blew out the dream again.

I don't know what's going on with Google's clicks. I read all this stuff and I decided that I didn't care about Google's clicks. I don't want to have to keep thinking about it all the time.

I don't even want to think about how to get out of this piece. I'm tired. I said, tard.

Google Hell

Yesterday, GOOG went down ten. This morning, it went up ten and then, at midday, went down ten, and then closed, up seven. Which is almost ten.

Now, after hours, it's down 15 and I'm wondering, what happened? The news was all about Google, kicking butt again in the click share business. That wouldn't make it go down. It had to be something like Congress makes Google illegal. The news didn't have anything like that.

So I made the mistake of going to the Google Message Board to see what was going on. Now, I'm really shook. I gotta stop going there.

In my room, quiet, with spreadsheets

I'm still here.

I've been spending a little more time than usual in my little room upstairs. Figuring on my spreadsheets. A quiet time for me. My wife understands.

I enter data, make formulas, draw conclusions on the wall. A hundred different ways of asking the same question: how'm I doing?

So far, in 2008, I have a net profit from all my stock sales of $17,140.56. That wouldn't make Josh Hayes happy, but it's not bad, considering that the year, so far, has been a bitch.

Diary of a Madman

I bought my first GOOG on November 5, 2004, at the lowest prices I have ever paid for GOOG.

In the morning, I bought 25 shares for 181.98. In the afternoon, I bought another 25 shares for 172.03. On January 12, 2005, growing bolder by leaps and bounds, I bought 50 more shares to bring my total to an even 100. The next day, I bought another 100. Exactly one week after that, I sold all 200 shares, booking a profit of $227.40.

Epiphany or Doubt's End

Every now and then, I venture an opinion about the market, as though I know something.

When I went to cash in September, last year, I was thinking that a crash was coming and it would be nasty, brutish and long. I had been through two of these things before, so I had an idea of what it might be like.

I don't remember much of the pain from the seventies, even though I was there. I rode out the millenium crash, every bump down. Still, I wasn't making any decisions back then, so my gut didn't learn anything.

I figured, this time, I would stay in cash for a year or more, while the market fell off a series of increasingly big cliffs. Finally, when it was exhausted, there would be plenty of time to go around picking up Apple for 7 and Google for 85.

So far, for all the sturm und drang, we've fallen off one puny little cliff. Somehow, it doesn't seem enough. In the back of my mind, Dundee is grinning and saying, "That's not a crash!"

But I allowed myself to be swayed by the learned opinions that I heard on the Stock Channel. Unpleasantness in the first half, they said, and gangbusters from there on. The crash would somehow fit itself into those parameters. I took on a trading mentality. Every day, I decided which way to lean.

I went nowhere, fast. I'm flat on the year, but that's a consequence of going to cash last September. Nothing I've been doing lately has affected my bottom line, one way or the other.

This week, I took a step back. I decided that I didn't have to buy low and then sell high, the next day. I kicked back. I chilled. I read Rev Shark's TSC postings over and over again.

I'm beginning to understand, now, how long it's going to take. I'm beginning to believe.

Faithful Companion

Today had a strange feel for me. I sat out the rally. Normally, I would have been buying on Monday. Selling today. But that little play was getting too hard. I became averse.

Kass is downright giddy, these days, but I'm a believer in Rev Shark, now. It ain't over until the Klaxon sounds.

But I'm not totally bereft. My C Fund caught the thermal, like a Rocky Mountain High. And I have now re-established most of my full position in GOOG, reducing my cost basis by 11.5%. The rest of my money just sits there like a good dog.

The great white bird into heaven

I don't care what his religion is, or what his politics are, Cat Stevens has the spirit in him. He always has.

Anyone who could sing, out of his original mind,

"They will vanish away like your daddy's best jeans,
Denim blue fading up to the sky..."

has the spirit in him. Like Dylan. In the sixties, everybody had the spirit. The music was tremendous. It's all gone, now.

Once, for about a year, all my thoughts took a poetic form. Iambic pentameter in my sleep. I wrote everything down in a journal. I'm afraid to look at it, now. Either it's gone, or I am.

