capitalism *is* fun :-)

I was surfing the Apple website to checkout the new iPhone 3G, when I came across this. Cool! I am looking forward for the release of fixed rate mortgages for iTunes. Or even better, an iPhone equity loan, backed by my iPhone as a collateral Watch out people … we could be heading for the next credit crisis, once the value of the iPhone will drop, leaving people with negative equity.

Capitalism surely is fun

P.S: I am changing my recomandation on Apple (AAPL) stocks to: BUY and HOLD :) 

Last night I read an excellent quote. I decided to change it a bit, so that some people don’t find it offending.
"10 years ago we were using oil. Today we are paying for oil" … hence the pain at the pump

Well, I was reading the latest issue of  The Economist and noticed nice link to howispentmystimulus.com. Looking at what people bought with that money almost made me cry. Poor people where helped out by the stimulus to buy those everyday necessities. Let’s name a few:
- a gas guzzling SUV
- cat dentist (???)
- Runescape player upgrade account (everyone needs one, really)
- guns!
- vacation to Mexico
- Las Vegas (really, this one couldn’t have been missed)
and so on. Visit the site and enjoy. Those poor guys.
I think those checks stimulated something else then the economy. Let’s hope that next time, Ben the helicopter Bernanke will decide to to throw the dollars straight from a bio-fuel powered helicopter, and save a couple of thousands of trees that were used to make the paper on which the checks were printed.

I love the way politics work. They are like a retail store offering a 5% rebate on a 50% overpriced product. From the 2 sides of the coin, people always see the side which has the 5% rebate printed on it, and cheer along.

With crude oil hitting a new record, of over $138, every newspaper and the entire media are out for finding the new guilty ones. OPEC, governments with taxes, little green men, etc. Face it people. We are almost 7 billion, chewing on limited amounts of the black stuff.

I got to watch "The Mist", based on a novel by Steven Hawking. I suggest you watch it. Underneath the cover of a horror movie, it actually does a wonderful and subtle job of showing how people react when confronted with dangerous situations. Watch the movie, and observe the similarities with the actual world we live in.

Cheer up. My investment portfolio is up 5% for this year. Things don’t look that bad.

I guess there is nothing more cool on this world, then buying oil with US dollars
I know this post doesn’t make much sense, but I am just giving Windows Live Writer a test .

At the end of 2005, there were 8.333 billion US dollars in worldwide assets of equity, bond, money market, and investment funds.
At the end of 2005, there were 6.477 billion people on the planet. This means that if we take an anual yield between 5 and 10%, every human on this planet contributes between $65 to $130 a year to increasing private wealth.

Pretty nice :)  

As posted some time ago, check it out:
http://stocks.forbes.com/exosyphencom/

80% accuracy Now, should I be a nice guy and also make each stock’s weight in the portfolio available for you?
Also, I got 3 rewards in 2 weeks.

-80% or better picking accuracy
- Unsung hero - Top ranking gains earned on picks that have received relatively little agreement
- Perma bull - At least 80% of all takes are bulish.

I am looking out for some tool in which I can build a more complex portfolio. Perhaps I will replicate my complete portfolio somewhere.
Keep up with me for the best market tips

I think I will do some profit taking, and head for Starbucks.
Keep working people … I have portfolios to grow

As usual, I waste a lot of my valuable time chatting with Dan on things of which we can’t speak publicly, as we would risk to be missinterpreted. But just tonight, I will let you in on some of our private stuff. Please do not try to replicate anything at home. These lives belong to 2 people that are highly experienced in what they do. They poses large amounts of cash and logistics used to back the entire show.

For example, I could move to Bucharest, and with the amounts we individually pay as rent for our luxurious living spaces, we could share a big penthouse that would make every chick get wet faster then my car reaches 100. (That’s about 6.8 seconds). Or we could use the same amount of money to support a lot of people in need. But we just don’t feel like doing it. If we would combine our tech gadgets, we would achieve the most high-tech/sm in the entire world. Also, we would be the smartest guys in the room. Sounds tempting? But we made a secret deal not to ever do this. It’s enough that we get together 4 times a year (This is Dan’s fault anyway) and make the security staff of the hottest club in town say: “Not these guys again!”, when we step in.

