Archive for November, 2009

Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing 11-29-2009

The most exciting returns are to be had from an asset class where those who know it best, love it least.
-Don Coxe

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing


This Week in Tweets for 2009-11-28

  • RT @pkedrosky: RT @mathewi: had a bad day? read this email exchange — I had to stop reading I was laughing so hard: http://bit.ly/57zGN3 #

Today I Am Thankful For

Patrick Bryne
You have provided us with years of bizarre entertainment. You may have peaked with the Sith Lord episode and your campaign against naked short selling but you continue to amuse. Your 3Q earnings press release, in which you made various statements about your auditors’ alleged views on Overstock’s latest accounting mishap was excellent. Grant Thornton’s reply to the SEC, in which they basically accused you of lying, took this episode to the next level. But I am really thankful that you took it one step further and “corrected [their] mistatements“.

Steve Wynn & Sheldon Adelson
Wynn always provides great quotes on his conference calls. Whether he is telling investors that he will take advantage of their stupidity or directly confronting the administration for their suicidal policies. Thank you Steve.
And to Sheldon Adelson, thank you for all the amazing commentary you provide on your conference calls. Among the many quotes worth saving, my favorite was your joke that you may be cooking the books at your recently IPO’d Macau subsidiary.

Twitter
Thank you for creating an information firehose that distracts me from work and play. If only I could post half as often as I tweet.

China
Thank you for loaning our country so much money. And thank you for being such a fascinating place, a parallel universe where collusion is OK and business operates on the businessman’s terms. I am hopeful you avoid the credit growth and over-investment fueled crash towards which I fear you are headed.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. Please tell us what you are thankful for in the comments.


Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing 11-22-2009

Here is the deal. Inside one of these boxes is a key. If your box has a key in it, you will be the last person today to get one of those cute little G6’s, ok. Who will it be? Are you ready? Hold on, JR is back in our audio booth, I want, y’know. this calls for a drum roll, cue the drum roll, alright open your boxes. Open your boxes 1 2 3, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR, YOU GET A CAR!!!!
-Oprah Winfrey

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing


Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing 11-15-2009

I feel useless. Like a woman with a college degree.
-Kenneth on “30 Rock”

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing


This Week in Tweets for 2009-11-14

  • RT @jodiecongirl: In a sign the economy may be recovering, NYers started buying big ticket items again, like elections and championships #
  • Geithner reaffirms strong dollar policy. Very credible. Thanks timmay! http://bit.ly/1bDlnQ #
  • Add this to the list of things that will not end well: http://bit.ly/6B43O #
  • RT @pkedrosky: The Price of Gold in Gold: From price, the price of gold in gold. This is awfully suspicious. Wher.. http://bit.ly/3CbPnl #

Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing 11-08-2009

I’ve never taken the high road BUT I tell others to. Because it leaves more room for me on the low road. (Driving gesture)
-Tom Haverford on “Parks and Recreation”

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing


This Week in Tweets for 2009-11-07

  • RT @TheStalwart: This is awesome. RT @hblodget: Business lessons from the battlefield in Iraq http://bit.ly/3lWfSl #
  • RT @pkedrosky: It is insanely interesting wariness about complex systems and coupling doesn't extent from financial markets to climatology. #
  • http://bit.ly/1HhOg4 — he neglected to list us, but we were there, and we're insider trading the shit out of what they told us, more soon #
  • Relevant to todays post http://bit.ly/LFzlS #
  • http://bit.ly/rw3kd just got sent this, on GS's trading "The firm lost money on just 3 days in the last two quarters", LoS beats that fyi #
  • RT @jodiecongirl Haha, vegans vs. carnivores (funny pic from Megan McArdle) http://bit.ly/xNIX0 #
  • RT @felixsalmon Autumn Trends in the Pirate War: http://bit.ly/qUw13 #
  • "investment in piracy in last yr, can place a # of motherships in a chain, 40 nautical miles apart; pirate tactics like U-Boats in the WWII" #
  • @onetwoko Olivia Wilde can look like a frightening space elf from certain angles. Also too skinny. Bar Rafaeli is shattering. in reply to onetwoko #
  • @jodiecongirl Reason No 1 for me: I don't want groundhogs to die in a fire. in reply to jodiecongirl #
  • @Anal_yst J youll see a notebook titled Raymond’s Recipes Id recommend making the barbecued halibut with chile watermelon salsa, its his fav in reply to Anal_yst #
  • http://nofirstdate.com/ tremendous from @Anal_yst #

