Various thoughts

Silver broke $22 this morning, gold is still hovering around all time highs on news of a Spain downgrade and Anglo-Irish Bank needing another cash influx on the order of billions of euros.

Business is increasing steadily.

Saw a leaf with frost on it this morning during my commute.... aaaaaahhhhhhhh!

Weekend Update: Competition Results

My weekend in Copenhagen involved zero tourism, but I got to know some great people through the competition. The short version: I took second out of 200 competitors. It was extremely hard, but alot of fun. And I'm very tired as a result.

(Very) full report after the jump:

Off to Copenhagen

I'm elaving shortly for the Crossfit Competition in Copenhagen. 200 competitors, 5 workouts in one day (tomorrow). Should be fun. You might be able to follow progress here, though I will be done at 7pm local (noon EST).

FSU favored by 20 over Deacs???

I know we're not playing very good football, but Wake is a 20 point underdog to FSU on Saturday. Check it out here at Bodog Sportsbook (not entirely sure you can view it in the US).

With an over/under at 63, that means the projected score is Wake 21.5 FSU 41.5. Ouch

It's really too bad this is fake

Hat tip Deadspin

Chainless Bike

So I was really intrigued by the concept of a belt-drive bike, but when I saw this completely chainless bike design by some designers in Hungary, I'm excited.

See more (plus video) after the jump (click the title of this blog post)...

The People Have Spoken: Congress = bad

Check out this post at the Reformed Broker re: Congressional approval ratings generally, by party and compared to Obama. Not good.

Where Min Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

I recently finished Where Min Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman by Jon Krakauer (of Into Thin Air fame). It's very well written and a very interesting read. Tillman was a fascinating guy that I think alot of men will identify with to varying extents.

Tillman was an undersized, super-aggressive safety for the Arizona Cardinals. He was fierce, thoughtful and lived a conservative lifestyle compared to his NFL peers (drove a Volvo wagon, etc). After 9/11 he felt compelled to do something. He and his twin brother decided to join the Army Rangers as enlisted men rather than officers despite their college degrees because they wanted to have boots on the ground rather than calling the shots from some rear base.

Tragically, he was killed in a skirmish by confused friendly fire. The army's cover-up of the fact and the media circus from the Bush administration was deploreable. Krakauer does an excellent job of exploring the deeper details of Tillman's life, the events leading up to the attacks of 9/11 and the politics/aftermath.

It simultaneously makes me want to join a military operation and avoid anything to do with our government whatsoever. If anyone else reads it or already has, I'd really like to get your impressions.

Weekend Update

A purposefully slow weekend in London. As much traveling as I have done and have coming up, it was a good chance to catch up on sleep, errands and chores.

This coming Friday, I will leave for Copenhagen for a Crossfit competition. A new European city and something for me to compete in? Should be fun.

The weekend after that (Oct 1-3rd), I'll be in Munich with Will Watters checking out Oktoberfest. Stew was there this weekend, so I should get a good scouting report.

20-somethings getting smoked by the unemployment situation

Milennials as Recession Punching Bag from The Reformed Broker

It's an interesting article, check it out. Lots of delayed babies and moving back in with parents. Ouch.

Wake is not a defensive powerhouse

Well this was almost cool: I went to bed early so that I could wake up early and catch the end of the Wake Forest - Stanford game (via some sketchy internet link). Kickoff was at 11:15pm eastern time from Palo Alto. When I woke up at the start of the fourth quarter, Stanford was up 54-24. And it is only getting worse. It is currently 68-24. We look like a high school team.

Thanks Defense!

Business Update

Business has really picked up. We had a mailer for several hundred trading-oriented prospective customers hit yesterday and the phones have been blowing up. To avoid confusion, recall that there are two aspects to what I do: 1) an over-the-counter market-making service in physical gold and 2) speculate on markets largely with futures. The mailer goes to potential clients on the physical based on a business list our US marketing department purchased from a data mining company.

Both have gone really well today with gold touching all time nominal highs around $1279 per troy ounce  (depending on where you get your trading info).Over the coming weeks I will begin cold-calling to follow up from those mailer prospects, but until then I get to wait on the inbound calls to slow down. That's going to require some serious caffeination (wish I had some of the espresso from Italy).

Basically my work day consists of being on and off the phone all day (for physical deals entered via our proprietary trading system), speculating on markets through a futures exchange platform and rocking out via the Grooveshark streaming music website (lots of Grateful Dead and Railroad Earth right now) with Bloomberg TV on in the background. Manic, but fun.

Contrarian Indicator

The Big Picture has a good follow-up to my post about contrarian indicators, check it out:

Article Here

Hipsters Buying Gold, Look Out Below!

My idiot-investor-warning is flashing code red on this article: Bubble Alert: Trendy New York Hipsters Buying Gold (Clusterstock).

Remember Giselle demanding she be paid in Euros and Jay-Z videos featuring 500 euro bills? Ever heard of the  magazine cover contrarian indicator? This might be more blatant. Damn.

[Hat Tip Reformed Broker]

Weekend Update: Italia!

I ducked out of the office a little early on Friday to catch a flight to Bologna. Got in Friday night and took a bus to central Bologna from the airport.

I stayed the first night at the Albergo delle Drapperie, which is a 7 or 8 room hotel off a tiny, quintessentially-Italian street with foot traffic only. Fish and fruit mongers next to cafes and trattorias, etc. My hotel room was not much larger than what you might find on a cruise boat, but it sufficed perfectly for my needs and still had beautiful furnishings, marble floors and all the trimmings. As cool as my area was, this trip was about food and wine and it was time to get to business.

Read more after the jump

Beware of Greeks Bearing Bonds

Be sure to check out the much-discussed Vanity Fair article by Michael Lewis about the state of Greece's economy and how they got there.

Set aside a few minutes and enjoy.

An experienced charter boat captain was killed just off the Atlantic Coast of Florida this past weekend when he was running his boat back through the inlet and overtook a breaking wave.

Very scary stuff. Thanks to Mr. Comerford for sending along. 

(Horrifyingly detailed) Photos and more background after the jump 

Tornado in Dallas

OK, so maybe there are a few things I don't miss about Dallas:


Floodwaters Recede, Cleanup Begins

Vancouver will have a long hangover from Olympic party

Quick follow-up to yesterday's post about international sporting events and lavish stadiums being a financial parasite to the public municipalities that fund them. Exhibit #593: Vancouver

Hat tip Reformed Broker

Stadiums and the Sport Economist

If you have never checked out The Sports Economist, do so. Its interesting analysis of economic principles applied to sports. Their big kick has been about the public disaster that is new stadiums (and Olympics, World Cups, etc). The potential economic benefits are always overstated by biased consultants and then the unwitting (or is it witless) public is left with long term debt on an asset that no longer produces enough revenue to fund itself.

Today's example: The Old Giants stadium. According to the NYT:


The old Giants Stadium, demolished to make way for New Meadowlands Stadium, still carries about $110 million in debt, or nearly $13 for every New Jersey resident, even though it is now a parking lot.

3 links from the NYT on housing

NYT - The Bearish and The Less So on the Housing Market - interesting consideration of housing as a luxury good or a staple. I would tend to think its a luxury good, largely for one reason: if you win the lottery (the powerball or something mega), you buy a huge house. (via Reformed Broker)

Cool Rent v. Buy calculators from the NYT awhile back: here for the basic one and here for the advanced (with chart!)

Visual Guide to Deflation

Excellent example of how economics doesn't always have to be that complicated: check out this visual guide to deflation from Mint.com via Ritholtz. I can't add much to it, so just click already.

Weekend Update

What a whirlwind weekend.


I left London on Friday and landed in Raleigh that afternoon. Two of the other guys in Andrew's wedding picked me up and we fought Labor Day traffic all the way to Greensboro. A 4 hour drive took about 6-7 hours. The bachelor party took place at the Rumbling Bald Resort in Lake Lure, NC. It is a beautiful mountain golf community with two Nicklaus courses. The weather was gorgeous and we had a blast (the cold beer helped).


Nicole drove all the way out to pick me up on Sunday. I got to finally meet our new Rhodesian Ridgeback ("Deacon") and drive back to Winston for the night. I was also able to see Nicole's parents for awhile, which is always fun. I can't wait for our Costa Rican Christmas this year.


Sadly, I had to catch my flight yesterday afternoon out of Raleigh. At first, the flight seemed benign. We were a few minutes late leaving, but no big deal; I had an empty seat next to me and slept straight through. Upon landing, I received an email from my roommate that all of the London Underground was going to be shut down today for labor strikes. Read the WSJ article about this here.


Before I could even get that far, however, I spent two solid hours waiting in line to clear immigration into the UK. Not how I wanted to start the week. Fortunately, its a short one and I get to see Mom in Italy this weekend.

Where in the world is Brad?

For those of you playing along at home

- This weekend (Labor Day): Catching a flight to RDU tomorrow. Going to Lake Lure, NC for the weekend for a bachelor party in the country to celebrate Mr. Andrew Boyett's coming nuptials.
- Next weekend (9/10-9/12): Italy with Mom! Italian cooking classes in Parma.
- 9/23-9/25: Copenhagen for the Fit as Fu*k Crossfit Competiton. 150 entrants in the men's open division. Should be fun.
10/1-10/3 - Will Watters is flying in from ATL to join me in Munich for Oktoberfest

Westerners are the Weird Ones

Cool article from the National Post examining our Western hemisphere psychological biases. The article opens by examining the fact that everywhere else, the Ultimatum Game results very differently (You are given $100 and have to decide how much to give to the other player. The other player can either accept or reject the offer. If the other player rejects, no one gets any money). One enlightening quote:

"The UBC researchers also found that 96% of behavioural science experiment subjects are from Western industrialized countries, which account for just 12% of the world's population. Sixty-eight percent were Americans. The United States is dominant in the field of psychology, accounting for 70% of all journal citations, compared with 37% in chemistry. Undergraduate students are often used to stand in for the entire species."

Read the full article here

Seasonal Investing Articles are Crap

I always chuckle to myself a little when I see an article in the WSJ or a report on CNBC regarding how September is a bad month for stocks or some other mindless investing swill. This is about misunderstanding the fundamental difference between correlation and causality. Note that commodity markets have more legitimate seasonality because of supply and demand issues (think summer driving season and hurrican season for energy) Josh Brown at the Reformed Broker does a nice takedown of these pieces:

I see that the "September is the Cruelest Month" linkbaiting posts have already been arriving in droves.  I'll shred them to pieces real quick typing with one hand and only about a tenth of my common sense.

Let's start here with a bit from Minyanville:

The month of September gives equity investors a sinking feeling and for good reason: Historically, this has proven a bad month for the stock market.

Oy vey, when it starts like that, you already know you're reading filler.  Allow me to deconstruct the genre of "month/season/timeframe" articles and posts so that you never waste your time on another one again:

1.  Timing - designed to coincide within a few days of the beginning of the new time frame (September in this case, post date on this example is Aug 30th)

2.  Post Title - The title will mention the month and within a descriptor or two attempt to scare you into to clicking on it.  It will work, you will click, because we were all conditioned by the same commercials as kids when Duck Tales came on after school.  Cereal was purchased, let's keep it real.

3.  Data - They will steal all the data from either the Bespoke Investment Group or Ned Davis Research so just set your feedreader to grab both of those for the raw numbers minus the ex-banner ad salesman's "contextualization".

4.  But wait! - About halfway through the post which has just given you all the historical reasons you should just blow your brains out rather than be invested, a White Knight shall come galloping up over the crest of the hill, banners aflutter, with a reason to live, dammit!  The White Knight will be the Chief Investment whatever at an asset-gathering operation whose prima facie mission is to keep you invested, read his commentary accordingly.

5.  The non-conclusion - the last sentence will be exactly the evidence you need to tell you that you've just read something with almost zero value to anyone other than Scottrade, who have had the 1 minute-and-15 second opportunity to flash banner ads at you like a 42nd Street vagrant.

The point is this, it's all unprecedented.  What the markets did in September over the last 11 years or 6 years matters as much as the hair styles of this year's top ten American Idol competitors.  The variables are too large, too unknown and too unbound from historical calculation.  The context is always different also, especially now in our era of roadside attraction-sized superlatives.

Investors should try to incorporate historical quantitative stuff in their search for probable outcomes, but should never live and die by it.  Monthly market machinations make for good headlines but stupid fodder for helpful forward thought.

Wheelchair Double Back Flip

OK, this is kinda dumb, but very cool. This guy lands a huge single backflip in a wheelchair and then decides that a double is possible. From Outside Online, video and article here