The Origin of Faith

Recently over the winter holiday, I had come across a documentary on the Discovery Channel abroad about Jesus Christ. This wasn't the controversial one with James Cameron as the Executive Producer, nor was it contesting the history of the Catholic Church; rather, it had a simple premise: That the teachings of Christ was based on economic and political upheaval of his times.

When I think of Christianity, I think of my childhood version of it: Church on Sundays, memorising hymns, singing songs, camping trips, Christmas trees, stained glass windows, Cathedrals, and a social network of people who primarily pushed their children to go to Ivy League Schools. I also think of how this earlier vision became perverted into controversy in my young adulthood: news reports of sexual abuse from pastors, sodomy of Church choir boys, and the overall contemporary hypocrisy present in religion as a social and political institution which exacerbated my extreme dislike of the commercialisation of televangelists and the strict social rigor that prevented self-expression. Yet, I still found its history alluring. I was enamoured with Cathedrals, the music, the traditions in itself, and there was something about non practicing Christians that I found an affinity towards, in the way that most children who were raised from any religious belief, Islam and Judaism included, became disillusioned with it yet still held onto those core memories of their upbringing.

My generation did not trust any religion. We grew up as non-practicing Christians or Muslims, reformed Jews and only utilised religion at family gatherings. For us, it was not a personal choice. This is how I have always viewed religion. However, this documentary made me realise that religion, too, had its roots in economic and social strife. Religion and Politics, these twin ideologies that were branches on the same tree, were suddenly cleared of the fog from the mystical remnants of a text that seem mired in allegory.

"Whoever eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." 

-John 6:54

Imagine a world where there were starvation, economic disparity between the classes, diseases being rampant and a lack of resources: of education, of healthcare, of simple living standards. There were endless class wars, and factions killing each other in retaliation, similar to the situation in Darfur and Serbia; in the middle east, between Shiites and Sunnis. At first, in the historical, Biblical situation of Jesus I was reminded of contemporary North Korea- where indeed the 1% lived in abundant riches, and the rest were living in starvation, with the presence of cannibalism amongst its population. Then came a man, Jesus from Nazareth, who envisioned that this abstract entity, God will provide for all, and accept all into his world. In this world, everyone would have health care, education, food and opportunity to pursue one's passions.

In our contemporary Orwellian state of affairs, what threatens to re-create a version of the Holy Wars, or the Class War in the United States and its allies is the belief of Us vs. Them. Of the 99% against the 1% and vice versa. Hedge fund manager, Paul Tudor Jones reminded us in his annual address to his organisation that: "We have to take the 1% and the 99% and remember that we are the 100%"

The banking sector is vilified as the enemy in the current social climate; however, they are merely the middle men to this long economic history that encaptures the government, lobbyist factions, energy pharmaceutical, and insurance industries. The government deregulation of these industries has created a tempestuous fiduciary climate in which poor impulse control has lead to the collapse of multiple sectors within the United States which in turn, affected the entire global economy. We can say with certainty that Reaganomics has indeed failed. It took 30 years before we started to feel the full effects from the seeds in which the Reagan administration had planted when he first took down those solar panel walls off the White House, and gave financial, energy and pharmaceutical industries carte blanche in 1980.

During the MF Global Congressional Hearing, one Representative asked Jon Corzine: "How can we regulate greed? No matter how many laws or regulations we put in place, we just cannot regulate greed." He said this in a rather audacious manner, with a slight smirk, as if he weren't actually a puppet to lobbyist money who had bought his seat and had ordered him to say exactly that: Regulation isn't the solution. Yet America's history tells us otherwise.

“Give me your tired, your poor, 
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: 
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. "


It is easy to forget where we came from when we are living in splendour. It is easier to blame others for their misfortune, and to point the finger and blame others for ours. Religion might have been a way to cope with economic disparity within our annals of history, and perhaps religion as a social construct was a way to govern people whose own government had failed them. But as the current lessons in the Middle East and Africa have taught us, genocide isn't the solution to the problem. So then the question needs to be asked: How can we redistribute wealth without affecting the innovation of certain sectors, particularly in technology, where America is the strongest? Is there a way to address the current economic disparity without resorting to another Class War? 

The Search for the Meaning of October

Octo (latin): Eight

Up until 45 B.C., there were only ten months in the Roman calendar, and October had been the eighth month. After the assassination of Julius Caesar by his ally and colleague, Brutus, the months of July and August had been added to the Roman calendar, in honour of Julius (July) Caesar and his successor, Augustus "Octavius" (August) Caesar.

