Long or Short Capital

Self-analysis of Long or Short. Judged and ranked for the strongest combination of humor and truth.

1. Perf: The Next Big thing. Abstract, yet tangible. And clearly, very true.
2. Supreme Court Dance Parties: Long. Truth was strong in this analysis, as this has been upgraded to Chief Justice Dance Parties, within only a month of our post.
3. Visteon: Analysis of New Ideas. A graph and fraternal due dilligience. This is why we’re the best there are at what we do.
4. Racialistness: Markets in Soul and Respect. An overview of the impact of the inputs of “soul” and “respect” on the music markets.
5. Proposed Changes to Koran Pt 1: Mortgage Friendly. Everyone wants an ARM these days, let’s not let religion prejudice a group of potential homeowners against “freedom” financing.
6. Mudpies, Creampies: Short, Long. Prefaced the whole OSTK hubbub. THAT is how you analyze.
7. The Number Z: Preempting the trend. Like Perf, but with numbers. When is the last time a truly new whole number came along?

Recommendation: Give us your money. Riches will follow. We’re long Long or Short Capital LLC. Feel free to advocate for your favorite.

Full disclosure: We are Long or Short Capital LLC, which may or may not bias our opinions of ourselves. All external advocacy will be ignored.

Justifying our cephalopod recommendation from July, witness this video in which a giant pacific octopus dominates a shark in acquatic combat. Here is the footage. We reiterate our long position. Keep in mind that if the stock begins to tick up, there is a lot of tentacle pressure that could push it through the roof.

Background via Collision Detection:

Okay, so — the Seattle aquarium had a couple of Giant Pacific Octopi, and for logistical reasons they had to temporarily put one of them in a tank holding several sharks. They figured the octopus would be okay because it can change color to conceal itself from predators. But over the next week, the marine scientists came into work to find sharks are lying dead on the floor of the aquarium. Whatever was going on? They stayed around one evening and trained a camera on the water to see.

I’ve been thinking about music technology on a couple levels. First of all, I’ve been drawing together a proper music snobbery response to two of Craig Newmark’s posts, the first about how technology has killed the rock snob star and letting him know what the perfect album is. During this process, I came across this tidbit of information via CD.com: the overwhelming majority of people use only a paltry percentage of their iPod’s total capacity.

Why is that? The most obvious answer to me is that most people have such small brains that they can only handle having 375 options available to them. The second most obvious answer is that there is a constant 18 month moving average of 375 top 40 songs.

But why do people continue to buy iPod’s, and other digital music players, at capacity levels which they won’t ever approach? Because people are stupid and cannot properly gauge what they need. Alternatively, people are vulnerable to the power of marketing featuring Bono gyrating in bizarro shadow relief video style.

A running theme here at LOS.com is that in every group of people, most of them will be idiots. Applying this maxim here, in any group of iPod owners, most of them will be idiots. This is good news for Apple.com as any growth they hope to achieve, now that everyone and my mother has an iPod, is dependent on the continued existence of the Idiot Demographic (aka TID). Oh you have released a product which already far outstrips anything I need, costs twice as much, and is difficult to order? I must have the OmegaPod Mini Shuffle!

We think that you can always bank on idiocy. The post-war diamond industry was built upon this. So we will continue to focus on business plans and companies which are dependent upon TID. Future entries in this series include “Why own when you can lease for 50% more? The Rent-A-Center Story” and “SBUX: Hot water and filtered dirt for $4.50.”

Full Disclosure: JD owns an iPod Mini and an iPod Shuffle. He fully embraces his inner-hypocrite.

Pinnacle Entertainment (ticker:PNK) is a small-cap gaming company whose assets were particularly hard hit by Hurricane Katrina. Here is their Casino Magic Biloxi property.

The company yesterday held a call to talk about the damage they have suffered both in Biloxi and to their Boomtown New Orleans property. It was announced that the Biloxi casino needs to be rebuilt and will be with with the insurance proceeds. But the company faces a double-edged labor issue.

CEO Dan Lee, September 6th, 2005:

One of the ironic things we started looking at it and we are very concerned — what do we do with the 900 employees? We are continuing to pay them now. We can’t continue to pay them forever. No company can afford to pay people forever who are not working.

…

[Also,] how are [we] going to find people to work on rebuilding? Because as I said a minute ago, carpenters are going to be in short supply.

Labor on payroll that doesn’t fit their labor needs. Pinnacle has been handling this situation remarkably well, putting their workers’ first and handling the devastation with calm focus. Their solution to this particular problem is pure genius.

[Our] HR people are fervently trying to search out how to set up courses or classes for our employees that while we are getting organized, we teach dealers how to swing a hammer. And even people who work in housekeeping — there is a lot of people pushing brooms on construction sites.

We applaud PNK’s creativity under tough circumstances, even if we are dubious as to how well it will work in practice. The workers will definitely be incented to try and make the switch but most dealers I’ve seen seem to specialize in three things, namely, being a dealer, being a degenerate gambler on their spare time and ruthlessly crushing my spirit.

Actual message conversation between Mr. Juggles and me about our Google Adsense Ads, (which are very clickable, if you are, you know, into that kind of thing):

MisterJuggles: How many clickthroughs have we gotten this week?
Me: I don’t know. It’s difficult to sort out the legitimate hits with the constant and perpetual click fraud I commit on a daily basis.
MisterJuggles: *laughter*

Don’t worry about GOOG and YHOO though, as I’m sure I’m the only who does this.

As an aside, does anyone know where I can get Neil Diamond tickets?