If I know there are Ten dollars in my pocket and then I suddenly only have Nine, I don't call that a "wallet correction."
Steffi Panzer


Corporate Diagnosis: Does Your Company Suck? PDF Copy

Is Your Money REITarded?
(Del Mar, CA, USA)    November 2009
The DJIA is like my pulse. I live and breath by it. Every nickel that I can get my hands on goes into my on-line trading account. I'm addicted to trading; I admit it, I love it. I've traded millions of dollars in stocks and enjoy a comfortable lifestyle as a result. I live in a small, rural town in a rural state where we shoot rabbits and trespassers from our back porch. 

I missed every crash. Yes, every stock market crash, I was liquid, no margins during every one.

The first action I took was in February 2007. I cashed in my shitty employers 401K ( the Napoleon CFO tried to stop me) and didn't even care about the penalties and taxes. I churned that sum into a tidy little nest egg, far surpassing the deductions that were taken from it because I was not fossil age or the company I worked for turned to vomit (which it did!). Secondly, in the first week of July 2007 I sold every remotely connected financial stock, real estate related, mortgage company, bank, or mutual fund companies.

But this article is to not tote my accolades, though I am about 1 in 5000 traders that avoided every crash and continue to make money in this weird market. The purpose of the article is to inspire you to rethink how your money is working, or probably, not working for you, especially if you are sucked up in a REIT.

One point to note on trading: don't be too greedy. I made $168 today and that's fine by me. It took a few hours of math doing projections based on past asks and trade volume, but after my take, I called it quits and shook a martini around noon. Too many day traders think they need to make $4000 an hour - very stupid. Set a limit that equals an honest wage and plan a trade or trades based on that number.  My goal is actually just $80 a day. Who needs more?  Its done so quick that I can go fishing or shooting or call my mom and talk for an hour, or rather let her talk for an hour...anyway...I'm not working at that point.

The stock I am making bank on is Textron (TXT).  It is not unique in choice for me because I only deal in defense contractors.  If you want to make a killing in the market, buy a stock that makes a killing. ha! 

What I don't put my money into is financials stocks, mutual funds, or these weird investment vehicles called "REITs".  They are some sort of real estate fund that the last time I checked was the shittiest segment in our economy.  So don't put your money into a coma by buying real estate trust funds where I have seen some decline like 98.89% in two years. $150 Million, Poof! Gone!

Instead, I invest in Department of Defense contractors like Textron who is working on a wicked new space based laser that can assassinate a person from the outer atmosphere.. Very cool. The difference to your bottom line in trading will quickly become apparent as you move your money out of the way of the REIT real estate train wreck. And by the way, don't sneak up to our back porch; we may mistake you for a rabbit.
  --Sr. Trabajando, News Correspondent (not CIA)

Wall Street Edge News Interview, We Asked a Cat What to Trade in This Market

  Mr. Moops, Esq.
(Sarasota, FL, USA)  - August 2009

(Before acting on financial advice from another species, please consult with own financial experts first. -ed)

With the often negative and constantly conflicting economic advice streaming out of the media and our self-appointed, or is self-anointed, financial experts, we thought we would get a fresh and objective opinion on the current state of the American private equity markets by asking the office cat.

Editor: Thanks for joining us today Mr. Moops.

Mr. Moops: Glad to be here ed.

Ed: Its actually Brian, "ed" is for "editor."

MM: You know, I like you Betty, thank you very little.

Ed: (laughs) Nice classical film reference.  Your biography says that you hold several degrees.

MM: Gwow. Gwow.

Ed: So you're also multi-lingual - we'll get back to your degrees in a moment.

MM: Rats Right, Ryan, rulti-ringual. English-dog, English, English-cat, Spanish-cat. I'm Studying German-dog right now.

Ed; You're earlier English-dog reminded me of Nixon; I like that.

MM: (laughs-meows) Maybe my German-dog will end up sounding like Kissinger.

Ed: (laughs) What are some of the interesting degrees that you've earned?

MM: I have a Master's Degree in Television Viewing.   I watch over twenty hours a day of it and I can tell you with absolute certainty what sucks on it.

Ed: Do you use television then as the main source for information on your stock leads?

MM: Definitely. I chased down a good one the other day on on of the digital documentary channels. It was a show on military hardware that featured the Paveway System ™.

Ed: Can you give us a summary of your research-to-trade trail?

MM: Sure, if you pay me in Euros, (laughs-meows.)   The Paveway System was developed in the early nineteen seventies to accurately deliver more ordnance to the end consumer, at the time the NVA and the Viet Cong.

Ed: How is that relevant in todays market though?

MM: Whoah, slow down professor, I am getting to that. Traditional high explosive air delivery bombs, typically 1000 or 2000 pounders, use gravity to simply fall towards the intended target.  But these traditional gravity bombs are essentially "dumb" bombs, thus it takes a lot more of them to cancel out one location.

