I grew up with LEGOs.

They were the ultimate “indoor” toy for me.

And while I was never the most skilled “original builder” amongst my friends, I distinctly remember several creations that I was quite proud of…especially considering the limited supply of bricks that I got to work with (a restriction stemming from the meagre amounts of disposable income afforded by Mother’s teaching salary).

As I grew older, computers slowly became the “ultimate” toys…and although my love for LEGOs never quite diminished, I definitely did not “play” or spend as much time on them as I once did.

However, over the last few years I’ve started to rekindle some of this LEGO-love.  Not in the form of knights and spacemen (or even the Technic of my teens), but rather in the complex big builds that I didn’t have a hope or prayer of affording earlier.

My latest acquisition, via a well-timed and -received Christmas gift, is a set from the brand new “Architecture” series…Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater.  Not the most challenging build, to be sure, yet the building “experience” is still satisfying as you watch the structure “go up” under your hands…perhaps similar to how the real stones & steel may have actually been laid.  In fact, each of the 3 main levels of the living quarters can be removed and examined individually.

These Architecture sets are definitely not meant for “playing,” nor are they meant to pose the ultimate challenge as some of the multi-thousand peace humongo-sets do.  They are a more refined experience…as close as you may get to “LEGO art,” if you will…

This one is going up for display in the home office for sure.

_______

Continuing Monday’s theme on Tuesday (although now with a delta-neutral portfolio, after booking several profitable calls)…looking for bearish entries via a few puts:
BGC (@30.75), BUCY (@57.75), EOG (@99.50), GLW (@19.), HPQ (@51.89), HUM (@45.)

Current holdings:

Comments »

And the winner of the 2nd Annual iBC Fantasy Football League is…

Judge Smails Inc

Let’s give it up for The Judge, ladies and gentlemen, who destroyed his opponent in an utterly dominating fashion (much like he had done to everybody else throughout the regular season):

We have obtained an exclusive clip of The Judge giving his victory speech on the private boat that he just acquired with his winnings:

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGpQej3o9eo 600 450]

It’s easy to grin
when your ship comes in
and you’ve got the stock market beat.

But the man worthwhile,
is the man who can smile,
when his shorts are too tight in the seat.

Comments »

Most of y’all who are “blessed” with in-laws already (probably) know this…but if not, listen carefully:  DO NOT spend more than three (3) consecutive days in the vicinity of your in-laws!  Exceed this magic 72 hour threshold at your own risk!  Do not be swayed by the “occasion” of your get-together either (or, worse, the assurances of your significant other that “this time it will be different“)…this limit applies to all co-habitations – Christmas, birthday, the pop-in – “IT DON’T MATTA!”

Now you may wonder how I have arrived at this magic number of 3-days/72-hours.  Well, I tell ya…through a bit of careful observation/deduction and quite a bit more painful self-experimentation.

But perhaps this may be best illustrated via an example.  Say, oh, let’s pull a random one out of the hat: Christmas 2009 with the DPeezy in-laws.  Oh yeah…that’s a good one:

…before I forget…RULE #1:  If at all possible (1000-mile/15-hour radius), DRIVE!  Never underestimate the importance of having your very own getaway vehicle.

DAY 1:

• Overall mood:  joyous.
• If you drove, you create immediate sympathy/caring since you create the urge in “them” to take care of you after such a long and “crazy” drive (750mi/11-hours, in this case) – right away, lunch is served and then you’re left to your own devices to gather some rest until dinner time.
• While you rest, your passenger(s) get to field all manner of annoying/small-talky questions as they update the locals on the ever-boring minutia of your everyday life.  The fact that you get to skip this part is immense.
• Dinner time rings in some much needed libation time as well, which, when coupled with the joyous mood, leads to merriment and general good-will.  A semi-competitive card game may follow, during which playful jibes are reciprocated gracefully.

DAY 2:

• Overall mood:  sunny, especially once everybody gets over the fact that you didn’t wake up at 8am like the rest of the retirement community.  “Nice of you to join us” contains only a hint of guilt-inducing resentment.
• You delay any ill-will by “splitting the herd,” while the women shop for last minute Christmas supplies, the men take in a lazy midday/afternoon of golf.  Everybody meets back up for a nice evening of grilling on the patio – steaks & beer/wine/spirits for all!  Eventually, you end up in front of the TV, watching random Christmas movies as you fall in-and-out of the food/drink-induced coma.
  • On a side note, I love the fact that several other channels have now copied the TBS model of showing a certain Christmas movie 24 hours straight.  So now you can catch A Christmas Story on TBS, Bad Santa on Comedy Central, and It’s a Wonderful Life on AMC – just to name the big ones.

