“When a Mere Ass-hat Just Won’t Do”
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Before I talk about this Disco Ball Market, I want to take a second to explain why I love this country and I love going to work every day, despite the imminent Tsar Bomba of Damocles hanging over this economy thanks to the near-brain dead or simply evil (your pick) statist government with which we’ve been collectively saddled.
You see my line of work brings me into contact with blindingly smart people every day. And not just smart people, like your average egghead dufus at State U., but smart ambitious fellows not unlike Le Monsieur Le Docteur de Le Fly. People who want to actually do and create things in a clever and efficient fashion that no one has considered before.
It gives me such hope, you see. (Aside: Can I use that word, or has it been wholly discredited like the otherwise once-honorable “liberal?”)
Anyway, it gives me hope for this benighted land, that we might still have the IP to make it “on to the next,” as Jay-Zee would say. These are the people that are continuing to create value every day, even in the worst of market circumstances. And here I am, just lucky enough to stumble into them every now and then, and maybe lend them a hand along the way.
Without getting too deep into specifics, let me proffer this example of the young man I met this morning…
This guy used to be in plain vanilla big project software consulting. Serendipitously, or unluckily depending upon your tolerance for such things, many of his clients were large state governments. You know the drill if you’ve been exposed — this is a client base characterized by horrendously long sales cycles, diffident bureaucracy, inefficient and/or politically-driven decision making — you know the drill. The biggest net positive to that kind of customer base is that it’s magnificently sticky, if perhaps only by dint of inertial motion (thanks Newton).
You’re probably saying “so what? — there’s a myriad of private sector gov’t suppliers out there, and they all sell for about 5.0x cash flow and maybe 0.75 to 1.0x sales.” Big whoop, right?
Well, that’s where the innovation I so love comes into the picture. This young man came to realize, via quiet hard analysis and slow revelation, that the value he could extract from his customer is so valuable to the outside world, that he can afford to pay them and himself, and still make four to five times the margins he was originally making in his original model.
Think of that for a second. He can afford to pay his clients to allow him to do what he does, which also happend to be a value added, money-saving service to them. You think that’s going to drive some demand for his products, maybe?
I love my job. God Bless America, and screw Damocles while You’re at it.
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This Disco Ball Market is turning and turning and sparkling and sparkling, and it’s even worse on my poor M. Le Fly’s brain than the chemical laser-krunk, electro-youtube sonic Ecstacy-Assist “the kids” are replacing Gloria Gaynor with these days.
Sometimes I feel like one of those “lucky ones” of the generation X+ who were too young for Viet Nam, but too old for the Gulf Wars, but replacing those armed conflicts with the twin piers of “Disco” and “Electronica.” Much like the tenets of war, the universal deficiencies of bad club music remain eternal.
One is driven to speculate as to whether the Spartans and Etruscans had to winnow their young from the atonal lull of the thumping lyre. Better than warring with the Athenians, I guess…
Watch the dollar. If it breaks down, we will continue up. However, today’s action in gold and silver seem to be signalling, if weakly, that we’ll have a pullback here. I may lighten on some of my calls, at least temporarily.
In the mean time, the banks BB&T Corporation BB&T Corporation BB&T Corporation BB&T Corporation [[BBT]] , Citigroup Inc. [[C]] , KeyCorp [[KEY]] , and Pacific Capital Bancorp [[PCBC]] and my favourite (sic) L.E.D. techs, Cree, Inc. [[CREE]] and especially Veeco Instruments Inc. [[VECO]] look very strong, telling me this is not an “about to plunge” market, no matter the sweaty-palmed Denninger-types’ trepidations.
Please also remember to take any spare change lying around in the cushions and apply them to a short of ArvinMeritor, Inc. [[ARM]] , so I may defeat mine righteous enemee (sic), CA, and proceed to the Elite Eight.
Thanks in advance.
Update: The real thang, yo’ —
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBR2G-iI3-I 450 300]______________
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Is your young friend’s company publicly traded?
Not yet.
Interestingly, there is a public company that is peripherally in this space, but does not even understand the model yet.
I can say no more.
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If you want to better disparage “the kids” and their electronic music why not do so in their own ri-cock-u-lus terminology? Behold the rosetta stone…
http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/
That’s an awesome guide, but I’d be less concerned about the club & underground techno scene and much more concerned about the deluge of shitty pop, rock, and rap that “the kids” get exposed to nowadays…
I would be less concerned about the club crap if it didn’t involve brain rotting home made ecstasy ingestion.
I have children, you see.
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I enjoy several forms of electronic music, and used to go to clubs all the time in my younger days, yet never touched X or any other drugs. It’s not the music, you see, it’s the person, how he was raised, and who he’s hanging out with.
