Cut and Pasted from my personal blog:

Remembrance Day today…Veteran’s Day for our neighbours south of us.. call it what you may…It is a day to recognize those who gave their lives for our freedom. A day to say thanks to all Veterans and  troops who have served and continue to do so…

Yet, I am utterly appalled to hear several local schools are allowing students to “opt out” of participation in Remembrance Day ceremonies.  And there are parents who choose not to allow their child to participate and take their kids out of any ceremonies on reason of their own choice.

People just don’t get it anymore.

And while there are those, including many Veterans, voicing their disapproval of these actions to opt out of recognizing the troops who gave their lives for our freedom,  Remembrance Day was always something I’ll admit I never really got as a kid either.. and what I did get was it was a statutory holiday and another ‘day off’ from school or work..  fuck yeah!

I mean I would see all the parades and shit at city hall on the teevee; we did the ceremonies at school; wore poppies and all.. two minutes of silence at 11:00 on the 11th day on the 11th month.. officially commemorating when WW1 ended and Armistice was signed in 1918.. yeah yeah..I got the deets…  I paid attention in Social Studies…

You see, my ancestors have a different history.. they didn’t fight in the Great War.. they ran from the Japanese; they ran from Communists; they starved on their own farms.. Chinese immigrants celebrate “Ching Ming”..we get pastries and BBQ pork from Chinatown and have a picnic at the graveyard to acknowledge our ancestors.. So on Remembrance Day.. we get the day off!!  WooHoo!

On May 2010, I was particularly intrigued hearing on the news about the Netherlands having more Canadian flags waving in one town than all of Canada.  I just figured, fuck, those Dutch must really like hockey or something… indeed they do..  BUT FOR OTHER REASONS.

Watching news clip after news clip, I saw 100s of thousands of Dutch people cheering, crying, mobbing, and honouring a bunch of these old codgers, Veterans, getting limo’d around on their streets.. Mothers of small children, teenagers, people in their 20’s and 30’s who never knew WW1 or 2, for that matter, running up to these old fuckers just to get a kiss or a simple touch!  Then they interviewed these fanatics… they said they wanted their children to know they touched a person who liberated their country 65 years ago.

Flags and banners waved:

“THANK YOU CANADA- WE WILL NEVER FORGET” and “THANK YOU FOR OUR LIBERATION CANADA- WE LOVE YOU”

It was quite the spectacle to behold. Memorial burial places in the Netherlands were gathered by literally 100s upon 100s of thousands placing flowers and candles on Canadian soldiers’ graves and headstones.. “They never let a whipper snipper touch those headstones; they hand cut the grass with scissors..” said some old Canadian Vet in an interview..

The revelation suddenly dawned on me then… “They do remember..”

You see, the Dutch deliberately keep in sharp focus what it meant to be hunted down like animals, starved and beaten, and killed during the war. They forget neither those crushed under Nazi occupation at home, nor those who went off to their deaths in battle.  The memory is kept alive by public policy and personal conviction. These people realize what it meant to lose their freedom.. and they remember what it took to get it back…

THEY GET IT.

“To show their appreciation to the pilots who dropped food from the air, many Dutch people painted, “Thank you, Canadians!” on their rooftops. In honour of their gift of freedom Dutch people have donated 10,000 tulip bulbs to Canada for the National Capital Region, annually since the war’s end. For 1995, the Netherlands donated an additional 5,000 bulbs for Parliament Hill, 1,000 for each provincial and territorial capital and 1,000 for Ste. Anne’s hospital in Saint-Anne-de-Bellevue, Que. (the only remaining federal hospital in Canada, administered by Veterans Affairs Canada) “

from

It is tempting to feel our Canadian pride upon seeing all of this;  BUT what really dawned on me also was the Dutch challenged my thoughtlessness that day.  I am embarassed about my delinquency as an adult.  What the Dutch say rings true..

“It is our duty to remember and teach future generations what it means to be free..”

This quote will forever haunt me of my ignorance and obtuseness.  For forty years, I took for granted what this all meant..  I didn’t get it.  But, it’s not too late.. It’s never too late to pause and reflect on the real price for my lifetime of peace, freedom, and opportunity, is it?

In fact, I think we all have the moral obligation and the social responsibility to teach our children and future generations why we even have the freedom to be able to ‘opt out’ of anything in the first place.

So today, as I have every year since that day I was enlightened by the Dutch,  I set aside my X-rated prose about Wall Street’s inner workings, hold back my perverted cynicism about politics and current economic outlook, and instead choose to nurture memory and appreciation.
Today I give thanks to those who made the ultimate sacrifice so I can enjoy my everyday freedom.

Today I will pray for those who gave everything, and for those being now asked for their all..

 
Lest We Forget…

“Many Thanks” in tulips…

So it’s the end of the world as we know it again…

Senor Tropicana has cancelled Christmas and we should be expecting Horatio Clawhammer to take the reigns of the time machine any day now…

But guess what? The Clam is riding shotgun and he is laughing at all you fucktards, panicking and shit… everything is going swimmingly in this new world of Costanza and endless lines of cocaine… two charts for your perusement:

What happened with QE2:

And what the fuck is going on right now:

You make the call.

Recent press releases from AT& T and Apple says they are selling stupid as fuck amounts of the new iPhone 5 in the past  few days.. Luckily I got my pre-order within the first hour.. So why am I getting the 5? Especially since I upgraded to the 4S barely 11 months ago?

Sure.. the new iPhone will have 4G LTE speeds, a bigger screen, more memory, etc. etc. You don’t need me to give you all the specs… 

I’m don’t  really see myself as a fanboy, more of a fan-old fucker nowadays and I do still enjoy my nerdy tech gadgets.. but that’s not it. 

And I quit trying to impress my peers eons ago… plus they’re all still into their granite countertops and stainless steel appliances around here anyways.. so that’s not it either…

I was parked outside the supermarket the other day while the wife ran inside to pick up a few things. Not 10 seconds after I park, some dirty old street person walks up to my car and taps on my window to ask me if I had any spare change so he can catch a bus.  I roll down the window partially to tell him, “Sorry pal, got no change, I only use plastic… Now how ’bout you get the fuck away from my window..”

  He then walks away from my vehicle to meet up with another street person working the other side of the parking lot; the other guy must’ve been a colleague by the way he was pushing the shopping carts full of bottles and garbage bags… I kept a watchful eye on them for a bit as I’ve heard in the news some of these vagabonds may vandalize your car or get violent sometimes when they don’t get any spare change…

Much to my surprise, both reach into their overcoats and pull out cel phones and start texting like a couple o f crazy teenagers… Not only did they have cel phones, they were both using  iPhone 4’s;  I can tell not only by the recognizable Otterbox they had protecting them but because that’s the kind of psychopath that I am…

Being an AAPL shareholder, I was quite elated that they had iPhones but like fuck if some dirty vagrant clad in a burlap sack begging for fucking bus fare is gonna have a nicer phone than me!!! 

Nevermind trying to keep up with the fucking Joneses, it’s all about staying ahead of the dirty vagabonds these days…

Dsiclaimer: Got the black/slate 64GB… should be here Friday..lineups are for suckers. And vagabonds.

In all honesty, I could use a 10% pullback in AAPL here… that way I can go from stupid as fuck long to retarded as fuck longer… 

Good Luck in all your trades.

“A message to our fans and partners:

 

As you are most likely aware, the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players Association expired this past Saturday, September 15. Since the two parties were unable to reach a new agreement by that date, a work stoppage is now in effect. We remain hopeful a new CBA will be reached in the near future and the 2012-13 NHL season will commence with minimal interruption.

 

We assure you our thoughts are mainly about you during these troubled times. Oilers fans have carried our team to greatness many times in the past and you can be assured that we spend every day working on plans to repeat those achievements for you, as soon as possible. In the meantime, while this dispute is unsolved, we thank you for your patience and your loyalty.

 

Patrick LaForge

 

President & COO

 

Edmonton Oilers”

 

From my personal blog here.