Why am I going into this?

It's Sunday, Jake.

Oh, the humanity

I read the news today oh boy.

Crash and burn. The great men of finance, hanging out the discount window until they can't hang anymore. It's better not to look. But we can't help looking.

Where's the Grief?

The TSC traders were in a grouchy mood, this morning. The Fast Money traders, except Karen, were downright indignant, this evening. Their numbers were legion. Nattering nabobs of negativism, as far as the eye could see.

They couldn't find yesterday on their charts. They wanted capitulation and they hadn't gotten any. They wanted everybody, except themselves, to be really sorry that they'd lost all their money. And they wanted to buy up everything for practically nothing. It didn't happen and they were petulant about it.

Just a short squeeze, they said. And they were probably right: if yesterday was all short covering, then the only sellers were the shorts, themselves. Out in Lukenbach, Texas, ain't nobody feelin' no pain.

I consider my position. They might be right. Might not.

Tomorrow, I might sell my SPY. Might not.

I Dragged a Comb Across My Head

This morning, I found my way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up, I noticed...

... Steve Liesman, on the Stock Channel. He was in Washington, with news. The fact that they sent him all the way to Washington to pick up this news got my attention.

I figured out, right away, this must be a turning point, so I went back upstairs and committed a portion of cash to the market for the open. The usual suspects: SPY, VTI and, of course, a little GOOG.

Then, for most of the morning, I felt like an idiot - schlemiel and schlamazel, at the same time. But, by mid-afternoon, I was a mensch.

Say Hayes

Joshua Hayes is a new scribe at TSC. He is an engineer of trading.

His theme is, "Through technical analysis, you, too, can find happiness by getting rich, like me."

By all indications, including his picture at the top of his posts, he is a happy man. I enjoy reading him because his strategies unfold with mathematical precision. Nothing is left to chance.

I favor a more tortured approach. The essential ingredient of my method is madness. It works for me. I am happy for Mr. Hayes, but, on the whole, I'd rather have my face.

Undercharged again, at the QuikTrip

Do right to me, baby
And I'll do right to you, too

The time change threw me off, this morning, and I was late getting to the QuikTrip for gas and my New York Times. Even when I'm not late, I often get the last copy, so I wouldn't have been surprised if they'd sold out.

There was one copy left. So I was happy when I came up to the counter to pay. The clerk looked at the paper and said, "Two bucks."

I reminded him that it was five bucks. He took another look and saw I was right.

He said, "A lot of people wouldn't have said anything."

I told him it was Sunday. I don't want to cheat nobody. Don't want to be cheated.

Altucher is Trouble

I never intended to buy back GOOG so soon.

But I watched a TSC video with Altucher on. In the beginning, he was hitting on Farnoosh Torabi pretty good, but she used first person plural on him and that kept him from touching her.

Then he started talking about GOOG and that got him even more excited. He said that GOOG was a short term buy. The way he said it sounded like he didn't like it for the long term, but he likes it long term, too.

Anyway, he got me excited and I bought the GOOG, even though my published objective was to buy it back much lower.

I like Altucher. He responded to my Facebook poke at him. And he's always right - two years later.

I'm still waiting on Dow 16,000 that he promised last year.

China Shop Research

Everybody wants to know when the bull is coming back. Me, too. So I checked out the local China Shop.

I didn't see any bull in there, but the bear was tearing up the joint.

Good times or bad, sell the China Shop.

They said it was a bad day

When the night comes falling
From the sky

63 thousand hedge fund managers lost their jobs, last month. Joe Kernan and the boys, and the girl, were all over it. They had guests on who were prepared to certify that the economy is now going to hell, but they didn't need guests. Kernan kept shouting while they were trying to speak. For a while, everybody was yelling at once. It was pretty scary.

I say it's a good thing Santelli is in Chicago. He wanted to fight somebody.

The market itself, when it came on, did a pretty good rendition of "Up a Lazy River, by the Old Millstream."

