Vegas Imminent

I'm off to Vegas Friday afternoon, rekindling the pattern of annual Martin Luther King Day trips to the desert.

While I'm gone, there's a lot of reading to catch up on here.  Of course, you can always hit my tip jar and donate to my efforts.  The link is on the right sidebar.

In case you missed it, I've been busy the past few weeks, cranking out what I think are pretty worthy reads.

Just before Christmas, I penned a post titled "Isaac Newton, Momentum, and Mean Reversion,"  which tells one of the most valuable concepts I learned in my time on the buy side - you want fat tails of distributions working in your favor, not against you.

Later that week I wrote "Fiduciary Duty and the Victim Mindset,"  which tried to get at the point that as long as we continue to label those on the losing side of trades as victims, they will never change their behavior.  Many of these "victims" were grossly negligent and need to be removed from their money management rolls.  This theme continued in a post titled, "Synthetic CDO's, Spanish 21, and Sports Betting,"  which I'm very happy with.

After New Years, I named my trade of the year:  the Ponzi scheme epitomized by the TLGP, and eerily reminiscent of Tommy Boy's "I'll take a crap in a box and put a guarantee it" quote.

I was surprised that Regulators found it necessary to explain to banks that interest rate risk was a big deal for them, and Tim Geithner's seat heated up a little with news that he may have tried to prevent some disclosures from the AIG settlements.

The unemployment report sucked - no matter what the mainstream media wants you to believe.

I penned a few homeowner related posts.  "The Joys of Home Ownership," attracted a lot of reader comments, and I followed that up with my travails attempting to buy a ladder, titled "Eff You Brick and Mortar."  I went home and bought the ladder online at Amazon.com

I took issue with the Administration's blaming the banks for the collapse of the automakers.

Finally, I wrote a reaction to the populist fury over the confusion surrounding the difference between front running- which is blatantly illegal, and talking your book - which is the essence of our entire financial markets.  Every commentator you see or read is talking some sort of book/agenda - don't forget that.

If you want some lighter reading, to prep you for next week's Vegas Trip Reports, the "posts of fame" section on my right sidebar has all my old Vegas Trip Repors.

enjoy,

KD