There are other more relatively recent times that come into sharp focus when tracing the history of the days of October:

October 24, 1929
October 19, 1987
October 5, 2008

1929 vs 2011

"The economy had been growing robustly for most of the so-called Roaring Twenties. It was a technological golden age as innovations such as radio, automobiles, aviation, telephone and the power grid were deployed and adopted. Companies that had pioneered these advances, like Radio Corporation of America (RCA) and General Motors, saw their stocks soar. Financial corporations also did well as Wall Street bankers floated mutual fund companies (then known as investment trusts) like the Goldman Sachs Trading Corporation. Investors were infatuated with the returns available in the stock market especially with the use of leverage through margin debt."

"The Roaring Twenties, the decade that led up to the Crash was a time of wealth and excess. Despite caution of the dangers of speculation, many believed that the market could sustain high price levels. Shortly before the crash, economist Irving Fisher famously proclaimed, "Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." However, the optimism and financial gains of the great bull market were shattered on "Black Thursday", October 24, 1929, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) collapsed. Stock prices plummeted on that day, and continued to fall at an unprecedented rate for a full month. The October 1929 crash came during a period of declining real estate values in the United States (which peaked in 1925) near the beginning of a chain of events that led to the Great Depression, a period of economic decline in the industrialized nations."

(source: Wikipedia, events leading up to the stock market crash of 1929)

"On March 25, 1929, the stock market suffered a mini-crash. It was a prelude of what was to come. As prices began to drop, panic struck across the country as margin calls were issued. When banker Charles Mitchell made an announcement that his bank would keep lending, his reassurance stopped the panic. Although Mitchell and others tried the tactic of reassurance again in October, it did not stop the big crash. By the spring of 1929, there were additional signs that the economy might be headed for a serious setback. Steel production went down; house construction slowed; and car sales waned. At this time, there were also a few reputable people warning of an impending, major crash; however, as month after month went by without one, those that advised caution were labeled pessimists and ignored."

(source: http://history1900s.about.com/od/1920s/a/stockcrash1929.htm)

In 2011, perhaps the styles of dress had changed, but the ideologies that existed in the 1920s remained firmly intact. It was a technological golden age as innovations such as the internet, electric cars, space shuttles, mobile/ smart phones, and solar power were deployed and adopted. Companies that had pioneered these advances, such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Tesla, saw their stocks soar.

Women were liberated from the archetype of the sterile housewife from the 1950s, similar to that of the advent of flappers from the 1920s who were casting off the 19th century era of female sexual repression. Vestiges of the old economic era, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase were still around, but this time, with strong ties in government. People were still buying stocks on margin; banks and lenders were utilising leverage to gauge their positions.


What is different about 1929 from 2011 is that instead of radio telecasts spreading mass panic about the stock market, influencing people's choices in what to invest, and manipulating the market through popular discourse; we have added to these methods, ratings agencies who work with investment banks to spread inaccurate information to manipulate the market in their favour.

Who are these ratings agencies, and why are they a threat to global economy?

Never had a tripartite of agencies, S&P, Moody's and Fitch, had such collective power as to sway the global market. Being integral to the housing collapse in 2008 and the stock market crash, they have singularly worked to manipulate investors into buying toxic CDOs and other such junk investments for their own personal gain. They even have the power to threaten governments if their legislation is not up to their personal satisfaction. When S&P leaked that they would downgrade US credit last Thursday, US companies in the stock market collectively lost 2 trillion dollars of their value in a period of three days. Similarly the Asian markets also followed suit and the Nikkei was down 3.5% at open.

On August 4, 2011, we suffered a mini-crash. It will be a prelude to what is to come if we continue to allow ratings agencies to manipulate the global market and make demands on the government to change legislation to suit their personal interests.

What happens this coming October is still unclear. Will we enter a second Depression? Will there be another stock market crash? One thing seems to be clear, if we don't strip ratings agencies of their power, these Bruti will most certainly create panic situations in which they will profit from betting against the US economy.

Standard & Poor's: The Benedict Arnold of Our Time

“Neglected by Congress below, distressed with the small-pox; want of Generals and discipline in our Army, which may rather be called a great rabble, our credit and reputation lost, and great part of the country; and a powerful foreign enemy advancing upon us, are so many difficulties we cannot surmount them.” -Benedict Arnold, American traitor

Much has been debated over weekend since S&P downgraded the credit of United States. But let's look at the underlying motivations of the S&P, namely who are the S&P? 

S&P is owned by McGraw Hill and Co. On their board of directors are various pharmaceutical, insurance, and oil industry heads, along with companies that are heavily invested in the pharmaceutical and oil industries. Let's drop some names:

Sidney Taurel
Chairman Emeritus
Eli Lilly and Company

Edward B. Rust, Jr.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
State Farm Insurance Companies

Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg
Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer
Strategic Investment Group (heavily invested in pharmaceutical industries)

Sir Winfried Bischoff
Chairman
Lloyds Banking Group plc

Director of Eli Lilly and Company

McGraw Hill and Co. also owns Platts, which is not surprisingly, an energy company focused on oil and coal.