Apologies to all you addicts that come here daily for some of my AAPL trading rants… for those of you that were looking for typical Friday pin and weekly opex action yesterday, this was an event week with the product announcement and QE3, all that OI shit goes out the window and I mostly sat on my hands watching the cocaine being thrown into industrial strength floor-drying fans; and ambition was quite the rare commodity as I was too tired to blog, from staying up late doing my part in ensuring Apple sells out of iPhone 5’s in its first hour…

Anyways, I went down to my local bank this morning, to order some more paper cheques and found it nearly impossible to even get the fucking time of day from them…

I know I probably could’ve done everything I needed to do via the standard teller, but I prefer to do ALL my in-person banking “concierge“-style with those people in ugly flannel suits and sit on their plush leather chairs drinking tea rather than stand in line at the fucking glass-windowed wickets like some degenerate riverboat gambler at the horse races…

When the ‘financial specialist’ finally got off the phone with her buddies and stopped chit-fucking-chatting with every one of her other co-workers that happened to walk by,  I told her I only needed the new cheques and to give her a couple of signatures for some extra paperwork already done online for my options trading accounts.

But just as her banker training hypnosis dictates her to do so, she INSISTED we have a look-see at my accounts so she could possibly help me with my investments…

So, upon bringing up all my accounts onto her computer screen, I had to roll my fucking eyes as she literally shit herself… Yes, that is a comma, the decimal point is over there…

“Oh I’m sorry, I was busy checking my Facebook, what were those mutual funds you were trying to sell me again??”

Suddenly, progress on those cheques.

Followed up by some major ass kissing..

.
Moral of story: Just because I opt to dress like some punk-kid skateboarder vagabond that just crawled out of a homeless man tent, doesn’t necessarily mean I need your financial advice… plus your mutual funds suck dick.

Have we not learned anything at all from “Pretty Woman”??

QE3 is a go… everyone is running amok with erect dicks in hand throwing fistfuls of cocaine into rapidy spinning ceiling fans. Except you, wet noodle flaccid and if not already de-testesed, not wanting to go “all in” in case the Clam and his POMO locomotive backs up over your corpse, are now sitting all cash waiting for lower prices… so how does one trade this??

Well here’s what happened the last time… hat tip to Jaymes @llabtoofootball for this chart:

So the event is finally been and gone, and now we can officially get to the blasting midgets out of big circus cannons and little dogs with gay haircuts jumping through flaming hoops. 

On Stocktwits, I see it has already begun… every fucktard is coming out of the woodwork claiming how disappointed they are the iPhone 5 wasn’t as “revolutionary” as they conjured up in their thick fucking skulls,” it’s not much of an upgrade.. my 3GS will do just fine”; “so glad I bought the Galaxy S3”; “it’s bullshit that an elongated iPhone and new plug can justify $400”; “creativity was lost when Steve Jobs died”, “Apple is finished”….. SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!!

Tell me how much difference there was between the Galaxy S2 and the Galaxy S3?? Oh wait, you didn’t buy the S2… that’s right, the Motorola Droid RAZR was the trendy “iPhone killer” barely 6 months ago and the HTC before that… the Blackberry Torch before that… no wonder every phone you buy seems soo “revolutionary” compared to the last one…  Driving a Chevette is revolutionary too when you’re used to catching the fucking bus…

And all you other asshats disappointed as this was completely expected like all those leaked photos, you’ve seen before… FUCK YOU TOO.  You must’ve been just as disappointed with your wife’s performance on your honeymoon as well, considering your new bride couldn’t blow your fucking brains out with all the stupid dog tricks you had dreamt up in your perverted head from downloading and watching the nastiest porn, and listening to ever rumour you could possibly find over the internets 6 months before the big event…. think about that a moment.  Yeah. Surprise.

And those of you of the unwashed breed claiming the innovation is gone and it’s “EXACTLY” the same phone… that’s right IT IS. Remember the good ol’ days when every single one of us LOVED it we had to buy an entire new setup because Microsoft so happened to upgrade Windows? Even better when all your old software you spent egregious amounts of coin on like your year-old MS Office Suite would not work whatsoever on your new system..  Because this is what we really want from Apple right?? Well then, give me a fucking Nokia Lumia…Lumia? isn’t that a minivan?   Apologies, it seems my sarcasm button is stuck on FUCK YOU again…

And what’s with this new big screen TVs as phones trend?? If I wanted to carry around a fucking iPad in my pocket and hold it up to my ear to talk on it like a cel phone, I would just get the iPad… and the Note?? That’s innovation? A fucking stylus?  Fuck, I think I got a Newton in my attic…

Please.  If you have no financial interest in AAPL, long or short, spare me the justification why you made the fucktarded decision to buy something else.  When they start making “Galaxy Killers”, then I’ll worry about Apple’s demise…

The only problem I see thus far with the new iPhone 5?