The Paveway System is a laser-guided cone assembly that can be retrofitted to the huge stockpiles of traditional dumb gravity bombs.

The Air Force and the Navy can then maintain large stockpiles of high-explosive gravity bombs for use in large scale saturation bombing campaigns when  needed, but dip into these stores, fit them with Paveways, to make laser precision guided bombs when necessary, provided a dual use for our DoD investment dollars.

Ed: So the product transforms already manufactured ordnance into newer "smart bombs."  That's clever. And it might be a huge cost advantage for the DoD, since they have already paid for the steel casing, fuse, explosive components, and manufacturing for the ordnance.

MM:Meow.  I had exactly the same idea. Its a very cost effective weapons system to purchase and use. Then my sources discovered that the DoD had invested another $30 million+ in the Paveway II System™ to Raytheon, so I, meow, recommended a buy for (RTN) and I believe some the staff members acted on it.

The Four Digit Dow Jones: Welcome Home
(Manhattan, New York)  June 2010
Sources at MSN.com reported by market's close on Thursday that the Dow had "shed" 376 points, and futures were down around another 80 points before markets opened on Friday. We have heard reports before from the NBC affiliates that the market has "stumbled", that it has "tumbled", but this is the first time that we can recall that the index crashing has been likened to a hairy and panting beast, casting off its spring time fur just in time for summer. 

So perhaps finally the Dow "shedding" so many points is a start to the index beginning to come back down to more practical and earthly levels. Maybe knowledgeable investors and traders are starting to be more realistic and pragmatic about what our investments on Wall Street are actually worth, and they sure aren't worth 10,600 points!  The five digit, 10,000+ Dow was artificially created for psychological purposes for the sake of debilitated investors, sort of like when you tell a retarded person that they are "giftedly exceptional."  While that makes everyone feel real nice, we all know that it's not true and not really even that convincing, just as we found out during the past few trading weeks, as the similarly cajoled, and so obsessively world-wide watched stock index reached levels around 11,000 points or more was also found to be not that credible either.

Crafting The Dow Jones into levels of over 10,000 points helped investors fluff their magical money stuffed pillows at night and sleep soundly with financial fairy tales dancing through their heads that all was well on Wall Street.  It is not.  First our sources reported, that the index was manipulated higher by removing three long time components from its measurement: American International Group (AIG), Citigroup (C) and General Motors (GM).  Once we stopped monitoring the performance of these three bafoon stocks alone it was guaranteed to boost the Dow Jones by at least 1000 some points. Its like when a bunch of losers all drop out of school at the same time and the test scores of the remaining students are then reported as suddenly and happily rising.  However, in both cases, the dirtballs are still hanging around in the parking lot stoned.

So similarly AIG, Citgroup and General Motors are still out there, lurking around like pan-handling bums that are still affecting the rest of the economy, regardless of whether or not the Dow Jones chooses to measure their stocks performances anymore. For example, GM and its twisted bastard GMAC is still scaringly and deeply involved in banking investments, propped up only for the moment by heavily transfused amounts of Treasury printed inflationary US dollars under the guise of a totally new name, Ally Bank.  And I have to admit, this renaming, and their commercials are clever.  Maybe you've already seen an Ally Bank television advertisement; they are very funny. 

In them, a slick banker who looks like someone we have all worked with in corporate America at one time or another teases kids with empty promises like getting a big new toy truck to play with, riding on a shiny new bicycle, and our personal favorite, getting a real pony, if only the kid had just asked for one. We think teasing kids is funny, because they deserve it.

Kids are costly, germy, whiny, irritating, and call for bail money in the middle of the night while you're asleep. But Ally Bank is on to something.  We are like the stupid kids in their commercials and Ally is still the overly slick, deceitful GMAC banker that bought all those ridiculous CDOs and tanked a car company and an economy or three in the process.  Unlike financing a new Cadillac or Corvette it is entirely different and extremely more financially dangerous to dive into the risks of credit default swaps or purchase bundle after bundle of blocks of thousands of sub-prime home mortgages. If this twisted and bogus AAA credit paper was still actual being sold and resold, would Ally Bank have the sense to stay clear of it or will the secret GMAC bank mutation fall into the trap of buying into the next bizarre, little misunderstood, seemingly profitable, high-risk financial derivative product to be invented? 

Today what we have now is a situation where most of the money in the falsely bloated Dow Jones is parked money from institutional traders who have no other choice but to put it into the market and trade stocks back and forth among themselves from fund to fund to simulate activity. But the tepid volume at the NYSE clearly shows that regular investors however haven't the resources or confidence to trade at the volumes we saw over the past eight years, and with the Dow Jones barely able to keep itself above the 5-digit psychological barrier, that time doesn't appear to be too likely in the near future.
--BW Schulz, Editor in Chief

The US Government Wants You to Pay a Fee To Spend Your Own Money
(Washington DC, USA)  October 2009
Again, Americans hard-earned money is at the mercy of the wisdom of law makers in Congress who are proposing a bill that will transfer the obligation of paying credit card and debit card fees from the merchant to the consumer.