 

When President Obama announced in April 2011 that he will increase taxes for the oil and pharmaceutical industries, the board of directors at McGraw Hill and Companies were not pleased. As such, Standard & Poor's countered President Obama's proposed tax increases with a threat to downgrade US Credit based on nothing but a political ploy to create a standoff in the debt ceiling bill to prevent the passage of these tax increases on the pharmaceutical and oil industries. 

Instead, Standard & Poor's created baseless accusations of Congress being deadlocked and that they were merely the messengers of an inept government that reached a debt ceiling deal at the last hour. In truth, they were never the messengers who spoke truth. They utilised their position to profit interminably throughout the 1980s and 1990s to the financial crisis that lead to the stock market crash of 2008. They had no compunction nor moral nor even financial numbers to validate the A nor AA+ nor AAA credit ratings they gave so easily to the companies they were heavily invested, but now suddenly, with President Obama as the sophomore Congressman who took the reign of the old boys club by sheer determination and forcible wit with a diplomatic centrist view, and had decided to do what he promised- to end the era of Reagan-economics, Standard & Poor's- who are now faced with increased taxes to their beloved pharmaceutical and oil industries, decided to suddenly slap the US with a credit downgrade. Under all the pontificating rhetoric they have issued over the weekend, what they really mean is this:

"Yo, Obama, if you don't knock if off and cut taxes for the pharmaceutical and oil industries, we're gonna push the US Dollar under a bus, then we will see who will win!"

A true traitor, what S & P have effectively accomplished is that they have thrown the first dice into a dismal fire. This credit downgrade is not merely "psychological", the credit rating will now be utilised in a political battle between the GOP and other members of Congress to push their own agenda. Not only that, but now China and other nations who hold US debt can openly justify why they will raise interest rates to further deteriorate the US economy. Standard & Poor's, an American company, have effectively betrayed their own long-term interests for short term gain.

 

And who will pay for this credit downgrade? The average American citizen. Gone are the days when one family member was able to comfortably support a family, since the 1950s- (when tax rates were the highest for oil industries), now in 2011 (when tax rates are the lowest in history for these industries) as a two-person income, most Americans were still struggling to support a family. 

So which industries will be impacted by President Obama's tax increases? It won't be the average American citizen who probably makes less than $500K/year. The industries that will be most affected are the oil, pharmaceutical and insurance companies, the very companies that are represented in McGraw Hill and Companies, the one who downgraded US credit on "principle": Standard & Poor's.

l'accident du travail

"The death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world." Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)

"Save the cheerleader, save the world!" Heroes, TV series (2006-2010) 



Necessity is the mother of invention, but often the catalyst to technological and medical advances occur by accident. Accidents, these seemingly entropic collision of molecules, of people being drawn together by chemistry, of a succession of events that lead to an inevitable outcome- discovery. Throughout history, we have learned that human error can oftentimes be fortuitous. If Professor Alexander Fleming had not forgotten to clear away glass plates filled with bacteria he had been studying, he would not have discovered the mould of penicillin that had grown overnight and found on the morning of September 3, 1928.

If Larry Page and Marissa Mayer had never met and dated in the early days of Google, perhaps the company would not have been so heavily invested in Artificial Intelligence. Both Google and Intel, perhaps surreptitiously, have been developing direct brain implants for the last decade. Intel announced in 2009, they have developed an Intel brain chip to implant into humans to remotely control electronic devices. Just a year later, Google announced that is has also developed a Google brain chip to help humans rid of electronic devices:

"This is a chip that users can implant in their brain that will search the internet the moment you think of something.  The chip has the power to find information even before a user knows he or she wants the information...The introduction of the Google Brain Chip means that individuals will no longer need PCs, Macs or tablets. “These devices are primarily used to access the internet and download content,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “With the Google Brain Chip, you don’t need to buy any hardware at all. The human brain is the hardware, we provide the chip and you are… a genius.”"

But how does one test out these brain chips on people without crossing the boundaries of ethical practice? This is where accidents come in play. So often, we do not realise that sometimes spectacular advances in technology transpire out of unfortunate events. Before Google and Intel announced their consumer version of the brain chip; in 2006,  Cybernetics Neurotechnology Systems (CYKN) had already implanted a chip the size of an aspirin on a 26 year-old quadriplegic patient who was able to control remote devices by his thought patterns alone. The year before, in 2005, Sony had patented a sensory device able to transfer images, sounds, touch and even smells to the brain without an implantation device in order to enhance the video game experience.