Risk in our Doomsday Device Fund

Dead_Cat commented on the Screw You, Science piece thusly:

I hereby launch my new fund Doomsday Device Partners Fund I LLC. This is a private equity-style product specifically focused on the acquisition and exploitation of doomsday devices. The fund will develop a diversified portfolio of doomsday devices, which may include particle accelerators, nuclear research and generation facilities, underground virus research laboratories and key religious artifacts. Nicolas Cage will be Chief Investment Officer and Milla Jovovich will be Chief Risk Officer.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, Long or Short Capital already has a Doomsday Device fund, one which is itself a doomsday device. We designed it with an automatic trigger system, a sophisticated system of arrays and failsafes such that, if any competing doomsday fund were ever to be launched, we would be able to retaliate no matter what happened to the value of our assets.

And unfortunately for you, and really all of us, we may not have been entirely sober when we designed this system. We called it The AYFKM system, but we generally referred to is as “No Whammy.” Kaiser conceptualized the structure. The first part of the design is an array which monitors an assortment of global communication channels. There is also a direct line of communication from No Whammy to the Long or Short Capital bunker, which is not a euphemism for our moms’ basements.

The device can be activated in one of three ways:

  1. If No Whammy’s array detects that any doomsday fund has started pitching investors, the No Whammy goes live.
  2. If the Long or Short Capital bunker signals for The AYFKM device to go live, it goes live. An instance where the line of communication between the LoS bunker and The AYFKM device is severed or otherwise goes down, The AYFKM device goes live. Just in case.
  3. If there is seismic activity in Manhattan greater than 0.7 on the Richter scale or an unusually large flock of Canadian geese, No Whammy goes live.

What does it mean for No Whammy to go live? It means that within 72 hours, thermonuclear missiles will be fired from silos we have across the globe, rendering the Earth uninhabitable. We did design a fail-safe in case of a mistaken triggering of No Whammy: we have a bunker with a single person in it who has access to a button that can stop the process, provided he first gives enters the correct password.

Unfortunately for you, and really for all of us, that bunker is staffed by Yuri, a drunk and a loudmouth. And Dmitri absolutely HATES Yuri. Dmitri, you see, was the first button-pusher we hired. We had a following out with Dmitri over a heated game of Risk in which one party did not honor his agreed upon alliance, and in fact, exploited the truce that the illusory alliance provided in order to build up forces and launch an invasion from said party’s (it’s Dmitri, duh) Kamchatka base. We immediately replaced Dmitri with Yuri, because we are a responsible firm, one who cares about things like not negligently letting our doomsday device render the Earth uninhabitable. But what we could not control was how many times Yuri had had sex with Dmitri’s wife Ludmilla. Or in how many different positions. Or on how many internet webcams. And when he learned of them, these numbers very much upset Dmitri and he refused to divulge the appropriate password to Yuri. Or to us. So if No Whammy goes live and at that time Yuri deems it appropriate to stop the launch of the missiles, it’s on Yuri to correctly guess the appropriate password.

And thus here we are. Not for long mind you, but here we are.

Recommendation: This is a clear demonstration of how important it is that when deploying an automatically triggered doomsday device, one must first SIGNAL that such a device is being deployed. That is really the whole value in the device in the first place. This is a mistake we won’t make again, we promise you. Amazingly, this has happened before.


Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing 11-01-2009

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then plagiarism is the sincerest form of imitation.
-Malcolm Gladwell plagiarizing from his friend Jacob

Past Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing