Vampire Weekend, "A-Punk"

These guys making my alma mater proud... great band, very original.

Virtual Office, $26. Dow, +34.03, 12,063.09.

Me, $75 on 2800 shares traded.
Tokyo, $55 on 2201 shares traded.
OBAT, $18 on 5400 shares traded.
Timmay, -$60 on 2000 shares traded.
Denarii, -$62 on 5400 shares traded.

On a seemingly quiet day, my RO completely kicked ass. The head man (same guy all week, btw) was up $11,684, while the low man on the day lost $837. Overall, the traders were up over $30,000 on the day. Two guys accounted for $20k of that, though. Something about oil shorts. I was #14 of 25 traders today.

Anyway, for the VO, it was quiet. I studied and surfed more than I traded. I guess I won't be back at full swing, focused entirely on trading, until next week. Despite my small gain, I was very happy to break my lame 3-day losing streak.

Tomorrow look out for the quarterly expirations...

See you manana. Again, no daily post as I'm focused elsewhere. But I'll take the opportunity to post a good music video, since I made money... no more bad music.

More Barack Obama Rumors

Interesting...

My favorite... "Barack Obama's skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL."

Poundcake

I don't like to fly, but a couple of weeks ago, I had no choice but to fly.

It's mostly a control thing. I like to feel as if I'm in control, and when I have to sit, in one place, for hours, I am being controlled by the situation and not vice versa.

Incidentally,, I think it's why I took to the occupation of trading. Yes, it's stressful to not make money, or worse, to lose money, but at least (in theory) I'm in control. I'm losing money because of decisions that only I can make. I find a stock to trade, I click "buy," I click "sell," and I decide what quantity. There's really nothing outside of my control.

Well, that's not entirely true. There's Esiggy. It "loses data" and goes down all the time, and that's why they suck. I hate Esiggy because I have no control over Esiggy.

And, let's face it, their customer service is the worst.

Anyway, back to flying. I'm here at LaGuardia, sitting in a pretty empty terminal with time to kill and anxiety to burn. I haven't flown in nearly 5 years. There are trees in large white square pots lining the terminal with it's short blue rugs and pale gray walls. The seats are also pale gray and mostly stained. There is a trapped bird, a House Sparrow of course, hopping on the blue rug avoiding the chrome garbage bins.

What must that bird be thinking?

Anyway, shit... I have time and I digress. Judy is next to me, in her stained gray chair, reading The Yoga Journal and lightly bouncing her foot.

She loves to fly. Absolutely loves it.

Meanwhile, I'm here scribbling nervously into a small pad with large earphones on my head glancing up now and then to see who is walking down the terminal. I'd say that conservatively, 90% of the people are fat. It's disgusting. Worse, it's 90 degrees and humid and they're all wearing jean shorts and t-shirts.

Anyway, let me get back to the beginning... you know what my sister-in-law calls all the fat pasty people (women, specifically) of America? "POUNDCAKE." As in, "check out that poundcake in the jean shorts eating that donut."


-"poundcake #1327"

But you know, Judy got her "feet done" for the wedding we're going to and she told me about how the salon was like a factory, with all these women getting something "done" while reading magazines like Allure, wide-eyed, trying to find ways to improve the way they look.

She said there was a 5-year old girl in there. Made me think about our 3.5 year old. Made me think about her trying to fit into someone else's idea about "how you should look" and it got me depressed and even a little angry.

I thought, well, better to just be happy with who you are, and with your body image. The beauty factory is just as scary as the "poundcake," but in a different way.

To be continued... probably after my exam.

This Blog Is Clean

It was a wild scene here at Dinosaur Trader blog last night. I'll have you know, I'm a control freak and don't like other people messing with my blog.

But it's over now. The iBCers are gone and peace has been restored. I never thought they'd leave. Check below for how they were dispelled from my illustrious third tier haven.