The Browns?! What the hell?

So the Dow finally closed below 10000 today and there's yet again a bunch of silly articles wondering how close we are to the bottom. The answer is who the hell knows? Suppose the Fed gives us an emergency rate cut... do we go up because it'll stimulate the economy or do we go down because the economy must be worst than we thought? Who the hell knows? I think the short term trend is still down, way down, but this market is completely nuts so who the hell knows?

What I do know is that we're seeing some crazy volatility and that's what I've been betting on. First off, sell your crappy longs to reduce exposure and raise cash. Then find a volatile major index ETF with tight option spreads (the Qs work here) and buy yourself some front month straddles or tight strangles and you're golden no matter which way we move (as long as we keep on moving). Wait til at most week or so before expiration to take profits and then roll into the next month. I don't see volatility dying anytime soon so this should work for a few cycles.

Oh yeah, I'm not a financial professional so do your due diligence before taking any action. I'll take all the praise if this works and none of the blame if it doesn't.

I was listening to CNBC on the way home today when McCain held his wonderful speech blaming Obama for politicizing the TARP. Are you fucking kidding me dude?! He's the one who politicized it last week by "suspending" his campaign to meddle with the Congressional negotiations which were well on its way to a completed deal. He fucked it up, not anyone else. Don't believe me, read this Salt Lake Tribune story. Don't believe the lies. His selfish political ambitions have contributed to fucking all of us. Fuck you very much, asshole.

Now there's some asshat "fiscal conservative" Republican House member on talking about how he doesn't want to bankrupt his children to bailout Wall Street. Again, are you fucking kidding me? 401Ks, IRAs, brokerage accounts are all guaranteed to be fucked if this bill doesn't pass. What's your children gonna have left when the banks go under and business go under because they can't borrow money to operate? What a dumbass. We're staring armageddon in the face and he wants to dick around with this crap. Oh yeah, your idiot party had the Congress and the White House for six years and you pissed away a shit-ton more money than this bill. Where was your fiscal conservation then? Asshole. You guys are the borrow and spend party and then you have the gall to throw out "bankrupt the future" card. Rovian politics at its best... repeat the lie enough and people will believe it's the truth.

I didn't think this could happen but I think even less of Republicans since they've stopped at nothing to defend Sarah Palin.

NPR aired some interviews from the RNC. There were multiple people stating that they respecting Palin more because her family took the honorable path of forcing their unwed, pregnant, teenage daughter to marry the father and not having an abortion. Jesus Christ, man, that is some convoluted logic! What would they be saying if it was Biden's unwed, pregnant, teenage daughter? They'd be slamming Biden and the Democrats for being liberal un-Christian people with no family values. This is the antithesis of everything Republicans stand for but they'll find any flimsy silver lining to avoid admitting that they're wrong.

There was a CNBC guest praising Palin for thinking outside the box. The example? She sold the Alaskan governer's office's private jet on Ebay. Seriously? One, I doubt she herself went onto Ebay and sold the jet. Two, even if she did, the party is in big trouble if they're touting such a relatively trivial act as one of her crowning achievements. Yeah, I once decided to drink white wine with my steak dinner. I'm a fucking maverick!

Finally, I was listening to XMPR on the drive home today and some crazy senator from Tennessee was touting her executive experience. Her example? She was the Commander in Chief of the Alaskan National Guard so that's good preparation for being Commander in Chief of the nation's miliary forces. For real? She's comparing the Alaskan National Guard to the entire fucking US military? By that logic, I'm throwing my name in the Warren Buffett succession hat. Shit, I ran a lemonade stand once so I'm totally set to run Berkshire Hathaway. What a fucking idiot!

Folks, I think we're gonna have a straw shortage because the Republicans have grasped them all.

Yeah this song is ancient but I just kind of rediscovered it today in my youtube favorites. I defy you to be in a bad mood after watching this video.

I think I'm watching the greatest Seinfeld episode ever right now. The TV guide says the episode is named "The Strike" but it is so much more. Kramer returns to the bagel shop after a decade on strike. Jerry dates the two-face. George invents The Human Fund. Elaine tries to get back her frequent sub card. And then there's Festivus. Yes, this is the episode that launched the new holiday. Christ, I remember all of these things but I didn't realize it was all from the same episode. Pure genius.

My damn cable modem has been down all weekend but I'm in meetings basically the whole day tomorrow so I have to wait til Tuesday to get a damn cable appointment. Grr...

Anyway, I'm tethering off the Blackberry today. It's hella slow but better than nothing.

Hungover hockey is not fun. Drank way too much Saturday night and the killer hangover killed my entire Sunday. Then the rubber gasket and bulb arm in my toilet bowl tank goes all messed up. Pain in the ass. I was in no condition to work so I had to get up early today to make up for it.

On the other hand, I did make a crapload of money in the market today so it wasn't all bad the last few days.

Apparently I've been living under a rock because I just stumbled upon kiva.org yesterday. They're a non-profit that provides a venue for people to make micro-loans to small business in emerging countries. You can go on the site and browse through loan applications and donate as little as $25. There's no interest paid to lenders but the default rate is astonishingly low so the risk as pretty much nil. I prefer to think of it as charity and I've been looking for a way to give back some money or time to charitable organizations and this is as good as any. Anyway, it's just $25 so just do it!

Grrr... I did not do well in my interview today. 25 minutes should've been plenty to get there but I was still 10 minutes late because traffic was freaking horrendous this morning. And when I got to the parking deck, the provided code didn't work. I drove around for a minute and found a visitor lot but it was like a 5 minute power walk away from the building. So I'm sweating my balls off and coming down from panic of being late and my entire gameplan went out the window. That truly sucked and might wind up biting me in the ass.

The GMAT's my bitch! 740! That's 97 percentile! 47 quant (81%), 45 verbal (98%). I was so damn nervous before the test and I was expecting mid 600s when I finished the test but, hot damn, that's a ridiculous score. Wish it was Friday so I could partake in some drunken celebration.

Well, I took my final practice GMAT today and I freaking destroyed it. I got a 700, biatch! 43 quant and 42 verbal. That's a huge improvement from the 580 I got on my first practice test. I guess the endless hours of mind-numbing practice exercises will not have been in vain. Interestingly, the 43 quant only puts me in the top 30% but the 42 verbal puts me in the top 4%. I thought I'd be better at math than at verbal because of my Asianness.

Anyway, my real GMAT is on Thursday and I know specifically what I need to review again tomorrow. Damn, I sure hope this wasn't a fluke.

New Weezer album! Damn this song is catchy.

Well I finished the official study guide over the long weekend and I'm pretty damn confident now so I scheduled the test for June 12. I'd rather do it next week while all this crap is fresh in my mind but I still have my advanced math workbook to do so I'll just put that off a week to get the timing right. This shit needs to be over ASAP.

I've got a new kickass computer setup now. My Mac Mini couldn't really pull that off well and it was starting to get a little pokey so I sold that for a good chunk of change and got myself a refurb MacBook Pro. I bought an extra 2 GB of RAM and a sweet Seagate Momentus drive and upgraded it myself. The end result is silky smooth dual-monitor goodness for around $1600.



Later, I picked up a laptop stand and a cheap 7 port USB hub from Microcenter to complete the setup. It freaking took forever to find a decent laptop stand with front access to storage underneath the stand. This is literally the only one that I could find. Anyway, this allows me stash the hub under the stand and still has plenty of valuable storage space. The whole setup just barely fits on my desk with my existing 24" monitor. Absolutely perfect.



Now it's time for GMAT studying.