Black OR white?

Good Morning.

Disclaimer: Long like a mother fucker AAPL

OK   here we go… live feed set up.. check.

Stocktwits $AAPL stream…. check.

Live quotes….  check

Trigger finger….  fuck you button…  check.

Apple Store..ready to buy…. check.

I’m ready.  4 minutes and counting…

Happy iPhone 5 day Gentlemen. 

It’s all about AAPL today… you might as well shut down your twitter stream and news feed unless you are attempting to trade AAPL today like a degenerate OTB guy at the Fitz..  Going rumour is even the Clam will be basing his POMO decision on today’s product announcement…

So what to do today?  The two dominant investment strategies out there today are fundamental analysis and technical analysis. 

Fundamental Analysis is a method to determine the intrinsic value of a stock by looking at financial data and facts directly related to the company per se, such as earnings, sales, balance sheets, cash flow, income statements, and dividends. There are more than enough websites and information on the Internets that go into all that shit; you don’t need me to regurgitate all that for you.  What we do know is AAPL has stupid as fuck amounts of money and makes stupid as fuck amounts of money.  And, regardless of what you think of the iPhone 5, AAPL will make stupid as fuck amounts of money on it.  There you have it.. fundamentals.

Technical Analysis is a method of predicting future stock price movements via the use of charts showing past price and volume performance, patterns, and trends.  Most technical traders use a series of indicators, oscillators, and signals to determine if the market is pricing that particular stock in question correctly at the time; and because of technical analysis’ primary belief that markets are efficient, everything you need to know about the stock is already reflected in its price and price action.  So looking at AAPL, this is how its price reacts to product announcements in the past:

Good luck with that fuckface. 

Here’s what we do know… technical analysis is based on  one sole premise: HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF.  So looking back, the iPod, iPad, iPhone 3G, and iPhone 4S have ALL been some of the greatest disappointments in AAPL’s history on the announcement day and in the following days of its announcement. Well, we all know how those all worked out for Apple and its investors. 

There is a third, much less known, but far more useful investment strategy. Psychological analysis.  Basically it is the study how humans respond to certain market events.  You probably heard the cliche, “It’s not the news that counts, but how the market reacts to the news”… This is what I’m talking about here. What I like about it is human psychology never changes: investors always feel fear and panic when shit is knifing down, and investors are rich and fucking geniuses when shit goes up. And when it comes to AAPL, it is one of the most emotional investments I’ve ever run into, with exception to real estate. Like real estate, it seems, you’re either a rabid fanboy sporting wood on every uptick or a degenerate basher vying to get into AAPL at lower price or got a serious hate on for AAPL just to justify your asshat decision on a Sony Xperia purchase…

An interesting post @Redman59 wrote yesterday, looking at how emotional Apple investors get when someone, anyone in fact, writes anything negative about Apple.  I have noticed a lot of writers and traders will do so just to mock Apple fanboys. If you looked at the AAPL steam on Stocktwits, you would have noticed how @traderflorida shorted AAPL during an entire $100 run up on AAPL share price. Whether or not he made money, only he knows, but if you read his tweets and watch his video clips, I personally think he does this intentionally, like some insecure beta male schoolboy desperately seeking attention and fame would,  just to fuck with AAPL longs knowing full well how rabidly bent out of shape they can get when you bash their precious AAPL. 

Anyways, getting back on topic, what do we know on a psychological analysis standpoint? The iPhone 5 was the last product Steve Jobs had ever worked on before he passed away. And there are literally millions upon milions of people, fanboy or not, that want and will buy the iPhone 5 right the fuck now and NOT ONE of of these people has EVER seen it yet.  Think about that for a moment.

Place your bets, addicts. 

Good Morning and good luck in all your trades.

Disclaimer: I am stupid as fuck long AAPL.