DAY 3:

• Overall mood:  nippy, with a chance of thunder/lighting
• The morning “Nice of you to join us” carries with it the full extra weight of years of failing to live up to parental expectations…of which “they” are reminded when you can’t even drag your ass out of bed at 8am to open Christmas presents.  With every hint of nostalgia that then follows, the overwhelming message of “what happened to the little boy/girl that used to leave cookies out for Santa!?” gets ruefully conveyed.
• “Oh wow, thanks guys/Mom/Dad…we really needed another set of dishtowels from Kohl’s!”
• “NO WAY…a tube of Aquafresh AND some tooth brushes!  omgomgomgomg!  It’s just what we wanted!  Because we obviously STILL don’t know how to take care of ourselves after all these years of living in a different state!”
• Needless to say, “the sauce” is hit hard, early, and often.  As evening approaches, past affronts start to get hinted at, but are not yet dredged up to the surface.  Some strained small-talk over the “fancy dinner” and an ultra-competitive card game later, everybody retires early to their own corner of the house.

DAY 4:

• Overall mood:  dark & stormy
• The annual “when are you going to take all your shit out of our house!?” game begins.  This year’s variation of the game included the one where you actually want something, but you can’t take it because it’s “part of the decoration” or because…well…because “I DON’T WANT YOU TO TAKE THIS…DON’T YOU WANT TO LEAVE SOMETHING TO REMIND ME OF YOU!!!?”  Oh, so you want us to just take all the junk that we’ve told you several times that we don’t want and yet you’ve refused to throw out…but we can’t take the stuff that belongs to us and we actually want?!!?
• The evening’s “entertainment” consists of going out to dinner and a performance (because even “they” realize the futility of trying to stay in the house for this many consecutive days).
• But it’s not just any ol’ performance…oh no.  It’s performance of the kind that you KNOW we don’t like and had you actually asked us if we’re even interested BEFORE you spent hundreds of dollars on the tickets, you wouldn’t have to guilt us with said cost every two minutes.  Now, to be fair, as the youngest by far in the crowd, I’m sure we did a great favor to Mannheim Steamroller by expanding their “fan base” to the under-30 crowd.
• Throughout the day, multiple past transgressions are rehashed and re-argued/shouted/cried-over, truly bringing home the Christmas message of Peace, Hope, and Love.
• Fully utilizing the wonders of the getaway vehicle, we bolt out of there with just a few minutes to spare before midnight…

___________

Coming out of Christmas week, I find myself quite bullishly biased, almost to the tune of 3-to-1.  To bring back a bit of balance, and to play that broken record from earlier this month once again, I’m looking at several puts for Monday:

• puts:  BWLD (@42.24), CMG (@89.50), LAMR (@31.31), PNRA (@68.), PWR (@21.34), SBUX (@23.32), YGE (@16.)
• calls:  XOM (@69.22)

Comments »

ROFL. A sign of our times??

Comments »

I’ll be heading out of town early tomorrow morning to spend Christmas/weekend with the in-laws (NOT where the above picture is from, though…that’s in Budapest, while I’m heading to a far less exciting Phoenix).

And while they do have internet, it is of the dial-up variety (which is surprisingly not extinct, yet) so I predict that I’ll be saving myself from the frustration of having to use it.  My iPhone’s 3G will probably be much more tolerable (AT&T’s well-known issues notwithstanding)…but that won’t be too conducive to regular posting either.

So, long story short, it’s time to engage the trading robots for tomorrow.  Without proper access, I guess I’ll just have to skip the half-day on Thursday (hopefully without missing any potential entries that might save or ease the pain of my December performance).

For my 6-7 readers, I wish a very Merry Christmas – may all your wishes come true!  For the haters…well, Merry Christmas to you douchebags, too!

Enjoy this wonderful time of the year, regardless of where or with whom you get to spend it.

__________

For tomorrow, the robots have been ordered to buy:

• calls:  BCRX (@6.10), FXI (@41.75), GENZ (@48.50), MUR (@54.75),
• puts:  BGC (@31.), COF (@38.38), GD (@67.75), SPY (@open – $CPCI ratio:  0.57)

Comments »

As mentioned by Mushroomz in the comments, the $VIX finally knifed through it’s multi-month support of 20 and closed at a fresh 52-week low of 19.54%.

There’s been substantial correlation between the Miracle Meltup in the markets and the slow meltdown in the $VIX, which has dropped from the mid-50s to now below 20.  I see no reason that this should change and thus I would expect the market to resume its previously established trend (before this month-long borefest)…presuming, of course, that the $VIX will follow through on this break and continue its swoon to the low teens:

(Nevermind that long tail, btw…looks like some bad data on thinkorswim’s part…)

Comments »