Why don’t we do this? Because in about 2 years, we would become filthy rich. This is why we never work on stuff together. We would probably buy the biggest office building in town and turn it into a strip club. I would use my skills and cash to manipulate markets and drive oil prices through the roof, until a galon of gas is exactly 69 US dollars. That is right. We love the US dollars. We don’t get all wet about the Euro. We love the american way. We love capitalism. We don’t need a currency designed by some designer living off social aid because the factory he used to work in as a condom box designer, was relocated to Pakistan and he got fired. The US dollar makes you feel you actually hold money in your hand. Just look at the bill. (Or use Google to find a picture, if you only have coins in your pocket - this is how Google actually became so huge. People googling for stuff they would never see in their entire life, for real. Like pron.).

Dan would probably buy a Smart car an fit 2 Hummer engines in it. That is because we are not eco-friendly. At all. We like plastic. We like everything that can’t be recycled. Because 10.000 years from now, people would dig out our stuff and expose it in a museum : “A condom used by Dan to please someone’s wife”. Some advanced nation, would find the pit where I pour all the high performance engine oil I burn (and boy, I burn a lot), and become the Saudi Arabia of the year 13.069 by exploiting that. This why we should not be eco-friendly. What we do today, should be known for eternity.

Did I tell you about the time, me and Dan got drunk, and paid with brand new money, which had consecutive serial numbers? We spent the bills in reverse order. We used the last bill to pay for the cab. We were so drunk that we couldn’t remember Dan’s house number. I just told the driver to drive until he sees the biggest house on the street and stop there. He didn’t missed. I mean this guy lives in a freakin sky-scrapper. Get an elevator dude, I am tired of climbing stairs for an hour, until I reach your room. No wonder he used to get laid rarely. Those stairs exhaust any chick.

We don’t need to hear your comments. We don’t care about them.

I was reading Forbes today, and noticed this cool stock picking section they have. Since I am considering to invest in US stocks soon, I decided to create a small portfolio and some recommandations. You can follow them here:

http://stocks.forbes.com/exosyphencom/

What I really like about capitalism, is that everything can be bought with money, and handled as disposable items. It’s like living the ultimate eco-friendly life. Everything can be ‘recycled’ (read: passed on to others). You wake up one morning and realise that everything you do, resembles a giant market. Everything is for sale. Everything can be bought. You can even hedge everything. Money is what defines the “can’t do / can do” ratio in your life. Make sure to get that ratio as closest to zero as possible.

Everything becomes more interesting when you realise that even people are part of this huge market. Set a target. Find a proper entry level. Buy. Patiently wait to achieve your target, and then exit. Sell. Make sure everything is hedged. Don’t hesitate. Afterall, it’s all a technical thing.

Don’t make an IPO. Keep yourself closed. Avoid being traded on the open market

As usual, I went out to have dinner at my favourite restaurant. I was out of luck … my favourite table which has absolute privacy, was taken. So I took what I found. Great … I was in the middle of everybody. I started looking around out of boredom. It’s a rare ocassion to see grand-scale expression of stupidity.

Some guy next to me was flashing his Blackberry to make sure everyone notices him. At one point he was almost waving his hand in the air with him. Grow up. Learn to sit and eat in a restaurant. I assume he was celebrating the recent corporate job he just got, along with his Blackberry.

Some girl was taking photos of herself next to a BMW X5 which was on display. Come on! How low can some people get? I bet that by the time I am writing this post, she is the hottest girl on Hi5 with those photos. Or not.

In less then 6 months after I bought my car, it was already on YouTube … and it wasn’t me who made the video. Have some respect for privacy people. I am really not happy to see myself and my car on YouTube.