Shadow Puppets

My friend Steve pointed this video out to me. Pretty incredible stuff. To Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World"

Here's the thing

How much do we really need and why do we think we need it? Why are we wired to compare ourselves to everybody else around us? These are interesting questions to me.

I figure we live like kings compared to even the most well-off people from even 100 years ago. I mean there wasn't even electricity then, and thankfully I haven't ridden my horse to work in a while. (The horse is thankful also). How many people even 100 years ago could wake up to a warm shower? By all objective measures the average Joe today lives like a King compared to almost anyone living 100 years ago.

But I wonder if the average Joe perceives himself as any better off?

I wonder if in 100 years people will be orders of magnitude "better off" than we are now, but will they still be slogging away at jobs they don't enjoy, trying to pay mortgages and buy stuff, and just trying to figure out how to get ahead... Will we ever get to the point where we're satisfied, or are we wired against it?

No bailout

I like this comment from Warren Buffett on a potential bailout of the many troubled lenders.

"If lenders lent money that they are not going to get paid back, that's their problem, frankly"

Here's the commentary from seekingalpha.com

Squirrels

This story about squirrels "heating their tails" and harassing rattle snakes is one of the stranger things I've heard in a while. Apparently adult squirrels can survive rattlesnake bites.

from the story:

Because the snakes, which are ambush hunters, can sense infrared radiation from heat, the warming makes the tails more conspicuous to them — signaling that they have been discovered and that the squirrels may come and harass them

Fantasy Football

Fantasy Football season is almost here. At work we picked numbers to determine our draft order today for our 14 team league. I got lucky and picked #4 this year, the best pick I've had yet over the past several years.

Players like Frank Gore, Shaun Alexander, and Larry Johnson will likely be among those I'm picking from at that spot.

Newt Gingrich

I tend to lean to the liberal or even libertarian side of things politically, but I am a big fan of the Newt Gingrich's ideas and the way he thinks. Whenever I catch him on C-Span I find his talks to be always engaging, insightful, and even visionary. I saw one of his speeches recorded at Vanderbilt where he discussed this same "World that works" critique of bureaucracy similar to the one illustrated in the video below.

Quotes of the day

Here are some good quotes I saw on the Big Picture Blog.

A couple of my favorites:

"It is pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed."
— Kin Hubbard

"There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody."
— Adlai Stevenson

Lotsa buying/selling today

I took the day off of work today and made quite a few changes in my portfolio, taking the chance to trim some poorly performing stocks. I find it's good to clean the decks sometimes after major market pullbacks as there's usually stuff out there I want to buy, and that's what I've tried to do.

I reduced further my position in CRDN Ceradyne. It's been very profitable, but time to lessen exposure here given the poor performance since the conference call.

I eliminated my final small position in PMTI Palomar - a big looser for me.

I sold my position in NGPS Novatel. I made good money on this one over the past couple of years, but it's been trending poorly, and sales growth has been anemic recently when GPS components should be performing better.

I added to my position in Vasco Data Security (VDSI).

I tried to purchase more Cognizant CTSH, but the order did not fill.

What I've been reading

"Trend Following" by Michael Covel. Trend following is a trading philosophy designed to capture benefits of longer term trends. It details successes of many trend followers and along the way bashes about every other method of investing. I found it good to have read, although like most books it's padded with too much fluff. Could've gotten the same point across in 100 pages. Suggestion - read the first couple of chapters and turn to chapter 10 to get the gist of the trend following approach.

"Hot Commodities" by Jim Rogers. I'm reading this right now. Jim Rogers is a well respected investor (you probably see him on the financial news occassionaly) who advocates moving some of your asset exposure into what he sees as a long term commodities bull market. I've been learning about trading systems and many trading systems (including trend following) incorporate trading in commodities (like oil, natural gas, wheat, cocoa, corn, cotton, pork bellies, etc).

"Foreign Currency Trading" by Russell Wasendorf (Jr and Sr). I'm still reading this too, but is an introduction into foreign currency trading. Just trying to expand my options as I work on a trading system. Many traders trade currencies.

Over-leveraged

Here's an interesting story regarding the over-use of leverage putting selling pressure on the current markets. I found it interesting reading for perspective.

"The Minsky Moment is important because it means the beginning of forced selling. Buying driven by ever-increasing leverage stops, and selling to decrease leverage begins. The deleveraging sellers are there because they must sell."

Homes carved from stone

Check this out. It's not an optical illusion although it's hard to believe the scale of the first image. These are homes carved into stone towers in Cappadocia.

This photo gallery has many pictures of the region. I'd never heard of it until I came across today.

The song that launched "unplugged"

I remember this performance from when I first heard it on an MTV award show around 20 years ago. While soon after this it became popular for bands to play acoustic versions of rock songs, Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora were really doing something unique for the time period when they unplugged for this performance medley of Living on a Prayer / Wanted Dead or Alive.

Conference Call Transcripts - Garmin and Cognizant Tech

Here's a link to Garmin's Conference Call Transcript. Garmin makes personal navigation devices, and reported some very strong results, and are hinting at what sound to me like run-away product demand.

Some Highlights.
- Revenue up 72%
- Unit Volume up 99%
- Automotive Unit Volume up @173% is driving unit volume results.
- margins higher than expected
- unit price decreases being offset by component price decreases, although expect margin compression in last half of year due to spike in flash memory prices.
- market seems to be growing faster than they thought.
- sounds like they expect eventually over time 40%-60% of cars to have a navigation device.

Here's a link to Cognizant Technology's Transcript also. Strong quarter there too. Europe is clearly a focus for growth going forward. They don't see capacity constraints being too much of an issue, especially not the employee count constraints so often mentioned in analysis. They feel like they have excess capacity built into their business model already.

High School Graduation Rates

Ever wonder where your state stands in its efforts at graduation high school students? Here's a table that shows Public School Graduation Rates in the US in 2000.

It's really a pathetic showing. I honestly didn't realize it was this bad in some areas. In my state of TN 6 of 10 high school students graduate. And there are some states that are worse.

That's really scary considering how it limits future opportunities for so many kids. And Lord help you if you're a non-Asian minority.