The idea that a customer will have to pay the transactional costs associated with their purchases is outrageous, especially in this economy where consumers are finding every excuse not to spend any of their income anyway.

Retailers and merchants currently pay the MasterCard and Visa fees for the privilege of offering fast and convenient sales to their patrons. It saves the customer the trouble of hauling around large amounts of cash, the store from having to safeguard large amounts of cash and very importantly, the use of credit and debit cards stimulates impulse purchases.

Historically, this has worked well for stores that accept credit and debit cards for sales, as many patrons will steer themselves towards merchants who display the Visa and MasterCard logos as a sign that these are reputable businesses.  That's what the merchants pay for.  We don't need to pay you to take our money. It's supposed to be the other way around.

When Australian lawmakers forced through the same legislation on their citizens six years ago, it saddled debit card and credit card customers with nearly half a billion dollars in extra fees the very first year.  This may not be taxation without representation, but it certainly is undeserved expenditures without representation. Write to your senators and congressional representatives and let them know how unfair you feel this bill would be. Urge them to vote against it or you won't make any political contributions to them this year because you are saving on credit card fees.

--BW Schulz, Editor in Chief

Let's Change Our Model for Traffic Commuting: It Could Save Millions of Gallons of Gasoline Every Day in America
(Santa Monica, CA, USA) January 2010
Last Friday I had the unfortunate obligation to have to use I-10 during rush hour, which people have said for years is no rush, that it is actually stop hour because you are stuck in your car for an hour and definitely more if there is something out of your control like a traffic accident that happens ahead of your travel that hasn't been cleared yet.

While I was sitting at a complete stop, as everyone else was, I observed the usual sight of drivers who were shaving, reading, putting on make-up, eating, and talking on their phones. Normally all these activities would be very hazardous on the freeway, but that is, if we were actually moving. Its when an idea came to mind; one that could save the United States millions of gallons of gasoline everyday that get burned up by idling cars stuck in these absurd daily commuter jams. 

The question was, why are all these people trying to get to work at the same time? What is so magical about the ubiquitous 8 AM start time for everyone? Do we need the light of the nearest star so that we can bring in the cows and gather up the wheat?

Like the FAA fanning out take-offs out of Newark, or President Bush's proposal to make some travel flight times more expensive than others (for example, old people have all day to travel and run errands, if you are retired, don't shop during 1st or 2nd shift please.) we can do the same thing with millions of workers everyday, too. Many employers, I know, could examine their business models and adapt the work day to stagger the times that people have to punch in and start working. If you polled the staff, you would find people who would want to start at 6 or 7 AM, and you would also find a lot of people who would like to start at 9 or 10 AM. For the commuters where an exact 8 AM start time remains necessary, at least there would be less drivers to contend with.

We know supervisors everywhere are balking at the idea of all their worker bees not being in the hive at the same time. Some even threaten firings for being a few minutes late too many times. Late for what? Late for getting my coffee? I can't control LA traffic. I know from observation that much of our work days is fake working. People looking busy at doing nothing, gossiping, browsing our on-line newspaper, talking on the phone, and all sorts of other fun things.

No one admits it, but we all know it is true.  How many of you bought some or all of your holiday gifts on-line from work for example? Like Peter in the film Office Space says, "In any given week, I probably only do 15 minutes of actual work." Mike Judge was exaggerating and joking, but there is some truth to it. The urgency is simply not there to have fifty million people hit the road at the same time every morning.

There could also be a great benefit to the economy as goods and services would be more available in our new staggered hours work-world. Wouldn't it be nice to have some people at your insurance office until 8 PM? How about if your plumber could arrive at 7 AM, a full 3 hours before your shift begins? No more missed work days calling in fake-sick waiting all day at home for a contractor to arrive. No more frantic lunch hours trying to jam all your errands in while businesses are still open.

This could lead to not just massive savings in petroleum usage, it would cut down on automobile exhaust from idling, non-moving cars, allow early risers or people who need to pick up kids at school to leave work sooner, and it would allow workers who are highly productive, but hate getting up in the morning from being fired for punching in one minute late, this sweatshop-like policy necessitating higher costs for the company by having to rehire and retrain another worker. We could save ourselves a lot of wasted gasoline and perhaps raise the GDP in turn as people, with more flexible hours can get more things done without missing work by calling in sick to get something done that has to be done during the strict business hours we are subjecting ourselves to right now.

--BW Schulz, Editor in Chief