But what about rebuilding the entire human brain? We now possessed the technology to do this, but we did not have a viable test subject.

The subject of these initial brain implant experiments date back to the 1950s but are often never known by the public. These people, often the victims of circumstance, come from all walks of life. Some suffered from epilepsy, some came from extreme poverty, some were the victims of accidents.

Two weeks ago, a beautiful young girl in Southern California was travelling in a car with other girls when they were struck by a drunk driver. Although alive, she was pronounced brain-dead and put on life support. She was a popular teenager who was also a cheerleader at her high school. A memorial service was given for her today to give closure to the people who had loved her and known her.

No Trading on Mondays

I've made a decision to avoid trading on Mondays. Mondays were the days when I would be unsure of myself, second guess all my decisions and the months of painstaking strategy would be thrown away on a whim.

Over the weekend, I had been happily effused in mint julep elation while at a Kentucky Derby event. I know absolutely next to nothing about horse-racing, but every year, my friend and I would take this time to show off our colourful hat collection that on any other occasion, we would not otherwise be able to do so.

Suffice to say, after rubbing elbows with directors and lawyers whilst indulging in conversations about the virtues of cinematic life, followed by more partying and cocktails; the weekend tradition continued with mimosas at Sunday brunch.

On Monday morning, rising at the crack of dawn, I had an acute headache. The sort of headache that said not to get up. There was a distinct voice in my head to nurse my hang over and lie down, but I did no such thing. Sleep was for pussies. Then I made my second mistake for Q2: on a whim, I dumped my Google stock early, the one I had caught like a pouncing tiger and bought at 524.40, to dump all of it at 531. What was I thinking? Early on Friday, Google had been consolidating more than usual, slow to move, and I had considered dumping it to exchange with another stock, but then on Sat, I had a vivid dream not to do so. Most traders probably don't pay attention to their dreams, however, I keep a careful log, because a lot of what I absorb during the day I won't fully process until my mind falls asleep, allowing me to have access to all of my brainpower, and being able to perceive an event that has not completely consciously registered yet. In actuality, I had analysed that Google would surge to 717 by Sept.

It ended up being a tiny gain, but I was disappointed in myself for making the same mistake twice- dumping a stock too early because I was getting cold feet. The previous 3 Mondays ago at this time, I had done the same thing- woken up with a hangover on Monday, and dumped all my Gold stock. Of course, I had caught Gold early on, and had already met my target price, but again, the lack of sufficient sleep had caused me to overthink my position and dumped it before it would surge 5 more dollars without yet any candlestick formation of an impending downtrend. In actuality, my exit in Gold wasn't terribly bad, and I had actually only exited a week early, with a hefty gain, but I was really annoyed with myself for having made the same mistake twice in one month.

After reassessing a potential re-entry into Google, I had surmised that I would have to be patient this time, and enter when there was a distinct signal to do so, and not pull out prematurely before it matured. Currently I was focusing on the tech sector, being that my favourite commodities were all in consolidation, and I wasn't the type who liked making 50 cent moves, I liked making 20 dollar moves and holding onto a position for a few months. After some self-examination, I decided that I only really needed to up at the crack of dawn when I was in buying mode. There's something about morning glories in which I had the trigger finger to sell, especially after imbibing one too many cocktails. I didn't need to spend all my time trading, as I considered strategy more important than making high volume trades per day. Besides, I was transitioning into investment banking, and I had to spend more time partying, learning the ropes of M&A.

Lesson learned: No Trading on Mondays. More Sleep. Enjoying life instead of stressing over minor details.

The End of An Era

In January 2005, Richard M. Kessel, chairman of the Long Island Power Authority held a ceremony at the decommissioned Shoreham nuclear power plant and said:

''We stand in the shadow of a modern-day Stonehenge, a multibillion-dollar monument to a failed energy policy, to formally commission the operation of a renewable energy technology that will harness the power of the wind for the benefit of Long Island's environment.''

Although, it was only able to generate electricity to power 25 homes per day, that moment would symbolise the beginning of the end of an era of nuclear power.

Stonehenge, built approx. 3000 B.C., England

There is something atavistic about monuments. As if entombed in stone, they were somehow immortalised for generations to witness their terrible beauty.

Fukushima nuclear power plant, built in 1971, Japan

Scholars have theorised that Stonehenge was a burial area, where the living dead were put to rest. In a similar vein, the Fukushima nuclear reactors will be entombed in concrete; the deceased people who might lay nearby, unable to be retrieved due to radioactive poisoning. When encompassed in concrete, the Fukushima nuclear power plants will be a no-living zone, where for centuries, the radioactive plutonium, celesium and iodine will make the once fertile land a kind of burial space.