Yesterday, I bought some GOOG for 447. It closed around 432. I needed another falling knife. Now, I have a full set.

"He breaches!"

For the past year, Rev Shark has been writing amazing stuff, every day, directed, not at professional traders, but at shlubs like me, repeating the same message again and again - stay the course, be patient, the time will be long in coming, wait, wait...

We need this guy. These are perilous times. He reminds me of Ahab's First Mate, Starbuck, in the long boat with his men, waiting for the whale to breach, saying "Steady... Steady... Steady..."

Blumen notices a bird, outdoors

I'm in cash. 100%. I don't have to read Cramer or Rev Shark, anymore. I don't have to look at the Stock Channel. I don't have to buy the Wall Street Journal when I have lunch at Panera's.

Today, I noticed a redbird in a bare tree. He looked down at me and cocked his head. I got the feeling he was in cash, too.

Slow Boat to Hallelujah Land

I was doing so well.

Mostly in CASH and GOOG since the fall of last year, I converted the GOOG to cash this month. In my Thrift Fund, I stayed in C for a little hedge against good times.

And I did a little trading, mostly in SPY. I bought the dips and sold the rips, several times, and made money each time. Not a lot, but not bad when everything was down from day one of this year.

Then, in the past week or two, things firmed up. I started paying more attention to guys on TSC who were saying that happy days were possibly in the offing. Even Kass was buying at one point.

I let my guard down. Last week, I bought a rip with the intention of letting it ride until the good times arrived. Even though the charts were still screaming that it wasn't going to happen, I doubled up.

Friday wiped out half of my accomplishment in 2008, so far. This market clearly has further work to do in the down department. My usual suspection, at a time like this, is that it is too late to get out. But the thought of riding it out fills me with dread.

Monday morning, I aim to go completely to cash. I will collect my 2% a year and throw in as much free cash flow as I can squeeze out of my day job.

I can't imagine why anyone would be interested in hearing about this, except, possibly, my heirs. I wouldn't be going into it at all, if it weren't Sunday.

A Diminished Thing

I still have no GOOG. It's been 22 days. I go to bed, I sleep. I eat, the food goes down. Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah.

MSFT is now below where I sold it in order to buy GOOG. I bought it all back, today. How've you been?

Everything I sold to buy GOOG has gone down. So what am I getting so upset about? My decision last year to put 20% of my money in GOOG and then sell it ten months later for no gain was a brilliant move on my part. Zip-A-Dee-A.

I see GOOG receding in my rear view mirror. It's the fifth line down on my eye chart, now.

My own private briar patch

GOOG: the lower forty.


Today, my challenge to the god of GOOG was undone. The boast, that the marker of my sale at 489 would not be penetrated, has been exposed for the cheap ploy that it was - a crass and self-serving attempt to provoke fate into proving me wrong. And so it did.

I said I would be loading up the Honda when it got to 450. I never thought it would actually get there. Now, I'm not so sure. The view is different, down here. Maybe if it goes to 400.

Ya hear that, GOOG?

From the Journal of Improbable Events

GOOG Today: 486.44 After hours: 484.00


In 1716, it snowed all summer in New England. In 1871, Chicago, Illinois, and Peshtigo, Wisconsin, both burned to the ground on the same day. And on February, 25, 2008, GOOG dropped below 489.

None of these things should have happened. But they did. Now, it is up to those who ponder strange events to see what can be made of it.

I make this: if you find yourself hoping that the stock you just sold goes down 20 points, wish for 200 points, instead. And then, wait for it to happen. It will.

Whacked, She Said

Two words I've been hearing lately: whooshed and whacked. Meisler uses them a lot. I first noticed that a few weeks ago, when she started saying that GOOG needed to be whacked. And then, when GOOG did get whacked, she expressed satisfaction that it did.

So, whacked is something that happens to a stock. Markets don't get whacked. And it's always bad to get whacked. Never good. Nobody says, hooray, my stock got whacked.

Whooshed is another matter altogether. Stocks don't whoosh. They may seem to whoosh, but there's always another word for it - they ramped, or went parabolic. Use your imagination.