True, that certainly helps. But an atmosphere conducive to “X” taking — and I’m told it’s not unlike the blase acceptablility and administration of LSD/psilocybin during Dead and similar concerts back in the old days — is one of “proximate danger” no matter the training.
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The key is to listen to really good DJs that play stuff you like so you don’t have to warp your mind with chemical shit. I always thought the music was enough to keep me interested. Electronic music’s dying, anyway. Hip hop and its many ilk are killing it slowly.
MDMA is highly underrated.
MDMA and X are one and the same, yes? So I am told.
Look at you…acting like you don’t know
Better watch your mouth, or I’ll direct your mother to these pages.
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Shhhh…let her sleep, she’s been at a rave all night.
That is a great little site. I’m an unabashed junglist.
I have to admit I know almost zero about it, but I give that kid huge props for taking on such a holistic historical documentation project like that.
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That’s very interesting stuff. Guy’s a historian, for sure.
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inanely stoopid business model, paying your customers that is!
Inane like a fox!
Imagine for a second you could take the orders of your clients and then sell them one hundred times for the price of one trade.
Would you pay them to send you orders? (of course, AM’s pay for flow all the time, but this is more about information).
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Jake, I work at a company that pays drug stores for sales data and we sell the data back to pharma companies. Very profitable. As a matter of fact, TPG just took our company private.
It’s ALL about the information.
Literally, the Treasure of Sierra Madre.
If the internets have taught us anything, it’s that the hunger for information is self-perpetuating, and insatiable.
Much like the legal profession in that sense.
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no.
Okay D.
(my youngest)
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Strong post!………. I think it signals to the productivity #’s that we are seeing.
BAC V. CREE Could be a final 4 match up!
Please, I have to tear off CA’s ARM and beat him over the head w. it first.
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jake do you know anything about MGH, AGT, THM, or MVG? 🙂
Pipsqueak-a-cal and doggish, for the most part, but a rising tide, etc., etc.
Employee 8/Teahouse loves MVG.
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Goose Stepping …–…—
we shall see lord gint.
I am releasing my “leaked” report about bent truck axels as we speak….
Developing!
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Preach ON, Jake! You are right; it is always a pleasure to meet/engage-mentally with anyone who is ‘gittin’ it done’, as my grandfather would say.
To be clear, he had that phrase working well before that fat turd Larry the Cable Guy.
Thx, and for the record, I figured there was some historical precedent to that phrase.
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5 sharp sword hanging over the head of this country:
reprocraps
demfumblicans
People who see distinctions when there are no differences
People who entertain themselves to death on mind-numbing sports
teeming masses of lazy asses
Have you been reading Chomsky again? Lol… But I do agree with his point that pro sports are taking up a lot of the intelligent discussion time in the Western world, and that important things are discussed with a dumbness that’s hard to comprehend. Repeat the party line. Repeat the party line. Glenn Beck was a nice example when he had that Dem Congressman on who was accused of groping. He said he was sorry for wasting his viewers’ time, just because the Dem said a bunch of things he didn’t agree with. Since when is listening to the other side a bad thing?
You are wasting your time watching Glenn Beck, no matter to whom he’s talking.
People should read more.
(Especially Dan)
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Nice post Jake. I wish I had more time to comment.
That makes two of us!
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LOL; I’ve been meaning to tell you to stop being so quiet!
Actually, I do remember a time when something like 50% of ALL comments made on iBC were you and/or your alter egos. Ahh..the good ol’ days…
Yeah, the alternate commenter thing is a lot harder w. the avatars. I used to have some fun w. that.
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Well, just change the email address, and you get a different avatar. See? Of course, for full effect you’d have to upload a bunch of different avatars to your various emails, etc. MR.LIMM may not be worth all that effort…
On an unrelated note, here’s an article you might enjoy:
What a daft way to stop your spaniel eating the milkman
You learize you are quoting a ribeltalian now, dontchoo?
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Well, shit.
FREE (gov’t funded) HEALTHCARE for all!!
Velly intelesting.
I am famiyar wit dah changing avatalls, I jus’ doan do it dat much.
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Jake, you took the lead going into the 4th quarter over CA, it should be an interesting finish.
Yes, very touch and go right now.
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Jake, you following that bull flag on SLV? It sho’ got a purdy mouth…
I doan know nuthin about Purdy’s mouf, and I’m not so sure that I’d characterize that as a “bull flag,” but it certainly seems like a valid continuation, at least.
I did sell a little SLW calls today and some GDX calls and a bit of AGQ. Just to raise some cash for next week, which I think will be volatile.
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