Stonehenge map

Fukushima II nuclear power plant

Once entombed in concrete, Fukushima will be a city turned to stone, a monument to a nuclear Medusa that had perfectly captured its beauty, like a crushed butterfly encased in a horrific display.

Where Stonehenge stands now, the land is lush again and eccentrically green. We still ponder why for hundreds of centuries, the surrounding land had been a no-living zone. All we can surmise is that life did not exist around 1500 B.C., some 1500 years after Stonehenge had been built. Anthropologists and scholars extrapolate that there were periods in our earth's history where massive extinctions of complex life occurred for unknown reasons.

The heretical question remains then, in our contemporary era, will our dependence on nuclear power eventually destroy us in the end?

(Disclosure: I do not hold any positions in stocks that power nuclear energy such as EXC, ETR, D and GE)

Why Libya hates Japan

When I talk to my friends who have holdings, options and futures positions in energy stocks, mainly those of crude oil, and the petroleum sector, they all say the same thing: that oil reigns supreme and the countries and corporations that have dominated the global economy with our co-dependence on oil has lead some companies to rise in stock within these uncertain times. Saint Mary Land & Exploration (SM) Chevron (CVX), Tesoro (TSO), Exxon (XOM), Range Resources Group (RRC), Conoco Phillips (COP) are all well run companies. They have established their mighty place in the world. They give people what we need, energy. We love our cars, and cars are run on oil.

The country that has benefited the most, of course, is Libya. Libya is the crack dealer who sells oil to the rest of the world. Their sweetest variety of oil is their largest export, and accounts for more than half of their revenue. The GDP per capita of Libya soared by 676% in the 1960s and a further 480% in the 1970s thanks to oil.  

Libya's natural resource allows the Gaddafis to afford expensive palaces, real estate in foreign countries and a world-class education while the rest of their population live in near poverty. The average Libyan does not have access to a world class education; much of their industry simply revolves around the oil industry.

Japan, by comparison is a wealthy nation that is built upon technological innovation and prowess, similar to the United States and Switzerland. Education is valued by the Japanese. Their main religion, the Shinto religion, is one in which they are one with nature. They created and initiated the Kyoto Treaty, one in which would've made our planet a cleaner and more beautiful place. So, how cruel of a fate is it that the world's leader in clean energy would suffer a tripartite of the worst geophysical disaster ever, in which, not only did they suffer a 9.0 earthquake, but was followed by a tsunami and then a volcanic eruption?

The beauty of Japan, and their love of nature and clean energy was taken away in just one week.

People might ask why? Was it some act of nature? Why did this happen to a country that was the innovator in clean energy?

Let's examine the chronology:

Japan was the first to utilise algae biofuel in commercial airline flights in 2008. They no longer use oil to fuel for airplanes. They want to move away from the world's dependence on oil. By some act of genius, they figured out how to create sustainable energy out of seaweed, and somehow convinced the United States to try it too, so that our US NAVY is fuelled not by the petroleum or natural gas, coal or the oil sector but by algae biofuel, a technology that Japan freely shared with us to the extent that Honeywell (HON) and Exxon (XOM) are also in research and development of the multiple uses of algae biofuel. But that wasn't enough, they somehow also figured out how to power cars by using water in 2008 (Genepax) before MIT researchers figured out the same thing in 2011 to power houses, using the same principle.

What would happen if Japan went into global mass production with these water powered cars?

Libya would no longer have a dependable revenue on exporting oil. They are a nation built upon one thing, and that thing they hold most valuable would not be necessary any longer in global economics.

However, all our great oil companies in the United States would also go bankrupt. Our economy might fall further into recession. The bull run would end. CVX, TSO, SM, COP, RRC, XOM would no longer have a demographic.  These are great companies, and somehow we must find a way for them to transition into our brave new world. When coal was the primary source of energy in America in the 1800s, an American entrepreneur, John D. Rockefeller created the Standard Oil Company, that would later become Exxon Mobil; because he believed oil, and not coal, was the future, despite many protestations of disbelief and doubt coming from the coal industry and the general public.

We seem to be at a similar juncture in time, when there is a changing of the guard. Who will take John D. Rockefeller's place?

Brave New World

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes,
an aeroplane - Lenny Bruce is not afraid.
Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn,
world serves its own needs, dummy serve your own needs.
Feed it off an aux speak, grunt, no, strength,
The ladder starts to clatter with fear fight down height.
Wire in a fire, representing seven games, a government for hire and a combat site.