Only markets whoosh. And a whoosh can be good or bad, depending on which way you are leaning at the time. A recent example is last Friday, when the indices all drifted lower until the last half hour when they whooshed. Up.

I missed it. I went to the bathroom and when I got back, the market had whooshed. It was a good thing I went when I did.

I wouldn't give a bucket of warm spit for my chances now

When, in a moment of terror, I sold all my GOOG, there was revealed in my soul a vein of self-destructiveness so hidden that I didn't know it was there. Some loathsome will to fail, masquerading as its opposite - the will to preserve one's silly self.

There was providence in it, I realized, as soon as I did it. The action in the stock, both before and after, seemed to turn on my deed. I knew immediately that I had established, then and for all time, a floor under GOOG, below which it will not go again. I didn't know I had that power.

But I do. Yesterday, I allowed myself to doubt that incontrovertible fact when GOOG whooshed down 20 points, and, today, when it kept dropping and briefly took hold of a four-handle before scooting back over 500. The technical boys all drew a line on their charts, right through my bleeding sale.

Just Another Random Act of Kindness

Karen Finerman is my favorite trader on Fast Money. I don't get silly about it, I just like her. Actually, I like all the people on that show. Najarian is special - a big palooka with a lot of heart, brain and courage to come on a show like that. Macke talks fast and sometimes he's funny, but, when Najarian lets loose, you get a lot of useful information in a short period of time. Adami is cool inside, but he's a deep klutz. Ratigan, I admire as a man among men. And a woman.

Karen is my favorite. I felt sorry for her today. CROCS was down 16% after hours. She took it well, but I wonder how she manages it. She can't claim stupidity or amateur status, like me, but she does the same stupid things. I ought to write her and tell her about my recent experience with GOOG. It might make her feel better.

Waiting For Go Down

This was a stupefyingly nothing kind of day. Nothing was going on. Nowhere. I got an old dog-eared, paperback copy of Beckett's plays down from the top shelf, where it was situated between "Finnegan's Wake" and "The Long Dark Night of the Soul". I started reading "Krapp's Last Tape" again. That's the kind of day this was.

I need to get out more often. Away from this trading pit. I wonder what life is like in Outremont, Glendale or Sherman Oaks - I think the people there must be refined and fond of repartee.

In those places, I imagine music in the cafes at night, and revolution in the air. I used to go to places, but they're all gone, now.

"Most likely, you'll go your way, and I'll go mine"

Just because I asked a friend about her,
Just because I spoke her name somewhere...

Enough about GOOG. Without the dream, it's just another stock. This is no longer a blog about GOOG.

If your interest is confined to GOOG, I understand - you're excused. But if you were hanging around the site because you like to hear me talk, that's your business. I'm fine with it.

Anyway, last night, after hours, I sold the SPY. Then, this morning, I sold the VTI. I remind myself of the Pequod's Second Mate, Stubb, who said, "It's hard to stop killin' when you've been killin' steady." I looked around for something else to buy.

I took a little Goldman, and a little Conoco for the IRA's. Names I saw in Cramer's blog, today. I owned Goldman a couple of years ago and sold it for 147. When it ran, I was a little upset for a while. Now, it didn't bother me at all to give 180 for it.

Maybe, some day, I'll be that way about that other stock I used to own.

My New Best Friends

Yesterday, I noticed that the market wasn't going down anymore. There was no fear in the air. I checked Kass and he was buying. Meisler was saying one more whack ought to do it.

So I committed 30% of my cash to SPY and the Total Stock Market Whizbang Fund, VTI. They're my new best friends. They closed agreeably.

This morning, Warren Buffet - bless him! - came out with a modest proposal to MBIA in which he would accept the risk for all mortgages that had no discernable risk, in exchange for the company. The last I heard, the company was thinking it over.

But the market got a laugh out of it and the general good spirit engendered caused everything to go up in the morning. I was a market genius for about three hours. I thought about selling for some quick walking around money, but I held off.

Then the bloom came off the rose, and if you've ever seen a