-R.E.M., "It's the end of the world (and I feel fine)"

Who would've thought that the incoherent ramblings of a pop song could have such chilling relevance to world events? Let's examine the modern chronology of events:

Thousands of birds suddenly dying and falling from the sky in Arkansas, Louisiana and also Sweden. (Jan 1-4 2011)

Millions of fish washing up dead in Cheasapeake Bay, Maryland (Jan 4 2011)

Another million sardines found dead in Redondo Beach, CA (March 8 2011)

Earthquake and tsunami in Japan (March 11 2011)

Cobra missing from the New York Zoo (March 23 2011) 

What is clear is that these aren't natural occurring phenomena. There is something strangely correlated about these series of events. 


"The key to geophysical warfare is the identification of environmental instabilities to which the addition of a small amount of energy would release vastly greater amounts of energy. "

-Professor Gordon J. F. MacDonald was associate director of the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at the University of California, Los Angeles, was a member of the President's Science Advisory Committee, and later a member of the President's Council on Environmental Quality in 1966. (from Angels Don't Play This HAARP: Advances in Tesla Technology, 1995)

HAARP is High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program. It utilises ELF waves to target the earth’s crust and specified populations can be negatively afflicted by geophysical phenomena, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, in addition to mind control, brain-wave interference, and can lead to the influence of targeted electro-magnetic fields that most probably leads to ill health, but also to death in plants, humans, and of course, animals. In other words, the World Wars of the past can now be replaced with geophysical warfare.

Except that with a blink of an eye, we can wipe out their population, and kill all living beings, using nature as our weapon of destruction.

Which countries have access to HAARP technology? All of us. 

The personality of a bull

I have to admit, I really have little to no respect for scalpers. I view scalpers as the scavengers of society, those animals that must feed off the remains of others or else, look for the uneaten pieces of food that others have left behind. They are the ones who would readily accept sloppy leftovers, cheat on their wives and husbands with their  wives and husbands'  best friends, and never contribute anything meaningful to society except to look for opportunities into benefiting from someone else's misfortune.

There is a psychology to scalpers- which is dog-eat-dog world which I never took to heart. Why would I sell 100K shares of a stock I hoped would fail then buy it back 2 cents later?

I suppose at heart, I prefer to watch those equities when they fail, I never short them in options for obvious reasons. In options, it is much easier to be bullish on particular stocks. Buying and selling puts were for losers. People who accumulated a lot of puts were basically people who decided that a stock was at a long term high, and then short them. They were short term thinkers, these people who believed 2008 should be a recurring year every year because they liked it when companies failed.

Scalpers were men who typically didn't care now know much about the stock they were shorting or buying at all, they only cared about the 1 cent. They were Wall Street's hangers-on and leeches; but thanks to algorithms, they were now replaced by automated programmes that would buy at the bid and sell at the ask.


And ironically scalpers' stories were all the same: They eventually burnt out; blew through their accounts, were addicted to meth and adderall, and decided to either go traveling around the world on a boat or go into real estate.

What is nice about options, is that one has options. Like a potential lover, you choose which ones catch your mind's eye, and then you strategically think of a way to seduce them. When they're pulling back, or at a dip, is when you go in for the kill. Or else, you make love to them while they're in consolidation mode, and then analyse them for short term or long term. Is this who I want to be in a short term or long term relationship with? The numbers by themselves, are for fools. The potential for a beautiful long-term relationship was always in the fundamentals and the technical charts of a particular equity.

I fell in love with AAPL because it made beautiful, efficient, machines that were pleasing both to the eye and to the wider demographic. I fell in love with CMG & WFMI because people wanted to be healthy and eat well; I fell in love with TIF because young men will always want to woo women with beautiful shiny things. With options, you never really had to buy the stock, you simply rode on its bullish trend, then exited, simply without putting in much risk aside from your premium. That was the beauty of long calls on options. You saw a talented person you could fall in love with, made a bet that this person would be successful, then simply banked on it before the expiry of your options contract. You never lost more than what you initially put in as your downpayment, but the rewards of that relationship were far more bountiful, if you set your eyes on someone whom you found worthy of your attentions.

You weren't actively looking for failures, which could be costly in options, and your losses unlimited, you were looking for successes.

Men who were bulls had entrepreneurial spirit. Men who were bears were looking for a quick buck.

In options, buying long puts were for losers who were looking for losers. But why focus on the negative? We were in a bull market in this year 2011. Why not simply capitalise on it?

The Emperor's New Clothes

There are two aphorisms one should consider when working in finance:

"Money is the root of all evil."
"A lack of money is the root of all evil."

Perhaps these seemingly opposing views are really complementary, such as Epictetus ' virtue in self-discipline and acceptance in living simply, not being ruled by one's lack of control of events; and Epicurius' discovery of  pleasure in the simple things in life and the fulfillment of one's duty. The definitions of stoicism and epicureanism have become perverted throughout the ages to refer to ideals that were the polar opposites, but at their inception, their views of the world were altogether rather similar.

So now we have come to a point in our history which represents the changing of the guard, when we must redefine ideologies once again.

In our society, the greatest virtue is to be "rich"; to amass great wealth, to have the kind of freedom and power which money can only bring. We worship not deities, nor ourselves, any longer, but in money. In Money We Trust. Wall Street is our religion, it is the powerful entity in which we bow down, and are envious of its all-encompassing power. No one cared about nobility any longer or the sacrifices made by the creative force in our society. Money was the one thing people would always admire.

Since we worship money, we must then examine how money is created, and how the illusion of money creates more money.

Let's take for example, Enron, a company that for decades defrauded their investors by fabricating positive gains in their accounting department. People believed the hype of Enron to the degree that 65 billion was lost in a company that was quietly losing money year after year, while their company executives happily spent their investors' money on company jets and posh offices. This house of cards came down when it was revealed that indeed, Enron had defrauded the best on Wall Street; 65 billion dollars of investor money, lost.

But we have not yet learned our lesson. The second ponzi scheme infamous in the media, Madoff's evil, ingenius and brilliant scheme came by the way of 60 more billion dollars; this time using his pristine Wall Street reputation to defraud the clientele of the elite upper class with JP Morgan as his ally. Perhaps in prison, where Madoff is now, he might be known as Robin Hood, who stole from the rich, a kind of hero to thugs and murderers who believe that the middle and upper classes in America should be made to suffer the fate of con-artists. Still, our lesson was not over yet.

And then, came Facebook, evaluated recently at 40 billion and climbing. The problem with social media was that, of course, it never created any revenue. Facebook was a liability to most investors; it sucked up funds, but never made a dime. Then Bill Gates, the evil, brilliant genius of all time, came to publicly bid Facebook for 6 billion dollars. This shocked the venture capitalist world. No one wanted to buy Facebook for less than 5 million by previous companies, but here, Mr. Gates set a precedent by publicising his intent to purchase the company for 6 billion, a feat in which he probably never intended to do in the first place, but as Microsoft was already an investor in the company, wanted to raise its value in the public eye. In the 4 years it has done so, Facebook is now theoretically worth 8 times that initial bid.

Was Facebook worth 6-40 billion, when it had negative cash flow every year? So our dilemma continues. However, Gates was able to elevate Facebook from being perceived as a liability to a company that was now, an asset. He proselytized the Silicon Valley masses into donating their flesh and blood into the religion of the Church of Facebook. If he wanted the company for 6 billion, certainly, it was worth more than that now, investors were saying, impressed by the imaginary messiah clothes that Mark Zuckerberg wore. Indeed, it was the revenge of the nerds. Somehow, they were able to fool all the Silicon Valley venture capitalists into thinking this company with negative cash flow was somehow worth at least 6 billion.

But let us continue. Now Hollywood, then picked up on this ponzi scheme, except they idolised it within the context of a Don Quijote movie, full of clichés, deifying Zuckerberg into some sort of cool Geek status in which his ordinary self is immortalised as a kind of archetype of the New American Hero. Here was  this likable nerd, socially inept and dorky, but cool, who steals an idea, makes a match.com site for Harvard students and becomes a billionaire. And he didn't even have to finish college.

But let's go back to the facts. Mark Zuckerberg might not be that cool guy in the movie; perhaps in real life, he was not a lovable nerd, but perhaps he sounded more like a conservative right bigot who had imbibed the politicial ideologies of half-informed posts on twitter, and sounded like illiterate college dropout he was. Who really knew?

The fact was, Zuckerberg, was smiling, perhaps with a contemptuous, comfortable smug on his geeky handsome visage, because he had pulled the biggest heist of all; more so than Enron, and Madoff, because Facebook was only profitable as long as investors poured in their money on a negative revenue company (especially with the help of Goldman Sachs, whose own executives wouldn't touch the Facebook stock but tried to push it onto all their European clients) but because in the process, the dorky Zuckerberg came off as some kind of cool hero for the population to be enamoured of.

The dorks shall inherit the earth, indeed.

The road less travelled

I was given the worst possible advice by our best options trader a few days ago. Suffice to say, he is brilliant in his own way, soft-spoken with a keen attention to detail in his exquisite scalping strategies in which he makes over 1000 trades per day.

This talented scalper, let's call him Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, after the basketball star; Kareem said to me that to be a great trader one had to fail and lose a lot of money. That is, to feel that pain of the loss of capital, to understand that agony in which one couldn't sleep at night because one was drowning in negative capital.

I didn't need to feel that agony. For the last half decade, I witnessed the decline of my family's fortune, as their multi-million dollar investments turned into dust. I stood witness, while my parents dutifully shielded me from that loss of capital. The future looked bleak, but my family never lost their perserverance. It's something that I never discussed, this economic tragedy that had befallen the members of my family, who for decades had enjoyed the American Dream.

It made me realise that women are often shielded from fiduciary matters. We are absent when business is discussed. As children, we learn that is it vulgar to discuss money with others; and we are sent on our way, to primp and preen, and be admired for our beauty and diligence, but are never consulted when important decisions are made regarding our financial future.

Middle class families send their daughters to become accountants and lawyers, in the hopes that they will never suffer the fate of an unknown financial future. I studied music and art, and in the United States, that is a privilege as I have come to learn. I look at all my artist friends, and most of them ahead of their time, the Picassos, Klimts and Van Goghs of their time, except no one knew who they were yet. Yes, we were all struggling.

So my brilliant co-worker, the star options trader continues to tell me that my non financial background could be a great asset; after all, my mind wasn't filled with superfluous information, and my particular style of visual thinking lead to an eerie accuracy in creating charts that always met their targets. But perhaps, underneath it all, I always had a love affair with the world's economy.

For me, failure wasn't an option.

Neocapitalism: An insular education

It's been said that Wall Street steals all the most brilliant people away to work in finance. When I ask people who work in all sectors of finance, they all seem to have the same story: Graduated from an Ivy League; majored in economics or accounting; interned at some bank as students, always knew they were going to work in finance etc. They studied numbers all their lives. They had parents who pressurised them into the field. They were following a path that was already paved from them. They never knew anything else.

I sometimes wonder if insider trading is really about people who socialise at country clubs, playing golf, and saying, hey, let's do this next week, just between you and me. Just don't leave a trail of emails, facebook messages, or twitters. You'll be fine, right?

I once read that the best traders are star athletes. Most investment and capital groups are attracted to star athletes, not due to their Michelangelo and model-like appearance, but because as star athletes, they are disciplined. They get up at the crack of dawn, they practice their technique daily, they don't indulge in excess, they learn to persevere etc. It's akin to the myth of the hero: this perfect athlete/ trader. They are Greek gods, admired by men and ladies alike, wanted by all Proprietary Trading Groups and bring in the most revenue.

The truth is, this probably is untrue- at least for most Proprietary Trading Companies out there. At our company, 3 of our best intraday traders were not athletes. They didn't even play sports at all. One was a warm, caring individual who came from a foreign exchange background, and studied business administration when he really wanted to be a writer. The other two, foreign immigrants who liked to play a lot of video games in their spare time, and the other still, a French national who read a lot of literature, and had an intuitive way of analysing the market. They knew how to scalp based on their understanding of routes, tape reading and learning how to outsmart the automatons at the "big banks" at intraday play. They were never A-students, and none of them attended Ivy Leagues nor were star athletes; but what they had in common was that trading was never meant to be their primary profession. Trading was their Plan B, and somehow, they found they were extremely good at it.


Did Wall Street take away our best scientists, artists, musicians, writers, engineers, editors, lawyers, doctors and make them into financial analysts, traders and investment bankers?

Perhaps. In the United States, we live under neocapitalism. One could no longer have the freedom to do what they wanted in life unless they were somehow involved with the financial market. 

Wall Street was our new religion. But part of the joy was discovering that path itself. This is what always separated the bulls from the bears. One had to always take a stand.

A speculative art

Trading is a highly speculative art. It is a form of prediction that can have dire financial consequences. Often when I speak with traders, they have the mindset that the market is an enemy, which takes away their profits. Their enemy is their own. There is no enemy. The market is effusive, organic, and represents a paradigm shift; a vast ocean that pushes and pulls and gradually will drown you unless you learn to float on water, and learn to move to the rhythms of the oceans waves.

Struggling against the market is akin to trying to swim against the current. The ocean is more powerful than you are. When I first learned to surf, I fell many times, but after much practice, I realised that there was a method to the madness.

Intraday traders often have great technical skills akin to coding. They play poker when the market slows down, they place and cancel orders, learn to read the tape, and play against automated programmes from the financial instutitions that have utilised scalping technologies without a human interface.

Swing and position traders, like myself, can't be replaced by automatons, at least not yet, at this particular juncture in time in 2011. We have a thinking skill that cannot be replicated by software programmes. This ability for analysis is the same as if one were analysing a work of literature. The market possesses a plotline, a summary, a list of characters of various players, and shifts and movements that we recognise and place our bets on.

When I first started trading, I was at first, lured by the power of shifting large amounts of capital around, but as I grew more familiar with the market, I realised that it was really a kind of blueprint of humanity; in each movement, possessed truths about our society. The market was really a macrocosm of each individual action, in which a combination of fundamental analysis along with a technical understanding of its recurring motifs are necessary in the highly speculative art of being a trader.